The Shaft

by David J. Schow

  Back in 1972 the Boss had pointed out that Kenilworth Arms had been constructed during Prohibition, using bricks and material recycled from outmoded and condemned structures that dated to the mid-1880s. Fergus had noticed at once the peculiar smell of the bricks; a tang of mummy species, or what old tombstones smelled like when they broke. An American never would have perceived it. A smell of age.

  After sight, smell constituted Fergus' principal sensory input. His nose was keenly tuned. It was one of the things that kept him from bathing too often. The odor of American soaps and the reek of hard, piped water seemed toxic.

  The building was very special. The Boss stressed that. It contained a tunnel system accessed via the basement level, plus custom-built deadspaces, akin to small attics, between the second and third floors. These had originally been engineered for the concealment of large quantities of bootleg liquor.

  Fergus was not particular about accepting the position. The thing inside of him forced him to say yes. Later he reckoned all had been for the best. He decided he did not mind being coerced.

  The thing alive within him had begun as a stitch, stabbing in just below his left lung and causing the kind of pain you feel when running too fast or breathing wrong. It tended to linger, pulsing rhythmically.

  Stomachaches followed. Then massive bouts of constipation. He swigged Mad Dog and ate a bottle of aspirin to cut the worst of the pain. He thought he had grown a tumor, and if so, why bother? He was not ambitious enough to become a morphine addict, so the pain was a convenient excuse for doing nothing with his entire life. His way of giving the finger to an infidel god.

  Never would he forget the evening he had been scanning the papers, seeking custodial work to pay rent and buy wine. His little pet stitch decided to sting him, viciously doubling him over hard enough to bang his broad nose on the kitchen table. Blood ran and his head filled swooningly with its aroma. Clutching his gut, he slouched to the toilet to vomit.

  Great torture-rack heaves battered him bodily. It was impossible to draw air and it felt as though a policeman was kicking in his lungs. Internal pressure bulged his eyes. They would pop and smear the bowl with aqueous jelly. Most of the pizza he had wolfed down earlier resurged in vast unmasticated hunks. Whole pepperonis tinted purple by cheap vine flip-flopped from his spasming gullet and glued themselves to the walls of the bowl. He puked blood. He knew there were probably ulcers down there, but this pain was new, compounded, different. The ulcers had never bitten him quite this way before.

  He spat blood-ribboned mucus and black gouts of digestive acid, his face as red as Thunderbird port, veins tumescent, breath husking inward when it stole the chance. His sphincter contracted and he loaded his trousers with liquid shit that stank of alcohol. His bladder voided warmly as tears, oily and yellow with the impurities of his metabolism, squeezed loose to drip into the toilet bowl. That porcelain ring had become a life preserver, and he hung on even as his internal seizures bounced his jaw off the rim more than once.

  Each time the worst part of the nausea passed, he spat and geared for the next wave.

  At last his stomach floated as a solid mass ascended, pushing past his epiglottis and separating his teeth. His windpipe was blocked and at first he thought he was chucking up his own intestines. He had heard of really lucked up people actually doing that…

  Except that this mass was squirming too vigorously to be married to his musculature. Something was trying to wriggle free of his throat, pushing against the walls of his trachea.

  It fell out into the darkened water of the toilet bowl, and coiled. A blunt, eyeless head, brown and bullet-shaped, rose into a cobra pose inches from Fergus' face. He thought of it as a head only because it resembled the business end of his man-thing, only larger, with a red-lipped vertical mouth that suckled on the bloodstains while he watched.

  His first impulse was to flush it away. It hung on to the bowl via oral suction and was rinsed clean.

  What he had coughed up was about a foot long, and with a vaguely ridged undercarriage. Overall it was the muddy color of potter's clay, the busily feeding head the same girth as the body, which did not taper. It was six or seven inches around. No appendages.

  Fergus' vision swam from the physical strain of his ordeal and he passed out on the filthy bathroom floor. When he awoke, the thing was gone and he dismissed it as an especially vile drunkard's hallucination.

  Until it prodded him again, from within.

  It suggested he respond to the advertisement for Kenilworth Arms. Destiny or dream? It did not matter because the results were identical.

  After settling with the Boss, Fergus explored the tunnel network. When he chanced across the bolted hatch that opened into the garbage-flooded southern airshaft, the thing wiggled free and took up residence as the first new tenant of Fergus' administration.

  Throughout the years, both of them had stayed.

  As reward, it bit Fergus from time to time.

  Venom rocketed through his system like freon, and an irresistible narcotic numbness settled in for a good long while. The first time, Fergus had simply lain back in the tunnel and given himself over to the rolling waves of fuzzy pleasure. He came to eight hours later and found that he had ejaculated in his pants. The pain of his ulcers had subsided. His stomach had settled. His vision was clear.

  He was hooked.

  Both of them had stayed, through two decades now. Fergus' arms were a riot of scarred puncture marks, so he wore long-sleeved shirts and kept a stiff upper. Both he and his pet grew with time. They protected and nourished each other. It was the nearest Fergus veered toward genuine love in his life.

  When the Boss proposed secret extracurricular duties, Fergus was ready. He did it for love.

  The Boss, it seemed, had occasional trash disposal problems, said trash being disagreeable individuals who refused to do things the Boss' way, or tried to screw the Boss somehow. Fergus knew the Boss to be a generous employee, appreciative of his charges. He was eager to help out. It benefitted everybody. His pet relished the meat, the fiber, the fresh bloody calories it could not derive from dog food - even the kind that made its own gravy. Fergus reaped the pleasures of increased venom potency caused by the richer diet. And the Boss was provided with a solution to his human trash-flow problem - one that left little evidence.

  Ex-employees were not delivered all that frequently. Fergus refined his pet's feeding regimen. Mixing the kibble with dog or cat blood helped. Now and again he would provide his own blood, because he cared.

  Lately his pet had been overeating, stealing meals away from Fergus' supervision. Fergus could tell instantly, because it was always bloated and logy after a big feed, and it did not require food that often.

  Somehow it had snatched that little kid from the third floor. But how? It had no free access to the tunnels unless Fergus opened up the hatches. If his pet had free run, someone might see it. That would goof everything up.

  Today he would investigate the tunnels.

  The workday started out badly. He had his keys halfway drawn from his chain caddy when he saw that his office window had been broken in the night; there were still pieces of glass on the floor.

  'Boolsheet sunvabeech,' he muttered.

  He could tell the office had been ransacked but the thefts were not immediately apparent. Asking people in the building directly would be fruitless; no one would know or have seen anything.

  He fired up his hotplate, boiled some Cup O' Noodles, and installed himself in his sprung and swaybacked desk chair. Outside the blizzard raged, but in here, in the heart of his little universe, he was content.

  Two hours later, around ten o'clock or so, he thought he heard gunshots, booming faintly from some distant part of Kenilworth. So what. If it was serious the police would show up again. It had happened more times than was worth counting. Probably just some brownie or blackie asserting their masculinity because their whores tried to pussywhip them. Big deal. Boolsheet.

  It took Fergus another fort
y-five minutes to slouch upstairs and discover the slaughterhouse mess inside of 107, where Mr Ransome had lived for five years now. Blood leaking from beneath the door was what attracted Fergus' notice. He stood with hands thrust deep into his grimy pockets, tongue working within one cheek to dislodge cold food. The smell lilting up from his armpits masked the worst of the stink inside the room.

  'Fockeen I dunno,' he muttered. He would have to clean all this up.

  He checked the bathroom and concluded that his pet had gotten feisty, crawled up the airshaft, poked through Mr Ransome's window and dragged him off for a leisurely dismemberment. Given time to decay in the mulch of the shaft, the corpse would in a few days be easier to wrench apart into hunks that were swallowing size.

  But where had the policeman's coat come from?

  This entire situation was becoming an annoyance. Fergus was abruptly thankful for the storm. It would help keep nosy outsiders away until he could mop up and invent excuses. He locked up 107 securely.

  Next on the agenda was the tunnel check. Fergus knew where the water was low and the humidity highest. That would be where it was sleeping. If it had just eaten, its venom would be notably stronger, and that thought was enough to start an erection swelling in Fergus' grubby pants.

  Down in the basement corridor he unhasped a utility door. He had fortified this one personally, lining it with steel and rubber flashing, interior hinges and double padlocks. This closet-sized room had originally been built as the tunnel access. It housed a false rear wall which Fergus had removed. Beyond were horizontal racks of wine-cask size, now empty, and a hatch cover of boilerplate iron held tight by six wing nuts, which Fergus spun with bored familiarity. The heavy hatch opened on oiled hinges.

  The odor from the metal tunnel told Fergus instantly that his pet was nearby. He smelled fresh wet spoor on the clammy air.

  He was head and shoulders into the tunnel, ready to squeeze around the first curve and stand up inside of the larger branch, when he froze tight with pointer alertness.

  Voices were coming at him out of the tunnel.

  TWENTY-NINE

  'You'll live,' Jamaica pronounced.

  Until he met her, Bash had thought he was sharp. Now he had stood dumbfounded while she navigated, never less than certain. Little glitches like mayhem and corpses did not ruffle her resolve.

  Was she some sort of professional at this?

  Once Bash had lowered the gun he had pointed at her, she darted into Jonathan's bathroom and handed him a damp towel for his staved-in mouth. She checked and informed him that no teeth had been lost - just rearranged.

  'Save it.' She waved a hand when he attempted speech and mutilated words. 'I know, I know you've got a million or so questions, babe, and I'm sure what just happened to you is as gonzo as what's happened to me… but we have got to burn ass outta here, and I do mean right now.'

  She had hustled him downstairs and into her getaway chariot, a Corvette the same color as the lifeblood of the intruder who had tried to deprive Bash of his old age. That blood now tinted the sidewalk ice the color of strawberry popsicles. Snow dervished around and gradually entombed the guy right where he had fallen to break his neck.

  'That's Marko.' She stepped over the body to get to the car. What do I call you?'

  'Jeffrey. Bash, I mean.'

  'Well get it in gear, Jeffrey Bash - 'cos we've gotta go now.' At the Bottomless Cup she had marched him in by the sleeve and ordered a booth and coffee while they were en route to the men's room. She preceded him. The citizen they urprised took his time zipping up and stepping away from a urinal clogged with filtered butts and wads of spent gum. The citizen's eyes moved up and down Jamaica and she knew what he was thinking right away.

  Some things never changed.

  'Shit on a fork,' Bash said to the mirror. 'I've got a black eye. Cammy will drop a cat.'

  'Please,' Jamaica entreated him. 'Reassure me that you don't actually know anyone named Cammy. Hold still.'

  Her comedy was for his benefit - mostly - and he behaved while she dabbed at his face. Reasonably human was the closest they could fix him, given the time and facilities. She plugged tiny wads of toilet paper into his nostrils and assured him they did not have to stay there through the next major legal holiday… just until a bit of coagulation could take place.

  He thought such first aid might have been more efficiently realized in Jonathan's bathroom. He asked about this and she shook her head confidently.

  'No, no, and no. We had to get out and we've got to stay clear. Major shit is gonna fly into the fan any second back there, and believe me you don't want to inhale any.' It was an expression she'd heard Cruz use.

  Then she stepped out, leaving him to urinate - it stung and there was a thread or two of blood from a shot he'd collected in the kidneys. He returned to the mirror to stare like a retard. His shiner was the size of a tennis ball and his lips felt like ground round, bloody-rare.

  Before he could lament his condition too much she returned to hand him a steaming mug of coffee that smelled like a thinking adult's idea of Paradise. She tipped three pink and black capsules into his palm.

  'Take 'em. Trust me.'

  He did, and in ten minutes felt amazingly right, all injuries considered. Pharmacology could be sooo nice.

  Their waitress' tag read Oh Miss. Bash would have smiled if it did not feel as though his face would split in two.

  'Are you okay?'

  Jamaica steered. 'Yeah, we had a little spat and I had to bust him in the chops. Boy meets girl. Fist meets face.' Leaning closer to the waitress, she added, 'I didn't rupture anything I need, if you get my meaning.'

  The waitress made a face, then ventured a cautious smile. Was she being put on? She was the thin, harried type that would still be taking hash-house orders twenty years and a couple of kids later.

  'Eggs scrambled dry,' said Jamaica. 'Bacon crisp. Hash browns well done. Sourdough toast. We don't know if he's eating yet.'

  'You want the toast burned, too?' She refilled Jamaica 's cup. Bash was nursing his slow and gently, still afraid of spitting out incisors.

  'I'm into carbon.'

  'I'll get this order in. Cook's afraid the storm is gonna blow the power out.'

  There were only three other checks to pick up. A plow operator spreading a freshet of newspapers around a booth and packing down a huge breakfast. He was gearing up for an endless overtime day. Two booths down sat a couple, a preppie type into shirt-and-sweater combos and a sunken-eyed blonde sparrow who was either his wife or fiancee. They waited for club sandwiches and wondered what they were doing stranded in the belly of this fierce white nightmare. At the counter sat the guy from the restroom. He stank of highschool dropout and was here to drink too much coffee and chat up Oh Miss.

  'She's good,' Jamaica said. 'Keeps your cup full without you having to flag her down.'

  'You?' At first Bash had to make do more with pointing and expressions than actual talk.

  'I tried being a waitress. Hasn't everybody?' She sipped coffee. 'You going to hang on to that gun you're packing?' Shock drained his complexion. He'd forgotten the pistol sunk into the pocket of his olive greatcoat. He was virtually sitting on it, and it had slipped his brain.

  'Okay, wait. Next you're gonna ask why don't we call the cops. And I am going to say that gun is a big part of the reason that you and I don't need to start a Q&A with the police -because once they start asking all the questions they're going to ask, neither of us will get a word in.'

  'Ask about Jonathan first. I was. Actually.' Talking hurt but the dope she'd lent him helped. 'But you're right.'

  Her expression darkened. 'Jonathan.' A long slow breath carried pain and regret out of her. 'Jonathan; oh my poor Jonathan.'

  It took her an hour to get through the rest of the story. Even if the pills had not worked, her words were enough to make Bash momentarily forget his own pain.

  ***

  Kenilworth Arms uses what it knows.

  It concentr
ates on keeping itself whole, when it can remember what it is supposed to be. It is unaware of the human dramas unfolding inside of its own aged corpus. The blackout periods run longer, these days.

  So many details have already been forgotten. Or are remembered wrongly.

  Blood has always been spilled here.

  In the rooms and compartments and passageways, blood has been spilled, but never more than would amount to a passing toxin in a healthy metabolism. Old buildings can amortize nearly any aberrancy. They outlast crises of the moment. Elapsed time sands floors, erodes bright paint, force-fits doors until they either shut properly or jam for good. The walls process the animal odors of garbage and the piss in the corners. What today is a pool of red, staining wood slats forever, is in a year or two an unremembered vagary lacking even a scent.

  Kenilworth Arms weathers, and maintains itself. Its tenants have no idea that their own despair is a protein that helps to keep the building whole.

  Lately, more blood than usual has moistened the walls and carpet runners. The dosage is capacious enough for the building to experience the power of blood, and be transported by it.

  All this has come to pass thanks to the tapeworm.

  The tapeworm has initiated the building into the opiate joy of blood. Infirmity and senility are bypassed. The sensation is transporting. Desirable.

  Numbness has reigned for an unmeasurable time, though time is irrelevant. Kenilworth has forgotten things. When it can remember, it shores up its failing wallwork - it recalls the correct components of its identity.

  It remembers rooms.

  To be complete in all of its parts, it sometimes remembers the tenants of the rooms. Sometimes it misremembers them.

  Sometimes it remembers half of one thing, plus part of another, and imagines a working fusion. It does not matter that some of the tenants are long gone, or dead. The building uses what it knows.