Halifax

This is a short story I wrote some years ago, and that I translated about an year ago. Originally in italian, it's a little experiment in sci-fi horror, with a rogue reclamation crew and a  luxury ship disappeared years before suddenly reappearing...hope you enjoy it!

Sitting on the floor, his back leaning on the metal door of the small storage room where he found refuge, Jeff Vaugner kept his eyes on a fixed point of that white wall, stained of rust, without actually seeing it. Surrounded by the bright, merciless light of the emergency system, he held tight the powerful pulse rifle like a fetish, a talisman that could save him from all evil. At the screeching sound outside the door, and the noise of blows ramming on the airlock mixed with the crackling of bones, Jeff gasped, feeling his powerful shape of flesh and cyberware shiver, every muscle fiber trained in the years under the enemy fire during the Venus Colonies revolt.

The blows stopped echoing in the small room, and Jeff let his body slide lower along the cold surface of the door, feeling its chilling temperature seep into his military bodysuit, even if it was studied to survive the most extreme conditions.

When another scream, more similar to an electrical discharge, echoed in his brain along with the rhythmic shuffling behind the wall, Jeff leaned his head back, the fingers of his only natural hand trembling violently on the bridge of his rifle.

‘It can’t come in.’

It was his optimistic side saying it.

‘It doesn’t want to come in’ his realistic side replied.

Even after hours there was nothing but almost complete silence, broken only by the low and regular humming of the electrical systems. Jeff was still there, crawled, feeling his muscles ache for keeping such a position this long.

But he couldn’t move. An irrational instinct urged him to remain against that door, in the belief that, as long as he kept there, motionless, everything would be fine. That nothing could enter as he pushed that door like a heavy block of concrete.

That humming started getting on his nerves. He started hearing again those voices, the ones of his companions, calling to him. He could swear he was able to see them sometimes, there in front of him, pointing their fingers at him. Sometimes it was just a fleeting vision with the corner of his eye. Others, a presence behind the small metal boxes dotting the storage room.

But those weren’t the worse. That spot was reserved to the times he closed his eyes and could feel already their shadows cover the light of the lamp on the roof. And when he opened them, he could see them there, all around him, staring at him in silence.

Judging him.

Mocking him.

The wall in front of him wasn’t as smooth as it used to be: thick burn signs revealed where his energy bullets landed when he lost control, after the third time those spectral figures came to visit him, trying to wipe them out in a fit of hysteria.

But even pulling hard the trigger of his weapon, he saw those globes of light pass harmlessly through the bodies of his best friends, and instead of their cries of agony only the fizzling of metal deforming under the intense heat of those shots resounded.

Then he closed his eyes again, screaming, and they disappeared.

The electronic screeching of that THING came back, from time to time, during those hours.

Sometimes, when that noise reached a particularly penetrating note, the world around him changed colors, reaching cold, absurd tones that left him shaking in terror.

The walls seemed to melt in an organic mix of liquid metal, distorting and creating vague forms and geometries. Sometimes it felt like the surface wanted to snap free of its hinges and embrace him, fuse with him, capture him in a spiral of pain and madness. The floor lost its consistency, and it felt like sinking in an oily, freezing goo.

He thought he saw the glimpse of what might have been a faint teal, a purple, maybe a crimson red. Nothing seemed to have sense. But those gleams were always, unceasingly fixed upon him.

Sometimes, in those crackling, snapping sounds he thought he heard a laughter.

Sometimes it all happened when there was nothing and no one around him.

He knew that none of that could be real. If the pavement of the room really became an oily mess, why the wraps of the rations he frantically ate were still there? Why weren’t they swallowed by that organic mass bent on devouring everything?

But even this consciousness couldn’t avoid his mind to go into a panic, his throat releasing whimpering mewls of horror every time he felt that substance wrap around his feet, his legs, pulling him lower and lower. Even just thinking about it left him with an accelerated heartbeat, eyes barred as he aimed his rifle against the wall, waiting for the shadow on the corner to suddenly become another set of fangs ready to eat him.

Even now the surface seemed to shift and deform. Not much. Nothing as horrible as those weird formations of shining flesh crawling towards him. But he could see the vibration. The faint shivering of something alive about to pounce on him, playing with him, reveling in his fear, and every time Jeff turned his eyes to check the rest of the room he felt tense, trapped between those four walls.

He lost it completely for the first time. Tossing his gun aside, he got up and started bashing his metal fist against the wall with all his might, screaming, cursing, whimpering, not even stopping when he felt the creak of the mechanic junctures of his prosthetics break with quick clanking snaps, not even when he saw his index break loose of its slot and fall on the floor.

Crying, he left himself crawl on the door, feeling against his cheeks wet with tears the bumps his now useless, wrecked hand left on the surface.

And after a long moment of silence, the walls started to thunder. The noise in his mind got stronger than ever, that penetrating note splitting his head, his thoughts. The room mutated again, and the sound seemed to come from all those fleshy growths reaching for him. He couldn’t breath, gasping for air under the intense, organic heat. And behind that noise, the voice of that THING, he could hear the beating of tens, hundreds of blows that shook the bulkhead. The rifle disappeared in the liquid pavement, and bringing his hands to his ears, slashing himself with the metal spikes of his useless fingers, he tried to get that sound out of his mind, until he just slipped in a black abyss.

He came back to his senses that a couple of hours should have passed. The room was still there. The gun was where he let it drop, and the white, constant light shined on the blood splatters coming from his cheeks, from the wounds that he caused himself in those convulsed movements, slashing his ear and face. He slid his only remaining hand on his short hair and he found himself sobbing again, quietly, for a couple of minutes. Once he pulled himself together, he tried to find some solace in what little he still had. The footage of his squad. Activating the small holoprojector, he looked at his ex-companions, one by one.

It was just another night after a job, at their favourite pub. He saw Adam again. His sensual, fit body, toned, the perky breasts held in one of his usual skin-tight dresses. His pale skin covered in esoteric symbols, from time to time glowing of a mystical light. The long, flowing black hair. She was the face of the group, able to run business as well as she could manipulate the subtle energies of the universe. He met him during the war, after which he got his body sculpted to resemble his ideal of beauty. He saw his projection one more time, the theatrical, playful entrance in the establishment, and his favourite line, towards one of the beauties of the pub.

“My name is Adam. And for you I’ll be the first and last real man you ever met.” with that feminine, warm tone that made him look more charming and mysterious - at least in Adam’s eyes. Jeff two selves, the one in the pub and the one trapped there, laughed almost at the same time.

He saw again Bharghav, with his olive skin, and the connection jacks on one side of his face looking at Adam, shaking his head and sipping his beer with a resigned sigh.

He was talking about his last attempts at breaking in a database, and how he hated viciously the defense programs. Jeff’s happy self, the one in the pub, kept nodding, unable to understand completely what the indian was saying.

He saw Jeff Vaugner again, the famous Jeff Vaugner. He saw his powerfull mass, his mechanical arm with neatly decorated plates in memory of his battles, his fearless expression…

He turned the projector off. He didn’t want to see it anymore. He didn’t want to see himself. He didn’t want to BE himself. But the digital images got quickly replaced by memories.

The occasion of a lifetime. The reports from Bharghav about the credibility of their informations. The humongous luxury cruise ship Halifax, disappeared years ago in an anomaly along the outer rim of the solar system, and its sudden, silent reappearance at the edges of a small patch of cosmic void contended between two rival corporations. The battle plan. The euphoric departure, towards what was the dream of every treasure hunter.

The entrance in the enormous interiors of that colossus of metal and luxury, the absence of any sign of life. The faint brushing noise following them as they moved in the gargantuan hall.

The first time the world around them changed as that noise echoed in their mind.

JEFF! Cover Bharghav and Klaine! Get the fuck out!

His mind heard Adam shout those words again, saw her body tense in the effort of manipulating reality to counter the enemy. He saw again the limbs and torsos tore apart, moved by invisible strings pinning her down. The screams of pain, mixed with the fear of his two companions as they turned their back to her.

He felt on his back the stock of his rifle, the panicked shots against those macabre puppets moving towards Bharghav and Klaine. He saw a toned, pale and decorated arm fly towards him before hitting his head.

He saw it again.

Hundreds of eyes, all different, hanging in the air and looking at them. The walls and the columns of the hall melting and reforming in new, incomprehensible shapes, the imposing, shapeless mass of their enemy, the pulse of blood rushing through those tentacular, transparent growths, stolen from the bodies it puppeteered.

As he sat in the storage room, feeling Adam’s presence towering over his body curled on the floor, the memories arose the sensations he felt when he saw that thing.

Tense muscles. Barred eyes, frantic and uncontrolled breaths. The total blackout of his thoughts, the shaking of his body.

He recalled the corridors rushing around him as panic held his mind in a cold grasp. He recalled the small storage room, his hands hurriedly searching for the sealing button, his body pressing on the door as his companions rammed against the metal plate, crying, cursing him, pleading him to let them in, and finally scratching and screaming beastily in their last moments of life.

His ears filled again with the dry and wet sound of cartilages getting ripped, flesh shredded and broken bones, the last, gurgling sounds of the dying companions he was supposed to protect.

Then, only fear and a rising shame.

Until now.

After those fleeting apparition in the hours he spent in there, abandoning them, now all three were there. All three looking at him. All three staring at him in silence and judging his cowardice.

Blaming him.

“LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU WERE DEAD! YOU WERE ALL DEAD! I COULDN’T DO SHIT!”

That raging bellow echoed in the small room, but his prosecutors were unshaken.

“I...I didn’t want to...I didn’t want to! I loved you! But I couldn’t, really! I’m sorry, leave me alone, I didn’t want to let you die but I couldn’t do anything!”

Now his tone wasn’t but a pathetic whimper, a desperate prayer. But his friends kept staring at him, in silence, motionless.

And along with their silence, he could hear a slow, regular beat, a crescendo against the outside of that room.

A rhythm growing in strength and desperation, until it became the same rhythm of Bharghav and Klaine’s as he stood there like a rabbit letting them die, with his implants and powerful weapons.

He resisted for a while. Sobbing, praying, screaming and attacking those mute figures, trying with all his might to grasp at the last shreds of his mind.

He couldn’t even tell the exact moment when something snapped beyond repair inside him.

An hysterical smile crept on his lips and the gasps of a high-pitched, irregular laughter shook his body.

“Oh yeah? Yeah? This is how it is, huh? You know what!? I’M FUCKING LEAVING! I’M ALIVE! I’M ALIVE AND I CAN LEAVE THIS FUCKING PLACE!”

And with a last cry, grasping his rifle with his only serviceable hand, he opened the door and ran outside, in the enormous hall.

Stepping on the blood being sucked into the that invisible force, laughing, he kept the trigger pulled even after there was nothing more than the sound of the spool spinning empty, before the heads of Adam, Bharghav and Klaine, real, decapitated with those spread eyes surrounded him.

An olive-skinned hand grasped his wrist as the sharp teeth of Klaine sunk in his neck, ripping skin, flesh and tissues, and, finally, letting that laughter end in a hoarse gurgling, as the hands of his old companions flayed his body.

After a couple of hours, the blood disappeared. The glimmering, deserted corridors of the Halifax shone when the rays of the sun entered the portholes. And the gargantuan cruise ship kept silently, inesorably move along its last route towards Earth.