The Eaton

by John K. Addis

  Tony was looking down, unlatching his belt, and so never saw it coming. The Kubotan hit hard against his left temple, making an audible crack, and he staggered away from her, tripping backwards over a pretentious glass coffee table which exploded under his weight. Tony’s body shook violently, as if in some sort of seizure, before his eyes rolled back into his head and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Sarah, who was still clutching the iron Kubotan for dear life, walked over to his body, terrified that she may have killed the man. But it was clear he was breathing, even snoring a bit, so she relaxed. She opened her right palm for the first time then, staring down at the weapon in wonder. She had picked the thinnest, most delicate Kubotan the shop had, yet perhaps because it was iron, it had held firm. The weapon felt indestructible and powerful in her trembling hand, a thing of magic which had branded its ribs and contours into the soft flesh of her lower palm and fingers.

  Putting the Kubotan back in her pocket, she walked shakily over to the coatrack where her purse was hanging, retrieved her phone, called her father first, and then the police. By the time officers had arrived, Tony had regained a sort of fuzzy consciousness; when they asked him if he had told Sarah that he was going to fuck her whether she liked it or not, he sealed his fate by responding not only that he had, but “so the fuck what?” The officers, one of whom was female, were not amused, and Tony went to the hospital in handcuffs. Sarah had been worried the police would confiscate her Kubotan as evidence, but they had let her keep it, perhaps due to her father’s commanding presence and his demands that they be allowed to leave.

  No charges were filed against Sarah for using the weapon, but she did press charges against her attacker. It took more than a year for the case to go to trial, as Tony’s wealthy parents were able to delay hearings repeatedly through carefully crafted motions. Sarah’s attorney had warned her that attempted rapists rarely got much jail time, especially when the rape had not even begun—Tony was still clothed when he was arrested, after all, and had no prior convictions on his record. Sarah had argued with vehemence that a woman shouldn’t have to let a rapist inside her just to increase his jail time, but her attorney just shrugged and agreed that it “sucked.”

  Once the case had gained some publicity, however, three other woman had come forward to share their own stories, all three claiming full unwanted penetration, and one of whom had, through choked sobs, recounted her subsequent abortion on the stand. The judge railed against Tony from the bench, branding him a “sexual predator” in front of his parents and grandparents, and sentenced him to four years at Woodland Center Correctional Facility.

  A few days after the sentencing, Sarah asked her friend Brad, a blacksmith she had met at the Michigan Renaissance Festival, if it was possible to turn part of the iron Kubotan into an intimate piece of jewelry. Brad explained that raw iron wouldn’t be recommended for a piercing, but was able to modify a surgical steel nipple bar to accommodate the end pieces of the Kubotan, giving the illusion of a shortened Kubotan entering her right nipple and coming out the other side. It gave her strength whenever she admired it in the mirror, or looked down and saw its outline through thin fabric when she wasn’t wearing a bra. She had lived her life less afraid from that point on. But even though a few hours earlier the body piercing had been ripped away from her flesh by the powerful magnets of the hotel’s generator, likely aided by The Eaton itself, she knew the internal strength hadn’t left her.

  The Tony creature was less than four feet from her now, inching ever closer, still smirking, a hungry stare on its borrowed eyes. For the first time, Sarah smirked back.

  “I think you’re getting a little rusty if you thought the face of Tony Generaux would terrify me,” she said, her right hand casually moving across the control panel behind her back.

  The Tony creature cocked its head. “And why’s that?”

  He moved another step toward her, close enough to reach out to her now, to attack and strike and strangle, but Sarah showed no fear. Her right hand had found its mark, and the creature had stopped just where she wanted it to.

  “Because last time,” she said crisply over the whirring motors, “I kicked his ass.”

  She pounded her fist on the pressure release valve, and from a pipe about four feet from the ground, a jet of hot steam exploded into Tony’s left side. It seemed to cut right through its body, and its human facade melted away in less than a second, replaced with its hulking, monstrous true form. It seemed to fly as much as fall, thrown against the room by the force of the blast, and uttered such a piercing, primal scream as it landed that it drowned out the sounds of the generator altogether. The steam had acted like acid against its flesh, and at the point of impact, Sarah could see the oily hide had become charred straight through. A moldy stink filled the space as a viscous grey-green fluid poured out of the hole and onto the tiled floor.

  The creature made new sounds of pain, then fury. It turned its head to Sarah with hate in its eyes, and gave a gurgling growl so utterly alien that she gasped. It may have been wounded, but it was still strong, and she had to get out of there now.

  The pipe was still releasing a torrent of steam, although with less force than before. Sarah ducked under it as she ran to the door and into the hallway, racing for the stairwell without looking back. She knew the creature was hurt, but doubted it was a mortal injury. After all, she wasn't sure the thing was mortal at all. If it had any power left, it would pursue her.

  Releasing the steam pressure had injured the creature, but had also made her attempt at sabotaging the generator a failure. It would not now explode; it would simply peter out. As she raced up the stairs, she again noticed the water pipes which lined the stairwell, remembering The Eaton’s over-the-top illusion that one of the pipes had burst, filling the lower levels with piranha. As she sprinted, she kept her eyes out for valves she could spin, thinking that flooding the stairs with the toxic water would aid in her escape. She found one, and tried to turn it, but it required a special tool to move that she did not have and could not get. So she raced onward, stopping to catch her breath at the fifth level, the baths level, where she got an idea. If Al’s gun had any remaining ammunition, she might be able to shoot holes in the water pipes, creating additional obstacles for her pursuer.

  She flew through the stairwell door into the baths, and screamed.

  Al was there alright, his body slumped against the wall with a gun in his lap, but his face had been torn away, leaving a mess of blood and gore that seemed to have gushed out of his head like a chocolate fountain. The combination of panic, the stair running, her alcohol buzz, and this horrific site, made the remaining whiskey in her stomach expel itself violently from her throat and onto the floor several feet in front of her. She retched again, and cried aloud in agony, but would not permit herself any more time to recover. She ran over, grabbed the bloody gun from Al’s lap, and checked the cylinder. Two rounds remained.

  Racing back to the stairwell, she considered leaving the two bullets in the chambers for personal protection, but reasoned that bullets hadn’t stopped the creature before, and likely wouldn’t again. She took aim at the pipes, and fired both rounds. The first shot went wild, missing the pipes altogether, but the second hit, and rich Eaton Rapids mineral water began to spurt from the hole as if from a faucet. It flowed down the stairs, not as torrential as Sarah would have liked, but hopefully enough to further slow the wounded creature in its pursuit. Having no further need for the weapon, she tossed it aside and continued her ascent, faster than before, as though the purge from her stomach had given her strength.

  All she had to do was make it to the transit level. If The Eaton was telling the truth, and Sam was dead, she would be alone. If it was lying, Sam might be there as well. If there was no exit after all…well, she just wouldn’t think about that. The pneumatic train car was supposed to reach Charlotte, wasn’t it? Perhaps the tunnel already did.

  She had two floors to go when the lights beg
an to flicker. Perhaps she had done more damage to the generator than she thought. The thought of being plunged into total darkness was terrifying, as she reasoned her pursuer had hung out in the darkness for a hundred years, and likely had night vision which she lacked. Still, she plunged ahead, passing the Gameroom level, stopping to catch her breath as her hand was on the doorknob of the tenth floor, which if Sam’s text message was correct, would be her chance to escape. One deep breath later, and she threw open the door.

  “Sam?” she called. There was no response. She tried again, a little louder. Silence. Maybe he already got out, she thought, and jumped down onto the track. She was able to activate the work lights they had used to explore the tunnel earlier, but as the overhead lights flickered again, the work lights flickered too. Whatever she had done in the maintenance room was affecting the electrical system, or perhaps the creature was still alive and trying to sabotage the lighting itself, to improve its odds. She again began to panic at the thought of total darkness, especially after realizing her phone was still propped by an access panel in the maintenance room.

  She then remembered Sam’s phone in her pocket. Even with the low battery, there would be enough for the flashlight app, at least for a few minutes. She called “Sam” a third and final time, and when again no answer came, she hurried down the tunnel.

  Sam had not heard her calling, for his broken body remained slumped against the wall of the Gameroom a floor below. He had heard, or at least thought he heard, Sarah’s footsteps race up the stairwell to reach the floor above. Sam had considered crying out when he heard her ascent, but his mouth was dry, and he didn’t see the point in her stopping for him anyway. One look down at his once-white undershirt, now crimson and caked with blood, confirmed he hadn’t a prayer. Any attempt to save his life would not only be futile, but risk Sarah’s chance for escape. Better she should live than both of them die.

  Not that, he thought morosely, she’d still care enough to want to save him anyway. She had been the love of his life, and he had still fucked her best friend. She’s better off without me, he knew.

  In those final moments, Sam had time to think of many things. He thought of his parents, and how his death would affect them. He thought of Vaughn, and that night at Venue A, where Vaughn had taught him what real courage was. He thought of poor Janet, who deserved not only a better death, but a better life. He thought of Al, and how he had made such horrible mistakes in judgment, but tried to redeem himself in the end by buying them time to escape.

  But mostly, he just thought of Sarah.

  His left arm had gone numb, like his legs, but his right arm and hand still had feeling and motion. With great effort, Sam managed to reach into his pocket and retrieve the engagement ring. It was in a small clear pouch, for Sam hadn’t wanted the ring box to make a conspicuous shape against the pocket of his jeans. With his thumb and index finger, he was able to open the pouch, tilt it to let the ring fall into his lap, and pick the ring up, bringing it close enough to admire with his one remaining good eye. Even in the dim light of the Gameroom, he knew it was perfect, and that Sarah would have loved it. The diamond sparkled for him, an item of beauty amongst the destruction of his lower body and the disarray of the room. He turned it over and over in his fingers, smiling at what might have been. It was the last thing Sam Spicer ever saw.

  thirty-two

  The lights flickered one final time before going out for good. The blackness was fast and absolute, causing Sarah to stop in her tracks. She waited motionless for several moments, hoping for the lights to return. Her remaining senses were heightened, and she became aware of peculiar smells, of rocks and musty earth, and of the sound of escaping steam, which sounded like air being released from far-off balloons.

  Sarah retrieved Sam's phone from her pocket and activated the flashlight. The light was quite strong in the total darkness, at least when illuminating the tracks beneath her feet, but visibility fell off quickly when she pointed it onward. The tunnel had been constructed with dark bricks which reflected little light, though she could still make out where the curved brickwork ended and the raw tunnel rock began again. Cautious and quick, Sarah made her way to where the tracks abruptly ceased, and where large piles of bricks and abandoned construction tools told the story of halted progress.

  Once again, Sarah found herself in front of the large boulder, and the cave which had long ago held the creature. She let her light fall over the strange petroglyphs, remembering how she had deduced the nature of the monster hours earlier, and cursed the builders of the hotel for their stupidity in unleashing the thing. Turning back, Sarah's light fell upon deep scratches etched into the boulder, scratches she hadn't noticed before, but were presumably from the trapped creature trying to escape many years ago. Yet she still didn't see any obvious exit.

  Had Sam been here, and found the way out? If so, why hadn't he left a better clue behind? Sarah considered the possibility that the exit Sam referred to wasn't at this end of the tunnel at all, but back by the train car and the ticket booth. She hated the idea of backtracking to the station, as it decreased the distance between her and the creature, but the desire to escape was building into a frenzy inside her, and she had to know for sure.

  With a deep breath for strength, Sarah began racing down the tracks, phone held in front of her like a shield, casting as much light as it could. The blackness outside the beam of light was unrelenting, and seemed to be absorbing more and more of the beam as she ran. The smells and steam sounds were increasing as she got closer to the entrance, and her mind was still prepared for a dark monster to jump out from the shadows at any moment. It was a “beep,” though, that caused her to falter, dropping the phone in front of her on the tracks. The flashlight app deactivated itself, but the phone still emitted a soft screen glow, allowing her to see the warning message which had replaced the beam. The battery was now down to 5%.

  As she leaned to pick the phone up, though, it became clear that something was wrong. The steam sounds had coalesced into a sort of mechanical whir, and the air began to feel somehow lighter than before, as if she had been transported to a high altitude. A feeling of dread washed over her then, and she fumbled with the phone to reactivate the flashlight. Pointing it forward, she at first saw nothing, as the beam fell off into the darkness fifty yards or so from her position. Then Sarah sensed, before she saw, a sort of wall moving toward her, pushing the air in front of itself, and she turned back toward the cave and ran. The pneumatic train car, invisible in the dark and nearly silent in its operation, was picking up speed, and would crush her against the tight fit of the curved brick walls if she didn't make it back to the construction area in time.

  Unable to hold the light steady in front of her, she gripped it with her right fist as she ran blindly along the tracks, trying to avoid disorientation as the strobe of the light confused her eyes. She was afraid she would run full-speed and head-first into bricks, or a cave wall, but couldn't slow down or she could be overtaken. Sarah's speed was incredible, as if the air was being pushed behind her, giving her a wind at her back, which in a way was literally true. At the last moment, from the corner of an eye, she saw she had reached the opening. She dove to her left to hit the clearing, just as the whispering train car reached the end of the track, jumped it, and crashed with a loud, explosive force against the wall of rock at its terminus.

  On the ground, Sarah cried out and covered her head, expecting debris to topple down upon her, but nothing came. There had been a shower of light-emitting sparks when the car had hit, but now it was black, and she was blind. Sarah had again dropped the cell phone when she fell, and fumbled for it in terror, certain it was lost forever to the blackness, but it had only fallen face down this time, and was located by the faintest of glow from the rock it had landed upon. The screen was cracked, but still functional, though reporting just 3% of battery. Still, she had to risk the flashlight app again, to see what had happened, and to see what her options had dwindled to.
>
  Sarah got to her knees and turned around, shining the beam on the train car which had almost crushed her. It was in bad shape to be sure, and its front was a mass of twisted wood and metal. The wreck had also blocked her from returning down the track to the station. The entry doors were on the other side, the platform side, and so were inaccessible, but she thought perhaps there would be a rear door to the train car, so if she climbed through one of the broken windows on this side, she might be able to exit from the back.

  There were three visible windows, and the glass had shattered on all three of them, but they were small for train car windows, just a foot or so high and less than two feet wide each. Sarah figured this made sense, as there wouldn't be much of a view in an underground tunnel, and the windows were likely there to add aesthetic familiarity rather than function. She thought she could squeeze through one, but before she attempted this, she had to know what had caused the car to chase her down. If it had been a fluke of pneumatics, brought about by her attempted sabotage of the generator, she was likely still alone. If, however, the car had been controlled by the creature, she would be trapped.

  As if in answer, a dark shadow passed by one of the windows inside the car. Sarah hoped it might be a trick of the light, and squinted harder to confirm this, but then heard a soft crunching sound, and knew for sure The Eaton was in the car.

  She wanted to turn the light away, but could not. This would surely be her death, and she wanted to look it in the eye. Within seconds, as if knowing what was expected of it, the creature turned to look out one of the prison-like windows and stared Sarah down. There was another crunching sound from the car—what was that?—and then a sort of injured growl, but it kept his gaze on her, saying nothing, making no movement to attack.