Spawn of Hell

by William Schoell

  “Now don’t worry,” Harry said as soothingly as possible. “Are you sure he was due back today?” He dipped a plastic spoon into the yogurt, came up with a creamy dab of pink goo.

  “Of course, I’m sure. You remember. He was going to spend a week in New York, and be back at work on the 12th.” She tapped the calendar on the wall with her pencil. “That’s today. I hope everything’s all right.”

  “Jeffrey was probably having such a good time that he decided to stay a few more days.”

  “Without calling us? I don’t believe that. He’s not that irresponsible. I have three new clerks to train today. He promised to help.”

  “Well, I have his sister’s number in New York. She might know what happened to him.”

  “He wasn’t planning on staying with her. He wasn’t even sure he was going to call her. She has such a busy schedule, no time for her family.” Her words took on that familiar bitter tone he’d heard coming from Jeffrey himself time and time again.

  “It’s worth a try,” Harry insisted.

  “I’d be embarrassed. Suppose he didn’t get in touch with her. It could make for an awkward situation.”

  “Well then, relax. He’ll probably come strutting in here this afternoon, with a good, if maddening excuse. If I’m not worried, why should you be?”

  She sat down on the edge of his cluttered desk and exhaled dramatically. “I guess you’re right. I’m just so tired this morning. And those new people. Phew! Two of them act like they can’t understand a word I say. The third is gonna be trouble, I can tell already. The thirty-minutes’-work-in-three-hours type. You wait and see.”

  “You’ve been wrong before.” He scraped out the last of his yogurt. “This isn’t enough for me,” he whined, throwing the container and the spoon into the waste-basket at his feet. “Half a sandwich. I hate diets. I need something substantial.”

  “Me, too. To help me get through the day.”

  “Since when are you dieting? You don’t need to.” Her lovely slim figure was a constant source of admiration. Those beautiful green eyes and naturally long lashes. Black hair cut short, curling inwards at the chin-line. A very attractive woman. Damn Jeffrey.

  “Neither do you,” she countered. “But you struggle along on your half-assed diets anyway, year after year. Why? To stay slim, right? Me, too. I want to stay slim.”

  “Well, one good meal won’t make us fat, will it? On me. How about it? Can I buy you lunch?”

  She shot up and smiled down at him. “You certainly can. But I thought you’ve already eaten.” She motioned towards the brown paper on the desk, the crumbs of bread and bits of cheese left over.

  “A mere appetizer, I assure you.”

  They went out into the street, full of traffic and pedestrians shopping and carrying out other errands, pretending they were living an exciting life in a big city. Milbourne wasn’t exciting, but it was clean and attractive. Most of the shops looked new, and those that didn’t were quaint and charming. They walked past the deserted and shuttered building next door—the closest thing to an eyesore in the town—and went into a restaurant on the corner. They found an empty table immediately. When the waitress came, Paula ordered a cheeseburger deluxe, and Harry a banana split. Paula chuckled.

  They said nothing until halfway through the meal. They were that close. Silences were not awkward or threatening.

  “I’m still worried,” she said, looking off into space somewhere to the right and above her lunch companion’s head. “It’s just so unthinkable for Jeffrey not to call, to do anything on impulse. Anybody else, I’d assume they did what you said. Decided to stay longer, the hell with work. Who wants to call work when you’d rather forget about it? But Jeffrey isn’t like that.”

  No, Jeffrey wasn’t like that. Jeffrey was an enigma. He was the forgotten, unknown, unrecognizable relative of an increasingly visible public figure. If anyone wondered what it was like to be the brother of a famous individual—or someone on the verge of being famous (big movie contracts and TV series deals were in the cards for model Anna Braddon, or so everyone said)— all they had to do was look at Jeffrey. He and his sister had never been that close, perhaps that was the problem. He could not bask in reflected glory, could not live among her circle of rich, successful friends. His ambition seemed to decrease as he got older.

  While attractive, he was not beautiful like his sister was. He was quiet and likable, fast with a joke, easy to talk with. His qualities were unsensational and unexploitable. No one ever knew quite how he got to Milbourne, as he had not been born there and—being a bachelor—had not come there seeking peace and sunlight for his family. Whenever the subject came up, he would mutter some noncommittal, unintelligible phrase, shrug his big shoulders and cough to show his unease.

  No one really knew why Jeffrey shut himself away in a small Connecticut town. No one ever knew what he wanted out of life. After a while, no one cared.

  Harry and Paula sat there listening to the muted conversations of other diners in nearby booths, the clatter of plates and yelling from the kitchen, and for once in their lives, there was a void that needed to be filled. A pause that was awkward.

  Harry wondered later why he said it. It just slipped out:

  “You’re very fond of him, aren’t you? “

  “Of course,” she said, putting on a perplexed expression, as if she didn’t know what he had really meant. “Aren’t you?”

  “Very much. He’s a fine man. A good friend. But your feelings for him go slightly deeper than that, don’t they? I’m sorry.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wishing he were back at work. “I didn’t mean to get so personal. It’s none of my business.”

  “That’s all right, Harry,” Paula said, smiling a the-heck-with-it kind of smile. “I can’t really answer your question, if you want to know the truth. I just don’t know how I feel. You know that Jeff and I have been— intimate. But physical intimacy and emotional need are two different things entirely. I want his friendship. I have his friendship. Maybe that’s all there is. All there needs to be. I don’t know.”

  He patted her hand (a condescending if well-intentioned gesture, he thought later), then called for the waitress to bring the check. “Unless you want dessert?” he asked.

  She declined. They walked back slowly to the store, discussing the new clerks, display plans, stuff that was important in regards to work, but trivial in terms of their friendship.

  The afternoon was considerably more eventful than the morning had been.

  At 2:30 Jeffrey had still not arrived. Paula called his house again and again, but got no answer. She wished that he had told her specifically where he was going to stay in Manhattan. She didn’t like the idea of bothering his sister—although she had her number—and decided not to do so until absolutely necessary. Surely he would be back by tomorrow.

  What bothered her was that she had not even had a chance to say goodbye. She had gone out to do some quick shopping late that afternoon—the last day before his vacation—and he’d been gone by the time she got back. She had called his house to wish him a happy trip, but there had been no answer then, either. Oh, she hoped he was all right.

  The new trainees were not shaping up very well, although Paula rationalized that many slow learners blossomed into genuine treasures. Unfortunately, none of the three—all young people from the town wanting summer work—had very outgoing personalities, a must for a successful salesperson. She hoped she wouldn’t have to let them go.

  At 3:15, Harry asked to see her and inquired as to the whereabouts of some large posters they had used a year or two ago to advertise a sale on basketballs. “I asked Jeffrey where they were the day he left. He went off to find them, but I guess he had no luck. He left before I had a chance to check with him.”

  “Are you putting those old things on sale again?” she asked.

  “They might go faster. I don’t want to get stuck again.”

  “I think they might be in the cellar. I’ll go and l
ook.”

  “Why don’t you send someone down there?” he suggested.

  “No. They’d only have to come and get me. Better I look. I think I was the one who put them away in the first place.”

  The basement was empty except for the salesman and a family looking through the tent display over in the far corner. Paula walked past it—smiling at a small child who was lounging on the carpet of fake grass around the tent—and entered another chamber through a large metal door. She went down three concrete steps into what was usually referred to as the “sub-basement,” although it was adjacent to the cellar, not really below it. She flipped on the light switch on the wall, illuminating a gray and dusty corridor leading into the far right side of the lower part of the building. She wished that someone would move the switch up to the metal door behind her. Someday someone would break their neck on those steps in the dark.

  This storage area was used so infrequently that there were cobwebs lining the walls, hanging down from the low ceiling. Shuddering involuntarily, she pushed her way through them—thank goodness the webs were not large—and made her way down to another metal door at the very end of the hall. Unused items and boxes and assorted junk had been stored in this room as long as she had worked here, a good ten years, and if those posters were anywhere, they would be inside.

  She opened the door and stepped inside, inhaling the disagreeable, musty odor of the chamber, and made the mistake of walking ahead briskly to the light cord hanging down in the middle of the fair-sized room. She had only a brief glimpse of the metal racks, laden with cartons and stacks of paper, before she felt herself falling into a crumpled section of the flooring. She heard a cracking sound, a splintering noise, and suddenly she was plunging into a dark hole underneath her, dropping through the jagged wood floor and down to an abrupt and painful halt on a mound of moist dirt.

  Her ankle was killing her, but she seemed to be all right otherwise. She picked herself up from the ground, brushing dirt off her clothes, and looked around. She couldn’t see much; the only light was the little bit from the corridor above that came down through the same hole she had fallen through. Her body felt sore, especially her rump. The drop was only a few feet, luckily, and she had landed on soft earth. Otherwise, it could have been a lot. worse.

  How could this have happened? What could have made the floor fall in like that? It had been cracked open before she’d stepped on it; she was sure of that. Her feet must have just touched the edges of the hole, making the floor directly below give way under her weight. Maybe somebody else had fallen through at some time.

  She tried reaching the hanging wood beams above her head, but it was no use. There was nothing down there for her to stand on either, just blackness and more blackness on every side. She wondered how far she could walk before she hit a wall or foundation. The deserted building next door must begin somewhere at this point. The only thing separating it from the store was a very thin alleyway no fat person would ever dare to walk through.

  She tried not to panic, keeping her screams for help urgent, but not hysterical. When nothing happened after a few minutes, she figured “the hell with propriety” and began to holler at the top of her lungs. Although the door to the store room was still open, the other door leading into the main part of the cellar was closed. And it was thick.

  Ten minutes went by. Her throat was raw and hoarse, and she had begun to notice a sickening odor down in the hole, coming from a distance, coming closer all the time. Or perhaps she was just becoming more aware of it. The only word she could use to describe it would have been stench. A real, honest-to-goodness stench.

  Then she heard footsteps. She wiped away the silent tears that had been running down her cheeks for the past few minutes, and began to yell again. “Help me. Help! I’m in the storeroom. Help me!”

  She heard a voice, a man’s voice. Roger, the clerk. He probably wasn’t busy and, having noticed her enter the sub-cellar, had come in to see if he could help. “Don’t step in the room,” she warned. “The floor has fallen in. You’ll have to get a ladder.”

  He must have heard her, because the footsteps stopped right outside the door. “Paula,” he called. “What happened?”

  “The floor. The floor fell in. I fell into a hole in the floor. Be careful.”

  “Holy!” He had obviously peered in and seen the condition of the floor for himself. “How far down are you?”

  “About three feet too far, I’m afraid. I must have fallen about eight feet.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “A little bruised and my ankle hurts, but I think I’ll live.”

  “I’ll get a ladder. And some of the fellows. We’ll get you out of there.”

  “All right. But hurry, it’s creepy down here. And it smells.”

  “Okay. Be right back.”

  “And Roger?”

  “Yes, Paula?”

  “Tell Harry about it. He’ll need to know sometime.”

  Harry and Roger and two other clerks were there five minutes later. The whole staff would have been there, Paula suspected, had they not had customers to wait on.

  “Jesus Christ!” Harry’s familiar lament. “Are you okay?”

  She assured him that she was. “You and your damn sale posters,” she laughed.

  “Get out of the way,” someone yelled, “we’re sending a ladder down.”

  “No, no,” Harry said. “Get one of the rope ladders. That wooden thing is too heavy. This whole floor is about to go any minute.”

  There was another brief delay. And then an unraveling string rope came flying down into the darkness. Paula grabbed for it.

  “Shall I come down and help you get up?” Harry called.

  “No,” she said, pulling herself onto the bottom rung. “I can make it.”

  “Watch out for the sharp ends of the broken wood,” Harry cautioned.

  “I will.”

  She was pulled up and out into the corridor a few moments later. “Boy, am I glad to be out of there. It stinks!”

  She raced upstairs to take a Valium.

  “Hand me that light,” Harry instructed. “I’m going to take a look around.” He climbed down carefully into the dark hole below, followed gingerly by Roger. Harry told the other two men to stay put just in case.

  “What could have caused this?” Roger asked. He was a bearded man of thirty-five, with a protruding pot belly and dark blue eyes. “It looks as if something pushed the floor upwards.”

  He was right. Harry looked up and saw that most of the cracked wood was pointing upwards, except for the pieces which had swung down when Paula crashed through. “That’s odd. Come on. Let’s look around.”

  This troubled Harry. Troubled him more than he let on. He hoped the whole structure of his building, his store, his life, had not somehow been damaged beyond repair. They walked to the right. “We should hit the foundation of the Forester Building soon,” he said. The Forester Building, so called because it had been built by the prominent Forester family in the early 1900s, was the abandoned building next door.

  They both shined their flashlights into the blackness before them.

  “Look,” Roger cried. “The wall’s been eaten away. Must have collapsed.” They were walking through a hole in the bottom wall of the Forester Building, apparently entering a kind of sub-basement. Only it wasn’t a sub-basement any longer, assuming it ever had been.

  “I didn’t know the Forester Building had such a deep cellar, did you?” Harry asked.

  Roger shook his head. “It seems to be a cave instead. I wonder how big this is.”

  It was becoming more apparent that they were walking in some sort of huge cavern, stretching out ahead of them endlessly, although they could see the rocky sides of the enclosure at the far edges of their lights. The cavern was about fifteen feet across, eight feet high. There was no telling how long it might be. And Paula had been right; the odor was horrible and getting worse.

  Roger began to shine his light all over,
up and down, trying to figure out if the space was natural or man-made. He finally shined it straight up, almost as an afterthought, and let out with a low whistle. “Mr. London. Take a look! It’s unbelievable!”

  The light revealed several floors above them; it looked like a shaft had been ripped right out of the building—a shaft going from cellar to attic. At this point, the ceiling of the cavern did not exist. The light shined through the tattered, torn remnants of each floor above, clear up to the undisturbed roof of the Forester Building. The shaft was shaped in a rough circle, approximately ten feet in circumference.

  “It looks like somebody dropped a safe down from the attic and it smashed through every floor,” Roger said.

  It did look that way. Several safes. Large ones.

  “How come the floors collapsed in only one end of the building?” Harry wondered out loud. “Everything seems intact elsewhere. Besides, this building was being used only six months ago. Don’t tell me this could have happened in so short a time.”

  “Maybe there was an explosion,” Roger offered.

  “An explosion that we didn’t hear next door?”

  “It could have happened at night.”

  Harry ignored the remark and pointed upward to the spot illuminated by his flashlight. “Look at the wood here. It hasn’t been smashed upward like in the storage room. It hasn’t been smashed downwards, either. It looks as if it’s simply crumpled up and fell apart.”

  “Could termites do that?” Roger asked.

  “Why would they concentrate only in one area? Why not the whole house? Besides, that’s almost a perfect circle!”

  “We don’t know about the upper floors,” Roger said. “They might be in a similar state on the other side of the building.”

  Harry shrugged. “You’ve got a point. Let’s get out of here. I want to go next door and take a look around.”

  “A look around the store?”

  Harry laughed. “Confusing, isn’t it? I should have said that I want to take a look upstairs. In the Forester Building.”