The Umbral Wake

by Martin Kee

  “This used to be a confessional,” Gary whispered. “Emil says someone tipped him off that we can get to the Bowl from here. You know the Bowl right?”

  Scribble nodded. It was what some people called the massive crater in the center of the city, what was now a manmade lake. Scribble had only seen it from a distance. Most urchins, vagrants and the other dregs of the city weren’t allowed near the memorial. To do so invited a swift intervention from the local police.

  “You shut up back there,” Emil hissed. “I don’t know if this is even going to work, and we might not be able to get the masks.”

  “What masks?” asked Jimbo.

  “There’s dust… or gas, or something,” said Emil. “Something in the air. You can’t breathe it or you die. It gets into your lungs and makes you cough ‘til your lungs come up.”

  “That won’t protect you from rogue energies,” Gary muttered.

  “What’s that?” Emil asked, irritation growing in his voice.

  “It’s just what my dad used to call it. Rogue energies, you can’t see it, but it makes you sick if you are around it for a long time.”

  Emil narrowed his eyes. “You’re talking about the curse?”

  “It’s not a curse,” said Gary. “It’s just energy. Raid-a-shun… or something. It makes you sick.”

  “Well, that’s why we ain’t gonna be there long then,” Emil said, turning and lifting the board out of the way. Scribble could see the hesitation in Gary’s face. None of them wanted to get on Emil’s bad side.

  The interior of the Confessional was a dark burnt-out hollow, any religious artifacts removed by the fleeing priests or looted by rioters over a year ago. The wooden arches that once lined the ceiling above the tiny altar were now black and charred. The throne where the confessor would sit had been overturned, the back torn away exposing wires and cables.

  “That’s a good sign,” Emil said. “Gary, see how much copper you can get from that.”

  Gary stayed behind and began tugging at the wires while they followed Emil deeper into the room. There was a door in the back, covered by an ornate wooden façade. Scribble could see that once opened, the door was actually metal but painted white. Emil waited there a moment for Gary to join them before they followed him into a darkened corridor.

  “Get your crank torches out,” he said. “If you get lost we ain’t coming back for you.”

  Scribble fished inside his pack until he felt the cold brass cylinder with a handle along one side. Winding it charged the chemical cell, and the crystal bulb on one end lit the floor ahead in dull amber. He wound the crank a few times and watched with mild fascination as the bulb grew brighter, revealing the space in front of him. The corridor was littered with waterlogged papers, ruined from the seawater that dripped in from shattered windows and cracked walls. Scribble wondered how many people worked in here, had died in here, how many had been pulled screaming from these rooms to be murdered by mobs. They trespassed in a land of ghosts, the tattered remains of a rejected ideology, rotting beneath a slow drip of saline.

  At the end of the passageway, they came to a cabinet along the wall, where inside, strange looking helmets hung on racks. Emil smashed the glass along the front then grabbed the helmets, tossing one to each boy. Scribble looked at his, a dirty lump of thick fabric that trailed a pair of rubbery hoses. A clear window ran along the front, framed by rivets.

  “Don’t put these on until we get closer,” Emil said. “Unless you like breathing through a sheet.”

  They stuffed the helmets into their satchels and continued down a circular flight of endless metal stairs. Beyond their beams, the stairway seemed to vanish into nothingness, and it was a surprise when they reached the bottom, their feet clanging on a metal grate. Darkness stretched before them, the torchlight ending in a black abyss. They walked single file, surrounded by echoes of dripping water and the scratching of rats along pipes.

  “This is the old town,” whispered Gary from behind him. “I never thought I’d be down here. Must’ve gotten some kinda good lead to search in the Bowl.”

  “I have my sources,” said Emil. “This is a special assignment. So keep that in mind when you think you might try and pull anything sneaky.”

  The walkway ended at a landing that had collapsed from disuse. It tilted at an angle and the boys scrambled down, landing in running water. Gary swore and Emil laughed at him.

  “You afraid of a little water?”

  “No way brah,” he said, joking in pigeon. “I like da fishies more dan a waters. Fish for eatin not joinin.”

  “Be careful ya don getta fish in ya pants. Climb right uppa yo tube eh?”

  More nervous laughter as they descended along the corridor, wading through water and thick sludge. The amber beams from their torches painted the rust and filth ahead of them, playing along the metal and moist brick.

  “This used to be a supply line back before the Cataclysm,” said Emil. “Nobody knows it’s here and they killed most anyone who would admit to working down here.”

  “When the Cataclysm happened, lots of people died,” Gary said from behind him. “I don’t think they like to be reminded of just how bad it was before.”

  Scribble knew the Cataclysm was bad. He had seen it from a hillside. It was amazing anything was left at all. He turned to face Gary. He put one hand on his torch and then pulled it away, spreading his fingers, a pantomime of an explosion.

  “Yeah, you saw it?”

  Scribble nodded.

  “My dad worked at the lab,” Gary said. “And when he died inside, my mom went crazy and threw herself into the Bowl. That was before it filled with water. She fell really far. They say the air down there will kill you as soon as you breathe it. That’s why we are wearing these masks when we get there.”

  “There better be something worth our time,” said Jimbo from up ahead.

  “It’ll be worth your time I promise,” said Emil. “A little birdy told me that there’s still parts of the lab that aren’t damaged. You can just walk in and take whatever you want.”

  “I thought it was picked clean,” said Gary.

  “It was… that part. I know of another hatchway. One that ain’t been opened yet.”

  “Last time was about a year ago. Emil came back from there with a huge haul, stuff we never seen before. It’s one of the reasons we got the best hideouts in the city. No other gang can afford to live like we do. And it’s because of Emil… and Hetch of course.”

  Warm air spilled from pipes, and water swirled around his feet as they moved closer to the heart of the city, his own heart racing in his chest.

  The path ended at a massive rectangular door, its edges rounded, at its center a metal wheel so wide it looked as though it would take all four of them to make it move an inch. To the right of the wheel rested a small window with ten tumblers inside, each with a random number. Scribble recognized the symbols.

  Emil told them to stop. He pulled out the bundle of a helmet and placed it over his head. The other three did the same.

  They looked at each other, their eyes the only thing visible through the dirty glass visors. A black rubber mouthpiece covered their noses and mouths—Scribble thought it smelled like age, dark dusty warehouses filled with decay. The hoses dragged behind him as he moved away from the floor. They sounded like snakes.

  Emil spoke, his voice muffled. “Stand back a ways.”

  They didn’t hesitate. The four of them backed up until their helmets touched the pipes on the opposite walls. Emil pulled a slip of paper from his pocket.

  “Gary, you know numbers.”

  Gary nodded.

  “Come here.”

  He handed it to the boy. Gary stared at the paper, reading from it as he dialed in a combination, pressing a thick button below each digit until it reached the symbol he wanted. A heavy clunk sounded from deep in the walls, so deep they could feel it in their chests. Emil pulled from his backpack a long steal crowbar. He wedged it into the spokes of the wheel
and paused. If Scribble didn’t know any better he would have thought that Emil was scared.

  Taking a deep breath, the boy lifted himself over the horizontal crowbar, exerting all his weight onto it. They waited a few minutes, but nothing happened. After a moment he turned to face Gary.

  “See if you can do it,” he said. “You’re bigger than me.”

  “We wanna open it not break it,” said Jimbo. He snickered, but nobody joined him. Each of them felt the walls pressing in from all sides, knew why they were wearing the masks. Everyone had seen the effects of the rogue energy, the babies born without heads, men and women with burns on their faces, the beggars on the streets with feet the size of watermelons.

  Gary approached the bar and placed his hands on it, testing its strength.

  “Just lift yourself over it,” said Emil. “Let gravity do the rest.”

  Gary lifted himself over the bar until his chest rested on the beam, he bounced once, twice and then fell to the ground, the bar clanging to the tile. There was a grinding creak of metal as white fog sprayed from all edges of the doorway. Scribble fought the urge to run, but saw Gary get to his feet amidst the cloud as it pooled on the floor.

  “I’m okay,” he said as Scribble rushed to offer a hand. “The masks really work or I guess we’d be dead by now.”

  “Wait a minute before you go in,” said Emil. “Give it time to thin out.”

  They all stood in an arc watching the gas escape from the tomb. It drifted along the ground and curled around pipes and rails. Rats sprung from between pipes, scattering away from the noxious gas. One already lay dead along the metal grating, a single leg running in slow motion before falling still.

  “Check it out Jimbo,” said Emil.

  Through the helmet Scribble could see the boy’s head snap to glare at Emil.

  “Why me?” Jimbo said.

  “Because I told you to,” Emil said. His gaze was fixed on the massive steel door. “Just peek in and make sure it’s safe.”

  “You go,” said Jimbo.

  “Everyone plays a part,” said Emil. “I give the orders, Gary helped open the door. You go in and see if it’s safe.”

  “That’s bullshit,” said Jimbo. “Why not send him?” He pointed at Scribble, his finger shaking.

  Emil let loose a faint sigh that sounded hollow through his helmet. “Fine. Send in the chimp.”

  There was no victory in Jimbo’s eyes as he looked at Scribble, only relief. “Well, get in there.”

  “I’ll go,” said Gary.

  “Nope, you did your part,” said Emil. “And you can carry more than he can. If the chimp dies, we’ll know it’s bad.”

  A canary in a coal mine, a canary that can’t sing, thought Scribble. He held up a hand to Gary as if to say It’s all right, before stepping up to the monolithic door.

  The surface felt rough, the paint bubbling up from the metal, making him think of old rusted ship hulls. How old was this place really, he wondered. He took another glance over his shoulder, past the boys and down the hallway. That corridor went on forever it seemed, winding down through the bowels of the city. How many layers were there? How many centuries of city-on-top-of-city were stacked and rotting down here, compressed in geological slabs?

  “Don’t have all day,” Emil said.

  Scribble nodded then gripped the cold damp wheel, pulling it. The door slid open with such ease it may as well have been new. The exposed doorframe gleamed with the timeless sheen of freshly polished metal. He continued to pull, feeling the momentum build, the heavy door swinging on its own. He released it and all four boys watched as it hit the wall with a dull metal thud. The inside surface of the door was charred with black carbon scoring. Hanging from the inside metal wheel was a severed hand, shriveled and leathered from age.

  Blackness gaped at him from beyond the doorway as he took his torch, wound it up, and aimed it into the room. A face stared back at them, still reaching for the wheel with a truncated stump, a leathered casing around white bone. The man did not move or fall. He had mummified in that grasping position, his last act to seal the door perhaps. Or maybe he was trying to escape.

  They all stared at the body before Scribble got up the courage to step around it. A white lab coat lay draped over the man like a burial shroud. A tinkerer’s tool belt hung around his emaciated waist. The man’s other hand had curled into a claw, the yellow nails long and sharp. Scribble expected that claw to shoot out, grabbing his ankle as he passed. But the man did not move; his leathered face only stared with shriveled brown eyes as the boy moved beyond the doorway and into the darkness.

  “What do you see?” asked Emil.

  “Like he’d say anything,” laughed Jimbo.

  The amber light from Scribble’s torch revealed more bodies, some in pieces, some hollowed out. They lay in a pile against the door at the far wall, their shriveled hands still pressed against it to ward off unseen horrors from the other side.

  A second and third beam of light joined his, traveling over the tinkerers’ bodies, their empty eyes, their withered limbs, their mouths open in silent screams for help.

  “We’ll need to clear these bodies,” said Emil. “Grab their clothes and pull.”

  They slid the bodies away from the door, leaving them in stiffened disarray against the far wall, against the tables and cabinets in the room. Papers littered the tile floor, many of them charred or burned.

  Emil opened the next door, then the next, until they found themselves in a hallway, the walls and floor shattered. Doors lined the wall, each of them with identical silver handles. Thicker doors stood open outside these doors.

  “This place is nothing but doors,” Jimbo said.

  “They’re fire doors,” Gary muttered. “They close to keep the fire from spreading.”

  “Spread out,” said Emil. “Pick a door and report back.”

  Scribble moved down the corridor, away from the other boys. It was clear they each had already chosen the closest door. Scribble didn’t want to get into the tangle when they all rushed out. None of them wanted to be here very long at all.

  There were more bodies, some of them with limbs sheered off. Others melded with the floor and walls as though something had partially dragged them into the solid matter. He also walked past inexplicable black patches, charred and melted metal.

  Scribble wondered which one might have been Gary’s father.

  He reached the final door and pushed it open, finding resistance on the other side. He could feel objects scraping along the tile as the door opened. As his entrance widened, so did Scribble’s eyes, the beam of his torch glinting off piles of treasure.

  It was a storage room, a small warehouse with racks and racks of gear, instruments, parts, and trinkets, though the shelves were empty. Every item lay in a pile that stretched along the far wall. To Scribble, it looked as if a giant had taken the room and tilted it on its side for a moment.

  A man stood at one end of the room. As Scribble’s torch beam traveled over the man, it was clear that he was not alive, or not anymore. But something was off. The man stood stiffly, leaning against the opposite wall, its arms rigid like a mannequin’s. Its face was a leather mask that tapered into a long beak at the front, centered below two circular glass lenses. Scribble was almost afraid to approach him.

  But there was a lot of treasure, the biggest haul he could imagine.

  Holding the torch in his mouth, he dove at the items on the floor, ignoring the beaked man and sorting with agile fingers. Below the top layer, he began finding polished brass and pristine glass baubles, gems sheltered from the explosions and the elements for months. A few handfuls could feed him for a year. He was so busy trying to stuff only the best items into his bag he never heard the footsteps approaching from behind him.

  “That’s a good haul,” came a voice, too low to be heard by the other boys.

  Scribble felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. He turned to see Jimbo standing over him, his strangely average features im
possible to read from behind his breather mask. Scribble could only stare at the boy now blocking his only exit.

  “I got a bum room,” said Jimbo, shrugging. “Looks like the floor fell away and anything good went with it. Lost my pack too, can you believe it? Fell right through the floor. I only found this.” He held up his hand so that Scribble could see the gun. “I’ve got no idea if it works or not.’

  He hefted it in his hand, enjoying the way Scribble’s eyes followed it.

  “But considering the way everything else in here is pretty well preserved, I’m willing to bet it does. It certainly worked for the guy who used it to blow the back of his head off.” He smiled. “You wanna see if it works?”

  Scribble shook his head, feeling short of breath as his cheeks brushed the mask. It was warmer now inside his helmet, the air growing sticky, toxic—or was that just his imagination? The gun barrel continued to stare down at him, held perfectly still in Jimbo’s hand.

  “That bag looks heavy,” said Jimbo. “If you want I can carry it for you.”

  He studied Scribble’s eyes as the boy looked at the gun, then down at his backpack. There was really no debate about it. Scribble let his hands drop to his knees, his head slumped forward as Jimbo swept it up, slinging it over a shoulder.

  There was more than enough for both of them, Scribble thought as he looked around the room. He could still grab some more items and not return to Hetch empty-handed. There was probably even another rucksack buried in here somewhere.

  “Let’s go,” Emil’s voice drifted from down the hall. “I’m sealing the door in a minute. I am not kidding. If you aren’t at the door when it’s closed, you’d better get used to breathing through a mask for the rest of your short sorry life.”

  Jimbo looked down at him and gave Scribble a piteous smile. “You’d better hurry up with that haul. Don’t want to keep Emil waiting.”

  He backed out of the room with Scribble’s backpack, closing the door in front of him. There was a second clunk, the fire door closing. Scribble’s torch dimmed and he took it from his mouth, winding it frantically. As the beam illuminated the items before him, he heard Jimbo’s voice echo through the hallway, now fainter than before.