Page 112 of Dead Serious: Case 3 Mr Bruce Reyes

Finally, I emerge on the other side, and I inhale in shock as Sam and Danny appear beside me. Sam is speechless and Danny’s eyes are wide, his hair sticking up in staticky shock.

Dusty is right behind them. “What the fuck?” she gasps, staring at the gateway and dais.

It looks like something from the TV show Stranger Things. The air is filled with bizarre floating flotsam which glows a phosphorescent neon blue. But my eyes are fixed on the dais or, more specifically, the gateway. It’s almost been consumed by thick black tentacles.

No, not tentacles, I realise. Vines, thick and gnarled like the roots of an ancient tree..

Thick, black, diseased limbs emerge from the gateway, entwining the portal to the point where the stone archway is no longer even visible. They crawl across the dais and spill over the edge. To the side, I can just about make out the deep armchair Bruce had been using, knocked on its side and almost swallowed by the creeping tendrils, only a cushion and two of its legs still visible through the mass of vines.

“Please tell me you know what you’re doing, Bruce?” I whisper in horror.

“We need to get those bones to the gateway,” he says. “Do you think you can?”

“Do I have a choice?” I mutter.

“Choice about what?” Danny says in concern.

“I need to get this box to that platform,” I tell him, looking first at him, then at Sam. “Will you stay close? I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I’ve got your back, sweetheart,” Danny says.

“Me too, darling.” Sam gives me a cheeky wink to lighten the mood.

I glance across to Dusty and do a double take.

“What the fuck, Dusty?” I can’t help but ask. “We’re twenty minutes from the end of the world, we’ve got to cross a minefield of evil vines to deliver your boyfriend’s bones to a magic door, and you just decided to stop and do a quick costume change?”

She’s wearing the skimpiest of eighties sci-fi outfits—in fact, I’m pretty sure it is actually the one Dale Arden wore in Flash Gordon. On her head is a huge tiara, and I mean enormous. It does, however, go well with her gold bikini, the lower part of which is covered by… well, you can’t even call it a skirt. It’s literally two pieces of long, flowing, iridescent fabric that cover her crotch and her arse, leaving her hips and thighs bare but for some tiny crisscrossing gold chains. Angular shoulder-pads made of gold sit across her shoulders and from them drape thin, floor-length strings of tiny jewels. Stiletto strappy sandals complete the look, lacing all the way up her calves to her knees.

She looks down at her outfit and then back up at me. “What? It’s my save the world outfit. It worked in Flash Gordon. This is just like the football scene, except instead of having to get through evil henchmen, we have to get through evil horticulture.”

“Words fail me.” I shake my head as Sam gives her a very appreciative once-over.

“If the world is about to end, boo,” she says fiercely, “then I’m going out looking fucking fabulous.”

“Fair enough,” I concede. “How much time?” I ask, and Sam glances down at his phone.

“Fifteen minutes,” he says.

I draw in an anxious breath. “Ready, Bruce?”

“Ready.”

“Okay let’s do this.” I exhale, and we head toward the dais.

We’re barely halfway to our destination when, out of the corner of my eye, I see something shift. Swallowing tightly, I pick up the pace, hurrying as fast as I can. But the movement happens again, and I can’t help but look.

The vines are moving, undulating like a pit of snakes.

“Fuck!” The breath rushes out of me, and I push forward.

I hear Danny cry out next to me, and as I turn, I see him on the ground, thick vines wrapping around his body and dragging him further away from the gateway. Sam goes down next.

“Tristan, run!” Danny shouts as he struggles.

I break into a run and am almost to the edge of the dais when I feel something cool and unpleasant twist around my ankle and jerk my legs out from under me.

I crash to the ground but by some miracle still keep a grip on the box. Rolling onto my back, I kick out at the vine squeezing my ankle while another one slithers toward me. I look around desperately to see something, anything, I can use.