And Crawling Things Lurk

Jackie’s throat burned with the air rushing through it. His chest burned with each labored breath. His hands burned gripping the spear and the Zippo. His feet strained forward with each step as though dragging anchors, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even slow down. He just hoped the delay to recover the Zippo hadn’t cost him the race. He couldn’t even be sure he was still in it. Maybe it was already over, and he just didn’t have the sense to stop running. But he wouldn’t – he couldn’t – not as long as there was the slimmest chance that Muri still lived. And if she did still live, there was no barrier he would not breach to wrest her from that thing’s clutches.

From ahead came sounds of a heavy door, first its latch opening and then the squeak of hinges. He tried to will more speed from his burning legs. They threatened to collapse beneath him, but he wouldn’t back off. Muri needed him. He refused to consider that Muri could be beyond caring.

“I’m coming, Muri!” he managed between huffing intakes of breath. If she did still live, she had to know she was not alone. “I’m coming!”

His feet pounded the ground driving him forward, but he was still looking at nothing but blackness ahead beyond the Zippo’s light when he heard the heavy thud of the door closing.

“Nooo!” he wailed, reaching each foot forward, stretching his stride to get him there before it was too late, before the door was forever barred to him.

And, suddenly, there it was – the door. The flickering light of the Zippo bounced back from a wall of timbers replacing the endless, inky depths.

His momentum was like an unrestrained avalanche. He stumbled and with his slackening speed, dropped the spear and the Zippo and pitched forward, sprawling and twisting in his fall so his left shoulder slammed into the barrier instead of his head.

His shoulder exploded with pain, immediate and crushing. He felt something break, but it could have been the door. He rolled over and sat up, then tried to use his hands to push himself to his feet, but his left arm collapsed beneath him as agony enveloped him.

Fuming, he didn’t have time to spend there on the floor of the tunnel, hurting and despairing of his limitations. He still had one good arm.

He started feeling about him on the floor for the Zippo with his right arm, but it could have gone anywhere. He couldn’t even find his spear. Tears of pain and frustration and anger at his failure streamed down his cheeks, but he continued to flail about for the Zippo, flopping his hand left and right out and back, even beneath him in the hope that he had landed on it. But it was not there.

He reached out and touched the door, then pushed against it. It was as solid as the wall of stone filled dirt beside him. He groped about on the door, searching for a handle, a latch, some kind of mechanism to open it, but there was none. As the weight of the realization fell on him, he slumped to the floor and hung his head.

In his mind, he could hear his voice calling out to tell Muri he was no longer coming to save her, that he couldn’t because he was just a useless wino. How could he have even thought he could kill the monster when he can’t even –

“Jackie, get up! You don’t have time to sit there feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a wino, but you’re not useless, so just get to your feet and find that door release.”

“I can’t.” How can Josie say he’s not useless? How can –

“Yes, you can! Now get up! Muri needs you!”

Yes, Muri did need him. She had no one else, so he had to do it. Grinding against the agony of his shoulder, he crawled and clawed his way up to door until he was on his feet. He could feel the wet smears he was leaving from his bleeding palms.

“Remember when your spear stopped the other door?” Josie insisted. “Picture it. Remember it. Make a picture of it in your mind. What was near it?”

His mind went back, and he could see the spearhead buried in the doorframe just inches from the huge hook that would slip over a knob when the door closed. He reached up to the left side of the door, feeling about, found the upper hinge and realized he was on the wrong side. He moved over to the right, probing with his outstretched hand until he found the wall, then forward until he was on the door again. He pictured his spear sticking into the frame with the door just inches from the closed position, and he moved his hand back. He moved it up and down, back and forth, and there it was. Under his fingers was a long lever. At its upper end was a large hook that fit snuggly over a knob or protrusion anchored to the wall. He tried to lift the lever off the knob, but it wouldn’t budge.

Tightness began to grip his guts when he realized it could be locked from the other side. He resisted dropping to his knees and wailing again how useless he was.

No time.

There has to be a way. Keep looking.

His hands had just moved down from the lever when he realized he could make out their shapes in a light that grew brighter as he looked. He heard footsteps approaching from behind and turned.

In the distance two bright dots jigged up and down, although not together. They grew brighter as the illumination about him increased, and he heard Evans’ voice. “Jackie!”

He didn’t wait for them to reach him, but turned in the light and examined the latch. On the upper end of the lever, beyond the hook, was an extension that went through the wall next to the door. On the lower end of the lever, and below a pivot point, was a line attached that went up and over a pulley. At its lower end was an iron weight. He lifted the weight, and the lever moved freely off the extension.

As the door crept open toward him, Jackie started to reach for his spear on the floor with his left hand but withdrew it when agony threatened to drop him to his knees. His useless left arm hung limp at his side, so he reached for the door with his right hand, to jerk it wide, to rush through, once again, in pursuit of the monster that had Muri.

With his flashlight beam lighting up the tunnel ahead, Don led Carl at a dead run. The tunnel was straight enough that it was plain they were headed toward the old mansion, and they must be getting close. Straight ahead, like the magic of an image appearing on a photographic print submerged in developer, Jackie emerged from the darkness with the solid end of the tunnel just beyond him. Jackie’s stance was hunched over to one side, leaning over like he was injured, broken. With his pain obvious, Jackie abandoned his spear and was reaching for the door when Don called out, “Jackie! Hold it! Don’t open it yet.”

Jackie turned to look back for a moment, turned back to the door and reached for it again. Don slid to a stop beside him and reached out to stop him by grabbing his shoulder, the left one.

Jackie’s reaction was immediate. With a groan, he sagged beneath the light touch, turning from it and raised his other hand to fend off another touch.

“What’s wrong?” Don asked. “What happened?”

“Think I broke it. ’S’okay, though, I can still go. Muri’s in there.”

“Okay, but we shouldn’t just go bustin’ through. No telling what’s on the other side.”

Jackie snapped his head around towards Don and growled, “Muri’s on the other side.”

“Yes, I know. Just take it easy, though. You won’t help Muri if you get snared as soon as you go through.”

Jackie sagged against the tunnel wall on his good shoulder.

Don turned his own light off and motioned for Carl to cover his flashlight lens with his fingers, allowing just enough light through to see the door. After he picked up the spear and handed it to Jackie, he drew his own weapon and nodded for Carl to open the door.

Wooden racks of the type used for wine bottles covered the other side of the door. Then the stink hit him, the sewer and charnel house reek he associated with the evil they pursued. But what was present in the tunnel increased ten-fold beyond the door. He resisted gagging with controlled, shallow breathing and could tell from nearby sounds that the other two were doing the same.

Beyond the threshold loomed a shadowy space where phantom shapes reflected just enough of Carl’s still shielded light for Don to recognize them as wide slats in a waist-high railing. The barrier was only a few feet past the doorway and appeared to mark the outer edge of a catwalk. If they had run through the door as it opened, at least one would probably have tumbled over the rail. Don eased out onto the catwalk and peered about left and right. He could just make out the shapes of more bottle racks covering the walls on either side of the door. He looked down over the railing, but all he saw was inky black. He motioned Carl and Jackie forward, moving to the side until they were all on the wooden structure. With the increase of illumination from Carl’s still covered flashlight lens, he could see the catwalk continued in both directions, as well as the bottle racks on the walls. The door behind them remained open, but he could see its bottle rack covered surface matched the adjoining walls enough that it would not appear as a door when closed. It was as much a secret door as the one on the other end.

“Okay,” he whispered, “let’s light it up.”

Don hit the button on his flashlight and swept it to his left while Carl removed his fingers from the lens on his and did the same to the right.

They were in a large room, cavernous, but not a natural cave. It was roughly circular and close to forty feet across. The rack-covered walls were evenly spaced with heavy wooden beams set into the wall about every five feet. The beams on either side of the tunnel that formed the frame of the tunnel door were two such. A pit of shadows lurked among buttressed arches above their heads. The catwalk lined with bottle racks continued around in both directions. A scattering of dust encrusted bottles occupied a score or so niches, but most were empty. Close to straight across he saw a closed, undisguised door, and to the left of it was an opening in the railing from which a stairway led downward into darkness. He saw no other doors or openings in the railing.

When he stepped forward and turned the beam down to illuminate the space inside of the circle of the railing, only the tops of more wall racks were visible a few feet below the catwalk. Within that circle, there at first seemed to be a jumble of piled boulders, like a bucket full of stones. But when he let the beam rest in one place long enough for details to become clearer, the reality struck him, and he couldn’t keep from gagging again. They were wrapped cocoons of victims, just like Be-Be, Josie, and Sarge, and there were hundreds of them, possibly even thousands because he couldn’t see the floor. How deep could the pit be? Those uppermost were close to eight feet or less below the catwalk. Some were larger than others, and some were clearly four-legged. But many, those on top, anyway, were small, child-sized.

“Oh my God,” Carl breathed beside him. He had four of his glow sticks out of his pack and handed two to Jackie after he activated them. In the eerie, green aura they lent, he added, “Are those what they look like?”

“I can’t think of anything else they could be.”

“We gotta find Muri,” Jackie said as he turned away from the railing and started around the catwalk to the right. “She ain’t down there, yet. We gotta find her.”

Suddenly, a screeching wail ripped through the air. It sounded less like a human cry than anything Don could imagine. After ducking below the railing, he peered back over it and flashed his beam about. And there she was.

Hunched over the railing straight across from them, near the door into the mansion, was a very old woman. She could have been Don’s own grandmother as he remembered her, white-haired and wrinkled, soft and gentle. But this one didn’t look or act like his grandmother. With her hands spaced wide on top of the railing, gripping it with fingers splayed like talons, she hunched forward and glared at him with eyes like a jumble of black marbles. Her mouth gaped wide, and her fangs, just discernable at that distance, thrust forward and down.

She screeched again, and rather than a little old woman, she looked like a beast of some hellish jungle challenging intruders of its lair.

“Muri!” Jackie roared as he picked up the pace of his charge.

Don shook himself back to action and followed with Carl close behind. He still lagged by several paces behind when Jackie raised his spear for a thrust. But, just as he drew within range, the monster leapt back and away to land on the railing where it crouched on all fours like a cat. Then, faster than Don or Carl could swing their light beams to follow her, she sprang from the railing, out of the light, and was gone.

Don’s beam swept the pit and its ghastly accrual, but she wasn’t there. He looked into the recesses of the ceiling, but the buttresses provided too many places where she could be concealed. He didn’t see any other exits from the place, but too many shadows held too many possibilities. He realized he still held his pistol in his other hand, ready to fire. He and Carl ran to join Jackie at Muri’s side.

“Muri!” Jackie pleaded. “Muri, are you okay? Talk to me! Muri!”

From kneeling, he sank crooning to huddle on the floor beside her unmoving form in her unfinished cocoon. His good arm cradled her as he worked his crippled one up to tug at the no longer sticky strands.

“Did it bite you, Muri? Oh, God, don’t be dead. Please, say something. Evans, make her say something.”