“I can’t hear anything. I expect it was just a rat.”
Tom knew the thing had sounded too big to be a rat, even for one of the track rabbits down here, but he wasn’t going to argue. He was probably getting spooked—the lack of light, the dark tunnels, everything he had been through. It was not surprising he felt jittery. Everything remained still, so they carried on, now having to drag Samantha along with them.
They had only managed another hundred yards before the noise came again, only now it was louder. Much louder.
Tom spun around.
Something huge ran at him at with an awkward, shuffling gait.
In the dying beam of the torchlight, at first he didn’t comprehend what rushed at him, but then, for the briefest of moments, his heart lifted with recognition. For that millisecond, his head didn’t register what was wrong—he was simply pleased to have one of them back again. But in an instant, it plummeted back down as his brain registered what his heart hadn’t.
Like a beast, Jo lumbered towards him, her big feet dragging along the ground, her shoulders heaving from side to side.
Her hair hung in wet, lank, clumps down either side of her face. Her skin was white and bloated, as though she had spent weeks in the water instead of just a few hours. Her pupils were milky and unseeing in the torchlight. She stretched her arms out to him, her lips pulled back from her teeth in a horrific parody of a smile. The only sound was that of her heavy footsteps dragging along the tunnel floor.
That’s what I heard.
“Oh, my God…” he whispered.
Tom froze in horror. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Beside him, Sky screamed and ran, but Samantha stood like a comatose person with Tom’s arm around her waist, showing no reaction to the horror hulking towards them.
Finally, Tom’s body caught up with his brain and he turned and started to run, pulling Samantha along with him. Samantha fell over her own feet, forcing Tom to hold her up as he ran.
Though Jo moved slowly, she kept coming, her heavy footsteps echoing down the tunnel towards them.
Sky glanced back and saw Tom struggling. She ran back to him to help, but Samantha wasn’t capable of moving any faster so they dragged her along between them. They still moved faster than Jo, but the weight of carrying Samantha between them wore them down. The tunnel they tried to run through now had an upward slant, making things even harder.
“Is she still behind us?” Sky gasped.
“Yeah, just keep going!”
They moved as fast as they could, but still the monster that had once been Jo kept coming.
“Why won’t she leave us alone?” Sky sobbed out of fear and exhaustion.
Samantha tripped and stumbled. Tom lost his grip, but Sky hadn’t and Samantha dragged Sky down with her. Sky hit the ground with a yelp, her hands and knees scraping the stone floor.
“Are you okay?” Tom gasped for breath. He grabbed Sky’s arm and pulled her back to her feet. He glanced back over his shoulder.
Jo’s body still ran with a lurching gait towards them.
Tom reached down for Samantha.
“Leave her!” panted Sky, desperation pushing her towards decisions she wouldn’t normally make. “The Shadows are already inside her. It won’t hurt her.”
“We can’t leave her with that! What if she comes round and she’s in the dark with Jo’s body!”
“We can’t keep running.”
“Then we are going to have to fight.” Tom had no idea where the sudden bravado came from. Just because the actual Shadows couldn’t hurt him, didn’t mean this thing couldn’t. He spun around to face the thing that had once been Jo, but he didn’t get the chance to so much as utter one word.
“Hey!”
The shout came from above and Tom spun back around, shining his torch in the direction of the voice. The beam lit up another ladder leading to the crawl space above. Tom trailed the light up the ladder to see a bearded face peering down at him.
Tom stared in disbelief. Too much was going on; none of it could be real. Surely he must be imagining the man. But then he spoke again.
“Are you going to stand there like morons or are you going to get your arses up here?”
Sky gasped. “Mack!”
“Hurry up,” Mack said, reaching an arm down towards them. “Or would you rather stay and chat with that thing?”
Sky didn’t need any more encouragement. She leapt up the ladder like a cat.
Mack reached back down to pull Samantha up.
“No, wait,” Sky pulled back on his shoulders. “You can’t touch her. She’s been infected.”
The colour drained from Mack’s face.
“Oh, shit,” he said, and pulled back out of the hole.
Tom shoved Samantha up the ladder and Sky pulled her up the rest of the way. He glanced over his shoulder to discover Jo now only twenty feet away from him. His heart was pounding, frantic. She was almost upon him.
“Come on, come on!” Tom hopped from one foot to the next waiting for Samantha to climb the last few rungs. The monster that was Jo was getting too close. His torch trained on her horrific face, the eyes blank and unfocused, like the eyes of a dead fish.
For a moment Tom was locked in its stare.
“Move, Tom! Move!”
Sky’s shriek dragged him from his hypnosis and he jumped for the ladder, his palms smacking against the rusted metal, scraping his skin.
He scrambled up the rungs, feeling as though his feet and hands couldn’t move quickly enough, all the while expecting her cold, dead hand to grasp his ankle and pull him back down. But it didn’t come and Tom pulled himself up into the crawl space.
Still she kept coming. Mack, Sky, and Tom watched from above in horror. Tom didn’t think she would have the coordination to drag herself up the ladder, but her fat, bloated fingers wrapped around the middle rungs and she started to pull herself up.
“Shit!” Mack cursed and pushed Tom and Sky to one side. “Get out of the way.”
Jo’s hands appeared in the hole. Her nails had always been short and blunt, but now the flesh had swollen up around them, giving them the appearance of being imbedded in white dough. Her fingers clawed up at them, waving around in the air as though hoping to grab one of them.
Slowly, the top of her head appeared, her hair dark and wet, followed by the pallid flesh of her forehead.
Mack edged to the side of the hole. He pulled his leg back and kicked hard with the bottom of his boot, kicking her twice in the face. A sickening crunch came as his sole made impact, the fragile bones of her nose shattering.
Jo’s mouth opened in a silent mewl of pain. Her milky eyes rolled back in her head, but she didn’t let go of the ladder.
“Fuck… Off… And… Die!” Mack yelled, punctuating each word with another kick.
Sky’s hand covered her mouth in horror.
No blood poured from Jo’s face, as would be expected. Her heart no longer pumped blood through her body; she was dead. Yet still she moved.
The ladder ended in a sharp metal, the two main prongs, sticking up into the crawl space. It was similar to the part Tom had caught his bag on at the start of the journey.
Mack grabbed the back of Jo’s head and slammed it down, impaling her through the eye socket with a wet, sucking sound and a final crack of bone.
Finally, Jo gave a shriek of rage. She jerked her head several times, but only succeeded in drilling the metal further into her skull. She was stuck.
Suddenly, she went limp. The Shadows must have realised its puppet was no longer of any use.
They all sat back in disbelief, Tom and Sky too shocked by what had just happened to start questioning Mack’s sudden appearance.
Tom tried not to look at Samantha differently now. The potential of what she might become filled him with fear.
“Is that is what happens to the bodies once the Shadows has finished with them?” he asked, talking around the lump of fear and revulsion clogging his throat. “If the one
s the Shadows infect die, they still kept going?”
The importance of saving David took a whole new turn. If David died, would he become like this? What about the rest of the humankind? Would the Shadows escaping to the surface ultimately mean a world filled with these zombie-like beings?
Tom couldn’t let that happen.
Sky stared at Jo’s impaled body, her blue eyes as wide as a child’s. Tom reached out and pulled her towards him. She allowed him to, hiding her face against his chest, her whole body trembling.
Tom himself couldn’t tear his eyes from Jo. He kept expecting her to move again.
“Come on,” said Mack. “We need to get out of here.”
Mack made a couple high-pitched squeaking noises, drawing the air in over his teeth. From out of the darkness, a large furry body leapt at him.
Sky screamed. Tom’s own scream lodged in his throat, but instead of warding the animal off, Mack reached up and settled it on his shoulder.
Tom stared. “Is that who I think it is?”
Mack reached up and stroked Bug’s fur. “Yeah, he found me in the tunnels. I figured something bad had happened as soon as I saw him. He would never have left Otto if everything had gone to plan.”
Tom shook his head in amazement. He was surprised to discover he was actually pleased to be back in the rat’s company. He reached out and scratched the animal behind the ears. Bugs tilted his head like a cat, obviously enjoying the affection.
If Mack hadn’t found the rat—or the rat hadn’t found Mack—he would never have figured out everything had gone wrong. Without Bugs, they might all be dead right now. It was crazy to think they could owe their lives to a rat.
Jo’s large body now blocked the entrance to the main tunnel. No one had the heart or stomach to try to pull her head from the metal spike.
What is it with Jo’s body blocking holes today?
Tom almost laughed out loud at the thought. He clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. He felt dangerously close to madness.
“Come on,” Mack said again, nudging Tom’s shoulder towards the much smaller tunnel. “We can get down the next ladder.”
Tom didn’t want to crawl again, but he wanted to prise Jo’s head free even less.
Samantha seemed like a shell of a person and her presence filled him with apprehension. What if she turned on them somewhere in the crawl space? If she attacked one of them in the confined space, there would be no room for anyone else to help.
The thought of crawling through a narrow tunnel again terrified Tom. The memories of the wormhole were far too fresh in his mind and he thought the claustrophobia of nearly being buried alive would stay with him forever.
“Okay,” he said, pushing down his fears. “Let’s go.”
Mack led the way, Bugs scurrying ahead of them. Sky followed.
Tom glanced at Samantha. She sat with her dark hair hanging in her face. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he decided he didn’t want to.
“Come on, Samantha,” he said. “It’s time to get going.”
Miraculously, she followed after Sky, crawling on her hands and knees.
Tom took a deep breath. He gave one last nervous glance at Jo to make sure she was still in place and then took after them.
* * *
IT FELT AS though they had been crawling for a lifetime, but finally, and with relief, they got to the next ladder and dropped back into the main tunnel.
Sky hadn’t gotten rid of her shakes, and, as she climbed back down, her legs gave out from under her. With a small scream, her foot slipped and she almost fell from the ladder.
Tom caught her.
“We need a break,” he said.
Mack noticed Sky’s pale face and nodded. “You’re right. Time to rest up.” He gestured to the ground. “Here okay for you?”
The tunnel had been washed clean when the water from the reservoir flooded through. The floor was still damp, but at least it no longer stank. They put down bags and jackets and sat down heavily.
“I’m pleased you came for us,” Tom said to Mack. “But what are you doing down here? I thought Otto sent you back.”
The older man shrugged and Bug’s claws gripped his shoulder more tightly. “Came to save your sorry arse, didn’t I.”
“But I thought you didn’t know your way down here,” Sky said. “Otto and the others said you’d never been down this far.”
“Ah, what the fuck do they know? Just because they think they’re in charge, doesn’t always mean they are.”
“They were, you mean,” Sky said, her lips pressed tight.
Mack’s eyes flicked to her, but Tom didn’t glimpse any sign of regret in his expression. “They didn’t make it then?”
Tom shook his head and Sky stared at the ground.
“I suspected so when I found Bugs.”
“So, did you come down for us because you found Bugs?” Sky asked.
“Not just Bugs, though him not being with Otto made me realise things weren’t going to plan. But I’ve been tracking you the whole time.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would the others not let you come? Why would they not want you to come if you knew your way around down here?”
Mack shrugged. “They didn’t know. Has it ever occurred to you that someone needed to watch the Watchers?”
Sky looked at him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “I’m not sure what to believe any more.”
Tom remembered how little fight Mack put up in the cavern when he had basically been told to get lost. At the time, he had assumed the man basically didn’t care, but perhaps he had been planning on following them all along.
“I saw the Shadows,” he announced. “And I remembered what happened all those years ago.”
Mack’s attention snapped to him. “So you know how to send it back?”
Tom shook his head. “I didn’t stop the Shadows last time, Mack. It was my mother.”
The older man’s face drained of colour. He clearly hadn’t known about that part, at any rate.
With his stomach in knots, Tom took a breath and said, “I remembered the baby.”
This time Tom couldn’t read Mack’s reaction. His eyes focused on something on the ground and he didn’t answer.
“I assume from your silence that you already knew,” Tom said. “Why didn’t you tell me? What possible reason could you have for keeping her a secret?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me,” Mack said finally, still staring at the ground. “You didn’t even believe you’d been down here.”
“You’re making excuses. You didn’t even try. Do you have any idea how important that information is? We could have avoided this whole sorry mess. People died for this!”
“And what about me?” Sky said, joining in. “Don’t you think I deserved to know I had a brother?”
Mack lifted his head and Tom was surprised to see tears shining in his blue eyes.
“We were frightened you would want to find him. We thought you would leave us.”
“You selfish bastard!” Tom said, amazed. “You kept her down here, kept her living in the dark, because you didn’t want to be lonely?”
“You don’t understand. This is her home. She had us—she always had us. What would have happened up on the surface? She might have gone to some couple who abused her or stayed in care her whole life.”
Tom shook his head in disbelief. “She was just a little baby. She would have ended up with a family who loved her.”
“She had a family who loved her,” Mack snapped. “We loved her. We lost your mother and then we lost you. You think we were going to just hand her over to some strangers? Anyway, we needed to know where she was. We didn’t know if you would ever come back or if we would ever find you again. What would be happening now if Sky had gone to some family and we lost track of her? What if we had never been able to find her again?”
“Bullshit! You didn’t even tell Sky!”
Mack glanced away and ran a hand over hi
s beard.
“We didn’t want to lose her,” he admitted. “Maybe we were wrong for keeping her down here. Maybe that’s the reason we could never bring ourselves to tell her the truth. It was bad enough when your mother died, but then you went above ground to get food and you never came back. It took us months before we eventually tracked you down and by then we loved Sky so much. She was the joy in our lives. Why do you think she’s called Sky? We named her after the one thing we never had down here ourselves. We were heartbroken to lose you; we couldn’t bring ourselves to hand her over to complete strangers. And as the time passed and she got bigger and became her own person, the right time never came. We didn’t want her to hate us.”
Sky’s eyes went wide. “I wouldn’t have hated you. You were my family, you all looked after me.”
Mack shook his head. “You wouldn’t have rather had a normal life?”
She frowned. “Honestly? I don’t know… perhaps. But I am who I am because of all of you and this place. If I had grown up above ground, I would be normal. I would never have known all of this—all of you—existed.”
Tom could barely believe what he was hearing. However bad his few years in care had been, he couldn’t imagine spending his whole life beneath the streets. Once he had found his final foster family, he’d lived a happy life. He had gotten an education and a career, and eventually a family. Sky never even had the chance.
“So, I was right about Sky being my sister?” Tom said, trying to bring the focus back around.
“Yeah,” Mack admitted. “You’re right.”
Sky and Tom smiled shyly at each other. After spending their whole lives thinking they had no family, all of a sudden finding they had a sibling was a lot to take in. They didn’t have time to dwell on what might or might not have been; they needed to get back to the hospital and pray Sky would be a match.
But Tom hadn’t even asked Sky if she was willing to donate.
“You know what you need to do to save David?” he asked her.
Sky’s eyes held his and she gave a brief but determined nod.
Hope surged inside him like heat. Sky might not even be a match, but for the first time, saving David’s life felt like a real possibility. He would be a fool not to allow himself this small reprieve.
Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More Page 318
