the Glowing chapter 5

Chapter 5

1993 fall

After the fight on the rooftop Austin falls down the steps of the apartment, Austin is hurt, he doesn't know how bad, only that he is. Rob drags him the rest of the way to the first floor and into the tool room. Rob takes a broom he saws it in half then uses a role of tap to tie up Austin's left leg.

This act is called field-dressing, in the army, this is a way to get a solder on his feet long enough to find a medic. This is not the plan in this case. The idea is only to bandage up Austin and get him home. Rob carries Austin up to his room from there. Austin is shacking and sweating. His leg swollen and purple. Neither Austin's mother nor grandmother seems to notice.

Hours later, Austin has been passing in and out of conciseness since the fight, only now is he mostly alert. Rob is yelling up through the air conditioner to Randy. Austin crawls over to the heating vent looking down into Randy's room. "Randy! Randy. Are you up?" Rob calls.

Randy is sitting against the wall looking down into Rob's apartment. "Here. What's up?"

Rob calls back "Randy, I saw something yesterday. Something I don't understand…" Rob's voice is shacking. "Up on the roof. Austin and I were playing and something." He can't seem to finish his thought.

Randy yells up to Austin "Hay, Austin!"

Austin is short of breath, he still can't stop sweating "I'm up here."

Randy calls "Did Rob see… It?"

Rob exclaims "It?"

Austin replies "Yeah. I saw it again, and it kicked my ass."

Randy is concerned "Are you hurt?"

Austin nods, he is tired, almost too tired to keep talking, Rob replies for Austin "he fell, his leg got all bent up."

Randy looks down to Rob "so you did see It then?"

Rob throws his hands up "What do you mean by IT?"

Austin shacks himself to stay in the conversation "Randy, get the tape."

Randy looks up "do you want me to come up to your room?"

Weekly Austin calls down "yeah."

Randy looks at Rob "the monster is real, Austin and I got It on tape a few months ago. Meet me at the elevator. We will show you. "

Rob nods, "I'm on my way up."

Randy has seen the monster in the past. It changed her, she developed a sequence of rituals she must execute to feel safe. Randi cannot walk past a partly open door, she has to close it as she passes, if she needs to pass the door from the handle side she must hide against the wall and shut the door without looking in. if the lights are off as she looks at a door she has a flashlight she must flash at the door before shutting it. It takes her three minutes to cross from her bedroom to the front door.

Rob and Randy find there way up to Austin's room about 10 minutes later. Austin meats them at the door. Austin is dragging himself around, he clearly is unwell. Randy holds up the tape. Austin nods wavering Randy on.

The three walk into the front room, Rob shuts the closet door for Randy as they pass it. Rob has seen Randy's ritual even if he doesn't understand it. Randy starts the tape. The video is of Randy and Austin performing a duet of Queen songs: Killer Queen, Princess of the Universe, Who Wants to Live Forever. The performance isn't bad, 20 years from now it would have made an excellent YouTube cover.

Much of the way through Princes of the Universe, the door to Randy's room can be seen opening Randy jumps from the couch and stops the tap. She points "there it is! Can you see it?" Rob crawls on all fours up to the tv squinting to try to see what Randy can see.

Fingers reach around the door, long jointless fingers, more wormlike then manlike, a single eye looks through the crack, large and round, like a fisheye, a foot has slipped in, not a man's foot, a narrow-covered slug-like foot.

Rob looks horrified as he is looking at the thing; clearly, he can see it just like Randy could "What is that?" he whispers

Randy explains "I call it the Long Man. Austin calls it the Glowing One."

Rob stars for a time for a time "Is it real."

Randy shrugs "real enough that the three of us can see it."

Austin joins in more than a few seconds late on the draw "it is an eldritch horror. A monster from outside space as we can understand it."

Brooke, Austin's eldest sister, now seven years old comes in the room, she explains to them "I can see it too. So can grandma, and Austin's dad."

Rob looks at the others "what do we do?"

Randy jokes "Hope to live long enough to see high school."

Austin grips himself by the eyes, he grunts as he tries to sit up, a defining sound fills the air as he falls off the couch. Austin faints.

***

Austin is tied to a bed as the defining noise stops, he can feel movement. He is mostly paralyzed. A bright light shines overhead. Austin tries to look around. The millipedal-like monster is kneeling alongside him, it grips him by the nose and mouth with one hand forcing him to keep his eyes up. Hornet-Like stinger swings in from over the monsters head stabbing Austin in the arm, Austin blacks out again.

***

Time passes, Austin has no idea how much, the light still hangs overhead, the voice's of Austin's grandmother and stepmother Ruth can be overheard nearby "Left knee is multi-fractioned, the left ankle has a hairline split. The bandaging job isn't bad, but it looks like his hamstring tie-in has been severed and is partly fused to his alkalis tie-in. We need to set the joint before we can even try to correct that. Was it you that administered first aid, Gloria?"

Austin's grandmother shakes her head, "I don't know who did that."

Ruth explains "I want to go in for one more round of x-ray's, it looks like there may be an alien object under his kneecap. Expected recovery time is 4 months."

Austin whispers to himself "Alien?" The next few days are little more than brief seconds of lucidity followed by hours of darkness.

***

It is well past sunset, there is a bag hung from a rack on the wall filled with a clear liquid, there is writing on the bag, Austin can't make it out. Brooke appears standing alongside Austin, she is holding a large silver object, a charm, two winged cats with human heads looking away from each-other a stone trapped in-between their tails. Austin knows this symbol it is the crest of Zora-Austria, an old church, maybe one of the oldest. Austin has seen this charm in one of his books.

"Grandma said to hide this," Brooke explains she sounds far away, the voice is influx like when you hear a sound from under water.

The shadows retake Austin.

***

It is raining, Grandma is standing in front of the door to the room looking out into the hallway, Austin can't see past the door, it is too foggy. Grandma whispers into the night "I can see you Grate Horned One. Step into the light and face a child of Brigid the Hearthmother." Grandma is glowing, her hair blows in the wind looking like fire. She is dressed in a coat made of scaled steel.

Gloria reaches onto her hip and draws out a sword cast of white silver, a rounded, broad-blade, etched into the hilt is the ruin 'Tricoata' three circles drawn with a single line, and a knotted rope running up the stem of the metal. Both are pagan symbols from Sweden 4th century. Austin has a fancy for lore. Sleep clams Austin before he can ask Grandma about the sword or the holy symbol, the sounds of birds call to him, water crashes on the sand in tranquil bliss

***

Jim, Austin's dad is in the room when he wakes up, sitting in the chair alongside the bed. The sun is raising. Three carpenter nails hang from his lip, a tape measure in hand, tool belt hanging from his hip. Jim produces a 2x4 from the air, he rests it across his lap and starts to draw markings on the wood with a pencil he equally wills into existence. Jim asks his son to hand him something, Austin cant understand what he is asking for.

As Austin stars at the window over his father shoulder the sun streaks across the sky, sunrise turns to sunset in moments.

***

The overhead light flickers, Austin can feel movement, A door nearby opens, another shuts, Austin turns his head, his mother is walking down the hall alongside Ruth.

Austin's mother complains "you told me four months and he would be back to normal" Vici is tall with thick red hair, curly and bouncy, she has the build of a professional dancer and the glamor of a punk-rock heroine like could only have existed in the 80's. She is commanding, dressed in a pair of red silk slacks and a bright red blazer. Vici is young, Austin today is already older then Vici was when Austin was born.

Calm, controlled, the much shorter Ruth speaks with a detached disinterest. "Under ideal conditions. There have been setbacks, the patient has contracted a…"

Vici cuts in grabbing Ruth by the arm, Vici never gets sad or depressed, she gets mad "Austin is better than Jim or I, he is like you, he is someone special. Now I need him back at school. Make that happen before Thanksgiving."

Ruth looks down at her grabbed arm "you will remove your hand from my person now." Ruth is stoic, she can't be intimidated.

Austin tries to sit up, he tries to call his mother. A weight presses down on his chest holding him still. Austin looks up, the waxy caterpillar demon is standing over him. It brings a hand close to its face. The monster mimes the stop motion, it then points directing Austin to look down his own body to his broken leg.

The demon is in two places at once. It is holding Austin still and conducting an operation on Austin's leg simultaneously. The beast brings its scythe-like tail down cutting a thin line into Austin's black infected leg. The monster produces from the air a set of surgical tools. Peeling the skin back from Austin's femur the monster cuts around the muscle with one set of hand the brings up a pair of pliers with a second set of hands. There is a crunching and popping sound. The monster finds something, a seven-legged squid-bug, the monster pulls the otherworld parasite out of Austin's body.

Austin screams. The Glowing One stabs it's tail into Austin's arm again. Austin faints.