Undead as a Doornail

by William F Aicher

  Satisfied her sister hadn’t been tucked away in some unknown hideaway she’d somehow missed, we turned tail and headed out. But instead of following the submerged tunnel from this room into the next, Sofi surprised me as she pointed out an exit I hadn’t seen. Similar to the dark space in the dead-end hallway, but only half as wide, she turned to her side and squeezed through the blackened crack in the stone wall. Her body halfway in, she paused and reached her left hand into her jacket pocket. When she retrieved it, she held my rusty old Colt .45. She offered it to me, but I shook my head.

  “You keep it,” I said. “Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case we run into something else down here,” I replied. “In case we run into something on the other side of that wall.”

  I didn’t tell her the real reason I let her keep it. At this point I had become certain, should we come across anything else while we found our way out of this place of death, the gun probably wouldn’t do us a lick of good. It only helped with living things. And as far as I was concerned, we were probably the last two living things down here … other than the rats.

  I probably should have felt bad for using her as bait like that. But I wasn’t about to let the chance to put someone else out there in front of me get away. If there was any monster —paranormal, human, or otherwise —on the other side of that wall, I didn’t want to be the first to feel the brunt of the hit. Yes, I can revive myself after being killed. But no one ever told me if my special skills had an expiration date. For all I knew it could be something limited, like a cat with its nine lives. Many more than nine had been spent already, so I’d outlived any cats as far as chances go … but that didn’t mean there was no upper limit on how many times the old man upstairs was going to give me to keep coming back here and doing whatever the hell I wanted. And if I was going to come back, there are worse things than dying. After all, I don’t heal much better than anyone else does. Probably the same as everyone else, to be honest.

  The stab wound in my gut was reminder enough of the human side of my being, and it burned like a goddamn fire in my belly. The knife had hit something inside me, probably intestines, but I was no anatomy professor, so I didn’t have any certain idea of what it had sliced open. What I did know is the pain was bad, getting worse, and likely to continue until either I got better, or I died. What I didn’t want would be for me to stumble along and then get an infection where I ended up paralyzed from the waist down or something worse.

  Each time I come back to life, I come back pretty much exactly as I’d left. And that means any non-fatal cuts or scars or aging or anything else that happens to me before I die, stick. If someone cuts my arm off and I don’t die from the wound? I’ll come back as a one-armed man. Not exactly something on my bucket list.

  So why did I let her go first? For one thing, she didn’t argue. Could have been the shock still in her system, or the irrationality of wanting to get the hell out of wherever she’d gotten herself into. I didn’t give a shit. As for the other thing … like I said earlier, I feel pain like anyone else. And squeezing my body through a crevice in the wall when for all I knew there could be a herd of zombies on the other side ready to claw into me, rip my guts from my chest and eat my brains, wasn’t sounding like that great of an idea.

  Besides, I’ve still never tested what happens if I something cuts me up into little morsels, much less eats me. I don’t think I’m going to be like the liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2 and have all my little bits and pieces come back together into one piece after I die. I mean, what happens if someone gobbles me up and I’m completely digested? Would the crap that I’d turned into magically transform back into a person? Would I be a walking pile of shit? Not something I ever want to find out.

  Of course, there was nothing on the other side of that wall. Or if there had been, I probably wouldn’t have included Sofi in this story. Yeah, it was a bit of a dick move to use her as bait, but she was okay. If I’d used her as bait and she’d gotten killed straight up? I’d have cut her out of my narrative. No reason to bring up that kind of nonsense. Bad mojo is what I call it.

  The tunnel she led to was like the one I’d appeared in when I popped out of Eitherspace. Skulls embedded in all the walls; racks of bones piled high in little openings. Every once in a while, a rat would scurry by, squeaking with glee at whatever prize it had found tucked away in the tunnels. One who raced by just missed my foot, and in the damp glow of my lighter, I saw what appeared to be a half-rotted finger dangling from his mouth like a macabre cigar.

  For the first part of our journey, we traveled in silence. As we’d hit one dead-end or another, I’d hear her mutter something under her breath, though it was in French so I couldn’t make it out if I wanted to. After about an hour of this, the wandering became hurried and more sporadic. Though I initially had thought since she’d found her way in here, she must know the way out, all the backtracking, grumbling and swearing made it clear her plan for exit was as good as mine. Still, as far as she knew, my exit would also just be a bunch of wandering. Once or twice I considered trying to snatch the gun back from her hands and putting a bullet through my brain so I could jump into Eitherspace and find my way out of here. Didn’t matter where I ended up, so long as there was fresh air and a chance at sunlight. But I had enough on my conscience and wasn’t about to add forcing her to witness the grisly sight of my suicide, followed by my magical disappearance into nothing. Add that shock to her already fragile system and she’d probably drop dead from a heart attack right next to me.

  “Do you have any idea where you’re going?” I finally asked.

  She ignored me the first time I asked, so I gave it a few minutes and asked again. This time she stopped where she stood, spun to face me and gave me a glare I’d only seen on the faces of girlfriends I’d pissed off in years prior. “I know the way. I just have to find it,” she answered, and went on leading us blindly through the bone-coated caverns.

  “What were you doing down here anyway?” I asked. “Did you follow that guy? Were you tracking your sister?”

  A snick of sound and a flicker of flame sputtered from her direction, and she lit a cigarette. Taking a puff, she offered the pack to me, and I accepted. For a few minutes, we stood there, again silent, and then she told me her story.

  “I came down here with my sister,” she began. “Her name is Camille, and we were down here for a party.”

  I almost interrupted her right there. The simple thought of anyone having a party in a place like this already sounded fishy, but she was here for some reason. I might as well let her go on.

  “Crazy place for a party, yes? We have them here often. Away from the police so we can do what we want. We have secret ways into these catacombs. Ways they do not know and they cannot find us. Unless someone is followed,” she took another puff of her cigarette and started to walk. “Our friends invited us to a party, and we came. When we got there, it was already big. Lots of music, lots of drinks, lots of drugs. A fun time.

  “Here in the catacombs, it is like another world. We like to come here to escape from the one above. It is freeing. Cami and I partied with our friends, dancing and having fun like we do every time. But something was different. Something was wrong. I did not know what it was when I arrived, but the people who had the party were people I did not know. Cami did not know them. Our friends did not know. Just someone heard from someone who heard from someone else that something crazy was going on and we should follow the signs.”

  “What signs?” I asked. “I thought you said this was a secret party. Doesn’t sound like much of a secret if you’ve got posters up all over the place advertising it.”

  “Secret signs. Only show up when you spray them with this.” She handed me a small plastic spray bottle filled with a pale yellow liquid. “Glowing arrows on the walls, like painted by fingers. Pointing the way. You do not see them if you are not looking.”

  “Blood trails,” I muttered, though I hoped I
was wrong. I could only think of one reason to stack up piles of exsanguinated bodies … and that would be because you’re gathering the blood for something. But now was not the time to start planting ideas of vampires into this girl’s head. She’d seen enough already.

  “We entered through a secret door. One in the old part of the city. Just a green door in a stone wall down an alley leading into an abandoned store. Down the stairs in the store, you will find a basement, and that basement is earth and stone and ancient time. But it is still only a store. Glass bottles cover shelves of wood planks. Cracked and rotted and dried away until only husks are inside. If you go to the last shelf, and you know to slide it the right way, you find the second door—the door to the catacombs.

  “Everyone knows not to come down here alone. These tunnels wind like snakes beneath the city, twisting and turning. Dark secrets almost forgotten to time. But time has remembered them and now so do the tourists. And we stay away from the places the tourists go. Security and prying eyes like a children’s game. We do not play games because we are adults and adults know better than to go lurking in death’s shadow without a partner. This is why Cami and I came together. If she was not with me, I would not have entered, and if I was not with her, she would not have entered. Many times you hear stories of people lost in the catacombs. Entered and never coming back. But we go to a party, and we think everything will be fine. Lots of other people at parties, even if many of them are up to no good. I am often up to no good myself, so I am with people like me. No one to be trusted, but still a lot of love. If you can understand.”

  I nodded, dropped my cigarette to the floor, and crushed it beneath the sole of my two-sizes too big boots.

  “When we arrive, there is much loud music. The kind of party I love. Music and sound echoing through the darkness so hard against your ears, you cannot hear anyone else. Just the music. The music and the lights and the drugs and getting lost in dancing like you are an animal. Because you are an animal.

  “Only what came to us, while we were lost in our ecstasy … it was a true animal. They were true animals. The flashing pulse of bright light flickering in the darkness showed it in slow motion. People but not people, out of the dark corners wearing dark clothes but with faces white as Christmas snow. Grabbing others, tearing into them. Blood spray caught in the flickering light like an old film. Screams ripping through the caves out of the terrified throats of both the victims and the witnesses, yet buried in the volume of the song. I screamed and screamed as one of them appeared behind Cami and then as soon as he appeared, she was gone. The music kept pulsing, booming against the catacomb walls, and the flickering of lights stopped. Red and blue and yellow dancing lights returned, and the record came to an end. All around me, crimson death. Boys and girls ripped apart. A few still twitching on the ground. But nowhere I looked did I find Cami. Just dead brothers and sisters. I wanted to run, to scurry from this place of death like a rat does from a burning ship, but I could not leave Cami alone. She was not dead. I knew this as only a sister knows many things about her sister. As I know she is alive now. But where she is? That is a mystery.”

  “You’re damned lucky to have lived through that,” I said. “Vampires don’t usually leave people behind. Not if they’re fresh up with blood like you are.”

  “You are silly. There is no such thing as vampires,” she gave a nervous laugh. “Those were something horrible. Maybe psychotics who have found homes down here. Vagrants who are sick.”

  “Oh, they’re sick, alright. And maybe they were vagrants … at some point. Back when they were alive. But with everything you’re telling me and everything I’ve seen so far? Those were vampires.”

  “But what about the man you killed. The man who…” she paused. “Who killed that girl. If he was a vampire, why did he die?”

  “Wasn’t a vampire. A familiar. A stooge. A lackey. Just someone who wishes he was a vampire, doing the dirty work for other vampires. Maybe there used to be a nest down here, and maybe those others were simply passing through, but that guy? He was setting up camp here to do something else. He was harvesting here like this was his home base. But where he was taking his bounty?”

  “Who are you really, Phoenix Bones? Why are you here?”

  “I’m here for the same reason you are,” I replied. “Or at least a close enough match of a reason. I’m here to find out who took a girl and save her. You’re here to find another girl and save her. And I’m pretty sure they’re in the same place.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because otherwise, we’d have found them in that pile of bodies back there. Or you’d have found your sister bled out at your party. Whoever took these girls had something else in mind for them. They weren’t just cattle to be slaughtered. They were taken for something else and whatever that something else is, it led through here. Though it didn’t end here.”

  “Where did it end? There is nowhere else to go. I would have seen them escape past me.”

  “There’s more than one way out of a dark place,” I muttered.

  We kept moving, neither of us talking for quite some time—the only sound the echo of our footsteps against the stone floor and the occasional crunch of an old bone beneath my boots. Here and there the scurrying of rodents could be heard from the darkness, scattering as we drew nearer. We had no idea where we were going, and I knew it. And she knew I knew it too. But I let her keep leading. Let her have some impression she had any amount of control over the situation. The idea of popping into Eitherspace kept coming into my head, but I pushed aside time and time again like the cobwebs draping the corners of our path. Sooner or later, if we didn’t start making any meaningful progress, I would have to take over. If I even had the energy to. But in the meanwhile, I gave her time.

  As we passed from one tunnel to another, through archways and crevices connecting the underground labyrinth, we’d pause and listen. I knew what she was listening for, even if she didn’t. Or maybe she did but wasn’t quite ready to believe me yet. Either way, she remained on guard, and I was grateful. Eventually, we entered a new cavern, bored larger than the rest with less scattering of bones and other debris than the others had harbored. Even the air in this new space felt different. Cooler. Drier. Fresher somehow, but still with the same sickening sweetness of liquid decay.

  As we entered the space, a sound like a rat echoed at our approach, though this one sounded bigger than any we’d seen so far—a chewing and slurping sound from the edges of the periphery. Sofi heard it too and remained frozen in place as the chomp and shluupp sounds continued, oblivious to our presence. A painful ache throbbed in my gut around the searing pain where the knife had gone in. It hurt to speak, but I spoke anyway.

  “Your light,” I half-grunted, half-whispered. “Hand me your light.”

  Sofi remained still, moving nothing but her arm as she reached back and placed the flashlight into my waiting hands. Her ears perked up at every sound, and if I were close enough to kiss her, I’d have felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up straight. She didn’t breathe.

  I ventured a few steps forward, leaving her behind me for the first time since we’d teamed up for our journey out of this hellhole. No footsteps followed. As I stepped off, leaving her in the darkness, she remained rooted to her spot, listening. Waiting. Fearful and ready to die.

  I cast the beam across the floor and walls but found nothing, so I continued. Pointing the beam ahead of me I could tell the space we’d entered was by far the largest of the tombs, as the light found no wall ahead but instead petered out into the inky dark. One step at a time, I crept forward and gave a slight jump when a gasp for air sounded behind me. The breathing continued, shaking and unsteady. Sofi’s body had finally decided it needed air again if it was going to keep on living. The ragged in and out of her breath comforted me somewhat, knowing not only was I not alone … but I’d not let another girl die on my watch. I’d already had more than enough of those in my life, let alone today.


  With each gingerly placed footstep, I crept forward like a ninja. A ninja with a flashlight though, so now that I think of it, I wasn’t being all that sneaky. Anything in there with me would have known I was there long ago. Would have known we were there the second we entered the room. But that fear reaction, it lurks within all of us. Even brave and stupid monster hunters like me. So, while I might have thought I was being sneaky at the time, the truth is I was scared. I didn’t have anything with me to fight a vampire, let alone an entire nest of them, if that’s what Sofi had come across. The cutlass wouldn’t do me a lick of good other than to wound them. And if I had the gun, it would have made a few annoying holes—enough to piss them off—but it wouldn’t stop them. I was thoroughly unprepared for this, and I should have known better than to have come this far without going home and stocking up. But I didn’t expect vampires. And who knows if that’s really what they were. I still hadn’t seen one. Well, not that night at least. Been through my set of run-ins with the blood-sucking bastards before so I knew how to handle them … and knew I was in no way ready for them now.

  After a couple more steps and a few more swipes of the flashlight, I finally found it—the thing making that horrible sound. And my suspicion had been correct: it was no rat. Down on the floor, a writhing mass of tiny pale bodies and translucent wings fluttered about, nipping and biting at one another in a fight for whatever lay on the floor beneath. I crept closer, and they ignored me, too caught up in their hunger. But as I closed in on them, nothing showed. Nothing at all to expose whatever it was they were fighting over. I crouched down and put my cheek to the floor, taking in their view. Tiny proboscises sucked at the stone.

  “Come up here,” I whisper-shouted to Sofi. “It’s fine.”

  I shined the flashlight in her direction, its pale beam revealing her mascara-streaked face. There in the darkness of the catacombs, with only this meager light to illuminate her, she exuded death. I flicked the beam down, out of her eyes, and a dragging shuffle arose from her direction as she broke from her stasis and moved to join me. I kept the light trained on the floor, enough to cast the space between us in a dim glow bright enough to guide, but nowhere near bright enough to blind. When she finally reached me, I turned the light up and covered it with my hand, casting us in the faded red glow of light through skin and blood. Tiny beams splintered through the places where my fingers met one another, like cracks opening to hellfire.