Turning to face the tunnel again, he shook his head in disdain. If this is the terminus, he looked over his shoulder through the gate, and then turned back to the tunnel again, then that way would have to lead out.
He tried the gate, already knowing it was locked down, and that he stood no chance of getting past it. Thumping a bar with the palm of his hand, he was stunned when the canvas stopped flapping and lifted at the corner.
His heart stopped in mid-beat, and his eyes grew wide as he tried to force them to see what was in the back of the truck. The corner eased back into place, and the canvas started its restless movement again.
“Hey! Is there somebody in there?” That was the only plausible explanation in his mind. His voice, sounding like the squeaky, unstable octaves of a boy going through puberty, echoed around the large, empty lot and back to him.
His palms sweated and his heart thudded hard, sending pains through his skull again. His vision wavered, and he held his breath for a moment, vying for control over his faculties. The canvas continued to swing back and forth over the tail end of the truck.
He had to question if he had really seen something lift the canvas, or if it had been his eyes playing tricks on him at that point. He knew he had at least a minor concussion, but it might be worse. Maybe it was bad enough to give him hallucinations.
Reluctantly, he turned his back on the vehicles and headed back in the other direction. He had no choice if he wanted to get out of there. And he definitely wanted to get out of there.
As he walked along the tunnel he lowered the flame of his lantern so it wouldn’t burn through the oil as quickly. He let it hang at his side as he walked. There was no debris to speak of in the tunnel other than a bit of dried mud in the tire ruts.
He walked on the right side only out of habit and he stumbled upon a doorway he had failed to see on his earlier trek. The door was solid and painted the same color as the tunnel. He had nearly passed it by before realizing what he was looking at. The doorknob came off in his hand when he tried, and the knob on the opposite side clanged to the concrete, leaving a hole the size of a quarter. He peered through the hole and quickly realized it was a guard’s room, set up with three small television screens and a panel of levers and buttons. The room was about five feet square, too small to hold anything of importance to him.
Looking back toward the gate, he realized he had moved far enough from it that it was again concealed in darkness. When he came to the arrow on the wall, he stopped and scribbled through it, drawing another on the other side of the opening that pointed in the new direction.
There were a few doors on either side of the tunnel in that direction, and he opened the first door he came to. He still wanted a weapon; any weapon would suffice. The door opened onto an office. An old typewriter with paper jutting from the top sat on the huge metal desk. Three large filing cabinets stood against the opposite wall. A small table with the dried remains of a potted plant sat against the wall in front of the desk, as if whoever worked there had tried to bring a little of the outside to the inside. The waste basket sat beside the desk with wadded papers still filling it to the halfway point. A coffee cup, its contents dehydrated, sat by the typewriter.
The room gave Robert a chill. It seemed as if whoever had worked there had abandoned the place in one hell of a hurry.
He closed the door as he stepped out and drew a large X on it. The next door stood slightly ajar and the strip of complete blackness it revealed caused Robert’s stomach to knot. He stood there looking at that dark strip for several seconds before working up the nerve to push the door open with his foot.
It opened onto not one office, but a large area filled with desks and chairs, wastebaskets and coffee mugs. At the front stood a room with windows instead of walls. In that room, there were two oval tables, a long countertop against one wall, and three coffee percolators. Several coffee cups were turned upside down on the counter.
He moved toward that room. There were cabinets. Maybe there was something he could use as a weapon in one of them. That room seemed as close to a kitchen as he had found in the place. If it had been a breakroom or the like, there might be knives.
The cabinets hid only old cans of coffee and snacks from the late nineteen-seventies. A dead houseplant stood in the corner; its carcass was draped over the sides of the pot to the floor where the leafless tendrils splayed out to look like skeletal fingers.
Trash from leftover lunches were strewn over the table, and a big black stain emanated from an overturned coffee mug. The switch on the hotplate was in the on position and an empty pot sat on it. Again, it looked as if the workers had left quickly.
As he rummaged through the drawers, he wondered if there had been an emergency evacuation for some reason. Even under those circumstances, someone would surely have returned to do the necessary checks and perhaps cleanup. The drawers held spoons and a few forks, matches and candles, but no knives.
Closing the door all the way, he drew an X on it and moved across the hall to the next door.
The door was harder to push open, but once it opened, Robert was looking at a mirror of the last room he had entered. “How big is this damn place?” He whispered to the emptiness as he moved to the breakroom, where he rummaged through cabinets and drawers again.
It was almost as if anything that might have been used as a weapon had already been taken. Being a military facility, he knew they wouldn’t have silly restrictions on knives or the like, but he couldn’t find anything with which to defend himself if he ran into that creature he heard earlier.
He placed an X on the door and pulled it closed, moving quickly to the next on that side. It was several yards away where the tunnel curved slightly to the left. That door opened onto an empty round room. In the center of the room was an enclosure made entirely from thick glass reinforced with metal bars at even intervals. Inside the enclosure were two operating tables. The metal on the leather restraints had been broken off, and the leather torn into thin strips. The curtains hung in shreds at either side of the operating theater. He could see dark stains on the tables, floor and back wall, but didn’t enter to investigate.
The sight made him want to get out of there as fast as possible. Turning on his heel, all sorts of images playing through his head, he heard a high-pitched chittering sound. It was impossible to tell how close it was to the open doorway. It was an unnatural sound; not insect or animal, and definitely not human. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention.
The sound moved closer and grew louder. He broke his paralysis and rushed for the door, heedless of anything other than closing that door between him and the thing making that ear-piercing noise.
He pushed the door closed and then let go of the knob gently to ensure stealth. Placing his foot against the bottom of the door, he pressed his head against it, listening as the horrible sound grew louder and louder. When he was sure it was just outside his door, he held his breath, not wanting his fast and loud panting to give away his location. The sound the creature was making was high up as if whatever was making it was very tall, taller than him, even.
The chittering stopped. It didn’t fade into the distance; it simply ceased. He held his breath until his lungs burned, imagining a nightmare creature standing on the other side of the door, possibly with its malformed head pressed against it, listening for any sound.
His leg and ankle began to burn from holding them in the awkward position, his thigh threatened to cramp, but he held his position and his breath. Sweat rolled from his hair and dripped over the headband onto his nose and cheeks. Something scraped down the other side of the door, as if whatever was out there dragged a fingernail, or talon, slowly down toward the doorknob.
Robert eased his hand toward the knob, ready to grab it if it started to turn. It did not. He let his breath out slowly and drew in another even slower trembling breath. The chittering started up again and mo
ved away, fading as the creature headed in the direction he had been going.
Letting out his breath, he straightened his leg and wiggled his numb toes. Reaching for the doorknob, he was overcome with the horrible certainty that the creature would be standing in the doorway waiting for him.
He turned the knob and opened the door by fractions until he could see there was no creature, no nightmare monster to devour him. Breathing easier, he noticed the lingering smell of sulfur and something else, something he couldn’t place.
The hallway kept to its gradual left-hand turn for several yards before straightening out again. He kept the flame in the lantern low and passed four more doors without opening them. If the vehicles had followed the tunnel, it had to lead out and to freedom.
Screw a weapon, he thought, if I can get out of here, maybe I won’t need one.
A security gate with bent and mangled bars was set into the opposite wall. A smaller corridor lay on the other side of it. Thinking the creature might have gone that way, he rushed past it.
He saw the impasse before he made it all the way to it. The end of the tunnel had been sealed the way so many had been sealed in the past—by plugging the hole with rocks. The litter of smaller rocks on the floor made walking treacherous as they shifted and scooted on the concrete.
He strained against some of the larger rocks, but it was useless. They had been packed in there so tightly there was no hope of moving them. And, because he could see no light from outside, he suspected they had been covered in cement from the outside.
The army meant for whatever was in there to remain in there.
Could it be that creature they were sealing in? he wondered as he turned to face the other direction, scanning the darkness for movement. The creature had seemed to deliberately be toying with him outside that door.
Thinking like that could induce panic and he knew that. He tried to fight the thoughts but couldn’t find any other explanations for all the precautions the military had obviously taken to ensure security and privacy. He had not found a single window that looked to the outside of the structure. The only way he had found to get out had been blocked at one end by a security gate, and at the other by rocks. Whatever they had been up to out in the backwoods of Louisiana, it must have been very bad, indeed.
Getting up his nerve again, he headed back to the doors he had not opened and began exploring the rooms beyond them. In every one of them, it was the same: evidence of many people leaving right in the middle of their work or lunch, and nothing that could viably be used as a weapon.
In the last large office space, at the head of the neat rows of abandoned desks, stood a door. The door had a small square of glass at head level. He cupped his hands and looked through the glass but saw only blackness. He tried the knob and didn’t know whether to be relieved or fearful that it turned so easily and quietly.
It was an access hallway, skinny and fitted with bulbs in cages high on the wall every few yards. There was no debris he could see. In fact, the paint was even intact, giving the impression that everything was normal. Just another day at the office according to that hallway. No cobwebs, no vines, no foul smells of rot and decay, just a plain, everyday little hall.
If it had not been for his run-in with the chittering creature, Robert could have imagined everything was okay as he walked through that hallway. He held the lantern high overhead to keep its flame from blinding him to what might lie ahead.
A door on the right was askew on its hinges as if it had been broken by an unthinkably strong force. The top and bottom of the door had buckled slightly toward the middle. The unpainted cinderblock wall was decorated with deep gouges and scratches that were two and three feet long. The concrete floor had matching scratches.
His mind conjured images of a creature with nails being dragged backward into the room as it tried to claw its way out that door. He knew that couldn’t be true, though. Anything large and strong enough to leave those scratches would not fit through the doorway he had entered. He was scaring himself like a kid who’s afraid of the dark will imagine every sort of monster living in the dark, even though he knows logically there’s nothing there.
Then he heard it. The high chittering call in the distance. His blood ran cold through his veins. It was behind him, somewhere in that skinny hallway, tracking him.
For the first time, he was certain he was not alone, and that alligators might be the least of his concerns.
Chapter 5
The Chittering
The chittering moved steadily closer to the mangled door. Frantically, Robert shoved the lantern in front of him and moved it back and forth, looking for a spot to hide. There were fallen wooden beams blocking part of the big room and broken concrete and surgical tools littering the floor everywhere else. There would be no silent passage, nor would there be safe passage, it seemed.
The room opened up into a large area that had been walled with cinderblocks up to about twenty feet, and from there, the dome seemed to be a natural formation, like a cavern. The apex of the dome soared far overhead, its uppermost parts out of reach of his meager light source. Every step sent metal tools or bits of concrete skittering and the sounds echoed above him.
The chittering advanced into the room and began to cast about its own echo. Robert froze momentarily and doused his lantern, wondering if there were other creatures in there, or if it was merely the echo from the one.
At the end of the room, a fall of blocks had formed a hole he could sit inside, but there was nothing to cover the opening, and he passed on it, continuing along the wall. His hand hit metal, rusted in places and cold. He ran his hand gingerly around the corner and along a flat surface. As the chittering moved closer, Robert understood he had found a set of old metal storage lockers, and he began opening the first one quietly.
There was no way he could open and then close it without noise, so he timed his movements to coincide with the creature’s call. Before climbing inside, he set the lantern beside the row of lockers. The metal creaked and groaned under his weight and the door clanged noisily as he pulled it shut.
The chittering stopped, but he had played that game before. He knew the creature was out there, probably very close, trying to determine where the sound had come from, homing in on him as he stood deathly still and held his breath.
The chittering started up at the end of the row. Suddenly, the lockers rocked forward violently, throwing his full weight against the door. He gasped but didn’t scream. Then, the far end was lifted and dropped. The sound inside the metal was deafening, and the sound reverberated through his head causing a wave of vertigo and nausea to wash over him.
Putting his knuckle between his teeth, he bit down to keep from screaming or throwing up, or both at the same time. The sound of clawed feet on top of the lockers grated his nerves until he could barely remain still. Maybe it was some kind of large predatory bird. The lockers had to be six-and-a-half feet tall.
Then it was off the lockers on the lantern side. He listened as the thing hit the lantern with its foot. The lantern wobbled and then settled with a light thud. Without warning, the sound of rending metal pierced his eardrums and he involuntarily slapped his hands over his ears, barely stifling a scream. It moved down the line of lockers, randomly destroying doors.
A few moments passed with Robert holding his breath while the thing pounded across the top, the lockers rocked violently, and then silence descended. After a full minute of deathly silence, Robert peeked through the small louvers near the top of the door. All he could see was darkness, and he strained his eyes to discern any movement but there was none.
Opening the door far enough to see down the row, he could make out part of the destruction left in the creature’s wake. Whatever the thing was, it was stronger than any person. Stepping out, he listened, wincing at the pain in his head as his heart continued thumping harder. Bending to retrieve the lantern, he stopped
as the chittering sound echoed. The creature had gone back to the entrance, and he hoped it was leaving again.
A thorough search of the large room proved there was no other way in or out. There had been at one time, but the large metal doors had been welded shut from the outside long ago. Keeping the flame low, he made his way back to the entrance. The dark, tight hallway was the last place he wanted to go, but he had no other choice. It was the only way out of the room.
Moving more quickly than before, he kept his pace just below a light jog until he reached the office room from which he had entered the little corridor and went inside stealthily. He pondered at the depth of the place. How far underground was he? If the cavern was any indication, he was much deeper than he would have ever guessed. That also meant the sealed tunnel might not have led outside.
Starting to feel the first pangs of hopelessness, Robert stood in the middle of the room, between two identical large desks, and thought about Julie and Lilli. If he died in that godforsaken place, they would be left to fend for themselves, and they would never know what happened to him. Would Julie think he had deserted her? He hoped she knew in her heart he would never do that. But his body would never be found, so she would have no real closure, either.
The thought of Lilli growing up, her first day of high school, prom, first day of college, her wedding day…he couldn’t bear the thought of missing her future, so many crucially important rites of passage without him would be detrimental to her. And worse, the thought that eventually Julie would meet and marry another man who Lilli might call Daddy, destroyed him.
He needed a weapon. His father had been a hard-nosed bastard, and Robert had feared him, but his words came back. The damnable thing about it was, now those words made sense.
S79 The Horror in the Swamp Page 6