The Glob by Terry Wright

Billy took the high point of rock down in the Cavern of the Damned, which was lit only by torches mounted to rock walls. Hell’s heat had become bearable for him, if not somewhat comfortable. Stroking his goatee, he looked over his new charges. Flickering flames cast an eerie red glow on the legion of demons assembled before their new master. As the devil had agreed, Christy’s delivery into hell was rewarded most adequately.  

These demons were an unsightly bunch of squatty-looking gargoyles. Their blood red bodies were mostly smooth, completely unclothed, and smelled of vinegar. They had hairless heads, piercing black eyes, and pointy tails that bent at sharp angles. The horde, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, swayed back and forth and chanted Cara, Tara, Shara, Cara, Tara, Shara, a show of allegiance to their new leader.

As he scanned the hellish members of his new gang, his eyes were drawn to a demon standing in the front who appeared to be older, his skin being rougher than the others, and one place on his chest appeared scarred. Billy pointed down at him. “Come up here.”

With the moves of a monkey, the demon clambered up the rock, slouched at Billy’s feet, and twisted his neck around so his inky eyes looked up. “Master?”

“I’m going to need a little help with these guys.”

“Leon, at your service,” the demon said, and with a twinkle in his eye added, “They call me the baby killer.”

“Admirable.” One thing Billy liked about demons, they enjoyed bragging about their evil exploits and the ghastly deeds they’d committed to gain rank and favor with the devil. “You’ll be my right hand man.”

Leon hissed his approval and turned to the legion.

Cara, Tara, Shara. Cara, Tara, Shara. The cavern was alive with death.

Billy extended his hands, palms down. “Listen up, you guys!”

The chanting subsided, leaving only the gaseous sound of fiery torches.

“You’ve been draggin’ ass around here for too long. Things are going to be different.

The demons stopped swaying and began murmuring to each other.

“I expect twice as many souls fried in the fires of Hell’s kitchen. You got that?”

Now the demons eyes widened, and they hissed loudly.

Leon looked up at his new master. “What’s the rush? We’ve got all eternity.”

“Are you going to be insubordinate?”

“But we’ll need to increase coal rock production. We’ll need more chains, more diggers. New gas lines will have to be run and more wells drilled. The logistics of such an operation is mind boggling.”

“I don’t want to hear none of that crap,” Billy said. “Tell your boys to get on it.”

“But…”

“Do it!”

“You don’t understand…”

Billy’s eyes became threatening slits. “I’ll tell the devil. He’ll strip you of your demonship and cast you into the hell fires along with all the other losers in this fricken place.”

Leon flinched, paused in thought, then turned and crouched on all fours, his tail angling upward. “You heard the boss.”

The demons began to sway. Cara, Tara, Shara. Cara, Tara, Shara.

Feeling the rapture of his power, Billy thrust a fist in the air. “Now get to work!”

As the demons filed out of the Cavern of the Damned, he turned to Leon. “You take care of things around here. I have another matter to attend.”

“Justin Graves?”

“The devil is obsessed.”

“They are worthy opponents.”

Billy huffed. “I’d like to see them choke each other to death.”

“They’re already dead, my master.”

“Lucky me.”

Leon sat on his tail. “Because of them, you get to go back up there and raise a little hell of your own. Some of us down here would call that lucky.”

“I’m bored with it all,” Billy said with a sigh. “I mean, being invisible and sneaking up on people to slash them was okay at first. But what I really want to do is make them piss their pants.”

Leon’s brow arched. “Let me get this straight. Before you kill them, you want to scare them?”

“Shitless.”

“Then you need to learn a few tricks.”

Billy peered quizzically at the old demon Leon, the killer of babies. “Tricks?”

“Lighten up on my boys, I’ll show you.”

“If you make it worth my while, I might.”

“Follow me.”

In a whirl of smoke and ash, Billy found himself transported to another rock-walled chamber. “This way.” Leon led him down a sloping tunnel that smelled of oily decay, swampy and tarry. Bats clung to ceiling rocks with sharp claws and protested the intrusion with high-pitched squeals. Billy felt a chill. This place was darker and colder compared to the rest of hell. “Where are we?”

“Down here,” Leon said, loping along with a crab-like gait, “are many secrets of the dead, where horrors abound, and the tools of the trade are at our disposal. One of my favorites is just ahead.”

The tunnel’s end opened into a steamy cavern, where in its center, a dark pool oozed and bubbled. Billy half expected to see a woolly Mammoth flailing in its midst. “Tar?”

Leon squatted on a flat rock at the pool’s edge. “Looks can be deceiving.”

“What is it?”

“The stuff nightmares are made of.”  

Captain Holland set his binoculars aside, satisfied the ravine was clear of personnel. The sun beat down gleaning sweat on his brow, which he patted with a handkerchief. “Get ready, men.”

            A dozen holes had been drilled into Penelope’s walls. Dynamite was planted and wired. In a few moments, Holland would be assured no one else would ever die in that treacherous mineshaft.

            “Charging.” Lieutenant Richter had been a Marine demolition expert back in Vietnam. Both his hands were on the raised T handle. Both his eyes glittered with anticipation. The light on the detonator glowed solid red. “On three, sir?”

“Just blow the damn thing,” Holland said.

In an instant, the ravine disgorged rocks into the air with a mighty boom. Penelope belched and fell in on herself. The tailings pile gave way and cascaded to the bottom of the ravine. Dust billowed up like an afternoon storm.

Back at the station, Deputy Ryan had hold of the phone. “I promise,” he said. “As soon as they get back.”

“I need that prescription right away,” his wife said. “She’s breaking out all over.”

“I’m on duty.”

“Don’t give me that line of duty crap. Your daughter needs…”

“I’ll get it. I promise.”

The line went dead. Deputy Ryan couldn’t believe that his wife had hung up like that. He clicked the receiver button several times without raising a dial tone. Just great. As he set the malfunctioning phone down, a burst of wind threw open the front door, and a red mist came in, swirling.

He’d seen strange phenomenon before, this reminding him of a rampant dust devil wreaking havoc down Main Street, blowing open doors and knocking over potted plants. But this one was different. Its amoeba-like form defied reasoning. It moved about as if with deliberate intent. Papers on the desk began to fly around the room. Chairs toppled. He could hear faint laughter. The wind took the form of an...an...oh my god...an undulating glob of liver. It was upon him quickly, looming overhead, rasping with a heavy sound like breathing. Ryan’s hair whipped in the wind, and he felt fire on his face. A distinct realization came to him. He was no longer alone in the station house.

Captain Holland’s men threw the last of their equipment into the back of a county maintenance pickup truck, which they had borrowed for this chore. “Return the truck,” Holland said. “I’ll meet you back at the station.” He slid behind the wheel of his black Texas Rangers squad car. It had a silver circled-star emblazoned on the front door and a multi-colored light bar mounted on the roof. He clicked on the air conditioner and picked up his radio mike. “Command. This is Unit One.”

Static.

Holland frowned. “Command—come in!”

Silence.

“Deputy Ryan?” A shot of adrenaline spiked his heart rate and caused a sharp pain in his healing chest wound. The doctors had told him to take some time off, but that wasn’t possible. Seemed every time he turned around, Billy Denton or Justin Graves interfered with his need for rest. Now his radio calls were going unanswered, and he instantly feared more of the same. The maintenance truck with his men on board was already cutting across the desert, a plume of dust in its wake. They’d be more than an hour returning the truck, and if he knew them, they’d probably stop for lunch at the local Sonic drive in. He switched the radio frequency to mobile. There might be another Texas Ranger car in the vicinity. “Captain Holland, here. Anybody on this channel?”

Silence.

He switched to the Deckers Police Dispatch. “Somebody call the Texas Ranger station on the phone. I can’t raise my man.”

“Who is this?” a female voice came back.

“Captain Holland.”

“Right away, sir.”

Filled with dread, he dropped the transmission shifter into drive and flipped on the overheads.

“The line is dead, sir.”

Holland’s throat clutched. “Send a black and white to investigate. I’m on my way.”

“Roger.”

A Deckers Police cruiser screeched to a stop in front of the Texas Rangers’ station house. Sergeant Baxter looked at his partner, rookie Steve Mosier. “Watch my back.”

Baxter piled out of the car and headed for the front door, gun drawn and Mosier on his heels. But something wasn’t right about this. The front door was wide open. Papers and debris littered the steps. With a quick wave of his hand, he cautioned Mosier to stay back until he had a chance to scope out the situation.

Peering through the doorway, he saw no one in the reception lobby. The place looked like it had been hit by a typhoon. Creaking, a wall-mounted fire extinguisher pivoted crookedly on its broken hanger. The glass partition between the lobby and squad room had been shattered, a sign someone had breached internal security. Chairs and tables lay legs-up on the littered floor. Signaling Mosier to close the gap between them, Baxter entered the station house, his gun held steady in his white-knuckled hand.

Inside, past the reception counter, he carefully advanced toward the squad room, every nerve on full alert. Years of training and experience kicked in: clear right, clear left, advance. Looking back occasionally to check his partner’s progress, he hoped the young rookie was taking notes and keeping a keen lookout.

At the shattered doorway to the squad room, he stopped and listened. Nothing stirred inside. He’d been in this room before, on several occasions, back when the Texas Rangers and the Deckers Department of Safety and Training met to discuss tactical maneuvers and Critical Incident Procedures. He never thought he’d ever have to enter this room under these circumstances. What would he find inside? According to dispatch, Deputy Ryan, a friend of his since high school, was supposed to be on duty. He wasn’t answering the radio, and his telephone was out of commission. Had he met with some horrific fate? Instinct and devotion to duty pressed Baxter to move onward.

But nothing in his life had prepared him for the carnage he found inside the squad room. The walls were awash with blood, some smears still dripping streamers toward the floor. Bullet holes punctured the walls and ceiling. Furniture was upended, and he could smell gunpowder in the air. Wide-eyed and heart drumming, he worked his way around the room.

Mosier entered after him and began gasping.

Behind an upended desk, Baxter found Deputy Ryan, his torso, that is. His blood-soaked shirt had the arms cut off, and his trousers had the legs cut off. His neck bone was clearly visible, like the cheese in French Onion soup.

Mosier fell to his knees and vomited. The stench of his bile knifed through the air.

“Get up!” Baxter grimaced. “Stay alert!”

White as a lily petal, Mosier wiped puke from his lips with his shirtsleeve.

Baxter, his gun hand trembling now, searched the room for Ryan’s legs and arms and his head. Under tossed tables, toppled chairs and piles of papers, monthly reports and duty rosters, he looked everywhere without success. The blood and gore made his insides heave. But after a thorough search, he was sure of one thing; the perpetrator had left the scene. Holstering his weapon, he clicked the switch on the radio mike clipped to his collar. “We need the coroner over here,” he said. “And CIT.”

“The Crime Investigation Team? My God! What happened?”

“I’ve never seen anything…”

Suddenly, the air in the room turned sauna hot. A wind stirred up debris. Baxter turned. A scream came from behind him. He spun around and froze in disbelief. It was Deputy Ryan, his head atop a red and undulating glob to which his legs and arms were attached, like some morbid version of Mr. Potato Head. The look on Ryan’s face was that of a man who’d seen hell first hand, his mouth wrenched in pain, his eyeballs staring out blankly. Blood oozed from his neck and streamed down the slimy glob. Red streaks ran from where Ryan’s sleeved arms were anchored and from where his pant legs were attached also. The gruesome being walked forward stiffly, like in a Frankenstein movie, its arms outstretched. A wail came from the depths of this ungodly aberration, a cry that hurt Baxter’s eardrums. Without hesitating, he drew his revolver and fired, once, twice, again and again until he’d lost count of the rounds spent, his mind blinking in and out of consciousness, at first expelling any notion that this was real, then recognizing the pure horror before him.

Mosier’s gun banged, too. The screaming beast, the firearm reports, and Mosier’s cursing made for a macabre cacophony of sounds echoing about the room.

As the grisly anomaly approached, not yielding to the barrage of bullets, Deputy Ryan’s head lolled back and forth, his arms flailed at thin air, and with each step, his bloody boots clunked on the tile floor with the clumsiness of a marionette. His amoeba-shaped body pulsed and throbbed like a living glob of...of...something...something unearthly. Fighting panic, Baxter emptied his gun then threw it at his assailant. Only two feet away now, a third arm shot out of the glob, a tattooed arm with a bloody knife in its fist, slashing out. At first, Baxter felt a stream of warm urine run down his leg, then a sharp pain, a bright light, and nothing.

Captain Holland pulled up next to a black and white cruiser with its overheads flashing. There was no one in it. He got out of his car and headed toward the station house entrance.

A cry came out the open front door. “No! Don’t!” It sounded like Deckers’ newest rookie, Lieutenant Mosier. He had a pretty wife and a new baby.

A guttural scream came next. Then silence.

Holland bolted inside, gun drawn, his chest wound on fire. The place was in shambles. In the squad room, his stomach tightened. He found two officers down, the rookie and Sergeant Baxter whom he’d known a long time, though they were difficult to recognize in their beheaded conditions. Mouth agape, Baxter’s head lay on its left cheek in a puddle of blood, his gray hair all wadded up in gooey red tangles. From a near corner, Ryan’s lifeless eyes stared out of his head. It looked as though it had rolled there, several yards from his torso, which Holland found behind an overturned desk. Mosier’s head was nowhere around. There was no one else in the squad room, no one else alive. “Christ!”

Pivoting around, gun in both hands and elbows locked, he scanned the bloody room, thinking the masochistic killer had to be near, maybe hiding in the adjoining office…or perhaps the locker room down the hall. He couldn’t have gotten far. Only moments ago, no just seconds ago, Mosier’s life had been snuffed out, his body brutally dismembered and left piled about, along with Ryan’s and Baxter’s parts and pieces, like a grotesque game of pickup sticks. The stench was awful: the upchucked bile, congealing blood, and excreted bowel matter. Flies were already buzzing around their newfound gruesome feasts.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

About then, Holland heard a rustle of paper and felt a rush of hot air on his face, stiflingly hot air that sent a chill rippling down his backside. A glob-like form began to ooze out from the walls and the cracks in the floor, seemingly from everywhere all at once. It came together before him, suspended in mid air, undulating, stretching, and expanding. His throat went dry. Behind membrane-thin walls, Mosier’s head bobbed in a blood-red fluid, his face distorted: eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets, mouth agape in an eternal scream, and his skin stretched so tight the form of his skull was clearly visible.

Holland stepped back in total disbelief, wanting to fire his gun but at the same time realizing how futile it would be. He’d never seen anything like this before. He had never known fear like this before either, and he had all he could do to keep from peeing in his pants. 

The aberration grew larger and larger, maybe two-foot by three foot or more. Holland stepped back again, this time tripping over Baxter’s decapitation. Mosier’s head suddenly popped out on top of the glob and waggled like a puppet’s head.

Now Holland felt bile rise in his throat. Everywhere he stepped there was blood. Every breath he took made his insides revolt. He thought he couldn’t take anymore. “What are you?” he shouted, still clinging to his weapon, yet not firing and not knowing why. Was it the natural inquisitiveness of a homicide detective, or was it morbid curiosity? As a captain in the Texas Rangers, he’d seen a lot of disgusting things during his career. This beat them all with a stick.  “What do you want?”

The sirens were getting louder.

Another face appeared in the belly of this monstrosity, large and alarming.

Billy Denton!  

His eyes were evilly slanted, brows set askew, one impaled by a silver ring. A goatee protruded stiffly from his chin, and his neck was ringed in tattooed barbed wire. He opened his mouth wide, and an eardrum-shattering scream filled the squad room, like feedback from a rock and roll band’s speakers, drowning out the approaching sirens and Holland’s sanity. He began firing his weapon like mad. “You son of a bitch!”

Now he heard laughter.

The blob sprouted knives, a hundred or more, clinking and clanking, coming toward him with deadly persistence. The sirens seemed so far away.

With his back against the blood-streaked wall, Holland’s gun clicked empty. The stench of death swelled in the room like a nuclear blast. He knew this was the last moment of his life.

“Billy!”

Holland darted his eyes left. Justice was standing next to him, his cowboy hat canted on his head, his feet planted apart, and his long coat drizzling dirt and debris. Steel-gray eyes dominated his shrunken face, but even through the ravages of decay, Holland could see determination in his expression, feel the power in his clenched jaw, and hear his exposed molars grinding together. In one hand, he held a fire extinguisher filled with carbon dioxide. Holland knew this because there was no gauge on the bottle. In the other hand, Justice sported his Winchester rifle.

“The cavalry to the rescue?” Billy Denton said and cackled from inside the glob. A malicious smile twitched the corners of his mouth.

“Call it what you like.” Justice squeezed the extinguisher handle. A cone of powdery dry ice spewed from the nozzle.

Knives lashed out from the glob, some slicing into Justin’s coat, some plunging into his bullet-riddled chest. But Justin held his ground and kept the spray aimed on his target.

Holland ducked behind Justice, cringing from the stench and the horror.

In seconds, an icy-white coating completely covered the glob. The freezing temperature caused the aberration to become sluggish. Mosier’s head fell to the floor and made a cracking sound. The knives retracted.

“Damn you, Justice!” Billy cursed through chattering teeth, his voice echoing weakly inside the icy core. “I’ll get you for this!”

“Chill, punk!”

The accumulating dry ice weighted the glob to the floor; it was no longer able to levitate in mid air. The absolute cold zapped Billy’s power to control his satanic vehicle, and the colder it got, the less it moved, until finally, it became a  totally immobilized glob of ice. Justin poured on the CO2 until the extinguisher sputtered empty. Tossing it to the floor, he raised his Winchester. “Go to Hell!”

One shot, dead in the center of the frozen glob, shattered it. Pieces flew through the air like shards of glass and landed on the floor with a tinkling sound.

“You got him,” Holland said. “You killed him.”

Justin frowned as if those words made no sense to him.

Sirens and the sound of squealing tires came from outside. “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!” Somebody had a bullhorn.

Justice turned to Holland. “The devil has marked you for death.”

“What did I do?”

“To get to me, he’ll make you suffer.”

“Then give it up, Justice. Cross over. He’ll have no reason to pursue this.”

“I’ll do my best to protect you.”

“Listen to me, damn it! This is not your problem. Christy is gone. Go find your wife. Be happy.”

“But you’re the only friend I’ve got.”

Holland patted dust from Justin’s shoulder. “Friends like you will get me killed.”

The bullhorn crackled. “DON’T MAKE US SEND IN THE SWAT TEAM!  COME OUT!  NOW!”

A scraping sound came from the floor, over by the bloody wall and in the far corner. Justin turned, and Holland followed his eyes. Splinters of frozen goo were melting into droplets and moving toward each other, conjoining into puddles and pools, racing across the floor as if drawn together by some magnetic force. Hundreds of globules skittered about and quickly combined into one massive aberration that began to undulate and rise up.

Holland felt an ache in his throat.

“WE’RE COMING IN,” the bullhorn bellowed.

In an instant, the glob dove into the floor cracks as if suddenly siphoned back to hell.  

“This isn’t over yet,” said Justin.  

“Let it go, Justice, let it go.”

“I can’t.”

With a gust of wind, the ghoul was gone.