Or perhaps to say goodbye.
I began to notice small outcroppings of rock from the wall. Some of them had coins on them, old, weatherbeaten pennies, dimes, quarters—I guess the denomination depended upon the degree of importance of your wish. I looked below and noticed that the chasm of the well narrowed somewhat.
Down through the narrowing, I was suddenly beset with an astonishing sight: someone had spray painted complicated glyphs in various areas of the rock wall.
I was not only not the first person to perform this act of lunacy, I wasn’t even down here for much of a reason at all. Someone else had taken the initiative; someone else had gone ahead and performed the descent, but armed with a means of making their mark—whatever in the world those strange and somewhat unwholesome marks meant.
Who did they intend them to be seen by? Was it something like the weatherproof boxes found at the summits of mountains, containing various messages and the names of those who had gone before?
Or was it, perhaps, something more sinister? A method of “putting a lid” on the Murk, of keeping something down here?
I had, I felt, passed a certain point of no return. I began to descend more quickly. Indeed, the glyphs appeared in a ring perhaps thirty feet below surface level, but did not occur again beneath that. A dank smell began to assail my nostrils—where in the world was the floor of the well? It couldn’t possibly be much deeper—
At that moment, I hit bottom. More stone and silence met me. I swung my lanterned head about, trying to get a survey of the area.
I was in a room, roughly ovoid in shape, perhaps twenty feet across, with two halls proceeding away from it: one to the west and one to the east. There were no discernible coins on the floor of the well, despite the fact that generations of hopeful people had been tossing them hither. No coins on the floor of the well...sometimes the wishes are answered, if the coins are caught...
My heart began to beat faster, but I steeled myself. I had been ready for something terrifying to happen; I only now realized how much I wished it had been an alligator or whatever.
I turned to my right, to the eastern hall, then to my left. No discernible difference. No markings of any sort, really; just passageways going straight off, as far as I could tell, into blackness in each direction.
How to choose?
I did the unthinkable at that moment. I unhooked the rope from my harness and approached the western hall. Closer inspection showed nothing particularly unusual, nor anything in the way of indicating that the hall curved away beyond twenty or so feet within. The eastern hall entrance proved to look identical to the western one. Breathing in deep, I took a step within the eastern hall entrance, trusting fate—or perhaps Mike’s Lords of Chaos—to guide me.
Five steps in...ten steps in...nothing changed. I increased my pace. There’s got to be something down here for me to take back to them, I thought. Twenty steps in...thirty...
I began to consider turning around and heading back when I heard a distant rumbling coming from the direction behind me. As I turned around to face it, the rumbling became a mild quaking and trembling. As I began to run back to the entrance proper, I was hit with a wall of freezing cold, frothing water that grabbed me like a plaything and pushed me back the direction I had been headed.
I managed to gasp in one or two breaths of air before I went under, sheer panic enveloping me. Where was it taking me? I dimly sensed the water beginning to twist this way and that; my body hit the rock walls solidly several times, and I was able to steal a few breaths by desperately pushing myself up toward the ceiling at a few points.
My mind and heart raced. Death by drowning? I’d heard various opinions about it—good, bad, slow, fast? I couldn’t remember. As my latest breath began inching its way out of me, the water seemed to slow, and I found myself spilled out onto a smooth stone floor, water streaming away around me. The lantern had gone out.
My first instinct was to try to get it working again. I patted the ground around me, happy in the assumption that any noxious creatures would have been washed away in the deluge, at least temporarily. By feel, and carefully, I unlatched the miner’s helmet from my head and was able to coax open the small flashlight at its front. I slid out the batteries and placed them in my shirt pocket, then began shaking water out of the lantern itself.
When I could no longer hear water shaking around inside of the flashlight, I re-inserted the batteries, muttered an imprecation against the gods of chance having their way with me again, and switched on the light.
The beam flickered, sputtering somewhat, and finally began to glow dully once again. A chuckle escaped my lips. I placed the helmet back on my head and was about to re-latch it when I saw the loathesome thing that squatted across from me in the small cavern I was in, watching me with sickly, yellowish eyes that gazed out from behind long, matted black hair, its body a travesty of humanity, covered in a mossy, dark fur. It lifted one ragged, taloned paw toward its face.
The light went back out.
Moments of sheer terror and panic were our stock in trade. The Bhairavi Society—so-named after the ancient yogis of India, the bhairavis or “fearless ones” who had reached levels of awareness beyond all human conception—had instilled in me a great respect for the awesome forces that could be coaxed out of (some) human beings when pushed to the very limits of emotional trauma.
Fear is the great initiator. Without fear, there is no change. Without fear, there is no compulsion for the nervous system to function at a level beyond human squabbling. Let us reach that level of greatness within ourselves, the height that can only be truly found in the deepest, darkest depths...
Mike’s words. At that moment in the cavern, I reached a whole new level for sure.
Running would get me nowhere. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Was this one of those things Mike had been conversing with the other night? I had to assume that it had not (yet) attacked me for some very specific reason of its own. I had to try to take control of this situation.
“I am here on a mission for Michael Flowers,”
I spoke as calmly as I could. “Do you know him?” My voice sounded hollow. It sounded afraid. I heard the thing quivering in the place I had last seen it. I almost said something else, but decided to wait instead; I stood up, staring at the spot where I had seen the creature, pretending that I could see it.
A series of unnatural clicks and gargles followed by an odd hiss of air proceeded from the spot where the thing still, presumably, squatted before me. I recalled that other creature during its interaction with Mike, and the fact that it clearly spoke no language that I could discern.
This was going to be more difficult than I thought.
I assumed that it had responded to me, and took that as a good sign. All things considered, taking it as a bad sign would, at any rate, accomplish nothing.
“Bring me the items I am to deliver,” I finally decided to say. “And be quick about it!”
I heard it scuffle off. Good? I could still see nothing in the blackness of the cavern; getting out seemed both an imminent concern and far from my thoughts. I took the miner’s helmet off once more and tried fixing the lamp again. It flickered briefly, then went right back out. The soaked box of matches in my backpack obviously wouldn’t help in the slightest.
I would have to proceed by feel alone. Luckily, the deluge had not appeared to give way to any major divergences on its way here, which implied that if I simply kept my hand on the wall and reversed direction, I should make it back to the well. Provided, of course, there were no further flash floods.
Minutes passed. I became aware of my own breathing, of the closeness of the cavern, of the dampness of my clothing and the oddly invigorating scent of wet stone. Was I supposed to have followed the thing?
I heard shuffling again, then the presence of the creature asserted itself. Something was pressed up against me.
A package? The thing clicked and moaned as I took hold of what appeared to be a wooden box of about ten pounds in weight, almost like a cinder block in size.
“I will deliver this promptly,” I said. The thing muttered in response, and I decided to add: “I will be sure to tell him that it was you who provided it for me.”
What I assumed was excited shaking and clicking emanated from the creature. I tucked the box under one arm, then turned quickly and, reaching out a hand to touch the wall to my right, began slowly and surely to pick my way back (I hoped) the direction I had come. Behind me, I heard shuffling and scuttling, then more clicking and moaning from what seemed to be more than one creature, fading off into the distance.
Darkness ahead, darkness behind. I wouldn’t give in to any sense of accomplishment until I had gotten back to the well.
Concern for what I prepared to carry out of that dark place began to weigh upon me the farther I walked. As I began to see flashes of lightning appearing up ahead, I knew I approached the well’s entrance—but I slowed my pace.
What was in the box?
There appeared to be a simple latch holding it shut. Easy enough to open...
Had Mike said anything at all about delivering everything I found? No—“whatever” I delivered would be considered sufficient. Was this part of the test?
Something snapped within me. To hell with it, I thought, and undid the latch.
Within the box, working solely by touch and the extremely dim light reflected from storm clouds above the well’s base, I discerned two items: a small book, about the size of my palm and perhaps half an inch in thickness, and an elaborately molded key. The latter felt cold to the touch, and heavy—brass, perhaps, or even silver...
Quickly, unthinkingly—despite my clothes still soaked in flood waters from gods-knew-where—I pocketed the book and key. My pants seemed baggy enough for the items to remain unnoticed—I hoped.
I re-clasped the latch of the box and shoved it in the backpack with the other junk. I re-connected the rope that still hung down into the cavern to my harness. Tugging on the rope, I began to hear bustling above, and in minutes I was being hauled, slowly but surely, back to the surface.
I was mistaken to think that Mike bent forward into the well to help me out. His hands reached just past me and grabbed the backpack, pulling it over my shoulders and retreating with it as I reached the surface, leaving Steve to help haul me over the side of the well, back to the land of the living.
“Proof of success!” Mike uttered as he removed the box from the backpack and gingerly placed it into a large, dry duffel bag of his own. “Charles, you have been judged—and not found wanting!” He clasped his hands together, gazing up toward the full moon above, and began to mutter in some strange tongue under his breath. Steve grinned at me and pulled out his ever-ready whisky flask.
“Water of life,” he said, and took a swig before offering it to me. I obliged him, and drained a good deal of it. “Speaking of which, what the hell happened to you down there? It sounded like a fucking deluge. And you’re soaking wet.”
I shrugged. “Died and came back to life,” I said.
Julie laughed and patted me on the back. “I guess we’re going back to Mike’s for—”
Mike began to chuckle and hefted the duffel bag. “No need,” he said. “He has not been found wanting.” He headed off into the night, practically bouncing with joy.
I conceded to a slight sensation of guilt. He would get home and find the box empty. He would wonder whether I had opened it, and probably make accusations—which I would stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the truth of, all the while wondering why I had been so stupid to have stolen something whose value I could not possibly conceive. If Mike ever found out...
“Looks like we’re off the hook tonight,” Steve said, gathering up the remainder of the rope as he gazed blankly in the direction Mike had scurried off.
Julie was packing the few other supplies we had brought. “No shit,” she said. “What’s up with him? He’s usually all: ‘The Lords of Chaos must be appeased.’ Yadda, yadda, yadda.” She turned to gaze at me as I rested in the moonlight against the trunk of a tree. She scrunched up her face and feigned mortal terror. “Charley! What’s in the box?!?”
I laughed. “If you saw what gave it to me, you might not make that joke.”
Even Steve paused in his labors at that. Julie shifted uncomfortably.
I felt unsafe about taking the items home with me. There was only one place I could think of where I might feel anonymous enough to open that book and find out what the hell I had stepped into, and I wanted Steve and Julie with me when I did it.
“You guys want to go to a party?” I said.
Julie and Steve departed to stash the equipment and then try to swipe some more booze and cigarettes. I headed to my house, ostensibly to change and take a shower, but before arriving there I made a brief detour to our old elementary school, Maple Ridge, a few blocks away. In second grade, I had discovered a loose brick in a corner wall behind one of the dumpsters out back with enough space behind it to house whatever eight-year-old contraband I could get my hands on, e.g., firecrackers, old lighters, a jackknife or two—even a dirt-crusted pack of old playing cards sporting pictures of halfnaked women on them, found one day lingering at the edge of oblivion on a gutter grate.
I would stash the book and the key here temporarily, then retrieve them before heading off to Amanda Whitfield’s. I thought that, perhaps, an atmosphere of noise and lots of people might somehow diffuse (or, hopefully, defuse) any ill effects associated with their capture and study. In other words, I decided, quite selfishly, that if I was going down, I was going to take down half of Honorius High School with me.
Life’s unfair, right?
Maple Ridge was dark, quiet, peaceful. It alarmed me that, despite what I knew lived below us here in Golem Creek, I felt so resilient, so unchanged by the experience of meeting with it. Perhaps Mike was right about us—there was no coincidence in our having been chosen as members of our little “Fear Club.” Perhaps also that mere fact itself was the thing that scared me the most. After locating the correct brick—still there, seemingly untouched even after all these years— I extracted the palm-sized volume and the key. By the light of the moon and a not-too-distant sodium vapor lamp casting an orangish glow over the dim environs, I got a half-decent look at the items.
Thankfully, the book didn’t look too terribly damaged after its trek across town in my waterlogged pants pocket. Some warping at the edges, but it had a sort of dark leather cover that seemed to be water resistant. Maybe fifty pages bound around with a leather strap, but not even too oldlooking—something you could probably buy at a stationery store today.
The key was another matter entirely. It was presumably silver, and probably authentically so, given the tarnish and oxidation—but what a key! It looked both too simple and too complex at the same time; complicated arabesques adorned the handle, and what appeared to be the faces of grinning satyrs or imps peeked out from amongst ornate foliage. The business end looked like the standard “skeleton key” of four bold, ridged teeth, and the whole thing, about four inches in length, seemed to weigh far too much for its modest size. I stowed the items behind the brick after taking another quick glance around, then high-tailed it back to my house. I would return here and retrieve them before heading off to the party. I felt a terrible anxiety about having them anywhere near my home. It seemed like a warning that took in more than just the dangers of the creature who had given them to me.
Not to mention the fact that I didn’t want the things near me if Mike Flowers were to show up unexpectedly, demanding to know what had become of his treasures. Why did I feel so certain that he should never have them?
Amanda Whitfield lived in what most of us would call a “mansion,” in a suburb of Honorius called Forty Winks. To get there, you could either take the main r
oad past Cricket River or try to meander through a rather dense thicket of woods, called Foxend because it backed right up to an ancient cemetery called the Foxend Churchyard. I met back up with Julie and Steve at the corner of Brake Street and Main; Julie had deigned to chauffeur us to the party in her glamorous 1981 Honda Civic. Steve, as a gesture toward my position of honor for the night, even allowed me to sit shotgun.
We drove in partial silence, the radio tuned to some alternative station, until Steve decided to interrupt Trent Reznor with the echoing question.
“So,” he said. “Um. What’s in the box?”
Julie actually started laughing. I hesitated, but couldn’t help joining in.
“Come on!” Steve said, laughing now too. “I know you fucking opened that thing! There’s no way you didn’t open it. Tell!”
I shrugged. “When we get to the party, I’ll show you.”
Steve gasped, then began acting hysterical, kicking the back of my seat. “I knew it! Julie, didn’t you know it?”
Julie just kept laughing. Trent seemed unaffected, deep in the world of his own problems.
“A fucking gold bar, man! Yes! We cash it in and ditch this place!” Steve concluded. “Why go to the goddamned party? Let’s just head to FazMart and have a look!”
FazMart served as the name of an ubiquitous chain of convenience stores located anywhere nature couldn’t prevent it from happening.
“I thought the party might be a better idea,” I said. “All those people. I mean, what if some thing comes looking for it?”
Steve patted me on the shoulder. “Right! Great minds think alike. Take down the high school with you.”
Julie’s grin seemed plastered to her face, and she chuckled as she lit another cigarette. “It’s a good idea. I mean, even if a monster doesn’t crash the place, is Mike going to show up at the party?” I hadn’t thought of that, but she was right.
Fear Club- A Confession Page 3
