Shadows Rising

by Dean Rasmussen

  “Please, Rebecca, we only have a few minutes before my dad gets back. Hurry.”

  Rebecca stared at Michael. “We should go with him.”

  “Hurry!” Joey said.

  “Michael is coming with me or I’m not going.”

  “Okay, deal.”

  Rebecca jumped up and grabbed Michael’s hand. “Michael, please?”

  Michael stood up slowly. “Where are you taking us?”

  “No time.” Joey unlocked the door to their cell. “Get out of there, now.”

  “Fine.” Anything was better than dying in that urine cage.

  Joey poked his head outside and waved for them to follow him. Michael and Rebecca’s backpacks still sat against the side of the garage, although Finn’s rifle bag was gone. Joey handed Rebecca her backpack and Michael grabbed his own. They circled the garage to the back where earlier Finn had shot out the church’s camera with the paintball gun. The edge of the orchard lay ahead of them. It was a way to escape, but Michael hesitated.

  “How do we get down into the tunnels?” Michael asked Joey. He lifted his backpack and slipped it onto his back. Joey hoisted Rebecca’s backpack up onto her back.

  “You can’t,” Joey said. “Rebecca, we need to run. I’m going to get in big trouble for helping you.”

  “We can’t leave my mom down there,” Rebecca said, “or his grandfather. We need to get them out.”

  “Nobody comes out of there.” Joey nudged Rebecca toward the orchard. “We need to go now before my dad gets back from break.”

  Michael motioned to the black storm door at the base of the garage. “Where does that go?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, “it’s filthy.”

  “Does it go into the tunnels?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  “Dad puts nonbelievers down there who don’t survive the Black House, and the next day the bodies are gone. Poof! Like magic. I’ve been down there once with Dad. There’s a door at the bottom of this hole too.”

  Rebecca gestured to the padlock on the door. “Can you open it?”

  Joey nodded and unlocked it. “I’m telling you, you’re not gonna like what you find if we go this way.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Horrible things,” Joey said. “If you want to go down there, I guess it’s the only way, but I’m not sure it’ll lead to where you want to go.”

  “Okay, we’ll do it.” Rebecca stepped toward the storm door.

  The door creaked as Joey pulled it open and they peered into the blackness. Michael cringed and turned away from the odors that flooded past his face. “It smells like shit.”

  Joey slapped Michael’s shoulder, pushing him forward, and laughed. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Michael jerked his shoulder away and clenched his teeth.

  Rebecca stepped over to Michael. “Turn around. I’ll get your flashlight.”

  Michael turned around and Joey’s eyes glared down at him, relishing his slight height advantage. Joey’s expressionless eyes betrayed his grin. The corners of his mouth angled upward in a subtle version of The Joker from the Batman comics. All he needed was the clown makeup.

  Rebecca handed Michael his flashlight. “Grab mine.” She spun around in front of Michael and watched them from the corner of her eye. He stood tall behind her and parted her hair, which draped over the backpack’s main pocket and dug out her flashlight. They stared down into the open hole again. A light breeze whisked the smell into Michael’s face.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Michael said.

  “C’mon pansies,” Joey said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  A rope ladder draped along the side of the hole. The smell was the worst thing ever. He gagged as his stomach lost any remaining ounce of appetite. Rebecca aimed her flashlight down at Joey, and then followed him. Michael shut the storm door behind him. Maybe escaping down that hole would buy them some time when the guards discovered them missing. His backpack scraped against the sides of the hole as he lowered himself down and bits of soil rained down onto Rebecca and Joey.

  They gathered at the bottom on a soft plywood floor. The flashlights lit up the black bare soil that encircled them. An earthworm dangled beside him. It was the first stage of being buried alive.

  “Did you use the toilet up there?” Joey asked.

  “No,” Michael said.

  Joey laughed. “Good thing. All that crap just goes straight down here. That’s part of the smell.”

  Rebecca stepped away from the wall.

  “Give me your flashlight,” he said to Michael, grabbing it from his hand.

  The lower half of the wall on the side facing the church was stone. A rusted metal frame attached to the stone wall housed a thick slab the width and height of a computer screen. Rope tied to the slab ran up to a pulley above them and the end hung loose down the other side.

  “Here we go.” Joey gripped the loose end of the rope and pulled down. The slab rose revealing a collapsed section of the stone wall and the black hole beyond it. Joey tied off the rope on a metal hook so the door stayed open and pointed the light into the hole.

  “Where does that lead?” Michael asked.

  “You wanted in? I got you in.”

  A few feet into the hole the ground dropped away into darkness like a mineshaft. The flashlight lit up dried, dark patches of a fluid like blood, which streaked across the sides of the stone walls. Flies buzzed around them.

  “Is that blood on the walls?”

  Joey shrugged, “I don’t ask questions.”

  Rebecca led them forward and Joey wedged himself in front of Michael. The ground squished beneath their feet. Michael aimed the flashlight ahead of them and focused on Rebecca. The ground sloped downward as they continued and she stopped.

  “Is this supposed to–” Rebecca’s foot slipped while turning toward them. The light from her flashlight whipped across the walls and floor as she grabbed onto Joey and he threw his arm around her, embracing her until she stood up again. Michael reached out in the darkness toward her, but she was out of reach.

  Rebecca wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I got some on my tongue. I think I’ll throw up.”

  Flies swarmed around Michael’s face and he breathed through his nose. His shoes knocked into soft chunks of matter. Several animal corpses lay strewn against the walls.

  “Stop,” Rebecca yelled. She froze.

  Joey’s foot slipped on the stone floor as he threw his hand into the dirt wall, grabbing at anything to avoid walking into her. Michael stopped a moment too late and slammed into the back of Joey, throwing him forward into Rebecca. Her flashlight flew from her hand, dropping below the level of the floor, and disappeared. She collapsed onto her side as her feet slipped out from beneath her. She grasped at the stone floor as every movement shifted her closer toward a narrow tube like the entrance to a water park ride. She screamed, and Michael almost dropped his flashlight in the scramble to reach her.

  “Rebecca!” Joey cried. He dropped and seized her hand at the edge of the descending floor. Her hand slipped away and she slid further out of reach.

  Michael pushed in next to Joey and shined the flashlight toward her. The light reflected off her eyes as if they glowed. Her lower body was now out of sight, and she slid away faster as Joey threw himself into the tunnel headfirst with his hands stretched out in front of him as if he were about to dive into a pool. Michael dropped the flashlight and grabbed Joey’s feet, but they slipped through his fingers. His shoes pounded against the walls and the dark consumed him along with Rebecca and Joey.

  Her screams faded down the tunnel, and he lit up the walls as far as the light would reach. Who knew where that hole ended. His body shook in the damp, cold air. His grandfather was down there. He sat down at the edge of the hole like a child preparing to descend an enormous slide and launched himself forward. The ground dropped out beneath him as he cascaded forward. He sail
ed across the surface of the slimy passageway, his body lifting and then pounding back down. His flashlight spun around him. Rebecca called his name, and a moment later, he flew out of the hole, slamming against Joey’s leg. It knocked both of them over sideways. Rebecca shined the flashlight on them as Joey sat up.

  “You all right, man?” Joey asked him.

  Michael shook his head. His flashlight slammed into his arm. He grabbed it and looked around. The room, with stone walls and filled with decaying debris, was about the size of his grandfather’s living room. A thick rancid smell of rot poured into his lungs, and his stomach churned. Insects and spiders scrambled from the light, and Rebecca screamed again, this time a high-pitched wail.

  Michael pushed his hand down into the debris where he had landed. His fingers brushed across the buttons of a suit coat covering a solid cold structure like a mannequin. “What’s this?”

  “Oh, God!” Rebecca screamed. “They’re people.”

  “Fuck this shit,” Michael said pulling himself up out of the pile. “Fuck this shit.”

  Michael twisted to the side, and his hand squished down onto an animal with thick fur the size of a basketball. As he pushed himself away, his hand punctured through the fur, releasing a torrent of putrid air with a loud hiss that encompassed him. The fur and bones scraped along his wrist as insects scattered through his fingers and up out of the carcass like an army of zombies. Michael convulsed and threw up over the suit coat he had landed on.

  “Why did you bring us here?” Michael groaned, gasping for breath.

  “Joey, get us out of here!” Rebecca said.

  “Keep going forward,” Joey said.

  “I can’t,” Rebecca said. “Where’s the door? I can’t see the door.”

  “What is this place?” Michael asked in a groan.

  “The temple drops the nonbelievers here,” Joey said. “It’s worse than I thought it’d be.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “It’s the only way in to the tunnels,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Get us out of here,” Michael yelled.

  Joey examined the ceiling. “I don’t know how.”

  Michael crawled up across the bodies, the corpses squishing and sinking beneath him. He scoured the flashlight in every direction for an exit. Against one wall the bodies piled up like a staircase toward the ceiling. Michael crawled closer to the pile and aimed his flashlight up to the ceiling, revealing a hole ascending straight up. It was another body drop hole.

  “We’re trapped,” Michael said. “You moron! You brought us down here to die in this shithole. We’re stuck now, you dumbshit.”

  “Sorry,” Joey said. “I’ve never been down this far. I only helped dad put the bodies inside that door we went through.”

  Michael lunged at Joey, but tripped and smashed down onto a woman’s head. Puffs of her hair slid between his fingers, and her scalp peeled off in his hand as he pushed himself away. He groaned and threw the scalp across the room.

  “There’s got to be a way out,” Joey said.

  Rebecca whimpered as she struggled to stand and step across the corpses.

  22

  Michael resisted taking a deep breath, knowing particles of dead bodies were entering his lungs. Holding his breath just delayed the inevitable, and it made him light-headed. Bugs scurried up his arm as fast as he could swat them away.

  “Find a way out,” he screamed.

  He scoured the walls for any sign of an exit. Swarms of beetles infested the cracks in the stones over his head. Another clump of hair tickled his forearm and dared him to look down. The bodies whispered to him as he shifted his weight. Deep below the pile several bones cracked at once. He paused as the pile collapsed and moved across the surface on his hands and knees. The weight of his hand pressed down onto somebody’s chest and air exploded up from its throat like a violent ghost escaping into the night. A face flashed beneath him, caught by the light of Rebecca’s flashlight. A woman with long, styled hair. He forced his eyes back up toward the ceiling, but with each movement forward, he needed to glance down to see where his hands settled so he wouldn’t slip and fall further into them.

  One face jumped out at him when the light caught it. He avoided looking down at the familiar face. He struggled to pull himself up when Rebecca’s flashlight passed over the face below him. Michael looked down. His dad stared up at him.

  “Why did you kill me?” His dad mouthed each word, wheezing and gasping.

  His dad’s crushed skull pivoted on a mangled spine to face him. His sunken eyes beamed at him, and his smashed jaw opened and closed with each word. The light flashed across his mouth as a torrent of maggots crawled up from his throat and down his dad’s face toward another corpse lying next to him. Michael forced himself to look up at Joey and Rebecca, but below his line of sight his dad’s face spasmed in a deadly seizure, his jaw gaping open and his neck twisting with surprise and terror at having been torn apart.

  “You’re not real.” Michael looked away.

  “I am real,” his dad’s voice gurgled.

  Michael looked down again. His knee was pressing on his dad’s chest. He lurched to the side. His dad’s head twisted to face him. Rebecca’s flashlight cast a spotlight on them like actors on a stage.

  “Help me,” his dad said in a whisper strained through a mouthful of oatmeal. “Help me.”

  Michael lunged forward toward Rebecca’s flashlight and swatted it with his palm. “Shine that somewhere else.”

  “Sorry, Michael,” she said. Her strained eyes watered up. “Do you see my mom in here?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “I saw Mrs. Allen over there,” Rebecca said in a broken voice. “She was my second grade teacher.” She moved the light across the faces stopping at each one.

  “I think I found an opening,” Joey said, straining as he pushed and pulled one large stone in the wall from side to side like a loose tooth.

  The sound of clicks echoed in the distance. They stopped moving. The clicks grew louder.

  “What’s that sound?” Joey asked.

  “Something’s coming.” Rebecca turned her flashlight toward the slide where they had entered. “Climb up the tunnel.”

  Michael crunched and crashed over corpses toward the hole’s opening. Maybe he could push against the sides to lift himself up and out and use the rope ladder to escape. He sank down up to his waist between two corpses and the bones jabbing at him were cushioned only by the person’s clothing. How deep do they go? His shoe loosened as it stuck into a bone, but he pried it away and struggled to lift his feet as if he were moving through molasses.

  “Find a place to hide,” Michael said.

  “Where?” Joey asked.

  “Anywhere,” he said. “Get underneath a body.”

  “Oh, God,” Rebecca said. She turned off her flashlight and pushed deep down into a pile of corpses. Michael did the same, throwing his hands up over his face. His heartbeat filled his ears and his breath warmed his hands as he listened for the clicking and wondered why he would die in such an awful place. Nobody would ever find their bodies. They would each become another corpse in the pile, simply rotting away like Rebecca’s teacher. The cool air touched the top of his head. He should have covered himself better. Should have rolled one of those bodies on top of him.

  The corpses creaked and rustled like an old mattress as the clicking echoed off the walls above him. His hair bristled and something scraped against the top of his backpack.

  Michael played dead. The corpses jostled with each breath, so he stiffened his chest. His body trembled as the corpse pressing against his hands shifted away and the cool air reached down to his forearms. He was exposed. The teeth on the creature’s arms scratched across the bones and clothing of the corpses in front of him. His wide eyes peered into absolute darkness, darting from side to side without a drop of light. Tentacles scraped against some bones further away now, moving toward Rebecca. He took in a slow deep breath.

/>   He calculated how long it would take him to pull out his weapons. Five seconds if he was lucky. If Rebecca screamed he would jump up and come out swinging that blade. He might not move so fast if Joey needed help.

  The thing crept across the surface of the corpses and moved off to the far side of the room. Its odd sharp noises fading as it left.

  Michael gradually pushed himself up and took in a deep breath. Then he rose up a little more. His trembling hands held the flashlight out in front of him, but he hesitated to turn it on. The cold air encompassed his chest again and stripped away any remaining warmth within himself.

  “Was that a phantom?” Joey asked.

  “Shh,” Rebecca whispered. “I don’t think it’s gone yet.”

  “I’ve never seen one before.”

  “We should follow it,” Rebecca said. “See where it goes. I think it will lead us to my mom.”

  “Are you crazy?” Michael said. “Finn said to stay away from those things, not run after them.”

  “It got out of this room, didn’t it?”

  “She’s got a point, man,” Joey said.

  “How did it get out?” Michael asked.

  They climbed over toward where they had heard the creature retreat through the wall, crunching and squishing over corpses with every step.

  “Hallelujah,” Joey whispered. “There’s a hole here.”

  Rebecca stood and balanced herself while shining her light down into a broken section of the wall. “Oh, thank God.”

  Michael climbed over to them, his flashlight still trembling as every ounce of warmth had leaked from his body. “Let’s go. Anywhere but here.”

  Rebecca took off her backpack and dug through it. “Get your machetes out just in case.”

  “Awesome,” Joey said. “Can I have one of those?”

  Rebecca handed him a flashlight and one of her machetes. Joey swung it back and forth through the air like a pirate.

  “Be careful with that thing,” Rebecca scolded. “It’s not a toy.”

  Michael dug his machete out and gulped down most of the water from his canteen. Some of it spilled down his shirt.

  “Are we ready?” Rebecca asked.