Doomsdays by Jeffrey Thomas by Dark Regions Press

Author:Dark Regions Press
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: horror, short stories, collection, undead, armegeddon, apocolypse, jeffrey thomas, dark regions digital, dark regions press, drp digital

The End

The Call of the Worms

The steep path up the slope was lined on either side with the fossilized shells of an extinct mollusk, set into the ground so that their long spiral shells pointed upwards like stalagmites.

Actual stalactites dripped from a calcite ceiling lost in gloom. At one point the party of King G. stopped to rest, and G.’s Second – the King-in-Waiting – turned his face up to catch a steady stream of cold, pattering water across his forehead. It soothed his agonies somewhat. All of the members of the King’s party felt the agony of the worms, but that pain had been steadily increasing in the Second’s skull. As his worm grew, so did his skull expand to contain it. But the pain was a blessing, the presence of the great worm Yahhew within him. And he was particularly blessed, being the King-in-Waiting.

The winding path through the ranked spikes of spiral fossils ended in a level cliff top. Its ragged edge overlooked the Gulf, a plummet of deep gloom like the vaulted ceiling of the cavern above them. The Second had never seen into the Gulf’s depths himself, but he had heard stories related by those who had been lowered by rope. In a pool of black water or some other fluid, countless fossilized ammonites – these shells coiled in spirals rather than tusk-like – churned against each other constantly. Not buoyed up by the water, but filling the pool to its bottom, however far that might extend. Though constantly gnashing against each other in the turbulent pool, the coiled fossils never eroded, never wore down smooth.

Their music came up to the party now in greeting, a rasping, grating chorus...like the teeth of dreaming giants grinding in their sleep.

King G. had been foremost in the party, and he posed haughtily at the very lip of the precipice. Like all of his party, he was naked and purified, but there were marks to set him apart. Besides the greater size of his hairless head, twice that of the others, he wore a blue turban tightly wrapped around it, the only garment among them. Also, his skeletal leathery body bore the mark of Yahhew – an X – branded in a raised pattern all across his skull, his face, his torso and limbs.

Across the Gulf, the procession of the great worm Lalah rose into sight upon the opposite cliff. At its very edge, staring across, stood King S. in his red turban. The two Kings, the two parties, did not yell or gesture across at each other. Despite their seething hatred, they maintained a solemn sense of decorum. This was a holy ritual, enacted every four years. As it had been since even the time of the dead ammonites singing below in the Gulf.

Spanning the Gulf, high above the heads of both parties, was a horizontal iron bar scabbed in the rust of ages, its ends stabbed deep into the rock of this cavern chamber’s opposing walls. It had

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