Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 31C, Blue Cortina, by Sytaxia
It was the wind that first woke Sam, howling and screaming through the land around him, and when he opened his eyes, he found that he was staring at dark, rich soil, thick and damp with the rain that was falling onto his naked back. He slowly climbed to his feet, and found that he was once again in the woods, rain pattering down through the cracks and holes in the thick, dark canopy overhead. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a hollow, hungry sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he shivered as the wind cut its harsh whistle through the dense limbs and branches and lashed at his skin. Sam slowly climbed to his feet, taking in the fetid, dead scent of the wretched woods, and the rumbling sound in the distance. Mingling with the booms of the thunder, he could make out the screaming, clawing, tearing sounds of the creature, and his eyes widened when he realized that the sound was once again drawing closer to him.
Huge, wide roots split the thick soil, curling up and out of the bases of the trees, rippling angrily through the dark ground, bits of moldy leaves clinging to their dark, gnarled surfaces. Sam stood and stared around him; the sky was considerably darker than it had been the last time that his nightmares had forced him into the woods, and it was almost too dark to see; the sky was an angry, dark, boiling haze of black and clouds, peaking like a vast, hungry eye from the holes in the leaves that spread above him, and he shivered as the wind once again violently lashed at his flesh.
“Still wavering about, are you?” Sam turned around quickly, nearly twisting his ankle as his foot caught on one of the roots that were stabbing up and out of the ground, and he stared at the sight of the double, standing before him, clad in his dark suit and tie and balancing the little girl on one arm. She, in turn, was balancing her clown, its mouth still twisting in its grinning, deadly leer, on one arm, a perfect copy of the way that the double was holding her against his hip. Sam shuddered at the sight of them, and then turned away.
“Trying to ignore us, are you, Sammy boy? What good is that going to get you? Everyone is always trying to ignore the truth, ignore the facts, and try to go through life with all of their little black curtains in place, blocking out the things that they don’t want to see. Isn’t that one of the things that you hate about the world, Sammy? About all of the worlds? The way that things always get swept under rugs, hidden behind curtains, kept safely out of sight and out of mind?”
Sam turned on his heel and faced the double again, “If you’d ever thought to give me useful information, I might stick around and listen to you. But no more. I’m done with this. We’re going to catch the killer, and then I’m going home.” Sam started to walk away from the double then, feeling his heart pounding in his chest as he made his way through the muck and mud, brambles and low branches clawing at his legs as he tried to find his way out of the woods again.
“Useful information?” Sam looked up from trying to find his footing and found that the double and the little girl were once again standing in front of him, having bent the laws of physics to their will in the strange, nightmarish woods.
“Sam’s being mean again. He doesn’t want to listen to us because he’s a naughty, naughty boy,” the little girl wrapped her arms more tightly around the clown and the doubles neck, bringing the three figures closer together. “He never wants to listen to me. He never wants to listen to sense. I tried, and I tried, and he was always so mean,” the little girl’s tone was angry and petulant, her face a dark mask of accusation as she stared at Sam. The clown, too, was staring at him, but its face continued to only look hungry.
“Sam just doesn’t understand useful when he looks at it. Always looking the gift horse in the mouth, never listening to reason. Always thinking that he knows best. Selfish bastard.” The double’s face was hard set, a pattern of fury mapped out over Sam’s own features as he stared at him. “We’re trying to help him, and all he does is ignore us…”
“You’re not trying to help me! What more do you want from me? What more do I have to do? I don’t bloody understand this shit, and unless you’re going to actually help me, as you keep fucking insisting you’re doing, I’ve had it! I have had it up to here with your useless shit, and I’m not bloody taking any more of it!” Sam screamed at them, and the wind picked up in response, screaming back at him and forcing him to the ground, his hands and knees digging into the dirt, one leg colliding with one of the large, twisted roots that split the ground. But the root didn’t feel like a root… His leg was resting against flesh, and as Sam looked up again, he saw that none of the roots were actually tree roots - they were all bodies, strewn about the ground, writhing in agony and adding their deep, pain filled moans to the growing cacophony around him. The wind, the howling, the clawing and tearing and growling of the approaching creature, the moans of the bodies that lay, some half buried, others simply laying on the ground - all of the sounds collided together in a thick, swelling symphony of pain and despair.
Sam closed his eyes, trying to fight back the tears that were forming in them, “This isn’t real. None of this is real. It isn’t real. It can’t be,” when Sam opened his eyes again, he could make out the features of the body nearest him, and he felt his innards turn to ice: the body was another double. All of the screaming, moaning victims in the dirt were perfect copies of himself, each one wore his own face, contorted in a mask of pain and anguish, tongues lolling and eyes bulging, skin torn and flesh ripped apart, blood running down and mixing with the thick, dark soil upon which they lay. And every body, every perfect copy of Sam, had the same marking on its belly. The mark of the killer, swirling and sharp lines, traced into their flesh.
“Don’t you see, Sam? You have to understand it all, to solve every part of the puzzle, in order to win. In order to get what you want. You can’t just solve half of the clues and say that your crossword is finished, you daft bastard!” The double was standing over him again, his foot crushing the hand of the nearest body, fingers crumpled and bent under the heel of his shoe. Sam scrambled to his feet, and then tripped over another one of the bodies, falling backwards and feeling his own bare flesh collide with the naked form of another one of his doubles, its blood staining his skin and its cries spilling into his ears, his own voice filling the air, a maddening stereo of his own sounds of pain and fear.
“I don’t understand… I just… I can’t understand….” Sam stared at the mark on the stomach of the body, knowing that he knew it from somewhere, somewhere long before 1973, somewhere in the future, in his own past… His brain somersaulted through case files and memories of killers and rapists, of murderers and graffiti of every size and shape, but he couldn’t remember where it was from…
“You have to try harder, Sam! You have to know!” This time, there was no anger in the little girl’s voice: there was desperation, and, Sam realized, some encouragement. He had to understand where the symbol came from, where he had seen it before… He had to find out more about it, it was the only way that they were going to catch the killer…
***…doing the best that we can, but the case is very, very complicated.***
Voices suddenly filled the air, barely audible above the screams and moans, the sounds of the wind and thunder and the horrid, maddening sounds of the nightmare creature as it grew ever closer.
***Complicated? You’ve told my sister that her son was brain dead in the past! First it’s a clot, and now it’s a tumor, first he’s ill, and then he’s better, and now he’s ill again - I think it’s time that you lot pulled your heads out of your arses and started to actually help my poor nephew!***
***Mrs. Bradley, I’m sorry, but…***
***MISS Bradley, thank you very much, Miss Heather Bradley who is going to hire a solicitor and file suit against the NHS for every little ounce of negligence that has gone into this case!***
***Miss Bradley, you must understand, with the current state of most hospitals, even with the most thorough cleaning, MRSA infections are very, very common; having them enter into the lungs and form pneumonia is not, but given the recent surgeries to your nephew’s chest…***
***Surgeries that took place months after his accident, because you missed, you missed… You missed whatever it was that you missed in his chest the first time that you were fixing him!***
***The embolism was very, very hard to spot, I’m afraid, but it has been removed now… And now that we know about the tumor, we’ve called in one of the best surgeons in the region, possibly the country, Frank Morgan, to…***
***You’ve called in the surgeon, but you won’t let him cut into Sammy’s head until he’s better, and it’s your fault that he’s so ill in the first place!***
***Miss Bradley, please, try to understand…***
***I am through with trying to understand! This is inexcusable! This is…***
***Heather, please!***
Sam shook and stared at the sky as he heard his mother’s voice drifting down, falling like one of the moldering leaves that were dropping off of the huge, expansive trees that cluttered the sky. “Mum! Mum, I can hear you! Mum!” Sam shouted at the sky, but received no response as the voices continued to filter through.
***Ruthie, it’s time you listened to me and hired a solicitor to deal with these pillocks! Just look at poor Sammy…***
***I know! Just let them do their job! You’re not helping! Oh, god…***
***Mrs. Tyler?***
***Ruthie, what is it?***
***What is that? Doctor, what is that? His stomach…***
***Surface staph infection - the same MRSA bacteria that are filling his lungs have caused a skin infection, that’s all…***
***But the pattern… The pattern… I know that marking… I, I remember that marking..***
***Miss Bradley, I think you should take your sister home; she’s been here for far too long, she needs to rest.***
***You don’t understand, the pattern on his stomach - I know it! I just… I don’t know from where.***
***Mrs. Tyler, you really should go home and rest. We’re doing the best that we can for your son, and you know that we’ll call you if there’s any change.***
Sam’s head reeled through this new information as the voices faded away, drowned out by the howling and screaming of the winds and the sounds of the moaning and mangled bodies that littered the ground. His mum knew the symbol - his mother had seen the symbol before… What the hell could that possibly mean?
Sam was still trying to sort out the information, mulling over the symbol and where both he and his mother could have possibly seen it, when the air suddenly grew incredibly still, the rain, the wind, everything stopping around him, silent and heavy, a horrible, muted feeling descending upon the world, and then…
The sounds of the creature ripped through the woods behind him, splitting the heavy silence like a knife through a veil, ripping it away and replacing it with the thousands of screams and wails, the clawing, growling, slithering sounds of a thousand nightmare creatures collapsed into a single being, a huge, tearing behemoth that thundered through the woods, ripping through trees and ground, coming up directly behind him. Sam started to run, his footfalls fumbling and unsteady as he made his way through the maze of writhing, moaning bodies around him, and then he fell, staring into his own face, its eyes glazed with pain and its limbs grasping at him, drawing him down and onto the ground, its blood seeping up through the tears in its flesh as it twisted and shook on the ground…
And then the creature was there, the scent of death and decay hot on its breath as it leant over him, growling and hissing, and Sam closed his eyes as he felt a claw, long and thin and razor sharp, not the wide, punishing daggers that had previously torn at him, but a thread-like whip of solid bone, piercing and wicked, slid into his back, ripping through him. He started to scream as he felt his flesh collapse under the sharp pressure that it placed against his back…
All feedback is highly encouraged and greatly appreciated!