At the bottom of the stairs, he surveyed the basement, which was also a wide open space with brick support columns; deteriorating cardboard boxes and wooden crates were stacked here and there. The darkness was thick like India ink, and the flashlight’s beam seemed insignificant against it. The air was chilly and damp, about ten degrees cooler than outside and felt like a wet blanket; gooseflesh erupted on his skin.
He crept forward and the light found some clothes strewn about on the floor. He thought nothing of the mess, other than someone wasn’t very careful about where they tossed things. He wondered if Maddey actually stayed here and why she lied about it.
Lockhart walked further into the basement, his light shining on nothing but dust-covered debris and discarded litter – most of it looked old, as in decades old – that had gathered around the collapsing boxes and sturdy crates.
He muttered under his breath as each step propelled him forward. It was just idle babbling about why the teen would stay here and why he’d decided to go into the basement in the first place. More than anything, it was supposed to keep his mind from thinking about other things, troubling things.
Lockhart thought he heard something and quickly tracked the light in the direction of the sound. However, the disjointed beam found nothing as it jumped here and there.
“I must be crazy.”
His nerves had frayed, and his mind played tricks on him. Cold sweat pooled in his arm pits, the small of his back and on his hands. He heard the blood pound through the veins in his ears in the crypt-like silence, while the flashlight beam flickered in his trembling hand. Lockhart took a deep breath and exhaled raggedly, hoping it would steady his nerves, but it didn’t. He continued forward, putting one foot in front of the other.
He wondered if Maddey actually came down to the basement, much less stayed in it. Discarded clothes aside, he had seen nothing to indicate someone, let alone the red-haired teenaged girl, had been down in the basement. There were certainly no signs anyone lived there.
The light’s beam searched the ground before him and revealed some small bits of white sticking up from the dirt and debris. They were small and narrow like pale twigs, and he wondered aloud what they were. However, he couldn’t bring himself to stop and examine them closer, unsure he wanted the answer.
Lockhart heard another noise and followed with another spastic whirl of the light. Again he found nothing as the possible source.
He laughed, but it was a hollow sound like the lid scraping on a concrete tomb.
The man stepped deeper into the basement and saw more white on the floor, but there was no mistaking what they were. They were bones. With his mouth hanging open he studied them in the flashlight beam, but could find nothing to distinguish what the origin of the bones may have been. Lockhart had seen evidence and heard rats scuttling around in the walls, so he surmised that’s what the bones were. Or at least that’s what he told himself. He hesitated when the beam found larger bones that had been stacked into several small, intricate piles.
“What the …” he muttered. “That’s … that’s crazy.”
But it didn’t deter him. He rounded a series of crates stacked higher than he was tall, and, in the open space, there was no mistaking what his flashlight had uncovered. He gasped in stunned and unbelieving surprise.
Scattered about the dirty concrete floor were a number of unclothed corpses – the remains of both male and female teenagers – strewn about like life-sized dolls in a child’s bedroom. There were more than a dozen, randomly placed here and there. None of the bodies appeared to be recent kills; they were dried and withered in decomposition.
Lockhart stared in shocked surprise. He knew he should have looked away, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the sight. He couldn’t believe what his eyes beheld. He refused to believe it, but his body began to tremble in fear because the physical evidence was spread out on the floor in front of him.
He yelped in terrified surprise when a hand fell on his shoulder.
FOUR
As his heart leapt into his throat and his bladder threatened to spill, he spun quickly and ungracefully on his heels, barely managing not to drop the flashlight. In the haunted house lit gloom, he saw who had touched him.
Maddey smiled at him. “My … what big eyes you have,” she said playfully.
“Maddey, it’s you.” He laughed out loud, but it was a mirthless and hollow sound. A different and inappropriate emotion slipped into his body. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“My … what sharp teeth you have,” she said, ignoring his words.
“Wh … wh … what are you doing down here?”
She glanced down and giggled childlike. “My … what a big – ”
“Maddey!” He tried to recover some of his composure. “Maddey. Ginger.”
“You shouldn’t have followed me, Brendan, especially down here,” she said. “You were better off if you didn’t know. Much better off.”
“No, Maddey, this … this just can’t be. It can’t be. I know you, I … I … I know you. You’re just a kid, a lost and scared runaway.”
“You know nothing!” Her green eyes flashed to reptilian yellow and back to green again.
“Who … what are you?”
“I am … the Haunter of the Dark, the Crawling Chaos,” she said softly as if savoring the words that revealed her secret. “I am a messenger from the Other Gods. I am the screams of your nightmares. I was old when this world was young, and where I go, others vanish never to be seen or heard from again.”
“I … I …I don’t believe you. That’s crazy, Maddey … just crazy talk. You … Ginger, you need help. I can get you help, we can get you help.”
“I don’t want help, you fool!” She laughed at him. “I am what I am. And this is what I am.”
Right in front of him, before his terror-stricken wide eyes, she shifted into some of her thousand shapes:
a yellow-eyed cross between a nude, hairless woman and a serpent, with reptilian facial features and smooth dark green scales instead of skin, narrow torso with barely noticeable breasts, the plain of its stomach a few fades shades lighter in color than the rest of its body, a nearly imperceptible slit between its legs and those legs that led down to clawed lizard feet;
a lithe and androgynous-looking bare-chested Egyptian pharaoh, with a heavily painted face and sun-bronzed body, attired in royal garb;
a three-eyed ram-headed male, complete with thick, curled horns and a tuft of hair on its chin, a smooth white-skinned and well-defined torso, an enormous penis dangling between furry and muscular legs like the hind legs of a mountain goat with cloven feet;
a smiling, gap-toothed Haitian voodoo priest, with weathered skin the color of tar, dark eyes set deep in full cheek bones, a broad nose that topped a thick-lipped mouth, a bushy beard sprinkled with gray, a thread-bare but well-tailored silk three-piece suit and a well-worn top hat on his head;
a tall figure in a black robe with a dark hooded cowl draped over its lowered head, and when the figure raised its gray-skinned head to reveal its face, it had no eyes, nose or mouth;
an improbably tall, blue-skinned humanoid dressed in silver gossamer clothes that seemed to float around its torso caressed a smooth and glimmering glass and metal alien object in its hands;
a pallid-skinned and brown-haired male, whose black eyes were flecked with red, smiled and revealed elongated fangs, pearly-white and razor sharp, where his canines should have been;
an octopus-like creature, its smooth and slimy skin white-gray with hints of green, wriggled more than three dozen tentacles, each of them with a mouth filled with jagged but needle-like teeth;
a beautiful goddess, with an angelic face, long brown hair, gold skin that sparkled and shimmered, full breasts, a narrow waist and long legs, danced naked around a bonfire to music only she heard;
an unclothed male creature with dark skin, oily and smooth, a bullet-shaped head with lobeless pointed ears, lifeless black eyes, a reptilian
nose, slit for a mouth and pointed chin, bat wings folded along its back, freakishly long and multi-jointed arms that ended in sharp clawed hands, a long barbed tail that lashed ceaselessly back and forth from its backside while a smaller version bobbed in the front, and long inverse jointed legs that ended with narrow feet, tipped with black claws; and,
lastly, the waif-like red-haired teen-aged runway girl in the dirty red hoodie with the twinkling green eyes and smile of sunshine stood before him in the beam of his flashlight.
Even though he had seen the phantasmic images with his own eyes, his brain refused to comprehend them. He couldn’t comprehend them. “We have to get you help, Maddey. We have to go to the police, we can get you help. We have to call the police.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, Maddey, we do. We have to call the police.”
“I’ve already called them, on one of your cell phones.” She pulled something from a back pocket of her skinny jeans and showed him the iPhone, his personal phone.
Confusion swept across his face. “Wh … wh … what?”
“They’re on the way here.”
“Good. That’s a good thing, Maddey, a real good thing. We’ll get you the help you need.” He reached out to take her by the arm, but she slipped away from him and sashayed toward the stairs.
“Maddey – Ginger – don’t do this. We can get you help, I’ll be there for you. You don’t have to run anymore.”
She laughed a sweet child-like giggle and continued to amble toward the steps.
“If you run, the police will catch you. Eventually, they will catch you. You know that, don’t you? You can’t run away from them.”
Maddey giggled again. “But, Brendan, I’m not running away from them.” She gave him the sweet, teenager smile that tormented his sleep. “I’m running to them.” The teen danced to the stairs and bounded up them.
It took a long moment for the words to penetrate his thick skull and reach his brain, but the implication of what she’s said – and done – hit him like a kick in the groin. “Uh … oh, hell!” He ran after her.
Lockhart flew up the stairs two at a time and ran through the lobby and burst out the front door. Outside the fence, he skidded to a stop on the sidewalk once he saw a police officer with an arm protectively around Maddey's shoulders, tears running down from her green eyes. She pointed a shaky finger at him, and the cop’s partner drew a service weapon and screamed for him to freeze. He tried to speak, to explain, but only got screamed at again to put his hands up and get on his knees.
Slowly, he did as commanded.
FIVE
Humiliated, Lockhart had been handcuffed and placed face down on the sidewalk. He had breathed in dirt and concrete dust for nearly forty-five minutes, while cops and crime-scene technicians walked around the scene, some actually stepping over him. A crowd of gawkers had gathered but was held at bay by yellow crime-scene tape, while the press shouted questions to the police, the technicians, Maddey – and him.
He was roughly hauled to his feet and spun to face the officer in charge of the scene, a police lieutenant. He tried to speak, to explain. “She’s not what she seems to be. She’s … she’s …”
“So, what is she?” the lieutenant asked. “Why don’t you tell me what she is? Are you going to tell me she’s responsible for all those bodies in the basement? Is that what you’re going to tell me? Is it? IS IT?”
“She’s …”
“I’ll tell you what she is. She’s a fourteen-year-old runaway, who is the luckiest girl in the city tonight. She fortunate she’s not in the basement getting defiled by … by you.”
“No. No, she’s …”
“SHUT UP!” The lieutenant turned to a nearby officer. “Please get this worthless piece of human excrement out of my sight.”
The cop gruffly took Lockhart and placed him in an unmarked squad car, while the press yelled questions at him and the bystanders called for his head. His mind couldn’t comprehend what had happened to him, it was too farfetched. He gazed out the squad car window and saw Maddey standing with a female officer.
He stared at her, willing her to glance in his direction. The teenager turned and saw him in the police vehicle. Lockhart gave her a pleading and imploring look that said you have to tell them!
Maddey returned a slight, wry smile before she winked at him.
The tower rises from the edge of the cracked salt sea, a single tree wasting to sticks at its stony side. Surprise washes through Ismail at the tower's sudden appearance; his well-handled map shows the tower over three mountains more, nestling within the heart of a black, bramble wood. He expects to slice his path through thick vines bursting with thorns thirsty for a taste of him; to be clawed bloody before he stumbles gasping against an old, splintered door. No such obstacles greet him; his sword--the mark of every questing prince--rests unused in its leather scabbard.
The salt sea is cracked to the merciless sky above. What water the basin once held is long gone, the ground buckling into ripples of pale salt flowing outward even now as if something yet falls into their midst. Ages before, when water cloaked the sea, it was a rock, ever-growing rings of water lapping outward to the salty shore. A palm-sized black stone rests unmoving within a salt crater as if to say it was indeed so.
There is only this: the salt and the tree, the tower and the sky, until a shadow defines the dreadful height of the tower across the crusted ground. Ismail knows within his bones, this is the place he has sought for ages and for ever.
He moves forward, always within the breadth of shadow, lifting his eyes to the tower's pinnacle, but the highest point is lost within the dazzle of the sunlight. If there is a window, he cannot see it. The sunlight scoops his vision into its burning hands and Ismail stumbles to his knees within the salt. The water bottle he carries falls free and with a slosh spills its wet abundance into the salt; when vision returns, Ismail presses his fingers into the dark puddle, the salt as thirsty as he. Melting salt clings to his fingers and he wipes them down the length of his golden robes, thinking this worse than black brambles. All his water, lost to the salt. At least he could cut brambles, make them bleed in turn.
Ismail staggers to his feet. The tower's shadow lessens the day's heat, but sweat still soaks his skin. His robes are greedy for the moisture and, when he reaches the tower's door, wet. He stinks of his journey, wants to scrub himself clean in the salt, but seeks the carved words across the door's lintel, words to give proof of this place. He does not see them at first and panic sticks an icy hand into his gut until he spies the faintest shadow against the stone. He stretches, digging his fingers into the salt crusting each carved letter.
What is not killed is not dead.
Salt feathers down Ismail's wrist, tracing his sweat-damp arm. His fingers linger within the last word, pressing hard as he envisions they who built this place, they who raised the stones at the edge of the salt sea. Those who bound the princess within and cursed her to as empty an existence as there might ever be; those who branded her a monster for they could not dare understand the wonder and power within her small hands. They who could not stomach the way eyes strayed to her when she walked through the market; they who knew a threat in her smile and step. Centuries gone, the stories said--and no more than stories, so many others proclaimed, but here, here, proof beneath his fingers pulsing with his heart. Here she is. She in her tower, in her desolation, at the edge of a broken salt sea.
Ismail weeps at the idea of it, salted water coursing down his cheeks. It is water he cannot stand to lose, but he sobs uncontrollably, until his knees buckle and fingers slip from the words within the stone. He presses himself against the door; this door is not old or splintered, and its paint, the color of a twilight sky, still smells fresh, shines bright. A fabrication of the desert, he thinks, and kneels at its threshold. Nothing is as he believed, but for this place, anchored in all of time.
"Princess, I have come," he whispers in a voice torn ragged by the dry air.
But if there is a princess, she does not reply.
___
The tower: three storeys, pale rag- and mudstone rising from a jumble of debris at its base. The white tower rakes the sky in solitude when once it might have been part of something larger, though not something necessarily better. The white tower is the only object visible from the river, clouded horizon unbroken by tree or hill. The memory of walls intermittently marks the scrub grass.
Within as without, the tower once housed something larger, something more. Every upward step is notched, a large body violently dragged up or down; it is impossible to say which direction and perhaps, in the end, it was both. Hall and chapel stand empty, echoing, and the uppermost tower room also yawns vacant, a mouth swallowing the sodden roof spilling itself inward. Rusting rings and chains notched into the walls, the ages-old scent of bodies once kept; bodies in protest, bodies in revolt. Anger stains the floorboards, recollections of people etched into walls alongside marks of years.
___
Ismail spreads his map in the light of the fire, smoothing rivers and planets and stars flat so he can discern ground and not sky upon the page. It would not be this world, they all said.
His map said the same, until it curled in on itself and edge touched edge. Ismail made careful folds within the aging and yellowed paper, creating a cube, a triangle, and connected points that should never have connected. The map became a living thing within his hands, showing skies he could never have imagined existing. And this small speck, this lifeless rock, solid beneath bottom and foot now, crusted with salt, marked with a tower. It should not have been.
A meager dinner from his pack, but it isn't a lack of food keeping Ismail restless. He glances toward his ship--gleaming, white, pristine--resting beyond the last soft ridge before the jagged mountains. He wants to run for it, climb in and fly away because in the night that rises when the sun sets, the tower fluctuates. He believes at first it is only the angle of the light; the slow dwindle of sunlight into moonlight, and then a curious combination of both, until one swallows the other.
A Mythos Grimmly Page 5