Diary of the Displaced by Glynn James Page B

tremors?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Keep going. You’ll reach the valley soon.”
    “I’ll be glad to get there.”
    (Laughter)
    “I bet. Be careful when you get here though. On rare occasions, a gargant wanders up from the lakes and drinks from the waterfall pool.”
    “Lakes?”
    (Laughter again)
    “Yes. Lakes.”
    He was right about arriving soon. Later that day, after hours of pushing the cart, the edge of the plateau dropped off out of sight. DogThing reacted before I even saw the terrain change. He bolted towards the darkness and almost disappeared before the flat rock gave way to a grassy slope.
    I had seen the points of blue light for a while in the distance, but until we got closer I couldn’t make out what they were. I suspected correctly. It was the crystal stalactites from my dreams, and as I approached the edge of the valley, my eyes adjusted to the new light. The vastness of it all was overwhelming. The valley spread for what seemed like miles. The sound of the waterfall, cascading down the rocks was quiet and muffled. Sound doesn’t seem to travel as well as light does in this place. It’s also odd how the light seems to deaden off at a distance. Only the blue light of the crystals travels far. The darkness is almost like a fog.
    I found Rudy’s body down by the water’s edge. It was exactly where it had been in the dream, but it wasn’t the same. Where before there had been skin and bits of body and blood all over the place, now there was only dry, old bones, most of which had become submerged in the mud.
    He hadn’t died recently.
    The old shack was there, up on the rocks, not far from the waterfall. It was quite a trek up the path, which I think must have been worn away by water rather than been cut. The rock was too smooth.
    Rudy was waiting at the entrance to the building, near where the door was flung open and hanging half off of its hinges. A strange, warm wind was gusting across the rock as I hauled the cart up the slope.
    After everything I had seen in this dark world, even with the zombies (apparently not zombies), and DogThing, and the mushrooms, seeing a floating, glowing ghost of a dead man was still quite disturbing. I was wary as I approached, but he was smiling and beckoning me forward.
    “You made it. Good. Come on, quickly. Get inside before the gargant smells you.” He pointed behind me, beyond the waterfall.
    I span round, looking down the valley, and saw the creature he spoke of. The gargant was close by, and the name was quite apt. I’m not sure what it was that I was expecting to see, but I know that a giant slug thing wasn’t it. From my best judgement, given the distance, it was easily the size of the bus, maybe larger. It shuffled around on a multitude of tiny legs that lined the bottom of its body, and hundreds of tentacles writhing across the ground in front of it, as it scoured the river bed and the grass around the lake’s edge for, well, whatever it was looking for.
    “Mad.”
    “Yes. Exactly. Nasty things. Fortunately they can’t get all the way up here. The rocks don’t give them enough purchase to climb, but they can get part of the way up, and have wrecked the lower end of the valley before, killing all the pods that grow there. Come inside. Let’s not give it any reason to come any further upstream.”
    I left the cart on the flat, rocky area in front of the shack and went in, following my ghostly friend. I noticed that DogThing had disappeared again, and Rudy must have sensed my thoughts.
    “Don’t worry, it will be back. The maw seem to love gargant spawn, and they are far too quick for the gargants to catch.”
    My stomach churned.
    “Gargant spawn?”
    “Eggs. They leave piles of them in the mud, easy for maw to dig up. Best not to think about it.”
    The shack looked long abandoned, but the rough stone fireplace, the only part of the building not made of wood, was stocked up and ready to be lit.
    “I made the fire before I went down to the lake