Spawn of Hell

by William Schoell

  Roger didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. From the look on his face Harry could tell that his portly employee wouldn’t have stayed down there in that odorous pit any longer if he’d offered to triple his salary.

  Harry called the Chief of Police and explained the situation. Chief Joe Walters was a heavy-set, punctual sort who stumbled about with a dumb expression on his roundish, balding countenance that belied his continued efficiency. “The Forester Building, hmmm?” he repeated over the phone. “That’s been vacant for months now. Belongs to the township. I’ll get the keys and bring ‘em over and we’ll have a look inside.”

  “Good!” Harry hung up and got himself a glass of water from the cooler outside his office door. He knew Joe would arrive within minutes, ever on time. He checked in to see how Paula was doing. She was on the phone in her office, but hung up when she saw Harry. He sensed that she didn’t want him to know that she’d been ringing Jeffrey again. It might make her seem too possessive in his eyes. Clinging. He didn’t know. But ever since she’d been rescued from the hole in the storage room floor, it was as if some horrible thought had seized her mind in a merciless grip, had seized it and refused to let go. She was more tense and nervous than ever.

  Harry remembered that on the day of Jeffrey’s departure, he had asked the mail if he knew where the sales posters were—the same ones Paula had been trying to find downstairs—and Jeffrey had said that he would look for them before he left. Harry had assumed that he had simply forgotten all about it in the excitement over his trip. But now he wondered. Had Jeffrey also gone down to the storage room, fallen into the hole below? He had not seen any sign of him; if he’d been injured or killed the body would have been discovered immediately. Still, Harry couldn’t help but worry.

  He knew that Paula’s thoughts were focused in the same direction. She couldn’t keep herself from calling Jeffrey’s number, over and over, until he answered, until she heard that cheerful voice of his, heard some excuse, some reason for his not coming to work that she’d gladly forgive and accept and understand. Harry wondered if a woman would ever again feel that way about Harry London.

  “Chief Walters will be here any minute,” he told Paula. “We’re going to look around next door. See what we can discover.”

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” she said. “That big abyss in the cellar. I wonder what could have caused it?”

  “That’s what I keep asking myself. Well, we’ll find out. Want to come have a look?”

  “I’ll pass. I have to check up on my trainees. I’ve ignored them practically all afternoon.”

  “Not many customers anyway,” he laughed. “Maybe this hole of ours will improve business.”

  “You could always put up signs and charge them for a look-see.” She brushed her hair into place and added:

  “Speaking of signs, I never did get those sale posters for you.”

  “Forget about it. I’ll have one of the high school boys make up some new ones. They’re not worth a broken neck.” He came closer and took her hand in his own, squeezed it gently, affectionately. “I’m sorry . . . about down there. I should have gone myself.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m fine.”

  He nodded, squeezed her hand again, then dropped it and stepped outside. Joe Walters was walking towards his office through the aisle packed with tennis equipment.

  Walters was a man of few words, and the formalities were dispatched with swiftly. Harry called Roger, and the three of them went outside and walked up the steps of the Forester Building. It was getting hotter outside and a stale breeze blew low in the air.

  “Who was renting this place last?” Harry queried as Walters fiddled with a huge set of keys of different shapes and sizes. One long silver job was shaped like a naked woman, but Harry didn’t ask where it had come from.

  “Some corporation. It’ll be listed in the Hall of Records somewhere if you’re interested,” the Police Chief grumbled. He finally found the right key and inserted it in the lock. “They wanted to use this for research and storage. I think they had a few small labs built on the premises.” The door swung open. Immediately Harry and Roger recognized the stench that came from within, the same odor they had smelled earlier in the cellar. Joe had not had occasion to encounter the smell, so he recoiled even more than his companions did. “Yuuch. We must have something dead in here.”

  “What did they need the laboratories for?” Harry asked as they stepped inside the foyer. Directly ahead was a thick double door made of wood. To their right was a wooden staircase which led to the upper floors. The chipped white walls had not been painted in years. This outer chamber was very bright, lit by sunlight coming in through the skylight, the only window that had not been boarded up. The foyer stuck out from the rest of the building and did not support anything heavier than the air immediately above it.

  Walters opened the inner door and the odor got stronger. “I don’t know,” he finally said in response to Harry’s question. “But it better not have been to make explosives.” The three of them stepped into a corridor that ran through the back of the building; several rooms led off from it.

  “Let’s go to the back room and turn right,” Harry instructed. “That should be where we’ll find those shattered floors.”

  They started down the hall, alternately fanning the air with their hands and holding their noses. It got more breathable as they progressed, as they got used to the odor. It wasn’t so much unbearable as it was different. “Didn’t anybody check the place out after this corporation’s lease was up?” Harry asked. “Somebody must have noticed the damage.”

  “It might be recent. Just like the damage to your cellar floor. When’s the last time somebody went down there?”

  Harry had to stop and think. “I’m not sure. Couldn’t have been more than a month or so ago.” He remembered the posters and Jeffrey again, and a new chill went all the way through him. His dismissed his grim thought quickly. Jeffrey was on vacation, that’s all there was to it. Somebody must have said goodbye to him; he would check when he got back. “So someone did check this place out when it was vacated?”

  “Sure. We had somebody here all the time. A superintendent. But when a couple of months went by and it didn’t look as if anybody was going to rent it, we decided to close the place up and figure out what to do with it.”

  “I always wondered why the town didn’t make it a landmark. It is a real old building,” Roger said.

  “That would be the smart way of doing things,” Walters replied. “And this town doesn’t work that way. That’s one thing I know after twenty years of service.”

  Both Roger and Harry knew better than to encourage the man in one of his famous tirades against the town elders of Milbourne; they kept quiet and he ran hi« course pretty quickly this time. “Anyway,” the Police Chief continued, “we wanted to put the janitor in another place—the school, I think—and shut this place up, but he decided to retire. There was nothing wrong with it then. Somebody would have said something if there had been. Except a few mice. And how much harm can a few mice do?”

  “Lots,” Harry said. “But nothing like this.” They turned into the last room on the right and walked through the portal in darkness. “Hold it!” The Police Chief turned on his flashlight and illuminated the floor —or rather the lack of a floor. Halfway across the room it had simply disintegrated. He shined the light up and saw that this was true of every floor in the building. The whole right side had practically been eaten away. “What the hell!” Walters exclaimed.

  “Now you see,” Harry said. “This whole place is falling apart.”

  “What happened?” Joe asked, rubbing the back of his head with his fingertips.

  “I wish I knew, believe me,” Harry replied. “Because whatever did this must have . . .”he fished in his mind for the proper word, “. . . burrowed under the foundation and gone underneath my place.”

  Walters peered down into the pit exposed by his light. “How many feet under your bui
lding does this go? Lengthwise.”

  “About five feet. Just underneath that one storage room.”

  “And in the other direction?”

  “We saw no end. The cavern, or whatever it is, didn’t appear to be any wider than the width of this building, but it stretched out farther than we could see lengthwise.”

  “I’ve gotta take a look at this,” Walters said determinedly. Too determinedly, as if he really didn’t want to go, but was trying to force himself to do so.

  “I’ve brought along the rope ladder,” Roger said. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather stay up here this trip.”

  Harry smiled and took the ladder from him, then unfurled it into the hole. “Hold the fort,” he said as he descended. He held the ladder while the rotund police chief lowered his bulk down after him. Roger squatted at the edge of the hole and watched their lights get dimmer and dimmer, and the sound of their voices receded under the building.

  Down below, Harry and Walters had walked past the far boundary of the Forester Building and judged that they were now somewhere below the intersection of Charlton Street and Halsford Avenue. “How far does this go?” Walters asked no one, trying to catch a glimpse of some sort of barrier or ending at the edges of his light.

  “Do you think this cavern has always been here?” Harry asked. “It’s below cellar level. That would explain why it was never discovered before.”

  “I don’t know. Somebody should have come across it while putting up the buildings over our heads. Who can tell. This could be man-made, but what purpose would it serve?”

  “None that I can think of.”

  “What I’d like to know is, why does it stop under your storage room?”

  “Maybe it was looking for something. And didn’t find it.”

  “What was looking for something? You think some kind of animals did this?”

  “I don’t know what to think. No, I can’t imagine what could burrow under the ground like this, but there has to be some explanation.” He bent down and touched the dirt. “The ground is loose and wet. Look, it has lots of furrows, as if something—a lot of something dragged themselves along the ground.”

  “You trying to scare me? I hate snakes.”

  “I never said it was snakes.” The furrows were too wide, for one thing.

  “Then what, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I don’t know. Listen, how much farther should we go?”

  “I’m getting tired, there doesn’t seem to be an end to this, and my shoes are full of mud. Let’s call it a day. I’ll send my hardy young patrolmen down here with lots of rope and—”

  “Wait a minute! Look at the end of your light. The cavern is branching out.” The Chief realized what Harry was talking about. He walked forward and saw that the underground chamber now divided into four tunnels leading away in different directions.

  “Tunnels. Now what?”

  Harry sshed him. “Listen. Do you hear a noise?”

  “What?”

  “It sounds like a sort of snapping sound. Like somebody stepping on twigs.”

  “Christ. I hear it, but not too clearly.”

  “It’s gone now. It came from one of those tunnels. I’m sure.”

  Harry went ahead rapidly, heading towards the tunnel on his far left, his light shining above waist level. Suddenly he tripped on something lying in his path. “Aghh. What did I hit?” He tried to stay upright, but tumbled down indelicately into the dirt.

  Harry looked up and saw that Walters was staring at the object that Harry had tripped on. Harry would have to swivel his body and crane his neck to see exactly what it was.

  “My Lord Oh My Lord Oh My Lord Oh My Lord Oh My Lord”

  Harry had never seen Joe Walters in such a state; the man never showed any emotion. Joe had seen it all: highway accidents, dead children, gunshot victims. What on Earth was he seeing now?

  Harry got up and took a good look himself with the flashlight. It was—it was Jeffrey Braddon! Or rather, half of him. The other half, the back half, everything behind his sideburns on the head, halfway through the shoulders on the body, had simply been eaten away. His face, his chest, the front of his legs—including the clothes covering those areas—had been left intact. But something had gotten hold of everything else, chewed away whole chunks of him. One could almost see half-moon patterns, bite marks, all along the sides of the leftover corpse.

  Harry had only a second to realize that the Chief of Police was off in a corner puking his guts out when he himself fainted and fell to the ground in a heap.

  Chapter Six

  “They wouldn’t tell me much about it,” Anna said through her tears. She kept pushing a Kleenex to her nose, wiping it dry, until the next fresh onslaught of sobs. “They said he had died under ‘mysterious circumstances.’ What the hell does that mean? He worked in a sporting goods store. What could have killed him there?”

  They were sitting on the living room couch, David’s hands holding hers. He delicately pushed a strand of hair off her forehead, and asked, “Who exactly did you speak to?”

  “Something Walters. The Police Chief in Milbourne. He said they found Jeff’s body this afternoon. He fell through a hole in the cellar floor, in this room hardly anybody ever went into. And everyone—God!—everyone thought he’d gone on his vacation. Nobody saw him leave, they all just assumed—” She threw her head down on David’s chest, too overcome to continue speaking.

  David was horrified by the whole affair. A week? Her brother must have starved to death. Or died of injuries he sustained in the fall. What was so “mysterious” about that? Why didn’t they level with Anna? Accepting once and for all that her brother had died a horrible death, left alone for a week, his cries unheard, dying of injuries and lack of food, was better than imagining all kinds of even worse horrors, was better than having one’s mind wander around in a state of unclarified upheaval. Why hadn’t they just come out and told her exactly what had killed him?

  Anna pulled herself together momentarily and rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry to put you through all this. I’m not a very good date this evening.”

  “That’s all right,” David assured her. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. You’ve just received a terrible shock and you need to talk it over with someone. I don’t mind. I’m glad I can help.”

  “Thanks. Thanks so much.” She dabbed her eyes and nostrils with the tissue again. “I just can’t believe it. But you’re right. You are a help to me. There’s nobody else I could talk to. No one. Clara can’t cope with things like this any better than I can. And even if Derek weren’t out of town he wouldn’t be any use to me. He can’t stand it when I cry.”

  She got up very suddenly and walked over to the fireplace. “Oh God, I thought I was strong enough to cope with things like this; I thought by now I could cope with life, deal with these things, these disasters. But I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t believe he’s gone. We had such little contact. We hardly knew each other. But I loved him anyway. Do you know how that is? You can love somebody without really knowing them, without really knowing, or caring, what goes on in their minds, what they want out of life, or even think about. I didn’t understand him.”

  She sat down next to David again and continued. “We went our separate ways a long time ago. He went off on his own before our parents had died. We only heard from him now and then, on holidays, Christmas. He never forgot my birthday. Not ever. I don’t know how he managed to get along sometimes. He drifted from place to place, job to job. A few years ago, when I was still a struggling young model with acting aspirations, we got together for lunch, and he told me that he’d been living in New York for eight months. Eight months, and I hadn’t even known! He said he’d met a woman—at a bar? I don’t remember—and she lived in this small town in Connecticut, and he was planning to move there. He didn’t ask me for money, but I knew he needed it. I gave him what I could spare, and he went off to the country to be near his lover. Only she got married to someone else two mon
ths later.”

  “That must have been pretty awful for him.”

  “I still have the note he sent to me about it. Such a sad, pathetic letter. He said that he should have expected it, that he was a loser through and through. He wasn’t a loser, not to me. I don’t know why he stayed there. I guess he got tired of moving from place to place. And the worst thing is, I never offered to help him. I used to rationalize, tell myself, ‘He has a steady job now, at that store, he must be happy, he must be solvent. But I forgot about loneliness. I forgot about the other things that can hurt people, can kill people. I didn’t want to think about them. I was on my way up; finally I had what I had always wanted. My career. A rich, handsome husband. What more was there to life? My brother reminded me of what I had come from and I didn’t want him around.”

  She put her head down on David’s shoulder. “He never even got his crummy vacation.”

  David hugged her, soothingly, and kissed her forehead and her eyes, which were moist again. He had finally seen the strength beneath the facade and he loved her for it.

  “I have to speak to Derek eventually,” she said. “He’s so much better at things like this. He can help me make all the arrangements.”

  She got up again and walked over to the window. There was a breeze outside and it made the branches of a tree scrape against the pane of glass. It was an ominous sound. “Oh, Jeffrey,” she said sadly, quietly. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  There was silence for a few minutes; she by the window, he on the sofa, wondering what he could do. He studied his fingertips, straightened his tie. He realized that he wanted the taste of strawberries again, and felt ashamed that he could think of something so—so earthy —at a time like this. She’d helped him feel sorry for Jeffrey, but after all, he had never even met the dead man, his grief could never cut as deeply as hers. Anyway, she was the one suffering now; her brother was beyond such feelings.

  “Would you like me to leave?” he asked. “Maybe you’d like to be alone.”