The room is dark now. Dark and cool. Even though outside the Arizona sun is pushing mercury towards triple digits, the room is dark and cool. It is not yet ten in the morning, but the blistering heat outside continues to rise to an unbearable apex. It is much cooler in the windowless room. The dark place shields light and warmth like a shameful secret.
The thing is sealed in that dark, forgotten room. The room lies within a roadside rest stop along a now defunct highway. The only passersby are tumbleweeds, carelessly rolling past the neglected tourist trap. In the dark room of that obsolete shop, the wretched thing floats in a large, dusty glass jar. It is about the size of a human head.
It sits covered by a canvas tarp on an equally dusty makeshift shelf of plywood and cinderblocks. It waits, resting amongst a myriad of other oddities that once served as the supporting attractions.
Most of the curiosities are fabricated. But some, like the thing, are genuine abominations of nature. The green liquid suspending the thing has grown cloudy with the gradual decay of the accursed six-chambered heart. Despite the time and course of decay, it sits and waits.
Jim, the owner of the shop, thought the thing had been sewn together with cow hearts. In actuality, the heart once belonged to an unfathomable creature. It was once part of a much larger, inconceivable being. A creature so foul and monstrous that imagination cannot adequately describe its countenance. A wicked, nasty thing spat from the bowels of nightmares.
The creature was born in the cold, frigid wastelands. Once, it had been covered in a matt of thick, black hair. It had layers of fat to keep it warm. The hair had long since fallen out, replaced by skin that resembled scales. The fat had melted away, leaving a sinuous body of lean muscle. It changed. It had adapted to the harsh Arizona climate. It was good at adapting.
The creature had come to this hot land, leaving colder regions, following its food. It had migrated, tracking its prey – those who would eventually become known as Native Americans.
Those people came south to this area. They came down from Asia. They came from Mongolia, crossing a landmass that connected Alaska to Russia through the Bering Strait many tens of thousands of years past. They were fleeing the monster.
It fed off of them for generations, inspiring myth in the process. It lived through the arrival of the white men, who bore more incredulous tales of the creature in their own legends. It thrived off of the human cattle for decades until a mob assembled to destroy it in the only manner possible - decapitation and purification.
The Native Americans had grown to accept the creature as part of the nature of things, and they had stopped trying to kill it many generations ago. As such, the creature was disposed of according to white man's lore. White man was new and couldn’t accept the order of things in the area. He wanted change.
Though many died in the gruesome battle, the white man’s mob eventually triumphed and subdued the wretched monster. The next task was to keep the creature from coming back to life as it had so many times in the past.
The head was buried in the earth in hallowed ground in an unmarked grave. Its eyes had been burned out with embers of an oak fire left burning for seven hours. They removed the vile, six-chambered heart with a blessed blade cast from the melted silver of a crucifix. The body of the thing was buried in holy soil in another secret churchyard with its chest pointed down towards the hell that undoubtedly created it.
The heart was supposed to be buried in a third reverent yet unmarked potter's field. During the transport of the six-chambered heart, highwaymen robbed the stage carrying it. Inside a strong box, they found the organ. It was wrapped in white linens soaked in holy water resting atop a Bible.
Assuming it was a valuable holy relic, the marauders tried to sell the heart to collectors. None wanted the fleshy abomination, but it was eventually lost in a poker game. It later found its way to a traveling circus in a sideshow, and then was abandoned in an attic for many decades.
The heart became the inheritance of another, who then gave it to a friend. That friend sold it to "Crazy Jim's Roadside Museum of Oddities and Amusements" for gas money to get to Las Vegas.
Jim's place died a slow and lingering death when the highway was abandoned in lieu of an interstate route some thirty miles south. The highway was no longer maintained and served no purpose. Jim remained, knowing that he could not afford to move. He waited, much like the heart. Only, Jim waited to die.
The oddities museum was mothballed and the "attractions" were stockpiled in the moldering back room. That was almost twenty years ago.
Jim never took a wife. He never had any children. He was the last of his line, which would die out entirely when Jim left the world.
Jim expected to depart due to old age or liver failure, having done his best to drink the organ into submission for decades. He fully expected to die in his old shop and remain undiscovered for weeks, perhaps months. He never expected his actual fate.
Three and a half years ago, routine progress unearthed the long forgotten gravesite of the monster. Thinking it was dinosaur remains, construction was halted until experts could be flown in to ascertain the nature of the bones. The creature didn't wait.
The skeletal body of the thing rose once the light of the full moon hit it. The monster burst through the sealed off area, eager to complete itself. Two night watchmen were killed and their blood allowed the skeletal remains to grow flesh.
The body instinctually knew where to find the head. It knew where to go, but couldn't unearth the skull as it was still hallowed ground. It knew this, so it waited. It waited for over three years amongst the shadows of darkness until it happened.
Sin was committed over the secret grave of the creature's head. A vagrant was killed by another of his kind over a jacket, spilling blood on the ground. It was the only thing that could de-sanctify the soil, and the creature was grateful to its unholy master for the offering. The head gnawed its way upward as the body began to dig in the soil to reach it. Soon, head and body were reunited.
The vagrant who killed the other gave his eyes for the beast. They seemed comically small in the huge skull of the beast, but burned with an eerie red glow like the conflagrations of hell itself.
Tenuous veins connected to the head like spreading vines from the neck. Flesh connected and bones fused. In minutes, it was like the head had never left the body. Soon. Very soon it would be complete.
The monster headed east. East towards sunrise. In a few hours, it would be there. It would reach the heart.
Had the highway been operational, drivers would have been terrified to see the creature walking slowly down the middle of both lanes. Not a soul drove down that road that night, or they would have fed the weary traveler. The creature grew weak. Weak, but determined.
It trudged along, mile after mile. It kept passing billboards that read slogans such as “What is ‘The Thing’?” and “Only 30 miles until ‘The Thing’”. Soon, the sun rose. The bright Arizona rays of morning burned the flesh of the cursed beast, but it kept going. Smoke tendrils wafted up from the black flesh, but it kept walking.
Lub-lub-lub. It the dark room, the heart began to beat. Lub-lub-lub. It beckoned to the beast. Lub-lub-lub. With every beat, the monster drew nearer. The creature was close and the heart knew it. Lub-lub-lub.
Jim awoke from a drunken stupor on the couch. A television bleared out “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”. Jim shook his head and heard the watery thumping of the heart, muffled from behind the wall of the dark room. His eyes widened and the sound froze the very marrow of his bones.
The heart beat louder. LUB-LUB-LUB. Jim stood upright, ignoring the pounding of his head. His insides lurched with nausea, but horror overshadowed that, as well.
LUB-LUB-LUB. LUB-LUB-LUB. The hair on the back of Jim's neck stood on end. He tried to isolate the sound. It grew louder and more furious. LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB!
Jim opened the door to the dark room. The hinges protested with a squeal. Shards of light penetrated the room that had known nothing but darkness for many, many years. LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB! LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB!
Jim tore back the canvas tarp. Decades worth of dust billowed, filling the room with a murky cloud. The heart continued to beat angrily.
Jim placed a hand on the jar. He could see it moving. He could feel the thumping of the thing from inside. LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB-LUB!
Jim screamed in terror as he heard a thunderous crash and splintering of wood. His house had been breached violently and something was inside. Something huge. Something unspeakable.
Jim threw the canvas over himself, huddling down into the fetal position. The heart beat loudly, calling its master. The creature heard, bursting through the archway. It forced the entrance to expand with the cracking of support beams and timber, allowing its wide form in the dark room.
Had Jim been a religious man, he might have spent the last moments of his life praying. He might have even known some rudimentary verses that would have repelled the beast enough to allow for his escape. He might have saved not only his life, but also his afterlife. Unfortunately, Jim's life had been devoid of religion and was as Godless as the creature who demanded the return of its six-chambered heart.
Jim heard was the crash of glass as the jar finally overturned with the enraged beating of the heart. Unrestrained, it beat louder that it yet had. It continued to beat, but suddenly grew more and more faint and subdued as it found its home. LUB-LUB-LUB. Lub-lub-lub.
Jim gasped in terror. The horrible thing tore back the canvas shroud, unveiling the shuddering, retired shop keep. The creature smiled, eyes blaring with the burning embers of hell itself. A clawed, scaly hand reached out for the man, writing in anticipation of its first kill as a complete being. The kill that would solidify its power and strength, allowing it to hunt unrestrained.
The last sound Jim ever heard was his own heart pleading with the creature. Lub-lub. Lub-lub. Lub-
THE END
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