by RB Stutz
The screaming was coming from just behind the door near where the girl lay. Gathering my wits again, I breathed in deeply and went through.
The room I entered was white and filled with a bright light somewhat blinding even coming from the well-lit hallway outside. The sterile room was some type of laboratory with a variety of differing pieces of testing equipment against the walls as well as tables with different beakers and vials on them. In the center of the room was a large hospital bed and lying on it, restrained, was Sara, screaming and thrashing as two people in white lab coats performed some sort of procedure.
I stood frozen as I tried to process the scene, the girl I loved, the one who mattered the most, in such agony. The two men working on her didn’t seem to notice me. Not knowing what they were doing to her, I was unsure of what to do. If I just rushed up and broke their necks while they were in the middle of some procedure, would Sara survive? Could I just take out one, and threaten the other to help her and give me the information I needed to save her?
“Michael. No. Watch out!” Sara screamed.
In all she was going through, she’d seen me. As she said it, a surge of intense blinding hot pain coursed through my body. The guns immediately fell from my grip and I, in turn, fell to my knees as I lost all control of my faculties. I screamed out in pain and fear. There was a powerful blow to my head and I crumbled to my side onto the ground.
“Michael no! Michael!” I could hear Sara screaming as I lay on the cold white floor.
A strange tingling flowed through my mostly numb, limp body. I couldn’t make any of my limbs move. I opened my eyes to see two men wearing Titan black fatigues standing above me with blank expressions on their faces. Get him up someone snarled to my left. My neck didn’t have the strength to look at who it was.
The two men reached down and lifted me from the ground. I swayed when they had me upright. They held me up, grasping each arm in order to keep me standing.
“You bastards! Leave him alone,” Sara screeched followed by another agonizing scream as the two in lab coats continued their work.
Something unintelligible came out as I tried to shout something at the men hurting her. My mouth was just a gob of useless tingling tissue.
Batton moved out from behind me. “You need not worry about her, Michael. We are almost through. It is yourself you should be concerned with.”
In his hand was a three foot rod, its tip glowing and sizzling bright blue.
“You are next. We will cut you open, see what there is to see, and then you will both be ours.”
I shouted something that ended up sounding like “blu thun tha va bit” as I tried to call him the male child of a female canine.
“Oh, wearing off already?” he said casually and then moved the blue end of the rod to my chest.
The electricity crackled as the pain coursed through me. He pulled it away and the pain started to fade, but a few seconds later he put it back to my chest and I screamed as the blinding pain returned.
Sara was still screaming, at the pain she was suffering and at what she could see them doing to me.
“Sara,” I tried to scream as the current tortured my body.
I couldn’t get the words out, just garbled sound.
“What are you doing to her?” I ordered.
“Stop, stop,” Sara pleaded as the door behind me burst open.
I was able to turn my head just slightly to see Dr. Roberts enter the room. Fresh blood still trickled from her lip. Batton moved the electrode from my chest and the two guards were still securing my arms, holding up my limp body.
Dr. Roberts moved to me. She had something in her hand, a syringe. She took that very large syringe and jammed the needle into my neck. Sara was thrashing against the restraints in the bed screaming “Stop, stop!”
It was immediate, with the sharp jab of the needle, I faded. I had to try, had to fight to keep my eyes open, but it was useless.
“Sara, Sara!” I mumbled as everything faded to black.
I’d failed. That was the last time I saw Sara, the last memory I had before waking cold and alone in the dark Montana wilderness.
I never understood how I was able to get away from the HUB, really no idea on how long it was I was unconscious. They were going to either kill me or do some other unpleasant thing. They’d told me as much, but there I was lying on the cold forest floor alone and free, well at least free from the HUB. I’d never feel free. I’d always carry the burden of letting Sara die. I’d left them all die.
CHAPTER 20
I ran from the Cross with my tail between my legs straight back to my nasty little hovel of a room. Terrified, I spent the rest of the evening curled up on my bed. Every creak and sound in the room and building caused my heart to race. I imagined those thick hairy spiders crawling on the floor and proceeding up to the bed, ready to molest me all over again with their cold probing limbs.
Sleep didn’t come easily, but at one point, I finally drifted off and when I did I was back in the hospital room I’d visited so many times before.
I was talking with the girl on the bed and looking at the tightly bundled babies. There was a difference now though from all of the other instances of the dream. The feeling of love for the newborns and heart ache at knowing I was letting them go was missing. The scene seemed more distant, like I was a shadow of the player I once was. Replacing the love and heart ache was a steady thrum of anxiety pounding away at me as well as terror, unseen, but very present.
Even though I wasn’t playing my part as rehearsed, the girl carried on as before. “They are so cute. I can’t believe we made them together,” the girl said.
I looked over towards the foot of the bed, at the two carts that held the two newborns. On the floor several of the large spiders circled the carts. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. The spiders began to crawl up the side of the carts, towards the babies.
“I’m fine. Sad,” the girl said with wet eyes.
Couldn’t she see what was happening? I tried to kick at the spiders as they climbed. Nothing happened. It was like my foot went right through them.
She continued on. “They’re ready for it to be over. They don’t understand why I’m sad. They say I should be glad we found such a nice couple willing to take twin newborns. They’re right. I know it’s best for the babies, but they’re ours. I’m sad.”
I couldn’t stop them. The girl couldn’t see them. They were going to hurt my children.
“Logan and Landon. I’ve always liked those names.”
The spiders were close to the top. I tried again, this time swatting at them with my hands. It was no use. I couldn’t stop them.
There was a knock at the door. This time the sound was hopeful. It was the nurse, the babies’ new parents. They’d stop the spiders. Logan and Landon would be safe.
The door opened and the young couple walked in. They greeted us and went to the babies. They seemed to see the spiders. They turned to me smiled and then knocked the creatures off like they were shooing away a fly.
The nurse then came in. She wasn’t the same round woman from my previous dreams. She was now the blonde girl I’d followed into that basement. She looked up with a menacing smile and went to the babies. I wanted to scream out to the adoptive parents, to warn them of the nurse. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I just watched as the blonde serpent took the babies away and the young couple cheerfully followed.
There was the too familiar feeling of soft thumps on my shoulders and back. I looked over and saw more of the spiders had landed on me.
With a start, I woke from the nightmare shaking and covered in sweat.
Whatever had happened in that dark basement scared the hell out of me. I had no explanation. Nothing I could work out that made any kind of sense. With all I could do, all the strength I thought I had, it was way too much for me to handle. My fear had reared its head in its most basic and naked form and gotten the best of me. I couldn’t handle it and I lost both the officer a
nd Wally.
I had a duty to protect them and I ran. Once again, I couldn’t do what was necessary to help those who needed it. I was a coward who fled instead of being able to do what needed to be done. I only hoped my abandonment hadn’t gotten them killed yet.
All the weirdness aside, there had to have been a reason the blonde girl brought Wally into that basement. There had to be a way out, aside from the stairwell back up into the bar. Officer Raymond mentioned when the police searched the space weeks before, there was no other exit. It was possible the blonde girl could have circled back around when we were distracted and gone back up the stairs, but then why did she go down there to begin with?
I needed to find them. I didn’t know if I was already too late, but I had to try. It was my fault officer Raymond was involved and I couldn’t have more blood on my hands. I had enough.
Once I was awake and fully alert, my wits under control, I decided to go back and check out the basement again during the early morning. I knew time was running short to make it too officer Raymond and Wally before it was too late. Fortunately, the day was overcast, which made getting back to the bar easy and since it was closed, I jumped in.
I’d expected doing so unnoticed during the day would have been more difficult than it was. The area the bar was in bustled with morning foot traffic. However, I was able to find a blind spot to jump from and once in, I proceeded immediately to the stair well and then down into the basement.
With the lights on, the basement area wasn’t as frightening as I recalled it being the night before. Of course the spectacle of nightmares had added to some of the spaces frightful ambiance. The room was now much how I envisioned it looking, open with random stacks of crates and boxes scattered to and fro. The space was large and expansive, but not efficiently utilized, its use nothing more than a dumping ground for the old and excess. The blanket of dust over everything showed most of the stuff had rested where it was for many years.
I carefully made my way around the entire room. There was no sign of a door or anything to indicate some type of passage out. There were just boxes and crates and I was at a loss at where else to look. I kept on looking though.
If there was a way out, it had to be somewhere along the walls. Surely there wasn’t anything further below the building. I didn’t rule that out, but it seemed unlikely.
There really wasn’t much blocking the wall space, only a couple places having obstructions that could possibly cover something. There was shelving and a few stacks of crates and boxes. Most everything else was positioned away from the walls.
The shelving didn’t appear to conceal any type of passage but remembering the basement in Troy, I checked several times to be sure. There was no mechanism to pull the unit away from the walls and I was pretty certain nothing was there. The couple of crate stacks against the walls were just like all of the others scattered throughout the room. All were pretty large. I tried moving a couple of crates, but they were way too heavy for someone to move them back and forth for access, especially considering they had to be moved back into place to conceal the passage.
I suddenly realized I could probably move the stacks against the wall fairly easily if I needed to gain access to a passage hidden behind them. I wasn’t thinking about it the right way. Had I just forgotten what I saw in Idaho only a few weeks back? I’d seen others with the same abilities as me. I hadn’t considered someone else might also have the strength to move the stacks.
With that realization, I went to the closest stack of crates against the wall. It was compiled of several smaller boxes forming a pile lacking in architectural soundness. When I tried to move a group of them, I had to jump back to avoid the falling avalanche of boxes. It took only a few minutes to clear away the fallen boxes and see there was no hidden passage.
The second stack was made up of larger crates piled three high and two deep. I wasn’t sure how heavy they were, but was fairly certain I could pull them all back from the wall as one unit. With my left shoulder against the wall, I put my fingers behind the back crate ready to pull. Before I did, I felt a cool breeze caress my fingers.
With only minimal effort, I pulled on the crate closest to the wall. The whole stack moved as one unit. Once I had the stack pulled three feet from the wall, the exit was revealed.
The rough hole was approximately four feet high and maybe two wide. It looked like it was made with a sledge hammer and brute force. The hole revealed the wall was made of brick covered in a thick layer of plaster. Jagged, broken edges of the brick, framed the concealed access point. Fastened on the back of the crate stack was a metal handle, like you might see on a barn door, so that once you stepped through, you could pull the stack back into place.
Cold air blew in from the darkness beyond the hole and a scent I could only describe as all things old surrounded me. With a sigh and a deep breath, I hesitantly stepped through the hole into a world of darkness.
I hoped I was prepared for whatever might lie ahead. I was armed with two 9mm and a small knife. The two guns were strapped on under my jacket, each in a shoulder holster, and the knife was strapped on above my ankle. I also had a small LED flashlight, which would put off just enough light to make my way around, but not alert anyone of my presence within a reasonable distance and of course the PTD was strapped on and ready, not that it had been very effective the night before.
I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Was I just following a serial killer or was she something more? Based on the weight of those crates, it was now safe to assume she did have at least some enhanced abilities. Not every young petite blonde girl in the world could have moved that stack back and forth. What I didn’t know was what the extent of those abilities was. Could what happened last night somehow be a product of those abilities? I shivered at the thought, not sure how well I would handle an experience like that again.
The light from the basement revealed some sort of underground passage. Fallen rubble, pieces of stone and brick, and broken wood scattered the ground everywhere. The outer side of the basement wall showed the facade of an old building. There was an old door space filled in with brick, where the hole was now punched through back into the building. I could also see spaces where windows once were on both sides of the old door, also filled in with brick.
When I first arrived in Seattle, I’d done some research online about the city and particularly the area where the disappearances occurred. I remembered reading some interesting material on Seattle in the late 1800’s.
Apparently in 1889, there was a huge fire that destroyed thirty plus city blocks. The structures in Seattle at that time were mostly wooden, which further fueled the fire’s destruction. After the fire, the city’s leaders ordered all rebuilding would use stone or brick to insure against a similar disaster in the future. They also decided to use the destruction as an excuse to re-grade the streets one to two stories higher than they had been. The Pioneer Square area was originally built mostly on filled-in tidelands and as a consequence, it often flooded. The new street level was to help prevent future flooding as well as help ensure gravity-assisted flush toilets didn't back up during high tide into nearby Elliot Bay.
In order to re-grade the streets, the builders used concrete walls to first line the streets. This formed narrow alleyways between the walls and the buildings on either side of the street, and a wide alley where the street was. The city’s naturally steep hillsides were used to run a series of sluices into these wide alleys, which carried material to fill in the space. This effectively raised the streets to the desired new level, generally twelve feet higher than they were before, though in some places it was nearly thirty feet.
The article said at first, pedestrians climbed ladders to go between the street-level down to the sidewalks in front of the building entrances. Eventually, brick archways were constructed next to the road surface, above the submerged sidewalks and skylights with small panes of clear glass, were installed.
Once the new sidewalks were comp
lete at the street level, building owners moved their businesses to the new ground floor. Some merchants continued to carry on business for a while in the lowest floors of buildings that survived the fire and pedestrians continued to use the underground sidewalks lit by the glass cubes embedded in the street-level sidewalk above.
In the early 1900’s, the city condemned the underground area for fear of the spread of the bubonic plague. The basements and underground tunnels were left to deteriorate or were used as storage. In some cases, they became illegal flophouses for the homeless, gambling halls, centers for prostitution and opium dens.
Most of the underground area was still condemned. Only a small portion had been restored and made safe and accessible to the general public on guided tours. I actually wanted to take the tour before I left Seattle. The history behind it interested me. It seemed I’d stumbled upon a condemned portion of the underground area and was going on the self-guided tour.
I had two choices, right or left. Shining the dim light at the ground, I crouched closer to see if I could find any trace of what direction they might have traveled. There were footprints disrupting the thick layer of dust on both sides of the tunnel entrance. I followed the prints to my left but they faded after just a few feet, so I turned around to follow the prints in the other direction. They went further into the tunnel.
My guess was the girl took those she abducted to one of the condemned basements that used to serve as a ground floor, forgotten by those who work and live above it. From what I understood of the tunnels, if I was going in the right direction and my guess on destination was correct, I should stroll right up to them. If the point of access was as delicately made as the one I had just came through, it would be obvious.
It was relatively noisy down in the empty tunnels. The bustle of mid-morning down town activity could be heard, somewhat muffled. Every once in a while, some light broke through the mostly dark colored glass cubes set in the sidewalks above, when they were still clear enough to let it through.