The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The Thing Beneath
by Kathleen McCluskey
The formation always looked like a man to me.
I had noticed it on my first day of hiking on the cliffs, a massive black outcropping rising from the earth beneath the grass. From a distance, it almost looked like the head and shoulders of some ancient warrior buried upright in the ground. The resemblance was so convincing that I took several photographs, laughing at myself for seeing a Viking where there was only weathered volcanic stone.
Three days later, I was standing in the same field when the rock moved.
At first, I thought it was the ground beneath me. The earth gave a slow, heavy shudder and loose stone rolled down the facade. Then I realized the movement was coming from the formation. The enormous head had shifted, just slightly and a crack had appeared across the black surface of its cheek.
I stood there and watched as pieces of stone broke loose and crashed into the grass.
Beneath them was flesh.
I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. The thing buried beneath the earth was so large that its skin had hardened and darkened until it looked like the rock. Centuries of roots and dirt covered its face, thick strands for what I had mistaken as a beard hung from its jaw, tangled with moss and roots. As it continued to rise, the earth split around its shoulders.
The sound was tremendous.
The ground didn’t simply crack, it tore open. Great slabs of soil rolled away from the thing as its shoulders pushed higher, exposing more of a body that seemed to have no end. I watched an entire section of hillside collapse from its back and understood with growing horror that the formation I thought was a monument was only the smallest visible portion of something buried beneath the landscape.
The Viking’s eyes opened.
One enormous eye turned to me, cloudy and pale, its surface filmed from centuries of darkness. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even comprehend the size anymore. The head alone was larger than a house and the shoulders disappearing into the soil stretched farther than I could see.
Then it groaned.
The sound came up from deep within the ground and all around me the Earth answered. Cracks raced across the field. Trees bent as the soil heaved beneath them. Somewhere beyond the cliffs, rocks thundered into the sea.
The giant was struggling to rise. But it felt like he wasn’t trying to escape, it was if he was trying to get away from something.
His enormous hands appeared next, breaking through the earth on either side of him. The fingers were as thick as tree trunks, the nails black and broken. He dug them into the ground and pulled himself upward, tearing free of layers of soil that had held him for centuries.
That’s when I saw the chains.
They disappeared beneath the earth on both sides of his body, each link larger than a car. Most were rusted almost all the way through but some were fully intact, stretched tight as he pulled against whatever was buried beneath him.
Something pulled him back. The Viking’s entire body lurched downward. His face twisted with pain and he let out a roar that shook the ground beneath my feet. The chains snapped one after another, each break sounding like thunder.
For one terrible moment, the earth beneath him opened wide enough for me to see what was buried under him.
There was another body down there.
Something long and impossibly pale was curled beneath the Viking, its tendrils folded around him like roots around stone. Its skin was stretched over bones and its enormous mouth opened and closed.
The Viking had not been buried to keep him in. He had been buried to keep that thing down.
The last chain broke.
The Viking surged upward, tearing apart half the hillside as he rose. His enormous hand slammed into the ground and the impact threw me onto my back.
I looked at him, expecting him to climb free. Instead he turned toward me. His ancient face was a mixture of relief and terror.
His mouth opened and beneath the sound of the collapsing hill, I heard a single word.
“Run!”
Behind him, something began pulling itself out of the hole.
Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image © Copyright Alex Grehy
More from Kathleen McCluskey:
The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror
Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.
Spreading the Writer's Word 