I am still on the daily cycle of keeping the defences clear, and waiting for guests to buy drinks. I will not bore you with another blog about routine.
So here is a story from when the lights went out.
The orange glow from the caterpillars gave the bar a tent like atmosphere. We agreed this was the environment for scary stories. Hennessy, a surveyor, told me this tales. Fingers crossed this comes across as frightening on the screen as in the dark.
H: ‘At that point I worked with a couple of my colleagues on Tillich. I don’t know if you’ve been there, but it’s swampland the whole way round, and storm clouds overhead. Not many visitors.
The residents live in houses elevated above the swamp, green cubes fashioned from the local plant life. They cure and sand the structures, so there’s no trouble from the parsnipheads. We import supplies to them in exchange for access to the planet. Nothing serious at this stage, just a scan for useful resources.
We were two miles from the village, water up to our knees, carrying our kit on a wooden sledge. Around us creatures slithered in the mud, and ragged birds sang above our heads. Rainclouds threatened to burst at any second. Torchlight was our lifeline.
A pack of parsnipheads thrashed towards us. Nothing to worry about. They popped along every so often. Our provisions were meat based, and in sealed containers. If a group shambled by, we waited by the side until they vanished.
But you get cocky around them, don’t you? You don’t look. You don’t think.
I didn’t spot the vine in the murky water until it sent me face first into swamp. Our suits were heavier than sewing machines, and sticky mud soon found a home in my eyes, my ears, and up my nose. In the silence of the crushing gloop, my thoughts were not at their most logical. I didn’t understand why my companions had left me underwater.
I managed to break loose from the sucking grasp of the riverbed by grasping something soft but unbreakable, and launching myself back up. My first breath tasted of salty earth, and soon turned into a coughing fit. A few frantic rubs of my eyes gave me back some kind of vision. Even if that vision was of a sea of parsnipheads.
With the fingers of a skeletal hand one dug furrows in the mud on my cheek. His rotting leg had been my underwater support.
The next five minutes was a cycle of the dead bumping me back under the surface, and the struggle to get back up. Every time I wiped another load of gunk from my eyes a new shambling figure greeted me. At one point I planted my hand into a rib cage, and touched the chicken carcass like bones inside.
When the herd thinned out, and my colleagues dragged me to safety, I was a swamp monster. I shambled back to town with them, and only my heartbeat separated me from the dead.
So yes, you never know what it is out there in the dark.’
