Speak Not The Name
It had all gone bad while we slept. Some real ugly characters had decided to move in the squat. Kids messing with forces they did not understand. The place had become a magnet for bad ideas. Some damned fool had brought a copy of The Necronomicon into the house. He had read aloud from it one night and got devoured by insects. Things went rapidly downhill from there. Entire rooms full of bottles of urine, some over a year old, some older, perhaps dating back to the 17th Century. Angry spirits had formed around the bottles, and we kept the rooms sealed. Recently a curious teenager had walked into one of those rooms, never to be seen again. Someone would be asking questions, and not liking the answers. The answers were wrong. All wrong. The Root of All Evil was in a sealed room, on the second floor. There was also talk of a rat. Not just any rat. The Rat From Hell. Fierce, snarling demon from the abyss. The place came to be known as Hell Squat.
It was the dawn of The Time of Cochise. He knew us. Awaited us.
The air was full of question marks.
It was a good time to be somewhere else. We would go south. On the trains.
We waited for the evening, when the oppressive heat had lifted slightly. Then we started for the tracks.
It was Jack Rabbit, Paradox, and I, Nebish The Liberator, Priest of The Runes. The Three Pedestrians of The Apocalypse.
We told no one of our flight.
On the way, we came across a smoking woman, fat and old, who croaked when she tried to speak at us. We do have the ability to move unseen, but using such power has it’s risks. Too easy to get stuck like that, slip through the cracks, and then no one ever sees you again, no matter how hard you try. The woman pointed a knobby thumb at us and croaked and croaked. Her eyes were bulging and red. We had mistaken her for human. Water escaped her mouth when she spoke. We ignored this omen and moved on.
We moved past the West Philadelphia Roach Wall. Tread carefully here, and keep moving, quickly, lest you be engulfed in the Great Roach Darkness. It is best not to look, just keep moving. Many have been driven mad by the sight.
To get to the tracks, we had to enter the land of Cochise, and possibly face Cochise himself. We were not yet ready to face the beast, but we were young and cocky and just didn’t know. How could anyone ever know the horror, the sheer shambling madness that is Cochise?
So, on we went from bad to worse, with no knowledge of what monstrosities lay ahead.
We moved past the Box LeWall Ball Players. Fanatics, bent on destruction. The object of the game is doom. The game you play until you are dead. One of the players noticed us. Not good. We knew this one. It was Ben Johnson. He looked at us with great concern. “Where are you going?”
We were evasive. “We have something we need to do.” I said.
“In The Land of He Who Must Not Be Named? One does not simply walk into these areas. Have the three of you gone mad?”
“We won’t be long. We’ve been in there before” I lied. I was trying to stall him. He would need to return to the game soon. They need to play, these poor bastards.
“You’ve never been in there. You don’t realize what can happen to you in there. Play Box LeWall Ball with us.”
Bodies were strewn everywhere. He went back to the game.
We decided to move unseen. We abandoned hope, and entered The Land of Cochise.
The air was thick and sour. To breathe was to gag. The only living creatures we saw at first, were those that scuttled across the ground. The sky was the color of blood. The madness was tangible. You could chew through it.
Further on, there were things that looked like trees. As we got closer, we could see that they were made of flesh. They hissed and screeched, like tea kettles.
“What do you make of this?” I asked my brothers.
Jack Rabbit was trembling. “This one is someone I used to know.” He said, pointing at one of the trees. It had a tattoo. “It’s Bill.”
“My God,” Cried Paradox, “These used to be people.”
We looked at another. What had done this?
Suddenly, Jack Rabbit screamed. I looked up. He was pointing at Paradox, whose head seemed a little loose on his shoulders. He was making sputtering noises out of his mouth. He had no control of the movement of his head. It was bobbing around. It was growing larger. His skin was lightening, turning transparent. I was overcome with horror. Nucklavee. He was transforming into a Nucklavee. We had to act fast. Jack Rabbit lept at paradox and stabilized his head. I ran to help. We held on. Slowly, the head shrunk to its normal size. He was going to get through this one.
“We have to get away from these… trees.” I said.
We moved quickly.
We were almost to the tracks. We were beginning to have a sense of direction. Not good. Familiarity with The Land of Cochise is a dangerous thing. You start to belong there. No doubt, this is what happened to the skin-trees. We cleared our minds as we walked.
Finally, we came to the tracks. We walked along them carefully. We were too close to make mistakes now.
Soon, we heard a train. Far down the tracks, we could see it’s light. The tracks shook as it approached. We ducked down behind a metal wall about ten feet from the tracks, to hide from the train operator as it passed us. After the front car got far enough down the tracks we started to run along the side of the train looking for a good car to hop on. We ran about a hundred yards or so, when the train began to slow to a stop. We kept running, looking for a car.
Then, the train started to back up. Something was wrong. The train was backing up. We made a mad dash to hide behind that wall again. Whatever kind of creatures were driving that train, we didn’t want them to see us. We hid silently as the train kept backing up. The ground shook.
The train stopped. We heard the sound of doors opening. Something was coming out of the train. We heard slushing and gurgling noises. We waited for death, or worse.
Then nothing.
Silence.
It was Paradox who first stood up to look. The train was gone. It had completely vanished. Rabbit and I were still sitting behind the metal wall looking up at Paradox when a bolt of lightning stretched across the air about an arms length over Paradox’s head. Sheet lightning was striking all around the tracks, all around us. Paradox shrieked in terror.
Then came the rain. Hard rain.
We ran. We ran for miles. The rain was shredding our clothes. Every drop of rain felt like a rock being thrown with great force. We were bleeding from the rain. Lightning continued to follow us, close at our heels. We couldn’t hear our own screams. We passed the skin trees, and continued running until we were outside the Land of Cochise.
The storm continued.
We made it to an abandoned house, just outside the land of Cochise. There we huddled together, wrapped our wounds in our shredded clothing. We had large bruises from the force of the rain. Paradox’s hair was burnt from lightning. We spoke little.
In the morning, we discussed Greyhound.
