Black Water

by Jon Fore

  “Let’s go back the other way. How we went the wrong way, I’ll never know.” Abby turned and started out on her own.

  “Abby! I know we went the right way. We had to!” Ethan shouted as he began to follow her, more important to keep everyone together then back tracking. “Abby, wait!”

  In a few short steps, they came to a hole, a large hole with an iron rung ladder fixed into the stone, rusted and gritty looking. There was no way around it but to try to leap over, which was not an attractive idea considering the drop.

  “This is just fucking peachy,” Abby said. “Have I gone insane or something?”

  “Maybe,” Ethan said just under his breath. “But if you have, you are not alone.”

  “How did we get lost? Guys, really, I want to get out of here,” Madison whimpered.

  “Back the other way. This is really sick,” Abby said.

  They did not make it back more than a few yards before another of the holes presented itself, the top rusted rung bent slightly. “I’m getting really scared now,” Abby whispered to Ethan.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Ethan agreed. He dropped his pack and drew out a length of orange rope and the nickel-plated revolver. He shoved the revolver in his waistband and offered one end of the rope to Abby.

  “What’s this for?”

  “If we tie ourselves together, we won’t become separated. Either of you two have a cell phone?”

  “Mine’s with my stuff,” Madison said.

  “No,” Abby replied simply.

  “Well, let’s just stay close together and find our way out. How big is this prison, Abby?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know anything about it until Brighton told us.”

  “It appears to be huge. I can see sixteen cells in either direction, and I know there are more, and there is another floor beneath us with more cells maybe. It’s just seems like a lot of prison space for captured troops.”

  “I really don’t know,” Abby responded weakly. “Maybe they surrendered in battalions back then or something.”

  “Alright. I’ll go down first, since it’s the only direction we seem to be able to go in, and I’ll let you know if it is safe.”

  “Are you going to tie yourself to us?” Abby asked.

  “No, I might fall or something. I don’t want to drag you in behind me.”

  “You know this place isn’t…I don’t know…right?” Abby asked almost under her breath.

  “I know.” Ethan placed his foot on the first rung and tested it to make sure it could hold his weight. It did, so he tried the next, and then the next until he found himself some twenty feet below the girls and their flashlights.

  He found himself in a large room, this time with some sporadic fixtures. The pieces had succumbed to decay and age unlike the house above. From here, four wooden doors led in four different directions.

  The oddest thing in the room was an enormous wooden cross leaning in one corner. It was made of wood and nailed together with large, block-headed iron nails. The wood was worked sloppily into a semblance of art, but so poorly as to make it look almost like someone was belittling its symbolism. He signaled the girls to come down while he went to inspect it.

  As he expected, at the ends of the crossbeam and near the base, he found stains of a ruddy brown color, almost rust. He knew this had to be old blood, dried and absorbed into the wood. The idea of crucifying people so recently disturbed Ethan greatly, and he jumped when Madison dropped to the earthen floor.

  Abby came down shortly after and they began to inspect the room from where they were, using their flashlights like holy relics ordained to ward the bearer from evil. Near the center and cut into the rock under the sandy floor was a hole suited to hold the large cross erect, satisfying Ethan’s questions as to if crucifixion actually did happen and the idea of it not a product of his slowly warping mind.

  Abby approached the door closest to her and peered through the tiny window filled with rusting bars. Just beyond was a room, dark and ominous, with what her flashlight revealed to be a large wooden bed. Chains hung from the ceiling and draped to or close to the floor. Odd stains scarred the walls with a dark rust color. As she searched the floor with her light, she hovered on what looked to be a small white stick, dull and a bit dirty. Just before moving on, she realized it was the skeletal remains of a finger and screamed for the others’ attention.

  “This must be where they tortured the soldiers,” Ethan thought aloud.

  “This place is sick…actually I think I’m going to be sick…” Abby said around a mouth too full of spit.

  “Can we go now?” Madison asked, clearly agitated.

  “Yeah, let’s check the other doors. You know, I just thought of something: did you say, Abby, that they put a road up to here back in the fifties?” Ethan wondered.

  “Up to the house, I think,” she said after clearing her mouth onto the floor.

  “How did the Hearts get supplies up here without an access road?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Well, I’m betting that there is a tunnel out of here near the foot of the mountain. They had to get horses and food and prisoners and, you know, stuff up here.”

  “I guess; I have no idea. Why are you asking me?” Abby was beginning to sound irritated as well.

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  Madison began to climb the iron rungs back to where they had come, and the first one pulled from of the wall. She fell to the floor with an audible rush of escaping breath.

  Ethan went to help her up. “You alright? That had to hurt…”

  “I’m fine. I guess we aren’t going back up there,” Madison said, still short of breath

  “I got the feeling that we were not going to get out up there, anyway.”

  “Why not, Ethan? Do you know something?” Abby asked him, accusation in her voice.

  “Well, we walked in a straight line and got lost. Turned around, walked in a straight line, and almost fell in a hole. Turned around, there was another hole. You guys don’t feel the, I don’t know, strangeness down here?”

  “I just feel like I need to get out of here,” Madison whimpered.

  “Yeah, I feel it,” Abby agreed, her face a mask of growing desperation.

  “Let’s look for another way to go,” Ethan suggested as he strode to another of the four doors.

  The second concealed a rack of chisels and augers and other rusted iron hooks, all for the same apparent purpose. This room as well was spattered in layers of aged blood, rusted into the walls and on the wood racks.

  “There seems to be a bit more to this place than what Brighton told us. I think a lot of torture happened here…and not so long ago,” Abby said.

  “Who knows?” Ethan replied as he moved on.

  “There is a passage in this one,” Madison called from the next door. “It goes on forever.”

  Ethan peered into the small door window expecting to see another of the cruel chambers, but instead his light vanished down a lengthy brick passage. A bitter odor drifted in on the stale air; something acrid and woody was burning somewhere. “Do you smell something burning?”

  “No…” Madison said thoughtfully.

  “Let’s find our way out.” Abby unlatched the door and began walking down the hall.

  The others fell in behind her with shuffling feet, scraping at the sandy floor. The walls seemed wet, oozing moisture along their height. The ceiling was tall, easily twelve or thirteen feet up, but it did little to ease the oppressive feeling of being underground. It made Ethan rather nervous, he being slightly claustrophobic.

  Abby suddenly stopped, her flashlight held out before her like a shield. There in the glow stood a man, or a man-like thing, its skin a hideous gray color, scabbed and pitched. It wore a jacket of some kind, but shredded and torn and without any emblems. Its head leaned sickly to one side, dangling a stringy mat of hair that collected on the ground. On many areas of its body, small cracks had opened in the mushroom-colored skin,
which leaked a puss-like fluid. All along its body, fixed deeply in the skin, were embers, small, smoking embers burning away at its flesh.

  Madison looked at the thing, gagged once, then wretched small bits of pasta at the wall. The odor suddenly became so strong it was hard to breath.

  Abby began to step backwards, pushing Ethan and Madison with each step. She was terrified beyond reason, and she could not take her eyes from the thing as she attempted to flee.

  It turned its crooked neck slowly and peered at them from around the greasy mat of tangled black hair. When it did, Ethan could just make out the rod in his hand, the grotesque rod with the small clasping mechanism at the top. Like the ones in Mr. Brighton’s house, it was a cinder stick, and possibly the very thing that had tormented Chris before he took his own life. It wore as well a cutlass on a ruined belt, more rotten leather than useful harness. Ethan was suddenly sure that this was Captain Black.

  Abby finally lost all control, spun on the two she had been pushing, and screamed, “Run!”

  They all took off as the grotesque thing dripped and shuffled after them, its hair dragging on the ground, its steps tearing strands free. It trailed behind it the greasy smoke of burning flesh.

  They reached the outer chamber quickly and rushed through the door. The first thing Ethan noticed was the cross now stood firmly in the stone cup in the floor. Nailed to the dry wood was the remains of Chris, his body gray with the lack of blood, the flesh of his neck yawning open to show his spine. Adding to the horror of this desecration was a savage mutilation that allowed the softer parts of him to fall out and collect in a pile of bloodless tubes on the floor. Madison vomited again.

  Abby screamed an ungodly scream, a scream that Ethan had never imagined coming from a person, and ran to the next door. Madison stumbled and spit as she followed after. Ethan spun on his heels and drew the revolver tucked at the small of his back. He aimed with the flashlight’s help and waited until he could see the thing that pursued them.

  “Ethan! There’s another hall! Come on!” Abby voice was as high pitched and strained with horror as Ethan felt.

  “Don’t wait for me!” he shouted back as he began to fire. The large caliber hollow tips struck the figure and blossomed into explosions of gray flesh and puss. He pulled on the trigger repeatedly until the explosive retort became a metallic click. Even with the large, snot-filled holes, the thing continued its pursuit, slow and purposeful, intent on some wicked deed.

  Ethan sprinted to the door the girls had gone through and turned just in time to see the thing tear an ember from its own flesh, affix it to the cinder stick, and begin to burn Chris’s corpse, already deeply branded, already long dead. Ethan closed the door and turned to see the two flashlights bobbling from floor to ceiling and back to floor as the girls ran down the passage.

  Ethan started running, and after a few moments, found he was having trouble catching up to them. They were running headlong and hazardously as if Death on its pale horse rode behind them.

  Chapter 9

  The passage ended in a crossway. To the left were doors and more passage; to the right, a large room.

  The girls slid to a stop, Madison bumping the wall before turning back to Ethan. She saw him coming, his face a grim standard, and screamed for all she was worth. Abby threw her arms around her and tried to staunch her own scream.

  “What the fuck was that! Oh my sweet Jesus! What the fuck was that?” Madison screamed at Ethan.

  “I don’t know! We have to go—now! I shot it six times; it didn’t even look at me!”

  “Wait…stop…think…holy shit, guys, what do we do?” Abby seemed to be trying to regain control of herself, her eyes flickering down the passage.

  “We get our asses out of here!” Madison shouted.

  “We have to think, guys! We can’t just go running through here like prey! God, where are you?” Abby’s voice spun down to a whimpering cry.

  “Alright, think…” Ethan said, the empty revolver still in his hand. “We can’t just run, I agree, but which way?”

  “I don’t give a frog-fucking damn, people! Let’s just go!” Madison sounded on the verge of bolting.

  “Okay, alright, let’s go this way,” Abby said, indicating the large room. “Its closer and we can always run back here. Where is that thing?”

  “It stopped to burn holes into Chris. Did you see what happened to him?”

  Abby did not answer and headed off to the large room. Ethan yanked the box of shells from his bag and started to fill the revolver as he followed her, Madison trailing by his shoulder, her eyes behind them, seeking the abomination.

  The room was large and centered with a square hole the size of a car. All around the room, chains hung from the brick walls with tight loops of iron on each end. Inside these loops were the skeletal necks of many souls who lay scattered about the room in varying positions, only some of them complete. Near one side of the room, a skeleton leaned against the wall, as if sleeping, and around him were scattered many of the long bones of those closest to him. These bones had been broken or smashed and clearly picked clean.

  “What kind of place is this?” Ethan asked. “This is sick.”

  “They let them starve,” Abby whispered.

  “It looks like they started to eat each other.” Ethan whispered. “What kind of demented person…” he began but did not finish.

  They entered the room more slowly, uncertain of the reality of it all considering the visage giving them chase. In the center and over the edges of the hole lead three of the chains, at the end of each the remains of those finding suicide a better release than starvation.

  “They hung themselves,” Madison said with breathy horror.

  “Or were thrown in by the more cannibalistic of them.” Ethan’s voice sounded as if he were about to be ill. “There’s more in the hole,” he added after shining his flashlight down. “That’s a bit of a drop.”

  “Let’s go back; we can’t get out here,” Abby urged as she started for the door.

  They headed back toward the passage and stopped when they hit a wall of stench, the stench of burning flesh.

  “Oh my God, it’s coming!” Abby gasped, frozen where she was.

  “Go, before he blocks us in!” Ethan shouted.

  The greasy tangle of hair made a lazy turn around the corner and stopped. The head rolled back with a crunching sound and the thing’s sword came free of the rotting belt. Its hand shook slowly, like an old person fighting a losing battle with age. It made a sinister sound, a wet hiss, but not like an angry snake, more like rusted iron drug across stone.

  “Go back!” Abby pushed. “Go back!”

  Ethan let the girls push past him as he raised the gun once more. He fired, striking the thing in the head. Behind him, one of the girls screamed at the sudden loud noise. It fell from the force of the round and struck the wall behind it. It slid a bit before trying to work itself back up. He fired again, each shot releasing more of the rancid ilk to splash across the wall and filling the passage with a rotting sickbed stench.

  The second shot caught the thing in the chest, and this time, it fell flat on its back, yet it did not drop the sword or the cinder stick, still sizzling around bits of Chris’s flesh.

  Ethan turned and ran after the girls.

  He found them on the far side of the room, clutching each other, trying to shake their terror free.

  “Did you kill it?” Madison screamed.

  “No, the damn thing won’t die! I hit it in the head, and it didn’t even drop the sword.”

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed…” Abby began, her eyes clenched tightly.

  “What do we do? We got to get out of here!” Madison screamed. She was clearly losing her mind, and doing so rapidly.

  “Down! Let’s climb down the chains.”

  “…on Earth, as it is in…”

  Madison rushed for a chain and started to scramble down, leaving Abby to her prayer.

  “…this da
y, our daily…”

  “Abby! Come on! We are leaving!”

  She looked up at him, but clearly frozen in terror. The stench of burning flesh and the gritty sound of iron and stone began to invade the room.

  Ethan rushed to her and dragged her to the hole on her knees. “I can’t carry you down, Abby. You have to do this yourself.”

  Madison had reached the end of her chain. “It’s not far enough to reach the ground.” She screamed, “Ethan, help me!”

  Ethan was quickly approaching a point where he would snap. When he did, and this was his greatest fear, all bets were off, and he was sure that for an eternity, he would walk these halls seeking prey like this thing entering the room. “Abby, climb down, sweetie,” he said calmly as he brought the revolver back up. “Climb down, Abby.”

  She finally rose and grasped the large links of one of the chains. Ethan fired a round, carefully aiming for the thing’s head. It flew backwards again, flinging the mockery of blood from the other wounds as well. Abby suddenly got hold of herself, shocked by the sudden retort of the gun, and scrambled over the edge, dropping quickly.

  Ethan waited a moment for the thing to gain its knees and fired twice in rapid succession. Without checking his shots, he grabbed a chain and slid down, leaving flesh in the rust adorning the links. He had trouble stopping himself before sliding completely off the chain. He dropped his flashlight and pistol to use both hands, and he heard the unmistakable sound of dried bones crunching beneath their weight.

  “I can’t hold on much longer!” Madison whined, the skeleton that once hung from her chain now shattered and fallen to the floor below.

  Abby had managed to get her feet to clamp on the iron loop at the end of her chain, and seemed rather capable of holding there for some time. Ethan found himself stretched and swinging slowly back and forth almost by the tips of his fingers. “I’ll drop first. Try and hold on, Madison,” he ordered through clenched teeth then let go of his chain.

  He felt as though he hung for just a split second before falling. He was not sure the distance, and at this point, did not bother worrying. He struck the floor hard, sending a raging burst of pain up his feet and into his ankles before rolling through the skeletal debris.