CONTENT WARNING: This update contains vivid descriptions of body horror.
Austin digs his fingers into Naberius’s arm, still using the much taller demon to support his weight as he walks. He can see the entrance to the offshoot tunnel up ahead, the flashlight beam bouncing off of the broken boards where it was once sealed off. There’s a certain electricity in the air as the group draws closer to the entrance, a humming that Austin can feel in his bones, oppressively filling up his ears. It’s almost the same sort of pressure he felt in his head when the lake spoke to him, but still somehow different, like it’s flowing through him instead of trying to overtake him entirely.
“Do you feel that?” Austin asks Naberius, tilting his head up to look at him. Naberius furrows his eyebrows in concentration for a moment, then nods, frowning.
“A revenant.”
“A what?”
“It’s an older term for something undead,” Richard says, drifting around Austin and peering farther down the tunnel. “Generally something more, uh, physical than your average ghost.”
“So like a zombie?” Austin asks.
“Less cognitive than a zombie, but sort of the same idea.” Richard shrugs. “Revenants can also be a lot of dead people at once, sort of…” he laces his fingers together demonstratively. “Stuck together. Like I said earlier, the DPR’s had to deal with that a couple times.”
“I don’t understand,” Naberius says slowly. “Why would Crocell want to summon something like that?”
“Mass destruction.” Austin lets go of Naberius, taking a few slow steps down the smaller tunnel. “When they were in my body, all they wanted was to kill people and destroy things. They probably wanted to possess this thing, or, I don’t know, harness it somehow to smash up the town.”
Naberius hums thoughtfully. He follows Austin and Richard into the tunnel, still holding the flashlight beam steady, illuminating the way ahead.
“I don’t like this, Aust,” Richard murmurs under his breath.
Austin doesn’t answer. Halfway down the tunnel, the smell of death has started to permeate the air, filling his nostrils with the thick, suffocating stench of rotting flesh. It’s all he can do not to vomit again. His stomach turns, and he retches, leaning against the wall and squeezing his eyes shut until he can breathe through the smell. He takes in deep gulps of air through his mouth, clutching his stomach.
“I -” he starts, weakly, and then something up ahead begins to move.
The noise is gradual at first, the sound of rock shifting and crumbling as something immense raises itself up off the ground. Then the revenant starts to moan, a low, deep noise like nothing Austin’s ever heard before. It’s dozens of voices in unison, crying, groaning, gurgling, mumbling, all straining to be heard over one another. There’s something else, too, under the voices - a fleshy sound, a wet slapping of skin on skin.
Austin hears either Richard or Naberius gasp, and opens his eyes. Just beyond the beam of the flashlight, he can see a dark shape moving towards them in the darkness. The size of it as it draws closer makes Austin’s breath catch in his throat. It fills up the tunnel from top to bottom, a writhing, veiny mass of human flesh, with a constant array of facial features and grasping appendages emerging and disappearing from it. It doesn’t walk so much as it undulates, oozing forwards like toothpaste gradually squeezing its way up through the tube. The death-smell comes off of it in hot, sickening waves.
“Jesus Christ,” Richard whispers from somewhere overhead.
If I look at this thing too long, I’m going to lose my mind, Austin thinks giddily, but still doesn’t tear his eyes away from the revenant. It moans and reaches towards him with several arms, and Austin catches a glimpse of long, blood-stained fingernails before they’re sucked back into the conglomerate of flesh. He feels a bead of sweat drip down the back of his neck. It’s a miracle they could recover those kids’ bodies from here without anyone else getting killed.
“Fascinating,” Naberius says softly. “And horrible. Pardon me.”
He steps past Austin, meeting the revenant in the middle of the tunnel and using the hand not holding the flashlight to poke and prod at the fleshy mass. The revenant groans loudly, a deep sound that makes the earth shake underfoot, pitching Austin forward onto his face. He can hear the sounds of wooden beams creaking overhead, and a shower of rocks and dirt spills down onto him as he scrambles back up onto his feet.
“Stop,” he tries to shout to Naberius, but his voice is lost in the revenant’s dissonant chorus of noise. The revenant seems to fold in on itself for a moment, consolidating its mass, then lashes out at Naberius much, much quicker than Austin would have thought possible. In an instant, Naberius’s wrist is nothing but a bleeding stump.
Austin sinks to his knees, clasping his hands over his mouth and gagging into them. Naberius chuckles, stepping away from the revenant and inspecting his wrist. He shines the flashlight on it, and, improbably, Austin can see new bones growing out of the stump, wrapping themselves in muscle as they form a new hand. Naberius flexes his fingers as skin grows over them, watching as they sprout nails.
“A dangerous thing,” he says, and chuckles. “Crocell tore those souls back here from the underworld. I believe they’re in pain.”
The revenant groans again. More dirt falls from above, and more, bigger rocks.
“Aust,” Richard says warningly, “we should get out of here before the whole place caves in.”
“Hold on,” Austin says, taking his hands away from his mouth. He looks up at Naberius. “You said it’s in pain?”
Naberius nods. “The souls inside it were, ah, resting in the underworld before they were summoned back here into…” he gestures at the revenant. “Into this. I imagine it must be very uncomfortable for them in there.”
The students it killed…maybe it was lashing out, like it did just now? It’s like a cornered animal. One that’s hurting. Austin takes a deep breath, holding onto one of the wooden support beams on the wall and using it to pull himself back to his feet. If it doesn’t want to be here…someone has to help it leave. Before it kills anyone else. Before it has to endure any more pain.
“How do I help it?” he asks Naberius.
“Austin,” Richard says.
“Dad.” Austin doesn’t even bother looking at Richard, instead lifting his chin up to hold Naberius’s gaze. “How do I get the souls back to where they were before? The underworld, or whatever?”
Naberius laughs again, louder than before, more genuinely amused. He sounds a little surprised, even.
“Well! You humans never cease to amaze, do you?” he asks, grinning. With a flick of his wrist, he produces a knife with a blade the length of Austin’s forearm from thin air. “You have to kill it, of course. It’s the only way for the souls to return to where they were before they were summoned here.”
Richard looks alarmed. “Wait, Aust -”
“Okay,” Austin says, and takes the knife from Naberius. He had packed his own, the hunting knife Otter stabbed through his hand the last time they were here, but this one looks more efficient. He tests the weight of it in his hand. “Okay.”
He takes a step towards the revenant, and it recoils from him a little, like it’s getting ready to strike again. A face appears on its front, pressing out of the flesh, its mouth frozen in a scream.
The man who killed Susie is probably in there, Austin’s brain supplies for him, trying to soften the blow of what he has to do. He clenches his jaw and takes another step.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to go down easy, are you?”
In reply, the revenant strikes at him.
NOT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO USE THE WORD UNDULATE. (a very good reason actually) (god damn this thing is creepy)