“AND IN THE LOWEST DEEP A LOWER DEEP, STILL THREAT’NING TO DEVOUR ME, OPENS WIDE, TO WHICH THE HELL I SUFFER SEEMS A HEAVEN.”

-JOHN MILTON

Paradise Lost

That was the day it appeared. Claude’s mother spent about ten minutes staring at it before she could admit that it was really even there–she made sure to put down her bottle of grape soda that had been sweating in her hands. What she saw before her, no more than a mile away, past the pale browns and muted greens of a small town, was a mound of black rock. It sprouted from the ground in the shape of a perfect square and formed a diamond point at its tip. 

 “Claude, you need to see what’s happening,” she said.

Her weak lungs couldn’t initially carry her voice far enough to reach him, he was in his room.

“Claude, I need you!” she wheezily bellowed up the stairs as she grasped onto the railing.

He rushed down the steps and grabbed his mother all in one quick motion.

“Ma, what’s wrong? Do I need to take you somewhere? I’ll take you. I don’t care what they say about any bill.”

His mother didn’t say a word but turned her head toward the massive black monolith that had been erected in the distance. To Claude, it seemed as if the entire world fell silent when he saw it. There was only one thing that pulled him out of his infatuation: the familiar gasping hiss of his mother’s labored breathing. He quickly snapped back to tend to her. 

“It’s gonna be alright Ma,” he assured her, “It’s not anything Ma.”

He held his mother’s shoulders reassuringly and looked into her eyes.

“I’m gonna get a closer look, alright?”

~

His mother gave him the name Claude because she believed it reflected high status, artistry, and talent–she believed those things would get him out of the country bumpkin village he was born in. But she did not name her little boy after Claude Monet or Debussy, rather, she named him after Jean-Claude Van Damme, the oft-forgotten movie star. 

His father had shared the same sentiment as his mother. “He’ll do better,” he always said, “better than we could. Hell, maybe he’ll even get us out of this old shit town.” Claude’s father hated Coward–the shitty town that he’d grown up in and that his father grew up in and that his father’s father grew old in, dating back to what he thought may have been a thousand-year-old legacy of poverty. But Claude’s father was wrong about him: he was destined to be less than. In Kindergarten, he took two weeks longer than the other kids to master his A B C’s, and by the time he had gotten to high school he was failing every class imaginable, even managing to flunk out of woodshop, the only class he could ever admit to liking.

Often, when they were kids, John McCallister would call Claude and his family, “Nothin’ but mouth breathin’ retards.” The McCallisters were the kings and queens of Coward, Nowheresville U.S.A. They owned a dairy farm situated between two flat fields of corn, each owned by another, less wealthy family of farmers who lived in fear of being bought up by the McCallisters every day. 

John McCallister was a nasty little boy, rotund in figure and with stringy black hair that fell past his bright blue eyes. As John and his group of delinquents lobbied insult after insult toward Claude, he could do nothing more than sit there and take it. Claude would endure abuse like that every recess. Sometimes, John McCallister’s sister, Lucy, would catch wind of the unrelenting abuse that her brother was lobbing at Claude and draw John away. 

One time, rather than just pulling John’s attention away, Lucy smacked him in the face. “Don’t you ever be mean to Claude again,” she said. John, with tears streaming down his face and wide glassy eyes, said nothing. Claude and Lucy looked on as he ran away, pushing past his friends. Lucy reached down and grabbed Claude’s hand, pulling him up off the ground which John had pushed him onto. As Lucy’s hand grasped his, he felt a feeling that he had never felt before. His little heart was pounding against his ribcage and his stomach buzzed like a beehive.

~

Claude’s mother nodded, clearly weak from the level of excitement the day had already wrought. 

“I’m gonna be fine. I’ll be back before it gets too dark.”

He helped her onto the small couch in the living room and wrapped a small hand-quilted blanket around her. Then he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. 

The walk from his home to the object was about 10 minutes, closer to 15 in the bitter cold of mid-January. The sky was overcast in grey monotones as Claude dragged his tennis shoes through the muddied brown and grey snow. The trees around him rustled flimsily in the blowing winds–they were still barren from the long and harsh winter. Landlines and rickety old shacks were the only signs of civilization that were along the road. Once Claude got to the object, he couldn’t help but fall entirely silent again. What pulled him out of his entrancement this time was the sound of a truck passing by. It was Amos’ truck, an old family friend who owned a homely little fishing shop no more than a half a mile away. Claude flagged him over to stop that big red truck of his from barrelling down the road. 

Amos pulled over and opened his truck door, hopping down onto the ground. He hobbled around to the other side of the truck and leaned on it for support. Amos was an older man dressed in a shirt that matched the cherry red of his truck. The overalls looked as if they had dug into his body and made permanent indents, forcing his shoulders to sit unusually high on his torso. 

“She saw it again then?”

“What do you mean again? Ma called you before she went and got me to come downstairs?”

Amos sighed and leaned his hat down past his eyes until they could no longer be seen.

“No, son, I- we have this conversation every time.”

“Every time?”

“Yes, son. Every time that thing comes back.” 

Amos stared down the monolith and it stared back. The deep darkness of an ebony void stared back at him and it stared intensely. His entire face trembled gently as he looked at it, his beard stuttering in the wind, his icy breath puffing rapidly out of his mouth. 

“Nobody ever remembers when it happens. I do.” 

Amos took off his blue cap and placed it on his chest. He reached up to the top of his head and scratched at an old scar. That scar was the remnant of an operation that had replaced fragments of his skull with a metal plate. He was a veteran. Vietnam. He always joked that the plate stopped his brain from “workin’ right”. 

“I remember every time that thing shows up. Every time since those meteors happened up in the sky all those years back.” 

Amos stopped trembling for a moment, stiffening his body and staring directly at the monolith.

“I’ve seen a lot of people go to that thing and never come out,” he said. “Everyone forgets but I always remember.”

Claude looked around and noticed that there weren’t any news vans or journalists. 

“Where’s the news people? Shouldn’t somebody be out taking pictures and writing about this?”

“The news never comes to see it, I’ve tried to tell em’. They shut down the moment you mention it, rush you outta their offices and their homes like you got the plague.”

Amos grasped Claude on both his shoulders and shook him with each word that left his lips as if he were scolding a disobedient child.

“Listen. That thing comes back once a year, same time, every year. People go in and you don’t see them again. Donna Blackard. Charlie Wethers. Vicky. Lucas. Little Arnold. They went to that thing one night and never came back.” Amos’ face began to run pale, his speech slowed and his pupils narrowed, “But they don’t just go into that thing. I think that somethin’ comes out too. I ain’t ever seen it, whatever comes out, but I always hear it. Late–at midnight. They scream so loud.”

Amos quickly hopped back into his truck and started the ignition.

“Stay away from that thing as long as you can, boy. Don’t make it take you any sooner than it plans to.”

As the truck pulled away, Claude turned his head again and gazed at the object. There were now large holes gouged out the bottom of it.

~

Once he got older and dropped out of high school, Claude realized that he had to grow up and he had to do it fast. He’d been taking the odd job here and there since his father went missing. He never made much. His mother, a woman who, despite her lack of wit, was more saccharine than the bag of butterscotch she kept by her bedside, had become sick. She seemed to get worse every day and had recently begun coughing up blood during horrible fits in the middle of the night. Claude lamented the pain that his mother endured every day and thought of new ways to come up with the money for a doctor at every moment. He’d consider pushing drugs some days and going back to school on others. 

One night, Claude snapped. Something about that day pushed him to the edge. He got up in the middle of the night and crept down the stairs. He slid open the closet that was behind his father’s chair, where his father kept his gun, an old Remington Model 31. Claude swiped it out of its place and stuffed it into the back of his pants, concealing it within his brown and tattered jacket that he wore as often as he could without wasting money on washing it. He made his way to the nice grocery store in the nicest part of town and stared into its bright neon “OPEN” sign for about twenty minutes, clinging onto his gun. 

He imagined himself running into that store, stealing thousands from inside the cash register, and going home. He would save his mother. He stared into the store through its glass pane windows. Its shiny interior washed over him and the piles of fresh food stacked neatly one atop the other stared back at him mockingly. He began to creep forward, his hand placed precariously at the bottom of his spine, poised to take out his father’s gun at any moment. Just as Claude was about to burst through those glass doors and step on the pearly white floor tiles, he was halted by a woman who was exiting the store. She was a short woman of about 60 with stringy gray hairs loosely anchored to her scalp. The loose skin on her face wiggled slightly as she stamped forward with her walker and smiled brightly at Claude. He stood there, silent and motionless as the old lady trailed off behind him to her car. He thought about his own mother, her sweet smile, and how heartbroken she would be if he robbed that store. He turned away, released his father’s gun, and went home. 

~

Claude couldn’t shake the idea that the news wasn’t there, so he decided he’d meet with an old friend of his. Lucy had grown up to be the most capable woman, or person for that matter, that he had ever known. The biggest misfortune that ever came upon her life was her marriage and even out of that her little baby boy was born. 

Claude walked a long way to get to Lucy’s house. She lived rather lavishly, for that town, a reflection of her and her ex-husband’s degrees and well-paying jobs–all of the McCallisters had gone to the state college. Claude knocked on her front door.

“Claude? Hi, didn’t expect you.”

“Hey, Luce. Sorry I came on such short notice an’ all but something showed up. A big black rock is how I’d say it. It came out of nowhere and there’re holes in it.”

“Hey now,” Lucy said, shifting her body to the side and giving a slight gesture of the hand. “Why don’t you slow down a bit and come on inside.”

As Claude slid into the doorway and past Lucy, he was met with a cacophony of radio stations, news broadcasts, and podcasts that filled the entirety of the house. In front of Claude and Lucy, greeting guests as soon as they arrived, was an 80-inch television which served as, quite possibly, the largest screen that the Channel 11 local news had ever been on. 

“Come on and sit down Claude,” Lucy said as she plopped down onto the couch, patting the spot next to her. In her other hand, was her cellphone which she had open to social media at just about all times. She, of course, had to keep up with all the news that she possibly could. 

“Well,” Lucy looked Claude in his eyes expectantly, something that always made Claude uneasy about her. “What’ve you got to tell me?”

Claude looked down at the floor and back up again, fearing that Lucy would dismiss what he was about to say.

“Amos says people go to it, the big black rock, and that they don’t ever come back, that it’s showed up before,” Claude said, noticing a focused wideness in Lucy’s eyes.

Lucy sighed and said, “Well, I’m glad you thought to come to me but you know I don’t do that now. I can’t go out there on the front lines being that kind of story chasing person anymore,” she smiled, “Not with Alex anyway. It’s too dangerous.” 

Claude could tell that Lucy was lying, that the excuse of taking care of Alex was such a flimsily presented social formality that he could see she was ready to bolt up off the couch and go with him. She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Here, I’ll call a friend of mine on channel 4.”

As soon as the dial tone stopped, Lucy heard a voice that abruptly began to speak, “Our offices are closed this week. Call again at a later time.”

“John? This is Lucy. I’m calling about some sort of object that’s appeared in–” 

ERRRRRN. John hung up before Lucy could even finish. 

“John? John? Hello? Damn it.” Lucy grabbed her jacket and her keys and shut the door, “Come on Claude, we’re leaving. Now tell me where this thing is again.”

By the time they got there, the object had grown taller. Lucy was in awe of it. She wouldn’t let it slide without some sort of logical explanation, however.

 “It’s probably an art thing placed here in the middle of the night by some eccentric douche.”

Claude got out of the car and came a little closer to the object. He saw that something about it had changed. 

“Luce, somethin’ is different about those holes. They weren’t shaped like that before. Not  human-shaped.”

Lucy got closer and took pictures of each hole on her digital camera. The holes were all individually shaped: some long and skinny, some fat and short. She looked inside one of them and shined a flashlight down into the hole. That light was completely absorbed into the ghastly human shape it was shone into. Lucy backed away from the hole and observed the entire monolith, taking pictures as she stepped further away. She looked down at her wrist and noticed the time.

“Ah damn. I’ve got to pick up Alex from the tutor. They say he’s still having trouble in math class. Anyway–” She abruptly took her camera and put it into her case and sat down in her car.

“Thank you so much for bringing me here Claude. I haven’t felt this kind of thrill in a while.”

She smiled, waved goodbye, and drove away. 

~

That night, Claude got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. He reached for his toothbrush, which sat in an old cup next to a pink toothbrush. It looked like the brushes were bought together, in a pack maybe. After he was finished brushing, he took a cloth and dampened it with some water, cleaned his face. Then he looked at himself in the mirror. He saw his father’s reflection, not his own. He walked out of the bathroom, put on his shoes, grabbed his coat, and stepped outside. The monolith was there, in the distance. He walked over to it, obviously moving but somehow, paradoxically, static. He walked up to the object and stared at it. He broke down onto his knees and threw his hands up. He was cheering. He was crying joyously. He found it and it was his this time. He could feel it. 

He tore off his clothes until he was stripped down bare naked. He walked into the hole, spreading his arms and legs so that he would fit. He slid in, so perfectly, and smoothly, but slowly. As he slid in further, the hole sealed behind him. All he could see was a blackness devoid of all light; his sight was completely nullified. He felt nearly nothing as he slid further into his mold, further into that ebony abyss. But, he could hear. He heard a deep, ghastly whirring. And then he could feel. He could feel viscous wetness begin to cover his body starting at his fingertips and toes and the top of his head. As the wetness began to cover more of his body it turned from an innate temperature to scalding heat. It felt as if his skin was disintegrating and his bones were turning to mush. He felt his blood begin to boil. All he could do was scream, scream a horrid and piercing sound, one made purely of fear, regret, and pain. But even that stopped once the liquid filled his gaping mouth. The only lingering sounds were a deep, ghastly whirring, followed by sloshing and slurping.

Claude woke up in his bed, dripping with sweat and with labored breathing. He sat for a moment and stared into the dark. All he could muster was a whimpering cry to console himself.

~

The next day, in the evening, Claude got a call from Lucy. She was muffled and crying. She said that she saw someone go into the monolith, a woman. That she tried to stop her but she slid in and was gone. 

“It was so awful,” she said, “Claude, it was awful.”

“Oh my god Luce, I’m so sorry, I-” 

“But Claude,” she paused and took a whimpering breath “I found it. I found mine.”

“There was another one connected to it. It’s for Alex, I know it! God, please help me. I can’t lose him, please come help me, please!” 

Claude rushed out of the door and ran to Lucy’s home as fast as he could. He knocked and knocked on the door until he realized it was already unlocked, pushed open by the frenzied bangs of his fist. He ran inside and searched every room for Lucy and Alex. They were gone and Claude knew where they were. He took Lucy’s keys that had been left on the mantle, got in her car, and drove as fast as he could to the monolith. 

Night had begun to fall. The sunset was a deep red layered by orange and a pale mossy green. He could see Lucy and Alex in the distance. They were bound hand-in-hand, bare-bodied, their eyes peering into human-shaped black voids. Lucy turned around one last time to see Claude. As she stepped forward, it looked like she tried to fight each step she took. She was crying and grinning. And then, when she reached the monolith, she slid inside, hand-in-hand with her son. By the time Claude pulled up to the object, the holes had sealed behind them. 

What happened to Lucy, it kept Claude up all night. He didn’t have anyone to tell. Not his mother, she was worried enough as is. His 911 calls were dropped immediately. He sat in bed, baggy-eyed and hunched over. He stared into the dark until his eyes began to redden and glaze over so he had to blink again. 

He eventually stopped staring into the dark and got out of bed. He went downstairs into his living room and grabbed his father’s shotgun from inside the closet. 

He confronted it again and he stood there for a moment. Staring down the monolith, it started back. It stole people from him, people he loved, and it just sat there, proud. It mocked him. Claude raised his father’s shotgun and methodically loaded it and pumped it, making a CHUNG CHINK sound. He fired BAM and pumped it again CHUNG CHINK.

“GOD DAMN YOU!” 

BAM!

CHUNG CHINK!

“MY FATHER! LUCY! HER LITTLE BOY!”

BAM!

“Give them back DAMMIT!”

“God, Why?” he collapsed to his knees, sobbing, “Why?”

He sat there on his knees, weeping into his hands. His father’s gun lay mournfully beside him. But then he heard it. He heard rock tumble and churn. When he looked up and opened his eyes he saw a new hole in front of him. It was next to Lucy’s hole, they would’ve been connected by the hand if hers was still there. It was his. He knew. 

Claude stood up and began to take off his clothes. He tore off his shoes, unwilling to waste time by untying them and he tore his shirt as he lifted it off his tall and slender frame. He let out a sigh of relief, still teary-eyed, but no longer sad. Draped from each corner of his mouth was an eerie, toothy grin.

“Thank you.”

He slid into the human-shaped mold, into the darkness that seduced him, and disappeared into its ebony void. 

Days later, at midnight: the object still stood. On its other side, three holes appeared next to one another. On the right, a hole tall and slender. On the left, was a short hole, the height of a child, connected hand-in-hand to a center hole. The center hole was not shaped like the others–it was inhuman. From it a spindly hand thinly veiled in pale grey skin emerged, its arms elongated and thin. A head with bulbous black eyes materialized in the darkness followed by a boney torso and protruding rib cage. Nestled between the ribs of the beast were faces that sunk into its body and disappeared. There was a short arm, the arm of a child, that protruded from the creature’s shoulder–it too sank into the body and disappeared. From the holes on the right and the left, all that they bore was a muddied red ooze. The creature opened its mouth and released a harsh moaning wail. The sound made a sharp whistling as it crept between the creature’s teeth, which were like long ivory needles. The object continued to bore these creatures and they all wailed into the stars. The cacophonous cries blended together; its message was fear, regret, and pain. Their cries begged for deliverance.

A bright white light then pierced through the dark clouds and engulfed the monolith. The light lifted its children into the sky and past the clouds. Instantaneously, the light was gone and the monolith crashed into the earth, concealed and eager to rise again.