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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nomass39 on 2024-05-08 12:36:19+00:00.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

It started with the animals.

Hunters noticed populations dwindling rapidly and inexplicably in our little patch of the enclave. Rumors spread of deers hobbling around riddled with tumors that burst from their backs or splitting their faces in twain. One was said to have been rendered completely immobile, more tumor than deer.

And then people began disappearing. Homes broken into, signs of a struggle, toppled furniture painted red with blood, but with no other trace of the families which lived there.

The fed’s coverup job was as impressive as it was terrifying to see. Seeing how efficiently those men in black worked — the media blackout, the disappearances, the patrols through the night enforcing some unspoken curfew — it made me wonder what else they’ve covered up in the past, to have become this experienced. But it was a huge pit for all those precious taxpayer dollars, and parents were withdrawing their kids from the program en masse. I couldn’t deny it: the Integration Initiative was falling apart.

The headmistress was a shell of a woman. Hollowed out, eyes sunken. Exhausted. I could only imagine how the feds must be screaming in her ear to get the situation handled now, or the truce is off. I saw her sat in her office with a glass of scotch she hadn’t taken a single sip off, staring off into the middle distance. “What is that phrase you humans say? No good deed goes unpunished?”

Her voice was hoarse and dry. “Once, I pulled down merchant ships into the depths of the caribbean. Nothing mattered but my own hunger. For centuries, it was a simple life.” She finally took a swig of her scotch. “To be a thing of horror was easy. It was to be free and without worries. But now that I’ve chosen to live like this, to try to be kind, to try to sow peace between our peoples… look what has become of it. What has become of me.”

I finally noticed what she was staring at: a photo on the wall of that familiar little boy with the dirty blonde hair. Elijah.

I wanted to hold her hand and deliver some rousing speech about how doing the right thing is never easy. But to be honest, I was thinking the same thing. What the hell am I doing here? I’m not cut out for any of this. I kept telling myself — today’s the last day. I’m going to quit for sure… tomorrow.

And then I’d get something like what happened this morning, when Katie walked up to me clutching her favorite little plush butterfly. “You know, Mister Vermeil, all this stuff with Saladin, it’s all been really scary,” she said. “But you know what? Every time I’m in your classroom, stuff doesn’t seem so scary anymore.”

“Is that so?”

“Uh huh! Every time I’m scared, I just think about what you say to me.” She puffed out her chest and lowered her voice, trying her best to imitate me. “Katie, if you ever feel sad or scared, just remember… somebody out there cares about you!”

And then I smiled and we gave eachother a fist bump, and as she ran off, I realized I could never quit this place. How could I?

I had to walk into class yesterday with a cane, limping with every step in whatever fashion least aggravated the aching pain in my chest, where multiple shattered ribs had been restored by some arcane process. The tumors left a thick, bumpy ridge of scar tissue along my chest, and my neck was still far longer than it used to be. Looking in the mirror, I realized I barely even looked… human. I tried not to think about it.

Class had only just barely begun when the headmistress strutted in with a sudden energy to her step, her hands clasped together, and something I never thought I’d see on her face: a big, beaming grin. The kids were just as awed as I was as she replaced me at the head of the class. “I apologize for the interruption, Mister Vermeil, but I think you’ll agree that the announcement I have for you all justifies my intrusion.” She cleared her throat. “My beloved pupils, it is with pleasure that I announce to you that the notorious hunter known as Saladin… has finally been brought to justice.”

In an instant, the classroom was alive with frantic whispers and sighs of relief, until the headmistress silenced them with a raise of her hand. Even I couldn’t believe it. Everything we’ve been through, all that suffering and terror… it was all over? It almost seemed… anticlimactic. I was so filled with relief, I had to dap my cheeks with a napkin to staunch the threat of tears.

Apparently, the hunter had gotten too overconfident. Tried to take out one of the kids while they were in the process of being withdrawn from the Initiative, while surrounded by dozens of agents. Even he couldn’t escape the wrath of Uncle Sam, and I almost pitied him for whatever’s being done to him in some black site somewhere.

The smiles spread through the classroom like a disease, and even I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. Our long shared nightmare was over. Everything would go back to whatever ‘normal’ meant nowadays. “I know it must have been driving you all crazy, being so cooped inside all the time,” the headmistress said, “so I say we celebrate by getting some fresh air. What do you say?” The class’ answer was unanimous.

It wasn’t until we were out in the halls that I started getting a weird feeling in the back of my mind. Where were all the security agents? Why did she waltz into my class in particular to announce the news, instead of using the PA system? How could Saladin have made such a stupid mistake? It all came to a head when I realized she was leading us into those access tunnels.

“Now, hold on, wait a minute.” I suddenly froze in place. “You— want us to go through there? Are you sure that’s safe? Why not just—”

“Oh, come now, Mister Vermeil. I’m just leading them to a particularly beautiful mountain view. Don’t you think they’ve earned it?” She smiled at me again. I didn’t like it. The headmistress never smiled.

I felt I couldn’t even steal a single gasp of air in those tunnels. My experience there was the most traumatic of my life, and just being in those tight halls made my heart pound. But it wasn’t long before we’d all emerged out of one of the side entrances, dotted seemingly arbitrarily along the mountainsides as if they once connected to chambers since deemed obsolete. And I must admit, it was beautiful. I savored the sight of the flock of crows rallying around the long, shimmering beam that was a waterfall peeking out from the cliff face before us, visible even through that impermeable mountain fog...

… and the sound of the metal security door slamming shut behind us.

I turned to see the headmistress’ face pressed against the glass. No, not hers. Someone else’s. Someone familiar.

It made sense. If he could alter his physiology at will, surely he could imitate that of another person. Yet still, I was dumbstruck. It was all I could do blather idiotically, “I… I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I’m trying new things, Mister Vermeil.” His voice rang clear even with the metal door between us. “You should feel proud, you know. It’s not often I run into someone who forces me to innovate.”

And then, from down the mountainside, that terrible roar. The gurgles and guttural creaks of something vibrating some great and malformed vocal chords. The crash of trees being knocked over as something tears down a forest path.

I only caught glimpses of it beneath us, through that fog. The silhouette of a thing so weighed by mounds and stumps of oozing tissues that it’s bent and hunchbacked, crawling on hands and knees like a newborn babe. Teratomas having grown from mere fingernails to entire arms and hands and limbs and faces, which themselves were then consumed by tumors and left swollen with the throbbing spherical stromas of cancerous mass. And poking free from that anathema to all beauty was that tubelike head, that Lamprey maw of teeth longer than our arms and a throat that could swallow us all whole.

It was heaving and letting out those deep, roaring goans as it pulled itself up the mountainside, transfixed by the promise of prey, like the taste of us was all that could quiet its writhing agonies.

There were paths from our perch back up to the school proper, but they were steep — it wasn’t quite a sheer climb, but it wasn’t far from being one, either. I wish I could say that I was the big, bad hero who shepherded all my students up the mountainside. In truth, they left me in the dust. Even average kids were impossibly swift and energetic, and these were no average kids. The class took off up the slope like it was trivial, while I huffed and panted and scrambled up the rocks behind them, realizing all those days I’d skipped the gym would now be the death of me.

“Mister Vermeil! Grab my hand!” Suddenly, an arm distended at least twenty feet lurched out at me from over the cliff face. Billy, I realized. I took his hand, and the grotesque arm retracted like a fishing line reeling in a catch, lifting me as if I was weightless.

The school came into view, but that cancerous leviathan was outpacing us. Horror...

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