Chương 9: Chapter Nine: Old Bones

Hollis did not make it around the atrium. He didn't even make it close, not before the pool in the center of the room sounded like it was bubbling with how many of those things slithered out of it with a sound like rocks falling in the rain. Willo was quick to give him a look at what he was dealing with. The masses rising from the water at first looked like a tangle of bones, but as they spread along the wet floor, it became clear they were hundreds of separate skeletons.

There were bones of mice that ran as they had in life, and the bones of a horse that used its ribs like a spider's legs to skitter forward. Its legs slithered separately from its body. But most of the bones were not animals. They were human. Some even walked like humans, swinging their arms, turning their heads. Most, though, they didn't even try to pretend.

Most of the skeletons slithered toward him feet first, with one foot or the other acting like a snake's head, guiding the leg and spine that followed in an "S" pattern toward Hollis. The skulls of those, if they were still attached, would simply be dragged behind. He was soon cut off from the direction he had been heading. The creatures followed their leader, who had once been a tall person in life, but now moved like a two-headed snake with both feet hovering off the ground and invisible eyes trained on Hollis.

Before the skeletons could pin him to the wall, Willo let off a Will o' the Wisp, a glowing copy of itself that flew over the monsters to Hollis' left, leaving them lurching into thin air trying to catch the light. They must not have had great vision, because only those creatures right near the ball of light even seemed to notice it. The rest moved in like a horde as Hollis ran back the way he had come, taking a sharp left down a corridor.

He had his revolver out and shot the big two-legged skeleton that slithered behind him right in the pelvis. [Marksmanship lvl. 6] The bullet knocked the creature back and stunned it, but it didn't leave a mark. A shot like that should have pulverized bone. But these bones were not ordinary. They were heavy, Hollis realized. They made such loud taps and smacks against the tile floor as they moved. A human skeleton weighed less than ten pounds. These were more like stone.

Even the human arm that flexed back and sprang up at Hollis hit the ground with a heavy thud when Hollis knocked it away. He let off a few more well-aimed shots against the horrors nearest to him, but the result was the same. The bullets didn't penetrate; they merely stunned. He was going to be cornered if he went further down the corridor. He had seen there was nothing but a cave-in in that direction. His only option was to enter an old wooden door close to where the hallway met the atrium.

Willo, just as Hollis had seen the night they met, was blasting his illusions every which way, causing the skeletons some momentary confusion, but nothing more. Hollis opened the door so he and Willo could enter and closed it behind them. He knew that the door wouldn't hold. Luckily, the tables in this room were made of metal, like those in a morgue. He quickly upended one and had it up against the door, while another was used to pin the first one upright.

It worked, but as the heavy skeletons launched their bones at it, Hollis knew it wouldn't last for long. He needed another plan. As he tried to think, a dark thought ran through his mind like a fishhook to the gut. Were these the people he had come to save? They were undeniably human skeletons. Some even wore the soaking remains of clothing they had once adorned in life. That brought up a whole new question. Since when were living skeletons part of Periapt's bestiary?

Maybe animal skeletons could maintain enough Spirit to walk around or fight. That wasn't too ridiculous. After all, he had a possessed wolf pelt in his backpack. But human skeletons? Something strange was going on. Humans did not have innate magic in Periapt. He had never heard of anything like this. Whatever the answer was, it didn't matter at that moment. He needed a plan. Luckily, the room had a back door, which would let him out even further in the direction he had first come.

He could always race back to the well ladder and be done with this place. Maybe. The skeletons ignored the second door, so they weren't intelligent or operating on their former memories, not even the few that walked upright. They were quick, though. They could have him surrounded before he got back to the entrance. Running in a few inches of water slowed him down and risked him slipping. One fall and he would… suffer whatever fate the skeletons had in mind for him. It wasn't clear.

They weren't exactly biting at him. If anything, it was like they were trying to wrap his legs up. He looked around the room with help from Willo. It was clearly some kind of laboratory. Glassware and metal tools covered the counters and lay scattered on the floor. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He needed something more than pure luck for his escape plan. He needed a distraction.

The skeletons seemed attracted to either sound or smell, given their weak vision. That meant he needed something loud or pungent to take away their attention just long enough for him to make his exit. His meager Alchemy skill was not promising. He knew a bit of chemistry, but not enough to mix a bomb on the run. He needed to assess his options.

Most of the place was rotten, and any supplies he needed would be rotten too, he realized as he made his way to the back of the room while the skeletons pushed and banged against his barricade. Even chemicals had expiration dates. The lab surrounding him was as dilapidated as any other room he had visited, except, he soon discovered, for one cabinet in the back. It practically jumpscared him as Willo's light illuminated it from across the room. There were eight cabinets just like it next to each other.

They had wooden frames, octagonal builds, and sides composed of frosted glass. It almost looked like the kind of cabinet someone would pick their choice of pie from in an old-fashioned diner, but the size of an arcade cabinet. Most had rotted to the point of destruction. Their glass was shattered, their contents long ago spilled. One of them, however, looked completely new. It didn't even have dust on it. It could have been installed the day before.

As he approached it, he tried to figure out the contents of its shelves. It was mostly beakers and other containers of liquid. There was a brand name on the cabinet. Many old-world artifacts were like that here. Periapt was in its "Coca-Cola still had cocaine in it" phase of consumer goods, where everything had fancy brand logos, and advertisements promised miraculous things about various products. Of course, in Periapt, those ads were likely a bit more honest.

The word "Permanarium" was painted onto the front glass pane. Above the cabinet, a strange brass device spun a thin propeller that had metal boxes at each end. It moved slowly, but it did move. [Archaeology lvl. 2] You see a Permanarium brand preservation cabinet. Preservation cabinets were common appliances in the years before Periapt's main continent was abandoned for the outer islands. They boasted an air-tight seal, multiple large shelves, and the ability to preserve their contents for weeks at a time.

Alongside ice box units, they helped make preserving food practical for even working families.

"Weeks at a time, huh?" Hollis asked. He grabbed the large handle of the cabinet and opened it. Fresh air spilled out over him. As soon as the cabinet was opened, the propeller on top stopped moving, and many of the beakers started to shake. It was nothing too violent. He wasn't worried that it was about to break. As he looked closer, he realized they weren't beakers. They were specimen jars filled with small bones and some type of yellow liquid. A human jaw, a tiny animal's spine, a skeletonized bird.

They were shaking because the bones in them were trying to escape. Hollis shut the cabinet on a hunch. Suddenly, the movement stopped. When Hollis opened the cabinet, they started moving again. As amazing as Hollis found this, he was more horrified by the realization that whatever those skeletons were, humans must have been studying them here. None of that mattered just yet. He looked among the shelves. He had been hoping for some kind of flammable liquid.

He could make a fire bomb that would distract the bones well enough if he found the right stuff. When he inventoried the cabinet, he didn't see anything perfect for that. He did, however, see a large jar filled with oil and a dull gray metal. He recognized it immediately. [Alchemy lvl. 1] You see a large jar filled with sodium. He couldn't have asked for anything better. He grabbed the jar and closed the cabinet behind him. It was a nice product, having a one in eight chance of lasting 300 years.

If he had a hand truck, he might have taken it with him. He moved back to the front of the lab. The plan would be simple. Wait for the skeletons to make it through his barricade, allowing as many as possible into the lab. Then, he would exit the back door, close it, and run back through the atrium as fast as he could. When he could go no further, he would use the sodium.

It took the skeletons a few more minutes to get through the barricade, clearing the old wooden door and moving the tables he had placed in front of it. If they had been coordinated, they could have gotten through instantly, Hollis realized. Once a few got through a hole, the others poured behind them and knocked the remaining barricade asunder like it was cardboard.

Hollis slowly opened the back door, and just before that big skeleton whose legs acted like twin snake heads got to him, he bolted out the other door and slammed it behind him. Then, the race was on. Many skeletons had not made it into the lab yet, and they heard his steps through the wet floodwaters easily enough. More skeletons came from the pool in the center of the room. He was surrounded faster than he imagined.

He reared back and threw the glass jar of sodium as hard as he could into the biggest group of skeletons slithering toward him. The glass broke immediately, then the many bits of sodium fell into the few inches of floodwaters on the floor beneath. Hollis knew the sodium wouldn't blow them up. It sure did make them dance, though. Dozens of pieces burst with vapor and noise as they hit the water, popping and blasting into the air where they would land back in the water and do it all over again until they dissipated.

It was a fireworks display. The noise and smell of pond scum burning, combined with the smoke and lights, confused the skeletons so badly that they forgot Hollis even existed. He managed to make it a hundred feet uncontested before the bones found him again. He still hadn't made it back. He had, however, made it to the place he had once entered, where the back half of the room had slid down into a dark chasm, and a skeleton sat on the floor. A wave of bones nearly got to him before he closed the big metal door.

In his head, the plan was to simply wait the skeletons out. They had been in a hibernation state of some kind when he arrived; perhaps they would return to it in a few hours, and he could run away. But as he looked at the skeleton sitting back to the wall in front of him, he wondered if that was what that guy had tried. That was not the only thing that concerned him. While he was running and shooting the slithering skeletons, he had inquired about the creatures on the inspector.

He had never seen anything like them, after all. The answers were as haunting as the creatures themselves. [Archaeology lvl. 2] You see that animated skeletons have infested some ruins. None of the records in the outer islands warn of this happening. [Naturalism lvl. 5] You see serpentine behavior in apparently human bones. There are no known records of human skeletons moving under their own power. [Medicine lvl. 2] You see a medical marvel. The human body cannot sustain Spirit after death.

Reanimation of a corpse may be possible through various parasites or viruses, but it is not possible for human bones to move under their own power through any known means. In a world of equal parts wonder and horror, where anything could happen, Hollis had found the one thing that science, history, and medicine agreed could not.