CLICK. The line went dead.
Then a new voice came, not from the phone. Oh no, the line was dead and nothing was coming from there, no more statements, no more questions, accusations or insults, not even the dial tone. No, this voice was coming from the basement. It was a child’s voice, a girl’s voice––recognizable in every possible way.
It belonged to Carrie.
“Mom?”
Stephenie hung the phone on the cradle and turned around slowly, oh so slowly, like she was in a daze inside a dream. The locked door was forgotten now. The phone call was forgotten too. She looked down the stairs––those big oak/mahogany stairs that weren’t suppose to be there yet somehow were. She felt her guts churn inside of her. She took a step forward, followed by another. And as she stepped down the first of ‘Lord only knew’ how many stairs, she felt a tear roll from her eye and onto her cheek.
Heaven help her, with that one single word from her daughter’s mouth it was decided: she was going into the basement. The warnings she received had been cast aside without a moment’s delay.
4
“Carrie?” she asked, with a voice both quiet and meek.
There was no answer.
She took a step, followed by two more. She snagged the flashlight off the floor and pointed it down the stairs. Then, with a hand squeezing the hatchet and an elbow on the handrail, she paused. She thought about the other basement––the bungalow––the way it looked, the way it felt. Like holding hands with a rotting corpse, she thought; her body trembled soon after. Carrie had been calling her name from the belly of that beast too, as she not so fondly remembered. And how did that story end?
Stephenie didn’t care how that story ended. She didn’t care because it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was rescuing her daughter, and the only thing that worried her was the concept of failure.
The voice came again, cutting her thoughts short. “Mom?”
Stephenie felt her mouth twitch. She didn’t grin exactly, but she almost did.
The voice in the basement belonged to her daughter; she knew it. That was the difference this time around, Stephenie promised herself. This time the crestfallen voice belonged to her daughter for sure.
So why was this little adventure starting to feel like Groundhog Day?
She took another step, allowing a fair amount of weight to fall upon the handrail. The stair creaked. The handrail creaked too; she hoped it wouldn’t break. The beam from the flashlight showcased nothing but darkness.
“Carrie? Is that you?” She took another step, wondering if the staircase would fall apart from the weight of her.
“Yes Mom.” The voice sounded quiet, far away, nervous. Above all, the voice sounded real.
“Where are you?” Stephenie asked, then a thought came. What if she found her daughter safe and sound and they left this haunted place together, and what if it happened soon, like in the next few minutes? (And yes, at this point there was no denying it: the place was haunted, or something that wasn’t too far from haunted at the very least.) Escaping the nightmare, wouldn’t that be nice?
“Carrie? Can you hear me?”
No answer.
Stephenie hunted the dark corners of the room she was stepping into, shining the light where it seemed most suited. But she couldn’t see anything. Not a wall, not the floor. Nothing––unless she turned around, of course. When she turned, she could see the light from the storage room revealing the area behind her.
Still descending the staircase, she pointed the flashlight in front of her feet. Yes, the stairs were there, easy to see and impossible to miss. She followed the beam at her feet, shining the light before her.
She said, “Carrie?”
Still no answer.
After another dozen stairs or so she came to the floor. She stepped onto it, heard the rail creak one final time. Then, as her shoes touched the concrete, her heart rate increased. She swallowed back the urge to turn around and run up the stairs, which she definitely wanted to do. She was afraid now, very afraid. The room was too dark and creepy, too unknown. Plus she had been fooled once already so her confidence in this particular situation wasn’t exactly soaring.
She coughed, tried to say something but found she couldn’t. The words were chained to her gullet.
She took a step ahead, followed by another. And another.
The room seemed blacker than night, blacker than death. So she closed her eyes and for a moment she thought she might actually die of fear, right then and there. When she opened her eyes once again nothing had changed. Her night-vision wasn’t going to become active, not with the flashlight on and she wasn’t about to turn it off.
“Carrie!” she finally said, louder than before. “Carrie, where are you?”
No reply.
“CARRIE!”
“I’m here Mom,” the voice said.
“Where?” Stephenie stepped deeper into the room, trying to find her child inside a darkness that was wrapping around her like fingers. But the voice sounded further away now. Was it just the acoustics of the room, or was Carrie drifting out of reach?
A splinter of light appeared.
Stephenie’s eyes snapped towards it.
On the far side of the darkness a door was opening. It seemed to be a mile away or more; the door looked so small.
The door opened wider, then wider still; the sliver of light increased in size.
Stephenie realized the door didn’t look small; it was small. It was probably less than two feet tall and a foot wide.
The slice of light continued to thicken.
Carrie appeared at the door, in the light. She was on her hands and knees (all the room she had been granted in such a place) and her face looked pale and frightened. Her eyes were like saucers. She opened her mouth to speak; then she looked over her shoulder and quickly shuffled back, evading Stephenie’s view.
Stephenie screamed, “Carrie!”
Something happened, she thought.
She began running. Well, not running exactly. She couldn’t run, but she could try. And she did. Fighting back tears of pain and screams of agony she charged towards the door. Her left arm spun wildly, still gripping the weapon with a blade sharp enough to split hairs. She tried to hold the flashlight steady but it didn’t work. The light bounced up and down, illuminating shadows at random.
Carrie was gone from view. Oh shit, she was gone.
“CARRIE!” she screamed.
Then Stephenie found herself at a door that only came to her waist, huffing and panting, her face masked in pain. Reaching down, she found a handle. She grabbed it with the same hand that held the hatchet, using her ring finger to grip. She pulled the door open and dropped to her knees.
5
Behind the door, a little round tunnel went straight into the earth; looked like it had been dug with a hammer. The walls were made of rock, clay and dirt. A string of lights were attached to the ceiling, though Stephenie couldn’t quite figure out how. The tunnel went on for about twenty feet before it came to its first juncture.
From Stephenie’s point of view, she couldn’t tell if the tunnel turned left or right at that juncture. She wouldn’t have cared one way or another if Carrie had been in view, but she wasn’t. Carrie was gone.
For a brief moment Stephenie thought about her favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption. More specifically, she thought about a scene near the climax of the film where the story’s hero, Andy Dufresne, is declared missing from his jail cell and his best friend Red finds himself standing with the prison’s warden plus a guard or two, looking into the mouth of a hole that looked very much like the one Stephenie was looking at now. She figured she might even be wearing the same expression that Morgan Freeman’s character Red had wore. Lord knows, a hammer-dug tunnel wasn’t what she expected to find.
“Carrie?” she said, too quietly for anyone to hear.
But then the response came, echoing off the tunnel’s wall: “I’m in here mommy! Come get me, plea
se!”
Stephenie looked over her shoulder, first the one on her right, then the one on her left.
Nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
The darkness made her skin crawl, and she could feel it weighing down on her––not just around her body but in her heart, too. This child-thing calling her name, maybe it wasn’t Carrie. She wished with all her soul that it was, but what if it wasn’t? It was a terrible thought but it was true. Still, she had come this far, why not a little farther? Why not another step? Or two? Why not place her neck upon the guillotine and have it over with? She couldn’t turn back. She couldn’t turn away. Where would she run? Upstairs? The door leading into the restaurant was locked, and even if it wasn’t locked, even if the troubled spirits running this nightmare decided to throw her a bone and unlock the door, what else had they decided? What other horrors lie waiting on the far side of that door if she was fool enough to open it? And worse than that––worse, but somehow more important, more real––what if she walked through the door at the top of the staircase alone, without Carrie? What then? What was her next move? Would she stumble onto the road and wait for a car that may never come? Would it be time to look for her keys again? Time to visit Blair or make another trip to that fucked up bungalow on the far side of the highway? No. She was a mother and her child needed her. She would do what she had to do. She would extend her neck across the chopping block if need be. Wonder why? The answer was a simple one.
What if Carrie was calling her name?
Stephenie was traveling a one-way street, and she intended on driving its corroded pavement ‘til the end because that’s what a good mother does. Darkness sat in her heart like a lump of coal because her heart was empty, and without her one-and-only daughter––without Carrie––her heart would stay that way until it broke or dried up and she felt nothing. And Stephenie didn’t want to feel nothing. She wanted to feel whole again. She wanted to put things in place. The cupboards in her heart were empty; she needed Carrie to fill them up.
“Carrie!” she said, not like a question but like a statement. Her voice was stern and strong. “I’m coming to get you!”
She pushed herself into the hole, into the earth, into the unknown void that would have a character from her favorite movie hang his mouth open in an expression of awe, because she was forging ahead. God help her, with a flashlight in one hand, a hatchet in the other, and an ankle swelled up like a balloon, she was forging ahead. And as she shuffled along with her arms and knees scraping against the floor, breathing hard with tears rolling from her eyes, she couldn’t help thinking that this was it, the moment everything would end. And maybe it was. Maybe the end was exactly what she needed. Maybe it would be for the best.
“Carrie,” she said. “Hold on, babe. Hold on.”
Behind her, the door closed without making a sound, locking her inside; the hinges were slicker than grease.
6
Stephenie crawled forward, knocking her head against the hanging lights twice. The air tasted damp and stale, filled with an earthy, wormy aroma that wasn’t pleasant in any way. She crawled to the place where the tunnel changed its course. It didn’t turn left or right; the tunnel did both. It was shaped like a ‘T’.
This new section of the tunnel was slightly smaller than the first, but not too much smaller. She would be able to move easily enough, but the claustrophobia factor would increase.
Stephenie looked left.
A string of hanging lights continued along the path, but most of them were out. Light shone upon the empty floor in three separate places. Then the path either changed course or continued without light. She didn’t know; it was too dark for her to make it out.
She swiveled her head from left to right.
Along the path on her right a solitary light was shining, illuminating the floor in a single place. And at the edge of that place, where the light and the darkness met, a twenty-two inch rat watched her movements with its little black eyes. It had brown fur, a twitching nose and a bloated belly. It had pink hands, pink ears and fingers that looked strong enough to play the piano. Its long dark tail tapped the floor periodically, almost rhythmically.
Seeing the creature, Stephenie cringed.
She didn’t like rats. She didn’t like mice much either, but rats were worse. They were big and brave and the thought of being touched by one made her stomach turn and the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Cockroaches she could handle. Rats, not so much.
She heard it squeaking. Or was there a different rat doing the squeaking? Yes, now that she listened she could hear quite clearly; there was more than one rat creeping around with her. Squeaks and squeals and the pitter-patter of feet were coming from both ends of the tunnel.
Stephenie turned left, away from the rat sitting at the edge of the light.
She said, “Carrie? Where are you?”
No response.
Crawling along this new path, she wondered if her journey would be easier if she dropped the hatchet. She couldn’t use it, not in a place so small. And it was starting to be a pain in the ass. She wondered if hauling it around was worth the bother.
She saw a rat run off from a dark corner, hobbling on what seemed like a sore hind leg.
She decided to keep the hatchet. Better safe than sorry.
Beneath the glow of a light, she paused. There was nothing to see, just the floor, the walls and the occasional rodent. But something was different. Something was off. She felt like she was being watched, but was she?
After moving ahead another couple feet the answer arrived.
She was being watched.
“Hello, Stephenie.” It was a voice––male, ugly, terrifying. It sounded like it belonged to a corpse.
Stephenie bolted into kneeling position, banging her head off the ceiling. Her flashlight fell from her hand and rolled forward until it was out of reach.
“Who’s there?” she said, holding the hatchet near her chest. She wondered if she should grab the flashlight. It was only a foot or two away. Afraid to move, she decided against it––for now. She didn’t want to budge until she figured out what was happening and who was in the tunnel with her.
Her eyes strained, defining shapes inside the shadows.
The voice came again. It sounded closer this time, maybe fifteen or twenty feet away. “You know me, right?”
Stephenie responded without a moments delay. “No, I don’t. I can’t see anything; I don’t know who you are.”
There was a shift in the darkness, the sound of something getting dragged across the floor. A fresh wave of stink came wafting through the tunnel, and Stephenie found herself leaning away from it.
“You don’t recognize my voice?”
“I’m afraid not. Should I?”
“I would think so. You know me. You know me very well. Oh yes. You know me very well indeed.”
“Well,” Stephenie said, keeping her voice steady (or at least attempting it) while she watched the figure in the darkness shift. “I don’t know your voice,” she offered. But there was something in the voice she did recognize, something that seemed familiar, but what?
“Come on. Take a guess.”
“I don’t want to guess. I don’t want to play games. Step into the light where I can see you.”
“Oh, that’s no fun. And it’s a little tight in here for stepping, don’t you think?” A chuckle came, cold as a dead fish. The sound of something dragging across the floor continued.
“Look, I don’t want trouble. I’m trying to find my daughter and I don’t have time for this.”
Her reasoning sounded good, at least in Stephenie’s ears; too bad she was full of shit. The problem wasn’t that she was in a hurry. The problem was that she didn’t want to have a discussion with some unknown thing in the bowels of crazy town.
“Here,” the voice in the dark said. “I’ll give you a hint.”
Suddenly there was a flash in the shadows and something came soaring towards her,
something small, cutting through the air in a straight line.
Stephenie lifted a hand from her hatchet, raising it in front of her face in a protective posture. The projectile, wherever it was, spun up and around like it hardly weighed a gram. It was a card––a baseball card or a playing card. And when it fell to the ground it landed face up.
Stephenie recognized it at once.
The face on the card was Ready Freddie, from the Old Maid deck.
Freddie was sitting at the kitchen table with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. He had yellow socks and a green bandana. His tongue was sticking up from his pencil-line lips like he couldn’t wait another minute to eat. The image was adorable. It was Carrie’s favorite card.
“Where did you get that?” Stephenie asked, trying to sound demanding. But she didn’t want to know the answer, not really, not deep down. And she wasn’t in any position to fake authority and get away with it. She was out of her element and clearly not in charge of the current situation.
“Do you want me to tell you? Do you really want to know where the card came from? Think about it Stephenie, think really hard. I know you can do it, babe.” The voice sounded closer now; it was moving towards her.
Stephenie inched back; then a rat ripped past her, followed by two more. They were squeaking and squealing, scurrying close to the wall. They dashed over the flashlight and away they went.
Stephenie released a helpless little yelp. She didn’t like rats. More than that, she didn’t want to ‘think really hard’. She just wanted out. Again.
Praise the Lord and shame the devil, as her mother would sometimes say, she stepped into another trap. And she knew better. At this point, she really did.
Why didn’t I just––
But that’s where her thinking came to a rushing halt. Why didn’t she just what? What was she supposed to do in a situation like this, knock her heels together three times and transport into a chocolate fantasyland? Sprout wings and fly away? Her choices weren’t bad, they were non-existent, and there was a new problem, one that was about to have her crying like a baby in no time at all.
Into Hell Page 12