Hive

But then there was something coming. Something else.

And it was no ghost.

Hayes felt something heavy glide over his head, felt the wind it created and the evil that exuded from it in a toxic sap.

An Old One. An elder thing.

Not dead and transparent, but tall and full and resilient. In the lantern light, its flesh was a bright, oily gray and its eyes were like shining rubies. Its wings were spread, great membranous kites seeking wind and it flapped them in a blur of motion, creating a high, horrible buzzing sound that rose up and mated with the whining drone of its piping, becoming a solid wall of noise that stripped your nerves raw. It stood atop a shattered pillar, clinging with those coiling and tentacular legs. The branching appendages at its breast scraped against each other like roofing nails.

Yes, it was alive, maybe eight feet in height, grotesque and alien and oddly regal as it towered over Hayes. Its piping fell to a series of chirping squeaks and squeals like it was speaking and it probably was. There was something questioning about those noises, but Hayes could only stand there like a mindless savage staring up at his messiah. A revolting, chemical stink of formalin wafted off it, a stench of pickled things and things white and puckered floating in laboratory jars.

Hayes felt its mind touch his own in a cold invasion.

The flashlight fell from his hands, then the shotgun.

The way it looked at him was devastating . . . it seemed to take him apart at some basal level. Things like defiance and free will writhed briefly in the glaring crimson suns of its eyes, then curled up brown and withered to fragments. There was an unquestioning superiority about the creature. No anger or rage or simple hatred, for such things were by-products of humanity and not within its natural rhythms. It looked down upon Hayes with a neutral passivity, maybe slightly amused even or playfully annoyed the way an owner will look down upon a beloved puppy that has shit on the carpet. Yes, I’ve come now, master is here, little one. You’ve made a mess of things, haven’t you? No matter, I’ll sweep it up, you precocious and empty-headed little beast. Maybe that’s how it was seeing him. As something stupid and messy and foolish that needed a higher guidance, a taste of discipline to set it right. That’s what Hayes was feeling in his head, the sense that this thing thought he and his kind had shit all over the world, but that was at an end now for daddy was here and he would soon set things to right. We made you what you are and as we made you, little one, we can un-make you.

And that was it.

Those were the thoughts that blossomed in the whistling vacuum of Hayes’ mind. That this horror saw itself as a parent looking down at a child . . . not hate there, just a touch of disappointment.

It was in his head now, easily mastering his thoughts, picking through his memories and emotions and subconscious urges almost by accident. Their minds were so dominating and supreme, they did this almost as an afterthought. Like everything else with them, a mind, a psyche, was just something else to be dissected and rendered down to its base anatomy.

Hayes felt something building in him.

Maybe the creature truly did not dislike him, but it also held no warm thoughts for him or his race, either. It was alien and cold and arrogant. Hayes was warm and weak and idiotic. But there was something in him they had not counted on and that something bubbled up from his core and he charged the Old One with murder in his eyes.

He surprised the old master.

It could not comprehend such out and out rebellion, for revolt against their makers was not something they programmed into the human animal. And as such, it was taken by surprise. Shouting a rebel yell, Hayes dove at it, actually grabbed its wavering stick-like appendages in his gloved hands and it was like touching a high-power line or a white-hot bar of smoldering steel. He was instantly knocked on his ass, his gloves melted and smoking.

But the creature had recoiled from him, maybe out of shock or fear. Yes, just like old Doc Frankenstein had recoiled from that shambling monstrosity he created. This thing was appalled by Hayes. He was white and bloated, a hairy and gas-filled fungus . . . symmetrically and anatomically obscene, a disgusting lower order. He had no love for Hayes no more than a scientist has a love for a large spider he toys with . . . but when that spider revolts, it must be crushed as a lesson.

Hayes felt all his hatred drain away.