The November Featured Story is by Jeff Parsons
Please feel free to email Jeff at:
jeff_95630@yahoo.com
DEVOURERS OF ETERNITY
by Jeff Parsons
There was nothing like a steaming-hot and mysterious Louisiana cemetery to draw out the haunting creepiness of the night world.
Louise stumbled through the ancient graveyard, breathing heavily in the humid darkness. She weaved around tilted, cracked tombstones to avoid the deep, sunken depressions in the forgotten holy ground.
They’re right behind me. The thought gave her a desperate burst of energy.
She knew what the two gang members would do just before they killed her. The gang, the Cajun Riffs, had a score to settle with her. She had been a girlfriend for one or two of the Riffs at different times, but when they insisted she also be a drug runner…
No one was allowed to quit the gang, so she ran through the night until she was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.
She struggled to focus. She needed to see her surroundings so she wouldn’t fall. Headstones and angel statues were illuminated by the full moon. Monolithic crypts rose from the inky shadows cast by sprawling, kudzu-draped oak trees. The strong moonlight plunged the landscape into a stark polarization that held no shades of worldly grey.
This was a bad idea. As far as Louise could tell, there was only one way in or out of the enclosed cemetery, unless she wanted to climb over the tall, jagged-spike fence. She didn’t have the energy for that.
A yell cracked across the still humid air. “There she is!” The voice sounded very close.
It made Louise run wild, without thinking, panicked and sobbing. The hitch in her left side took her breath away, a debilitation now joining the pain in her legs, which had already spasmed repeatedly with vehement protest.
She knew the gang members almost had her. Could she shake them loose?
Suddenly she saw a large crypt nearby. She decided to backtrack her trail by going around it.
In the arch above the crypt’s rusted gate entrance, there was a family name chiseled into the marbled stonework, but its exact wording was lost under the drooping shadows of clinging kudzu vines. The crypt was incredibly old, probably from before the time when the French sold the territory to the Americans. It was once an ornate monument to the eternal, but now it was defiled by the passage of time.
Louise staggered into the relatively cool darkness behind the overgrown crypt. Her despair became momentarily overwhelming; disorientation disabling her as she fumbled about, hands held before her.
She wondered why she was trying so hard to survive. Why not just die, like the meaning of her life had on that fateful day over a year ago when she’d left home, forever. In woeful contrast, her stepfather’s sexual abuses and her mother’s drunken denial were nothing compared to the evil Louise encountered in New Orleans. The city streets corrupted the meaning of her life and desensitized her with an anesthetic of indifference, until she was almost ready to be sacrificed, her heart cut out, on the civilized altar of profound misery.
But she kept struggling through the darkness, hands extended forward, searching. She moved away from the back side of the crypt, using the overhanging tree shade to conceal her actions.
“I see you, Louise!” a French-accented voice yelled.
Damn!
Louise bolted from her cover, tripped on a tree root and landed hard on the damp mossy ground. The earth gave way beneath her and suddenly she was tumbling down into a stygian darkness.
Somehow she landed on her feet, but at an awkward angle that caused her to lurch forward with her hands smashing into the thick debris that covered a firm stone floor.
Her mouth opened in agony; a silent scream. The pain in her hands seemed endless; taking her breath away, it was so immediate and pervasive. Her chest finally heaved and Louise let out a short yelp. She tried to stop hyperventilating. She calmed herself, trying to take her mind away from the pain, especially in her right ankle.
She kneeled carefully back on her legs, and was shocked to realize that it was actually cold down here—a very strange and musty discomfort, considering that it was never cold in New Orleans in the summer. Moonlight filtered down from the opening of the hole above, just enough for her to see that she was sitting in a large area about thirty feet underground. There were shadows flitting across the walls about twenty feet away. Maybe it was a cave?
The ground felt…odd. She remembered the same sensation from once before—she had gone to a bar that served endless peanuts for free as long as you kept drinking. The peanut shells had covered the floor of the bar. They crunched, cracked and split.
This felt similar, but also a little gooey. And something on the ground tickled her…with light twitching movements. What?
As her heartbeat settled, she heard an odd, high pitched chittering. It was a collective surround-sound of multitudes, a sound that ripped right through her composure and left her trembling and shaking, as fear overtook her rationale.
What?
She had no idea what it was, but it seemed to originate from everywhere.
She couldn’t breathe as the sound became louder. And it crept closer…closer.
Then, from the opening above, she could hear her pursuers as they drew closer, snapping her out of her unknown fear into a known dread, far more real and dangerous.
“She went behind this headstone—”
“Yes, but where is she?”
“She has to be nearby. Look, what have we here? A rabbit hole? Did Alice fall down into Wonderland?”
“Ma Cherie, it’s time for you to come out, or else we’ll have to come get you!”
Frikkin’ Creoles, all psychics, half in this world and half in the next. She frowned, exasperated, but knowing it was her heritage too…
“Look at that drop. She’s not going anywhere. Let’s see if there’s another way down there.”
“That crypt might have a basement. Here…shine your flashlight down there.”
I’m in a crypt! She cringed in the darkness.
Loud smashing sounds echoed from above. They were breaking into the crypt!
The rustling sound around her became more agitated. She had to figure out where she was—she had to get out of here!
Louise reached into the pocket of her black leather pants and took out her lighter. Good thing I took up smoking after the world had gone to hell.
She flicked the lighter. It sputtered wanly, then flared to a full flame, creating a small sphere of illumination in the darkness, which was now suddenly alive with movement in the shadows.
Her eyes adjusted. She wished she had never turned on the light.
Surrounding her were hundreds, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of them: unblinking tiny red eyes, watching her, the faceted reflections of numerous insects, a species that scattered underneath the feet of the mighty dinosaurs and yet outlived them all, and would undoubtedly outlive mankind…cockroaches. Millions of them.
The burial chamber’s walls, ceiling and floor were pocked with holes, the porous limestone like Swiss cheese. Out of those holes, the unusually large, caramel-colored cockroaches skittered forth. Their frenetic movements made the skeletons in their wall niches writhe, as if they were alive and getting the flesh stripped from their bones, undoubtedly a taste the roaches acquired throughout the graveyard.
Normally, Louise knew that cockroaches would flee from any light, but this horde surged closer to her, a rolling wave of individuals that behaved as a huge whole, a carpet that would soon engulf her.
She turned off the lighter as the roaches surrounded her. Her heartbeat rate escalated with fear. She shuddered as the first of many serrated insect limbs tickled and scratched her sweaty skin with their frantic movements.
The cockroaches crawled all over her, bristling with wispy feelers and sharp barbs. They scaled her back, her chest, and inside her blouse. They began scurrying about wildly on her shoulders, racing up inside her pant legs, and getting caught in her hair. She held her eyes and mouth firmly shut and flailed her arms, frantically trying to brush them off.
Above and behind her, a door was being pried open. Metal scraped loudly against wood and stone. Apparently, her pursuers couldn’t open the door the regular way—maybe it was a secret door?
The cockroaches seemed even more agitated by this new raucous noise. Some of them bit into her skin…surprisingly painful bites that excised tiny scallops of flesh from her.
Louise knew the end was near, either from the multitude of cockroaches causing her to have a heart attack, or, from her pursuers deciding to kill her in this dungeon. She started to scream.
The door above suddenly shoved opened with a crack of splinters. Bright light from the crypt abruptly flooded the burial chamber. She could sense the intense change in light even with her eyes squeezed shut.
Suddenly the cockroaches moved away from her like algae-green swamp water dripping…oozing intimately down her body.
She heard the two Riffs race down the stone stairs to the chamber, where she sat on the floor.
One of them cried, “Lord in Hell! Look at the critters here, ‘tis disgusting.” Both of them had flashlights and were shining them about.
“And looky, there’s Louise, the biggest critter of all!” The light haloed brightly around her. “Louise, you really didn’t think you could lose us, now, did you?”
“Ah, not to worry girl, you gave us a long chase, but it was very exciting! And we love to see you scared. Tell you what; we’ll be sure to give you a quick death. Maybe after we have some fun with you, no?”
Louise heard the sound of a gun being drawn from a holster. Terrified, she realized that the room seemed much brighter somehow. Cockroaches were on every side and seemed energetic, almost angry as they flexed their wings and legs.
The gang members were behind her, probably three of them, maybe ten feet away. She saw that they were, blocking the stairs; blocking any escape. Just ahead of her was a narrow crawlway that was sunken into the floor—it was probably once a small aquifer offshoot from an underground river—could she escape through that?
One of the gang members said, “Little buggers don’t like the light.”
“Ouch! One of them bit me!”
“They can’t—ouch! What the hell? They’re biting me too!”
“They’re attacking us!”
Desperate cursing followed as more and more of the cockroaches skittered and flew towards the men. The stomping crunch of squashed bugs became frantic and the cursing escalated into bellows of raw fear.
This was her only chance…
Louise dove towards the crawlway.
She slid below the rim of the floor and squirmed into the smooth crawlway. She felt like she was swimming through a pool of bugs.
A gunshot thundered loudly within the chamber. They shot at me!
She inched further along into the crawlway, her ankle throbbing. More cockroaches appeared, drawn to the disturbance, possibly beckoned from across the entire cemetery…
In the crawlway, a massive wave of the huge monsters streamed over her for a long time, sounding like poker chips tumbling in a near-empty dryer, drowning out everything until they finally passed into the chamber beyond.
The screaming in the chamber soon transitioned to gruesome choking and gurgling noises. She could hear the sounds of shoes flailing against the floor but soon the sounds became more and more sporadic.
Don’t look back, she told herself.
She lifted herself up into a sitting position in another open area. She didn’t dare flick on the lighter still held tightly in her hand, but, she could see a little more now that her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She was in a small natural cave.
There was nowhere else to go. She was trapped.
She sighed, and awaited her fate, slumped against a footstool that had been left in the middle of the cave. Near the stool were a hurricane lantern and five small chests. Could there be something to help her in any of the chests?
She flipped open the cover of one of the chests. Tarnished gold and silver reflected back at her. There were coins inside all of the chests. Very old coins.
Louise sifted her fingers through the cold thick metal pieces. The chittering of cockroaches eventually faded away in the other chamber as she thought about her life’s circumstances. She could change everything if she could get out of there…with some of the coins.
With a prayer spoken to the spirits, she filled her pockets with gold and silver. If she survived the night, she’d come back for more, later.
She turned around and went back through the crawlway. She had no other options. She couldn’t hear the gang members anymore; perhaps the cockroaches had scared them off. Perhaps they were gone.
It was tighter than she remembered. She wondered how she had made it through so quickly before.
Finally she reached the chamber and saw that most of the cockroaches had retreated out of sight. But it hit her that the gang members had not left with the insects.
A thick layer of splattered carapaces surrounded the ghastly remains of three human beings. The bodies, still clothed in shredded rags, had been stripped clean of their flesh. She could hear faint scratching coming from within the skulls.
She didn’t know why she felt so numb. She understood on a primal level that what she saw should terrify her. But she stepped carefully past the blood-wet skeletons, and the nearby pistol and two spent flashlights, then climbed the stone steps upward. There was an iron slat on the stairs, which was been torn from the crypt’s now-open outer door.
Once in the crypt at the top, she pushed the secret door closed; if you looked very closely, you might see some out-of-place marks on the stone wall, and that would be all. Her pursuers were very clever to have found the hidden door—lucky for her and unlucky for them.
The precious coins in her pocket felt good. Louise now had the power.
She stepped out into the moonlight and closed the outer door to the crypt. A whole new world awaited her, one where she’d no longer be afraid of what the darkness held.
Jeff Parsons originally hails from the east coast, but has called Northern California his home for many years now. He lives with his wife and family and is a proud recipient of their love and support.
Jeff is a professional engineer. He has a long history of technical writing, which oddly enough, often reads like fiction. He was inspired to write by two wonderful teachers: William Forstchen and Gary Braver. He is currently published in the Northern California Publishers and Authors anthology titled Golden Prose & Poetry.
Jeff got his first break with SNM Horror Magazine’s online stories. SNM recently published his debut book titled Algorithm of Nightmares. He was previously featured in the SNM Bonded by Blood IV and V anthologies.
