Crude Sunlight 1

by Phil Tucker

  "Yeah. Thanks for coming."

  "No problem," said Buck drolly from behind them. "I'm always here for you, amigo."

  Thomas smiled tightly, and began to walk down the steps. The others fell in step, and soon the dim and dusty sunlight was exchanged for shadow and dark. The steps were wide and shallow, and Thomas had to restrain himself from taking them two at a time. From rushing forward and diving into the darkness, racing into the lower depths and yelling out Henry's name, plunging mindlessly down corridors and halls, into the malevolent center of it all.

  "So, the boiler room should be up ahead, right?" Thomas stopped and looked questioningly at Julia. She nodded slowly, looking up and down the hall they'd stepped out into, and then turning to the left.

  "Eric had all the maps memorized. But I think I remember. This way." She began to walk, her flashlight wavering light from left to right. Buck clapped Thomas on the shoulder and stepped past him, turning his light to examine cracks and stains along the walls as they walked.

  They proceeded in silence. Something heavy hung in the air. Not fear, but rather their anticipation of growing afraid. They walked deeper into the darkness, what little daylight that followed them left behind, but everything remained quotidian. The very lack of menacing overtones unnerved them more, as if they were being purposefully misled. Moving in the dark, Thomas found himself growing conscious of every step. Aware of each placing of his feet in the unknown murk beneath, moving tentatively as if expecting to hit a tripwire. Moving forward beyond the comfort of his senses.

  Julia's flashlight lit up a heavy door. She paused, and then stepped forward to shove it open. It swung in with a groan, and she turned to face Buck and Thomas.

  "Here you go. This is the boiler room. The steam tunnels lie beyond, and then the room with the stairs going down. And that's where, well." She paused. What she had not said hung heavy between them. Thomas could hear Buck's breathing. It sounded coarse, thick. The air felt warm.

  "Yeah, Irish ghosts," said Buck. "How about we get a move on?"

  Thomas walked through the door and shone the flashlight over the heavy organic machinery of the boiler room. Rust covered the tubes and pipes and bulging plates like a reptilian skin, heavily textured and dark. It must have made this room intolerably hot when it was active, he thought, drifting forward as he took his time to examine the walls and floor. The same room, the same darkness and insinuation of shapes in the corners. A sense of déjà vu suffused him.

  "The tunnel entrance is over there around the corner," said Julia, aiming her light in the right direction.

  "This place is perfect for shooting a horror movie, eh?" asked Buck, standing in the doorway. "I mean, perfect. All sorts of Freddy Krueger's could be hanging around here, feeling right at home."

  "Relax, Buck," said Thomas, moving around the corner and up to a small steel door.

  "Relax? I am relaxed. I'm fucking frosty here. I just would rather be at the Ritz Carlton, is all. Is that so weird?"

  "No, but just relax. Okay?" Thomas tugged the door open. A corridor beyond filled with pipes. The steam tunnel. "What happened to Jimmy?" he asked, turning to look at Julia.

  "Jimmy?"

  "The guy who bolted in the video. The third guy who was really nervous. What happened to him?"

  "Oh, yeah. Jimmy." Julia shrugged. "He made it out fine. He went up the stairs and out. We found him by the fence. He never came back out with us. I guess he got freaked out."

  "Yes," said Thomas, smiling grimly. "I can understand that." Stepping forward, he eased himself into the tunnel, and began to walk carefully alongside the pipes. "Why didn't you guys join, I don't know, band or something? Yearbook? I mean, what's the attraction to these tunnels?" It was a stupid question, but Thomas didn't want silence. He didn't want to walk along in the dark, feeling alone, feeling isolated from the others. Conversation, he realized, was an illusion that could help keep the darkness at bay.

  "I don't know. It was fun. It was a little dangerous, and I was bored. Going places we weren't supposed to be was a thrill, is all." Julia walked just behind him, her footsteps echoing alongside his. "I did it more because Eric was so into it. I used to like seeing how excited he'd get. And then I did it because it was fun to be with Henry while Eric was clueless." Thomas could almost hear her shrug.

  They shuffled forward till the tunnel opened out into the large room filled with debris. Buck's flashlight beam danced about the room, skittishly moving from side to side as if unable to settle on any one object, and then passed over a stationary figure standing in one corner, watching them. Startled by the sudden pale face, the eyes occluded by shadow, Buck let out a cry and dropped his flashlight. It clacked against the cement floor and rolled away.

  "Buck?" said Thomas, "What did you--"

  "Jesus fucking Christ," said Buck, "Jesus fucking--"

  Julia swung her beam onto Buck, who was reaching down to snatch up his flashlight, who glanced up at her with wild eyes, and then she pointed her light into the corner.

  It was Henry. He was standing still, arms by his sides, staring right at her.

  Thomas felt his chest constrict. A tightness that made his heart shudder out of rhythm, and as he stared at Henry's gaunt face, a small voice in his mind wondered if he was having a heart attack.

  "Henry?" said Thomas. "Henry, that you?"

  Henry stood still. He ignored Thomas' question, ignored Buck's hoarse and heavy swearing. He stared solely at Julia, and began to walk quietly toward her. She kept her flashlight trained on him, but there was no evidence that the eyes beneath the shadows blinked or squinted against the bright light.

  "Julia," said Henry, and his voice was distant, hollow, a tortured low moan. "Julia."

  "Is that your brother?" asked Buck, rounding on Thomas, his voice shaking. "Is that your fucking brother?"

  "Yes," said Thomas, though he was shaking his head. "Henry? Hey--Henry, are you okay?" He knew he should feel exultation over finding his brother, should feel a savage joy, a sense of victory. Instead he felt a dull sense of dread. A sense of wrongness. He wanted to turn and run. He wanted to look away, to look away from the piteous need on Henry's face, to not think about how long his brother had been simply standing down here alone in the darkness.

  Julia was slowly shaking her head, not with disbelief but a crude desire to negate. Henry moved silently across the room toward her, seeming to pass over the debris without disturbing it, without knocking it aside or needing to walk around the piles of trash. Buck was breathing in rapid, sharp pants, and then he took a deep breath as if preparing to dive and stepped forward and placed a hand on Henry's shoulder.

  Buck let out a cry and snatched his hand back as if burned. He cradled it to his chest, and stepped back from Henry who continued to ignore him. Still moaning, Buck, turned and stared at Thomas, and then ran past him and into the steam tunnel toward the boiler room.

  "Julia," said Henry, "I need you to make it better, Julia." His voice was barely audible, whispery and thin.

  "No," said Julia, but she didn't move, didn't try to walk away. "No."

  The echoes of Buck's pounding feet were already fading. Thomas' heart continued to beat in hard, near erratic thuds, and he couldn't talk, couldn't move. It was hard to focus on Henry. Hard to make out his features. As if a shadow hung in the air about him, leaching him of color, blurring the edges of his body, making him seem insubstantial, washed out.

  "Julia, please," said Henry. "Let me. Let me show you." He reached a hand toward her as he started to draw close. "There's a dark lake, Julia. There's a dark lake, and it has no end. Julia, please."

  Julia was crying silently, her flashlight shaking in her hands. "Henry," she said, "No."

  Thomas forced himself to walk forward. It was like walking in a dream, moving in a fever haze, through honey. The shadows in the room were all wrong. "Henry," he choked out. "Stop it. Leave her alone."

  Henry reached out to touch Julia, but before he could she suddenly wrenched herself b
ack, paused, poised and trembling, and then turned and ran after Buck, as fleet and silent as a deer slipping away into a forest. Thomas stood still, flashlight trained on his brother, who stopped and watched Julia flee. When she turned the corner and disappeared, he let his hand drop to his side and stood still, his expression one of tortured, mute loss.

  "Henry," whispered Thomas, his voice huge in the darkness, his pulse pounding in his ears. "What's happened to you?" The darkness swallowed his words, absorbed them, and Henry turned away from him, turned toward the darker corners, and began to walk away, toward the stairwell. Thomas stood frozen. He wanted to run after Julia, after Buck, to tear down the corridors and halls and up the stairs and out into the air. To escape the suffocating darkness down here with his brother. He watched Henry reach the top of the steps and begin to descend, and before he knew what he was doing he took a step forward and followed him.

  The stairwell descended sharply, turning at right angles every ten steps. Thomas' flashlight dimmed as he faltered numbly down after Henry, the bright beam growing diffuse and weak till it did little more than make of his brother a silhouette. His heart was still beating loudly in his ears, thudding in his chest, and his breaths came in shallow rasps. Henry ignored him, a shifting shadow he could barely keep up with, an indistinct patch of motile darkness.

  The stairwell gave out into a wide corridor. Darkness was absolute but for Thomas' weak light. Cinderblock walls, a cement floor, hints of yawning shadows on either side that might have been new tunnels or doorways. Henry slipped forward, head bowed. Sweat stung Thomas' eyes, and his feet felt leaden, heavy blocks that caused him to stumble and trip. Somewhere above him were Buck and Julia. His parked car, the streets and lights of Buffalo. It all seemed so impossibly remote. Here there was just a few yards-worth of paltry light, the air choked with dust and dim walls and his brother's form flitting before him. He tried to call out and failed.

  Henry took a turn, and then a second. For a moment Thomas thought he had lost him, began to swing his flashlight erratically in the darkness, but then he caught sight of movement down a side corridor and plunged down it, desperate to not lose his brother, to not be left alone. He broke into a stumbling run, feet kicking through old trash on the floor, and saw his brother's hunched back once again receding rapidly before him.

  "Henry!" he cried, his voice hoarse, ragged. "Henry, stop!" Turns followed turns. Tunnels grew narrow, grew wide, opened up into rooms and then plunged down into sloping passageways or handfuls of steps. It felt as if he had been chasing his brother for hours. He couldn't breathe, his mouth felt caked with dust, he felt sobs rising within his chest and still he tracked Henry; still he followed him.

  Until he turned a corner and came to a dead end. He stood still, wafting his beam of light from side to side, searching for a new tunnel, a side door, something--anything. Cinderblocks faced him, plain and solid and impassable. He stepped forward and reached out to brush his fingertips across the wall.

  "Henry?" His voice didn't echo. It was smothered by the air around him. He turned and walked back around the corner. A long corridor extended into the darkness before him. "Henry?" Thomas was having trouble breathing. He wanted to sit down, to rest for a moment, to lower his head and close his eyes. Where was he? For a second Thomas wondered if he had hallucinated everything, and was only now coming back to his senses after running blindly through this labyrinth by himself.

  He retraced his steps, fighting for calm. Lose control down here and it was over. Had he missed a side passage? Slowly he checked the walls, ignoring the fact that he was lost, that he had no idea as to how to get back to the surface. How extensive were these tunnels? How hard would it be to get out? He pushed his panic down, ran his sleeve over his forehead, and reached the T-junction at which he had turned left mere minutes before.

  Indecisive, Thomas stood still and looked in both directions. He took the other turn, and followed it till he reached another side tunnel. He stopped again. His flashlight glowed ever dimmer, illuminating a mere three yards of space before him, a dull, jaundiced yellow, a sickly lesion of light. If it gave out, he would be down here alone in the dark.

  Turning around, he flashed his light back up the corridor. A sensation of being watched caused goose bumps to rise up the length of his arms and the back of his neck. He wasn't alone. He wasn't alone, and something was watching him and it made him want to scream, to call out, but instead he clamped his jaws tight. If he started, he didn't know if he would be able to stop.

  What was the logical thing to do? What was the logical way to get out of this mess? He pulled out his cell phone and checked his reception: none. Too far underground. If he was gone long enough, Buck and Julia would surely come for him with a rescue team. The thought of remaining down here for days filled him with panic, and he turned abruptly and began to retrace his steps, striding through the darkness, his weak beam of light serving only to emphasize the darkness before him.

  He thought suddenly of Michelle, wished she were here with him, holding his hand. Knew that she would approach this problem with calm and precision. That he would be stronger, braver, in her presence.

  Movement. He froze, straining to see deeper into the shadows before him. Something had drawn back, just beyond the radius of his flashlight, but he could see it, a darker form against the black. His heart began to pound again, a heavy thudding in his chest.

  "Henry?" There was a slight rustling sound, as of cloth moving against itself, and Thomas forced himself to step forward, another, raising his arm and extending the light before him like a weapon.

  A head hung suspended in the air, without body, without any means of support. It was two faced, each face identical, mirror imaged, a beautiful young woman whose features were marked with desolation and sorrow. Black hair hung in dusty wisps and curls, and her eyes were pools of darkness, gazing sightlessly down at the opposite corners of the corridor, both mouths moving slowly as she whispered words to herself.

  Thomas stopped and stared with incomprehension. The faint beam of his light played on her pallid skin, reflecting from both brows, the trails of tears that ran from her ebon eyes, the slope of her cheeks and the groove where her jawlines ran together. It was ghastly, impossible, terrifying, and when the eyes flickered and snapped toward him he nearly screamed, nearly dropped his light from nerveless fingers.

  A stain of darkness poured down through the air from of her head, and it was from this seam that she pulled herself, twin figures diverging from an invisible central mirror that ran down the center of the corridor. The head split apart, shoulders appeared, clothed in shapeless dark fabric, filthy and torn. A faint keening filled the air, the sound of nails breaking as they were torn down the length of a chalkboard. The woman twinned and divided, each self now complete except for where they touched and melded together, crouched and wretched, looking at him and seeing through him. The shadows writhed as if lashed, as if they had become more than an absence of light, a tangible substance tortured by the figure's very presence.

  "Careful," whispered the two women, mouths moving in unison, "They think I'm sleeping." Each moved apart, placing both hands on opposite walls, pressing their cheeks against the cinder blocks, caressing the rough cement with their faces in the manner cats might rub against the leg of a stranger.

  Thomas took a step back, legs stiff, disjointed. He moved his flashlight from one to the other.

  "I'm never going to go back down," said the women, lowering themselves into a low crouch, shoulders now pressed against the walls, moving forward with a susurrus of their ruined clothing. "Not if I can find a crack to crawl into."

  They spoke softly, their voices distant sighs, touched with unmistakable Irish accents. "Why do they hurt me? He tells me he loves me and then leaves me here for Father Timmons to touch."

  Thomas staggered back another couple of steps as they advanced toward him. The bunched folds of the archaic dresses filled the corridor, their hair spider-webbed tangles of knots and dust. Ski
n pulled taut over their skulls, their whispers echoing inside his head.

  "What are you?" asked Thomas, voice choking in his throat.

  "When I was kind I wanted nothing, but now Stephen is running through my halls and I am no longer dead. He tells me it is not his fault, that it is not his time, but there is no safety. Not from Father Timmons, not for Kitty; not on Canal Street nor here."

  They pushed away from the walls, hips merging, arms and legs disappearing into each other. For a moment they formed an impossibly broad single figure, but then they took a further step and blended further so that one woman stood before Thomas, strangely perfect, symmetrical and heinously unnatural. Thomas shook his head and stumbled back further as she moved toward him, picking up speed.

  "Where is he?" her one mouth asked, no longer a sigh, growing sharp as if infused with broken glass and flakes of rust. "Where is Stephen? He loves me. I didn't want to come here. I said no."

  She was rushing toward him now, fracturing apart and then disappearing into herself, so that at moments her face disappeared entirely and only wisps of cloth and hair and two flailing, claw-tipped arms were coming at him. Thomas let out a cry of fear, turned and began to run, the darkness spinning around him as his feet slapped the cement floor, the light so pale as to be but a ghost.

  "Where is he?" cried her voice, tearing through his mind, echoing off the walls. "Where is he?" The need and grief and fury was so intense that it seemed to jelly the darkness, and then there was a rush as something passed through him, past him, a glimpse of a filthy dress, the flash of pale skin receding before him at great speed, and then it was gone.

  Thomas ran. Raw panic seized him, laid claim to his mind and he ran, heedless of where he went. He turned corners and sprinted down tunnels, he burst open half-closed doors and ran across rooms. Tubes and pipes and broken chairs and tunnel mouths and his flashlight beam racing and dancing frenetically before him, his breath ragged and thunderous, his heart pounding, his feet barely touching the crude cement. Occasionally he stopped, panting and bent over, sweat running off his brow and soaking his shirt, a burning sensation rising within his chest as he sobbed for air, and then he would straighten and sense eyes on him, hungry and cold and cruel and childlike, and he would run again, run even as his body burned and begged to stop.