The Sand Devours (Part III)
The previous installment can be found here:
Brandon thought to run. He was, after all, a survivor and before him was the face of death. But what was there behind him? Nothing but endless sands and a broiling sun that would soon rise again. Even if he were to turn and run, the robed man would simply gather him up again before he made it out of the shadow of the dune.
No, it was no real choice, at all, when he thought about it. He had already cheated death twice, why not a third time?
So he followed, making a clumsier way of it than his adroit guide some ways farther down the dune. The stench grew with each step. Knowing its source made him gag even harder. Brandon had seen death before (Seb’s vacant eyes, still so blue against the mangled wreckage of the Cessna, blazed out at him through the fog of his memory), but the stink of burning flesh that buffeted him now was something else entirely. He buried his face in the curve of his arm, hoping the acrid odor of his own sweat and grime would help mask the deathstench of the pyre.
No luck.
By the time he reached the foot of the dune, Brandon was green and his head was swimming. The robed man awaited him there, silent and unmoving. Behind him the pyre spat red flames up into black night while the other robed figures stood still as stone around it. An oppressive heat hung heavy on the night air, but, to Brandon, it did not feel as if it was emanating from the pyre. The sand was broiling, so hot he could feel it through his boots, as if some buried furnace was churning away beneath it.
The robed man lifted a thin arm toward him and Brandon felt his skin crawl as the ring of crimson acolytes turned their shrouded faces his direction.
“Come,” beckoned the robed man.
Brandon swallowed. His head was pounding. Sweat and blood stung his eyes. He walked forward.
The robed man led him around the edge of the raging pyre, gliding as he always did with elegant dexterity. Brandon walked uneasily behind him. The flames burned hot and bright to his right. He chanced a quick glance, was met with a blackened char of human meat sandwiched between reddening logs, and promptly looked away. To his left, the faceless shapes of the acolytes followed his every movement, a sight somehow more unsettling than the pyre. He kept his eyes down.
The sand was white-hot, even in the moonlight, and streaks of blood traced their way across it. His footing was uneven, constantly shifting as his steps displaced the sand beneath them. It felt to Brandon as if there was something moving under there, writhing and swimming through the dense, packed desert. It was almost hypnotic.
“Wait,” the robed man commanded, snapping Brandon out of his sandtrance. They had reached the opposite end of the pyre. Protruding from the sand was a tall, polished obelisk that caught the moon and firelight in a frenzied dance across its surface. Latched to the base of this monolith was a man who, based on his torn and blood-spattered khakis, Brandon took to be one of the unlucky archaeologists who had stirred up this scene deep in the heart of the Gobi. His white beard, meanwhile, led Brandon to believe he was likely the head of the excavation. His limbs were splayed wide, held to the face of the obelisk by thick, corded ropes. He was bleeding and burnt, but though his wrinkled face was pained, his eyes remained defiant.
Beside this dogged old man was another robed figure, who, in place of the crimson folds of his fellow acolytes, was draped in a white so pure that it appeared to be woven of moonlight itself.
“You have seen,” the white robed figure spoke in a low, strained voice, uttering words that were foreign to Brandon’s ears yet somehow understandable. “Olgoi-khorkhoi comes. You must drink now.”
The old man leveled a bitter eye at the figure in white robes before him and spat. No reaction came from the desert priest. It remained fixed in the sand for a moment and then turned towards the pyre and its acolytes. “Olgoi-khorkhoi,” it spoke and then spoke again. “Olgoi-khorkhoi.”
The ring of acolytes took up the chant, swaying and thumping against the sand as they incanted.
“Olgoi-khorkhoi, olgoi-khorkhoi, olgoi-khorkhoi”
“What is happening?” Brandon asked, frantic. He aimed the question at no one in particular, but probed the old man for an answer with panic painted across his face. The archeologist’s expression remained stoic.
“Drink,” the desert priest commanded. In its hand now there was a waterskin. It held it up to the archeologist’s mouth. “Drink. Olgoi-khorkhoi comes.”
The old man was struggling against his constraints now, thrashing and cursing. The chants of the acolytes grew louder, drowning him out. They were pounding on the sand rhythmically, a steady beat beneath their incantation. The robed man who had guided Brandon to this hellish place fell to his knees beside him. Brandon looked on in horror as the desert man threw off his robes, revealing a grotesquely disfigured body. It was burnt and twisted, with chunks of flesh hanging off of cracked, yellowing bone.
Brandon screamed. He turned, making to run, but the sand heaved below him and tossed him to his own knees. All around the pyre, the other acolytes had discarded their robes, revealing their hideous forms. Only the desert priest remained in his snow-white robes.
“Olgoi-khorkhoi, olgoi-khorkhoi, olgoi-khorkhoi”
The air thrummed with chanting and the monotonous drumming of the sand.
“Drink,” the desert priest commanded again, shoving the waterskin into the old man’s face. He spat again, knocking the skin from its grasp.
“OLGOI-KHORKHOI, OLGOI-KHORKHOI, OLGOI-KHORKHOI”
Now the desert floor was alive with movement. Brandon watched in stupefied terror as long, slithering shapes shifted through the sand, making their way toward the obelisk.
“OLGOI-KHORKHOI, OLGOI-KHORKHOI, OLGOI-KHORKHOI”
In a spray of hot sand, the shapes broke through the surface. Pale, wafting tendrils rose from the desert like the fingers of a decaying corpse. They rose all around the obelisk, dancing to the acolyte’s chant. They looked to Brandon like worms, but even half buried they stood taller than any man and were as thick around as the trunk of a tree. They appeared white, but what external covering they had was so thin that they were nearly translucent. Upon their heads, or what Brandon assumed were their heads, were sharp beaks, like those of a squid, black as onyx. They snapped these beaks in rhythm to the acolyte’s sand drumming.
“Olgoi-khorkhoi,” the desert priest called out, raising both its hands high above its head and shaking them victoriously. The acolytes fell silent. The worms swayed in the moonlight.
“Drink,” it told the old man as it picked up the waterskin from the sand. “Drink or die.”
The old man, for the first time, turned to Brandon. “Don’t do what they ask,” he told him with a deep sadness in his voice. He then turned his eyes back to the white robed priest and defiantly clamped his mouth shut and inclined his chin, refusing the skin for a third time.
The desert priest hung its head and sank to its knees. “Olgoi-khorkhoi,” it said, beginning the chant again. The acolytes took it up once more and Brandon watched as the worms closed in on the old man, who was struggling mightily against his ropes.
One of the worms arched backward, hissed, and shot a thick globule of clear sputum into the old man’s face. Instantly, his screams filled the night. Flesh burned beneath the worm’s noxious spittle, eating away at the archaeologist as he screeched and thrashed. Another worm reared up and spat forth another glob which struck the old man’s chest. It sizzled there as it ate into his khaki shirt then devoured the meat beneath.
The screams were horrendous, cutting through the acolyte’s chants and into Brandon’s mind. He buried his head in the sand, praying for an end to it. Blessedly, it came quickly. Brandon took some small solace in that, knowing that the old man had not suffered long.
“Come,” Brandon heard the low voice of the desert priest say. “You must drink.”
He looked up from the sand to find the naked grotesquerie around him as the acolytes stripped what was left of the old man from the obelisk. The worms still danced silently. The desert priest was offering him the skin. “Drink,” it told him.
“He has already,” said his guide.
“Good,” said the priest. “Then you shall not know death.”
Brandon stared about him disbelief. A wave of relief washed over him. He had cheated death once more, without even knowing it. He was a survivor.
“You will live,” the desert priest told him as Brandon made his way shakily back to his feet. “Live to serve olgoi-khorkhoi, as do we.”
The flesh eaten mouths of the acolytes took up their chant. They closed around him as the worms moved forward. Brandon tried to scream, but his tongue melted away as the acidic sputum of the worms bathed his face. His flesh bubbled and burned.
He prayed for an end, for a release, but he did not find the solace of death that the old man had. He was, after all, a survivor.