This is Episode 2-5 of a serial urban fantasy & paranormal story.

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Part 2-5: Sconces

We were hamsters in a wheel. It was sconces and stones, over and over. They popped on, reliable as motion-detector lights, then faded behind.

I lost count at thirty. There were no doors, no forks. If we stopped, the sounds of whatever followed eventually overtook our laboured breathing.

“It’s not going to stop, is it?” I said.

“We can’t run forever.”

I had nothing but my fists to fight with. Wishing I’d picked up a piece of the stand, I leaned against the wall under the sconce, watching the gloom to my left. Persi squatted beside me. The shuffling, plodding noises prevailed as I quieted my lungs.

They got louder. I expected them to resolve into footsteps, but it was more of a drag and plop as it got closer. My legs demanded that we run again. Most parts of my brain agreed. My hand came to my mouth, ring clacking into my teeth. I tasted it, let my tongue and lips feel its cool, smooth surface. Anything to fight the wild instinct to run. Persi pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide and blinking fast, jaw working this way and that.

Like the snap-suddenness of the sconce light, there was no warning when the monstrosity hove into sight. We both cursed and scuttled off the wall, tense and ready to bolt. It was a human height greyish glob. Bulky, the size and general shape of a big plastic trash bin. There were a host of stubby legs; three or so that were stepping it forward, several smaller ones that were too short to reach the ground (they pawed at the air anyway), and a fat, beaver tail of an appendage that twitched and dragged, helping stabilizing its top-heavy mass. For arms, there were many noodley growths that looked sort of like jellyfish frills hanging down both its sides. A glassy lump, about the size of a bowling ball, pushed out from its skin, about halfway up the main bulk of the blob.

“Is this what you saw? Before?” Persi asked, her words escaping in a shuddering whisper.

I had no idea what she was on about. I was busy re-gluing myself to the wall so that I was as far away as I could be from the thing when it passed. I couldn’t run. Those jellyfish things looked designed to punish runners. I could only hope it would leave us alone if we left it alone.

And for a wonder, it seemed to be okay with this truce. There was an icy moment when it seemed to hesitate as it passed us, but it kept going. It had a tail. Trailing from the fat, slapping appendage was a thick tendon, maybe the width of my wrist. It was knotted with a skull size lump every six feet or so. It was also stretched and tugging off the ground, plunging back in to the darkness. Our globular visitor had cargo.

As it lurched out of sight, the cargo revealed itself as a second, similar creature. The tendon attached itself into the main mass of the thing, right below the eye-like globe. This one ignored us too, and this one also had the tendon.

“The conga line from hell,” I muttered, as the third beast came bobbing and dragging.

“How many are there?” Persi said.

“Oh, I bet they never end,” I said, choking back some bile as I studied #3 closer.

Now I thought I understood Persi’s earlier question. These things did remind me of the pearly blobs I’d seen when Eden was working its dastardly magic on the grandstands in the park. Their eye-thing was the same off-white colour, though the greyish bodies had much more substance and form here. I told her so.

“Maybe this is where they live?” she said.

“If they’re even alive. They don’t seem to be aggressive. The ones in the park never really hurt anything, they only sucked up the blue mist. At least as far as I could tell.”

“Let’s see where they’re going.”

It was as good a plan as any, and gave my mind something to do other than watch the freak show roll past. After #6 passed, we started to walk again, keeping in between it and #7. The ropey tendon bounced and scraped in the middle of the passage with us. It was preferable to the monsters. With Persi, I went over everything I remembered about the blobs in the park. I felt for the ring’s tingle. We both tried using our thoughts and imagination to affect the hall, with no apparent success.

After ten minutes of this, we fell into a frustrated silence, watching the sconces burst into life. Yellow sconce, walk past it, light dims, dims, dims, almost dark, sudden yellow sconce! Walk past it…

Had I not been settled into the routine, I mightn’t have noticed the white sconce. It was like all the others, but the light it cast was sharp and colourless.

“See that? White?” I said.

“Yes. Maybe it’s not endless after all?”

I let myself believe it. The next sconce was white too. Maybe this signaled the end. Or at least a change.

The sconce after that ruined everything. It was yellow, but that wasn’t the problem. It’s what it showed us: there was a heavy door on the left side of the hall. At its threshold lay the bisected vase stand. My hamster wheel analogy turned out to be a lot more accurate than I imagined.

“Help me Persi, or I am going to start to really freak out.”

“All I can think of is to try to go back in.”

“Yes, good, keep the ideas coming.”

We let monster #7 lumber past, then stepped over the cord. We pushed on the door. We shouldered into it. Hell, we even tried pulling. It was stuck.

I grabbed the stand. It made me feel better to wield something. The door had sliced it so that the ends of the legs were lost to the room beyond. But it had been at a sharp angle, leaving me with a dinner plate sized top with four sharp spikes, each a different length.

“As a last resort, one of these fuckers is getting this in its eye,” I said.

Persi nodded. I glared at what I thought might be #10 as it made its way into the light. It did not respond to the threat.

“Okay,” I said. “What would Deluxe do if she were here, hm? Collect samples? Talk to the conga line? We gotta think sciencey and smart, Persi, or I am going to stab one.”

“She seems the type to analyze and act at the same time, from what I’ve noticed. You know her best.”

“Analyze, yes. Perfect. Let’s analyze this bitch, c’mon.”

We fell in step between #10 and #11. I’m not a great analyzer, but there was precious little left in my arsenal to fend off full blown panic. That “trapped forever” idea had gotten fed up with my conscious brain and was busy alerting all the other parts of my body, like my intestines. The first pangs of stress cramps were warming up. So, I analyzed.

“What do we know about this stupid place?” I said. “Sconces, monsters. We’re in a loop.”

“Two sconces were white,” Persi said.

“Yes, that’s about all we have. How many sconces are yellow, I wonder?”

“I lost count.”

“Me too. So let’s count.”

The door sconce was number one. We walked and took turns naming them aloud. The simple task was enough to keep the cramps and panic at bay.

Sconce fifty-nine blared white. As did sixty. Then we were back at the door.

“It’s a god damn clock,” I said.

 

Continued in Part 2-6

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