He told me of things that slumber beneath the earth,
that gather wisdom and strength in darkness but must not be troubled
in their midnight vegetations. But, said he, there will come a time when their
master shall summon them, and the dead will arise and walk the earth.
—The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D (1791)
by James Boswell
[Omitted from the final published version.]
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.
(Abandon all hope, you who enter here.)
—Divine Comedy (1308–20)
by Dante Alighieri
And you will face the Sea of Darkness,
and all therein that may be explored.
—Book of Eibon
ONE
Monday, October 17, 1994. 8:02 P.M.
THEY HAD BEEN DIGGING.
The machines had stopped now of course, now that the billowing curtain of night had been drawn, the thickness of its fabric rendering too dark for safety the land of mud and treacherous trenches over which it held sway. The workmen had gone home, leaving excavators and earth-movers to lie silent. Sleeping beasts of metal and glass, they had been transformed by the darkness into the mechanical monsters of a fever dream, resplendent in their brightly painted colors in the daytime, now altered by the nearby neon street lamps into the shades of nightmare. The bright yellow of the diggers was now a burned, infected ochre, the dark green of the power compressors the ugly black of wet gangrene. Even the deep crimson bulldozers looked jaundiced and ill.
The barriers the men had erected before leaving had served to keep out all but the most persistent of trespassers, and now, at just after eight o’clock on a chilly October evening, the building site became a silent wonderland, a snapshot of frozen industry awaiting the sunlight to reawaken its activity with the first blush of an autumn dawn.
Heaps of reddish earth peppered with small stones, piled higher than the nearby machinery, glistened with the same freezing moisture that had collected on the angular metal of the vehicles that had dug the soil out. In the distance, sealed sacks of cement and neatly stacked piles of bricks waited patiently, their role in the proceedings to come a little later, when the foundations of the supermarket had been dug, the concrete poured, and the real work of building could begin.
The evening sky, neon-drenched and smothered with cloud, was the texture of bloodstained cotton wool as two small figures pushed their way between the DO NOT ENTER signs. Once within the building site’s perimeter, they ran to a nearby excavator and crouched beside its mud-clotted caterpillar tracks. Their attempt to conceal themselves was unnecessary. Aside from the fact that there was no one around to see them, even at their full height they were hardly taller than the racks of metal teeth by which the machine moved itself.
Their breath steamed in the chill air, the nervous vapor merging with the mist that was now beginning to rise from the chilled mud of the ground.
“Told you we’d get in.” Jason was the taller of the two by an inch, and older by a month.
“It’s fucking freezing,” his companion Mark moaned. “What did you want to come tonight for?”
“Because, you twonk,” Jason said, rolling his eyes, “by tomorrow they’ll have filled it all in with concrete, won’t they? We won’t have a chance of finding anything then.”
Mark gave a sulky sigh. “I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
Jason slapped his friend across the head. “Don’t you listen to anything in school?” he said.
“You don’t,” came the reply. “You’re too busy waiting for a flash of Miss Goldstrop’s thong.”
“Only if it’s a day when she’s wearing one,” Jason sniggered. “Besides, I’m not talking about Maths. I meant History.”
“With old Carstairs?” The more elderly and unattractive contingent of the female teaching staff did not merit an honorific. “Why the fuck would I be listening to her old shit?”
“Because if you did you’d know this place is where H. G. Wells’s house used to be.” Jason stamped the ground for effect. The earth beneath his feet gave more than he was expecting, and he almost slipped.
“Who’s he?”
A large plume of vapor came from Jason’s mouth as it was his turn to sigh.
“Remember that film she showed us last week?”
“What, the one about how building sites can kill you?”
“No, that was the week before, you dingbat. How can you have got the two mixed up? The one I’m talking about was in the History classroom, not the assembly hall.”
There was a moment’s silence while Mark pondered. “Oh yeah,” he said eventually. “I remember. That old bitch said she couldn’t believe we’d all got to the age of thirteen and hadn’t seen it. It was the one about the bloke who could travel places even though he never really moved?”
Jason’s silhouetted head nodded encouragingly. “Because he was moving in time instead. And it had those monsters in it at the end.”
“Fucking hated them,” said Mark. “Fucking hate things that come out of the ground to get you. What the fuck are we doing here again?”
“Being a fucking Sweary Mary is what it sounds like.” Jason snickered again, and when it became obvious his friend didn’t find what he had said at all funny, his amusement became a forced, full-throated laugh.
“Fuck off,” was all Mark could manage in the way of a verbal riposte, and so instead he took a swing at his friend, missed, and ended up whacking his fist against the caterpillar track.
That just made Jason laugh all the more. “Fucking clumsy spazz as well. Your mum’s going to wonder how you did that.”
Mark rubbed his scraped and bleeding knuckles. “My mum isn’t going to be home ’til late, and I’ll be in bed by then. She’s never going to know I was here. Anyway, at least I have a mum.”
That was below the belt, which was where Jason tried to punch Mark for coming out with it. The other boy dodged and tried to return the blow but his friend was too quick, stepping aside in the darkness and getting Mark’s neck in a headlock.
“Do you submit?” Jason squeezed tighter as his friend managed to emit a sound that was little more than a gurgle.
“Do you submit?”
An anguished howl from the other side of the building site caused them both to look up. Jason released his friend, who immediately stumbled back three paces. Once he had recovered himself, Mark turned to leave.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
Mark shook his head. “You said it would be safe.” He pointed past Jason’s shoulder. “What the fuck was that?”
His friend snickered. “Just a cat. Or a dog who’s found a cat. Don’t be such a wuss.”
Mark took a step back toward the fence, still unsure. “I’ve never heard a cat that sounds like that.”
Jason chuckled. “You live in a high-rise, mate. The only pussy hanging around there are the crack whores.”
“Like your mum you mean?”
The cry came again, but it seemed farther away this time, muffled, as if something didn’t want it to be heard.
“See?” Jason was ignoring Mark’s jibe. “It’s going away, whatever it is.”
“Or being dragged away.” Mark returned to his friend’s side, the implication of his wussiness sufficient to persuade him to brave whatever might be lying out there for them among the mud and bricks. “You still haven’t told me why we’re here.”
“I’ve been trying to.” Despite his previous assurances that there was no one around, Jason dropped his voice to a whisper. “Carstairs told us that H. G. Wells wrote loads of books in Victorian times, right?”
“Right.” From the
sounds of it Mark obviously didn’t have a clue, but for now he was happy to go along with his friend.
“And this is where his house was, right?”
“Right.”
“So there might be stuff here that’s valuable, yeah?”
Mark pondered this for a moment. “Like what?”
Jason hadn’t thought that far. “I dunno.” He shrugged. “Bits of the time machine?”
“I thought that was all made up.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t try building one himself does it, piss stick?”
Mark shivered. “That is the single most stupid reason for coming out on a Monday night I can think of.” He took another step back. “I’m going down to the arcade.”
“All right,” Jason called after his retreating form. “Just means when I find something I get to keep it. And all the money I’ll get for it.”
Mark halted and turned around.
“Money? You sure?”
Jason pointed to the narrow trenches and heaped earth. “Only one way to find out.”
Mark was retracing his steps. “How are we going to see?”
Jason switched on the flashlight he’d been concealing in his pocket.
“Okay,” said Mark, holding his watch up to the beam to see what time it was. “I’ll stay for half an hour. Then I’m going.”
The mist had thickened considerably while they had been talking. Now it covered the damp earth like a nebulous shroud, drifting gently with the breeze that had sprung up, but it was still willing to part for the feet of the two boys as the worn soles of their filthy sneakers disturbed its gossamer-like serenity.
As they walked, the building site seemed to transform. The deep trenches that had been dug for the foundations became open graves, the towers of bricks monolithic tombstones. The machines were in the background now, silent witnesses to what was about to unfold. The flickering beam of Jason’s flashlight only added to the sense of altered reality, especially as it kept flickering on and off.
“This place is like a bloody graveyard,” Mark whispered.
“Glad it’s not just me.” Jason suppressed a shiver. “It’s just a building site.”
“It’s fucking creepy is what it is.” Mark stopped and reached down.
“What’s the matter?”
“My foot’s stuck. It’s sinking in. Just a minute.” Mark grimaced as he scooped away the sticky, cloying earth from around his foot. “I might have found something.”
“Something good?” Jason shone the flashlight as Mark brought his hand up into the beam.
“I dunno. Feels like maybe necklaces?”
It was only when his mud-caked outstretched palm was in the harsh glow of the light that they both saw what it was.
The worms were all different sizes. Some were as thick as Mark’s fingers and moved slowly, curling themselves away from the brightness with almost lazy indifference. Others were much smaller and writhed with a frenzied intensity that pushed the paler, stubbier grubs into the spaces between the boy’s fingers, from where they fell to the ground.
Mark flicked his hand to rid himself of them while Jason made noises of disgust. Once the worms had vanished back into the dark patch of earth, Mark rubbed his palm against his fleece jacket and held it up once more.
“Shine the flashlight again,” he said.
Jason shook his head. “That was gross,” he said. “I don’t want to see what else you want to make me sick with.”
The other boy grabbed his hand. “I wasn’t trying to make you sick you wanker, my foot really was stuck. Now let . . . me . . . see.”
The worms had gone, but their passing had left behind a sticky residue. A layer of dark green slime coated Mark’s palm. Tiny pools of what looked like clotted blood were floating in it.
Jason’s eyes widened. “Shit! Did they bite you?”
Mark choked down a terrified sob that his friend wasn’t meant to hear. “I’m all right,” he said, rubbing his palm against the soft material as vigorously as he could. “I couldn’t feel them bite me, so they can’t have, right?”
“I don’t know.” Jason was playing the dutiful unhelpful friend. “Aren’t there some worms that can burrow inside you and you don’t feel a thing until it’s too late? I saw a documentary on it once—they eat away at your insides until there’s hardly anything left. Then they burst—”
“Fuck off.” Mark looked around. It was impossible to tell which way they had come. “I’m going home. Now.” He picked a direction and started walking.
“Well I’m not helping you.” Jason shone the flashlight in the opposite direction. “I’m staying until I’ve found something.”
Mark, his face tear-streaked and his hand beginning to throb—if only in his imagination—began to pick his way between the graves.
Not graves not graves not graves, he told himself over and over. Just trenches. Dug by those machines we saw on the way in.
Behind him, Jason flashed the beam of light in a number of unhelpful directions, with likely little intention of helping him find his way, but it did allow Mark flashes of a path he was able to follow that would lead him to the perimeter fence.
There was something up ahead. Between him and the wooden boards that hopefully led to freedom.
Something crouched close to the ground.
Something with a lot of thick, jointed legs radiating from a body so bulbous and black that it even absorbed Jason’s light.
“Jason!” The two syllables were barely comprehensible because of the mixture of snot and fear in the terrified boy’s throat.
The beam flashed Mark’s way once more.
The thing had moved closer.
He could see the legs moving now, clawing and bending as the blackness crawled toward him, edging closer on its multiple silent feet.
“Oh fuck help meeeeeee!”
The last word became a drawn out cry as Mark took a step back, his heel met with nothing but air, and he slid backward into a trench. Warm urine coursed down his leg as he felt more wriggling things try to work their way out from beneath his body. The memory of the public information film they’d been shown after assembly the other week came rushing back to him. At the time he and Jason had giggled about the out-of-date fashions and the ridiculous acting. Now all he could think about was the bit where the kid got buried alive in a hole just like this one.
Just like this one.
“Jason! Help!” He dug the heels of his palms into the rotting earth either side of him, trying desperately to lever himself up. But the trench was easily ten feet deep and the ground wasn’t about to help. Instead a myriad tiny fragments of gravel dug into his flesh, puncturing his skin and burning the raw tissue beneath. Was it his imagination or could he feel things trying to burrow into him? Wriggling between the joints of his fingers to get to the bone so they could gnaw at it?
Mark raised his arms and dug desperate fingers into the sides of the trench. A splatter of sodden, fleshy mud hit him in the face. He tried to wipe it away but only succeeded in smearing the stinking stuff over his mouth and nose. A fleck of something disgusting lodged itself in his left nostril. It stank the way his guinea pig had when it escaped and got itself stuck behind the radiator when Mark was five. There’d been no one in the house and by the time his mum had gotten home, his pet was dead and already rotting in the damp atmosphere of the flat.
That was how Mark felt now—trapped and already starting to decompose. It was difficult to tell where his scrabbling hands ended and the watery slime began. He opened his mouth to scream but before he could make a sound a clod of something wet lodged itself in his throat. He coughed and spluttered, showering his chin with a mixture of spit and solids. Were there wriggling things in it too? Nausea overwhelmed the boy and he vomited, the partially digested remains of the burger and fries he’d eaten before coming to the building site cascading in a semi-solid mass down the front of his fleece. He coughed. The stink was almost as bad as the fetid earth. Almost, but not quite. He wi
ped his mouth once again, resisting the urge to clean his hand by wiping it on his diseased surroundings. Instead, his fleece ended up even filthier than it already was.
“Jason!” Where was his friend? Mark tried to stand, but the earth beneath him, with its mixture of slime, mud, and creatures desperate for his flesh was much too slippery. As he fell down once more he called again, his cries becoming increasingly desperate. He kept shouting until his voice became so hoarse all he could emit was a croak, the kind he imagined the creatures hiding in the darkness around him might make if they were big enough. He tried to climb again but every attempt to claw his way out led to another cascade of crumbling, wet fleshy mud. If he kept doing that he was going to end up buried by the stuff.
Mark tried to swallow, but the stink of whatever was in his throat was so bad it threatened to cause him to vomit again. He was surprised he wasn’t crying, but he guessed that was because tears would be useless. He was about to give up hope when the flashlight beam caught him between the eyes.
“There you are!”
Mark’s overwhelming relief at the appearance of his friend was expressed the only way a teenaged boy knows how. “Fucking hell, where the fuck have you been?”
The outline peering into the trench gave a dull laugh. “Looking for you, you twat. What did you have to go and fall in there for?”
Even though it was too dark for anyone to see, Mark could feel the embarrassment of his face reddening. “I slipped.”
“You slipped? You fucking slipped? And how am I supposed to get you out?”
It was a good point. Even with Jason’s outstretched arm there was a gap of at least four feet between him and his friend.
Mark shouted up. “Isn’t there a ladder around somewhere?”
There was silence as Jason was hopefully scanning the site. “I can’t see one,” he said. Then there was another pause as he shone the flashlight around the site once more. “Hang on.”
It felt like an eternity for Jason to reappear. When he did he was holding something in his other hand. “I’ve found a rope.”
“Hurry up and throw it down, then!” Now that there was a real chance of escape, desperation had turned to impatience.
The Lovecraft Squad Page 1
