a bit about Wall Horror

A tight scroll covered in gravel and pebbles rains from above.

One of the most revolutionary concepts when it comes to my creature design was when I overheard a discussion about an entity Lovecraft made that used corners to attack. The goal was then to avoid any sort of corner to survive. To this day, I don’t know the title of the work referred to, but I was amazed a writer could weaponize something so simple to create a mind-bending horror experience, and that conversation stuck with me. It wasn’t just how to make a creature that looked scary, but the reality-warping way it behaved was a concept I never let go of.

I have never written horror before, but I’d like to get a feel for it because I know plenty of scenes in my book will have aspects of horror in it, and even more elsewhere in Otreo. I’ve always loved listening to The Magnus Archives and watching theory videos about Five Nights at Freddy’s or Vita Carnis. I would never actually watch a horror movie, but the stories this genre can create are unlike any other, and i have always respected it immensely for that.

All this to say that the short story I have written here is pretty mild horror-wise. It plays off of cosmic horror, the fear of the unknown, and claustrophobia, but no actual gore or traditional horror. This was a product of a Secret Santa writing event our school’s creative writing club put on, and my giftee asked for sci-fi, horror, aliens that are friends with humans, an animal sidekick, and/or the magic of friendship. Let’s see how I did…

Wallace

The infinite void of space stopped existing years ago, but approaching the dark mass of rock and ore marking the end of the universe still caused a catch in June’s throat. She saw the lack of light become apparent about a month ago. She called the unending rock wall Wallace, after a friend from flight school who always showed up at the most inopportune times. To get her in trouble. Like Wallace had. Most people just referred to the end of the final frontier as Big Wall.

Bug climbed up her shoulder to look at the dashboard. It was an old scouting model, pre-union, and absolutely bare minimum. Just for biosignature scans and orbital measurements. It reminded June of the copy-paste houses her neighborhood was made up of.

“Yep. There it is, Bug. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Bug chittered a Yes in reply.

“brREEP” a monitor chimed. She glanced at it. Her last probe had been triggered. Sooner than her speed should have allowed.

“Shit! They are gaining, Bug. I didn’t realize this was worth using auxiliary engines to them. Why are they so determined to keep us away?” she thought about looking around the ship—again—for something to help her go faster, but that just wasn’t the way interstellar travel worked nowadays. You get launched, and the lighter the ship the faster you are flung. The deceleration was done by a MLE—a mass load ejection—which they had done two weeks ago. If she really wanted to, she could try rerouting power from the magnetic field generator to the RCS thrusters, but it really wasn’t worth the risk of cancer. And she was almost there anyways.

Bug jumped onto the control panel and input a command code on the keyboard. Bug was as trained as June, and often more thoughtful when it came to fleeing the corp. The monitor showed up a crude map of the estimated distance between the Calimari 42 an the small armada of corp security. The Big Wall was also shown looming ahead of their path. The offset due to time of warning transmission was automatically applied, a rare luxury in this pod.

Doing some quick math in her notebook, June figured they would have about an hour after reaching Wallace before the corp caught up with her. Not as much time as she hoped, but more than she could ask for. She glanced back to the pilot module, just controls and a monitor. No desk space for any keep sakes, not that she wanted to bring any. Their life at the corp had been… well it had been a corporate job, and staying connected to friends and family when going interstellar was something they both had to give up.

“Alright, Bug, looks like we will have a bit inside Wallace before the corp catches up,” Bug was already looking over her shoulder, but she thought faster out loud. “I just hope we can lose them in the tunnels before our fuel runs out,” which was a genuine concern because in those tunnels there was little to no way of generating usable energy, and then they would be stranded. You had to have an instinct of these things if you were going to be an explorer.

The Calamari plodded along. Actually, it rocked along, but June and Bug were used to the constant motion at this point. They would have time to eat, and sleep one last time before manual controls were necessary.

They ate rations, which actually tasted pretty good. Modern advancements did some things right, after all the damage. Some species of fish this cycle, and some root vegetable beginning of the next. If they survived.

Bug chittered his goodnight and squeezed into his synthetic cocoon, while June folded up her notebook and flopped into bed. Then he got out to double-check that the alarm was set. Then flopped into bed again. The Calamari cruised along.

As she slept she dreamt about the thing she saw in the tunnels on the first ever expedition to Wallace. She still couldn’t even imagine all that she saw, but she was still struck with the same feeling. The same all-encompassing knowing that whatever lay beyond that thing would change the entire universe. What she saw in her dream was the lightless tunnels, about the diameter of a football mega-stadium. All she could see was the bifurcated halo cast by the twin headlights of the expedition vessel and the small amount of tunnel wall they projected back… until an eye opened. And then limbs started reaching.

She jolted awake to the alarm blaring. She knew the corp wasn’t right for playing it safe. That’s just not how space travel worked. She had to come back, even if it meant she was the only one. Well, at least Bug was also convinced. He had seen what she had seen and felt what she had felt, he said.

“Alright, Bug. This is what we have been preparing this whole flight for. We are NOT going to fuck this up.” She sat in the pilots seat. The cock pit was covered by Wallace, complete black. Not a star in the sky. She flipped on the two measly headlights, and despite their weakness they illuminated the massive hole and surrounding rock well enough. Probably due to the incredible amount of darkness.

“Chitter-chi-chit,” said Bug. He clacked his front claws together, emphasizing his point. June nodded in agreement. She pulled up the projection map on the monitor while Bug skittered away to reroute power from the signal disruption rig he had setup, to the headlights. He was a good mechanic among everything else. In a couple minutes the illumination became brighter.

“Alright, disabling autopilot,” June called to Bug. She heard a muted affirming chat from somewhere behind her, and entered the command. Autopilot was for avoiding obstacles using the RCS and decelerating at the optimal time, but now the only obstacle was an unavoidable one. She grabbed the control sticks and moved the ship forward, keeping a watchful eye on the error readouts. Nothing new so far.

The Calamari drifted forward until Wallace swallowed both of them. Somehow, it felt claustrophobic despite the incredible size of the tunnel. Sometimes just the small size of the ship made June claustrophobic, but through this journey, she grew to enjoy the minimalism of it all.

She found herself tensing her muscles, but she slowly gained more confidence moving forward in the abyss. Bug appeared on her shoulder again.

“Chip-Chirp-Chi,” he said. June hesitated before answering, but she supposed if he would be in danger out there, she was in as much danger in here.

“Fine, but please wear the earpiece so that I can hear what you see,” June said. Bug nodded in agreement, and when to get an earpiece. As the Calamari rounded a bend in the tunnel, Bug entered the airlock, and climbed outside onto the hull of the Calamari. Bug’s species could survive point-blank space, so all he had on was his exo-skeleton, an earpiece, and a small harness.

“How’s it look out there?”

“Chiiirrrrip-Kli…” He said slowly, “Chitti-Chipkli-Chi,” he concluded.

“Ha! Alright. I am going to speed up, so stay harness—wait. What the fuck…? Do you see that, Bug? The tiny particulates?” She heard a confirmary chirp. They coasted into a cloud of suspended gray dust. This dust didn’t appear last time. This was still atmosphere-less space, and Wallace didn’t have substantial gravity to create one, so what was this dust doing here?

“I am just going to continue forward. Keep those compounds searching, buddy.” June relayed to Bug. Bug tried to grab some of the dust, but it just was too small to make out, and just stuck to his claws. There was no gas surrounding the particles, so it was easy to get a sample. It was a light gray. Bug scurried to the airlock to test the stuff, but—

“Shit, how long have we been ogling? We need to MOVE! Whatever is ahead is good, and what is behind is bad!” And with that pep talk, she swiveled the ship, minding where Bug was on the exterior so as to not burn him up, and gunned the engines. The tunnel lit up The ship moved out from under Bug, and his harness jerked him into an equal velocity. The engines weren’t powerful, but full thrust sure felt faster.

For a moment. Then it was back to feeling like drifting. Bug calmly re-entered the ship and began testing the dust floating around outside. There wasn’t much he could test with the meager equipment aboard, but he would try.

They coasted in silence for a while, almost board of that they found so attractive moments before. Finally they came to the first fork in the tunnel. Last time, June and the crew and gone up, but she felt certain whatever waited for them waited on both ends. So, she piloted down. Maybe the corp will assume she went up again and they would lose her. Tracking signals was tricky inside so much rock.

They trundled along, turning around the massive tunnels. By Bug’s spatial awareness, they should have exited Wallace with how they had been turning all around. He was lost.

All at once, both June and Bug were hit with an almost unbearable feeling of danger. June’s head fell forward. Only her seatbelt kept her from falling. The ship’s RCS stopped with her lack of control. When June lifted her head, she realized the headlights were out.

“Shitshitshitshitshit.” She scrambled to get them back on. It was life-or-death. She flicked the switch on.

A bulbous and misshapen green eye larger than the ship itself stared into the cockpit. Her finger flipped the lights back off and the cockpit lights as well. A voice in her head spoke impulses to her: I am not the monster you are searching for. Spoken not in words but in feelings.

She and Bug sat in silence for a while, waiting for something—anything—to happen.

“Chi… Chitter?” Bug finally suggested. June couldn’t see anything, but she nodded anyway and cautiously flipped the lights back on. Nothing but wall, yet the intense feeling of danger persisted. June was sure she had seen that, but it was so brief… It was the same eye as before. She didn’t know if that made it more or less likely she was hallucinating.

“Whoooo… Bug, we aren’t stupid, are we? Are we still sure that whatever the fuck is in these tunnels is worth the risk?” June asked.

“Chit!” Bug said emphatically. June took a deep breath as Bug climbed up onto her shoulder. He whispered to her ear that the particulates seemed completely neutral, whatever they were. They still were floating around and were actually making the window quite a mess. Bug might have to go back out and clean it soon.

As June scooped up her nerves, she stared out at the impossibly large rock walls. She opened her map. She had programmed it herself to create a simple radar layout as they traveled, but the map didn’t make any sense. Their path turned in on itself in ways that were spatially impossible.

“Chipppp…” Bug moaned. His instincts had been right.

“Well, the corp will have trouble finding us. This whole place is one giant scientific anomaly.” June checked the remaining fuel. They had quite a bit left, so that was a ray of starlight.

They both knew that whatever was lurking in these tunnels could easily stop them if it wanted to. It was huge. However, the only damage it had done was making them worry about it. If they could just push through that, June knew that it couldn’t stop them. Or at least she hoped it couldn’t. They started moving forward, and heard—actually heard—a deep and rough SLAMing noise.

Slam Slam SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM! It was getting closer. It had to be.

“We shouldn’t be able to hear,” June managed to say between breathing heavily, and having trouble breathing. It was making her feel lightheaded. Maybe she was hallucinating again? No. Her training told her that lack of sleep allows more hallucinations than trouble breathing.

SLAM SLAM SLAM!

“Ki-chitterchi-ki!” Bug’s antennae were flailing about his head, and his eight legs gripped June’s shoulder tighter and they started showing their sharpness. The sound grew louder with their distance. They kept senses open against their will.

Continuing to gain speed at an acceleration June hadn’t risked before, they began careening around corners, terrified of Wallace, and eager to escape in any way. The rock walls on either side ambled by instead of crawled by. Until…

SLAM!

Dead end. The RCS reversed into a raucous stop. The headlights illuminated the rounded end as June swiveled the ship all around in an attempt to find a new path forward. She swiveled around to face another rock wall. They were entirely enclosed. Just the Calamari, the dust, and the insistent SLAMing.

June dropped her head into her hands and uttered a growl-groan. She dragged her face up through her hands and lounged back into the pilot seat, eyes closed in defeat.

“CHIT! CHITTI-KI-KI-KI-KI!” Bug suddenly yelled, ripping open June’s eyes. A massive eye had opened in the tunnel wall. Then the rest of the beast made itself manifest.

From the eye’s reflection, long and thick-jointed limbs grew from behind the ship and came into focus behind the eye. A long body squeezed out the back of both the eye and where it came from. The shrunken eye tilted upwards to reveal such a blackness that seemed to reach out from between the open-mouthed teeth. Teeth that were as tall as trees.

And it was coming closer. The feeling of dark limbs reaching for the ship came again, and it wrapped around the ship. Whether from the mouth or the actual limbs, neither June nor bug were sure, nor could they think about the difference, if there was one. The windows darkened with umbral digits and arms. The feeling reached for June and Bug’s minds as the ship’s hull started creaking under some form of pressure. June was panting, dry breathing, hung over herself in the pilot seat. Bug had curled into a protective ball and whimpered on the floor.

The grasping feeling of dark limbs eventually snuffed out both June and Bug’s consciousness.

Feelings were placed into their heads for when they awoke. Feelings that said Your reckless pursuit of a simple feeling has been rewarded with your desire. Welcome to the other side. June and Bug woke up an indeterminable amount of time later floating in orbit around Earth.

They managed to communicate with the space station for docking and shelter. Through conversations with the corp (conversations that went much better than she envisioned, even with her swearing), she discovered that all her files had been erased without a trace. In fact, several of her colleagues files had disappeared as well.

Bug noticed many differences very quickly. Using the internet, he discovered discrepancy after discrepancy in personal life, present politics, history, and more. The solar system’s orbits were reversed. The north pole was called the south pole. Wallace was on the other side of their universe. Just to name a few.

June and Bug had to live with these mysterious changes, and though they found ways to cope or be happy, they had to ask themselves: would Wallace take them back?

THE END

That is artwork from the very talented Stella, who I gave this story to as a Secret Santa. I am posting the story and her artwork here with her permission, in case you were wondering. Isn’t it amazing? I love that the Calamari 42 has such a squid-inspired design. It looks way cooler than the shabby ship I envisioned, but that is the beauty of art: interpretation.

I hope you enjoyed this short story, and I thank you for reading this far! This story has many firsts for me: horror, a dirty-mouthed main character (sorry), and a non-verbal character. I really really enjoyed writing this one! Have a great day, ya’ll!

May your drive away the darkness,

The Hollowkeeper