The Grimm Dossier

Chapter 51 - The Rift in the Fabric

England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
Dyowl's Hollow - Woods of Dartmoor
5 November 1898, 10:46 pm

Where a moment ago the features of this thing had been proclaimed, the mouth and nasal cavities, there was now only a torn hole of mangled flesh and bone. If the monster still had a mouth, it could have screamed. But a gurgling, disgusting gurgling sound came out of it. Then its form dissolved into black smoke, and Benjamin's heart foolishly dared to hope it had made it.

But the billowing haze reformed not far from him. Bones cracked and crunched as the figure rose again in jerky, stiff movements, and the elongated silhouette returned. At first, the man staggered, his form seeming to take longer in several places, and Ben saw him retch, cough, and blood spurt from his mouth onto the floor. Long fingers shot to where his face had been and groped over flesh lying in shreds. They clawed at the remains of his face. The creature seemed irritated by his resistance. If the monster was really as old as it had claimed, perhaps it was not yet familiar with the effects of firearms.

A single rapid click and crack sounded as if from billions of insects at once. Benjamin turned paler as he watched the chaos of movement surge through the body. A shimmer and shine of shells, countless curved legs, and the sickening sound of insects climbing over what had once been the creature's face. To Ben's horror, they spilled out between his fingers, disappearing into the sticky blackness and reshaping the torn flesh.

Then, with a jerk, the monster's head turned 90 degrees. Skin and muscle formed thick strands like twisted roots where the neck and spine should sit. Ben's legs went weak when the creature turned back to him in such a way, without wiping away the black-oily blood that covered his form like a blur of tar across the torso. The monster's body did not follow his head until a few heartbeats later, and the piercing eyes now fixed on Ben with a completely different expression.

"How dare you...!" rang out in several voices at once like a sickeningly discordant chorus from the creature's throat. The chorus rolled over and broke like black glass. The angular, grotesque features had returned, more horrible than before. The eyes were no more than black caverns, only a luminous dot forming their center, and a sense of bottomless misery gripped Ben. His eyes widened in disbelieving horror. The thing there seemed to have sprung from hell, the incarnate embodiment of human nightmares.

"By God..." Ben pressed out. That was all he could get out; his hands were cold and numb, as was his mind.

"You can pray all you want, but no one will hear you." rattled a voice as rough as if it were made of chains drawn across the stone.

Ben knew he had no mercy to expect now. The gleeful enjoyment had been completely wiped from the monster's features. If before he had toyed with it, delaying the fight to take pleasure in it, now that sadistic patience seemed to have ended. Ben's heart faltered; he jerked the pistol in front of him, his finger twitching on the trigger. It was the second before the bang.

WHAM!

A strange sound suddenly penetrated the scene, like a knife in a tightly woven curtain. It was the palpable tension before a roll of thunder. Deep and oppressive before a loud bang drove into the darkness. Something pulled at every fiber and texture of reality for a split second, settling on the bodies present for an instant and squeezing the air from their lungs. An out-of-place blast suddenly swept leaves aside. A few branches flew jerkily away and hit a tree trunk with a wooden clack or scattered in the foliage.