The Quarry

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  “Mythology, huh? You think that’s what I’m talking about?”

  “—I just don’t see what any of this has to do with Dale.”

  Felder got very quiet, picked up his beer but then sat it back down without taking a sip. When he looked back at his visitors, he seemed suddenly like a lost child, his eyes wide and chilling in their hopelessness. “Tell you fellas what, I’m gonna tell you what I didn’t tell that other one, what maybe I should’ve told him. Now, you probably won’t believe me, but I’m gonna tell you just the same. And even if you do believe me, don’t know what you can do about it. But ya’ll are young and clever, maybe you can come up with something my withered old brain can’t. Whatever the case, I ain’t long for this world and it’ll feel good to unburden some.”

  Emilio started to stand. “Mr. Felder, maybe it’s time we got going.”

  “You want to know what happened to your friend?” the old man said, spittle flying from his lips, the weight of his stare forcing Emilio back into his seat. “Well, I’m gonna tell you. You won’t like what you hear, but it’s the truth, at least as much of it as I know. Your friend is dead, son, and there’s something else wearing his body like a coat, but just ’til it gets strong enough to drag itself up out of the water.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emilio said, his voice low and quavering.

  Felder’s lips spread in a grotesque smile that was frightening to behold, his yellowed teeth looking almost predatory. “Sit back, fellas, and brace yourselves. I’m gonna tell you the true story about the Quarry.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I WAS THE youngest foreman the Campbell Limestone Corporation had ever had. Ain’t bragging, mind you, just telling it like it is. Or was. I earned it though. After my daddy died when I was fifteen, dropped outta school and went to work to help support the family. Worked hard, wasn’t afraid of breaking a sweat or getting blisters on my hands and feet, and by the time I was nineteen they done made me foreman of a crew down at the limestone mine.

  “It was a good job, although you young’uns today probably wouldn’t think so. Ya’ll think a good job is anything where you get to sit on your ass all day and pull in a six-figure salary for doing fuck-all. Back then folks had a real work ethic, and we wanted to feel like we was earning our money. And it was good money, at least for those days, and an honest living. Sure, I went home some nights with my back so sore that I couldn’t really stand up straight, but I took a certain pride in that. Made me feel like a man. There was an honor in physical labor back then that your generation probably don’t get.”

  Here Felder paused, his eyes going distant as if he were actually looking into his past, and he stared down at his hands, the knuckles sticking out like large knots. Several moments passed in silence until Norman cleared his throat, making Felder look up, his eyes focusing once again.

  “Sorry, got sorta off track there I reckon. What was I saying? Oh yeah, I ran a crew down at the mine, me and six other fellas. We’d dug the hell outta that place, looked like one of them asteroids or whatever had crashed and left this huge hole. We used to joke we was making a new Grand Canyon. Folks’d come by sometimes just to stand on the rim and look down at us, said we looked like ants and our vehicles like matchbox cars. It was a productive mine, seemed that well would never run dry. Job security, they’d call it nowadays.

  “In fifty-one, my crew was digging out a new tunnel in the north end of the Quarry. We’d found a particularly rich vein of limestone and had tunneled about three hundred feet when we hit on a natural cavern, a round opening deep down in the earth about the size of the lobby in the old Capri theater. We’d found a few of these in the past, like bubbles down below the surface, so we didn’t think nothing of it at first. It was ol’ Ben Childers that actually found the thing, literally stumbled right on it. Fell flat on his ass, held up his lantern to see what had tripped him up, and I swear he screamed just like a woman and started crabwalking back toward the opening of the cavern.”

  “What was it?” Emilio asked in a hushed, reverent voice. He didn’t know if the story the old man was telling was real or bullshit, but it certainly had him hooked.

  Felder shrugged then finished his beer before continuing. “Weren’t none of us could say. We all gathered round it, put our lanterns down in a circle so we could get a better look. Was nothing none of us had ever seen, that’s for damn sure. Wasn’t a man exactly, but wasn’t no animal we could identify.

  “It was man-shaped, in that it had an oversized head, two stalk-like arms and two legs. But it was completely hairless, and where its privates should’ve been it was perfectly smooth. Didn’t have no nipples or bellybutton neither. And its skin was the color of clay. Whatever it was, we assumed it was dead. It wasn’t moving, just lay there on its side, eyes closed, with those chains wrapped around it.”

  “Chains?” Norman said, and Emilio could hear the incredulity dripping in his voice. “It was chained?”

  “Yup, big old thick chains that gleamed like new, not a bit of rust. Wrapped tight around the thing’s middle then sunk down into the rocky ground. A few of us tried tugging at ’em but it was like they was cemented into the earth, and so tight around the thing that they was pressing deep into its rubbery flesh.

  “We all stood around in that small space, the seven of us crammed in there, talking in hushed tones, trying to figure out what it might be. Earl Herron thought it was a dead body somebody had buried, and the lack of air had mummified it or something. ’Course, how anybody could’ve buried a body about four hundred feet deep is beyond me.

  “Ed Masters I believe is the one brought up aliens. Said that except for its skin color, it looked like all them drawings he’d seen of beings from outer space. Some of us laughed at this suggestion, least on the outside, but none of us had any better explanation. How an alien could end up chained deep underground we couldn’t rightly say. Whatever it was, we knew it wasn’t natural.

  “While we was all standing ’round debating what it might be, trying to decide if we should run get the sheriff, Joe Wallace started hollering that he’d seen it move. We all stepped back and stared hard and long at the thing, but it was still as ever. Joe swore though that he’d seen one of its arms twitching, and he wasn’t one to tell tall-tales. None of us wanted to get too close after that.

  “Ben said, ‘It can’t be alive, not being stuck down here like that for only God knows how long.’ Which sounded sensible, but since didn’t none of us know what the hell it was, we couldn’t know what was possible far as it was concerned. Someone, can’t remember who, turned to Bobby Humphries, the oldest fella on the crew, and suggested he go check if the thing was breathing.

  “ ‘Why me?’ he says, and the answer was ’cause his daughter was a nurse, which didn’t make a whole heap of sense but we was all pretty freaked at that point and not exactly thinking straight.

  “Bobby finally agreed, mostly I think because he didn’t want us spring chickens thinking he was yellow, and we all stood back and watched him kneel down next to that thing. He turned back to us once and says, ‘How do we even know it needs to breathe?’

  “ ‘Everything living has to breathe, even plants,’ I told ’im, trying to sound like a big shot know-it-all, and right there I probably signed the death certificate of four men.”

  Felder took a shaky breath and let his head sag down until his chin was touching his chest, as if he were nodding off in the middle of his tale. But his hands remained active, fidgeting around like two hyperactive spiders, and he began methodically popping the knuckles of each hand with his thumbs. Moving quicker than Emilio would have thought possible, he jumped to his feet. “I need another beer. Sure ya’ll don’t want to join me in a drink?”

  Norman answered no for both of them, but Emilio was thinking that he maybe could use a drink. It wasn’t that he believed the old man’s story, but there was such conviction in his voice. Compelling. Almost hypnotic.

  While Felder had his head stuck in the fridg
e, Norman turned to Emilio and mouthed, What a load of crap.

  Let’s just hear him out, Emilio mouthed back.

  This is getting us nowhere.

  Please, just ten more minutes.

  Norman sighed in surrender and turned to Felder as he sat back in his recliner and took three large gulps of the beer, as if trying to drown the memories. Or his madness. The old man seemed hesitant to continue, more interested in the beads of condensation that dripped down the can. Finally he put the beer aside, looked up at his guests, and returned to his tale.

  “Bobby started by rolling the thing onto its back; he said it didn’t weigh much of nothing, like a scarecrow stuffed with straw. He didn’t seem to wanna get nowhere near its mouth, which was just a slash across the lower part of its face, so first he put his ear up against its chest, said he didn’t hear no heartbeat. The he reached out real tentative like and put a hand up over its mouth, feeling for air. Thing didn’t seem to have no nose, so if it breathed had to be through its yap. ‘Don’t feel nothing, whatever it is I think it’s dead,’ Bobby told us. Then he made the mistake of leaning toward the thing to get a closer look.

  “That’s when the thing’s arms shot up and wrapped themselves around Bobby’s neck, dragging him down closer to it. Now Bobby was old but he wasn’t weak, and you’d think there’d be no way them scrawny stick arms could’ve held him, but they sure as shit did. Thing pulled him down until them two were face to face. Then that thing put its mouth over Bobby’s. Looked almost like they was kissing.”

  Emilio flashed back to the night of Dale’s dive, pulling him back onto land…

  It kissed me.

  …and he shuddered.

  “Well, we all ran over to help, but thin as those arms were, they were like steel and we couldn’t pry ’em off poor Bobby. He was flopping around like a fish out on the peer, still with a hook snagged in its maw. The thing’s eyes were open, and it looked up at us as we tried to get Bobby free. Those eyes were perfectly round, about the size of the bottom of a Coke bottle, and there was no iris or pupil we could see, just solid color, a real light blue that seemed almost to glow. Some say the devil has black eyes, or maybe red, but I know different. I know from firsthand experience that the devil’s eyes are baby blue.

  “When it became obvious we wasn’t gonna get Bobby loose, we all sort of backed off, looking around for something we could use to maybe bash the thing over the skull, get it to let go that way. But then it let go on its own. Its arms fell back to its side and its eyes closed, and Bobby lay next to it, panting and shaking and looking like he couldn’t hardly catch his breath. Couple of us grabbed him and pulled him away from the thing, in case it got feisty again. We all bottlenecked up in the tunnel, just outside the cavern, Bobby leaning against the dirt and rock wall, gulping air like it was water. We kept asking if he was okay, but he just held up a hand so we gave him his space, much as we could in such close quarters.

  “After a few minutes, he looked up at us, his eyes sort of cloudy from shock we figured, and he said, ‘What the hell did that thing do to me?’

  “Didn’t none of us have an answer to that one, we was just glad it hadn’t done no permanent damage to Bobby. In our hurry to get away from the thing, most of us had left our lanterns in the cavern, so it was pretty dark in the tunnel, and the dark made it feel a little too cramped in there, like the tunnel was shrinking. They got a name for it, closetphobia or something.”

  “Claustrophobia,” Norman corrected.

  “Yeah, well, we all started to feel it, didn’t none of us much wanna stay down in the dark with that thing so nearby, so we decided to go back out in the open and discuss what to do next. Bobby suggested maybe a couple of us might better stand guard in the tunnel, just in case the thing woke back up and got out of its chains somehow. Didn’t seem likely, those chains were pretty damn strong, but as Bobby could tell you that thing was pretty damn strong itself. Bobby volunteered to stand guard if someone would join him, and I’ll admit straight up wasn’t a one of us wanted no part of that. I certainly wasn’t gonna raise my hand; I wanted out of that dark hole in the ground, wanted to see the sun again. Finally Earl agreed to stay with Bobby, and the rest of us hightailed it back out into the open air.

  “I gotta tell you, once we were back in the light, we started doubting what we’d seen, like maybe our eyes was playing tricks on us, or maybe there was some kind of gas in the cavern that had caused us all to see things. Weird that we’d all see the same thing, sure, but not as weird as what we thought we’d saw. But we were convinced there had to be some explanation that made sense; something we just hadn’t hit on yet.

  “We’d been huddled together for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, when Bobby came back out of the tunnel. Alone. I asked where Earl was, and Bobby said he was still back guarding the thing but that he needed Henry Myers, the youngest on the crew, to come on back in the tunnel with him. ’Course Henry wanted to know what for, but Bobby just said Earl wanted to ask him something, didn’t know what. Seemed kind of strange to me; I mean if Earl wanted to ask Henry something, why didn’t he come out himself? But Bobby was kind of like a dad to Henry, and the young’un followed him back in the tunnel without a whit of doubt. Didn’t sit right with me though, and I could tell by looking around our little group that it didn’t sit right with a bunch of the others neither.

  “We didn’t even really talk about it, not that I recall. After about a minute, we just all moved toward the tunnel, snagging a few more lanterns and flashlights and heading after Bobby and Henry. I think we all knew something was wrong soon as we walked into the narrow passage. Something in the air, a scent maybe, I don’t know, but something wasn’t right. We could hear some kind of noise down toward the cavern, a kind of sucking sound and a muffled mumbling, but our lights didn’t reach far enough to see what was going on. Which turned out to be a blessing.

  “We reached the end of the tunnel and didn’t find nobody, so we went on into the cavern, where all the lanterns we’d left there before were out. But by the new light we brought with us, we saw something that turned our blood to ice and sort of froze us in our tracks.

  “First thing I saw was Earl, least what was left of him. Only way I could identify the poor bastard was by his clothes. He was all shriveled and dried up, like when you pour salt on a snail. His eyes had caved into his head, and his mouth was wide open like he’d died screaming. And there was no question he was dead as a doornail. Looked like he was made out of that stuff, newspaper and flour, what’s it called?”

  “Papier-mâché?” Emilio said.

  “That’s the stuff. Just old yellowed brittle paper, like if you touched him he’d crumble under your fingers and just blow away like dust in the wind. Seemed all the moisture had been drained outta him.

  “I was aware of the other guys around me shouting and backing up, Joe falling to the ground and almost getting trampled, but it was distant, and I just couldn’t seem to focus on nothing except the lifeless husk that used to be my buddy Earl Herron. Then I turned my head to the center of the space, where those sucking and mumbling sounds were coming from. That’s when I spotted Henry, in the grips of that thing while it covered his mouth with its own, just like it’d done with Bobby. Only Bobby had seemed to come out of it all right, but I could see Henry wasting away, his skin tightening and cracking, muscles seeming to just wither away to nothing. He was pulling into himself, like he was deflating. This was obviously what had happened to Earl.

  “And there was Bobby, just standing off to the side and looking down at this with a smile on his face, all satisfied like. Then he turned to look at the rest of us, and I swear for just a split second I thought his eyes glowed a soft shade of blue, and he says, ‘Who’s next, fellas?’

  “I ain’t ashamed to admit hearing those words made my sack pull up and I never been as scared as I was at that moment. ’Cause it wasn’t Bobby’s voice. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. Don’t know how to explain it really, but it was like something done hija
cked Bobby’s vocal cords but didn’t know how to use ’em right.”

  I know exactly what you mean, Emilio thought.

  “Whole thing was so weird it was like a nightmare. No, now that ain’t exactly true, and if I’m telling it, I might as well tell it all and tell it right. Crazy as it was, I knew it wasn’t no nightmare, but I like to tell lies in my head so as to excuse my sorry self for not doing nothing to save Henry. I just stood by while his life was sucked outta him, until he was an empty shell just like Earl.

  “After it was done with Henry, that thing sat up, the chains rattling around it, not allowing it much leeway. I swear the thing’s eyes were glowing brighter and a bit darker. It raised a three-fingered hand toward Bobby, who came jerking forward like a puppet on a string, headed straight for the bunch of us.

  “We all backed up a step, but to our credit we didn’t turn tail and run. Whatever that thing was, it had taken hold of Bobby and had killed two men from the crew. Good men, men we’d worked with, shot the shit with, broke bread with, went out drinking with. We might all’ve be scared shitless, and I know I sure as hell was, but we wasn’t about to walk away until we’d stopped the thing.

  “Bobby kept coming toward us, sayin’ something like, ‘I need more. I’ve been down here for too long, my strength is sapped. I need to feed more if I’m ever going to break these bonds.’

  “Well, ain’t none us had ever heard Bobby talk nothing like that, so we knew it had to be that thing, talking through him or something. We didn’t know how it was possible, but we didn’t exactly have a lot of time to think. We had to stop Bobby, get through to him somehow.

  “Now I was the head of the crew, the one everybody looked to as the authority, even Bobby despite him being more’n twice my age. Forcing my legs to move, I took a step toward him, holding my hands up. ‘Look, old timer,’ I says, which was my nickname for him, and he always called me whippersnapper. I says, ‘Just calm down, okay? You ain’t thinking too straight right now, your mind’s all jumbled. How ’bout we go grab a smoke and just talk things out, maybe clear that head of yours?’