The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [129]
The Vermiform had reassembled ― she stood a head taller than me. She said, "We told Membury and the Equinnes that even when the Gabbleratchet vanishes they must not come out for a few hours."
"Where is it now?" I asked. The Vermiform pointed up to the sky above the hills. I strained to make out a faint grey fleck, moving under the stars at great speed. It turned and seemed to lengthen into a column. I gasped, seeing creatures chasing wildly through the air, weaving around each other.
"It has already seen us," the Vermiform chorused. Worms began to slough off her randomly and burrow into the grass. "When I say run, run. It won't be able to stop. Don't run too soon or it will change course. Be swift. Nothing survives it. If it catches you we won't find one drop of blood left. Beware, it also draws people in."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't look at it for too long. It will mesmerize you."
It was an indistinguishable, broiling crowd, a long train of specks racing along, weaving stitches in and out of the sky. Their movement was absolutely chaotic. They vanished, reappeared a few kilometres on, for the length of three hundred or so metres, and vanished again. I blinked, thinking my eyes were tricking me.
"It is Shifting between here and some other world," said the Vermiform, whose lower worms were increasingly questing about in the grass.
The hunt turned towards us in a curve; its trail receded into the distance. Closer, at its fore, individual dots resolved as jet-black horses and hounds. The horses were larger than the greatest destriers and between, around, in front of their flying hooves ran hounds bigger than wolves. Black manes and tails streamed and tattered, unnaturally long. The dogs' eyes burned, reflecting starlight, the horses' coats shone. There were countless animals ― or what looked like animals ― acting as one being, possessed of only one sense: to kill. Hooves scraped the air, claws raked as they flew. They reared like the froth on the wave, and behind them the arc of identical horses and hounds stretched in their wake.
They were shrieking like a myriad newborn babies. Dulled by distance it sounded almost plaintive. Closer, their size grew, their screaming swelled. As I stared at them, they changed. Yellow-white flickers showed here and there in the tight pack. All at different rates but quickly, their hides were rotting and peeling away. Some were already skeletons, empty ribs and bone legs. The hounds' slobbering mouths decayed to black void maws and sharp white teeth curving back to the ears. Above them, the horses transformed between articulated skeletons and full-fleshed beasts. Their skulls nodded on vertebral columns as they ran. Closer, their high, empty eyesockets drew me in. As I watched, the skeleton rebuilt to a stallion ― rotten white eyes; glazed recently
dead eyes; aware and living eyes rolled to focus on us.
The horse's flanks dulled and festered; strips dropped off its forelegs and vanished. Bones galloped, then sinews appeared binding them, muscle plumped, veins sprang forth branching over them. Skin regrew; it was whole again, red-stained hooves gleaming. The hounds' tongues lolled, their ears flapped as they rushed through hissing displaced air. All cycled randomly from flesh to bone. Tails lashed like whips, the wind whistled through their rib cages, claws flexed on paw bones like dice. Then fur patched them over and the loose skin under their bellies again rippled in the slipstream. Horses' tails billowed. Their skulls' empty gaps between front and back teeth turned blindly in the air. The Gabbleratchet charged headlong.
I shouted, "They're rotting into skeletons and back!"
"We said they're not stable in time!"
"Fucking ― what are they? What are they doing?"
"We wish we knew." The Vermiform sank down into the ground until just her head was visible, like a toadstool, and then only the top half of her head, her eyes turned up to the sky. Her worms were grubbing between