Chapter 4: The Invitation
The world dissolved into a roaring, metallic slide, a vertigo of rust and decay. Jeremy’s elbows and knees barked against the corrugated iron interior of the chute as he tumbled, Elliot’s choked yell echoing just ahead of him. Then there was no more chute, only empty, reeking air, and they hit the ground in a tangled, bruising heap on a surface that gave slightly, like wet leather.
The air was the first assault. It was warm and thick, pressing into the lungs with the cloying, iron-rich scent of old blood underneath a high, sweet note of meat gone terribly wrong. It smelled like an open refrigerator in a closed room, weeks after a power failure.
Jeremy pushed himself up, his hands sinking into the sticky floor. The world resolved slowly in a dim, flickering light.
They were in a cavernous space, a parody of a grand hall. Vast, water-stained murals of smiling, bland-faced patients peeling off the walls in leprous strips. Long tables, maybe twenty of them, ran the length of the room, each set with shattered porcelain and tarnished silver that gleamed dully in the light. The plates weren’t empty. They held grey, fibrous lumps and clean-picked bones that were too long, too thin to be from any animal Jeremy could name.
The light came from surgical lamps bolted to the high ceiling, their intense beams swinging lazily on frayed cords, casting stark, moving shadows.
“Ash removal,” Elliot wheezed from the floor, spitting out a string of dark fluid. “I miscalculated the vector. This is the intake point.”
A slow, wet sound came from the center of the room. A scraping.
Frank Manera stood between two of the long tables. He was no longer kneeling. He stood upright, his arms held slightly away from his body, palms open. He was looking right at them. In the clinical glare of the lamps, the filed points of his teeth were tiny, sharp shadows in his mouth. But his expression wasn’t one of hunger. It was something worse. It was relief.
“You made it,” Frank rasped. His voice was a dry leaf crushed underfoot. “Took the shortcut. Smart.”
Jeremy scrambled to his feet, pulling Elliot up with him. His mind, usually a swamp of apathy, was crystal clear, electrified by terror. Every instinct screamed to run, but there was no chute back up. The only doors were vast, rotten oak things at the far end of the hall, barred with iron.
“Stay away from us, Frank,” Jeremy said, his voice surprisingly steady. He had nothing but the screwdriver, now slippery with grime.
Frank didn’t advance. He shook his head slowly, a sad, deliberate motion. “It’s not me. It’s never been me. I’m just the usher.” He gestured with one thick hand at the grotesque tables. “You were always supposed to be here. On the menu. Special orders.”
Elliot was scanning the room, his head twitching. “The patterns are wrong. The bone placement is ritualistic but non-standard. The air current suggests a larger ventilation system behind the west wall. It’s not a hall. It’s a processing room.”
As he spoke, Jeremy saw it. The shadows on the west wall weren’t just still shapes from the swinging lamps. A section of the mural, a giant, faded smile on a painted doctor’s face, bulged slightly. Then it split. The wallpaper peeled back, not from age, but from something pushing from behind. A pale, segmented limb, slick with a clear, viscous fluid, probed through the tear and grasped the edge of the wall. Then another. They moved with a slow, insectile patience.
The wall was moving.
Not just in one place. All along the western side of the Feast Hall, the walls rippled. Things were stirring in the spaces between the bricks, behind the happy-patient murals. A low, collective sigh filled the room, the sound of a thousand dry leaves rustling, or a thousand wet mouths opening.
Frank didn’t even turn to look. He kept his hollow eyes on Jeremy. “They’re shy. But they’re curious. They smell the new medicine in you. The sadness. The fear. It’s a vintage year.”
“What are they?” Jeremy whispered, his grip tightening on the screwdriver. It was a absurd gesture. Like trying to hold back the tide with a twig.
“The cleanup crew,” Frank said, as if explaining a basic chore. “The Doctor’s little miracles. Leftovers from the early trials. They live in the walls. They clean the plates.” He finally glanced at the creeping, probing limbs with a sort of paternal disregard. “They’re why the floors upstairs are so clean, no matter how much… mess… we make.”
One of the limbs, long and jointed like a giant’s finger, tapped its way across the table nearest to it. It hovered over a bone, caressed it, then withdrew it into the gloom behind the wall. A soft, crunching sound followed.
Elliot grabbed Jeremy’s shoulder, his fingers biting in. “The barred doors. The iron. It’s not to keep us in. It’s to keep them in their… pantry. The bar is on our side.”
Jeremy followed his gaze. The huge oak doors at the far end were indeed barred by a single, massive iron bracket laid across them in a stone cradle. It was simple. Heavy. Meant to be moved by several people.
Or by two desperate men.
“Run for the doors,” Jeremy said, his body already coiling.
Frank’s relief hardened into something like disappointment. “Don’t spoil the supper,” he sighed, and then he moved.
He didn’t run at them. He lunged to the side, his massive arm sweeping across a table. A cloud of shattered china and old bones exploded into the air. He grabbed one of the long, warped table legs and wrenched it free with a scream of protesting wood. In his hands, it was a brutal, splintered club.
A gatekeeper with his weapon.
The things in the wall reacted to the sudden noise and movement. The rustling became a agitated slithering. More limbs emerged, longer now, feeling their way down the walls toward the floor, tasting the air.
Jeremy and Elliot ran. Their shoes slipped and skidded on the sticky tiles. The hall seemed to stretch, the distant doors not getting any closer. Frank moved to intercept, not with speed, but with a terrifying economy, cutting a diagonal path to block them.
“Elliot! Distract him!” Jeremy yelled, the words ripped from his throat.
“Social engineering on a feral host? Low probability of—” Elliot began, but then he skidded to a halt, snatched a tarnished silver gravy boat from a table, and hurled it with all his might. It clanged off Frank’s temple with a dull, metallic pang.
Frank roared, more in surprise than pain, and turned his shambling charge toward Elliot for a split second.
It was enough.
Jeremy didn’t slow down. He lowered his shoulder and crashed into Frank’s side, not to tackle him, but to shove past. The impact was like hitting a sack of wet cement. Jeremy bounced off, stumbled, but kept his feet. He was past him.
Frank’s club came down where Jeremy had been a moment before, shattering a tile into dust.
Elliot scrambled past on the other side, his breathing a frantic whistle. Together, they pounded the final twenty yards toward the doors. The barred iron bracket was the size of a small tree trunk. They reached it together, throwing their shoulders against it.
It didn’t move.
Behind them, Frank was coming, his club dragging a furrow in the filth. And from the walls, the pale limbs were reaching, coalescing into shapes that had too many joints, sliding onto the floor with soft, wet plops. The rustle was now a chorus of clicks and sighs.
“Again!” Jeremy screamed, the raw panic burning through the last of his numbness.
They heaved. Muscles burned. Joints popped.
With a grinding shriek of metal on stone, the bracket slid an inch. Then another.
Frank was ten yards away. Five.
A cold, smooth tip brushed against Jeremy’s ankle. He kicked out blindly, his foot connecting with something firm and unyielding that recoiled with a hiss.
The bracket slid free of one cradle and crashed to the floor with an earth-shaking clang.
Elliot didn’t wait. He threw his weight against the left-hand door. With a groan of centuries-old hinges, it swung inward, revealing not sunlight, but another dark corridor, this one lined with crumbling brick and the smell of damp earth.
They plunged through the opening just as Frank’s club shattered the doorjamb where Jeremy’s head had been. Jeremy turned, slamming the colossal door shut with his back. Through the narrowing gap, he saw Frank standing amidst the slithering, clicking things, not pursuing. He just watched, his filed teeth visible in a grimace that wasn’t a smile.
The last thing Jeremy saw before the door sealed was the pale, many-jointed limbs curling around Frank’s legs not to pull him down, but almost… affectionately. A keeper with his pets.
Then there was only darkness, the sound of their own ragged sobs, and the distant, hungry rustling still audible through the tons of ancient oak.