Thomas had moved out of Gosston over twenty years ago, swearing never to return, but he had moved back to care for his mother after his father had passed away. Last year he’d lost his mother, too, and yet he had stayed on. As much as he had come to despise the town, it was all he had now. The town and the “phantom pain” it held for him.
Thomas waded through overgrown weeds, wary of debris concealed in the tangles like booby-traps, until he arrived at one side of the derelict factory building – a spot just past its loading docks.
As a boy he had become familiar with the tunnel system that connected a number of the town’s old industrial sites, and one of the openings to this system lay before him now. Thomas ducked through a bulkhead door that had once been boarded up, flicking on his flashlight as he did so.
After descending a short flight of steps thick with fallen leaves he entered a straight tunnel with an arched ceiling and walls scaled in grimy tiles, rusty train rails laid into its damp cement floor. More graffiti abounded, rubbish and smashed glass scattered everywhere. A bare mattress had turned to a mildewed sponge from water that had trickled down the wall. Thomas walked quietly for fear of alerting any teenagers or homeless people who might currently be partying or sheltering down here, but he heard nothing. Even on the few occasions he had seen people down here they had only watched him as he passed without accosting him. Maybe they had feared he was a ghost, even as he had half-wondered the same about them.
Only once had he had a frightening experience down here, as a youth many years earlier when some of the plants the tunnels connected had still been operational. He had been alone and exploring out of simple curiosity when a shadowy figure had lunged out of a narrow stairwell that led up to one of the factories. The figure had chased after Thomas, never calling out to him and its intentions unclear. A security guard chasing him from a place he didn’t belong, or a madman with terrible desires? From the figure’s short stature, maybe just a bully of his own age. Whatever the case, a panicky Thomas had glanced back once or twice but the figure remained a silhouette, its features indiscernible. The most he could make out was that it held its arms out in front of it, as if to embrace him.
For years afterward – until he’d moved out of Gosston, in fact – in dreams the figure had continued to pursue him, as if some part of him had never escaped from the tunnels.
The tenement building he lived in had formerly been a factory building itself, just as other defunct factories in town had been portioned into office space. The tunnel delivered him only a three minutes’ walk from his home. The rain was moderate and he arrived in the tenement building’s vestibule only a little worse for wear. On the brick walls of the vestibule were an old punch clock and empty racks for punch cards. The landlord must have felt they were charming souvenirs of bygone days.
Up squealing wooden steps that sounded like each one trapped a dying animal inside, which Thomas pressed beneath his heels. Up to his apartment on the third and topmost floor. He quickly moved from room to room (which was all there was – two large rooms) pulling shades and drawing curtains, as if to hide from eyes that would emerge with the night. Then, at a more relaxed pace, he put on a kettle of water for instant coffee and changed into comfortable pajamas and his faded flannel bathrobe. When his coffee was in hand, he turned to stare across the combination living room/kitchen at the plastic bag resting on the table. The morning paper, The Gosston Mirror, was still spread there as if ready to soak up blood.
Thomas sipped his coffee a few more times, slowly, with long stretches between, before he finally padded barefoot – as if with a need for stealth – over to the table and opened the mouth of the plastic bag to draw out what he had folded double and hidden inside.
It was an adult-sized human arm, minus a hand at its wrist, heavy and solid. The expensive kind, with an articulated steel skeleton inside.
“Did you hear about that customer the company turned away?” Bao asked Thomas at lunch. She sat across the table from him, making him self-conscious as he slurped up his instant noodles. She left one of her open pauses for him to step into.
“What happened?” he asked after sucking up one particularly errant strand of noodle.
“He contacted GTA directly with a request. He said he’d lost his daughter and he was having a hard time dealing with it. So he showed our order department a photo of a girl of maybe sixteen – and she didn’t look anything like him.” She laughed. “And he never once mentioned that he had a wife, either.”
“Huh,” Thomas said, and then to give her a better reaction, “Wow.”
“He probably thought if we okayed it, he might even get his insurance company to pay for it.”
“Huh,” Thomas said. Poking around in his noodles, he hesitated but then said, “It might not be what you think, though. Maybe she was someone he loved when he was the same age and could never forget. Maybe even someone who died a long time ago.”
“Oh Thomas,” Bao chuckled, wagging her head. “You’re so sweet and naïve.”
He had just finished his meal when the time came for them to return to work. He excused himself to go to the men’s room, and Bao went on ahead without him. All the rest had already returned to their respective work areas and he knew his supervisor Derek would chastise him when he was late to his post, but he could deal with that.
He had come into the men’s room earlier with the object hidden inside a roll of used bubble wrap Derek had given him permission to bring home. He had seen someone’s shoes under the door to one of the stalls, however, so he had been afraid to go through with his plan all the way. He had quickly dug the object out of the bubble wrap, then pushed it down deep into the trash container – knowing the people who came to empty the trash and clean the floors wouldn’t do so until closer to the end of the shift.
There was no one in here now – only his own furtive-eyed face staring back at him from the big mirror over the row of sinks.
He knew there were cameras focused on the front doors, making him apprehensive about smuggling out anything that way. Furthermore, there was that stooped gnome of a security guard, Bill, sitting up front at his reception desk, lost in his baggy uniform like a child dressed for Halloween – holstered pistol and all – even if he did frequently doze off in front of his monitors. Likewise, Thomas suspected there were cameras in the coed locker room because no one actually changed their clothes there, only stored their coats, pocketbooks or phones in the lockers. But surely there were no security cameras in the restrooms.
With one more glance over his shoulder to be assured he was alone, he thrust his hand down into the trash and felt around until he retrieved his prize.
There was one small hinged window at the back wall, and it was already cracked a little bit open. He went to it, pushed it open more, and reached out the hand that held the object. He let it go, and heard a soft thud and a crackle of leaves below.
As he had last evening, he waited until all his coworkers had eagerly left for home before he emerged from the building and walked around to its rear. Here, where the company property bordered a strip of gray woods, drifts of fallen leaves drained of their bright colors had washed up against the back wall of the building. Thomas knelt before one such heap, directly below a small hinged window, and sifted through until he once again uncovered his prize. From the pocket of his coat he produced the same balled up black plastic bag with gold lettering, and he dropped the adult-sized human hand inside it.
“What happened to your hand?” David asked Thomas in the cafeteria, pointing at a nasty red burn across the back of his wrist. It looked like his hand had been severed and reattached there.
“Oh…I did that today with a sealer wand. One of the hip joints on a baby popped out of its socket – it mustn’t have been connected securely – so I had to cut the leg off, reconnect the joint then seal the leg back on. And when I did, the wand slipped and…” He made a hissing sound like sizzling flesh. The electric-powered wands melted the pliable plastic to an almo
st liquid state so that pieces could be joined together, and if skillfully smoothed out the place of joining was virtually undetectable.
It was true that he had had to repair one of the infant prostheses in this way, today, but the heated wand hadn’t slipped. The accident had actually occurred last night in his apartment, with a sealer wand he had smuggled home from work.
A shrill cry behind Thomas caused him to spin around with jolted heart. Bao had opened one of the refrigerators to retrieve her lunch, to be greeted with the sight of a human head resting on one of the shelves.
She whirled to glare at all the workers seated at their various tables. Some were trying to repress their smiles but others were laughing outright. “You think that’s funny? If I find out who did that I’ll be reporting you to Mr. Gale himself! I’ll ask security to play back the tape!”
“I don’t think there are any security cameras in the caf,” Thomas said, subtly glancing around at the ceiling tiles.
“I sure hope not,” David muttered.
Thomas gave his coworker a look.
But only a minute later, the old security guard Bill shuffled into the room, his fissured face one big grimace. “I saw that,” he grumbled. “Where’s the head now?”
“Damn,” David whispered, “so there are cameras in here. Why did the old geezer have to be awake for once?”
Bao handed Bill the adult-sized head. It was a male with realistic looking hair punched into its scalp. Its eyes were closed as if in sleep. Not many were produced at GTA, but occasionally an accident victim who had suffered decapitation was able to be kept alive indefinitely with life support. A lifelike prosthetic head, fashioned in the likeness of the victim, made the family’s visits more bearable. Other times, though, such heads were merely created so a family could view and bury an intact representation of a truncated loved one.
Bill cradled the head in both hands and held its face against his chest protectively. Rather than retreat with it to his desk in the foyer, though, he addressed the assembled workers. “You people need to take your work more seriously! You don’t know by now what these things mean to the people who buy them? You still think they’re only so much plastic? They have a magic to them, a magic to heal. They have soul in them…the soul of the lost loved one and the soul of the person who grieves for them.”
“Listen to him,” Thomas heard a worker murmur behind him, “the senile old fart is going to cry.”
Another worker replied in a lowered voice, “Watch out or he’ll start shooting us.”
Thomas could hear it now…either later today or tomorrow, once the camera’s tape had been reviewed, Bao saying to him triumphantly, “Did you hear what happened to David?”
David’s termination was inevitable, and Thomas felt sorry for him, but in a way he was grateful. If any of his own thefts had been noticed, there was now a person to take the blame.
Of course, now it might prove more difficult to steal one of the prosthetic heads for himself, and his work was not yet finished.
It happened sometimes in autumn – an early snow – but it was only a light snow and Thomas was one who enjoyed walking even in driving blizzards. It was almost just an excuse for him to take the underground path home from work. Surely it wouldn’t be much warmer down there.
But of course, he had to be honest with himself that he was nervous his theft might already have been detected, and people were just waiting to catch him walking home with his heavier than usual shopping bag.
He dug out his flashlight and slipped through the bulkhead opening as always. As he descended the snow-dusted stairs his breath steamed, looking like ectoplasm churning before his face in the beam of his flashlight. He moved forward along the rails of the old trains that had once unloaded cargo down here, barely glancing about at the familiar refuse: a stack of rotting cardboard boxes filled with ceiling tiles for a repair job that never came, several metal trash cans filled to the brim with little pieces of coal intended for some long disused furnace, a chaotic pile of rusting dismantled machine parts. No teenagers partying, no homeless sheltering – just the one figure that stepped into view at the far end of this stretch of tunnel.
Startled, Thomas stopped in his tracks. His beam had begun waning recently, the flashlight overdue for fresh batteries, and so he only made out the barest outline of the figure in the murk. But it was standing directly in the path he was taking – neither advancing nor retreating, and not stepping to one side – in a stance that appeared challenging.
Thomas didn’t want to appear nervous to this person or to himself. He thought to ask, “Can I help you?” or something of that nature, but instead he found himself blurting, “Who are you?”
His voice echoed back to him: “Who are you?”
As if these words prompted the shadowy figure into action, it suddenly lunged forward and came running straight at him down the center of the rails, arms extended as if to seize him in an embrace. It loped along with an uneven, awkward gait.
“Hey! Hey!” Thomas said, trying to sound authoritative. But the figure kept rushing toward him, and every dream he had dreamed about his boyhood encounter in these tunnels crashed upon him like bricks in a collapsing wall.
Thomas lunged forward himself, but bolted in a new direction – at an angle toward the left-hand wall, where he recalled there was another set of stairs leading up to an old textile mill. He prayed he could reach those cement steps and pound up them into the open air before the running figure intercepted him.
His flashlight beam danced ahead of him wildly as he ran, so he couldn’t see the stranger advancing – just heard its frenzied limping approach – but only a few more feet remained before he reached the stairwell. He knew he would make it just a bit ahead of the stranger.
And he did, shining his light up at the bulkhead doors.
He had never used this bulkhead entrance in his adulthood, and maybe the situation had been different when he was a boy, but now he saw that this particular bulkhead still had its original metal doors – and that they were padlocked shut.
Terror passed through him like a cloud of liquid nitrogen. Thomas spun around as if he might still escape the dead end of the stairwell, but of course it was too late. His pursuer stood at the bottom step, blocking his escape. Crowding his back up against the locked metal doors, Thomas pointed his light directly at the stranger – now close enough to sufficiently illuminate.
Now Thomas understood the cause for the figure’s extreme limp: its left leg ended in a stump rather than a foot. But more than that, his confronter was lacking a head.
It wasn’t that Thomas’ fear faded away then, but other emotions pressed in alongside it. Tears rose to his eyes. A smile quivered on his lips. And this time he didn’t think of escape, as the headless stranger held out its arms to him.
He lifted his head with a start from the kitchen table, across which was spread a copy of the Gosston Mirror, and looked around his kitchen area with frantic eyes. Slowly he calmed himself, but found that he was gripping the table edge. Was it that odd smell in the air that had roused him from his doze, a smell like something burning? Maybe an electrical fire?
He vaguely recalled pulling his comfortable flannel bathrobe around his cold, shivering body. Seemed to recall scrabbling noises outside his apartment door, its knob rattling. He believed he had staggered to the door and called warily, “Who is it?” without a response, finally opening the door only to find the morning paper bound with elastic and hanging from his doorknob in a plastic bag.
He might have dismissed these blurred memories and lapses of unconsciousness – dismissed that before donning his robe he had awakened naked on the floor of his apartment – had he had too much to drink the night before. But he wasn’t a drinking man.
What time was it? Should he be at work now? The thought that he might be late to work sobered and sharpened his mind. He realized he didn’t even know what day it was, and located the front page of the disordered paper before him.
It s
eemed that his place of employment, Gale Therapeutic Appliances, had in fact made the front page of the Gosston Mirror.
The company’s security guard, sixty-four year old William Crampton, had caught an employee attempting to steal one of the plastic prosthetic appliances the company produced – in this case an adult model left foot. This employee had at first vehemently denied that he had possession of this article, at which time Mr. Crampton seized hold of the bag in which the appliance was concealed. A struggle ensued and the younger, larger employee was able to wrest his bag free and dart for the exit.
It was at this point that Mr. Crampton pulled his licensed handgun and fired twice, striking the employee in the back. The employee, forty-three year old Thomas Capgras, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Killed a man for stealing a plastic foot,” he mumbled aloud, wagging his head. That crazy old fool; they had him in custody for it, too. And the other, the victim; he again said out loud, “Got himself killed over a plastic foot.”
His brow furrowed, then, and he scanned through the article again. He might have expected the thief to be David, joking around again, not this other man…this Thomas…
Mason involuntarily crushed the paper, wadded its inked words in his hands as if to unmake them. For a few moments he stared across his combination living room/kitchen, but focusing on nothing in particular. Vaguely he noted that smell in the air again – a smell like melted plastic.
Then, reluctantly, hesitantly, he pushed his chair back from the table a bit. Just enough that he could look beneath it.
And Mason saw that his left leg ended in a stump instead of a foot.
THE DARK CELL
“You’re mighty young,” Rose said to the newcomer. She didn’t really want to start up a conversation, but one of them had to. She was being polite to mask her resentment. She hadn’t been hoping for company, and this pretty but surly-looking Mexican girl didn’t appear enthusiastic about the prospect of making new friends, either.
The Endless Fall and Other Weird Fictions Page 8