ELDRITCH HORRORS: DARK TALES

Ashanna's Whispers

by Simon Bleaken

(Excerpt pp. 46-48, Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales)

Humanity—the one disease modern science was uninterested in curing: a great, blind herd that moved unthinkingly on a slow path of social and mental degeneration toward an inevitable and blessed extinction.

I left them all behind as I reached the end of the street—guided by the faint call that still beckoned, heading into an expanse of derelict, dilapidated warehouses. Empty, broken windows stared at me, and litter swirled in the gutters as the wind toyed with it. I moved past doors covered in ancient graffiti, meaningless messages that were gradually fading. There was no sound here, only a desolate silence that magnified my footfalls on the cracked asphalt and broken glass, and I shivered and drew my light jacket closer against the chill wind. This place, that once had been the domain of humanity, was now empty and utterly abandoned. The countless rows of dusty, echoing buildings with their sagging roofs and peeling paint were replete with the unknown and seemed to have become the property of an older, mysterious presence.

It seemed my feet knew my final destination, for they appeared to guide me forward of their own accord until I was standing before the tarnished and battered metal doors of a massive decrepit warehouse, whose grimy windows were half covered in rotting wooden boards. I could see a narrow row of murky windows high above me, and near to this a sagging fire escape clung desperately to the side of the building like a dying parasite.

I stepped quietly into the echoing expanse of the towering structure and the heavy, still air within; hesitating as my eyes became accustomed to the deeper darkness. Gradually the faint moonlight struggling through the high-up dusty windows revealed my surroundings, and the gloom shrank back to the corners of that cavernous space.

The warehouse was empty—the floor covered with the dust and grit of neglect. Overhead a walkway reached around the edges of the room and led to a small row of what must have been offices, whilst girders and metal support struts rose around me as though I had stepped inside the ancient skeleton of some great dead beast.

I noticed the narrow door in the far corner of the warehouse, and could just make out the vague outlines of a concrete staircase beyond, leading down into darkness. There was nothing immediately striking or remarkable about that doorway, no outré suggestions that anything of significant interest lay beyond it; and yet I felt instinctively drawn to it—a subconscious yearning to enter the dark and unknown depths it presented, and at the same time, I heard again that faint, beckoning whisper.

I had already reached the door before I realized what I was doing. In the darkness the narrow steps were treacherous and I made my way slowly and uncertainly down, wondering how long it had been since a human presence had last traversed them. But these thoughts were quickly banished as I stepped off the last step and onto the hard floor of the lightless depths of the basement. The air down here was stale with a musty dampness, and distant drips of moisture echoed through the murky blackness from unseen rooms and passageways. I shivered, feeling uncomfortably isolated, like Theseus deep within the Minotaur’s labyrinth. It was then that my common sense won out over whatever force had guided me here, and I turned, meaning to race back up those steps and into the moonlight once more.

But the steps weren’t there.

In a desperate panic I stumbled forward, hands flailing blindly, searching for anything to help me get my bearings; but I encountered only claustrophobic darkness, pressing in like some ebon shroud all around me. My feet echoed on the concrete floor as I walked, splashing in shallow puddles of accumulated water—and then my next step unexpectedly fell upon a soft grassy surface, and I became aware of a faint glow from somewhere up ahead. I hurried toward it, my heart racing anxiously. By now there was no doubt that I was indeed hurrying over a grassy surface, and as I grew closer to the source of distant light, I felt a cool breeze on my face. Moments later my outstretched hand brushed against some curious web-like material, and then I was pushing through tickling strands of strange unknown foliage and emerged into the overcast sunlight of an impossible landscape.

(...)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Paul S. Kemp:
One Thousand and One Words

W. H. Pugmire
Recompense of Sorrow (brand-new Sesqua Valley!)

Ron Shiflet
Out of the Frying Pan

Don Webb
The Jest of Yig

Gary Hill
Rest in Peace, Jeremy Randall

Simon Bleaken
Ashanna's Whispers

Leigh Blackmore
The Return of Zoth-Ommog

Thomas Strømsholt
Devouring Darkness Hovers

Benjamin Szumskyj
A Haunting From Beyond

Linda Navroth
The Specimen

Dan Clore
The Dying God

Blake Wilson
The Door to Nowhere

Paul Mackintosh
The People of the Island

Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
The Bibliophile