The Abyss Above Us 2

by Ryan Notch

  His first thought was “cop.” His second thought more of a “what the fuck?” If the thing had worn a trench coat and hat maybe, maybe, it could have passed. But clearly having only a rudimentary understanding of the purpose of clothes, it wore slacks with a wife beater t-shirt. Its arms kept engaging in random movements, as if attempting some unknown gesture or communicating an indecipherable emotion. A phenomenon made infinitely more unnerving by the fact that they were not attached to the torso, and occasionally wandered a few inches off the body in various directions.

  The head was likewise un-attached, but didn’t have to deal with the gestures so remained better in place. The face itself was perhaps the worst, if only for how it looked upon him. The right eye itself had the colors right and in the right order, black and blue and white. Only it was huge, taking up about half the face. The left eye looked like it might be normal, but Shaw thought up close it might reveal its own terrible misconceptions.

  The mouth moved constantly, as if speaking some message up to him. Sometimes opening up and down, like a normal jaw should, and sometimes side to side. He found himself straining not to listen, though doubted it was actually saying anything.

  Its hair came out in black tufts, or perhaps was not hair at all but just dark pieces of skin designed to look like it. It would make sense. If something had never seen a human, or any other living thing made of ordinary matter, hair might seem like just a another type of skin.

  The whole thing made sense, when thought about from that perspective. Even when it started walking towards the parish. Its legs not bothering to move in time. Sometimes hopping together, sometimes dragging behind as the thing floated forward. Forward towards Shaw. The thing’s every movement was that of a puppet. A painstakingly crafted disguise, made by a being whose senses in no way approximated a humans. Even a squid’s nightmare of a man would have been far kinder.

  Shaw stood frozen for a moment, thinking that running downstairs would only bring him closer to it. But staying upstairs would leave him trapped, so he ran. Part of him hoped dizzyingly for a moment that it would not be able to step onto hallowed ground. But only for a moment.

  He had barely set foot upon the first floor when he heard it at the door. Not one for knocking, this unwelcome emissary, it instead pushed right through them. Though finely crafted of thick oak, the doors splintered and tore open. It had not pushed with its arms, there would be no point given their decorative nature. Instead it had just moved face first through them, as if they had been no more than hanging beads.

  Shaw immediately ran the other direction, constantly looking back to follow its progress along the darkened hallways. He didn’t know if he could hide in the basement, but couldn’t risk it. He had to get it away from the machine. He ran for the back door, hoping that a creature who used legs only as decoration would not be able to move very fast.

  As Shaw burst out the rear doors and ran into the street, it seemed to be keeping pace with him but not catching up. He couldn’t keep up the pace for long, but thought that might be enough for him to lose it. He ran through the streets of the neighborhood, hoping for a dark alley to dodge into. He wasn’t used to exercise, and even with the cool night air and the flood of adrenaline, he quickly fatigued. To his surprise when he slowed it still did not gain. It just followed at the same distance, floating along as its legs pretended to run with it. It gestured still, mouthed its silent commands and appeals. He instinctively tried to decipher its meanings, but was left with only confusion.

  Finally he did find a good alley, leading off to a main street of the city. Maybe it would be afraid of crowds, and leave him time to come up with a plan B. He turned sharply down it, and almost immediately was forced to stop. The thing shot by him, moving at what must have been more than eighty miles per hour. It stopped suddenly at the other end of the alley, the same distance as it had been before but blocking that direction. Shaw was put in mind of Collin’s examples of someone putting their fingers on the two dimensional universe of the stick figures. They might seem like slow and clumsy circles to the stick man, but as soon as he tried to escape the human could whip them across the page in an instant.

  Shaw went back the way he had came, the creature behind him every step of the way. He made a few other attempts at changing direction, each time meeting the same result. He got it soon enough. He was the sheep, and this puppet the Dark God wielded was the sheepdog. He was being herded somewhere, and had no choice but to go. Like the sheep, he doubted the dog would really bite him. But he didn’t dare find out.

  He didn’t bother running anymore, his breath already came in ragged gasps and walking would do the job just as well. He took out his PDA and worked as he walked, hoping the thing couldn’t in some way perceive what he worked at. It was connected to the internet, sure, but in no way different than any other signal.

  When he had first looked out the window at the thing, he had been waiting for various programs to compile on the machine. A process that turned raw code into true computer language, one that often took a while and was historically an excuse for programmers to goof off since often no other work could be done in the mean time. Shaw liked to spend the time walking the hallways of the Parish. He had intended to run several tests tonight, sending ordinary information around to the carefully chosen internet nodes. Not the special code that was in many ways the same math of the Dark God, but only ordinary messages.

  And yet, he had been ready for this possibility. The tests would have been nice, would have been the proper procedure of the careful programmer. But they weren’t really necessary. Shaw had run all the tests in his head many times over. And in many ways what he had programmed wasn’t groundbreaking. It used the internet exactly as it was made to be used, just very very cleverly.

  So as he walked towards whatever God-awful doom lay ahead, he activated two commands on the PDA. The first was a simple monitoring program. It would let him watch the progress of the compiling and sound an alarm when it was done. The second was even more simple. A one word command that wouldn’t begin to process until the compiling was done, and would then set off a whole chain reaction of other commands. He felt an almost overwhelming range of emotions as he typed it in.

  Activate.

  With shaking hands he placed the PDA back on his belt. Now he could only pray that he had more time left than the machine needed to finish.

  The puppet creature moved closer, silently urging him to go faster.

  Chapter 38

  ********************

  Jack and Terra moved quietly through the storm sewers, but not as quietly as he would have liked. It was dead silent down here, the kind of silent where the slightest footstep on concrete echoes down the tunnel. Jack thought that it would be easy to get lost in here, but not easy to stay lost. It was dark and cramped and there was nothing like a map of any kind, but the tunnels were straight and rarely branched. He knew that because of this sneaking up on someone was almost impossible. The exact moment he saw the flashlights of Collin and Seth, they would see his and Terra’s.

  If, on the other hand, they somehow lost their flashlights...

  Looking down that tunnel, Jack considered the fact that the darkest alley on Earth is no comparison to the underground. He remembered once going on a tour of Cave of The Winds in Colorado. At one point in the tour they always turned off all the lights. The darkness was liquid. It created its own world just for you, exclusive from that of everyone around you. The tour guide suggested you think about what it would have been like for early explorers to run out of fuel for their lights while in here, what chance they had of getting back out. Feeling their way along in the dark. At the time Jack had thought that in such a situation it could only be minutes before total panic set in, and hours before total insanity.

  The sights and smells of the place weren’t like that cave at all though. Whereas the cave had been cool and cavernous, the sewers were claustrophobic and humid and hot from the steam pipes running along the walls. Walls w
hich were covered in an unhealthy looking black mold. Despite this, the ground was very dry, dusty even. He thought it might be completely different when it rained, but it hadn’t done that in a while. Occasionally as they walked their flashlight beams would glitter off some small stalactite. Some white, some rusty red. They grew from weak points in the joints of the concrete beams, beams which had been sunk into the ground decades ago. The whole scene would have been almost peaceful in other circumstances.

  But it wasn’t. His senses were keyed up to their limits trying to detect some sign that they had chosen the wrong way and were walking towards their enemies. He tried to pick a direction that would lead to the street, where he could surely find a manhole to force open. But it was hard to tell direction down there. The tunnels were as twisty as the Boston streets, and walking a little hunched over to avoid the ceiling made it surprisingly hard to tell distance.

  The whole thing gave him a giddy feeling. Having gone through so much to escape from the Brownstone, and yet still so close to danger.

  So fucking close, he thought. Come on, just a little further.

  Shaw did not easily figure out what the marionette thing had wanted from him in the alley. It had skittered about from one side to the next, not letting him leave by either side. Eventually after some searching he had found the manhole cover, partly opened for him in advance. He was half relieved to have figured it out, half filled with dread at what it meant.

  “This,” he asked it, pointing down. Nothing like an intelligible response came, just more of the senseless and constant gesturing, the silent moving of the poorly assembled mouth. Whether the thing bothered to have lungs or not was anybody’s guess, but Shaw was starting to doubt it understood that it was mimicking what humans did to communicate. Or else it would have just pointed. As it was, it didn’t so much as tilt its head in confusion.

  Before lifting the manhole he checked the PDA again. The program should have compiled by now, should have been up and running. If he made a mistake, just a tiny mistake, the whole thing would crash. Except if it did he should be able to find it on the diagnostic through the PDA, maybe even fix it quickly if it was something obvious. But the diagnostic wasn’t responding.

  Meaning either it was still compiling, or something major had crashed and the whole thing was down. And there was no way to tell which. Once he went down into the hole, maybe he could still get a signal and maybe he couldn’t. The open cover would let radio in the same way it let light in, but like any cell phone signal, he wouldn’t be able to tell what was a dead zone until he was standing in it.

  He put the PDA back on his belt and pulled at the cover, finding that even part open it took all his strength to move it. He had a tiny LED light on his key chain, useful for digging around wiring closets. It was better than nothing, but only a tiny spark compared to the greater darkness of the sewers.

  Jack and Terra had, despite their best efforts, caught up with Collin and Seth. Their attempts at being quiet had paid off though, mostly on account of Collin and Seth making no such efforts. They could be heard a long way off, long enough for Jack and Terra to turn off their flashlights. Jack intended to turn around and try another direction. He was in no way surprised when he felt Terra move past him in the dark towards the people they were trying to avoid. He didn’t need to ask what she was doing, and so didn’t bother trying to whisper the question to her.

  It’s not too late to leave her, you know, he thought to himself. But it was an entirely halfhearted effort, and he didn’t hesitate before following her. Hands out in front, so as not to bump into her.

  They crept closer, hearing the voices grow louder around a bend in the tunnels. Jack knew if Seth should start walking towards that bend with his flashlight, they wouldn’t be able to get far enough away in time not to be spotted. It was trusting entirely too much to luck, and if he could have risked the noise he would have explained that to her. Soon they began to snatch pieces of the conversation more clearly.

  “...down here somewhere...” said Collin. “...find him...Dark God wants him most...”

  “...get away...” replied Seth. “...sacrifice...”

  “...don’t know what...come on...”

  Footsteps sounded as they started walking down the tunnel. For a terrifying moment Jack thought they were headed towards them, but it was a trick of the echoes and soon he realized they were headed in the other direction. He had no intention of following them, and reached out groping in the dark to grab Terra and prevent her from doing the same. He grabbed her arm and pulled her after him, retracing their steps to try another tunnel.

  “This might be our only chance to find out what really happened,” she whispered in his ear.

  He turned back on his light and looked at her. She had the look of someone who had gone so far they can’t see the way back. She was too strong to give up, even when it was completely obvious that running was the smart option. At a loss for words, he impulsively put his hand to her head and pulled her in close for a kiss.

  “The fire department,” he said at last. “We have to get out so we can call them to stop the gas leak.”

  Understanding lit in her eyes and she nodded. They headed down the dark tunnel.

  Shaw found the marionette thing’s behavior even more ridiculous in the sewers, if no less creepy. It seemed to have a hell of a time keeping a straight path, spending as much time dragging drunkenly along the walls as it did herding him down the tunnel. He thought at first that it had always moved erratically, and the tunnels just made it more obvious. But no, that didn’t match his memories of its behavior on the streets.

  Maybe it just gets bad reception down here, he thought as its shadow danced weirdly in the light of his LED. Just like this fucking PDA.

  The PDA had valiantly managed about half a bar, but that was becoming intermittent. Shaw checked it obsessively, even though it was set for an audible alarm if any new information came. He needed to get back above ground. Despite the obvious trap the sewers represented, he thought they also might be a means of escape if he played his cards right. With the thing navigating so poorly, Shaw might be able to make a break for it and lose it. It obviously had some way of tracking him outside of normal senses, but it had taken a long time to find him at the Parish. If he got far enough away from it he might have a chance.

  But if he was wrong, if it felt the need to try and grab him...

  He shuddered at the thought. Its massive dead eye, shining liquidly in the light but also somewhat shallow, as if painted on the head. Those almost attached arms, one a little longer and a lot thinner than the other. The thought of those not quite attached arms grabbing at him...He remembered back to the fleshy spasming creature from his dreams, the one from the black room. How it too had tried to grab at him. He wondered which was worse between the two, and hated that he should have to wonder that.

  It was a terrible risk, but a risk he had to take. After all, he was completely unable to imagine where it might be taking him, and wanted to keep it that way.

  The next curve, as soon as I see a fork ahead. I’m going for it.

  Jack and Terra approached a crossroads they had passed before. Of the three choices he had originally gone left, figuring only a one in three chance of picking the same one as Collin. Having drawn the short straw on that one, he was going to try to pick the direction that seemed to go the opposite way he had heard them go. He was having trouble with it though, as the tunnels had a gentle curve to them that was deceptive.

  “Which way do you think...” he started to ask Terra. But before he got a chance to finish, he saw a light coming down from the opposite tunnel towards them. Alternatives raced through his mind fast, but narrowed quickly to one. No time to hide, surely their lights were as visible as the one coming. No point in running, that would just leave him tired when they were caught.

  No, it was time to take a stand. He didn’t give much for his odds, but he was surprisingly unafraid.

  Maybe I’m just tired of run
ning, he thought as he readied the cricket bat, turning off the flashlight and shoving it in his pocket.

  “Run for it Terra, I’ll hold them.”

  “No, I’m not leaving you.”

  “God damn it Terra,” Jack said with a mix of exasperation and anger. “You can get help and bring them back.”

  “I can help you better here. It’s two against one.”

  “What,” he asked, confused at her math. But she was right, it was only one flashlight coming. And it was coming at a mad run. That light moving down the dark tunnel, the holder invisible behind it, looked unnervingly like a train coming right at them. He found holding still and waiting for it wasn’t easy, his mind and his senses arguing for what was truth. He forced himself to hold his ground a few feet back from the crossroads, moving off to the edge to give himself more room to swing the bat.

  Ready.....reeaaadddyyy...what?

  Instead of pounding into him, the figure dodged quick and curved off to the tunnel on the right, leaving only the sound of his footsteps echoing away from them. His brief impression of the figure in Terra’s flashlight beam showed a man he’d never met before. Almost definitely not someone from the Brownstone. He didn’t have any time to think about it before he heard the sound of footsteps pounding from the tunnel to the left, and voices. Because of his position back from the edge, he could hear them but couldn’t see them, and they wouldn’t be able to see him.

  “That’s him,” yelled Collin. “Go, go!”

  Before Jack could mentally react, he saw Seth run right by him after the other man. He didn’t even think Seth saw him. Jack didn’t have time to think about his next move, and didn’t need to. Instinct and anger seemed to do the calculations for him.

  Waiting just a second to judge the footsteps, Jack stepped up to the edge of the tunnel and swung the bat, catching Collin square in the face as he ran by.