My Condo is a Turtle Tunnel — Part 3

Series — A new homeowner turns to an unlikely ally for help, after accidentally breaking the seal of an ancient gateway hidden behind the walls of his spare room.

Earlier…
Part 1 | Part 2

As it turned out, the first step in ending my nightly torment involved taking my remaining savings to the hardware store. We replaced my flimsy and mangled bedroom door with a steel one, complete with a heavy deadbolt, an impact plate, all held in place with four inch screws.

There would be no more cowering behind the dresser barricade while we planned our strategy, which -- I was quite annoyed to learn -- did not include killing the damn thing.

"I know it sucks to hear." Van snapped the lid of his tool box shut. "You're certainly a victim here. but this event is interrupting the creature's home, as much as yours. They were here first. If all else fails, I'll certainly defend us to the death. But that can't be our first option."

I folded my arms and leaned against the sturdy new door frame. "So how do we deal with this, then? Knock it out with a dart gun, and drag it out to your truck?"

Van shook his head, missing my sarcasm completely. "No way to know for sure if my darts would actually work. If they did, where would we release him?"

"The woods? A zoo--I don't know, anywhere else?"

"I have a few ideas I'd like to try first, you know."

The first of these ideas was so obvious, it almost seemed too easy: barricading the pantry door. I admit, I didn't have a ton of faith in the two-by-fours we used to seal the opening. Just as I predicted: the extra layer of protection bought us two solid thuds before the invisible entity crashed through, and continued its routine.

"Well, at least it didn't walk through the door," quipped the ever-positive trapper.

Our next attempt involved sealing the cabinet with a plywood sheet, upon which I carefully copied the sealing rune from the inside of the closet door. We spread a line of salt across the kitchen floor, then another across the hall for good measure.

The salt and Sigils did little to deter the creature. At the stroke of midnight, a familiar pounding shattered any illusion I had for an easy resolution.

Thud. Thud. Crash!

"Why do you think it didn't hold?" I asked Van the next morning while we swept up the damage.

"I've never quite had much luck with those glyphs." He stopped to lean against his broom, contemplating. "I wonder if there is a ritual component needed to make them work. Or maybe they were meant to prevent someone on the other side from opening the door... not our friend from kicking it down."

I mulled this over for a moment before an idea came to me. "What if we just pull it out?"

"Pulled what out?"

"The cabinet."

Van made a face, like he'd tasted something sour. "Where would that get us?"

"You said the opening to this turtle tunnel...whatever you want to call it... is something we can't see, or interact with, right?"

He nodded.

"I want to know if this opening is just sorta hanging there, or if it's physically linked to the back of the cabinet."

Van snapped his fingers. "Now you're getting somewhere, eh? If you're right... we could just put the cabinet in the closet. Brick it back up again."

"Pretty much just shorten the distance of the tunnel from a few dozen feet, to a fraction of an inch, yeah," I agreed.

Of course, it was easier said than done. Even from the moment we began unscrewing the cabinet from its wall mounts, something felt profoundly wrong. My first instinct is to describe the space inside the cabinet as cold, but that doesn't quite fit. Imagine a steady trickle of ice water running down your spine. Goosebumps covered my arms, along with a prickling, almost biting sensation.

The last time I'd felt this way was the afternoon I'd accidentally broken the seal on the closet door.

"That should do it." Van stepped out from the back of the pantry cabinet and closed the door. He got into a squat position, and wrapped his fingers under the lip of the frame. "Ready?"

I joined him.

"On three," he said. "One...two... three!'

We both pulled. The cabinet scraped a few inches along the linoleum. As soon as we began moving it, a high pitched howling noise began to echo from within the cabinet. It sounded impossibly far off at first, growing in volume and proximity like an approaching jet. The wood shook.

Van dropped his end. "Run!" He shoved me away from the door an instant before it burst open. An unseen thing rushed through the air, smashing into the living room wall and shattering the glass-framed picture that had been hanging there.

A few pebble-sized pieces of broken glass hung in the air a moment, clinging to the unseen creature's fur.

"Get back to the room! Shut the door!" Van threw back his coat, and drew a pistol from his hip holster. He fired at least half a dozen shots--no, pellets, each exploding in a spatter of neon green paint.

Van's gambit had worked: thanks to the paintball marks, I could track the general motion and position of its torso, and one arm. It also seemed to really piss the creature off.

The beast let out an unnatural sound, alien to the animal kingdom and loud enough to bring pain to my ears; like the gnashing of metal machine parts that were never meant to touch.

In a single, fluid motion, Van ducked a swipe from the paint-spattered arm, discarded his pistol, and drew a shimmering Bowie knife from a sheath just above his boot. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, feinting with half-thrusts and slices as he tried to reposition himself by the hall.

Something -- probably the creature's tail -- yanked Van's foot from underneath him, hoisting the trapper into the air by his ankle.

"Get out!" He yelled. "Lock yourself in!"

I ignored him, making a move for the blade. My hand closed around the paracord-wrapped handle. Not a second later, a set of invisible, enormous fingers wrapped around my upper body and hoisted me into the air.

I squirmed and struggled, pushing against the calloused, leathery hide that seemed to cover the creature's palm.

"The knife!" Van hollered.

Of course.

I sank the blade down to the grip into the beast's forearm. I twisted and wrenched the blade free, showering the kitchen with a spray of dark, shimmering fluid.

The invader howled again as I brought the knife down a second time. But as I raised my hand to deliver a third stab, it dropped Van, wheeled around, and shoved me through the back of the closet wall.

I flinched, expecting to be slammed into a solid wall. The sensation that came was more like plunging into cold water. The hand relinquished me, and sent me tumbling through the dark, fluid space. My eventual impact with the ground -- though soft and spongey -- knocked the breath from my body.

I gasped and wheezed as I lay on by back, trying to fill my lungs. A swirling sky stared down at me, tendrils of pink and black, dancing like oil on water, but never mixing. As I sat up, my palms squelched in a thick bed of grass, sodden with a sticky fluid. I couldn't tell whether its red color was from the unnatural sun, casting the kind of light one would see in a darkroom. Droplets of the liquid seemed to be welling up from the vegetation, drifting skyward.

Was this the domain of the creature in my pantry: crimson forest with twisted, sickly trees? And why had I been seemingly abandoned here?

Would it eat me?

Could it eat me?

If not--for what purpose was it keeping me here?

Panicking certainly wouldn't help me. I took a deep breath, and decided to take stock of my surroundings. I stood near the shore of what looked like a lake of bubbling black tar. The trees, though thin and spindly, reached higher than some of the tallest redwoods in California. From their branches hung a sickly sort of moss, black and stringy, as if it had been fished from the rancid shower drain of some hairy cosmic being.

The place felt oddly finite in a way I couldn't describe; some feeling in the back of my head told me that if I strayed too far from the lake, the forest would simply cease to be..

"You dropped this."

I wheeled around, almost losing my balance. A woman stood at the tree line, holding Van's knife. Long, dark hair framed her pale, hollowed face. From her complexion, it was clear she hadn't seen the sun in months--maybe years. Her tattered dress would've matched her skin tone perfectly, were it not for the filthy stains and spatters.

She approached me barefoot, toes squishing softly in the mud, with the blade held out in her arm. It still shimmered in the void light that seemed to taint everything in this place.

Instinctively, I recoiled, nearly losing my balance again. "Woah... who are you?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." She stood still, and lowered the blade. "Forgive me if I've forgotten my manners... it's been quite a while since I've spoken with anyone?"

"Where—" I stopped myself. This wasn't the important question. "Who are you?"

Next Episode

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