The Lurkers Below

by Keith Robinson

  Everything was rolling green hills or expanses of forest, almost green overkill. Where was the ocean? Liam saw a few narrow rivers and a small lake . . . but no ocean. And no sky, although there were fluffy white clouds here and there, hanging low and drifting lazily.

  He rubbed his eyes for the umpteenth time. He was never going to get used to this. Every time he thought he had it straight, his gaze would drift upward and he’d be overcome with dizziness. Humans aren’t supposed to see this, he thought suddenly. We walk around the outside of the world, not the inside. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.

  A small, logical voice in his head reminded him that this strange inner world was nowhere near the size of Earth. It wasn’t like the planet was completely hollow and the Government had somehow found a way to build on the inside. Earth was nearly eight thousand miles in diameter whereas this strange place spanned a few miles at most, nothing but a tiny air bubble just below the Earth’s surface. An air bubble, Liam thought dreamily. Yes, that’s it. A naturally formed bubble caused by molten plasma that . . . that . . .

  He gave up. Nothing could explain this place. The miniature sun, the gravity, the pretty landscape, even the quaint English village—none of it made sense.

  Liam climbed to his feet, swayed, and nearly fell over again. He stumbled to the nearest tree and leaned against it. Its branches partially blocked the glare of the sun above and allowed him to get a better look around without the need to squint.

  Some of the hills were shaped like mountains but relatively small. One in particular stood higher than the rest and was open-topped like a volcano. It was located high and to his left, jutting directly toward the sun like a massive cannon. For a moment, Liam had the crazy idea that the volcano had just shot forth a ball of fire and everything was frozen in time. But of course it would seem that way; just about anything that stood upright in this impossible inside-out world would look like it was reaching for the sun at its center.

  Liam tried in vain to stop looking upward, but every time he glanced around he found his gaze drawn higher. There was no horizon, no natural boundary between land and sky. The hills kept on going up and around, and so did his gaze.

  “Focus,” he muttered, clutching his face to forcibly prevent himself from craning his neck. He looked toward the village again. Thin trails of smoke rose from several chimneys. “So there’s life, then,” he said aloud, reassured by the sound of his own voice.

  The idea of a secret Government base was slipping away. If the Government possessed the technology and the means to build a place like this, surely they wouldn’t build a sleepy English village in the middle of lush green countryside. The place would probably be endless desert and military buildings swarming with soldiers. Jeeps and Hummers mounted with machine guns would be speeding around. It would be a hive of activity, with secret hangars surrounded by electrified fences . . .

  Liam shook his head. He really didn’t know what a secret Government base would look like. He just knew it wouldn’t include quaint stone cottages.

  He turned and stared at the tunnel. His tunnel. It was still there, an open black pit partially obscured by ferns that were moving in the breeze. The square tunnel was his only way out of this madness, and he didn’t want to lose sight of it. If he strayed too far, he might never find his way back.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t stand around forever. He had to find help. And he had to find Madison.

  He studied the scenery around the tunnel, noting several natural landmarks that he could pick out from a distance: three trees standing in a triangle here, a blackened stump over there, and the tunnel about halfway between. And the tons of scattered dirt and rock looked like a brown stain on the green landscape.

  With a sigh of trepidation, Liam set off.

  Chapter 9

  It wasn’t far to the village. Liam kept expecting a U.S. Army Hummer to come tearing around a corner, but all was quiet. The High Street was narrow and paved with dashed white lines painted down the center. Sidewalks lined both sides, and old-fashioned shiny black lampposts perfectly suited the Victorian shop fronts. If it were snowing, it would be a great setting for a Charles Dickens movie.

  Modern storefront goods and illuminated signs over the windows reassured Liam that he hadn’t stepped back in time. He stopped to peer into the nearest boutique, which offered a delicious array of truffles and chocolates. The sign read Harlequin Delights in swirling letters, and the chocolate aroma wafting out of the door was enough to make Liam drool. If he was going to ask for help, this would be as good a place as any.

  He pushed the door open, and a little bell rang above his head as he stepped inside the small shop. The smell of chocolate almost overpowered him. There were truffles of all flavors, many with multicolored sprinkles and white powder coating. They filled the wood-framed cabinet walls as well as the glass counter he stood before.

  Liam waited for someone to appear, then re-opened the shop door to make the bell ring again, stamping his feet noisily as though just entering. He closed the door with a bang and waited a little longer.

  “Hello?” he called at last.

  Behind the counter, an open door led to a dark corridor. He assumed the shop owner was visiting the restroom or making a cup of coffee—or more likely hot tea if this place was modeled on an English village. Liam was sure someone would be along in a moment.

  A full minute ticked by, and Liam grew impatient. He stepped around the counter and peered past the door to the hallway beyond. He saw no sign of movement, nor even a glimmer of light. Perhaps the owner was out. Still, there had to be a phone somewhere. Liam didn’t see one behind the counter, so he took a few steps into the dark hallway, absently feeling in his pocket for his flashlight.

  Something was wrong. It was too quiet, too dark. Liam strained to see ahead but found only blackness. He couldn’t locate a light switch, so he pulled out his flashlight and switched it on. The beam lit up the walls and floor to his sides but somehow petered out a few feet ahead. Liam took a few steps, his free hand groping.

  As he edged forward, his fingers faded into nothingness, then his hand and his wrist. He gasped and jerked back. There was something very wrong here. Just for a moment he had felt a curious smothering sensation in the hall ahead. He flashed his beam directly in front of him, but the darkness swallowed up the light.

  Liam backed up and returned to the shop. The novelty of the cozy, quaint English boutique deserted him. Now he just felt a need to leave. Even the smell of chocolate was making him feel sick. He dashed outside.

  “It’s the Twilight Zone,” he muttered. “Everybody’s disappeared. The town is made of paper mache.”

  The next shop was crammed with hand-woven baskets and cloth bags with flowery designs embroidered on the sides. All very cute, but the place appeared to be devoid of life and therefore no interest whatsoever to Liam. He moved on.

  Shop after shop, he saw no sign of anyone. He risked a visit inside a dusty secondhand bookshop and, completely alone, peered around a number of precarious shelving racks with an array of bizarre titles like Book About Towns and Lots of Small Writing. He moved on to the next shop, a mobile phone store, extremely bare and boring. Again he moved on. He resisted the temptation to enter a bakery named Buns In The Oven even though it smelled great. Pastries lined the window, brown and unusually shiny, steaming as if pulled from the oven moments before. They were called Cornish Pasties. Liam had no idea what was inside them, but the smell made his stomach rumble. The bread rolls, too, looked amazing—

  He shook himself. He couldn’t stand around gawking at food. He had to find a phone. It was true that he had just passed a mobile phone shop, but he knew none of the devices on display would actually be connected and usable. He needed a normal, working landline and a person to talk to.

  Liam crossed the street, thinking he had seen movement. He was drawn to a place called Ming’s, which he guessed was a Chinese takeaway. Yet the smell wafting out the open door wasn’t Chinese
food; it smelled more like fish.

  “Fish and chips!” he exclaimed. Of course. This place was modeled on an English village, after all.

  He froze in the middle of the street as he saw movement again. Yes, someone was in Ming’s—a woman with short black hair, wearing a black shirt and a white apron. She was moving to and fro, wielding a long pair of tongs and leaning over the tall aluminum counters.

  Liam burst inside and confronted her. “Can you help me?”

  The woman looked up and smiled sweetly. She was Asian, possibly Chinese although Liam was no expert. Was Ming a Chinese name? He really had no clue. “What you like?” she said in broken English.

  “I need a phone,” Liam said. “I need to—”

  “Portion of chips?” she interrupted, still smiling. She gestured into the counter. The top was glass, and Liam glanced down to see a mass of thick, steaming steak fries—or chips as the Brits called them. “Fish? Steak pie?” she urged.

  Liam frowned. “What?”

  “You want fish and chips, yes?”

  “No, I need a phone. I need to call home.” When the smile remained fixed on the woman’s face, he added, “I need to call the police.”

  “Fish and chips? Steak pie?” the woman went on, beaming and nodding. “Battered sausage? Pickled onion?”

  She gestured wildly at the array of bizarre foods. “No,” he said firmly. “I need a phone. A phone.” He put a fist to the side of his head and spread his thumb and pinkie. “See? I need to make a phone call.”

  “Cod or haddock?”

  “I don’t want any food!” he yelled.

  The woman’s smile faltered. Immediately Liam felt sorry.

  “Look, I just need help. I don’t know where I am. My house fell into a sinkhole, and I ended up here. Can you tell me where this is? This village? Where are we?”

  The woman looked confused and forlorn.

  Liam tried again. “A phone. Do you have a phone? A telephone?”

  The woman seemed to have slipped into a trance. She stared past him out the window, then lifted the tongs and studied them with a frown. As if Liam wasn’t there, she reached down and began moving large battered fillets of fish around, organizing them.

  Liam stared at her, his heart sinking into his stomach. Something was definitely wrong.

  Chapter 10

  Liam abandoned the fish-and-chip shop. The Chinese woman had started beaming again, asking if he wanted a portion of chips as if the previous conversation had been blotted from her memory. He hurried out, a feeling of desperation sweeping over him. Something had occurred to him, something horrible and terrifying.

  What if he was dead?

  Maybe he’d pushed the universe too far this time. Maybe he’d been sent to an alternate world. Or maybe this was The Afterlife.

  It made sense. How could he have survived that sinkhole anyway? He was lying dead in the rubble somewhere and only thought he was still alive, and his ghostly spirit was walking around some kind of purgatory. That was why everything felt so weird.

  Still, if he had retained all his faculties, why hadn’t the Chinese woman? She was clearly off her rocker. Maybe she’d been in limbo too long and lost her mind.

  He trudged along the road, walking on the painted white lines at its center. With the sun directly overhead, his shadow pooled around his feet. He assumed it always would no matter what time of day it was. Was there such a thing as night here?

  He heard nothing but his own breaths and soft footfalls. Some might call this village peaceful and serene, but to Liam it was deathly silent—no birds chirping, no dogs barking, no cars revving. Even in the quietest neighborhood, the distant drone of cars could usually be heard on a highway or interstate. Here, there was nothing at all.

  The High Street remained straight until the shops petered out, after which it curved sharply to the right and disappeared around the corner. Over the rooftops, the road reappeared in the distance as a thin gray line curving up the spherical landscape through fields and meadows. Liam squinted, seeing something rectangular to the side of the road among a clump of trees. Was that a car? Yes, it was. But it was stationary. He watched it as he walked, but it refused to move. Perhaps it had been abandoned.

  He paused. He had left the shops behind and was now at an intersection. He peered to his left where a row of townhouses lined one side of a short road. A low stone wall bordered the other side, open fields beyond.

  It occurred to Liam that perhaps the village was simply closed up for the day. It was Sunday morning after all.

  His pulse quickened. He should go knock on some doors. That was where the villagers were—lounging in front of the TV or relaxing with a good book. Everybody was at home today, or maybe at a church somewhere.

  He counted nine or ten sturdy front doors with brass knockers. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered as he approached the first.

  There was no lawn, just a single stone step right off the sidewalk. The red-painted door had a hefty brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. It all looked ordinary enough except for a horizontal, rectangular slot in the door, inside which a bundle of mail was jammed tight.

  He rapped the knocker and stood back. The street remained silent.

  The mail protruding from the slot suggested that the homeowner wasn’t in. And there was an unpleasant smell, too. Liam leaned closer, sniffed, and recoiled. It smelled like rotting onions, just like—

  He paused, frowning at the door. The smell from within was familiar, like the hideous man with the melted face he’d seen in his house. The Lurker.

  Unsure what to make of this, Liam hurried away, his mind whirling. He skipped a couple of houses and rapped on the door of the fourth, noting that this one’s mail slot was properly closed.

  The door opened quickly as if the owner had been waiting for him. Liam almost jumped out of his skin in surprise. An old man peered down at him from his high doorstep. He wore brown pants and a dark red sweater, and he had a huge beak nose and shaggy grey eyebrows. “Not today, thanks,” the man said dully.

  He went to close the door again, but Liam leapt onto the doorstep and planted his hands on the door. “Wait—I need help. Can I use your phone?”

  The old man frowned. “I don’t want to buy anything,” he insisted. His accent was strange. It might be British but had one of their many odd regional twangs.

  “I’m not selling anything,” Liam assured him. “I just need to borrow your phone. I need to call the police.”

  He thought that mentioning the police would speed things along, but the old man simply stood there shaking his head. “I’m not interested,” he said firmly. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

  “I’m not selling anything!” Liam yelled, hopping up and down. “I just need a phone! What’s wrong with you people?”

  “Not today, thanks,” the old man said. And he closed the door.

  Liam was livid. He kicked the door savagely before he could stop himself. Then he hurried on to the next house.

  Before he arrived, the door opened and a stern-faced woman stepped out with a basket slung across her arm. She pulled her door shut with a bang and started walking toward Liam. He stopped, hopeful.

  She walked straight past him without giving him a glance.

  “Excuse me,” Liam said, hurrying after her. She walked fast. Her long skirt flapped around her legs, and her nylon stockings made a thwip-thwip sound in time with the clacking of her heels. “Hello? I need—uh, ma’am?”

  She ignored him. When she reached the end house, she paid no attention to the nasty smell emanating from the jammed mail slot. She marched on and turned the corner.

  Liam almost gave up but then ran after her in a sudden rage. He jumped in front of her, turned, and stopped dead. Either she would notice him or try to walk right through him.

  A spark of puzzlement flickered across her face, and she faltered. Then she sidestepped around him and continued. But Liam caught her arm and gripped it tight, planting his feet
firmly and refusing to be dragged along. He tried to ignore how cold her skin was.

  She had no choice but to notice him. “Can’t stop,” she said firmly. “Got to get some shopping done before dinner.”

  “I need a phone,” Liam said grimly.

  “Can’t stop,” the woman repeated. “Got to get some shopping done before dinner.”

  She waited, neither tugging her arm free nor offering him eye contact. For a moment, the two of them were like statues, frozen in time. Then Liam released her. Without further delay, she clacked away on her heels, skirt swishing.

  Liam peered with disgust at his fingers, which were coated with some kind of sticky substance. He sniffed them cautiously. “Onions! What the heck?”

  As he looked around for something to wipe his fingers on, he spotted a big red telephone booth on the opposite side of the High Street. His jaw dropped open. He’d walked right past it earlier, apparently too busy staring at the impossible sun to notice what he’d been looking for all along.

  The woman with the basket entered Buns In The Oven. As she disappeared inside, Liam glared at the back of her head and reached down to wipe his sticky fingers on the pavement. Then he hurried across the street and pulled open the door of the booth. It was surprisingly heavy. As it closed behind him, he wrinkled his nose at the smell. Not rotten onions but something entirely more familiar. “Someone’s been using this as a restroom,” he mumbled.

  He picked up the clunky handset and put it to his ear. He heard nothing.

  The stainless steel keypad had a slot for coins, but Liam’s pockets were empty except for his flashlight and box of matches. Still, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need money to call the police. He dialed 9-1-1, jabbing the buttons viciously. It rang and rang, and Liam waited with increasing anxiety. The Brits used 9-9-9 for emergency services, but this was merely an imitation village. It was still America, after all.