From the classic 1999 underground anthology, PHANTASM: OBLIVION, officially authorized by Don Coscarelli -

Richard Elkin's

Continued from Page 3 of 4

"FORTY-FIVE MINUTES REMAINING."

Reggie trudged wearily through the burning sands, searching desperately for something- anything- that might lead him to the Tall Man.

Then he saw it.

Upon the horizon, a small cluster of dwarves disappeared into an opening in the sand. Unfazed by the dwarves' presence, Reggie rushed towards the opening.

The orifice was round, approximately eight feet in diameter and was breathtakingly deep. A path of highly polished metal lined the floor of the tunnel, its rocky depths glowing with an ethereal red light. Reggie could hear the scurrying and scratching of massive amounts of dwarf activity from the bowels of the tunnel.

Not much time, he thought. With his shotgun leading the way, Reggie began his foray into the depths.

It was notably cooler inside the than tunnel than it was on the surface. The further he descended, the more bearable the temperature became. As he proceeded, he passed several other smaller tunnels under construction in varying degrees of completion. Inside these smaller tunnels, small teams of dwarves dug at the surrounding rock and sand; some using crude tools to accomplish their work, others simply clawing at the softer material with their withered and bloodied hands.

'That's just fuckin' great,' Reggie thought. 'All those years of killing and pillaging and graverobbing just so these little bastards can play and dig tunnels in the sand.

'Reggie became more impressed as he continued, however. The network of tunnels was extensive and elaborate. Many of the more completed tunnels were lined with thousands of small holes. On occasion, Reggie would catch a glimpse of sentinel spheres drifting in and out of the holes. He gathered that many of these tunnels served as hangar bays for the flying weapons. Oddly enough, not even the spheres took much notice of Reggie as he continued to walk the metal path of the main tunnel.

"THIRTY MINUTES REMAINING."

The high pitched whine of an approaching sphere caught Reggie's attention. It was coming from the tunnel behind him. He pushed his body up against the wall of the tunnel and readied the shotgun for the imminent attack. A single gold sphere slowly floated into view and gently approached Reggie. Remembering the gold sphere that contained Mike's soul, Reggie resisted the temptation to pull the triggers and obliterate the sphere. The chromed orb gently drifted and bobbed in front of Reggie's face. He did not feel threatened in any way.

"Don't be afraid, Reg. It's me . . . Mike," the sphere said in Mike's voice. Not audibly, but a whisper in the back of Reggie's mind. Reggie lowered the barrels of the gun and smiled.

"Holy shit, Mike! I can't believe I found you!" he whispered in elation.

"You said you would come back for me," the sphere said. "You always were a man of your word. I could always count on you."

"Yeah, well don't mention it." Reggie looked around and noticed that the "hangar" tunnels were beginning to buzz with sphere activity, like angry hornet nests. "Hey, why don't we get the fuck outta here, buddy. I don't have much time."

The gold sphere slowly drifted past Reggie further into the tunnel, beckoning him to follow.

"Come with me, Reg," it said as it continued its slow flight. "There's something I have to show you first."

Reluctantly, Reggie followed the sphere deeper into the tunnel, which soon came to an end with a large polished metal door blocking the way. An equally polished metal plaque featuring a round indentation and three small slots was directly adjacent to the door. The sphere floated in front of the plaque.

"This is where it all begins, Reg," the sphere whispered, "and I am the key."

Three serrated blades ejected from the sphere as it thrust itself into the plaque, the blades keying into the slots. The huge metal door suddenly slid open, accompanied by a gush of wind from within. The sphere dislodged itself from the locking mechanism and drifted into the chamber, Reggie following closely behind.

The room was cavernous, filled with an overwhelming array of ancient, lifeless mechanisms and machinery from a world long dead. In the center of the room rose two towering, antenna-like structures which appeared to serve as a conduit between the other pieces of machinery. Thousands of silver spheres gracefully glided around and over the mechanical behemoths.

As Reggie surveyed his surroundings in awe, the large metal door behind him sealed shut with a reverberating slam. He spun to face the door, prepared to blast at it with the shotgun. The weapon flew from his hands, stripped away by an unseen force.

"You fool. You should have accepted my offer."

Reggie turned slowly to see the source of the terrible, yet familiar, voice. The Tall Man lashed his large hand out at Reggie, catching him by the throat and lifting him off the ground.

"I could have returned you to a place of happiness from your youth, a place far away from all of this," the Tall Man said, his left eye closing slightly. "But you chose to continue playing the game. You chose to hunt me . . . "The Tall Man tossed Reggie to the floor effortlessly, the gold sphere hovering near the undertaker's shoulder.

"FIFTEEN MINUTES REMAINING."

The shotgun was far out of Reggie's reach. He looked down at the grenade hanging from his belt. No sooner did he look at it than it, too, was stripped from him, flying into the Tall Man's grasp. He smiled slightly as he crushed the grenade within his hand.

"I have not spent all of this time preparing this planet for colonization only to have you ruin it now, ice cream man," the Tall Man sneered. "I do have a surprise for you, though. It is time you met the others . . . before you die."

With a motion of his hand, the Tall Man guided the gold sphere to a control panel residing between the twin poles of the conduit. A mechanism similar to the lock outside the door was mounted at the center of the panel. The gold sphere appeared reluctant to connect.

"Do not fight me, boy," the Tall Man threatened. "We are at the threshold. Our world is about to be reborn.

"Unable to resist the force of the undertaker's will, the sphere engaged with the control mechanism.

"TEN MINUTES REMAINING."

A nerve-shattering vibration permeated the room as the once darkened machines erupted with life. The conduit towers pulsed with power, humming with the grossly amplified tone of the dimensional forks Reggie had come to know all too well. He didn't know who or what was about to emerge from this oversized fork, but he sure as hell didn't want to find out.

"I am the key . . . " Mike's voice resonated within Reggie's aching head. The Tall Man stood in front of the fork, anticipating the arrival of the "others."

Reggie lifted his baggy pant leg and reached into his boot for the semi-automatic he had stashed there. Withdrawing the weapon, he struggled to take aim upon the gold sphere locked into the control console. His vision was blurring as the vibration scrambled his brains.

"FIVE MINUTES REMAINING."

"I'm so sorry, Mike," he whispered under his breath.The gun discharged, the shot bouncing harmlessly off the console surface. The Tall Man turned his attention back to Reggie just as he fired a second shot. The bullet pierced the sphere, blasting it into a million microscopic fragments.

The mind-splitting tones and vibrations of the machinery and fork were silenced instantly, replaced by a dull rumble which seemed to emanate from the very core of the planet. The rocky walls and floor of the chamber began to split open violently, sucking both the machinery and the Tall Man into the hellish depths below. Overhead, the spheres halted in mid-flight and plummeted to the ground; some exploding upon contact, spraying fragments of hot metal in all directions. Reggie's body armor had become a priceless commodity, its denseness protecting him from the invading shrapnel.

He managed to dodge a large crevasse which had tore open under his feet. He sprinted for the large metal door, which had collapsed in the havoc.

As he bolted through the disintegrating tunnel trying to make his escape to the surface, Reggie observed that, despite the chaos ensuing around them, the dwarves continued their laborious digging. As slaves, they had been conditioned by the Tall Man for the sole purpose of laboring. Any thoughts of self-preservation were removed from them along with the rest of their minds by the undertaker. Reggie almost laughed at himself for allowing a trace of pity for the pathetic creatures to tug at his heart.

"OXYGEN SUPPLY DEPLETED."

Moments after emerging again on the surface, the tunnel collapsed in upon itself. Reggie was out of breath from his desperate run, and he had no air left to breathe from the mask.

The Red Planet was not completely devoid of oxygen, but it was close. The years of corruption and war and plague at the hands of the Tall Man had taken its toll upon the planet. The shift in its orbit had practically written its epitaph, sending it painfully close to the fiery red blaze of the sun.

Reggie removed the now worthless mask, his dry white hair cascading down his back. The last jump through the fork in the hospital morgue had put Reggie many years into the future and had left him a dying old man in the middle of a dying old world.

He breathed in deeply and managed to find a few precious traces of air within the heat and dust he inhaled. He would not make it far in these conditions, as the Red Planet was far too unforgiving for an old man such as he.

After walking a few hundred yards, he stopped and sat upon the sandy ground, eyeing the wasteland around him. In the distance, jutting just barely above the level of the sand, he could see an old, withered street sign which read "DEATH VALLEY 2 MILES."

Reggie stripped off his chestplate and laid his head down upon the padded lining inside. He thought of Mike and smiled, secure in knowing that he had, in fact, kept his promise to come back for him. He was comfortable knowing that soon he would be reunited with his lifelong friend for all eternity.

Just as he closed his eyes and drifted into his slumber, Reggie thought he might have seen the dark silhouette of a very tall man waiting for him in the distance.

'No more games,' he thought to himself as his body became one with the sands of the remains of Red Planet Earth.

END

Richard also writes under the psuedonym, Richard Dean.

The Books of Phantasm

This page copyright 1999 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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