It’s definitely out of place, James thought.
“Keto, what do you make of this?” Anthony asked.
Keto folded his arms and placed a hand on his chin. He stroked its smooth surface, eventually digging his fingers deep into the recesses of his cheeks, creasing his skin into doughy little folds.
“I do not like this,” he said, taking a step back, averting his eyes from the altar. “This is a butsudan. Very common in Japan. It offers a small sanctuary for worship. This is devoted to Amida. Judging by the characters and scrolls, the person who stood here was desperate, if not mad. Parts of the structure are well made, perhaps borrowed, but the rest is haphazard, as if constructed by a child.”
“Is that common in Japan?” James said.
“It’s not unheard of. Most parents have their children partake in some form of ceremony,” Keto said.
“Worshiping the God of Death?” Anthony said.
“No, that would be unlikely. I would estimate that this is the work of a child on his or her own,” Keto said.
James had run with a few goth kids in his teenage years and on a couple occasions had been tempted to throw on white makeup and drab black liner himself, but he’d chosen other ways to defy society—ways that wouldn’t destroy his chances of getting laid by depressed girls. He’d stuck to the regular kind of crazy: daddy issues, societal pressure and the like. He'd maintained friendships with those who had happily joined the ranks of the living dead, however, and with them he’d attended parties where death metal blared in ultraviolet caves fogged with bong vapor. James understood the young and angry, but the tableau before him made his goth friends into purring kittens.
Olivia reached down and picked up the wooden statuette. She turned and bounced it in her hands, then examined it more closely, running a finger over its fine edges and grooves.
“This is remarkably well-crafted,” she said, turning the statue over, her eyes widening as she investigated the base.
“Hey, look at this! The statue has a Japanese character etched into it. It’s rather deep,” Olivia said.
She held the statue like a flashlight and pointed its bottom at the group. Gilded edges outlined an octagonal base, similar to the contour of the butsudan’s cabinet and doors. Keto bent toward it and squinted.
“The inscription says ‘Mother,’” he said.
A chill crawled up James’ spine as a dreary stillness fell upon the group. He looked toward the ceiling—thick wooden rafters ran its length. They disappeared into walls of compacted earth, which enclosed the entire room as if it had been cut into the ground with a monstrous chisel. The walls, far from naked in the dim light, featured intermittently recessed and slatted wood panels that covered their entirety, reminiscent of an Edo period Japanese household.
Olivia seemed as interested in the chamber as James and he watched as she also took in their surroundings, consternation on her face as she tilted her head, scrunched her nose, then turned her ear to the altar. She moved two steps. One more. She crouched, peering beneath the butsudan. He followed her lead and knelt beside her.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Shhh—do you hear that?” Olivia said.
James cocked his head, placing one hand on the ground to steady himself. He couldn’t hear a thing.
“You’re either hearing things or you’re superwoman,” he said.
Olivia ignored his jest and squinted, pursuing the sound. James tried desperately to tune into her phantom noise—he pressed his hand against the floor to lower himself. The floor, coated in a thick mire, deposited filth underneath his nails, which in turn set the hairs on his back to vibrating like nails against a chalkboard or chewing aluminum foil. A tingling in the tips of his fingers wouldn’t quit. It was as if the floor…
That was it—the sensation originated not in his hands but the floor. It vibrated—discreetly, almost imperceptibly.
James asked Olivia for her hand, to which she gave him without apprehension, much to his surprise, and he held it against the floor.
“Feel that?” he said.
“Yes—that’s it! It’s like the thrumming we heard outside,” she said.
There’s more to this altar. James lay on his back and wriggled his way under the cabinet under the butsudan. He choked on a swirl of dust.
“You okay?” Olivia said.
“Yeah, fine,” James said. “Can you grab me one of those candles? It’s dark as hell down here.”
Olivia placed a worn candle into James’ extended hand.
“Thanks,” he said, carefully positioning the candle to provide enough light without setting the underside of the table on fire.
“Well, I’ll be…” he said.
A circular extrusion the size of his palm flickered in the candlelight. It resided center of the table’s belly—and happened to be identical in shape to the statue’s bottom.
“I found something!” he said. “Olivia, can you hand me the statue?”
She did. Feet gathered round the table. Olivia scooted under the table beside him.
“The statue is a key, and I think I just found the lock,” James said. “I’m going to try it.”
The statue’s bottom slid onto the extrusion with ease. James turned it clockwise, and was rewarded with a crick, a creak and a whirring hum.
Nothing happened.
He continued to turn until a loud pop stopped him and the area beneath the altar gave way, dropping Olivia and James into the dark.
7
Theo was a gargoyle perched atop a gothic tower surveying a crumbling city.
“Trevor. Go. Now.”
8
James heard Olivia groan, felt pressure on his chest. His back ached, his breath was ragged. He lay blinded—save for a dim glow some ways away.
“James…?” Olivia said. “James, are you okay? Ugh—my leg.”
James took stock of himself.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said, running his hands over his chest in an attempt to find what was crushing it. It was Olivia—Olivia’s leg.
During their tumble down to God-knows-where, Olivia had somehow straddled James sideways, resulting in an awkward, entangled position. James arched his back, allowing Olivia to free herself.
“Well, that solves that. Where in God’s name are we?” James said, getting to his feet and… “—Ow! What the holy… Careful, the ceiling isn’t more than four or five feet.” He gingerly prodded a lump on the back of his skull.
“We didn’t fall for long. We must be directly beneath the others,” Olivia said. “Actually, I think I can hear them talking above us.”
James stood still and held his breath. Sure enough, a ruckus of muffled sound filtered through the unrelenting head-masher of a ceiling above.
James’ eyes adjusted to the darkness. The room (or rather, the crawlspace) was dark but for a glint of light seeping from the ceiling’s perimeter. James attempted to make his way to the edge, but tripped on a tattered, clackity thing.
“Um, Olivia. I don’t think we’re alone,” James said, fumbling onto his hands and knees.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
His eyes adjusted and confirmed his suspicion: next to James sat a dusty mass of human remains. Its flesh long decayed, its hollowed face stared from a disjointed neck, all bone and jagged—a screaming horror with slacked jaw. He scurried away until his back slammed against a wall.
He looked up. The light entered through grated holes that ran along the ceiling’s outer border.
“Hey! Anyone, can you hear me?” James said.
A shadow filled the holes above him.
“James! Is that you?” Anthony said.
“Yes! We’re okay. Too bad we can’t say the same for someone else we found down here,” James said.
“Do I want to know?” Anthony said.
“Nope. Listen, we’re going to look for a way out. Stay put—cool?” James said.
“Yes, of course. Be careful.”
Ja
mes looked back at the dead body, now accompanied by another hunched-over shape: Olivia had begun examining it.
“This body has been here for a long while,” Olivia said.
“Let’s make sure we don’t end up the same. Can you tell how they died?”
“No, it’s too dark.”
Olivia rummaged through the corpse’s clothing.
“What are you doing? How can you be so…nonchalant?” James said, crinkling his nose.
“Oh hush—it’s just a corpse. It might have something useful on it,” Olivia said.
“Have fun with that,” James said and crawled to where they had fallen.
He prodded the wall and ceiling, finding no apparent seam or indentation, as if the chute they’d fallen through had magically sealed itself.
He swept the floor with his hands, stirring up a cloud of dust that yielded no information. He widened the sweep until his forearm struck an object: the statue. He picked it up—it felt warm. A slight tingle ran through his fingers as he placed it in his pocket.
Odd.
His queries left little to investigate, so James started tapping on the walls, moving along the room’s edge.
“James, I found another card.”
“Nice! Anything else?”
He resumed his fruitless journey around the room.
“Well, I think this was a man, though it’s difficult to say. Both his femurs were shattered. I doubt he could move very far.”
“Lovely.”
He quickened his knocks, performing his best woodpecker imitation. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“What are you doing?” Olivia said.
“Trying to find a way out of here. Whatever we fell through is sealed shut.”
“Let me help, then.”
Olivia crawled to the wall opposite James and reproduced his effort. Tap. Tap. Tap.
They examined both sides of the room until they found themselves almost arm to arm. He looked into her wide eyes—she must have been as anxious as he was to find an exit. Their hands nearly collided as James’ fist knocked against the wall again. This time, instead of the familiar, thick thud, there came a hollow thock.
“What do we have here?” James said.
He knocked again.
An empty echo indicated an open space behind the wall.
They kept tapping, listening like bats, forming in their mind’s eye how large the extent of this new space might be.
“This is wide! It sounds thin… I bet I can kick through—” James said.
Before he could position himself, Olivia’s foot kicked through the wall with a strength that surprised and intimidated him.
This girl—yikes…
She removed her foot and tore away chunks of drywall with her hands. James joined her, and before long, they’d made an opening large enough to squeeze through. James peered into the opening.
“What the hell?” he said. A metal duct ended in a dead end ten or so feet from them. “Are you seeing this?”
Olivia nodded, her face lit by a soft, violet glow.
The rectangular passage reminded James of an air conditioning conduit. This, however, is where the similarity ended. Written in ultraviolet, glowing ink, hundreds of scrawls and symbols covered the duct’s interior. Among them:
BEWARE THE TRICKSTER
KEEP CLOSE THE MATERNAL
THE COUNTERFEIT SURROUNDS
THREE ARE NOW UNITED
EVERYWHERE THEY SEE
SHE LURKS
“This looks like the writings of a mad man,” Olivia said.
“I was thinking the same. I wonder if it was our dead friend over there.”
“I doubt he could have written all of this in his condition. Perhaps this was sealed after he died?”
“Not sure. Regardless, it’s creepy as hell. Let’s get a move on.”
James crawled into the cryptic passage, which permitted ample clearance, and as he proceeded, he felt something that betrayed common sense: a fleeting hope. While his situation was dire, a calm within the storm, a stalwart resolve concentrated deep in his chest that urged him to help not only himself, but those he now found himself with.
Olivia crawled after him, keeping close.
“Hey now, try not to stare too much,” James said.
“James, shut up.”
That was that.
They’d ventured halfway down the conduit, metal creaking under their weight, when the passage began to sway. The rocking cadence increased. James heard Olivia gasp and he torqued his upper body to look back at her, and in doing so, disrupted the pendulum-like swing, which settled with an unnerving groan.
As he watched, an explosive rattle beneath Olivia opened wide a hole that sucked her into an inky void. She vanished.
“Olivia!”
A white-knuckled hand gripped the edge. He reached down to grab Olivia’s forearm, sprawling his legs to anchor himself. The vantage into the bottomless pit overwhelmed him with vertigo.
It did not end.
Olivia swung silent, awestruck—her gaze directed downward.
“I’ve got you!” James said.
She slowly drew her eyes up toward James. They held neither fear nor excitement—only an unfocused dullness.
James struggled to pull her up.
“Your other hand,” James said. “Give it to me!”
Olivia was a limp, swinging thing.
“Olivia!”
Self-preservation registered in her vacant eyes, and she let out a guttural howl then threw her free hand up, snapping it onto James’ arm.
He pulled hard, and after several protracted seconds, Olivia sat inside the conduit, chest heaving.
“There…there’s no bottom…” Olivia said.
“What the hell is this place?”
James bent over Olivia to steal another look into the abyss. A faint light—it looked like miles below—twinkled inside a massive cavern. Perhaps his senses betrayed him, but a presence—or rather, an energy—emanated from the chasm.
Olivia took his hand.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t mention it. You would have done the same, right?” James said with a mild chuckle.
“Let’s get out of here before this falls apart,” she said.
Olivia led, and they synchronized their movements so as to not disturb the conduit. They reached a dead end and found that the path continued above them in an adjacent duct, forcing them into the unknown.
9
“You all are telling me that we have absolutely no signal in the underground compartment of Shrine Room One?” Theo said.
“No sir,” a young officer seated near Susan said. “All feeds are offline.”
“You and I both know. No, all of us—everyone in this entire facility knows that the chances of us losing a feed are nearly nil.
“Can anyone explain this—wait. Forget it, don’t explain it. Each camera costs more than a respectably sized yacht, which must mean either we have the worst luck known to humankind, or someone tampered with the cameras. Pull the logs for the last maintenance check!”
“Already on it,” Susan said.
“Are you Susan? Are you—as you say—already on it?” Theo said, sniffed and wiped away a wet warmth from his nose.
Susan’s shoulders slumped.
“Maintenance logs are clear. Facility 7’s cleaning routine went as planned. All checks were registered by supervising officials. Checking on Shrine Room One… Nothing unusual, standard cleanup. Cameras were in working order at the start of the ritual.”
“Scan the visual logs for Shrine Room One.”
Susan placed the fast-forwarded video on HULK and scrubbed through it until the feed ended. The logs showed none other than the seven participants visiting the room.
“Well this is just fucking unbelievable. I don’t buy it—something’s up,” Theo said.
“Theo, I can’t ignore this,” a voice beside him said.
Theo winced as General Holmes’ words shot through hi
s ears and into a shoulder spasm.
General Holmes continued. “This makes me anxious. Super-814N’s irregular attack pattern and now a broken camera feed. I’m authorizing a security sweep of all Magnus employees related to this project dating back six months. All members of Una Corda are now under my radar… Theo, that includes you.”
I’ve got nothing to hide, you arrogant nimwit.
“Understood, sir,” Theo said.
“Expect intermittent, random interviews, as well as deep personnel interrogations. We’re going to know how and when you wiped your asses while inside these walls.”
Did they install those ass-wiping sensors in the company toilet paper yet?
Theo nodded, cracking his signature fuck you smile and then thought on Trevor, who had been dispatched for specter cleanup.
“General, what is Trevor’s status?” Theo said.
“He’s with Clayton, reviewing the spectral cleanup procedure. He should arrive at Facility 7 within the quarter hour,” Holmes said.
Good.
Trevor worked miracles—he’d get the spectral cleanup job done. Then Theo would have one less worry—one less variable to consider. This ritual showed signs of failure—the worst Una Corda had seen in thirty-seven years. It had latched onto an uncomfortable 91.37% success rate and didn’t have any intention of letting go. A drastic turn needed to take place. Theo’s subconscious churned through scenario upon scenario.
Then an epiphany struck him square in the cerebellum.
“Susan, get Trevor on the line.”
She did.
Theo and Trevor spoke briefly—Theo whispered and avoided the general’s eyes, but Holmes’ arrow gaze fell upon him. Before he could interrupt, Theo ended the conversation and faced the front of the room as if nothing had happened.
“I hope all is in order?” Holmes said.
“All is well, General,” Theo said.
As the doors closed behind General Holmes, Theo let out a tense breath. Game on.
10
Trevor leaned his shoulder well into Clayton’s comfort zone, nearly atop Clayton’s desk, and awaited an answer.
“We ready?” Trevor said.
Rigid silence.
He tapped his fingers and played with Clayton’s fancy staple-less stapler.
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