The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  He stood for several minutes. He thought about knocking, but he didn’t. He thought about waiting for Lem, but he didn’t do that either. He went around the side of the house and found the gate. It’d been left slightly ajar and Martin opened it a few more inches and slid through. He peeked in a window. He squatted there and glanced about. He noticed the gate to Hickson’s yard. He hadn’t noticed it from the other side of the fence. It bothered him that he hadn’t.

  He walked over and opened it.

  Then he went through.

  The yard looked no different and there was no light from the house. He walked by the shed and up onto the deck, went over and slid back the door. He went inside and walked from room to room. He went to the ficus and pressed his fingers to the soil. Dry. He burrowed beneath the surface and about two inches down it grew moist. He squatted there, thinking. Then he exited the house and went down the back steps and over to the shed. He didn’t feel right about it. He couldn’t have said why. He pulled his pistol and curled a finger inside the trigger guard. He opened the door and peered inside. It was still empty. He closed the door and stood. He had a cold sensation at the back of his throat and he began, of a sudden, to sweat. He placed his palm on the handle and drew the shed’s door open. From between the plywood panels that served as a floor there was a splinter of light. Martin studied it a few moments.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  He looked around for something with which to pry. He knelt in the grass and glanced behind him. Then he gripped his pistol in the other hand and unfolded his knife. He wedged the tip down inside the seam and began gently to lever it up. It came, no problem. Martin got a finger in. He worked in his hand. He took the panel and pulled it and then he just crouched there, blinking.

  Under the panel was a hole. About three feet in diameter. From down inside it came a golden light. He almost dropped the plywood to reach for his radio, but he’d left it, once again, in the car. He patted his pockets for his cell, but he didn’t have that either. It occurred to him that any minute he’d be shot.

  Martin licked his lips and glanced over either shoulder. He didn’t really know who he was looking for, who avoiding. He closed his knife and clipped it back to his pocket, and then swapped the pistol to his right hand, holding the panel up with his left. He leaned farther and looked inside.

  The hole went down four feet, and then there was another section of plywood, and then a tunnel angling off to the left. He could just see where a kerosene lantern hung from a length of twine. He pointed the gun toward the hole. Tried to think. If someone was in there, he’d be in there now. There was no other way Martin could think to set up the shed door and panel. You’d have to close both from inside. Wait, he thought. That wasn’t right. You could close them from outside and just walk away. So he was either in the hole or he wasn’t. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He thought about going back to his car. Then he thought about someone being down there, that whoever was down there, Martin had him cornered. If he went back to the cruiser, whoever was down there, if he was down there, might come out. He’d come out, and know someone was looking, and he could slip over the fence, and that would be it. Another body vanished, someone else gone missing. Martin wondered could he live with it. There was no backup. No one to know exactly where he was. He looked from the shed over to where his cruiser would be, past the fence and house and yard. He touched his forehead to the grass and held it there a few moments. Deborah would not want him to do it. Martin thought about the boy.

  He decided no. Too much of a risk. It wouldn’t be procedure and if things went bad his office could be revoked. Deborah needed a husband. His son would need a father. All he had to do was walk to the cruiser, radio Nita, get ahold of Lem.

  Martin let down the plywood panel and then stood and walked back toward the gate. When he got to where he could no longer see the shed’s entrance, he stopped and looked back. The small building standing there in the center of the yard. He would walk across and into the next lawn and he could imagine just then someone emerging from the tunnel, pushing his way up into the shed, out its door, across the yard, over the fence. Then he’d be forever gone.

  Martin stood there, a sick feeling in his stomach. It was his decision to make but he felt he’d already made it. Long ago, in the shallows of the Arkansas River. The sheriff wondered how that could be. He set his pistol at half cock and walked back to the shed.

  He opened the door, lifted the panel, removed it, and positioned it on the grass.

  Then he lifted out the other and stepped down inside.

  DECEMBER 2006

  He shutters the windows. He gathers supplies. He walks from room to room nodding to himself, muttering snatches of song. The next day he ventures out to buy lanterns. He buys a pickaxe and a chain ladder and thirty gallons of kerosene. He wakes in the afternoon just in time to see the sun declining. He stands there, watching out the window, running a palm across his scalp. The days are getting shorter. He doesn’t have much time.

  He spends most of his nights digging. He drives to Wal-Mart at three in the morning, purchases a tent. He doesn’t want the tent, just the stakes, but they don’t sell them separately. He glances over at the young man working Sporting Goods and the young man glances quickly away. He stares down at the counter. He doesn’t look up. Hickson studies him. The tent is seventy dollars and he considers his bank account. Then he thinks of tunnels and then he doesn’t care. Inside the shed, he lifts the plywood panels, stakes down the chain ladder, and lowers it into the hole. He buys an entrenching tool from the local Army surplus, and with this implement in one hand, flashlight in the other, he descends a few feet. He descends a few more. It is warmer here, down in the earth. He looks back to the entrance and the ring of kerosene light. Then he wedges the flashlight in a rear pocket and begins to dig.

  He starts by making the entrance to what will be his tunnel. There is the main shaft which appeared God knows how and which Hickson has ceased to consider. To consider as a problem. A collapsed well or whathaveyou, it serves now as escape route, his passage to a life below. He carves an opening in the side of the shaft, about four feet down, and he makes it wide enough to crawl in comfortably on his hands and knees. The earth crumbles away and in several hours he has produced a kind of shelf. He stakes off the chain ladder on the opposite side of the hole and digs out a notch into which he’ll insert the platform, a plane of strong timber to block the shaft. The next night, he makes a trip to Lowe’s, has an elderly woman cut down a sheet of two-inch plywood, and this he takes down into the hole. He wedges the square of wood in the notches he’s dug, right next to the entrance to his tunnel. The plywood fits snugly, feels sturdy, and at each end there is a crescent-shaped gap between platform and burrow through which Hickson can sift the dirt. There is no need for the ladder now, and Hickson wakes later and later, drinks coffee, retreats to the shed, steps down into the hole and onto the plywood platform, enters his side tunnel, and begins digging. He buys two-by-fours to support the ceiling. He takes down a box of books from the attic, old books on Viet Cong miners, begins to study their scheme. He lays out maps. He draws new ones on sheets of graph paper. His vision seems to narrow and it is as if he’s constructing another world.

  He quits going to work. He quits returning calls. One evening, he drives to the pro shop, walks into Dresser’s office, and tells the man he’s finished. Dresser tries to talk Hickson out of it, but Hickson turns to leave. He has known Dave Dresser since fourth-grade history and this is the last he’ll see of him.

  It’s the last he’ll see of a number of things.

  The tunnel gets longer. He goes farther into the earth. Every five feet he wedges a two-by-four against the ceiling as support. He hacks along and hits a sandstone formation, makes a dogleg, makes another. He’s tunneled, by this point, perhaps a hundred yards and he hooks a U and begins tunneling back the way he came, tunneling adjacent to the first channel, always with a slope to it, always headed down.

  It is at t
his time that Hickson begins to forget. It surprises him how quickly. It surprises him what.

  He forgets recipes.

  He forgets people’s names.

  He forgets holidays and presidents.

  Movies and books.

  Song titles.

  Television series.

  The date of his anniversary.

  He forgets car parts. He forgets the parts of his guns. The first standing order of Rogers’ Rangers is, Don’t forget nothing, but he forgets the orders one by one. He forgets the Pledge of Allegiance and the words to the National Anthem. Reconnaissance Procedure. The Ranger Creed.

  He begins forgetting events from his life. It is as if they are erased. His memory is an entrenching tool and a flashlight and lanterns dangling from lengths of twine, the buckets he fills and drags back to the entrance. There comes a day he cannot remember his mother’s maiden name and then there comes a day when he cannot remember her first. He can remember the word mother and he can even remember to what the word refers. He digs farther and then this leaves him as well.

  Late one night, dead of winter, he’s lodged in the earth hacking away with a pick, when the soil gives way before him, pushes through and falls. He begins digging faster, pressing against the dirt, and discovers he has dug his way back to the original shaft, the one he discovered in his yard not three months before. It might as well be three centuries. Hickson pokes his head inside and glances up. Twenty feet above him is the platform he wedged blocking the hole, a faint light in the four half-moons along the edges. He sits there a moment and tries to think, but thinking is not exactly the word. He’s changed down here, Hickson. Entered a new kind of state. Or reverted, perhaps. He doesn’t seem to think in language. He thinks in image, in sound. He stays in motion, mostly, or he sleeps. He’s begun sleeping in the earth, dragging his filthy bedding back behind him. He no longer takes his medication. He no longer dreams.

  His nails have grown.

  His hair and beard.

  He crawls back and forth in his tunnel, relighting the lamps.

  On rediscovery of the shaft, he pauses several days. Then he begins to dig around it. He hacks out a chamber, a room of sorts, pushing dirt and sandstone into the center, into the shaft. He’s carved a kind of circle around it and day by day he makes it bigger, tall. He braces the ceiling with two-by-twelves and plywood planks. He tamps down the floor. There is his tunnel and now this room below. He can almost stand inside it. He brings down his food and blankets. He brings down canisters of fuel. He sits, through the day, with the lamps depending from pieces of twine, seated on the floor of his chamber, staring into the hole. Only October and he was twenty feet above, looking at it from his lawn. The lawn, now, is withered. Its caretaker underground. He cares now for his tunnel, cares for his room, and he is concerned, more and more, with this circle in its center. He throws in his refuse and never hears a sound.

  FEBRUARY 2007

  He went along carefully. On his hands and knees. The tunnel had been carved from clay and traveled in a westerly direction. The floor was compacted. Every twenty feet or so a lantern. Two-by-fours braced the walls and ceiling. Martin crawled along in the muted yellow light. He’d reach a place where no light fell, and then would come the next amber glow. He tried the flashlight at first, but he could see well enough without it. It only gave away location. He crawled past the third light and looked back in the direction of the shed. He nodded to himself. That this was crazy. Someone could shoot him or the ceiling give way. He’d get stuck down here and no way to call out. The sheriff crouched there a moment. He backhanded the sweat from his forehead and continued to crawl.

  He reached a bend. Gradual at first. Then a right angle. Another. The tunnel began to slope, running slightly diagonal. It occurred to Martin he was turning in the direction of the shed. He stopped. Backed a few feet. He reached up and smoothed his hand across the ceiling. It crumbled against his palm. Martin looked behind him. He pressed himself against the floor and looked up ahead. He crawled forward ten feet. Twelve. It seemed the tunnel was beginning to widen. There was a cluster of lanterns, or at least several lights. He went several more feet and he could see it now. Some kind of hollow. He blinked once or twice, stopped again, and lay there. He wiped the sweat away and rose to a crouch.

  It was a chamber. A space in the earth. Like a nightmare or vision. Martin wondered how far down. He couldn’t imagine what it took to build. You’d dig these holes as a kid, five, six feet. Like as not, you’d strike sandstone and have to quit. You’d go down a little and hit clay. It was one of the things people said about Oklahoma, how hard the soil was, how hard it was to dig. Even in a region of heavy topsoil, it would still have been a feat. The clay would have helped it. Made the structure sturdier, less likely to cave.

  Martin thought about that. He gripped his pistol tighter and crawled into the room.

  It was roughly circular, maybe twenty feet from wall to wall. You’d have to crouch in order to stand. There were two-by-twelves cut to length and propped against sections of plywood on the ceiling. There were pillows along the walls. Thermal blankets and quilts. Suspended from the sections of plywood, five lanterns, six. The lamps hung from pieces of twine. Martin knelt there, letting his eyes adjust. On the far side of the room, a perfectly round hole had been cut in the floor. Directly above it, another hole of the same diameter, carved in the ceiling like a flue. The sheriff glanced about. Motes swirled in the lantern light. He came several feet ahead. He got his legs under him, began to stand, and just then a shadow jerked to his left. He started to turn toward it, but there was a flash behind his eyes and a sharp pain in his temple. Martin pitched forward, and when he came to himself, the man was on top of him.

  The sheriff lay on his back. His vision blurred. The man who now straddled him was all beard and bare skin. Filthy. His hair a terra-cotta red. Martin flailed and tried to push him away, but the man was too strong. He pinned the sheriff, fed him a right hand. He fed another, the blows landing on Martin’s eyebrow, his cheek. Martin fetched at the man’s wrists. He fetched for his gun. The pistol had been knocked somewhere he couldn’t see. He had a pair of cuffs in a pouch on his belt, jammed now in the small of his back. He had an expandable baton in a holster and a knife clipped to his pocket. He wanted the knife. He tried to snake a hand down to reach it and ate another fist.

  This one was harder and the room went dark. Then it lightened. The sheriff scrambled. He bucked the man and tried to push him to the wall. The man was wearing trousers, nothing else. Barefoot. His body smeared various colors. He had his legs hooked around the sheriff and he torqued his body and took Martin’s back. Martin pushed away and the two of them rolled and the man ended up, somehow, atop the sheriff, straddling him once more, punching. He landed a couple of shots, he landed an elbow, and then he anchored his forearm across Martin’s throat and began pressing down. The sheriff spat and sputtered. He could feel his wind cutting off and he could feel the blood flow cutting. He saw spots and above him the man’s eyes were two sockets of black. His lips parted and his teeth clenched together. Martin could feel himself passing. He’d heard about these experiences, what people thought. He’d never believed it. How you’d have time to think. Or that time would pause to let you.

  But this was exactly what it did. It crept slower and slower and then seemed to stop. The first thing he thought was that he would die in this place and the second was that he’d never be found. Just like his brother, his body lost, and Martin thought what Deborah would do about that, what she would tell their boy. He tried to picture her saying this, tried to picture her face, and there was such sadness to it, Martin couldn’t even say. Other things crowded in, other sensations, but mostly a panic, all he’d left undone. Things unanswered, things left unsaid, information he needed and would never retrieve. The sheriff couldn’t take that. It was like an iron on his chest. His hands clawed at fabric. His breathing constricted. His vision began tunneling and he reached out, caught the corner of the man’s
mouth, inserted his thumb in it, and fishhooked him all the way to the ear. There was a sound like ripping carpet.

  The man let go immediately. He stumbled back. The skin was torn in a jagged line across his cheek, the lower part of his face hanging, his mouth jerked in a hideous mask. He grabbed at it, gaped at his palm, and when he did this, Martin pushed him several feet and fetched out his knife. He unfolded the blade and held it before him, swiping through the air, gasping breaths now, coughing. Light winked off the tongue of steel and the man seemed to see it. Martin tried to say something, warn him, back him farther, but he hadn’t recovered his voice. He came onto both knees and that was when he saw. His revolver lying on the floor not three feet away. About equal distance between him and the man.

  Martin looked at the weapon and then at the form crouching across from him, one hand still clutching his face. The sheriff was sucking air, holding the knife out like a caution. The man didn’t move. He stood there watching. Martin couldn’t tell if he saw the pistol or he didn’t. He was scared to look again, afraid it would make the man notice.

  They stayed frozen like that.

  Then the man did notice. You could see it in his eyes.

  The sheriff drew a breath and prepared himself to leap for it. That was when the man came suddenly forward and seized the knife from his grasp.

  It happened just like that. It was in the sheriff’s hand and then it wasn’t. In one motion he trapped Martin’s wrist and turned it, pushing out the blade. Martin retreated a step and the man bent and came at him. The knife was in his grip now and he feinted with a high slash and then sank the blade into the sheriff’s left thigh. Martin groaned. He fetched at his leg. The man had one hand on the knife, trying to sink it deeper, and Martin was trying to hold it still. He looked down and saw the blood welling, the man with one hand gripping the handle and the other pressed against the spine of the blade. Every time it moved there was a pain like electricity. They crouched like that, clenched, bent as though straining together to pick something up. Pieces of spittle collected on the sheriff’s face, speckles of blood. The sheriff panted. Then he collapsed, fell away from the man, and the blade came free. He was all dead weight, falling, and then he was scurrying crabwise across the floor. He was pushing with his hands and his feet and he sat down hard on something. The man was coming back in on him when the sheriff reached beneath him and retrieved the gun. He slapped the barrel against his knee to knock the dirt out of it and trained the weapon on the man’s chest.