Nightcrawlers

by Tim Curran

  They kept going and the mist held them in a terrible alchemy of dancing phantoms. The world was filled with strange, unseen forms and secret rustling noises that stopped whenever they dared look.

  Kenney was sweating now despite the wet chill.

  He could feel perspiration running down his spine, beading his forehead. His palms were greasy. He kept hearing sounds—off to the left, then the right, then directly in front of them, behind them. It was maddening. When he stopped to listen, everything went silent as the grave.

  He was expecting to see something at any moment. Something grim loping out of the shadows at them.

  Hyder was talking again, telling everyone it was just a deer. Some big buck rooting out there in the bog lands. Nothing more, nothing to be worried about. But it was obvious from his voice that he was trying to convince himself of this…and failing.

  Kenney thought he caught sight of some vague form ahead bleeding into the night, but then it was gone.

  One of the sheriff’s deputies said, “Christ, did you see that? What the hell was that?”

  And Hyder started to answer—he was always quick with an answer—but then he closed his mouth as something came at them out of the polluted, ectoplasmic mist…a sound.

  Whispering.

  Not just one or two disembodied voices like before, but dozens, maybe hundreds of voices whispering and whispering, competing against one another. That wall of eerie sibilance rose and fell, echoing through the night. You could hear individual voices in there, but never identify what was being said.

  Kenney and the others had frozen up tight now, unmoving. You could hear someone breathing, someone making a strangled sobbing sound, someone else chattering their teeth. Kenney himself felt like he’d been filled with concrete, allowed to set. He thought that any moment he would fall through the moist crust of the earth, plunge into some dark abyss like a sinking ocean liner.

  The whispering faded as if maybe it was coming from some far-distant quarter and then came right back at them again like a boomerang, a malevolent and baneful noise of countless voices, whispering and whispering and whispering. So loud now, so in-their-face god-awful, it seemed it was being run through an amplifier.

  “What the hell is this?” Chipney demanded.

  The men started moving in circles, weapons drawn. Unsure, afraid, terrified maybe. They were muttering to themselves and one man was reciting the Rosary. Herd mentality. Discipline was unraveling like a ball of yarn and they were bumping into each other and stumbling through the sea of cold mud, trying to stay together, but wandering off.

  Kenney was feeling it, too. It seemed the flesh at his balls was literally creeping, slinking, trying to draw itself flat so what it contained could not be found, could not be molested. Could not be ripped free.

  “Stay together!” Hyder called out and his voice was weak and horrified. “We…we gotta stick together and march out in a line. Don’t you see? Anything comes at us, we shoot it, we shoot it down for chrissake—”

  “Quiet!” Kenney snapped. “Shut your goddamn mouth!”

  He heard it as he heard it before…or thought he had…a stealthy, sentient motion out there that stopped as they stopped, took advantage of the noise of the search party walking through the muck to get in closer, closer. But now it was no longer bothering to disguise itself. It was coming now, coming for them. It sounded like a hundred men in rubber boots moving through a swamp—a wet, slopping noise. And there was a ragged, hoarse breathing accompanying it, snatches of that tenebrous whispering.

  The mud seemed to be getting deeper like quicksand now and the fog grew thicker. It swirled around them, covered them, moved in a phantasmal and cloistral mist, enclosing them in a shroud of dampness. The men stumbled through it, tried to find their bearings, but were gradually separating in their confusion.

  And Kenney thought: Sure, you goddamn idiot! Why didn’t you see it coming? That’s exactly what’s happening here! Whatever’s stalking you wants you to scatter, to disperse. Like lions working a herd of gazelle, they’re looking for stragglers…

  And he knew it, but seemed powerless to do anything about it.

  He called out, trying to rally the men, but no voice could still that confusion and terror that ate away their unity. And that was the worst possible thing—no command, no discipline, no unit integrity, everything steadily going right to shit until there weren’t ten men out there in those saturated fields, but ten little boys, lost and scared and confused. Because at the core, he knew, every man is a boy and every woman is a little girl. And nothing brings it to the surface faster that cold, metallic fear. He had the most disturbing sense than whatever was out there knew this only too well.

  It was what they wanted.

  Just like they’d taken advantage of the night and fog and repetitive landscape to lead the search party out here into this yawning hollow where the mud was cool and misting and hungry to suck a man down into its belly…

  Somebody screamed and Kenney saw one of the deputies—Kopecky, he thought—waist-deep in a sinkhole, struggling like a mastodon in a tar pit. He flailed and writhed and fought and that only fed him deeper into the throat of the hole. A few of the cops staggered away so they wouldn’t get drawn down, too, but the others tried to reach him and were soon up to their calves in the muck.

  Kenney made a try himself, one leg sinking up to the knee in that swampy filth.

  The sound of those footsteps moving at them through the mist was closer. A busy, quick sound. The sound of people or worse things perfectly adapted to this environment. They would strike now, he knew. Now that the searchers were mired in the mud, trapped and hobbled and most certainly stuck like struggling insects on flypaper.

  Jesus, I can feel it. It’s about to happen.

  The whisperings were all around them. Loathsome, hunched shapes flitted through the mist with amazing speed and agility. They made noises other than the breathing and whispering—gruntings and groanings, high squealing sounds that sounded too much like those of enraged boars.

  Kopecky was up to his chest in that awful, hungry mire and his face was wet and spattered with grime. His eyes were huge and unblinking, his mouth howling and howling and…and as everyone watched, a pair of grotesque white hands came up from the oozing muck, the fingers bonelessly wrapping around his throat like the tentacles of some bathypelagic horror, and he was drawn down and was gone, a few turgid bubbles rising up. And it all happened so fast, no one could be sure if those spongy, bleached things were even hands at all.

  And that was it.

  Everyone lost it.

  8

  When Kopecky opened his eyes, he was alone in the mud and the darkness. He tried to think, tried to put it together. They were moving through that field and then…and then those shapes came out of the fog. Not human shapes at all. No, debased, degenerate, grotesque. Then he went down the hole.

  You didn’t go down, you were pulled down.

  That’s when panic hit.

  He tried to scramble to his feet, but the mud was slippery like some semi-gelatin ooze. It smelled like corpse slime. Gagging, unbelievably gagging, a yellow and aged stench that crawled down his throat and settled in his gut. He managed to rise finally and immediately bumped his head on the earthen roof of the passage. A jutting root nearly tore his ear off.

  He was in a tunnel.

  A subterranean crawl space made for dwarves or troglodytes. Frantically, he felt at his belt. Yes, he still had his gun but his radio was gone. Not that it would have done him much good down in this stygian hole anyway. He fumbled around on his belt until he found his little penlight. He thanked God he carried it now. He also thanked God that he was not overly claustrophobic.

  He got the light on.

  It was practically blinding in the blackness.

  Above, a little light like that would have illuminated five or six feet, but down there it was like a searchlight. Such was the quality of the darkness.

  Yes, a tunnel with walls of e
arth. He saw no opening above, yet he must have gotten down here somewhere. He had figured he fell through a hole from above, but there was no sign of one.

  Okay. Just think. Do not panic—think.

  He panned the light over the muddy floor. He could see what looked like a drag mark fading into the distance. He must have been knocked unconscious when he fell. Yes, that had to have been it. Then he pulled himself this far by sheer instinct alone, not really awake, just scratching his way forward like a mole.

  He would simply go back that way and get out.

  That’s it.

  That’s all there was to it.

  He began moving back down the passage, trying real hard not to think of what the tunnel was for or who had dug it. It wasn’t a good idea to be thinking about things like that. The tunnel seemed to be arching steadily toward the right at a gentle angle. There was very little to see but tree roots spoking down, mud, and standing water that he splashed through or planed over like a belly-skimming kids. The stink was hot and gassy. It made his throat feel dry even though he was wet and filthy from head to toe, his uniform pants soaked, his boots full of sludge, his shirt smeared with drying clay.

  But dry. Oh hell, yes, drier than dry. Like I been inhaling bone dust and ashy cremains.

  The passage began to widen and he felt hopeful.

  I’m going to get out of this shit. Just you watch and see.

  It was optimism that he figured was neither unrealistic nor misplaced. A good state of mind was more important than anything now. If he could keep his spirits bolstered, his mind would react in kind and find a way out. If he let despair overtake him, he would panic and go mad scrabbling in the muck and darkness. That was unacceptable. He had a wife and son. He needed to get back to them. Besides, the others would be moving heaven and earth to find him. But they couldn’t do it alone; they needed his help.

  He moved on, duck-walking down the tunnel.

  Now and again, he would pause and listen. He wasn’t sure what for, but it seemed necessary. In the back of his mind he told himself that it was for the sound of his rescuers. Maybe it was, partly. But the dark truth was that he had grown up in Haymarket and he knew the stories like everyone did. Insane things about the underground network of passages and, worse, who had tunneled them out.

  He stopped again, breathing slow and even, encouraged by his own bravery, his cool head. He listened and heard nothing but the sound of water dripping, an occasional clod of mud falling.

  Christ, it was like the soundtrack to an old movie or something.

  Now that the passage was wider and taller, he moved forward at sort of a hunched-over crouch. The water had deepened some, it was up over the toes of his boots now, but it did not alarm him. This is the direction he had come from and this was the one that would get him back out.

  Wait until he told people he had been down beneath—

  Shit.

  He shined the light around and there was no mistaking what he was seeing. There were skeletons jutting from the bowed red clay walls, five or six of them still articulated by the dried mud itself. They looked like they were trying to crawl free, and for a moment, as his heart seized in his chest, that’s exactly what he thought they were doing.

  But no, they were long dead.

  Yellowed and pitted, crumbling from age. They had been down there a long time and looked oddly like withered corn shocks as he caught them out of the corner of his eye. Alarmed, he fought back the panic that rose inside him like bile. Gruesome a discovery as it was, they were still just bones and completely harmless.

  And you don’t have time for fear. You panic now and you’ll look just like them after a month down in this goddamn hole.

  He moved on.

  With a sort of sinking feeling in his gut, Kopecky realized that the passage was gradually canting downwards. It would take him deeper into the black bowels of the earth and the realization of this ignited a primal dread inside him. His skin pulled tight, his face and neck felt prickly. He waited there, unsure what to do now. The light trembled in his hand. Water dripped from above and ran down his face like tears. He began to feel the effects of confinement, of gnawing claustrophobia. He was breathing hard like the air was no good. The walls seemed to be pressing in on him. For just one sweaty second there, he thought he saw them moving.

  He edged his way farther down the passage.

  Jesus, it just kept going down and down. Its cant was gradual, but the farther he went, the higher the brown slopping water rose until it was nearly up to his knees. But just ahead, the light showed him that it opened up again. He would go that far before turning back. He would see what there was to see…even if it was just more old bones.

  You’re doing okay, he told himself. Just keep your nerve.

  He relaxed a bit. He couldn’t let imagination master him. He had his light, he had his gun. The walls were not closing in on him and the air was just fine. The very fact that there was air was proof positive that this network connected with the surface somewhere.

  He barely even smelled the gaseous stink now.

  After a while, he figured, you could get used to just about anything.

  He made himself move on until he was in a chamber that was tall enough to stand in. The water was up above his knees by then and steadily rising. It dripped like rain from above. About all he could hear was it constantly dropping into the puddles around him.

  He moved on.

  It was narrowing again, the floor dropping away much faster. He kept at it until the water was up to his thighs. He didn’t like that. He saw no sign of light ahead, as from an opening to the surface, just a heavy weave of darkness that was black and cloying and sewer-smelling. The passage opened up again ahead, but only into a pool of murky water that looked deep.

  No, no way in hell he was going down there.

  Time to backtrack.

  He put the light back the way he had come. Yes, it was more reassuring to go in that direction. At least the tunnel canted gradually higher and he would be out of the water. He figured he couldn’t have been too far under the surface. Worse came to worst, he was going to dig his way out like a rat.

  Behind him, splashing.

  A bolt of white fear exploding in his belly, he turned around quick. For just the briefest of seconds, the light reflected off what looked like dozens of shining white eyes. He nearly dropped the light, a small, strangled cry breaking in his throat. When he got control of it, he aimed the beam back down there.

  Nothing.

  Just that dark pool of filthy water. A few ripples played over its surface and he did not want to know what was causing them. He turned and started up. He made it maybe ten feet when he heard the splashing echoing up from the pool again and his flesh went tight like rubber. He put the light back there and saw nothing.

  It’s your nerves, it’s just your goddamn nerves.

  He breathed in and out and turned back…and cried out.

  Movement.

  Just a hint of it. As he brought the light back around, he saw a dark elfin shape scurry past. In his mind, he had a distorted image of something like a hunched-over black cat walking upright, front paws dangling from chest level.

  He moved the light around in trembling arcs, but there was nothing there. Still, he took no chances. Kopecky was a cop with a cop’s sense of reality. He didn’t believe in boogeymen, but he had been raised on the local superstitions and spook stories. His cop’s gut sense told him to err on the side of caution and he pulled his Colt 9mm from its holster.

  He moved on, the passage narrowing.

  The clay walls pressed in, the roof angled downwards. Water dripped on his head, making his scalp feel sodden and oily. Tree roots reached down like dead fingers. One brushed the back of his neck and he nearly cried out. He moved the light around, scanning it back and forth. And as he did so, he saw something that did make him shriek.

  A face.

  Again, he saw it for no more than a second, but it was definitely a face, white
and grinning, looking swollen as if from insect bites. Its eyes bulged from their sockets like white eggs, huge and sightless.

  Automatically, he jerked the trigger of the Colt and sent two rounds in its direction. Whether he hit it, he did not know. He moved the light around and it was gone. It was not in front of him or behind him. It had just disappeared like a ghost.

  He sensed movement again.

  Panicking, he shined the light in every direction, looking for a target, anything to take out his fear on. He heard more splashing from the pool farther down the passage. He caught a momentary glimpse of something in the light like a huge white spider skittering away. He fired. Something brushed the back of his neck. He turned and fired.

  They were all around him and he knew it.

  But they were so fast, so well adapted to their environment that he never stood a chance against them. He fired twice more at leaping shadows. A white hand came at him like a blur out of the darkness. Before he could even get the gun up, gnarled gray talons laid his cheek open. The skin hung open in a flap.

  He needed room to fight, but the tunnel was confined and claustrophobic.

  Another one of them came at him, but this time he heard it and brought the butt of the gun down on its head before it reached him. It made a squealing sound and vanished. Its head had been soft like the bell of an inky cap mushroom.

  Kopecki got off another wild shot and then he was crawling through the water on his hands and knees as they closed in on him. If he could just make it to the place where he found the skeletons, he would have room to fight. But they weren’t going to allow that because he was much bigger than them and his size and strength made him dangerous on open ground where he could use these things to his advantage.

  They dove on him, tearing and clawing and biting.

  He felt their scabrous little hands brush his face, their pasty and reptilian-feeling bodies. He hit at them, shot at them, blindly kicked out at them, but it was just no good. One of them buried its face in his throat and bit out a chunk of bloody meat in a red spray.