Darkbound 2014.06.12

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Only the phantom scent of Carolyn's hair in his nostrils, the soft touch of Maddie's skin on his fingers, kept him from just sinking into a comatose oblivion. His girls. They needed him. He needed them, too. That was what made a family.

  He forced himself to sit up taller. "We've got to get out of here," he said.

  "Good," said Olik. "I like to hear this. The sound of fight. You have ideas, Mr. Doctor?"

  Jim didn't. "Not a thing. What about you, Adolfa?"

  "Nada, mi hijo."

  Jim cursed. He felt himself grow angry, and fanned the ember of the emotion until it was a fire. Anger was better than despair. He could use his rage, could make it fuel his actions, push him forward like the flames in a steam locomotive.

  He snapped his fingers. "That's it."

  "What is it?"

  "We've got to stop the train."

  Olik guffawed. "This is excellent plan, Mr. Doctor. We just put down feet and stop, yes?"

  "No, I mean we have to get outside it. Stop it from the outside." Jim sighed, his frustration becoming palpable. "The subway's powered by electricity. A third rail runs alongside the two track rails, and that rail's the one that provides the electricity to the motor under the train."

  "Yes, yes," said Olik. Strange to hear the big man's voice coming from the dark. It was like having a conversation with a ghost. "Electricity in rail, rail touches contact which leads to train. So?"

  "So we've got to find the contact point and see if we can break it. That would stop the train, right?"

  "Is correct, but…." Olik sighed. "Problems are these: first, how do we do this; and second, what is to say there are not worse things waiting for us outside of stopped train?"

  Jim's hands tightened into fists. "I don't know. I don't know the answer to either of those questions. But we have to try something, dammit."

  "He's right," Adolfa said. "We do have to try something. We can't just wait here to die."

  "No, I suppose not."

  Something creaked. Then a moment later, Olik's voice sounded from the darkness, closer to the front of the car. "Well? Come then."

  Jim got up. It was dark. They were all in the dark.

  But they had to get out of this place.

  I'm coming, girls.

  TWO

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  Walking forward in a completely dark subway car while it rocketed along at speeds beyond belief turned out to be harder than it sounded. And it sounded pretty hard to begin with. Jim kept rocking to the side, teetering to the ball of one foot, then sliding to the ball of the other foot like a first-time drunk after a world-class bender. He listened for Olik, sure that the big man would have trouble, too, but the Georgian's tramp tramp tramp was steady and sure. He might as well have been walking through a well-lit room in his own house.

  Behind him, Adolfa was breathing heavily but other than that he couldn't tell if she was having trouble or not. He reached for her but couldn't seem to find her in the darkness.

  He bumped into something. Something large and firm and unyielding. It grunted.

  "Easy, Mr. Doctor," said Olik.

  "Sorry," said Jim. A second later Adolfa bumped into him from behind, and that led him to bump into Olik again. This time the grunt the big man coughed out sounded decidedly irritated.

  "What now?" said Jim.

  "Check door. Feel if will open."

  Jim moved up close to Olik. His fingers reached out until they scraped cold metal, then he felt until the seam between door and bulkhead rose up under his fingers. He began feeling along the seam, touching the door and the wall of the subway car on either side, feeling for levers, for knobs. Anything that would let them move to the next car, or at least get out of this one. Adolfa didn't move from behind them. She seemed to know that there was no room for her, that Jim and Olik would take care of this part of things.

  "I am thinking what happened to us," said Olik.

  "Yeah?"

  "I am thinking of Ourang Medan."

  "Who's that? A," Jim coughed delicately, "business partner of yours?"

  "No, no. Is not partner. Is boat."

  "A boat?" Jim was moving slowly. Only halfway up the seam. He didn't want to miss anything. He had heard that when you lost your sight your other senses became sharper, but if that was the case it must be a gradual thing because he felt like he was losing his sense of touch as well. He moved his fingers even slower.

  "A ship. A haunted ship."

  Jim couldn't restrain the quick laugh that belted out. "You don't strike me as the type that believes in ghosts, Olik."

  "Nor am I type who believes in men who go poof into pile of blood and coat, or man who has baby crawl from mouth, or woman who…." He trailed off. No need to finish. They had all seen it.

  "You think this subway is haunted?" Adolfa's voice was tremulous. That she believed in ghosts was not a surprise. She was probably crossing herself again, Jim thought. Saying a quick prayer to some saint, asking for protection from whatever angelic person was in charge of underground tunnels and insane subways.

  "Perhaps."

  "What we've seen didn't look like ghosts," said Jim. He felt something on the bulkhead and his heart skipped. Then he realized it was just another seam in the metal. Rivets under his fingers where two sheets of steel came together. He continued tracing the wall and door.

  "On Ourang Medan, the sailors perhaps never see ghosts either. But when they were found by American ships, it looked for certain they had gone mad."

  "We're not going mad."

  "Aren't we?" Olik grunted. Sounded like he was pulling on something. "How else you explain this all?" Another grunt. The door rattled but didn't move. "We are neck-deep in madness, Mr. Doctor."

  "What happened to them?" said Adolfa. "To the sailors on the boat?"

  Olik didn't answer for a moment. There was a click, and the door started to slide back. But any hope that might have been found in the door's movement was quashed by his next words.

  "They died. All of them."

  THREE

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  The door slid open, and Jim was surprised when Olik didn't step out. Then he realized the big Georgian was waiting for Jim to precede him. At first he thought the man was trying to get him to risk his neck in case something was waiting out in the space between cars, and almost stood his ground. Then he moved forward. Partly that was because he realized that they were as likely to be killed where they stood as anywhere. And partly it was because he didn't think Olik was treating him as a guinea pig in this instance. No, he felt almost like the other man was saying, "It was your idea to get out here, so let's see what you do."

  Any hopes that Jim might have had of stopping the train from the outside were dashed when he stepped onto the platform between cars. Unlike the space between the previous cars, there was no covering to shield the platform from the tunnel. Here, the platform that hung like a suspension bridge between the car they were on and the next one was open to the tunnel, open to the world outside the train... whatever world that might be. Jim could feel the air whipping past, could hear the unblocked echo of the train's passing on the tunnel walls.

  But within seconds he knew there was no hope of getting to the third rail or the subway's motor or any contact points between them. It was just as dark out here as it had been in the car, and any attempt to fiddle with the mechanisms underneath or outside the subway car would equate to passive-aggressive suicide attempts. He would fall, he would be sucked under the train, he would be mangled by the wheels, he would be maimed by passing machinery. The possibilities were endless, and the only thing they all had in common was that they all ended badly for him.

  "I can't see shit out here," said Jim. It was more a declaration of frustration than an informational statement, just something to say in order to let the others know that he couldn't do anything, and the anger he felt welling up about that fact.

  Adolfa tsk
-tsked quietly from the car behind him. Grandmothers everywhere would prefer that cursing be kept at a minimum, apparently. Even when faced with horrible, impossible death, please keep a civil tongue.

  Jim hated her in that moment. He was a grown man. He had been dressing himself for years. He had even seen an R-rated movie or two. He could curse if he felt like it. For a second he thought about turning around and calmly saying each curse word he knew. Not yelling it, just sort of listing them off. To see how she would react.

  Instead he felt his way out onto the platform. There were guardrails on the outsides of the platform, presumably to keep people from pitching off the narrow shelf and into dark oblivion – wouldn't want anyone to fall and miss their chance to be dissolved or impregnated with a miniature version of themselves or otherwise horribly dispatched. In spite of the irony of the guardrails, though, Jim put a hand on each as he edged into the nothing that separated the cars.

  What if it is nothing? he thought. What if there's nothing past the platform?

  A horrible image entered his mind, a vision of himself putting a foot down in the darkness, only there was nothing there to put it on. The platform ended, there was no connecting car. Nothing before or behind this car, it was just a singularity in the void that the universe had become. And Jim fell off the platform, not to be crushed under the car's wheels, but simply to fall forever, falling and falling and falling and falling. He saw himself screaming until he could scream no more, losing himself in a madness that was truly all-encompassing, because the universe would have cast itself away, and all that would be left was madness.

  He put his feet down more carefully after that.

  After only a few more steps his toe nudged something hard. The door to the next car. He let go of one of the guardrails. His entire body clenched when he did it, as though he was letting go of one of one of his few remaining tethers to reality.

  "You okay, Doctor Jim?"

  Jim almost jumped right off the platform. "Fine," he snapped. "Shut up."

  Silence from behind. He felt forward. Found the car with his blindly groping hand. He miscalculated the distance slightly and his fingers bashed the steel door, crumpling against it. He barked in pain.

  "You –" began Adolfa.

  "Shhh," hissed Olik. "Doctor Jim said no to bother him."

  "I don't care." Adolfa sounded petulantly resolute. Jim could imagine her stamping her tiny foot as she stood up to the giant man. "He could be hurt."

  Jim decided to forestall the argument. "I'm okay," he shouted.

  "You see?" said Olik. "The doctor is fine, yes?"

  It would have been a comical interplay in any other situation. Even now, Jim felt the urge to smile. He didn't let himself do it, though. He felt like that would be wrong somehow. This was not a place to smile. This was a serious place.

  His hand found a strip of metal. A crash bar. He hesitated for a moment when he found it. Was this kind of latch normal on a subway car? He couldn't remember. He was a long-time subway commuter, the kind of guy who knew how to get anywhere in New York with the right subway token, ticket, or card. But he couldn't remember if this was how subway cars felt, if this was the kind of latch they had on their doors.

  Maybe Olik's right, he thought. Maybe we're all nuts.

  But that was another dead end. If he was insane, sitting in a padded cell and drooling his way to the next meal time or making papier mâché art using blunt scissors, then there was nothing he could do. There was no escape, no way out of this.

  And he had to get out of this. He had always gotten out of every bad situation. Every time. Even when his mother had –

  (been murdered hacked to pieces blood everywhere all over the walls all over her sheets all over her eyes her open eyeballs and pooling on her open eyes so much blood)

  – even with what had happened with her, even then he had found a way to rise above it. To turn difficulty into triumph and the promise of a better tomorrow.

  Jim pushed the crash bar. He didn't really expect it to depress, and even if it did he didn't expect the door to the next car to open.

  But the crash bar did depress. The door did open.

  "The next car's open," he called back. Immediately he heard movement behind: Olik and Adolfa must have been eager to get out of the car, out of the moving headstone.

  He stepped forward.

  FOUR

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  It was just as dark in the new car as it had been in the old. But Jim still felt better here. They were moving forward. That was progress, wasn't it? Sooner or later they would have to get to the front of the subway train, and then they could...

  ... what?

  Jim thought about the driver he had seen earlier, the man with the too-gaunt face, beckoning him forward. Did he expect they would be able to just chat with that cadaverous looking fellow, simply ask the guy to pull over and let them off somewhere uptown?

  Jim doubted it would be that simple. But that didn't mean he was going to stop moving forward.

  Of course, the driver could want you to do just that.

  The thought was hardly welcome. What if they were being herded somehow? Led like calves down a chute where a butcher would be waiting with a bolt stunner, ready to pound their brains with a piston that would turn their gray matter into jelly.

  Something touched Jim's back. His skin felt for a moment as though it was trying to crawl off his bones, or as though it had suddenly shrunk several sizes.

  "Is that you, Doctor Jim?" Olik's voice managed to both boom and whisper at the same time, and Jim's skin returned to something approaching normalcy as he realized it was the big man's hand on his back.

  "Yeah. Is Adolfa with you?"

  "Right here, mi hijo."

  Jim pressed slowly forward, Olik's hand a constant pressure on his back. "What does mi hijo mean, anyway?" he whispered. He was talking to talk, trying to fill the void with something warm, something real.

  "It means 'my son.'"

  That was nice. Not nice enough to offset the distinctly unniceness of walking through the darkness like this, but nice nonetheless.

  He pushed forward an inch at a time, hands outstretched and waving before him. He fully expected to come into contact with something grotesque at any moment. To touch scales or horns or talons or something worse for which humanity had no name. But there was nothing. Just air.

  The walk seemed to last forever. Jim felt like he was trekking across a dark galaxy, a distance measured not in feet or even miles but in light-years.

  "Olik," he said. He had to speak. The silence and darkness were overwhelming him. Driving him crazy. He was starting to see flashes, but they weren't real. Just jelly-blobs of light that existed only in his mind. They looked like blood. Like bloody sheets. Eye sockets pooling with red.

  "Yes, Doctor Jim."

  "What happened to that ship? The Oura…."

  "The Ourang Medan? It was Dutch ship. American ships were sent message from ship, message that said 'Come aboard. All officers and captain dead.' And then another message: 'I die.' They came aboard and found all men dead. And then…."

  Silence. "Then?" said Adolfa. Jim took another step into darkness. How far did this car extend? He was sure it should have ended; sure they should have reached the front by now. It felt like like he'd been walking for years.

  "The Americans leave. They ran. Some say is because there was a fire and they had to get out. But I think is because they knew if they stayed, they would be caught, too. So they left. They ran, and blew up the Ourang Medan before its spirits could capture them as well. Before they could be trapped by madness, and death could come for them."

  The hand on Jim's back trembled. Jim stopped moving forward. "You okay, Olik?" he said.

  "Fine."

  Jim shook his head in the darkness. "Bull."

  "Just tired. Hand hurting a bit."

  "Sit down."

  "Would rather keep moving."

  "And I
'd rather not have to carry you the rest of the way."

  "You will never carry me. I guarantee that." The pride was easy to hear in Olik's voice. Even so, Jim heard the big man sit down on something. Jim sat, too, and was surprised to find that the seats were different again. Neither the new seats that had been in the last car, nor the older seats in the one before. No, these felt plush. Regal.

  "Comfy," said Adolfa.

  "Yeah." Jim closed his eyes. He would not have thought it possible, but he felt suddenly sleepy. He wanted to curl up for a nap.

  Then sleep fled as something flashed. A light. Not outside the car, either. This was a light within the metal box that he had come to despise so very much. A snapping, flaring brightness as the lights in the subway car all went on at once.

  They extinguished almost as fast as they came. Just an instant. A single moment in what had come to seem like an eternity of darkness. But it was enough.

  Their current subway car was old. Even older than the one they had just left. It looked like maybe one of the first subway cars to have been built, all leather and wood and glass and subtly rough edges that bespoke hand-tooling. There were benches covered in thick padding, and every few feet the benches broke and a pair of Victorian-style four-legged chairs sat bolted to the floor. It almost looked like an old-fashioned Pullman carriage.

  The flashing lights came from kerosene lamps bolted above every third window. They flickered with living flame, though they had all come on at the same exact moment, and had all turned off at the same time as well.

  Jim also noted that, in the hours – it had seemed like days – that they had been inching forward – they had only managed to move up the car about ten feet.

  The lights went out with an audible snap.

  "What now?" said Olik. The big man sounded weary. Jim wondered how much longer he would last. And what would happen if he lost so much blood that he could no longer walk.

  The darkness had seemed profound before. This time, with the memory of light burning behind his eyes, Jim found it oppressive. It had a physical weight, pressing down on him like water in the ocean depths. He felt like he might be crushed by it.