Free The Aberration by Bard Constantine

have fully evolved by now.  They won’t let us go back down.  No way to go but up.”
    “Are you crazy ?”  Fran’s screech almost shattered Michael’s eardrums.  “Didn’t you just see what happened to Drake ?”
    “It changes nothing.”  Guy checked the shells for his shotgun methodically, as though he had all the time in the world.
    “Jesus, Guy.  How can you be so callous ?  This was someone we knew , for Christ’s sake.”
    Guy looked up coldly.  “Would you rather it were the whole world, Michael?  Don’t you get it?  That’s what we’re up against.”  He pulled the long dagger from its sheath. “Better men than him have been sacrificed for the sake of this war.  I know, because I was there.  So listen.  I’ll go first, and keep this ready.  If the spider tries to snag me, hopefully I can cut the strands in time.”
    Michael disentangled from Fran’s clutches and stood straighter.  “Look, Guy… I’m not going with you.”
    “ We’re not going with you,” Fran said, taking hold of his arm. 
    Michael looked at her.  Staring at him so confidently, for the first time she actually looked… lovely.  He looked back at Guy.  “ We’re not going up there.”
    Guy stared at them for what seemed a long time.  “You know you’re going to die , don’t you?”
    Michael swallowed hard.  “It… it doesn’t seem to matter, does it?  Up, down… none of us are going to get through this night alive, are we?”
    Guy gave a rueful shrug.  “I don’t know.  But I do know that there’s only one person with experience dealing with these things, and that’s not you, Michael.”
    “Come with us, Guy.  You’re the one who said if we stick together then we make it out alive.  The Others have to better than facing…”
    Guy suddenly put his finger to his lips.  “Do you hear…?”
    At first there was nothing but a smothering blanket of dreadful silence.  Then it became worse.  A thumping sound became distinctly audible; the sound of something heavy carelessly banging against the stairwells as it descended.
    Guy raised his shotgun.  “Get ready.”
    The thumping grew louder, closing in on where they stood drenched in a cesspool of apprehension.  Michael wasn’t sure what he expected, but what finally descended made him want to vomit until he blacked out; the only thing that stopped him was his throat clamped by the choking fingers of his own fear.
    It was Drake.
    Only his upper torso remained as he hung upside down. The rest of him was just… missing.  The flesh was torn raggedly and bonded to the webbing.   What happened to the rest of him was something Michael didn’t want to consider. 
    Ghostly strands dangled him like a macabre puppet; his head jerked spasmodically as though searching for what his eyes could no longer capture.  They had been replaced with cotton webbing.  The same lined his mouth when he spoke.  His sound was muffled, and the voice nothing like Drake’s at all.  The strands pulled; one of Drake’s arms swung as though beckoning.
    “It’s safe now,” it said through its web-lined maw.  “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you, I promise …”
     

 
    17

Cryptid Trucidation
     
    Fran turned away from the blood-spattered puppet, gagging.  They had averted the flashlights, but that only made the shadowy form all the more hideous.  The top half of Drake still dangled from the thick ropes of webbing that was lost to darkness above them.  Something even worse waited up there; something that had torn Drake in half like a soggy piece of rotten chicken.  The strings jerked again.  Drake’s head and arms bobbed morbidly; the voice that was not his spoke again through his cotton-stuffed mouth.
    “Don’t be scared.  Nothing is going to hurt you.”  Blood dribbled from its lips.
    She wished it would stop, that the disgusting thing would just die , even if it was Drake; or that she would wake up and find out that this was all a sickening