The Eaton

by John K. Addis

  “We have to go forward,” argued Sam.

  “No, we have to get out of here,” Sarah countered.

  “That's what I'm trying to do. The stairs stop and the elevator's inoperative. This tunnel has to go somewhere. There might be ladders up to old manhole covers, or maybe even into another building's basement.”

  Sarah hesitated, but agreed with his logic and stepped down to join him. Respecting her leadership, Al and Janet followed, but Vaughn stayed put on the platform, close to the door. “Someone should stay here, just in case,” he said. He didn't say in case of what.

  “Alright,” Sam agreed. “We'll shout back to you if we find an exit.”

  “Just don't take off again,” demanded Sarah.

  The four slowly made their way into the tunnel. When they were twenty yards in, Sam observed two more flood lamps, which he turned on to illuminate the deeper passage. The soft electrical hum of the lamps made Sam uneasy, and he looked back behind him to see the train lobby and train car. Given the necessity of a tight space to make the pneumatic system function, there was no margin for error that could fit, say, a person stuck on the track. If the pneumatic system was activated, and the train car decided to move forward, there was nowhere to escape. Janet must have been thinking the same thing, for her pace slowed, as if considering making a run for it in reverse. But soon they had reached an unfinished portion of the tunnel, without the tight arched brickwork encasing them, exposing rough wood beams and the clay of the earth. A few yards further, the cave widened a bit, and the tension eased.

  There hadn't yet been any evidence of an exit, but there was something peculiar. Before them, the cave narrowed considerably, revealing an entrance to a smaller, natural tunnel lined in hard stone and clay. Another flood lamp was pointed toward this tunnel, and so Sam flipped it on to see what the builders of The Eaton had been looking at. At first, Sam saw nothing unusual, but as his eyes adjusted, there was indeed something special about this underground passage. The natural stone walls had dozens of detailed carvings which looked to Sam like the primitive drawings on Egyptian tombs. On the ground beneath the pictures were pieces of paper and a few primitive-looking pencils, as if a school group had been making impressions of the carvings and taking notes on them.

  “Hieroglyphics?” Sam pondered aloud.

  “Close,” answered Al. “They're petroglyphs. Native American. They’re a lot more common in the Southwest, where it’s drier so the preservation is better. But they’re not unheard of in the Midwest. Sanilac Park’s just up in the thumb, and their carvings were famous even when I was a kid.”

  “We took a school trip there once,” Sarah recalled. “There were birds and swirls and doodles, right? I remember thinking I was a better artist than they were.”

  “To be fair,” said Al with a smirk, “those artists had to etch their doodles into sandstone, using sharp tools and incredible patience. They didn’t have a 64-pack of brightly colored crayons.”

  Sam peered over the carved symbols. “Will we be able to translate it?”

  “It’s not like that,” replied Al. “It isn’t like hieroglyphics. Petroglyphs are just pictures, not language. Whatever they depict, that’s all there is.”

  What the carvings were trying to convey wasn’t clear, but the story did not seem a happy one. Nearest the entrance to the discovered tunnel were crude stick figure drawings of people lying on the ground, and deeper into the cave revealed figures running with their hands up in the air. It seemed to Sam that these images were meant to denote the passage of time as you traveled out from the cave, not inward, and so the people had been running in panic, then ended up dead. As one ventured further into the narrow passageway, the images became less coherent, and several depicted beings in transition from one animal shape to another, such as a snake into a bird.

  Near the end of the tunnel, the cave walls opened up somewhat, revealing a larger room containing a boulder nearly seven feet high and five feet across. The boulder itself had carvings on its surface that seemed to lack defined shapes at all, each one resembling a crude ink blot, with no two shapes alike. On the walls to the left and right of the boulder there were more carvings of animal transitions, only this time, the shape nearest the boulder was always an amorphous blob, while the shapes beside it seemed to evolve the blobs into figures of animals and people.

  “Sam, look there, on the ground.” Al pointed to white scrapes in the stone floor to the left of the boulder, which seemed to have been caused by the boulder being pushed or dragged several feet from its current position. As the floodlight angle and distance was no longer ideal this far in, it took a moment for Sam to realize that the boulder had once been sitting in front of yet another tunnel offshoot.

  Sam removed his phone from his pocket, activated the flashlight app, and peered into the new passage. What the boulder had been blocking wasn’t another hallway, but a small room, closed on all sides, maybe thirty square feet in all. A musky mushroom smell emanated from the space, and Sam thought the far side of the dank cell was wet. He peered closer, allowing his eyes to adjust, and realized there was a small, waist-high flow of water running along the rock wall, a sort of underground spring. It was scarcely more than a trickle, but it was there, and from the look of the erosion on the wall around it, it had been trickling that way for centuries. Other than that, the room was empty—not even a single wall carving. What, then, had the boulder been covering up?

  Sam turned off the phone light and turned to face his friends in the room. “Nothing in there,” he explained with a shrug. “It’s not another tunnel, it’s just a small room.”

  Sarah wasn’t paying attention. Her fingers were caressing one of the carvings of a person who seemed to have emerged from another of the blob shapes. She wasn’t sure what connection her mind was trying to make, and then, in an instant, she was. Sarah gasped, snatching her hand away from the carving as if it were hot to the touch, and shot a look of sheer terror in Sam’s direction.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “Oh shit.” She closed her eyes and began shaking her head emphatically, as if trying to scare off a swarm of insects.

  Sam sprinted toward her and grasped her shoulders, then when she wouldn’t respond he used a hand to lift her chin up to his, forcing her to look at him. “Sarah, what is it?” Her face was awkwardly illuminated by the floodlight from around the corner. It made her eyes appear sunken, and her features half-finished, as if he was looking merely at a mask of a person rather than the woman he loved.

  Sarah tried to answer him, but no words came. Her mind was consumed by images of Kedzie’s exposed midriff in The Eaton’s laundry room, then again of her crumpled, naked body on the staircase, both pictures seared into her mind—then earlier, months earlier, in Kedzie’s apartment, the night she revealed in private that she was pregnant, and how she had lifted up her shirt to show the Celtic tattoo she had just had inked around her navel days before, still healing, and her jokes about what a waste of money it had been since it would now get stretched out and destroyed as the baby grew inside her—and now, Sarah’s absolute certainty that the tattoo had not been present, not a trace of it, at any point today.

  She felt Sam’s hands shaking her. He was concerned. He was expecting an answer. He kept saying her name. She had to respond.

  “Sam…” she began.

  Behind them, the floodlight switched off.

  *

  Ba-Ba-Thump. Ba-Ba-Ba-Thump.

  Jon opened his eyes again, expecting something to have changed, anything, but nothing had. The damned woman was still screaming about her son.

  “I hear him too!” someone shouted, insistent. It was Clem, who Jonathan had known for ten years. In fact, Jon had invited him along in the first place. Why was he getting involved in this dispute? What did he think he heard? God, that man was an asshole. They’re all assholes. Maybe everyone was an asshole, himself included. But Clem, hell, he’s their king.

  “Let him in!” The old
bat was panicked now. She tried to move the desk herself but it was far too heavy. Her whole body was shaking with the exertion, and the jewels on her multiple necklaces scraped against each other in a soft metallic sound Jon was shocked he could hear over the chaos.

  “No, dammit, sit down,” ordered one of the furniture movers. “You’re sober and you know it!”

  Jonathan couldn’t help himself, and laughed aloud at this. In what other universe would such a statement make any sense at all? He wished he had his journal to record that one. Alas, it was still in his own room, on the end table with the ink pens, drowning in the dark shadow of the swaying, hanging body of his wife.

  How many others were trapped here, Jon wondered. He glanced around, remembering to move his head slower than the last time. Between the living and the dead, he counted fourteen. Were they the last? He remembered thinking how large and luxurious this room had seemed to him at first. Now it was small and dark like a tomb, overwhelmed with the musty stink of sweat and death, bodies huddled and trembling in its corners. The single electric light above seemed to glow weaker by the minute. Perhaps the generators were failing. Or, perhaps he was passing out.

  “But I hear him also! It’s his voice, I know it!” Jon didn’t know this new speaker, but saw him stand up to side with Clem and the old woman. “Just listen, damn you!”

  The men listened. Jon listened, too. He heard the deep knocking, but nothing else. He thought maybe he should say something, adding his own drunken insight, but decided against it. After all, what was the point? They would be fooled again soon enough.

  “Well I don’t hear it,” snapped one of the movers. Jon recognized him as Alroy A. Wilbur, a noted furniture salesman and undertaker up in Lansing. He had given a rather pompous toast in the dining room their first night, and Jon hadn’t had the desire or occasion to talk to him since. He had been Lansing’s mayor years ago, and now it seemed he wanted to be in charge again. So be it. “Step back,” Alroy barked.

  Something seemed to snap in the old woman’s mind. Her face distorted into a parody of rage, like a child’s drawing of a monster from a bad dream. She flung herself violently into the desk, pushing it away from the door with a force that at first startled Alroy into complete inaction. After a quick beat, he recovered, and with another man’s help, he stopped the desk from advancing further, while shouting at the woman and the man who had taken up her cause.

  The knocking grew louder, more insistent, more dire. It rattled the desk, even with multiple hands upon it. Alroy reached into his coat and withdrew a Browning pistol, leveling it at the woman with a trembling hand. “I told you to step back,” he affirmed, a break in his voice sapping some of what would have been a commanding presence. But Alroy could tell it was falling apart. All of it. Even if the woman was stopped, the desk would not hold.

  With a banshee wail of desperation, the woman lunged at Alroy, gnashing her teeth as if to bite him on the face. Her supporter grabbed at her body to pull her back, but was too late. Alroy’s pistol went off, exploding the woman’s skull just a foot in front of his hand. The sound in the enclosed space was as deafening as a cannon, and both the pounding in Jonathan's head and at the door were replaced by a pure, high-pitched ring of bliss. Jon smiled at the mercy of it, even as he saw what must have been the woman’s brains splattered against the artwork hanging on the far wall, and as he saw Clem and another man attack Alroy, wrestling him for the gun, seeing (but not hearing) it go off again, and then a third time, the new bullet hitting the chandelier in the center of the room, plunging them all into complete and utter darkness.

  As his ears attempted to make up for the uselessness of his eyes, Jonathan became aware of people screaming all around, crawling over his legs, running futilely back and forth, the chaos of the situation unbearable to everyone but him. He knew there was an epic battle underway for the door, perhaps over whether to let someone out or let someone in. He knew it didn’t matter. With several recursive layers of hangover and crippling intoxication, Jon would have thought he could have accepted reality and resigned himself to his fate, but instead his tension increased. It wasn't logic, but the survival instincts and adrenaline of an animal that compelled him to go on. He tried to summon the strength to stand, but a spasm of pain shot up his leg, and Jon realized he been injured by some debris from the gunshot—glass from the chandelier, perhaps, or a piece of shaved iron. So he slumped back, and heard the pounding once more, both in his head and from the other side of the door, now more in unison than before, and faster, too, working up to a frenzied climax. He wondered which would give out first, the door or his heart.

  It was the door. As his ears registered more and more screaming, as he could taste the tang of gunpowder on his lips, as the rancid smell of vomit began to mix with the metallic scent of blood, and as he could feel his own blood pooling in his lap and onto his fists, Jonathan Wesley saw a crack form in the unprotected half of the door. In the absolute blackness, the jagged sliver of hallway light appeared to be drawn into thin air, like a bolt of lightning crackling in the sky but refusing to fade away. Another loud thump, and the crack got bigger, and the slivers multiplied, and the wood seemed to melt away. And Jon laughed, drunk and delirious in the panic of it all, terrified at his upcoming fate but finding comfort in its inevitability, choosing to see the cracks of light as angels, even after he saw the light extinguished by pure, oozing blackness, and Jon’s hands finally relaxed, as he at last heard the screaming and the pounding stop forever.

  sixteen

  It was just two weeks earlier when Jon had received the mysterious letter. On exquisite paper and scripted in an elegant hand, it had been addressed to “Jonathan Wesley, esq.” Along the reverse seal of the envelope had been printed the word “CONFIDENTIAL” in large block letters, so even his wife Niamh hadn't opened it. When he read the letter the first time, his impression had been that it was an elaborate prank. The idea that someone was a month away from opening a twelve story underground hotel somewhere in Eaton Rapids was preposterous, for surely no construction of that magnitude could have been kept secret long enough to have built it. But the builders of the hotel seemed to have made an interesting discovery, a series of ancient stone carvings, and Jon was the only person in the area qualified to assess them. The letter even contained a paper rubbing of one of the carvings in question, to make it clear that the builders were sincere, and their trust in him unquestioned. It had been signed “The Eaton.”

  In just ten days, The Eaton was to have a soft launch for twenty or so invited guests of substantial repute, to join the builders and owners in an introductory celebration of their success. Even some of the laborers had been granted free rooms for the weekend in exchange for their continued discretion. It appeared that Jonathan was perhaps the only outsider, other than the high-class first guests, who knew anything about the hotel at all. The letter stressed the absolute need for secrecy, but made an interesting proposition to Jon and his wife. If they were free during the weekend in question, The Eaton would spring for a beautiful suite with all expenses paid, in exchange for his examination and opinions of their underground discovery. If he liked, he could even bring an assistant, who would also be given free lodging, though with regret they had reserved the last full suite for Jon, and an assistant would stay in a basic room. Given the time frame, they requested a written acceptance or rejection of the offer within the next one or two days, to allow them to make alternate arrangements to attract an archeologist “of similar skill.”

  Once Jon had decided it was, in fact, a genuine request, he told his wife, and she agreed with his decision to say “yes.” The acceptance letter was placed in the post the next morning, and Jon was confident The Eaton would receive it promptly, given Eaton Rapids' close proximity to their Lansing address.

  That afternoon, Jon made his way to their local library, near the State Capitol building, to start comparing the rubbing with known American Indian pictographs and petroglyphs. The rubbing had been a
tease, for the letter had boasted that these three shapes represented but the smallest taste of the full carvings. By the time the library closed for the day, Jon felt confident they were authentic, at least 500 years old, and might represent the most significant find of its type over a region of several states.

  The next day, he purchased a new blank journal, as was his pattern before any such adventure. He dated and began the first entry with a description of the mysterious letter, a brief summary of his research findings so far, and a note expressing his wife's excitement for the weekend away.

  “We needed this, Jonathan. It's a sign from God.” Niamh held one of his hands in hers, and closed her eyes in silent prayer. It was true, they did need it. When Niamh had been unable to conceive after many years of trying, she had fallen into a depression which itself had done more damage to their marriage than absent children. Jon's work took him away for weeks or months at a time, and it wasn't often that she was permitted to join him. Even during his time at home, he was distant, preoccupied, and seemingly uninterested in her. This made her even more depressed, which made her more silent, which made her even less interesting to her husband.

  “It will be grand,” Jon agreed, reaching up to caress her fair skin with the fingers of his right hand. A soft red curl fell across a freckled cheek, and he tenderly brushed it back into place. She blushed. Jon couldn’t remember the last time his touch had affected her so. An adventure might be just the thing to remind them both of why they fell in love in the first place.