by George Right
"Bravo!" derisively praised Jane. "'Never break character,' huh?"
The "coffin maker" smiled again, this time silently.
"I don't like all this," Mike muttered.
"Chuck it, Mikey!" the girl exclaimed. "The guy is a shill, don't you understand? He probably exited through a back door. Or stayed inside, quickly put on makeup, and will frighten us now as a 'blood-stained corpse.' A clever idea," she praised the “coffin maker.” "I've seen 'rooms of horror' with live actors, but never those who pretend to be casual visitors."
The worker continued smiling silently.
"Yes, but I don't want to ruin my clothes with that mess," Mike nodded at the "blood-stained" car.
"Do not worry about it," hastily said the “coffin maker.” "We will clean it up. And you meanwhile please sit down in the forward car."
Jane didn't make the worker ask her twice and stepped over a low board. Mike willy-nilly sat beside her. The "coffin maker" lowered the safety bar which latched and pressed them into their seats, as if they were going to ride on steep hills instead of a flat floor.
"Don't try to stand up or to grab anything during movement. Inside it is forbidden to take photos or to make other records," he warned them and turned the knife switch. The car lurched forward, having unmercifully jarred the passengers, and several seconds later dived into thick darkness.
At first they moved in total darkness and silence; the silence was unnaturally dense, wadded, absorbing even the sound of the electric motor. Then suddenly from the darkness ahead a desperate shriek came, this time female; now both Jane and Mike shuddered. Almost immediately from somewhere at the left a groan full of pain and hopeless despair responded to it; it slowly faded away and then on the right someone moaned as if trying to beg for something through a gag–probably, it was a very young girl... or even a child? And then Mike smelled a heavy, sticky stench and at the next moment–still in the same utter darkness–his face plunged into something like a dense web.
Mike had arachnophobia since his childhood and would rather have put his bare hand into a dirty toilet bowl than touch a web; his throat immediately spasmed in disgust and he desperately jerked his head, trying to escape from the nasty thing. As if having caught this movement, the car abruptly stopped, then rolled back a bit and stopped again. At the next instant a bright flash lit up what they had just ridden into.
And it was not a web.
Over the rails a long-ago decayed and dried-out corpse hung heels over head; most likely it was a women, or maybe a young girl–at such stage of decomposition it was difficult to discern an age. In any case, the victim had once had magnificent, voluminous, and long hair. Now only thin, fragile locks covered with dust remained; that was "the web." The victim was tied by barbed wire which deeply gnawed into the decayed flesh; here and there yellowed bones showed through ruptures in the browned skin. But the most terrible was the overturned face covered with a wrinkled parchment of dried-out skin: the mouth, open in a silent scream, showed rotten jaws; in place of the decomposed nose, there was a triangular hole divided by a vertical partition; gaping eye sockets resembled nibbled burrows. And the main thing, everywhere–in the mouth, in the nose, in the eye sockets—writhed small white worms. The head actually swarmed with them.
Yes, they weren't just motionless fake worms as it would be natural for a dummy. They were moving–in those three or four seconds when the light shone, Mike and Jane saw this clearly. And then the car jerked forward again, and they had to pass through her hair once more, now seeing distinctly what it was. And, no matter how they tried to turn their heads away, the dusty locks touched their faces again (mostly Mike's; Jane was only lightly brushed on her cheek). And then the light went out again.
From somewhere of the cave depths new groans sounded.
"Damn"... murmured Jane in the gloom while the car carried them further. "You were right, we shouldn't have..."
Someone's cold and wet hand touched her shoulder. The girl screamed. And the other hand at the same time touched Mike's shoulder.
The car stopped again and then suddenly turned in place–obviously, here the rails passed through a turntable. Again a directional light flashed, pulling out from the darkness what they had just disturbed.
It was a corpse, too, but this time, seemingly, male (though its back was turned to them, so it was difficult to say with full confidence) and not dried out but, on the contrary, inflated. The dead person had been rather fat even during his lifetime, but now his swollen body covered with cadaveric lividities and, apparently, ready to burst and splash out the purulent swill which had accumulated under its skin, looked especially disgusting. It was also suspended heels over head–or, more exactly, heels over neck, because the head was absent. Two meat hooks, hanging down from a ceiling on long chains, pierced its ankles from behind, having snagged the sinews. The dead man hung on these sinews stretched from its flesh by the weight of the bulky body like on terrible slings and long stains of dried-up blood–extending from the hooks covered with brown crust down along his legs which were like huge sausages–showed that he had been still alive when his flesh had been pierced.
His hands, which had touched Mike and Jane, still slightly waved, weaker and weaker. Then they stopped. The car stayed motionless, too. Then the light again went out.
"Move, damn it... " Mike murmured. As if having heard him, the car began to vibrate slightly–and suddenly the motor died again with an unpleasant metal clang. A clear smell of burned insulation added to the cadaveric stench. Engine failure? As if that wasn't enough!
"Hey!" the young man shouted into the darkness. "Hey, there's a problem! Get us out of here!"
The light flashed, lighting up again the headless body hanging ahead of them, absolutely motionless. And suddenly the hands of the cadaver stretched to the terror-numbed passengers, blindly rummaging in the air and narrowly missing their faces. From somewhere above came a grinding noise and the chains shook and began to move, dragging the ugly hulk even closer...
Jane recoiled, then tried to jump out of the stuck car, but the tightly fastened safety bar, as durable as on "Sky Ship," held her to the seat. Mike hammered his fist on the metal nose of the car as if hoping to jolt the motor to life. Certainly, it was useless. But when the hands of the corpse were just about to touch them, gear wheels clanged above, pulling the chains up and the body crept upward, still clenching and unclenching its fingers in vain attempts to seize the people remaining below. Right then the turntable turned the car again and the recovered motor carried them forward.
Only now Mike realized how fast his heart was beating. "Phew, nonsense!" he confoundedly thought. "After all it's just a doll! Very realistic, but..."
Actually, exactly these attempts of "the cadaver" to seize them should have acted to calm him at once. A headless body can't wave hands. At least, not at this stage of decomposition. So, all this is not real. To tell the truth, after the first corpse he had subconscious doubts–that body looked so... natural...
But the stench? Obviously, also a trick. As well as the smell of the burned insulation, intended to convince them that the motor was malfunctioning.
The darkness was pierced by screams again, this time a man's, and light appeared left ahead–not bright white but dim crimson. The light came from a niche inlaid with stones; the car passed it by at reduced speed, but this time without stopping, and the passengers saw a scene which probably represented a torture chamber of the Middle Ages. An emaciated man was stretched on a vertical rack and the executioner, naked from the waist up and in a round red cap hiding his face, methodically ripped off the prisoner's skin with big pincers. And it wasn't a static scene at all... The head of the unfortunate man was already skinned completely, having become a wet-gleaming crimson globe; Mike saw in horror how the absolutely round eyes, deprived of eyelids, were moving in eye-sockets, watching the passing car; from a lipless mouth, together with shouts, blood splashed out–apparently, the man's tongue had been ripped out. The executioner m
eanwhile flayed the victim's hand, pulling the skin off like a long glove. When the car had almost passed by, the executioner momentarily interrupted his business, suddenly turned back and waved to the passengers with the pincers. Jane screamed, having realized that his red cap actually was the skin just ripped off the head of the victim and turned inside out...
Again they moved in complete darkness with an accompaniment of screams and moans; then from the right, very close to them, came a sound like a dental drill. But, when black curtains opened near the car, it appeared to be a much larger tool.
A young man, probably even a teenager, was nailed to a wooden cross. More precisely, not even nailed. Screwed. He got more than Christ: in his arms and legs not less than two dozen huge screws were fastened. And the one who did it–a well-fed man in blood-splashed coveralls–wasn't going to stop: at that moment he used an electric drill to bore the victim's knee caps. The victim couldn't even shout: a wooden gag was hammered into his mouth and fixed with nails through his bottom jaw.
The car moved further. A new scene: a kitchen table covered with a cheerful cloth, to which a heavily pregnant young woman was tied by thin wire which ripped the skin of her wrists and ankles. Her bottom jaw was completely torn off; the fallen-out tongue–unexpectedly big from the point of view of those who have never seen before a human tongue as a whole–resembled a fat dead mollusk. And a slovenly hairy and bearded man furiously used a long, sharp-ended kitchen knife to stab, stab, stab her huge pregnant belly. With each blow, from the torn-apart hole which once was the woman's mouth a blood clot splashed out. But this was not the most terrible. It was clearly visible as under the skin of her belly, tightly straining it now here, then there, large bulges convulsively moved. The fetus was still alive–though, in principle, even a single stab should have been fatal–and each time when the knife pierced in, the fetus writhed and wriggled. Now a hand, then a foot stretched the mother's belly so much that it appeared just about to burst–especially taking into account that it already had cuts which drew as crimson holes; and at the moment when the car started moving again, Mike distinctly saw through the skin the features of a face with a wide-open mouth, pressing from within...
Nausea was rising to his throat, but the young man still couldn't look away. When they dived into darkness again, Mike closed his eyes and decided not to open them till the exit. But when almost at his ear a strange sucking-squelching sound was heard, he couldn't restrain himself and looked.
At first the beam of light was very narrow, and Mike saw only a tender girl's belly, pierced by a steel spike. This way the girl was nailed to a concrete column. Sweat flowed down her pale skin, mixing with blood below the spike. Then the beam slipped up, and the passengers of the car saw why the victim could neither scream nor even groan: her mouth and nostrils were tightly sewn up with rough thread. In order to let the unfortunate being breathe, her throat was pierced by a tube, like for a tracheotomy; this tube was the source of that sound. She began to breathe faster when she saw that the car stopped very close to her; her eyes looked at Mike and Jane with entreaty. It seemed to Mike, according to the movement of her shoulders, that she tried to stretch hands to them... and then the beam became wider, and the passengers of the car saw with shudder that she had no hands. Her right arm was chopped off almost up to the shoulder, the left one–a little above the elbow. Her legs had been cut asymmetrically as well–only there the longest stump was the right one, reaching the knee. The skin on the ends of the stumps was pulled together by the same rough thread. The victim stretched the remnants of her limbs in a vain attempt to touch Jane who was sitting closer to her; Jane involuntarily recoiled as far as the narrow car allowed. However, the stumps lacked several inches of reaching her anyway.
And then steps were heard from behind. Someone approached in a shuffling plod. Mike and Jane turned their heads round. At first they could not discern anything; then in the gloom a bulky silhouette appeared. From somewhere below smoldering crimson light beamed up; the face of the figure remained shadowed, but it was possible to clearly distinguish heavy boots, dirty jeans under an apron (once white, now covered with brown spots) and, the main thing, an ax on a long handle at the end of a brawny arm. An ax from which something seeming almost black in such lighting was dripping...
Strangely enough, seeing this person who was without any haste approaching the motionless car, Mike felt calmer again. A maniac with an ax, what a trite cliche... they could think up something more original... He looked at the heavy figure with a smile, even when the latter came very close and brought his ax over his head...
And then the ax fell upon Jane.
Everything happened in fractions of a second. The girl desperately screamed. Mike clumsily jerked, moved by opposite reflexes–to intercept the heavy edge falling on his girlfriend and to move as far away from it as possible... but in any case from such a position–pressed to a seat by the safety bar and turning his head back–he could do nothing. A bump, a wet crunch of a split bone, Jane's shriek...
Mike stiffened; his brain refused to process the events. Probably, about three seconds passed until he understood that his girlfriend was still sitting next to him, alive and unharmed. She had shouted just with fear. At the last moment the ax had changed its direction and fallen upon the mutilated victim on the column, having truncated the longer remnant of her leg by several inches. From a stump blood gushed, and from the tube thrust in her throat hoarse hissing came–the only sound that replaced a scream from her...
The butcher turned again to the passengers of the car, raising his ax. Now most of his face got into the beam of light directed at the nailed victim. Mike's eye was first of all caught by grinning big yellow teeth and an unshaven chin. Jane squealed again. She really, really wasn't sure that the next blow would not hit her.
And Mike wasn't confident in it anymore, either.
The ax began to fall again. But at the very same time the car sharply moved ahead. The sound of the blow–this time ringing, as the ax hit the steel rail–came from behind the car.
The butcher hollowly muttered something and ran after them.
He moved not too quickly, but the car also, after the initial jerk, rode only slightly quicker than a fast-walking person. The light was left behind; now around them there was darkness again which was filled with painful groans and agonizing screams, and behind thumped the tread of the butcher who was gradually reducing the distance. At last his steps began to sound very close, right behind where Jane was sitting–it seemed, the ax could crash down from the darkness at any moment. But the car accelerated again, leaving the maniac behind. The latter, however, sped up–his boots began stamping faster, approaching again. "It's all fake," Mike told himself. "He'll purposefully almost catch up to us, and at the last moment fall back again..."
The ax with a clang hit the board of the car only few inches short of Jane's elbow.
"Shit! " she yelled. "That could have been my arm!"
Yes, Mike understood suddenly. After all, everything had happened in the darkness. This man, an actor or whoever, couldn't see that Jane's arm wasn't there...
The car accelerated anew, but then the heavy footfalls began to overtake it again.
"Look!" suddenly cried Jane.
Mike, who had twisted his head back in vain attempts to see the butcher, looked forward–and saw the blood-red letters "EXIT" flashing in the darkness. The car rushed straight towards them. "At last," Mike thought with relief. Then the speed decreased, but only a couple of yards remained to the exit. An instant more–and...
The floor under them yawned, and they flew down.
A second later–a second filled with their joint scream–they understood that it was not a free fall but only a descent on a high-speed elevator. Then a short overload–the pay for zero gravity during the first instant of the descent–pressed them hard to the seats, and the car rolled forward to the bottom of... a pit? a mine? a well? They heard the elevator go up again, having left them in utter darkness.
But from the darkness no rat peep reached. Only some quiet, spasmodic scraping. And Mike felt–though he couldn't realize why–how this low, subtle sound made his hair move on his head.
Light, unsteady and wavering, came on, and they indeed saw a boy. But not that one–according to the legend, the victim of rats was white, while this boy was black. Tears flowed down his cheeks, but he couldn't scream. He was impaled on a long vertical stake which came out from his mouth. All that he could do was to gnaw this thick round wooden pole covered with blood and contents of his intestines; it was his teeth which made that sound. The stake, more than two yards high, was gnawed starting from the top–but now the boy had slipped down it almost to the floor. However, he had no chance to touch the floor with his feet–the base of the stake was too wide.
The flickering light became more and more bright, eventually lighting up not only the stake, but also the vault around. It was indeed a big vault with high concrete arch and blank walls. There were neither corridors nor doors leading outside. The rails ended only few yards ahead. And on these rails stood... other cars. Of the same design, but very old, rusted, overgrown with dust, dirt, and webs. And these cars weren't empty. In horror Mike and Jane looked at the pale-yellow skulls (on one of them earphones still hung, on another one a baseball cap remained), at the tatter of clothing hanging down from the ribs... it looked like nobody could get out from under the safety bars pressing them to the seats...
"So this is where those who disappear come!" thought shocked Mike... and immediately called himself an idiot. The carnival had arrived in town just a few days ago–how the hell could there be skeletons and rust?! Stage set, everything here is only trickery!