The Unnamed One (Story)

My hat is pulled down over my eyes to beat back the sun. The sun, that unforgiving ball just hanging in the sky, beating down on me like I’m a red-headed stepchild that forgot to put the cap back on the bottle of milk. Any reason to rain the fire down on me.

I do have red hair under my hat.

My fedora. My fedora that I adore-a. It’s pulled down over my eyes, to stop the sun from getting in. It just seems so much brighter these days, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

My boots are sinking into the sand that I’m standing on, a careless pile of dirt that someone threw together some years back. Back then, it had to have been bigger, what with the way the wind is blowing now, in every direction all at once. I figure the hill, the dune or whatever has fallen at least an inch since I took my perch on top of it.

I do have a jacket on, to protect me from the sand, and from the rocks that are thrown and the occasional gun shot. There are a few holes in the tattered tails of my long-in-the-back overcoat. Bullets that probably should have hit my legs, but for some reason, didn’t. I suppose I’ve just been lucky like that.

A small scorpion started up the hill about the same time I did, about three or so hours ago, and he’s just now getting to the top. My boots have sunk in a good half an inch or so from just not moving. The scorpion clicks its pincers together and then stabs my boot with its tail. Struggled all the way up here, all the way to the top, to fight a God. Brave little thing.

Admiring the exoskeleton, I bend down, and with a gloved hand, pick it up. It stabs at the glove, but the glove is leather. I gingerly hurl it has far as I can into the distance, knowing that it probably won’t survive, and if it does... well, it might just have a story to tell about the day it met the giant and battled. That is, if scorpions do tell stories. I see no reason why they shouldn’t.

I tossed it in the direction of that small shanty town I just came from, the town that I’ve been staring at the entire time. The sun is beating down on it just as hard as the sun is beating down on me.

There’s a church at the far end of town, the end of a long, dusty road. It all culminates in a long, dusty building. When I walked in to the town, I didn’t say much of anything. I suppose they were all rather used to drifters coming through.

The old women, the old men, the children, the young men, the young women, the babes in baskets, all accommodating. Every one I did speak to told me of the church.

That it was a sacred place.

The end is nigh.

All that good shit.

I just nodded and smiled along, of course, keeping my fedora that I adore-a pulled down over my eyes.

The town was called Clarkesville.

And I had seen it in my dreams.

Often through a haze, a thick fog. The pueblos standing, mud buildings, some of clay and brick, but the church was always a beacon. Indelible red eyes staring out at me through the windows, thousands of them, the windows reaching to infinity and the eyes always numbering more and more by the second. The fetid breath that would come from within – and how bizarre it was, to me, to be able to sense this breath, to feel the damp heat expelled from the inside, the mutinous glare, accusatory, from all the eyes.

It beckoned. It told me to bring myself and only myself. That the end was nigh. All that good shit.

In my dream, there were no people inhabiting the town, Clarkesville, the unassuming shanty. There were rats the size of humans, old women, old men, children, young women, young men, babes in baskets, all rats. All with glaring eyes, just as accusing as those in the church building – not a holy place, I had deduced, from my visions. They had sharp claws that would grab at my coat, that would pull me in every direction but out. Mainly towards the church. A sea of hands, rocking me back and forth, sharp nails digging in to my back, being forced to the building.

All that good shit.

Even the babies, the small rats, would plod to me and push on my calves.

The entire time, all I thought was of the subtle movement I felt from under the sand, the unsure foundation on which this hell hole was built, a slightly wave of rocks cascading back and forth.

They would stand me in front of the church, and leave me.

The eyes would peer into my soul and I would feel the church expel its presence onto me.

I would awaken, as the doors would open, a gaping maw, inviting, ever so pleasantly, to please step inside.

And I would stand, collect my things, as they would scatter in the night had I been sleeping on the ground, and move on. If I were inside, I would pick up my bag, and leave through the window.

Who was here?

The man with the fedora. That he adore-a’d.

Although they did not do it with their hands, they did usher me to the church, with their minds, thinking vile thoughts of me, and how I should repent.

How the end is nigh.

It was almost as if I could hear them, the thoughts, as if I could see them, as if I were wading through a shallow pool of xenophobic hostility. What if they could read my thoughts? It was of little matter. I had learned to think not much of anything, after seeing everything.

I approached the church and felt the presence of the towns people behind me, but I knew that they were not literally standing at my back. Their collective will had driven me to this point, had it not? Had they not asked me to come? Was it not their dream I was having?

When I entered the building, I found it was not.

No, there was no hostility upon entering. The sun shined brightly through the ‘windows’ in the walls. But upon the altar was a rat, completely eviscerated. My mind had displaced the rodent, having often dreamt upon them, as a small child, but it was surely a rat. How I often confuse the two.

In the front of the church, in the first two pews, were several larger rats – or perhaps they were people, but I saw them, visions of fur, and teeth, and claws, and beady eyes, staring ahead at the savior on the faulty wooden cross that hung crooked. Perhaps they were a people transformed by crossing the threshold into this building.

For brief seconds, I could feel the wooden planks of the ground moving under my feet, until they subsided.

The rats in the front, they oddly looked as if they were repenting, perhaps due to the atrocity committed against the tiny one, splayed like a prize deer, skin pinned back as if a butterfly, sanguine innards exposed to the harsh world.

I felt as if I related.

One of the rats jumped up from the front, wearing a pair of old miner’s jeans, and grabbed my hand. Its friend joined, pushing me to the front, past the small child, towards the large basin of holy water that sat beneath the crucifix. I knew more than to fight them as they took my hands and dipped them.

Lo, I was gripped by a thousand fingers each of my one fingers that pulled me down into the depths, into the tranquility of this dark fluid, this matter that I could swim through and breath through, had hands not clamped my mouth, had ropes not pulled me back.

I was floating endlessly, for what felt like hours, being pulled and tugged in separate directions by the same thing as if it was not of one mind, but only one body. The thing from the dreams.

And I did see it, when my body finally did come to a stop, my coat hanging in the air behind me, my fedora pulled over my eyes.

It had great teeth, and the body of a man, had his limbs been pulled to the infinite, had he them numbered greater than any digit imaginable. His body contained legs, oh, two great red-woods that fell beneath the body, with various small tendrils rising. My perspective gave me not the size of the tendrils, until I reflected, realizing that they were at least three times the size of the town, given my position as it held me, staring, with it’s beady eyes.

It saw in me not a rat, but a pig. It did not try to speak, nor did it want to.

To stare at me with the eyes of duplicity, psychosis, was all it wanted.

I realized that in my haste to reach Clarkesville that I had neglected to think upon any other facets than my arrival, which I was so sure was at the hands of the town’s people. I realized that this creature, this unnamed one persisting beneath everything, was the one who had summoned me. To break him free from his bonds so that he may rain insanity down on the helpless masses.

And lo, I did not wish to stop him. I could feel my grasp on lucidity slipping away as I was pulled closer to it, the impossible creature, the unnamed one.

I awoke on the floor of the church, knowing that outside, not a single resident would remain, that the two rats who had flayed their child inside the building would have taken care of my opposition for me. The unnamed one, set to task immediately whilst I was away, clearing the roads.

I grabbed my bag, and set the small packages of dynamite against the church, with a slow burning fuse that I trailed with me, all the way to the top of the hill where I now stand. It burns down, for what feels like hours, but I can see it snaking along. The blood red dirt in the town, the spilled morals from everyone residing within. I am not myself, you see, and I must apologize for what is about to happen. Had I been in my right mind, I, perhaps, would have stood a chance to fight this.

The church does explode, freeing whatever spirits lay trapped inside, and the miniscule movement I felt from my dreams becomes real. The hill I am standing on, alive, the tentacle from beneath rising up to wrap around me as the unnamed one’s body is pulled up from the sand. And I can only smile and smile as a villain as it begins to tighten its grip on me, as it has done others. But I cannot fight, even as I feel my ribs pop and my eyes bulge.

Even as it sends me to infinity, to reside with those who have tried to fight it.

Oh, yes, the end is certainly nigh. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m just asking for forgiveness. I’m just asking -