by David Irons
'They are what they eat,' Matt said as he pointed his camera's light at the hand scrawled blood message.
'The one we captured had larvae like tendencies: a ribbed, translucent texture to its original form, resembling the Phyllophaga grub. Two of my men, employees to help with this expedition were unexpectedly bitten and ultimately killed off by us. Through this we realized their bite has somewhat vampiristic tendencies to it…'
'Vampiristic? You gotta be fucking kidding me?' Alex cut in, reaching for his handkerchief with a nervous grin.
'They are what they eat?' Kelly said piping in with terror in her throat. 'Maybe these things ate vampires…'
'What the fuck is down here!' Alex screamed in a shrieking panic.
'The road above, the cross,' Jennifer pondered. 'Maybe it's not just decoration, maybe it's keeping something down here.'
'Have you ever read Dracula?' Kelly asked. 'Roses. Vampires hate red roses.'
Kristi, becoming spooked with the conversation, squeezed her daughter's shoulder. 'Quit it with the fairy tales kid; I knew I should have thrown that damn book out of the car.'
'But Mom, you killed it with a stake through the chest! Look!'
She paused, soaking in her daughter's words and staring at the thing she killed.
'What does that prove?' Matt scoffed. 'A stake through the heart would kill me.'
'Are you all nuts!' Alex shouted, 'What the hell are you talking about?'
'Well can you explain that?' Jennifer pointed at the chained creature.
Kelly turned away from the arguing adults, gazing into a darkened corner. Her sight slowly adjusted to the gloom; understanding, but wishing she didn't understand what she was looking at. Bulbous dead eyes glared back at her, as her eyes grew in terror. Jabbering, she grabbed at her mom, pulling at her black jacket and pointing into the corner.
'O — Over there!' she cried, 'A thing!'
CHAPTER 16
Everyone tensed, clutched their weapons tighter, turned in the direction of where the little girl's finger gestured. Matt threw his camera beam in its direction, highlighting an oversized form on the floor, a greying, almost transparent exoskeleton. A huge elongated, dead insect-thing; its antenna and legs, thin spindles like brittle rope. Its face an oversized cricket type creature, all black eyes and yellow teeth. On top of its head a hole gaped in its cracked skull, seemingly the explanation of how they dispatched it.
'What in the hell is that?' Alex moaned.
The thing stayed still, dormant — obviously dead.
Matt quickly moved over to the girl on the wall, inspecting its insectoid legs then spotted something on its gangling arm.
'What are you doing?' Alison cried out.
Examining the inside of the girl’s hanging forearm he spotted a circle of round, punctured holes. Matt eyed the dead creature's circular mouth, a shape that matched the marks on the woman's arm. 'There's some kind of teeth marks on her arm. I think it's from that thing, I think it bit her.'
'What the hell have you found down here, Blitzer, you bastard?' Kristi breathed out.
Matt pulled his phone's beam away from the dead thing, knowing no one else down there needed to see it.
Alex's panic increased. 'We need to get out of here! We need to get out of here now! We need...'
'Cool it, man,' Matt said, calmly.
Alex took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. 'Keep reading that book.'
Jennifer picked up where she had left off. 'Through their bites, we discovered two things: we become like them if their teeth penetrate skin, and from consumption of human tissue, they become more like us. From eating us, they almost immediately begun to show more human traits: limbs and torso re-forming to resemble the person consumed. Transmutation from their bites comes three to five hours after they have fed. After an hour, metamorphosis begins, turning the bitten human host into a variation of what the thing was that bit them. The creatures' DNA now not pure, suffering from years of living underground like this, causes their bite to hold their own individual mutant strain from what they have devoured: worms, grubs, etc. Later we discovered that transfusing their blood to another human causes the same mutation as the bite. But through this the subject keeps their human form longer, gaining more physical prowess and durability by doing so. Maybe the blood holds the original cell structure of what the creatures were in their more indigenous form; their bite possibly soured by the swallowing of the things they have come to represent, night crawlers and such.'
A jarring juxtaposition hit Jennifer like a two-by-four to the face,
'Night Creepers — Night Creepers, used to be a pest, now they're always with you, because you are their nest!'
No, she thought, don't think about it, not now, not now, not now…
The devil on her arm pulsed, almost reminded her, NO — now is the time to think about it.
'What the hell was that thing that bit her? Originally?' Matt wondered aloud.
Jennifer jarred back by his words, went on. 'We have tested the bite and blood theory successfully on some of the ladies of the night we found. Using them as paid subjects, Traxler and I incarcerated them down here until some kind of results were shown in their system. The blood transfusion took days longer than that of the bite.'
'Tested successfully, huh?' Kristi muttered, dryly.
Jennifer thought back to her time in the office: Blitzer coming in, talking to her about a proposition, to pay those debts. A shiver snaked down her spine when, for a moment, she pictured herself hanging from the wall.
'So that's what he wanted with those hookers,' Matt stated.
Alex wiped his brow again. 'Jesus Christ,' he moaned. 'What about him?' He pointed to the dead priest, a warm mist rising from the hole in his throat. 'Is he going to turn into one of them?'
'It says here they turn by bite, that thing didn't bite him, did it?'
Finding no peace in her words, he wiped sweat from his brow with a quick flash of his cuff.
'So, where the fuck is Blitzer now? You said you saw him dead,' Kristi snapped at Alison. 'He's not in his box. Is he down here with more of those things?'
'He was dead, Kristi, he was,' Alison whined in a sickly tone.
'That sick bastard,' Kristi said. 'I knew he was into this stuff, but this…'
'What do you mean?' Jennifer asked.
'Gregory Blitzer had some odd interests; Matt can vouch for this. I hired him to look into Blitzer's life, to dig around, to see what was really there. Alex knew he had cash stashed, Matt found out about the hookers, but what he was really up to, nobody knew.'
For once, as she stood holding Kelly, she spoke plain truth. Gone was the woman they had got to know over the last few hours: the loud brash banshee, wailing at anything and everyone she had an inkling of distaste for. Now, stuck in this situation, her voice lowered and the person behind the ego slowly seeped out. 'You know it, I know it, and I'm not even going to lie; of course I married him for his money. I've done it before and I would do it again. You can judge me on that. But trust me. My life hasn't been a picnic; I do what I have to do to get by for me and for Kelly. I thought at first there might be something to Gregory Blitzer, then, little by little, that wore off. I knew that guy had secrets, I mean who doesn't? Then when I started piecing things together, I wanted out, immediately.'
'What are you trying to say, Kristi?' Alex growled. 'This ain't exactly the time for a speech from The Bold And The Beautiful.'
The softness in her gaze disappeared, her pupils turning sharper than a pair of cutthroat daggers. 'What I'm saying is that Mr. Friendly, good-old-go-to Gregory was more a front than you would ever know. He had a room in the house, his private room, no windows, just a door. At first it was just an office, then after a while I knew there was something else in there. I picked up on his odd behaviour. Late nights out of the house, early mornings back in. So, one day I waited for him to come home, hid in the shadows near his office door. As soon as he walked through it, I got in there. Th
is guy was into all kinds of sick shit. Pagan looking diagrams, books on Witchcraft, demonology, other worldly stuff, you know? He went insane, forced me out of the place. I was only in there a minute, but what I did see were three white napkins laid out on a table, each one blood-soaked with something underneath, something small like an animal or… I don't know. Then I grabbed a folder with pictures of…'
She paused thinking how to say the next words on the tip of her tongue. 'Black and white pictures of Kelly, in bed asleep.' The girl pulled in closer to her. 'What kind of person does that? Now seeing all this, was she going to be up on that wall?' Her mother's words sent a shiver down her daughter's spine. 'What was going under a bloody sheet next? One of us? I wasn't waiting around. So, that's when we left. And then I took that son of a bitch for what I could. He had almost everyone in this town in his pocket somehow. You think the cops would listen to me if I told them he was some kind of sicko? No way. But they had to take it seriously when I told them I thought he had been doing a few underage things he shouldn't have. That put things in gear, that got me the money and it got me away from him. I'm telling you now, I don't think he was the only one into this shit. We know this Traxler is in on it. Those limo drivers, you're telling me they're not in on it? What are they, his fucking acolytes? We've been had kids, hook line and sinker. Not one of us here knows what this guy was really like. I don't know what he's found and I don't know what to expect, but I know one thing: what we need to do is get the hell out of here and when we do, don't expect the welcoming committee upstairs to be too friendly.'
Everyone stayed silent for a minute.
Alison was the one to break it. 'I didn't know Kristi. I always thought Mr. Blitzer was… was… a good ma…' she stopped as Kristi's cold gaze froze her mid-sentence.
'Well one thing we do know,' said Jennifer, 'if there are more of these things, we know we can kill them.'
'We can kill things like the girl, but what about the two-ton bug?' Alex cried, pointing to the dried carcass in the corner.
'I don't know. Four-ton can of RAID?' Kristi sneered. 'That one's dead ain't it? So, they can be killed. We don't know each other, and we sure as hell don't see eye to eye. But the one thing we have in common right now is we want to get out, we want to survive, so let's just make sure that happens.'
Slowly, everyone nodded in unison at her words.
'Nobody's ever going to believe this shit,' Alex said, 'I'm taking these.' He bent down and started collecting up Blitzer's bloody journals, taking the one from Jennifer and the pictures from Matt.
Kristi let go of Kelly and walked over to the body of the hanging woman, putting a sleek leg against her midsection, pulling the stake out from her chest. 'This guy ain't gonna win, kid,' she said boldly as she gave Kelly a quick cold smile.
Matt looked at the others. 'I say we go back and try these other tunnels; we all stick together.'
Jennifer picked up the projector and nodded towards him.
'Yeah, let's do it,' said Alex.
Matt spoke to the group again. 'I thought it was a bit strange we were all invited here today. I didn't know who I could trust at this thing. But now I think we're all on the same page now.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a 500 Smith and Wesson Magnum. 'If this son of a bitch isn't dead already, I'm sure we can make him that way.'
'You got a license to carry that Mr. PI?' Alex smiled.
'Well if anything or anyone down here tries to stop us getting out, I'd be glad to let them see it.' He smiled confidently as an evil glimmer rushed over Kristi's face.
But for Jennifer, seeing Matt's pseudo-macho bullshit didn't wash. Instinctively she knew that putting your trust in a metal-barrelled hand canon and its six little friends could get you into trouble as much as not having one — especially with certain people down here. She glanced at Kristi and Alex, their eyes mesmerized to the gun. It was then the winking face on her arm gave her that old kicking twinge of pain again, just to remind her he was still there, just to remind her that everything had as much potential to go right as it could go wrong.
CHAPTER 17
Thoughts of vicious glowing eyed spider women, un-dead chained up hookers, giant bugs and shadowed beings in every corner played in their minds heading back down the ticking clock-faced chasm. Playing follow the leader to the heat-packing Matt, Jennifer took in the inescapable clock faces, each one appearing after the other through the moisture-laden mists; their Tick, tick, tick jangled against her bones like death’s finger running up and down her rib cage.
She couldn't believe the time: 10.35pm, not long until midnight, and they were no nearer to escaping. But now, their problems weren't as simple as getting out. They had to deal with the added addition of the threats from Blitzer's journal. Things like the oversized insect that with its bite had transmuted a streetwalker and killed the priest, then tried the same to Kelly.
Tick, tick, tick
Jennifer, the girl who had wanted to escape the shackles of her desk and the ever-unflinching clock face that stared at her day after day. The clock that drew minutes to hours that watched her everyday just like that old song: every breath you take and every move you make, I'll be watching you. With the growing pressure and fear of the situation surrounding her, each of the clocks seemed to tick in double time. Their tempo even faster paced, setting the speed of everyone's movements with each riveting tick.
Now, back at the beginning of the tunnel, the place where they had all climbed down, they looked around at the next immediate decision they faced. Which one of the other two tunnels do they take further under the graveyard? Their openings florescent lit apertures to unknown things, things that Gregory Blitzer had set them up to meet in a confined, macabre game of hide and seek.
'Mom, I'm scared,' Kelly whimpered, the flicker of life Jennifer saw in the child now squashed to a dull juddering gasp in her voice.
'I know,' Kristi said. 'We'll get out of here, I'll make sure of that.' Those words coming from a woman so clear-headed about who she was somehow put a feeling of calm into Jennifer's bones too.
'So, what do you think?' Alex asked.
'Well, we have two options, we've been down the middle,' Matt said. 'So, door number one, or door number three?'
'Maybe we got lucky last time, stuck down a dead end with that thing chained to a wall,' Alison added with a slightly hysterical twinge. 'Who knows what's unchained down these two?'
'We got lucky? Tell that to the priest,' Alex sneered, making Alison look to the floor in dismay.
Matt shrugged. 'What do we suggest?'
The slow moving, cold white mists touched their skin; the clock strokes added an imperative countdown to their decision. 'Flip for it,' Alex said.
'We can't make a decision like this on a coin,' Alison exclaimed.
'You want to make it for us?' Alex snapped. The woman stayed silent. Alex reached for his jacket pocket, plucking a quarter from it. 'Heads one, tails three.'
No one said anything and only watched.
Jennifer scratched her tattoo, its itching feeling like the flutter of the devil’s wink; was this coin flip really just a game of chance?
Alex flipped the coin skyward; it became invisible as it flew up into the gloom. With a quick slap of his hands, Alex caught it and tossed it over.
Chance, Jennifer thought.
He looked up at them, a nervous smile firing over his face. 'Door number three.'
They looked at one another. A decision made by the simple flipping of a coin was maybe the decision between life and death. What else did they have to go on? This way was the only way in a sense that made any sense. If anything did happen at least there was no one to blame for the decision-making apart from George Washington for going face down.
Maybe.
Jennifer's tattoo twitched again.
Maybe.
They entered the tunnel. Only Kristi spoke as they moved forward, once in a low growling tone, 'Fucking clocks.' It was a statement everyone silently agreed with. Mov
ing further into the earth once more, they moved around more hanging rose roots, as old rotting structural beams started to appear, propped from wall to ceiling, put there to hold up what seemed to be a man-made tunnel. Venturing further, thick mantilla-like scarves of cobwebs drew around the beams, full of the drained carcasses of once living insects.
Jennifer's heart raced, she always had a hatred for creepy crawlers, creeping things…
'Night Creepers, night creepers…'
She clenched her fists; that old trick to stop anxiety: Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it…
As the clocks ticked, clicked and clacked, a new smell slowly vaporized into the air, a putrid familiar musky smell that permeated from the woman in the mosaic chamber. This time its pungency was amplified.
'This place is rancid,' Kristi brought her hand to her mouth. The others did the same.
'Well at least the lights have stayed on,' Alex added.
Matt looked at the clocks: it was now 11.45. 'Let's just stop for a moment, we've been walking for an hour,' Matt suggested. They paused. 'I say we give it another half an hour in this direction and if we find nothing but more dirt walls and wooden beams, we go back.'
'Go back to where we came in again?' Jennifer sighed, her arms aching from carrying the battery and projector.
'Maybe we try the coffin lid again?' Alison suggested. 'With the gun, maybe we could blast our way out or something?'
'You fancy climbing in a metal coffin and firing this thing, be my guest.' Matt sighed.
'Mom,' Kelly whispered, 'I'm hungry… and I need the bathroom.'
Kristi looked around, sighed, gestured back into the filtered mists behind them. 'We know it’s safe down there, go back a few feet and squat where no one can see you.'
'I don't want to do that,' the little girl squirmed uncomfortably. 'What if they hear me?'
'I'll keep them talking, you go take a pee.'
Kelly looked behind her, a chill rising through her body.