by Susan Vaught
“No joke?” He didn’t even slow down on arranging the ice. That was the thing about Jessie. He could be completely annoying, but he had no mean judgment in him anywhere.
I sat in the folding chair, pawed through the snack bags and sandwiches Jessie had brought, and grabbed myself a roast beef and cheddar with sour cream and onion chips.
Jessie plopped down on the ground beside the table, found himself a sandwich, and picked a bag of cheese puffs. After we had eaten for a minute, both of us keeping our gazes fixed on the tunnel opening, I said, “I got on Mama last night and finally made her talk. My grandmother took an ax to the murderer, then set him on fire.”
A small laugh popped out of Jessie, almost like a cough. A few flecks of cheese puff hit the grass in front of him, looking redder than his hair. “Go, Grandma Betty.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bet she saved a lot of kids—but that must have been hard for her.”
I told him everything Mama had finally shared, even the part about Grandma carrying some of my grandfather’s head. He didn’t vomit or anything. He also didn’t take his eyes off the tunnel.
“When she was dying,” I went on, trying to crank out what was worrying my brain, “she said something I thought was crazy talk like always, but now I’m wondering.”
Jessie didn’t say anything. He was waiting, letting me get everything out in one big wheeze. That was good, because if he interrupted me, I would stop talking.
I put down the last piece of my sandwich. “She said, ‘What I started, you got to finish.’”
Now it was my turn to wait. Jessie stopped eating his cheese puffs and finally tore his eyes off the tunnel long enough to glance in my direction. After another few seconds, he shrugged. “If she cut off his head and burned his body, I’m pretty sure she finished what she started.”
“Yeah. I kinda thought that, too.” But that tunnel plays ice-cream truck music when you’re not around to make it behave, and Grandma Betty’s ghost showed up to shame me last night, and now a kid’s gone missing.
I had to be losing my mind. No other explanation for how crazy I was thinking. Something like sadness crawled into my chest, mostly because I knew better than to lay the really nutty stuff in Jessie’s lap. I shared everything with him and Trina. Almost.
“Your grandmother was probably all confused and scared that monster was coming to get her,” Jessie said, turning his attention back to his cheese puffs and the tunnel. “That Jonas Brown kid—no ghost took him. I’m telling you, he just got lost or something.”
“Everybody in Never probably thinks my grandfather’s back.” I shook my head. “Nothing like being the bogeyman’s grandson.”
“Sucks to be you.” Jessie kept eating until rain started to fall. Nothing heavy. Mostly random spatters, but it was enough to get Jessie scrambling to his feet.
He helped me stow the few remaining bags of chips and pieces of sandwich in the bag, scrape out enough cooler ice to stow it in the Igloo, and lock the lid down before he took off jogging back to his half-wrecked Mustang. He said he was parked close and wouldn’t get too wet. That was more than I could say for myself.
I made sure the communications radio was fastened into its leather case, pulled my ball cap tighter over my eyes, and got ready to ride out the wet. No way was I taking shelter at the edges of that tunnel.
Jessie hadn’t been gone five minutes when the ice-cream truck music started. “Pop Goes the Weasel,” just like before. I glared at the tunnel opening, more pissed than anything, but I could feel ... something. Pulling at me. Teasing me. Almost daring me.
“You can knock it off,” I said, refusing to think about who or what I was really talking to. “I won’t be falling for that mess.”
The music hesitated.
My heart nearly stopped beating in the silence.
Then the creepy tune started right back again, slower. My brain filled in each word as the notes played.
All ... around ... the mulberry bush ...
“Not working. I’m not coming down there.”
Seconds passed between each note, like the tunnel was mocking me.
The monkey ... chased ... the ... weasel ...
“You’re dead, and you’re staying dead.”
And I refuse to lose my mind.
My whole body was shaking.
I forced myself to look away, running my gaze along the Rec Hall wall. I didn’t have to look straight at it to save patients, right? I could glance all around the hole to be sure nobody was getting close.
Maybe if I didn’t stare directly into that darkness—
The mon-key ... thought ... it was ... all ... in ... fun...
POP! goes the weasel.
The last notes rushed together, loud and off-key. I winced and covered my ears.
When I finally pulled my hands away from my face, I heard something different rising from the earth below Lincoln Psychiatric.
Tiny, halting sniffles. Little choking sobs.
Oh God.
It was the sound of a little kid crying.
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t slow as I crashed through the yellow tape. My fingers fumbled with the flashlight on my belt, and as I ran down under the floor of the Rec Hall, under Lincoln Psychiatric, I managed to keep the thin beam shining ahead of me.
The floor was brick. The walls were brick. Old, dark red. Stained. I didn’t want to think about it. Everything was arched and rounded, about the size of a train tunnel. The air was hot, then got cooler as I outran the gray glow from the world above me. The flashlight’s beam seemed to get smaller. The air smelled like dirt, then stinky water. The walls were getting closer.
Old bulbs lined the ceiling, long and broken. My breathing sounded too loud, and the echoes of my running footsteps ricocheted on the brick. I felt like I was crushing the noise I was trying to find—the cries of a kid.
Please don’t let this be happening.
The kid might be Jonas Brown. This might be real. Or I might be crazy. But if there was even a tiny chance the kid had found his way down into the tunnel, I couldn’t let him die. My blood, my family—if I had to die to save a little boy, I’d be paying a debt we owed.
My heart thumped as darkness crowded in on me. My flash-light punched at shadows too dark to light up, and the crying echoed ahead of me. The floor slanted down, and the walls got even closer. I wished I could run faster. I wanted to bellow and make all the stone drop away until I came face-to-face with the kid.
The notes of “Pop Goes the Weasel” started plinking like somebody had opened a demented music box. If I got my hands on whoever was playing that junk, I’d choke them. Made it hard for me to hear the kid, but there was only one way to run—straight ahead and down. It was cold now. My teeth started to chatter. I swept the flashlight left, then right, then left again. If I held out my arms, I’d hit the brick walls to either side of me. The tunnel was getting narrower and narrower.
The crying got louder. The kid sounded scared.
I growled and ran faster, the flashlight beam barely picking out fallen chunks of brick before I tripped over them. A chicken voice in the back of my head wondered how many kids heard that same music from my grandfather’s ice-cream truck right before they died.
What was wrong with somebody that would make them kill little children? Or chop up their husband with an ax? What kind of diseased genes did I have, anyway? Had to be why I was crazy. Had to be why I was hearing things now, but there was nothing I could do except run down that tunnel, because it was real. I didn’t care what anyone thought, because it was happening.
My fists tightened as my arms pumped, making the flash-light jerk up and down. Twisted shadows dangled toward me. Snakes?
I dodged.
The shadows got bigger, and the space got so tight I had to slow down. Soon I was walking with my shoulders hunched forward so I’d fit through the tunnel, my elbows barely missing bricks. I was burning up and sweating even though it was frigid. The giant snake
s weren’t snakes at all. I could see that now, having managed to shine the flashlight high enough. I was looking at tree roots, and stumbling over the bricks and mortar the roots had dislodged.
I tried to tell myself the roots came from the real world—but they didn’t look like any roots I’d ever seen. They reminded me of huge, gnarly fingers with dirty nails. The thorn around my neck had to be branding my skin, it was so hot against my chest. These roots were black like that thorn. They went on forever, and I couldn’t imagine the size of the tree they were meant to feed.
Hungry, my grandmother’s voice whispered just as the crying kid let out a shriek, and I jammed on the brakes because a brick wall sealed the path in front of me.
“Damn,” I wheezed, bouncing the flashlight all around the bricks. A solid wall, from the looks of it. Again I heard my grand-mother’s words, the ones she spoke before she died. You always see the truth ... Look hard.
I narrowed my eyes like I did when I wanted to see through something, see around it and into it, catch what most people missed. Nothing but dark, stained brick and those awful roots. I tapped at a place where the mortar looked loose. A few crumbles fell away, but the wall felt solid everywhere else I punched and poked.
Look hard.
Grateful that the stupid music hadn’t started again, I stared to my left, running the flashlight up and down the seams of the corner. Nothing there but more roots, spilling down the brick and biting into the floor. I turned as much as I could in the little space and shined my light on the right wall.
Part of it moved—only it wasn’t the wall. It was a solid coating of bugs.
“Jesus.” I stepped back, banging into the roots, and my insides lurched from the dirty, poking touch of the cold wood. My skin crawled like those roaches were climbing toward my head. Somebody was swearing, and I guess it was me as I crammed my jeans into my socks so nothing could run up my pants. Couldn’t do anything about closing my sleeves or collar, though. If they got on me and got that high, I’d probably piss myself and fall over dead, anyway.
I flashed the light in that corner over and over so the nasty little things would stay away, and that’s when I caught ... something. A shimmer. A strange, darker darkness at the wall seam. I looked hard, just like Grandma told me to. The air in the right-hand corner of the tunnel had an oily sparkle, like it wasn’t solid, like it didn’t have bricks behind it, except it did. I could see them. Sort of. They seemed lighter than the bricks on the left, or those in the wall in front of me.
I focused on the kid’s pitiful crying and made myself inch forward. The whole time my eyes kept yanking to the side, checking for that moving curtain of roaches.
Man, I didn’t want to, but I had to keep moving, jamming my bulk right up in that corner until my cheeks touched the chilled bricks and the scent of dirt and a billion rotten bug parts flooded my nose. I pushed forward into that greasy-looking black and thought I felt ten thousand roach legs scratching my skin, and—
I stepped through the wall, scraping my elbows on both sides, dropping my flashlight and stumbling and stomping to get my balance, jerking air into my lungs and hoping I didn’t breathe in any roaches. I stood straight up in a big basement room, maybe as big as the field stretching from the Rec Hall to the woods surrounding Lincoln Psychiatric.
It was old. The walls—when there had been walls—had been made from wood, like the floor. All of it was rotten now, with plants growing through the boards, and bugs ...
Yeah, there were bugs. Probably rats and mice and all kinds of other stuff I didn’t want to see, too.
The thorn around my neck burned me so fast and hard I had to grab it. My eyes hurt from the weird red light that filled the place. It was coming from the base of a tree in the middle of the room that had to be the size of a whole building. Thirty feet across, maybe, and at least as deep, with hundreds of scrubby branches winding together and tangling all over each other. It had huge thorns and clumps of weird white flowers that gave off a sweet stink, like something that died in the sun.
The top of the tree reached high into the darkness at the basement’s ceiling.
At least now I knew what those disgusting, twisty roots attached to. And where the crying was coming from.
Huddled against one of the biggest, fattest roots was a little kid with dark brown hair and dirt all over his bare feet and arms. He was wearing jeans and a striped shirt, and he looked just like a messy version of the kid I saw on the news this morning.
“Hey,” I said to him. “Jonas. Come here. I’ll get you out of this place.”
His sniffles choked away to nothing, and the kid twitched, but he didn’t unlock his hands from around his knees.
“Jonas,” I said. “I don’t know how you got down here, but I’m with Security at Lincoln. I’ll take you to your mom and dad.”
The red glow coming from the tree flickered as a cold breeze swept through the chamber. The kid whimpered and huddled into a smaller ball.
Okay, fine. That’s why God made big people big and little people little. I didn’t want to scare the kid, but I needed to pick him up and get him out of this nightmare place. Refusing to look around too much or think more than I had to, I strode forward, bent down, and grabbed Jonas.
He didn’t struggle as I lifted him, but he didn’t grab me back, either. He just kept his arms wrapped around his own legs like if he let go, he’d disappear forever.
I couldn’t make myself turn my back on that tree, so I inched away from it, trying to aim for the weird corner in the solid wall that hadn’t been so solid after all. The red light flickered again, and another burst of cold air whipped through the giant chamber. Gooseflesh broke out across my neck, and Jonas let out a low whimper. I kept backing up.
The wall shouldn’t be so far away. I hadn’t walked that far to pick up the kid. I glanced over my shoulder. The wall was a few feet behind me.
When I looked back at the tree, there was a man standing beside it.
My breath hitched so suddenly my ribs hurt, and I stopped moving.
The man was wearing a tuxedo with tails, like people at prom who want to look badass. He was tall, with dark skin and long legs and knobby, puppet joints. I couldn’t tell much about his nose or chin, because the left side of his face was missing. Part of his left arm was gone, too.
A horror like that couldn’t be standing up, much less be alive. It definitely couldn’t take a step toward me, or whistle “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
But it did.
I squeezed Jonas to my chest so hard I made him cry.
The thing that had been my grandfather laughed, and my skin crawled like all those roaches had jumped on me at the same time. Red light danced off pulpy parts of the horror’s face as it said, “Darius. It’s about time we got to meet you.”
We?
What the hell was it talking about, “we”?
The thing rested its good hand on the trunk of that monstrous tree, and something in the center of the tangled mass of branches shifted. It moved slow, like a piece of wood sliding or rolling or pulling upward.
The little boy in my arms screamed.
As the tree’s single eye opened and blazed a bloody, hot red, I screamed, too.
Chapter Fifteen
I stumbled and smashed backward into the brick wall. Jonas writhed in my grip and screamed again.
My grandfather moved toward us. His feet didn’t touch the floor. He flew straight at me, his half mouth open in a snarl.
If I had looked at the wall, I might have seen the opening, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing streaking across the chamber, or that tree—my God. That eye! More bark shifted, and a mouth opened. It let out a creaking bellow that shook the walls and rattled my skull and made my bones ache.
It sounded desperate. It sounded insane.
Hungry ...
I spun toward the wall, squinting and sweating and weeping and shaking so bad that nothing made straight lines.
“Darius.” My grandfather’s ho
t breath snaked across the back of my neck. “You got my blood in you, boy. I can smell it.”
I stared at the wall in front of me. I looked hard, but I saw only brick.
Fingers closed on my shoulder, and thick yellow nails dug into my skin. “Your mama came out weak, but you got what it takes.”
Jonas screamed and screamed and kept on screaming. My mouth hung open. I yelled but no sound came out as I jerked away from the thing trying to claim me. Jonas and I reeled sideways—and suddenly fell forward out of the rotten basement into the tunnel.
Darkness shrouded us, but I ran. Things scuttled across the walls. Roots stabbed through the bricks, cracking and groaning as they twisted. I didn’t know where my grandfather was, if he was following, if he could follow. The thought of that half a face flying toward me made me run harder. Crumbling bricks and dirt exploded beneath my big feet. All I could see was black. All I could hear were Jonas’s shrieks and my own cowardly yells. Some part of my mind registered the walls getting farther and farther apart.
Power rippled up the tunnel after us, cold and sharp and hateful. It chewed into my skin. It smelled like death. It felt like rage and starvation.
It whispered, Mine ...
I ran.
Up ahead, I didn’t see much light. Was it dark outside? How was that possible? I had only been in the tunnel for a few minutes. It was still afternoon.
Whatever.
If I could just get the boy to the entrance—if I could just get us outside, I could save Jonas. A hundred feet to go. Fifty. I could see the yellow tape now, crisscrossing over the entrance.
The tape I tore to get in here?
Something rough bit into my ankle and yanked me off my feet. I went down hard, throwing Jonas ahead of me so I didn’t crush him. Ribs cracked as I smashed into the brick. I heard them but didn’t feel them.
“Run!” I yelled at the kid, who was scrabbling forward on his hands and knees. He glanced back at me. His face was bleeding. Blood from his mouth coated his neck and shirt.
“Run!” I tried to shout again, but couldn’t manage anything but a wheeze. I kicked at whatever had my ankle. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to know what it was. My bladder turned loose as roots wrapped around me, dragging me backward, down into the darkness and the roaches.