The Valley of Despair Page 3

Erik’s case, before he had time to fully consider his options he snapped his handy single-shot carbine to his shoulder and delivered a lead slug full into the face of the beast confronting him.

  But he did not pause to note the effect of his round. Perhaps it was a modicum of the first reaction now that caused him to spin about and flee into the brush where within twenty steps he came to a lightly graveled stream which, his terrific thirst forgotten in his flight, he scarcely even noticed. He leaped the bubbling waters in a single bound, seeing in the rill only an obstacle to his escape from the beast behind him.

  One often hears that in times of stress the training one has undergone will come into play automatically, without conscious volition or thought. This the pilot found to be true as, while in mid-flight, his fingers instinctively retrieved one of his precious few remaining cartridges and instantly worked the action on his rifle. The motion ejected the spent casing and the man immediately inserted a fresh cartridge in its place.

  Slamming the bolt home to seat the fresh round he glanced over a shoulder to note if he was being pursued. Horrified, he discovered that not just one but a half dozen of the bizarre, purple-furred beasts were now upon his trail.

  Upon seeing him look in their direction one paused. The hackles on its shoulders rose in vertical barbs at which point it released a shriek the sound of which struck a chord of horror in the man that he never experienced when facing a charging lion or a human opponent – each a feat he’d accomplished upon many occasions since his advent to the colonies of German occupied Ost Afrika.

  “Gott hilfe Mir!” he cried in his native tongue.

  He had discovered in the various countries in which he’d lived that he had a natural inclination to submerge himself in the local culture, mechanically speaking and replying in the natively spoken language, enjoying the cultural immersion his capricious lifestyle lent. Of late he’d begun learning the language of the askarii – the natives who fought alongside the troops of Deutschland.

  But when faced with stressful situations he would, as do most, revert to his native tongue without any conscious thought. Whether it be anger, frustration, or that moment a combatant realizes his life is in imminent danger of being extinguished, it is always in his own native language that he cries out for God to save him. In that moment his mind will ignore the dozen other tongues in which he might be fluent for of these there is only a single one that is ingrained in the particular portion of the brain where the emotional center is hardwired to that of speech.

  Almost as if he were viewing an old, silent film of himself he watched in a detached manner as he fired at the oncoming beasts, spun, and then fled in the opposite direction on legs weak from privation. While running he would automatically load a fresh cartridge and fire; but he never paused long enough to note the effect of his barrage, thinking only to flee his pursuers.

  The creatures chasing him were six-legged, of about the size of a charging rhino, horned exactly as that engine of destruction and possessed four eyes spread evenly across wide, flat foreheads. Purple fur, dappled with black, covered their great feline-like bodies, ending in black tufts on their long tails and above each padded foot.

  But these were details he recalled only later. For now, fleeing through the dense brush of this horrid valley, he thought only of finding a place from which he might make a final stand – a place where he could point the muzzle of his rifle where it could destroy anything that approached. Before he knew it, he came to such a place.

  Seeing a brightening ahead of him he thought perhaps he drew near the marge of the forest. He could not guess if this would be a good thing or ill. It might be that he would be run down in the open with no place to make a defense. He considered scaling one of the enormous trees surrounding him. Then, recalling the claws that tipped the great pads on the ends of the legs of these unearthly creatures he tossed that idea, realizing that any arboreal path would be a freeway to such as these.

  Bursting through the last thick underlayment of the forest floor, he saw a sight nearly as shocking as that of the great beasts that stalked him. Before him, a hundred meters across a clearing of savannah-like grass, rose the cyclopean columns of a city.

  03: City in the Sphere of Time

  Hesitating only a moment Erik von Mendelsöhn impulsively started at a jog for the broken columns and decaying foundations of the unknown city upon the plain beyond the edge of the forest.

  His feet followed an erratic, stumbling path for the man suffered greatly from lack of sleep and nourishment – the same privations suffered by all who find themselves stranded far from civilization and who must then survive against great odds in the wilds of merciless nature. Glancing over one shoulder he saw that the great beasts stalking him had halted at the marge of the trees, as if fearful to exit their protective bounds. Growling fiercely, they slowly slunk back into the darkness of the enclosing verdure.

  Thinking it but the instincts of the wild beast to avoid the habitations of humanity the weary man staggered on amongst the blocks of granite and marble. He found himself faltering up the steps of what aforetimes had been a mighty edifice that would have stood as testament to the equality of grandeur and attainments of this long dead race as compared to the mightiest of constructions builded by any other of the Earth’s ancient races of peoples.

  The exterior of the marble and stone structure reminded him of his mother’s homeland, specifically the Parthenon of Athens with its classic lines and striking columns. Above these columns intricate designs had been carven - the scrollwork of a first class artisan depicting beasts that would have walked the Earth tens of thousands of years earlier.

  His mind still tried to make sense of the purple beasts that pursued him through the forest but it was also with the eye of an explorer that he glanced this way and that, admiring the beautiful construction of the ruins whose very existence in this unpeopled valley was most likely undreamed of by the outside world. It seemed the further he made his way into the city the better he found to be the state of preservation.

  Upon the walls there were many vivid and colorful murals depicting the lives of a happy people of a bygone age. The yet-sound roofs had acted miraculously in protecting the interior from the ravages of sun and rain, with only time having left its mark in the dust beneath his feet. This caused him to press on toward the interior, his curiosity peaked.

  He felt surprised at one point to be overcome suddenly by a dizzying feeling of nausea and vertigo so intense it caused him to stumble against an interior column for support. The nausea was accompanied by a sensation as of the slowing of his heart where he felt every nuance of a single beat that felt like it lasted for centuries. But the feeling passed and so he pressed on, coming to an immense doorway. The stone beams of this caused his engineer’s mind to immediately marvel and guess at what methods the ancients might have used to move these fantastic members into position.

  The size of these, in this remote locale unknown to civilization, stunned the mind. As he passed beneath the lintel of this doorway his eyes strained upwards, admiring its staggering proportions. He did not notice the exact moment when the sounds of his own labored breathing and the echoes of his footsteps upon the decaying vegetation clinging to the blocks of stone beneath his feet became swallowed by the noisy bustle of a city.

  Glancing sharply back to his surroundings he was shocked to discover a bazaar full of people of all manner of costume, engaged in the bustling work of a metropolis, laboring at all manner of vocations. Their way of dress seemed to indicate times from the past, of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, of the Dark Ages of Europe and of the early colonization of Africa by the various nations of Europe. His modern pilot’s uniform stood out in stark contrast - his booted feet, in comparison to theirs of soft-hided sandals, glaringly obvious.

  Shocked, he glanced back the way he’d come, noting the still, deathly quiet halls he’d traversed and the empty walks leading back toward a forest where beckoned sedate san
ity – at least, if he didn’t consider the purple beasts who pursued him. Looking in the direction he’d been walking he beheld again the busy bustle of a pre-historic city, a flurry of activity that had been neither visible nor audible before he stepped between the gargantuan frameworks of the peculiar doorway.

  As he stood there the people in his vicinity took immediate notice of him, as if he were the first person to step through that particular entry for centuries. They paused, looking at him aghast and with the oddest expressions on their faces.

  Amongst these, too, were others who witnessed his entrance - tall, gangly, creatures of parchment skin the color of volcanic ash, with strange proportions and oddly configured skulls set with cruel eyes. These now approached him from every angle in crouching, hunkered poses as if poised to leap at a moment’s notice, their postures serving to exaggerate the protracted look of their lengthy limbs.

  Erik was taken aback by the creatures closing in on him from every side for their mien was hideous in the extreme. Appearing roughly human in their basic conformation their bodies then took a turn for the nightmarish. They had the lean, gaunt look of a predator that’d went too long without feeding, an avarice