Read Online The Spawning by Tim Curran - Free Book Online Page B

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    â€œIt came for you. The creature took you.”
    Butler shook her head, but once again her lips betrayed her: “It touched me . . . oh God . . . it
touched me . . .”
    (not a shadow . . . it had form, thickness, solidity)
    (it stank of ammonia and cold, airless wastes . . . its touch was like ice)
    (the buzzing . . . the buzzing of its voice)
    (butler . . . butler)
    â€œIt touched you. Then it took you somewhere.”
    Butler’s breath came very fast. “I couldn’t fight it. I tried to fight it . . . but it looked at me and I couldn’t move.”
    â€œWhere did it take you?”
    Butler stared off into space. “Through the wall. Where the angles meet. It took me through the wall.”
    (through the wall . . . darkness and space, black gutters of time and filth and nonentity . . . the great white space and the black corridor . . . the primal emptiness . . . the spheres of shadow . . . the anti-world)
    â€œAnd where did you go?” Relling said.
    Butler was shaking despite the injection, just trembling and sweating, eyes huge and fixed, filled with cloying shadows. Her hands bunched in and out of fists. But she could remember, she could see that place, that void of darkness in which glowing geometrical shapes crawled and were alive, viscidly alive.
    â€œThat place . . . we flew into that place . . . into that dark place . . .”
    â€œWhat did you see?”
    â€œThe city . . . I saw the city!
It floats, black and endless!
Towers and pillars and pyramids made of black crystal . . . full of holes . . . holes . . . so many holes . . .”
    â€œWhat was in the city?”
    â€œThem . . . those things like at Hobb . . . the Kharkov things! Flying and hopping . . . up into the sky and down into the holes below! I was with them! I was
part
of them! We were the hive! We were the hive! The eyes! The eyes!”
    Relling gripped her arm. “Tell me about the eyes.”
    Butler was moaning now, tears running down her cheeks. “The eyes . . . the million eyes!
The million million eyes!”
    (the teeming numbers . . . hopping and creeping and filling the spaces)
    â€œWhat do the eyes do? What do they do?”
    â€œNo! No! Nooooo! Not the eyes that burn and see!”
    â€œTell me!”
    â€œNO! I CANNOT SAY! I WILL NOT TALK OF THE EYES–”
    The table Butler was strapped to began to vibrate and there was a sudden sharp, chemical odor in the air which had dropped thirty degrees in the span of seconds. Noises began to echo . . . slitherings and scratchings, pipings and squeals. The plasterboard wall shook and a great crack ran through it. The lights overhead flickered, went off.
    â€œTHE EYES! THE MILLION EYES OF THEM!”
    (the hive)
    (THE HIVE)
    (THE WITCH-SWARM)
    And then as Relling watched with a clinical eye, shapes began to bleed from the walls, spreading their wings, their eyes lit a malefic electric red. They filled the room in ghost trains. Then faded.
    Butler was unconscious.
    Relling went back to her office, wiping a dew of sweat from her brow. She thumbed the intercom. “Has the package been delivered to Polaris yet?”
    â€œIt’s not ready. Tomorrow for sure.”
    Relling sighed. “All right. But no later, no later.”
    Sitting behind her desk, she listened to the wind moaning through the compound.

11
    POLAR CLIME STATION,

FEBRUARY 23 rd
    O FFICIALLY AT CLIME, NICKY Coyle was a DA, a Dining Attendant, but he was no common DA and nobody thought of him as such. DAs loaded dishwashers and emptied garbage, made pitchers of Kool-Aid and pots of coffee, cleaned up the dining area and scrubbed pots.
    Coyle was no DA; he was a chef.
    Just ask anyone at Clime, and particularly when they were hungry.
    During his twelve-year tenure in Antarctica, he’d done just about everything. He’d worked Waste and Supply, been a heavy equipment operator and a mechanic. He’d been a meteorologist’s assistant. A medic.