by B. L. Morgan
The darkness was thick in front of us like oil. I was hoping there wasn't any bats down here that would swoop down and take a bite out of our heads. We shuffled down the middle of the street and could only vaguely make out the shapes of the storefronts on both sides of us. They were like phantom buildings where ghosts lived.
I half expected the doors of those phantom shops to burst open and vomit forth dozens of jibbering, yammering shapes with long fangs and claws to match. These things would fly at us trying to rip us apart.
I kept one hand on my Thirty-Eight in my holster. If they came, I'd be ready for them.
We moved on through the darkness. I had to force myself to move forward faster than I was comfortable going. But I knew that we had to get to where Julia and Felicia were real fast if we had any chance of getting them back alive.
Johnny edged up to me in the street. He whispered, "Has it occurred to you that this guy, Cyphre, might be setting up an ambush for us."
"Yeah," I answered. "The problem is we don't have any choice. If we don't go after Cyphre as fast as we can, then Julia and Felicia will die. I can't allow that to happen."
We moved on through the darkness, neither of us talking. From the vague outlines around us, I could see that vines had grown down from the surface above and hung like thick snakes down some of these storefronts.
Johnny grabbed me by the arm and halted me. "Hold on a second," he said. "Turn your flashlight off."
We both turned our flashlights off. Our eyes adjusted quickly to the complete darkness. Except that it wasn't completely dark anymore. Even without the flashlights I could see the grayish outlines of the shops at the corners ahead.
We stood silently and listened. Voices seemed to be coming faintly around the corner ahead of us. The voices were so faint we couldn't make out any words but it was obvious that we weren't just imagining the sounds.
I leaned close to Johnny and whispered, "It looks like it's almost show time."
"You got that right," Johnny said. "Let's just hope we ain't walking into some kind of horror show."
"I get the feelin we are," I told Johnny.
"So do I," he responded as we walked to the corner and peeked around the edge of the building.
About a block away to the west, the old gas street lamps were lit. My eyes weren't used to even that dim light, so it took be about a minute before I could see anything. When I could see, I couldn't tell very much about what was going on from the distance. All I could see was that there were people carrying things out of one storefront across the street and into another building that might have been the Rialto Hotel.
I whispered to Johnny, "To get up close to them we're going to have to use stealth tactics."
"Yeah, that's right," Johnny answered back. "We're gonna have to be sneaky as motherfuckers too."
I looked around the edge of the corner again and studied the situation. Since everything was being carried out of a storefront on the other side of the street and was being taken in to a place on the other side, I wanted to be over on that side of the street.
"We've got to get over there," I told Johnny and pointed across the street.
He nodded. We both looked out past the edge of the wall and as far as we could tell, no one was looking our way. We trotted as quickly as we could across the pavement and hid behind the edge of a building.
Looking out past the edge of the wall, I saw just how easy it would be for us to be spotted as we moved from doorway to doorway.
"We need to go around the back," I told Johnny.
He looked that way and said, "It's pitch black back there."
"So what's new?" I asked Johnny.
"Not a damn thing," he answered back.
We edged back away from the main street and just past where the building we were hiding behind ended, there was an alleyway. Out of curiosity I had shown my flashlight upward to take a look at the ceiling of this underground dead city.
What I saw was that even though there were cement columns that helped support the cement roof that was almost lost in the dusty haze, the majority of the support for the roof was supplied by the existing buildings that were down here. I could see beams and supports attached to the ceiling from the buildings. It did occur to me that the city council probably didn't allow very much to be built above ground that wasn't directly supported by a building below.
Looking down into the alley, it looked like we would be walking down into a tunnel darker than the pits of hell. There wasn't anything to do but go into it.
We edged our way down the dark alleyway shining our flashlights on the pavement in front of us. The pavement appeared to be like cobblestones. It was an uneven surface to walk on since the spaces between the bricks seems to have been washing away. There were wide cracks and spaces between the bricks.
Down into the dark pit we walked.
CHAPTER 52
INTO THE PIT
My heart was beating furiously in my chest as we went down the alley. There was something about walking forward into a pitch blackness expecting an ambush waiting for us that definitely put me on edge.
The stones were slick beneath my feet.
We were about halfway down the block when Johnny slipped on one of the cobblestones and bumped into me. He jumped to the side and said, "Damn!"
Even in the darkness I could feel Johnny's tenseness. I half expected his fist to fly out of the darkness at me.
"Do you get the feeling that somebody's watching us?" Johnny said and his voice tone was all about nervousness.
"Yeah, I do," I whispered back. "The thing is for them to see us they'd have to have a lot better eyes than I do, because I'm practically blind."
What I said must have been almost like a cue because a body flew out of the darkness and rammed into me. I was knocked sideways into Johnny and we both went down onto the slick hard stones.
"Goddammit," Johnny yelled and I found myself being kicked by unseen feet while I was trying to get up.
I punched upward on one of the legs kicking me and was lucky enough to get the inside of the leg and my punch connected with someone's balls. A strangled high pitched squeal was uttered and that kicker fell away. I threw punches in all directions at anything that seemed to be attacking me and somehow made it to my feet.
I could hear Johnny fighting and cursing somewhere off to the side but in the dark I couldn't tell quite what direction his voice was coming from. I didn't dare pull my gun and start firing. Johnny might be the first one I'd hit.
Anytime I heard a sound, be it breathing or a step or a muttered curse, I threw a punch or a kick in that direction. Mostly I was landing glancing blows or missing altogether. In this darkness I was fighting like a blind man because both of our flashlights were gone. The only good thing was that whoever was attacking us seemed to be as blind as we were.
I wasn't taking too many direct blows because I was fighting out of a deep crouching closed boxer's stance. With my hands up and my elbows tucked in and my chin down and my knees bent, I didn't give whoever was swinging at me too many open targets to blindly connect with.
We were in such darkness that one of my attackers actually walked right into my two up raised hands with his head. I grabbed him by the hair to make sure to wasn't Johnny. This was straight Caucasian hair so I knew it wasn't Johnny I had hold of.
I brought my knee up into his crotch then slammed his face down on the same knee and tossed him away. I had a moment of breathing space and shouted Johnny's name.
"They got me pinned to the fuckin' ground," he yelled.
"I'm coming for you," I shouted back and the crowd was on me again, fist and feet flying at me out of the darkness.
Again I went into my protected fighter's crouch. I tried to march forward throwing short hooks at whoever was in front of me like a blind version of Joe Frazier. There were too many of them. They drove me backward with the sheer force of their numbers.
Johnny's voice came out of the darkness to me. He shouted, "Get the fuc
k out of here!"
I could tell I wasn't being attacked from behind and it seemed like all of our attackers were between Johnny and me. Johnny's voice sounded desperate but I knew he was right. After I landed a good left hook on someone in the darkness and dropped him and then landed a right hook on someone that stumbled away from me, I shouted to Johnny, "I'll be back for you." I turned and ran.
I heard him yell from behind me, "Just fuckin' go!"
* * *
I hated leaving Johnny like that, but there was really no other choice. There was no way I was going to be able to get Johnny free in the darkness with that many guys on us and getting myself caught wasn't going to help us at all.
Down the alley I ran and I could hear the heavy footfalls of my pursuers behind me. I could now see a little bit in the dim light, so even though I'd gotten spun around in the fight, I was still going in the same direction that we started down the alley in.
I could see flashes of light between the buildings as I ran past them so I knew I was down where the streetlights were lit. Thinking that I really wanted to be out of this darkness and somewhere where I could see my attackers, I ducked down one of those narrow passages and ran toward the street.
The thunder of feet followed me between the two brick walls into the passageway that I'd ran into. The thought occurred to me immediately that this turn had been a bad mistake. While I might have been able to lose my attackers in the darkness, out in the light my only chance would be to outrun them.
I knew I was no track star.
The question as to whether I could outrun this pack was answered for me almost the same instant that it entered my brain.
In front of me I saw the silhouettes of several men stream into the passageway blocking my exit and coming toward me. Without thinking I pulled my Thirty-Eight and fired twice.
The boom in between the brick walls was nearly deafening. But not so much that I couldn't hear the two accompanying screams that came immediately after my two shots. I stopped cold because more bodies streamed into the passageway in front of me.
I fired twice behind me because they seemed to be closer than the ones in front. Again I heard two screams following my shots. But still they came on.
Now the silhouette of a face loomed in front of me out of the darkness. I pointed my pistol at it and pulled the trigger. I was showered by the wet spray of warm gore as the head in front of me exploded.
Then they were on me again. I could barely move in the narrow passageway and they attacked me from in front and behind. I tried to use my pistol as a club and it was sadly ineffective.
Fists and feet flew at me out of the darkness. This time, I had no choice but to accept the punishment. There was no room to maneuver at all. Blows rained down upon my head one after another.
Then one really hard punch caught me square on the chin. I was almost grateful for the greater darkness that dropped down over me. I slipped into unconsciousness.
PART III
CHILDREN
AND
DEADMEN
Who has not seen a child
Pull the wings
From a fly,
There is much Cruelty
In Innocence . . .
- The Walker in Darkness
CHAPTER 53
SACRIFICES
Cold wind and snow blowing into my face was what brought me around. I opened my eyes slowly.
I was sitting on a bench with my hands tied behind me looking out into a dark snow blown night. That wasn't all that I saw.
There were torches burning in a wide circle around us. Julia was sitting on one side of me and Felicia was sitting on the other. We were on the dome of a large rounded hill. A tree was growing out of the side of the hill and its bare gnarled branches leaned over toward us like a knotted skeleton's hand reaching to take us down to hell.
Except for the torches, it was a black snowy stormy night out here. A group of men, I estimated at least thirty, were milling around in front of us.
Felicia was shivering in the cold beside me. She had a coat and jeans on, but it was still too cold to be sitting still out here no matter how you were dressed. I looked at Julia and she looked at me.
"Did they hurt you?" I asked her.
She smiled at me, a grim hard smile.
"No," she said. "They're saving us for something else. I think it would have been better off for us if they would of killed us right away."
I didn't like hearing Julia talk like that. Usually she is a solid rock hard woman. She must have seen something really bad to have taken all of her confidence away like this.
"We'll get out of this," I told her.
Then I looked at Felicia. Her face expression was a blank. She stared straight ahead like she wasn't seeing anything at all. She was in deep shock. I was hoping she'd be able to come out of it. After what she had been through just since I'd known her, I wasn't certain of that.
Looking around me at the hill we were on and looking at the tree, I realized where we were. We were on one of the Cahokia Burial Mounds.
These hills had steep sides and actually looked like huge upside down bowls. I had come up the hill that we were on myself many times when I was a teenager and slid down the side of it on inflated tire tubes in the snow. Tonight would be a good night for that.
But we weren't here for fun.
I looked at Felicia and told her, "I'll get you out of this."
She looked at me and there was recognition in her eyes. Then tears ran down her face and she leaned her head on my shoulder and sobbed.
The snow stung my face and I grinned at the crowd of men milling around in front of us. "You sorry sons of bitches," I yelled at them. "Let me loose and I'll kill every last one of you with my bare hands."
The crowd grew silent then. They stood stock still and the crowd parted to let someone come through.
Everyone stepped aside and made a walkway for the one who walked among them now. He came straight toward us.
This man who walked toward us looked more like a boy than anything else. He was around five feet four and thin as a rail. He wore an African style ceremonial robe like he was some kind of a medicine man. His head was clean shaven and his skin was smooth. He wore the face of a fourteen year old kid. But his eyes were old and they shone with an evil light that only the ancient and bitter can possess.
He walked toward us with an evil grin on his face.
To my surprise Johnny was walking with him. Johnny was a step behind and to the side of him. It was obvious that Johnny was no prisoner. He was not tied up and he was carrying his shotgun.
The two of them stopped in front of us and the boy looked at me intently.
"Mr. Dark," he said. "I am Cyphre. I am so happy you could see fit to join us tonight."
"Let me out of these ropes and I'll show you how happy I am to be here," I told Cyphre.
He laughed at that and Johnny did too.
I glared at Johnny. "You're a sorry sack of shit," I told him.
He grinned at that. "I play for the winning team now," Johnny said.
"We were friends for a lot of years," I told Johnny. "I guess that don't mean shit."
"We were never friends," Johnny said and stepped right in front of me. "The whites only want to use the blacks. I was only playin’ the game. Well, now we have the power to use you."
I surged off the bench and stood up. Johnny stepped back and snapped out a quick straight right cross that sat me back down on the bench. It wasn't a hard punch. It was just quick. It surprised me that the punch wasn't that hard because we sparred a few times when we were teenagers and I knew that Johnny could punch like a mule kicks.
"You hit like a bitch," I told Johnny. "I guess you lost your balls somewhere in the dark."
He laughed at that and stepped back behind Cyphre.
"Yes," Cyphre said to me. "Mr. Davis now realizes that the dark skinned ones were the first men. We were meant to rule this world. I am going to open the gate tonight and bring the Lo
a through. They will inhabit the bodies of this world's rulers. The Loa will answer to me."
"You're out of your fucking mind," I told Cyphre. "You expect me to believe that you can put spirits into living people and run the world that way. You've been taking too much of your own drugs boy. That ain't gonna happen."
Cyphre grinned his ugly smile, "It does not matter what you believe," he said. "You have already seen it. The Loa was what I put into Tor and Morris's bodies to use as my servants. Felicia has a special soul. Giving her soul to Abbadon, the sovereign of the bottomless pit, will allow me to control thousands of Loa. The world will be mine."
Just one more small guy, I thought, with a Napoleon complex. The only difference was that he had us tied up and he was getting ready to cut our hearts out.
CHAPTER 54
CYPHRE
Cyphre looked at his watch and smiled. "Good," he said. "It is one half hour to midnight. Time to start our ceremony to open the gate. It is good that you woke when you did, Mr. Dark, or I would have to have cut your beating heart out of your chest while you slept. This way, I get to hear you scream when my blade slides into you."
"Keep listening dog shit," I told Cyphre. "You ain't gonna hear me scream. You ain't man enough to let me loose. You gotta have these mindless wonders of yours do your dirty work."
Cyphre laughed, "You are right, Mr. Dark. Of course I will not let you loose." He waved some of his other men in toward us. "Put them on the stakes," he commanded.
It took four of them to hold me. They dragged me over to the crest of the hill we were on and cut the rope that bound my wrists together. Then they forced me down to the ground where there were four stakes driven in.
While someone stood on each of my arms and legs, someone else tied my arms and legs to the stakes. I tried jerking my arms and legs loose as soon as I was let go of. The stakes were solidly driven into the frozen ground. They weren't going anywhere.
I looked around me as much as I could and saw that Julia and Felicia were tied to stakes the same way that I was. Things were not looking good for us.
