by John Everson
“I hope you’ve got this from here,” she said. “I don’t think I can stay.”
Austin stood on his toes and put both hands up as high as they’d go, holding the key between his fingers. He didn’t answer her but worked on finding the correct way to slip the key into the lock without losing it. When the metal of the lock suddenly clicked and the chain unraveled and fell to the floor with an iron clank, he looked back to where Angie had been.
There was only darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eventually, they would discover that he was missing. Austin knew he needed to get away from this place as fast as possible. He needed to find where Ceili was being held before they realized he was loose. His only hope was that they wouldn’t come for him until they were ready for the ceremony, which should buy him some time. Regina had mentioned midnight…if that was the real time, he should have a couple hours yet before they went to his cell. That was resting on a lot of assumptions though.
Austin released the cuffs and dropped those and the chains to the floor. Then he navigated his way across the dark room to where he knew the doorway was. He could see a faint illumination from that direction. Once he passed into the hallway beyond, the light grew stronger, and he began to move faster. He could see the flicker of a torch in the next passageway. He hurried to the end of the short corridor but then hugged the wall and carefully peered around the edge once there. He didn’t need to walk into a trafficked hallway and immediately get nabbed ten yards from his cell.
There was nobody in the passage beyond. He had no idea which way to go. Austin flipped a mental coin and decided to go right. He passed three white steel doors on the right side of the hall and tried the handle of each one. They were locked. He wondered if this corridor was a wraparound passage on the outside wall of the building. That would suggest that all of the doors on the right side led inward, and thus were locked from the inside to keep traffic on the perimeter out. That might also explain the lack of doors on the left – if it was an outer wall.
Following that assumption, when the corridor reached a T, he turned right. He didn’t need to find the exit right now. He needed to find a safe entry into the heart of it all.
He was definitely below ground here. There were heavy pipes and ducts that crisscrossed the ceilings above him. He could hear the hum of water and electric and at one point a small steel ladder led up from the cement floor through a square hole in the ceiling. He passed the ladder and could see another corridor branch ahead when he suddenly stopped. There were voices from up ahead. He flattened himself against the wall and listened. They were coming closer.
There was no place to hide. There were no doors at all in this section.
He started moving back the way he’d come – he might be able to duck into another hall before they discovered him. And then he saw the shadow of a figure walking on the wall at the end of the hall.
Shit.
Austin did the only thing he could – he grabbed a rung of the ladder and hauled himself up. He had no idea where he was going but he couldn’t stay here.
He pulled himself above the edge of the ceiling in a heartbeat and looked around. It looked like some kind of boiler room, with large steel reservoirs, presumably for water, and pipes leading in from all directions.
Nobody else was there. He pushed off from the ladder and lay down on the floor, peering over the edge to watch if the person or people he’d heard passed by. Had they seen him? Would they follow him up the ladder? He glanced right and left at that thought, wondering what his options were for escape if they did.
Other than hiding behind a giant reservoir…his options were not great. There did not look to be any doors or hidden spaces in the room. He had to pray that they had not seen him and would not look up as they passed.
A moment later two men in long black robes and pointed hats passed through the hall beneath him. They were talking animatedly – one gestured in the air with his hands and Austin was struck by the strange thought that the man looked like a prophet. But what was the message he was trying to spread now, in this place?
He stifled a laugh and watched as the two continued walking and passed.
He’d lucked out.
But it only underscored the need for him to find a disguise. If they were looking for him, he was going to stand out here like a sore thumb.
A black robe would do him well and probably get him into the places he needed to go without question.
But where to find one?
He lay on the floor and considered that question before looking up and realizing there was a clock on the wall behind one of the tanks. The red LED numbers said 10:47 p.m.
He needed to get moving.
Austin hung his head over the edge and confirmed that nobody else was walking down the hall before he let himself back down the ladder and hurried down the corridor in the direction he’d been walking before this detour. This time, when he turned the corner, he knew right away that he was in a more populated area. The torches were brighter, there were more doorways, and the floor turned from bare concrete to a rough brown tile.
He turned the knob on the first door that he came to and this time it opened. He stepped inside and found nothing of use. It was essentially a broom closet, with boxes, odds and ends and an actual broom. He exited quickly and moved to the next door.
This one…led to real room.
There was a film playing inside. And it was really a film, not a DVD projection. He could see the projector in the back of the room nearby, with a reel of film propped up high on an arm, feeding the brown film stock into the slot where the light projected it to the far wall. There were a couple dozen chairs in front of the projector; about half of them had people sitting in them.
He realized that he would be obvious if he stood in the back of the room, so Austin walked to the last row of seats and slipped into an empty one on the far left.
The whir of the projector provided a low hum beneath the soundtrack of the film itself. Which, once Austin sat down and actually focused on the screen, was…obscene.
A woman occupied the center of the frame. She wore fishnet stockings and bright red lipstick…and nothing else. She straddled a horse – the construction kind, not the animal. It was made of two-by-fours and was low – she had to squat slightly to touch the top bar of wood. But, that was by design. Because there was a rubber representation of a human phallus secured to the center of the horse…. And she was using it as if she were having sex with a man. There was a semicircle of people standing around her, all wearing robes of black. Some had hoods covering their heads. None moved at all; only the woman on the horse shifted, rhythmically, back and forth, up and down. The image and expressionless faces of the onlookers were oddly unsettling.
He looked around at the others in the room. There was a single man in his row on the right side. The guy looked older, with silver curls and black-framed glasses. Austin quickly scanned ahead, not wanting the man to turn and catch his eye. In the row in front of him, a man and a woman sat close together. Both wore black robes suspiciously similar to the outfits of the crowd in the film. The woman leaned forward slightly, her shoulders shifting back and forth as if pushing at something in front of them with her hands. The man, meanwhile, leaned his head back periodically, as if he felt the occasional need to study the ceiling.
Austin leaned to his left and caught a glimpse of what was really going on.
There was a man kneeling in front of the couple. The woman’s hands were on his head, moving it up and down with a particular rhythm.
Austin suddenly understood…and instantly looked away.
In the next row, two women dressed as nuns sat next to each other. There were three men sitting in front of them, all of them wearing black shirts with white strips around their collars.
Austin knew that none of them were priests and nuns ordained by a Christian ch
urch. No, just the opposite. They were anti-priests and anti-nuns. There were moans coming from the front of the room, and he turned his attention back to the screen. The woman riding the horse had somehow acquired leashes, or reins. The crowd now used her like a sick marionette. A dozen silver chains pulled taut against hooks in her skin. Each chain was controlled by one of the black-robed audience members. As the woman bobbed above the phallus of the horse, the skin on her breasts and belly and back pulled and stretched as she shifted her body toward orgasm. The pain of the hooks presumably kept her motions as tightly controlled as possible. She was not bucking with the same abandon as before, and with every motion she alternatively squealed in complaint and excitement.
Austin felt eyes on him then and realized the man to his right had noticed his presence. And was eyeing him with an odd look. He was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was the only person in the room not wearing some iteration of a black robe.
It was maybe time to leave.
And he knew what he needed to find, first and foremost.
A black robe.
Austin slid his butt off the seat and slowly pushed himself upright holding his hand on the back of the chair. He nodded politely at the man watching him, and back stepped toward the door. He knew when it was time to leave the party.
This was something of a toga party and he wasn’t wearing a toga.
He closed the door behind him carefully, and then moved quickly away from it. The next doorknob he tried led to a small chapel.
And more black robes. A priest with a tall hat – maybe he was supposed to be a bishop – stood at the front of the room before an upside-down cross, holding something up in the air. Austin didn’t stay to find out what it was. He didn’t need to be noticed again.
He kept walking and turned a corner. The smell of incense was suddenly strong in the air. Maybe it was just the effect of smoke, but the temperature seemed slightly warmer here too. He could hear voices nearby. There was a hum of talk from one direction. And the distant echo of both laughter and shrieks.
A man turned the corner at the end of the hall and began walking toward him. Austin didn’t wait to see the man’s reaction. He decided to go back the way he’d come. He walked past the chapel room and as he was passing the film room he heard the man call out to him.
“Hey there, wait a minute.”
Austin didn’t answer but increased the speed of his feet. And as soon as he did, he heard the sound of footsteps running. He didn’t dare enter the film room with all of the people in there. Instead, he sprinted around the next corner and toward the broom closet. Maybe he could duck in before the guy saw him.
He pulled the door open and stepped inside, flipping the light switch near the door. A bulb flickered on overhead. In addition to the broom and boxes he’d seen earlier, the room had several shelves with everything from coils of electrical wire to screwdrivers and wrenches to aluminum ductwork. There was even a stack of metal pipes on the floor next to the wall. Seeing no other easy options, he reached down and picked one up. A second later, the door opened, and the man came charging in.
Austin didn’t even think about it; he swung the pipe at the back of the man’s head. The guy went down, fast and hard.
Austin grabbed at a coil of white electrical wire and wound it around the man’s ankles before he could recover. He only had seconds – the guy was already starting to moan.
Speaking of which…he looked around for something to gag the man. He didn’t need a screamed alert going out.
There was a stack of duct tape on one of the shelves and he grabbed a roll, pulled a segment loose and ripped. Then he slapped the tape over the man’s mouth. That would solve the immediate problem. The man was blinking rapidly and lifted a hand to feel the back of his head. Austin knew he only had a few seconds before the man was fully in control of himself again. He grabbed at the black sleeve of the man’s robe and pulled it free. Then he yanked it from the other arm and reached again for the wire. The man began to struggle when Austin brought his wrists together, but he was still fuzzy and Austin had the strength of desperation on his side. In just a few seconds the man’s wrists were bound. Austin pulled the robe free. After considering for a second, he shook his head and began to strip off his clothes before slipping the robe on himself. He frowned when he looked down at the way it clung over his groin and thighs. The nun and priest outfits here were not designed to conceal much. But if he was going to look like one of the club’s members… he had no choice but to let it all hang out. Luckily, the side panels of the robe were not only not transparent, but they included pockets. Even devil worshippers needed someplace for their wallets! He quickly transferred his phone, the bones and other implements from his jacket to the robe.
There was a smear of red on the cement floor from the back of the man’s head. Austin felt bad for hitting him but…the man’s eyes were bulging angrily and he appeared fully conscious now, yanking against the bindings and grunting behind the tape.
“Sorry,” Austin said. “But you came after me. You should just leave people alone.”
The man flapped his bound arms at him accusingly.
“I need you to stick around here for a while,” he said, and grabbed the roll of wire. Then he looped a length of wire through the binding at the man’s ankles and tied the other end to a large pipe that ran floor to ceiling through the room.
“If I don’t get a chance to come back for you, I’m sure someone will need supplies in the next couple days,” he said. “See ya.”
Austin slipped out the door and back into the hallway beyond. He hoped the guy would be okay. But at the moment, he cared more about blending in until he could track down Ceili. Now he should be able to slip in and out of rooms without attracting attention.
He retraced his steps back to the area where he’d heard voices. The incense seemed even stronger now, and he soon found out why. The first doorway he came to was an arched entryway to an ornate room beyond. He stepped through and saw gold gilt columns reaching to a vaulted ceiling and murals of debauched scenes panted on the ceiling just above.
He stood in an antechamber above a large hall. There were theater style seats to his left, with just a narrow walkway between here and there. He had entered the balcony section of the hall. He walked over to a balustrade and looked down. A procession was going on down below. Black-clad figures wove in a serpentine line around a series of round tables. The smoke streamed steadily from a gold box. A man dangled the box from a chain as he walked.
He was calling out words in a strange tongue as he led the procession, and every time he stopped speaking, the crowd behind him answered, with a single, guttural syllable: “Goi!”
The procession wound around the edges of the room, and then when the man yelled out “Parlay avun das erunt al interogattan deo dua,” most of the people behind him answered, “Goi!” and the line continued to move.
He watched as they completed a full circuit of the room and then turned down the center aisle and began to move toward the main entrance on the level below. He was just about to stop watching when he realized that the back of the line was made up of a handful of young women…one of them carrying a baby in her arms.
Ceili? He squinted and leaned over the edge, trying to see better. The baby lay on a black pillow, wrapped in a black sheet. Probably a piece of one of the nuns’ robes, he realized.
He could only see the white of the child’s face, but as the procession moved past his vantage point on the rail, he saw the baby’s eyes open and look about.
It was Ceili. Her eyes were wide and bright as the nun passed below him.
He needed to follow them to wherever they were going! But first he had to get out of this balcony. He looked around for an exit, and saw an arched doorway covered in black drapery near the seats to his right. He rushed over and poked his head through the dark velvet curtains.
It led t
o a carpeted circular stairwell down. He took the stairs two at a time and found himself at the back of the main hall just as the last of the procession exited. He didn’t slow but hurried after the last person in line. He fell in step just as the final people left the room and began to march down the long dark hallway beyond.
If the person ahead of him noticed that they were no longer last in line, they gave no indication. His timing couldn’t have been better. Nobody seemed to notice that the procession had grown by one. And why should they? The whole group continued to walk down the corridor until they came to a room at its very end. The glow of red flickered from inside, and the leader simply turned and put up his hand.
“Only one may pass,” he said. “The chosen one.”
With that, the nun toward the back of the procession moved forward with Ceili and disappeared into the room beyond.
“The preparations are complete,” he told the group, holding the incense container in the air and clanking its body against the chain. “In one hour, we will meet in the Sacristy and complete the ritual of the Devil’s Equinox.”
With that the crowd began to stream past Austin, and he fell in step behind a blond woman in the translucent black silk of the sisterhood of Club Equinox. He could see almost every movement of her muscles through the garb as she walked. He forced his eyes away and looked for a place to sidestep the crowd. He didn’t want to get too far from the room where Ceili had been taken, but at the same time he didn’t want to suddenly be the sole person left standing right outside it as the priests kept an eye on the area. He couldn’t afford to stand out, not when he was this close.
He stopped along the wall when the corridor zagged left and waited until the throng passed him by. There were a host of conversations going on between the sisters and priests about tonight, and in their excitement, nobody paid any attention to the guy leaning against the wall. Which suited him just fine.
Once the hall was clear, Austin walked back toward the end of the hall. He had not been able to get close to the room before. Now, he should be able to walk right in without anyone noticing.
