Grave Measures (The Grave Report, Book 2)

by R. R. Virdi

  I smiled. “Save it for the monster, Ortiz.” I picked up the pace when I noticed two vertical bars on my forearm.

  Eleven hours left.

  More than enough time to hunt down an ancient monster, find and save the young girl trapped in its clutches, and gank the aforementioned creature.

  No sweat.

  Ortiz and I rounded the corner. A pair of double doors stood at the hall’s end. A fist-sized crack hung in the wall to my side. At least I knew I was heading down the right path. It wasn’t likely that anyone else had made that indentation. As we drew closer to the double doors, I began to separate what I had seen from what was actually here. The dark pool of liquid that obstructed the path was likely my mind’s warped version of the double doors ahead.

  “Through there.” I nodded to the doors at the end.

  “Charles.” A hint of wariness hung in her voice.

  “Yeah?” I turned to face her.

  Ortiz chewed on her lips again. She shot a furtive glance to the far doors but I caught it. Her fingers waggled before she clenched them into a fist.

  “Lizzie’s down there,” she said. I could hear the myriad of emotions in her tone, all tangled about as one tried to voice itself above the rest.

  “Yes, she is.”

  Ortiz folded the corner of her lip and bit down noticeably harder. “Lizzie’s down there—alone—with a monster. A monster that, if we don’t do something about, will make her see her worst nightmares—or worse. All the while, it’ll be feeding on her, leaving a dead child behind.”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded far away and removed. I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of failing Lizzie. Of making our way down below only to find the body of a young girl. A kid who had become my friend. The whole of my body twinged like I had fallen into an ice bath. It wasn’t an idea I was fond of thinking about. I found myself nursing the temptation to take Lizzie and run.

  My job was to find Charles’ killer—the phage—and destroy it. If it came down to a choice between getting Lizzie to safety or killing the creature, I knew which I’d choose. The phage could wait. Lizzie couldn’t.

  Ortiz’s lips twitched. Her eyes shook and a something flashed through them. “Charles.” She gave me a weak smile. “I’m… This is a lot of pressure.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “You’re going to think this is stupid,” she said.

  “No, I’m not. Trust me.”

  “I’m scared.” Her words drove the strength out of my legs. My muscles turned to mush. Her gaze slipped away, turning to regard the floor.

  Shame.

  Camilla Ortiz was ashamed of the fact she was scared about what we were going to do. Iron bands wrapped tight around my lungs. It hurt and left my chest feeling heavy.

  “So am I, Ortiz. So am I.” The heaviness in my chest flooded my voice.

  She looked up, staring me in the eyes. “Does it ever stop?”

  “No. You never stop getting scared. Never. Not in this life. But you do get better at handling the fear. It does get easier to manage. It never goes away, not truly. The few moments of sleep I get to steal every now and again are always riddled with nightmares. You learn to bury them. I tell myself I see the horrible things I do so others don’t have to. That I fight the nameless things out of stories so other people will never have to know they exist. That I’m burdened with the fear and knowledge that monsters exist so others can live in ignorance, enjoying the proverbial bliss that comes with it. When you think of it like that, it becomes a little easier to deal with, don’t you think?” I flashed her a smile.

  I realized as I was speaking to her, I was telling myself buried truths that I’d never really paid attention to. I spoke without thinking, a pure stream-of-consciousness. “And, like you said, if we don’t do this,” I broke off and inhaled. “A girl—Lizzie—our friend, will die. That doesn’t leave us much choice, does it?”

  The lost expression slid from her face, replaced by one I liked a whole lot more. A feral, wolfish grin I’d seen before. Aggressive, strong and one that completely rang of Camilla Ortiz. “No, it doesn’t.” She set her jaw. “So let’s stop the chick flick, go kill a monster, and save our friend.”

  I returned her grin. “Damn right. And don’t forget.” I padded the massive bulge in my pants. “We have this.” I gestured to the stake pinned in place by the elastic waistband.

  Ortiz arched a singular brow, eyeing my pants askance. “Is that a charred stake for killing a phage in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” She gave me a wry smile.

  “Uh, both?”

  She rolled her eyes and walked toward the doors.

  “Hey!” I whipped out the stake. “A big piece of wood can be the answer to many of life’s problems.”

  “Like inadequacy issues for which you’re overcompensating?” Her voice was perfectly neutral, but her eyes danced.

  I sniffed indignantly. I was not compensating.

  “Whatever,” I growled. “We’ve got a monster to shank and a kid to save. Let’s get to it.”

  Ortiz’s grin widened as we moved toward the end of the hall. We pushed our way through the doors, ignoring the “maintenance only” sign.

  Time to dive into the dark below.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The room wasn’t what I was expecting. It certainly wasn’t how I remembered it. Not that my memory of the trip could be trusted. The room was made of the same old stone I saw in my flashes. No attempt had been made to cover it up or modernize it. Copper piping, ranging in thickness from my pinky to my leg, filled the room. A lens the size of the bottom of a Coke bottle sat in front of a white circular plate. An arrow held steady between hash-like markings labeled with tiny numbers. It was attached to a barrel-like drum. All of it occupied the space of a small walk-in closet.

  Something sharp glanced off my ribs. Nudging me again, Ortiz nodded to the corner of the room. “There.”

  The room didn’t end there. It went off to some open space. Taking the lead, Ortiz crept over to the opening with measured caution. She beckoned me. Peering around the corner, we came across a corridor narrow enough that we couldn’t walk side by side.

  “Like the Sand People then,” I murmured.

  “What?”

  “Sand People move in single file.”

  Ortiz shook her head but I saw her lips twitch, trying to break into a smile. She kept them in control.

  “I’ll go first.” I brushed my way past her. “Watch my back?”

  “You have to ask?” Her tone was without an edge. She slipped behind me, remaining a pace behind.

  There was something comforting about her presence. It was like a familiar weight on my body. Almost like getting a tight hug from a close friend. It helped settle the steel cables tightening throughout my body. The lighting within the passageway stopped after the first few steps in, leaving the rest mired in darkness.

  The front half of my foot lost contact with solid ground, hovering over empty space. The collar of my shirt stretched tight around my neck. My first thought was that my shirt was trying to strangle me.

  It’s not as stupid as it sounds. Not in my line of work.

  Ortiz held me there, placing her other arm on my shoulder, pulling me back to stand.

  “Found the stairs,” I announced in a dry voice.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Want to switch spots? We don’t want you falling down the stairs…again.” She worked to keep her voice neutral. She failed. I could hear the amusement in it.

  I growled. “Yeah, right.” Prodding with the tip of my foot, I found the next step and gauged its depth. After that, it wasn’t difficult maneuvering my way down. I instructed Ortiz to keep a hand on my shoulder as we descended.

  “I thought you said they were spiraled?”

  “They were.” Another thing I had gotten wrong because of the hallucinations. I prayed I wasn’t making a mistake about anything else.

  Flickering lights with the dull color of an aged porch lamp illu
minated the place. Another step took me into the world of my delusion. We came into a hall of stone. It looked like a fantasy nerd’s wet dream. All that was missing was the torches, booby traps, and monsters.

  Well, if I was right about this, there would be at least one of those.

  The hall was wide enough to park several cars side by side. The darkened stone did a great job at absorbing the poor lighting. We walked in silence. I managed to catch sight of something that caused the bones in my shoulders to slide a bit. In between the dismal flashes of amber light, I could see what looked like gnarled branches. I motioned Ortiz to follow as I stepped closer. I leaned forward, squinting to get a better look at the vine-like formations.

  My shoulder crashed into Ortiz’s chest as I leapt back. “Shit!”

  “What is it?”

  “Look!” I pointed at the wall.

  Ortiz gave me a skeptical look and moved toward the wall, albeit with more caution than I had. Her head bobbed back a second later. “What the hell is that?”

  I shrugged, peering closer. It registered seconds later. The lengthy, thin constructs had lost their prior purplish coloring. They resembled a set of once-gleaming teeth beneath layers of yellowish plaque. The flesh had lost its supple look, appearing like frayed rope. Others parts looked like cracked, dry branches. Where the tendrils had split open, a gelatinous sap oozed and congealed over the surface.

  My sleeve slid across my skin as it was tugged. I turned to Ortiz, giving her a quizzical look.

  She gestured with a single finger to the ceiling.

  I followed it and looked up. I wished I hadn’t. Plumbing crisscrossed above. Every pipe was festooned in more of the phage’s elongated limbs. They had woven themselves around the metal tubing, growing like paranormal weeds. I could make out pebble-sized drops of moisture condensing over the pipes. With every snap of weak, bronzed light, I could make out more. The appendages looked like roots, fighting to take hold over and even in the pipes.

  There were spots where bits of tendrils, thicker than my thumb, had wormed their way into the metal. A milky-white substance formed a ring where the tentacle met the piping. It formed some kind of anti-leak substance. The amount of water trickling out from the pipes was minimal. A few drops per minute at best.

  “Whoa!” we exclaimed in unison, stepping back in synchrony.

  “You see that, Charles?”

  I nodded. The mass of intertwined tendrils pulsated like arteries pumping blood. Something coursed through them to make them bulge like that. The question was, what? I got my answer as soon as I asked.

  Despite the dimness of the room, I noticed the glistening bead fall. Its black coloring was easy to spot amidst the lights. It landed and deformed into an inky smudge no larger than the tip of my pinky.

  “So that explains a lot,” Ortiz murmured.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. The phage was forcing its toxins into the water supply of the asylum via the piping. It should’ve been obvious, but, even so, seeing it was something else. As far as I could tell, the endless amount of tendrils snaking over everything weren’t connected to the creature. They appeared to be separate entities. Though frail in appearance, they were clearly functioning.

  “They aren’t all, you know, still attached to the phage…are they?”

  “No, Ortiz. No, they’re not.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because that would be pretty unsettling.”

  I raised an eyebrow and hooked a thumb to the tangle of thin limbs around us. “And this isn’t?”

  “Touché,” she replied. “I didn’t know it could do something like this.”

  “Neither did I.” None of the lore mentioned it. Although, I should’ve suspected it. Nothing is ever simple with the paranormal. It’s an unspoken law. And just because it isn’t written anywhere for you to find, don’t rule it out. In fact, it’s better to assume it’s possible—no matter how unlikely—than think it’s impossible. Nowhere did it say that the phage couldn’t pull a stunt like this. Hell, it was effective.

  It’s not a great idea to poison water supplies by scurrying around and dumping buckets of toxins in them. By leaving a growth of vines near water sources, they could taint things from a distance. Play it safe until it was chow time.

  Chicken shits.

  “So.” Ortiz broke my silent train of thought. “This means that the phage really has polluted the asylum’s water supply. All of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means everyone who’s taken even a sip has some of this stuff in their body. Everyone has a little bit of the taint in them.”

  I didn’t answer, knowing where Ortiz was going with this.

  “There’s some of it in me too, isn’t there?” Her voice wavered.

  I remained silent.

  “In Lizzie?” she added.

  My tongue found its way between the front row of my teeth and I bit down on it.

  “Charles? The phage can reach out to us, can’t it? Tamper with our minds? Make us see things?”

  “Yes. Yes, it can.”

  Ortiz’s shoulders shook for an instant. She pulled herself together after seconds in silence. “But you managed to deal with it.”

  “I had people counting on me. Didn’t really have a choice.” I smiled. It’s always easier to bear difficult things when you’re doing them for the people you care about.

  She nodded. I could see her putting the disturbing line of thoughts in their place. “We’ll deal with it if and when it happens, huh?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s keep moving. There’s a kid needin’ our help.”

  “So stop dicking around.” She shook her head, going so as far as to roll her eyes.

  I snorted and followed as she assumed the lead. We crept forward, hyperaware of our surroundings. The occasional twitch of tendrils caused us to mirror the sudden spasmodic movements. It’s disconcerting to see tentacles on the walls move. It’s the sort of thing to make you flinch.

  Ortiz piped up after we had made it down half the length of the hall. “You said these things are blind, right?”

  “As far as I can tell.” I shrugged. “It had thin skin stretched over where its eyes should’ve been. My guess is the creatures are born blind. But like I said before, they don’t need sight. They have ridiculous hearing and can hunt via pheromones. They can smell fear. Not to mention every single person in the asylum is harboring a conduit to the phage. That’s what we get for drinking the Kool–Aid.”

  “So the phage could be stalking us right now.”

  I stopped. “Thanks for that,” I muttered under my breath. “Way to destroy the calm.”

  “Man up,” she retorted. “I just wanted to put the possibility out there. Better to be aware than caught with our pants down.”

  “It’s happened before, literally,” I grumbled. Ortiz showed no sign she had heard me.

  I signaled in silence for us to switch places. She slipped behind me. I held the stake level, its point out like a rapier. It was important for us to keep changing positions. Keeping the same person in front leads to complacency. The best way to get the most out of our fear-driven awareness was to stay in motion and introduce changes. Falling into a routine would cause our senses to dull. All it would take is a second. That’d be enough to put the nails in our coffins.

  The sound of tearing cloth emanated from around the hall. Our backs pressed against each other as we moved in a circular pattern, watching. Lights sputtered, revealing nothing more than tendrils moving over one another. Such an innocuous thing. Simple movements with such a disturbing sound. Ortiz’s back heaved against mine.

  “That freak you out as much as it did me?”

  “Yeah,” she breathed.

  “Good. Didn’t want to be the only one.”

  She snorted.

  “If we keep getting worked up like this, the phage is going to know we’re down here. Won’t matter how quiet we are,” I said.

  “Technically, you wandered through here before. You just weren’t
aware of it. You came out fine.”

  “Ish,” I replied. “I came out fine-ish.” I moved again with one hand on the stake. I kept it out at arm’s length. My other hand waved in the dark in an effort to gauge Ortiz’s position. My fingers brushed against hers and both sets of digits locked. The tenseness in my muscles eased. My uncertainties faded.

  It’s one of the simple and wonderful things about life, about being human—the little things. Holding the hand of someone you trust—a friend. Getting the right sort of smile from the right kind of person. A hug. Simple gestures with an endless amount of strength in them. They can ease the heaviest of burdens and quell the darkest of fears...like walking into a nightmare’s lair.

  Holding her hand there, in the dark, gave me a sense of calm. It was an assurance that everything just might turn out okay in the end. That we would save Lizzie. We would gank the phage, and everything would be okay. It was the best reminder that I had Camilla Ortiz watching my back. Someone I could trust with my life. Someone I had trusted with it. She hadn’t let me down yet and I didn’t expect that to change.

  I took another step and something prevented me from touching down on the concrete. My foot pressed down for a second before whatever it was gave out. There was a wet squelch like the sound of a water balloon bursting. I squinted and tried my best to make out what had just popped underfoot. Ortiz moved to my side. Her gaze followed mine to the floor. She swore and inched backward.

  Hundreds of individual, worm-like limbs covered the floor. They knotted over one another to form some sort of grotesque mat. Unlike the tendrils over the walls that had an aged, dry look to them, these looked healthy. Still the color of a nasty bruise, they throbbed on occasion like each was nursing its own heartbeat. One squirmed and gave the illusion it was going to become a bit livelier. Worst of all, they were filled with the horrendous pus I’d come to despise and be wary of.

  I grimaced and stepped back. Concrete friction fought my foot as I ground it over stone. I figured it best to get the phage’s nightmare inducing gook off me as fast as I could. I counted six limbs moving of their own accord, slithering into new positions.