The Descent

His lungs and throat burned with a contemptuous fire as air suddenly forced itself into his body. Graham coughed and spluttered back to life as oxygen filled him with painful speed. He could still feel the hands at his throat, the fingers of The Visitor holding him at the creature’s twisted mercy, but they had eased enough to allow him to breathe.

His vision came back reasonably quickly, although the colour was hesitant at first, but his legs remained as cold as lifeless as when he had fallen. Worse in fact, as now they were numb and alien to him, bolted onto his body but no longer part of him. Graham considered the possibility that this was something to do with whatever The Visitor had extracted from him and came to the conclusion that he did not want to know. The quicker he retrieved the eyes the sooner he would be released from this terrifying sensation, at least that was what he hoped.

He rolled over slowly, his innards cursing him violently, and began the long crawl to the safe. Graham had placed the safe in one of the many empty bedrooms in his house, the only one on the top floor, and had done so primarily because he was doubtful of any burglar’s intention to climb that many stairs. The room itself contained only the safe, an empty bookcase and a decade’s worth of dust, minus a few footprints from Graham’s recent journey to the safe. He had never liked the room from the moment the house was bequeathed to him. It felt occupied at all times, as though invisible eyes were watching him with unnerving interest.

Graham felt the invisible sentinels gazing upon him as he dragged himself across the floor, the small wound on his head leaving a subtle trail of blood behind him and his useless legs aiding in displacing a nebulous cloud of dust. By the time Graham reached the safe he had sneezed half a dozen times.

The safe itself was the oldest thing in the house by a clear margin. The dial was reddened by a thick layer of rust but the remainder of the safe was in pristine condition. Ordinarily Graham had no need of a safe and, in fact, his need to store the eyes had necessitated his first use of the device. As such it took Graham far too long to open the door, despite having memorised the combination. His hands, shaking as they were, made it difficult for him to rotate the dial sufficiently accurately, clicking over combination after combination until he finally managed to steady himself.

A light rumbling sound signalled to Graham that he had entered the correct combination. This had taken him by surprise the first time, expecting a click rather than a rumble. He pulled on the door with what little strength he had left and it creaked open ever so gently, flakes of rust revealing themselves on the rear of the hinges. Graham reached up into the safe, pawing the interior shelves for the eyes. He swore.

One of the eyes had, for want of a better word, melted. In its place lay a fine puddle of white goo. Graham believed, quite wrongly, that it was paint of some description and absently dipped a finger into it. It was cold, unnaturally cold. There was no aura of cold, no projection like most things with a definite temperature, only in the touch did it give any indication of how icy it was. The sensation caused Graham to retract with enough speed for him to catch his hand on the safe’s casing. He swore again and vowed to leave the gelatinous substance alone for now.

The remaining eye was still slowly rotating on its axis as it had been when Graham had locked it away. He grasped it with weary fingers and felt it straining to continue its little dance. Graham locked his fingers tightly around the sphere as best he could, locked the safe, and began his trek back to the staircase.

The return trip felt like crossing the Alps. Each skewed floorboard (of which there were many) seemed to have doubled in size in the time it had taken for Graham to conclude his business with the safe. His hands scraped timidly on the wooden floor and Graham made very slow progress, the speed of which would only decrease.

The deadening numbness of his legs was spreading fast. In the time it had taken Graham to cross the room it had already reached past his navel, and as he returned to the room’s entrance its icy fingers seized his left shoulder. His arm immediately went dead and began to flop limply on the floor. Graham’s last source of movement was doing double duty in both moving him and carrying the orb, the nature of multi-tasking meaning that it was doing neither job to any real satisfaction.

Despite this, Graham managed to drag himself to the top of the staircase. As uninviting as it had looked from below it now looked ten times worse. On the way up the loose nails and whatnot had acted as anchor points and, should he slip, the potential source of largely superficial scrapes and grazes. From above this notion seemed laughable. The helpful handholds were now nothing more than jagged death traps designed to skewer Graham during his descent. There was no upside to them any more, they were hideous instruments of torture put in place by some gnarled hell-god with an axe to grind, a malformed bastard from the dawn of time with more hatred than sense. Graham damned the younger version of himself, the one that had neglected the staircase for so long, and slowly tried to lower himself down.

It was difficult to move downwards with only one hand to provide motion, and Graham failed spectacularly. After progressing 3 steps he lost his grip and began to roll clumsily down the staircase. He struck nail after nail on the way down, large chunks of flesh being torn loose on the fall.

After what seemed like an eternity Graham finally hit the ground. He rolled, battered and bloody, in the direction of The Visitor. There was a languid, cancerous form stood in the doorway nearby, its overly dark voids studying him while a putrid hand kept its grip on some invisible object. The Visitor took two long strides towards Graham before stooping down over him. He gave the impression that he was frowning, although what skin there was on his face seemed incapable of such an expression. His lipless mouth began to move.

“I believe… you have some… of my property?” He said and held out his free hand.

The Ascent

Graham’s legs did not work properly. Whatever The Visitor had done to him had seriously impeded his ability to walk. Slowly he staggered his way across the room and into the hallway, all the time accompanied by the eerily pained and strenuous voice of his unwelcome house guest.

He would need to climb the stairs to reach the safe, a task that, with his legs in their current state, he did not relish one bit. Each step seemed more difficult than the last, as though the bones in his legs were steadily transforming into rubber. He fell a number of times before he even reached the stairs, the final tumble cutting open a superficial wound on his head. Yet, with great perseverance, Graham finally made it to the staircase, albeit crawling the last few feet.

Mr Nips was sat on the lowest step, his creaky little legs folded underneath him like a child at a school assembly. He regarded Graham with a professional indifference that few other humans, let alone spiders, could achieve. Graham stared at the bloated spider for a moment before hoisting his rubbery body towards the stairs.

He made it two steps before he slid backwards again, catching his chin on both steps on the way down. When he looked up again he was greeted once more by Mr Nips, who perched himself firmly on Graham’s nose.

Behind him Graham could hear The Visitor urging him to hurry up. “Faster, Graham” it tolled, like some hideous wooden bell, “I would prefer not to snuff out your existence.”

Scared, Graham flicked the spider from his nose and began to slither his way up the staircase once more. Five steps this time. Five steps before an unpleasant sensation halted his advance. His head felt like it was shrinking, that suddenly it was not big enough for its intended purpose. The intense displeasure of the feeling caused him to loose his grip and slowly slide down the stairs once more, again bashing his chin on the way down.

You’re doing it wrong. A snide voice chimed inside his head. Mr Nips was talking again. You’re supposed to use your feet.

“I can’t use my feet, they don’t work any more!” Graham shot back.

Well you either use your feet or you die. On your belly. Imagine what they’ll think when they find you. You’ll be quite a humiliating sight.

“I hate you.”

I’m not the one crushing your soul in his vice-like grip, chap.

Mr Nips left Graham’s mind again and gently squeezed his way through a nearby hole in the wall, disappearing. Graham surveyed the staircase a third time. It was tall as staircases go, and thoroughly dusty. What carpet there was had been ripped hundreds of times, each new rip having to be held in place with a nail or two just to maintain some semblance of order. Graham had begun to think of the carpet in the same terms as an amoeba.

The first few steps, maybe the first seven, were respectable enough, but the ones after that were in serious need of refurbishment. Many of the nails had worked their way loose, creating evil little crags that would be perfect for slicing the skin from a face should someone end up sliding face first past them. Someone like Graham.

He tried to stand but his legs gave way yet again. This time, on his way to the ground, Graham managed to catch the banister at the side of the staircase and narrowly avoided crashing to the floor once more. With this external support Graham wobbled like a house of cards, his crooked legs barely able to hold his weight even with the banister’s aid. Even with the ability to stand, however, the problem or movement still remained.

Graham tried to release the banister but that resulted only in his unreliable legs giving way once again. The only feasible method of ascent that Graham could see required him to lift each of his legs manually, using his hands.

“This is getting… intolerable.” The Visitor intoned from the adjacent room and Graham slowly started to climb his way up the staircase, step by step.

Graham made it more than halfway with no problems, and would probably have made it further, were it not for The Visitor’s impatience. The second floor was a few steps away when the voice boomed up to him.

“Squeeeeeeeeeze!” It said in a tone reserved for the types of children who dismember dragonflies, “SQUEEEEEEEEEZE!”

Graham suddenly could not breathe. Any control left in his legs was gone, and with it went the feeling. A creeping coldness started to rise from his feet. It swallowed his legs almost instantly, hurling Graham to the floor with alarming speed. He spun as he fell, resulting in him catching the back of his skull on one of the steps. A loose nail narrowly missed embedding itself into his skull, although the pain from the impact almost fooled Graham into believing it had succeeded.

As he lay there Graham could feel the atrophied fingers of The Visitor at his throat, choking him. Graham could see himself dying, his body being found lifelessly attached to the stairs like some urban artist’s impression of Jesus. He managed to turn his head and garner a look at the steps he had left to climb. The staircase looked as though it went on forever, yet he was sure it was only a matter of a few more steps.

With grim determination he forced himself to climb once more. He crawled, slowly and breathlessly, up step after agonising step. The wound on his head was bleeding profusely now, Graham reckoned his recent fall having succeeded in opening it even wider. On each step he left a small puddle of his own blood and, on one occasion, almost slipped on it.

Then the stairs stopped.

One hand reached up onto untarnished carpet. No loose nails, no wooden inclination, just firm and pleasant and even floor. Graham hauled himself fully onto the second floor and rolled onto his back. He stared at the ceiling, still willing his body to let him breathe, and felt as if he had just been on a gruelling mountaineering expedition rather than a mere ascension of his staircase.

As he lay he saw his vision start to darken. If he had tried he could have reached out to the door of the room wherein the safe was kept, but he did not. He just lay there as everything slowly faded to black, all the while cursing The Visitor and his spectral grasp.

Intermission – Sphinx 2: The Revenge!

“Watch out!”

A cry rang out across the dunes, hundreds of voices screaming in fear as the sandy monstrosity approached the mighty pyramids. It was hard to comprehend what had caused such a being to come into existence, yet there it was.

The creature had begun its ascension three days prior, but it had taken this long to finally shake its way free of the sandstone prison that was to be its tomb. After the last rampage measures were taken to immure it permanently, securing the beast deep within the desert. Apparently these measures were insignificant.

The front echelons fired off their weapons at the hulking creature, round after round embedding in its sand-ridden torso. If the creature was hurt it showed little sign of such. A massive appendage was brought down with venomous speed, swiping at the front lines, sending them hurtling through the air to their deaths.

The creature let out a terrifying roar, like a million lions in the grips of a primal rage, and shook free the remaining sand. It was then that the soldiers saw the true spectacle of the beast. They had heard tales from the previous ascension, yet tales rarely do justice.

The creature was huge, perhaps 60 feet tall, and both terrible and beautiful to behold. Indeed, like its roar attested, the creature closely resembled a lion for the most part, with claws larger than a man and a deep, golden fur. Unlike lions, however, the creature had what seemed to be the vestiges of wings, stubby little protrusions just above the shoulder blades. They appeared greatly atrophied and rotten, oozing sores bigger than a man’s head covering what was left of the flesh. The most unnerving and part of the creature, however, was its head. A human head.

The giant, emerald eyes of the beast darted wildly as it took note of the ant-like soldiers fleeing before it. They were captivating, beautiful, compassionate eyes that seemed deeply wrong when placed into such a violent beast. There was love in those eyes, a deep sorrow at what the creature was doing, the havoc it was wreaking, yet the face itself did not echo these sentiments.

The face of the creature was almost demonic in its enjoyment, a foul grin crumpling the smooth skin into a variety of evil canyons. Fanged teeth protruded from the creature’s mouth as it smiled, dripping sticky saliva in globules sufficient to drown even the tallest of men and potentially crush those of smaller stature.

A diminished squadron of fighters partook in a few strafing runs at the beast, each time losing one or two aircraft to a swing of its agile tail. One aircraft managed to escape immediate destruction, pinwheeling through the air and embedding itself in a sand dune. The creature tore into it like a child would tear into a gift, great fountains of blood replacing the more pleasant plumes of wrapping paper, the screams of the pilot replacing the giggling of a happy child.

Somewhere in the newly appointed front line the order was given, quite foolishly, to open fire once more. A cacophony of gunshots rang out into the desert, closely followed by hundreds of wet smacks, like the sound made when beating a wet sack, as the projectiles struck the creature. This time the creature seemed a little pained and brought its vile gaze to bear on the soldiers that had fired. With unrivaled speed, the creature charged the men. Though they were 300 metres away, perhaps more, the creature was on them in less than a second, perhaps owing to its large stride. It tore them to shreds and consumed them, all the while being barraged by tanks as effective as an infants toy.

The army were in full retreat by this point. They had no tactics left open to them, no weapons of any use, and as a result their morale was in tatters. The creature was not, however, of a mind to allow those that had wronged it the chance to escape. It began to torment the soldiers, running rings around those in retreat, forcing them back and forth in a perverse little dance. Occasionally it would take a swipe at them playfully, never intending to catch them. It was reminiscent of a school yard bully or perhaps, more correctly, a giant-sized cat and mouse.

The soldiers began to drop one by one, each being devoured as they fell, until one man remained. From a distance he looked insignificant, a black dot in a vast ocean of golden sand, but up close he seemed powerful. He had a grim look of determination on his face as he invited the creature to take him. He stood proud and strong in the centre of the vast circle the creature had worn into the desert and began to announce himself, loudly.

“Beast!” he cried, “I shall not play your game any more! If you intend on killing me then make haste and do so, for I shall not be your plaything any more!”

For a moment the creature seemed confused, as if it had understood the man’s words and was upset at being denied its toy. It paced around in front of him, considering its options. Gently, it approached the soldier and lowered its giant head, its alluring eyes fixated on the lone soldier. They stared at one another for the longest of times before the creature roared louder than it had previously. The proximity of the beast to the man resulted in him being carried away by the sheer power of the sound, slamming him into the remnants of an armoured vehicle. Something within him cracked noisily and he fell limp, the intermittent dripping of blood from his mouth being the last sound he would make.

The creature, victorious, turned its gaze on the great pyramid and began to approach it. It nimbly climbed its way to the very top and perched itself upon the point. Like a giant king it surveyed its lands from its new throne, picking out which settlement would be its next meal.

The Demand

The Visitor looked somewhat pained as he walked. He seemed stiffer, more wooden as he moved. His face seemed different now also, less pronounced and a little skewed. The left-hand side of his face didn’t even seem to be properly attached, a fetid flap of skin waving in what appeared to be the wind.

Graham stared at The Visitor for far too long. By the time he managed to motivate himself to move The Visitor was reaching out toward the surface of the mirror. The glass on every mirror stretched angrily as The Visitor pressed his weight onto them. They bulged horrifically, thick bubbles of glass. Hundreds of little cracks announced themselves with a torrent of creaks as the mirrors struggled in their frames.

Graham turned and tried to force the door open with all his might. He drove his shoulder into the door time after time but it gave no indication that it would ever move, as far as Graham was concerned it had become a wall. He wanted to break the mirrors, shatter them into thousands of pieces, but was worried that in doing so he would release The Visitor. He stared at the nearest mirror as a small diamond of glass gently tinkled out of the frame, landing by his foot. The Visitor had his empty eye-socket pressed to the hole but had seemed to stop his advance.

Seconds passed as The Visitor’s black recesses studied Graham. Graham did not dare move, afraid that somehow The Visitor would reach him, stop him, kill him. How he wished he had his cane now.

“Bring me… the orbs…” The Visitor croaked dryly. His voice was still as dead as it had been before, yet there was the hint of weakness behind it now, a pathetic undercurrent to a sinister and unnerving tone.

“I can’t! I can’t get to them!” Graham replied.

The Visitor seemed to consider this for a moment before pushing harder into the glass. The mirror had stretched a metre and a half from its frame and was getting closer to Graham. He took a few steps back but found himself pressed hard against the black door. With nowhere else to retreat to, this was Graham’s last stand.

The mirror stopped just short of Graham, more of the glass cracking and falling to the floor. The hole was quite large now, nearly large enough for The Visitor’s head to poke through. At this distance Graham could see just how tight some of the skin truly was. He could see the skull beneath the flesh and the beginnings of tiny little rips. The skin around the eye sockets seemed to be the only part of The Visitor that maintained any colouring of life, a sickly red colour ringing where the eyes should be. Graham was sure that a disgusting pus would be welling in the red bruises.

The Visitor pushed his lipless mouth to the hole in the mirror and spoke once more. Though his voice remained even and calm Graham felt that The Visitor was angry and had lost patience with him.

“Where… are the orbs!” The Visitor screeched, his dry throat ill suited to higher volumes.

“The safe! They’re in my safe!” Graham admitted. He was too scared to lie and felt that it would do little good to do so anyway. The Visitor would find out the orbs’ location one way or another, and Graham had no doubt that many of those ways would involve pain.

The Visitor paused for a moment. Graham thought that he might be taking a few deep breathes before realising that The Visitor did not seem to be breathing.

“They are not yours to possess… yet.” The Visitor finally said, after almost a minute of silence, “You are ill-prepared to wield them in your current state.”

“Wield them? What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“Exactly…”

The Visitor shifted his gaze, what there was of it, to the black door behind Graham. There was a deep rumbling at the heart of the building, Graham thought, and the door began to crumble. As Graham lent on the door the fine powder that it had become began to cascade over his shoulders until, before he could catch himself, it gave way under his weight. Graham tumbled backwards through the sandy remains of the dark door and fell heavily onto his back, striking his head. Stars danced around his eyes for a few moments and somewhere in the back of his mind a little voice shouted out: Idiot.

With much effort Graham managed to refocus his eyes and sat up. For a moment he hoped that he had been dreaming, that he had fallen and hit his head and that all that had just transpired was some concussion-induced nightmare. Then he saw the hand coming towards him.

The Visitor’s arm was unnaturally long, reaching from the mirror in Graham’s former bathroom and into the adjoining room. It deftly reached out and seized him by the throat, hoisting him to his feet. Graham could feel it pulling yet did not feel and compulsion to move. It wasn’t pulling him, it was pulling something inside him. He struggled and kicked but could not shake The Visitor’s grip. It pulled and tore at him and he felt something inside start to slip loose. Graham tried to hold onto whatever it was but it was like grasping a wet rope. It slid from his grasp and came away in The Visitor’s hand.

Graham stumbled back somewhat and tried to spot what The Visitor had taken. The hand was grasping onto something, something big, yet he could not see it. It was invisible but, to Graham at least, very real. Something was missing from inside him, something important, but he could not quite place it. Before he had too long to ruminate on this, The Visitor’s voice floated menacingly from out of the other room.

“Hurry,” he said, “I can… survive much longer without my eyes than you… can without a… soul.”