The Abyss Above Us 2

by Ryan Notch

  The perfect clothes line smash, Collin’s head stopped as his lower body kept moving. He flipped far enough to land hard on his shoulders and skid. He twitched weakly, but couldn’t get up. He seemed to be having trouble breathing.

  Jack’s smile was a cross between giddy surprise and sinister intent. He lifted the bat for a second shot.

  Shaw’s plan had worked, at least in the short term. He’d lost the marionette, and rather than confront the two people waiting for him in the tunnel, he had out maneuvered them and dodged down another direction. They hadn’t looked like more marionette monsters, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Especially considering a third was now chasing him.

  Fucking cultists, he thought. I knew this was a trap. Probably want to sacrifice me or something.

  The one following him was really no faster than he was, running bent over in the low tunnels wasn’t much of a fast affair anyway. But he was already tired, and even to save his life he couldn’t run much longer. Direct escape just wasn’t an option. Even if he did find a manhole, which he figured he would have to pretty soon, it would take him a while to get it open. No, he had to hide.

  After only a short time he saw his chance. He was around a curve where the person chasing him couldn’t see him, and was approaching a T-intersection. He’d noticed as he ran that there would be occasionally much smaller concrete pipes leading off from the main ones, probably to channel water from drains somewhere up above. There was one right before the intersection, only a couple feet wide but...

  He ran to the intersection and with all his strength threw his flashlight (unfortunately along with the rest of his key chain) down the tunnel to the left. Then ran the few steps back and climbed headfirst into the tiny pipe, squirming and shoving himself in so quick he tore at the skin on his arms and knees. He was only in a couple feet, not nearly as far as he would have liked, when he forced himself to freeze and lie still. The footsteps were coming close now.

  He couldn’t see behind him, not even a little. His own body filled the tunnel and blocked off his view. Was he hidden, or just an obvious sitting duck?

  Come on you dumb motherfucker, he thought desperately. Don’t over think it, just fall for it.

  The footsteps ran up and stopped, just what he didn’t want them to do. He heard their careful tread down the tunnel, likely towards the flashlight. It must have looked suspicious just laying there, not really that far down the tunnel. There was a horrible quiet, a moment of indecision.

  Then the footsteps running back, right towards him!

  Shaw tensed in fear, determined to try and kick his way free if it came to that. But no, the echoes lead him wrong. The footsteps went down the other fork. As Shaw had hoped, the man had assumed Shaw had thrown his light one way and ran blindly in the other.

  He waited only a few moments before edging himself back out of the claustrophobic space. It was pitch dark. He looked for his light, but the man had taken it. He was working blind. This wasn’t completely untenable, he had some little glow from the screen of his PDA. But he’d be moving slow and that battery was real limited. Still, even if it died, he’d be able to feel ladder rungs on the wall if he got to a manhole cover.

  So if being lost forever in the dark wasn’t a real fear, that still left him with two. The first was the fear of seeing another flashlight. The second was the sounds of something scraping and stumbling around in the dark that didn’t need a flashlight.

  Jack’s beatings on Collin hadn’t been meant to kill him. He didn’t really think he was above it, but was afraid if he got too rough Terra would stop him. No, he only wanted to tenderize him a bit before asking a few questions.

  He dropped the bat and lifted Collin up by his collar, slamming him against the wall. Causing another series of wheezing breaths from him.

  “Jack,” said Collin through the blood pouring freely down his nose over his mouth. “If you’ve got a complaint, I wish you’d just say so. There’s no need to get rough.”

  With this Collin grinned a smug little grin that made Jack see red. He pounded a fist into Collin’s gut so hard he almost lost his own balance in the process.

  “I’ve heard a lot about English manners,” Collin managed to cough out. “But I’ve got to say, I’m just not seeing it.”

  “Hand me your knife,” Jack said to Terra, reaching out towards her.

  “There’s no point,” she said, looking at Collin and shaking her head. Jack looked too and saw she was right, Collin wasn’t scared at all. In the beam of the flashlight his eyes glittered wildly. He just wasn’t all there.

  “Why did you do this to us, Collin?” Terra asked. “Why did you poison the water?”

  “I didn’t poison the water,” said Collin, looking hurt at the accusation. “It’s not poisoned.”

  “The fuck it’s not Collin,” yelled Jack. He shoved his forearm deeper into Collin’s throat. “We saw those tentacles in the pipes. We saw the things people turned into. The only reason we’re not one of them is because we had our own water supply.”

  A look of confusion on Collin’s face was slowly replaced with a smile of understanding. He rolled his eyes a bit and shook his head.

  “Oh yeah, she works at Deep Rock, right? OK, I get it. But no, Jack, you’ve got it wrong. I’ve been drinking that water the whole time. So has Seth, Noel...No Jack it wasn’t that. That sound I broadcast over the intercoms, it acted like a beacon for the Dark God. A three dimensional set of coordinates for it to zero in on. It centered itself on the Brownstone, focused Its attention on us. Spending time inside It...well it changes people Jack. Some more than others. I mean just the sound is enough to get into people’s heads, but actually being inside it...

  “Well It’s just incompatible mathematics. What It’s made of does terrible things to what we’re made off...”

  Collin trailed off, looking down as if he was thinking of something far away.

  “So why not us, Collin,” Jack asked. “I get why you might protect Noel and your bulldog Seth, but why us?”

  “Oh, well I didn’t really,” Collin said, looking distracted. “Maybe those people that changed were like me. Maybe they wanted something, needed something, and believed It might give it to them somehow. And I guess It did in Its way. Maybe you had everything you wanted.”

  Collin looked up at Jack with new attention, a smile on his face.

  “Or maybe you’re just a nihilist, Jack. I mean, what the fuck do you want anyway?”

  Jack was at a loss for an answer. Escaping the brownstone had been his first truly driving force in a long time, though he’d never really thought of himself that way.

  “Why Collin?” asked Terra, her voice holding back tears. “Why would you do this to us. We were your friends, weren’t we?”

  Collin looked shocked and saddened at this, shaking his head. “I didn’t do this. I mean, I didn’t mean to do it. I thought it would help somehow, help if you could all talk to it like I could. It made things so much better for me, I thought it could help everyone. And I was Its emissary, the only one who could understand It enough to bring It to people.

  “But I guess maybe I wanted to hurt people too, because it was so unfair for everyone to be happy while I was so miserable. I don’t really know, I can’t really understand the things I do anymore. By the time I realized how things were getting, it was too late...

  “You see, It owns me, Terra. It owns me every bit as much as Noel did. It filled up the space that was left when it took her from my head...”

  Collin’s expression changed imperceptibly from sad to something else. Something sinister. His blood covered teeth shined darkly in the dim light, and it almost seemed like his eyes themselves grew darker. Jack felt a chill as Collin turned his gaze back to him.

  “But I didn’t do it to just you. The Brownstone was first Jack, because it was at the center of the thing. The center of Its attention. But our new God is immense. The whole continent is inside it! And once the Brownstone portal is open, once
It comes through, we’ll truly be able to see what thing now re-makes us in Its image.”

  Jack backed away from Collin in horror. Without his support Collin slid to the floor, still staring up at Jack. The three stood silent for a moment, silent enough to hear the sound of footsteps coming.

  Shaw, he had to admit, had not been paying much attention. He had been walking more or less on autopilot through the tunnels, mostly concentrating on his PDA and trying to get a signal. He figured it didn’t much matter which way he went. Not knowing where he was, all paths were equally likely to lead to a manhole. He finally did manage to get one bar of a signal, and it was at the moment he looked up and realized he was walking right towards three people. A man and a woman standing over someone. In fact he thought he might be in the exact tunnel from earlier, he’d gone in a circle. And that man on the floor with the bloody nose, did he recognize him?

  “CollinAlthaus?”

  Jack didn’t know what to make of this guy, who seemed for all the world to be trying to get a cell phone signal down in the sewers. He didn’t look like much in a fight, even if there wasn’t much fight left in Jack. He pulled his own flashlight out and pointed it at the man.

  But the man wasn’t alone, there was something behind him...

  “Oh no,” murmured Terra.

  The person moving up behind the man, it was Seth. He had his flashlight off but in hand. A big black metal one, like the type security guards carried.

  Why doesn’t he turn on his light, wondered Jack. We already see him...unless he’s not sneaking up on us...

  “Noooo!” Collin screamed. But it was too late. Looking for all the world like an ogre swinging a club, Seth brought the flashlight crashing down on the poor man’s skull. The crunch of it echoed down the tunnel as the stranger collapsed lifeless to the ground.

  The whole of them were dead silent. Seth looking down with his seething empty eyes on his handiwork. Jack, Terra, and Collin all looking with horror at the same scene.

  Jack had nothing but questions, and nothing but the sound of stale air to answer them.

  And then the beeping started. The four of them jumped, startled by it. It was coming from the cell phone, still clutched and glowing in the fallen dead man’s hand. Seth stared down at it for a moment, then put his hands to his ears and began screaming.

  Collin’s screaming began a moment later, his hands likewise to his ears. He writhed on the ground, in obvious pain.

  “Stop what?!” he asked to no one Jack could see. “What do you want me to stop?!”

  Seth fell to his knees and tried reaching for the cell phone, still beeping loudly. But he was having trouble, his body wracked with seizures. He fell to his side, trying to crawl towards it. Jack didn’t understand what was happening, but knew he didn’t want Seth to get what he was after. He ran over to the phone and picked it up, out of Seth’s reach.

  Not a phone, he saw, but a PDA. Its screen just showed the word “Complete” and a series of meters which seemed to all be in the green. Seth was now spasming violently, a black ooze coming from his ears.

  In his head Jack thought he heard a faint noise, far away and getting farther. A second skin being pulled away from him. He looked up at Terra, and saw her own confusion. He opened his mouth to say something to her, and then it hit.

  BOOOOM!

  A deafening thud, as much felt as heard, rocked the walls.

  Oh my God, Jack thought. The gas leak. We’re still below the Brownstone...

  The roof began to collapse.

  Chapter 39

  ********************

  Shaw swam up through a haze of pain and confusion to consciousness. He was surrounded by white, and thought for a moment he might be waking up to death and whatever that might entail. But as his eyes adjusted he realized that he was not in the afterlife, but in a hospital room.

  He tried to sit up, but was immediately so dizzy from the effort that he lay back down. He put his fingers to his head and felt the thick bandages there. His skull was cracked, there was no doubt about that. But he couldn’t remember how it had happened. By instinct he reached for the PDA at his belt, only to find there was only hospital gown instead. He knew he had to check something urgently, but couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The whole situation was really uncomfortable, not just mentally but physically. His head didn’t just hurt, it itched like crazy. He reached up to scratch under the bandages and realized it had been shaved. On top of that his back hurt from lying still for so long and down below there was an awkward pain he had a bad feeling was a catheter. Another pain proved to be an IV in his arm and perhaps worst of all there was a fold of blanket awkwardly jabbed under his side. When he went to remove it he found he couldn’t, his hand was trapped.

  Not only trapped, handcuffed. Handcuffed to one of the metal guards on the side of the bed. He began to feel a bit panicked and tried to force himself to relax and think.

  He looked around the room to better get his bearings. To his right was another bed with another man in it. He looked like he’d been in a car accident, or some other such abuse. Despite this he seemed to be in good spirits, talking with a British accent to a woman who sat by the side of his bed. She looked like she was in the accident with him, with him definitely getting the worst of it. She was smiling at him and holding his hand. A real pretty smile. The kind of smile that made her plain features almost beautiful. She just looked so happy to see him, like he was the only person in the world. Despite how beat up the guy looked, Shaw found himself feeling a bit jealous. Not many guys got to have a girl look at them like that. Judging by the guys expression, he seemed to be pretty fond of her as well. Shaw surprised himself by sighing.

  The two heard him and looked over back at him.

  “Morning,” said the British one. “Nice to see you awake.”

  “We were kind of worried,” said the woman. “You’ve been unconscious since we dragged you out of the sewers two days ago. The doctors didn’t know if you’d wake up. How do you feel?”

  Shaw thought for a moment at this, trying to deliver the most useful answer.

  “Thirsty,” he replied. The British man laughed strangely at this, but the woman brought over a cup of water. Shaw took a welcome drink.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Ummm, if you don’t mind my asking. How did you get into the sewers?”

  “And why did the police handcuff you to the bed,” added the man. The woman flashed him a mind your own business look.

  Sewers! thought Shaw. Is that where I was? The marionette creature was leading me somewhere...The PDA, I’ve got to check the program...

  Only he didn’t. He thought about his sleep, how the dreams were gone. Even awake he could feel It was gone. Like a sensation you didn’t know was there until it wasn’t anymore. He looked down at the shadow of his hand, barely perceptible in the florescent lights. Just like it should be. The program had worked, the Dark God had fled the world rather than be trapped in the web Shaw had cast over it.

  He saw they were still waiting on an answer, and decided how much of the truth would do.

  “I don’t remember why I was in the sewers. And the police handcuffed me to the bed because I’m the sole survivor of both the Meresin mass suicide and the Saint Severinus asylum disaster. And to them that means I’m likely the cause.”

  And maybe I am, he thought.

  “Well I don’t think so,” said the British man. “You seem like a pretty good guy to me.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Shaw, genuinely curious.

  “Because a couple of real pricks I used to know seemed to hate you, which speaks pretty highly of your character.”

  Shaw laughed at this, though he didn’t fully understand it.

  “In the tunnels you seemed to know one of them. CollinAlthaus?” asked the woman.

  “Althaus...yeah, kind of. Used to?”

  “He’s dead,” replied the British man. “Killed in the cave in.”

  “H
uh,” replied Shaw.

  Grim news, but he couldn’t help but feel elated. Collin was the only person who would have had the knowledge to let the Dark God back in. So it was done, all of it. The horrors he himself had set in motion were at an end.

  He smiled at the thought of it, happy for the first time in a long time. He wasn’t exactly free, but he was alive. They’d probably take him back to a mental institution, but hell, it wasn’t a bad place to rest for a while.

  Chapter 40

  ********************

  Collin awoke in the pitch black of the sewers after he didn’t know how long. He felt hurt and nauseous and he mouth was caked with blood and concrete powder. He reached for the light button on his watch, only to find by touch that whole thing was cracked and broken.

  He forced himself into a sitting position, scraping up his hands on the sharp rubble he felt all around him. This brought about a coughing fit. A dry choking cough that made a rattling sound in his chest. He hacked up mucus and dust and spit it onto the ground. He felt awful. Scared and lonely and empty.

  He felt like he should be thinking something, but he couldn’t think it. Feeling something he couldn’t feel. There was a hollow part in his brain. A part that had been filled with Noel then the Dark God and now nothing. He felt the absence almost physically, like stepping off the bottom stair only to find you were wrong and had missed one. Or putting you tongue in a gap where a tooth used to be.

  “Seth,” he called to the darkness. He was worried at the weak and trembling sound of his own voice. He felt around for his flashlight, but only found rubble everywhere.

  “Jack? Terra?” he said.

  Nothing, emptiness and silence all around.

  He forced himself to his feet, wincing painfully at what felt like terrible bruises along his back. He started walking in a direction he picked at random, using the wall for support.

  After a while he started to feel a little better. After all he was free. Even if he’d had to go through hell to get there, he was his own man again. He was his own man, free to make his own decisions unencumbered. Free to once again use his mind to reason out the wonders of the universe, instead of as a device to torment himself and others.