Walters had gone straight to the spot where they’d found the corpse, then quickly chosen the tunnel nearest the right wall of the cavern. There was no doubt that this was a natural underground chamber, and that the tunnels, too, had existed for possible eons. The funny thing was, something had destroyed whatever wall or barrier might have existed between the Forester Building’s sub-cellar and the cave without. There was even something funny about the condition of the dirt, so crumbly and squishy in his fingers, as though it had been loosened and moistened by a thousand tiny earthworms, He had noticed an outcropping from either side of the cavern that neither he nor Harry had noticed before.
The edges of the outcropping were torn and jagged as if they were simply the ends of a wall that had somehow been breached by whatever had crawled out from under the Forester Building. He surmised that the break had occurred fairly recently.
He also believed that Harry and he had been wrong in their initial estimate as to the location of the cavern, as well as its depth. He couldn’t be sure without instruments, of course, but it seemed as if it sloped down and curved towards the left, taking it deeper beneath the foundations of the buildings above than he’d first imagined it to be. The leftward swing also indicated that he was no longer beneath Main Street, explaining why this section, at least, had never been discovered when the buildings had been erected so many years ago. It was not really located underneath the town.
No more stalling; he had finally decided to enter the forbidding tunnel and bravely stepped inside, having to stoop down so that his head would not scrape against the natural ceiling above. Odd—the very walls seemed to glisten in the glow from the flashlight he carried. He touched them and pulled back. His fingers were coated with a slimy gray substance that had been smeared, as it turned out, all around the entire circumference of the tunnel—walls, floor and ceiling. The sticky stuff felt oily and thick and disgusting. He wiped his fingers on his trousers.
He continued along his way, wondering if his were the first human eyes to set sight upon these walls, the first person to walk within this space. Things seemed to be closing in on him, but he shrugged it off, determined not to let his claustrophobia get the better of him. He had it under control, he told himself; he always had it under control. Don’t let your mild neurosis inhibit you now. Get on with it.
He walked faster. Still the space seemed to get smaller, tighter, and he wondered if it had been in his mind. He reached out. No—the walls were closer, there was no doubt of it now. Again he rubbed his greasy fingers on his pants, wondering what kind of slimy creatures passed through here while the township slept. Had Jeffrey taken a peek in here? Had he seen too much and paid the ultimate price for his fatal curiosity? The Chief stopped, then closed his eyes tightly, and summoned up a reserve of strength. He would not think like that. Not here. Not now. He had a job to do. No one else could have been sent in his place, he knew that now. Let them brush through the overgrowth with sticks, searching for four wayward children; the real work, the man’s work was being done down here.
Then the Chief started seeing things.
Lights at first. Little dots in front of his eyes which he assumed were strictly imaginary, special effects playing off his retinas. Optical illusions. He started—he thought he’d seen a figure in the passage way before him. Then it was gone. No, it too had been an illusion. In a place like this even a sane man could start seeing things that weren’t there. He shivered; his mother had always told him he had too active an imagination. It would get him into trouble someday.
And here he was.
The first tunnel had branched out into other tunnels and he’d lost track of how many forks he’d chosen, and before long he’d had no idea where he was. There was nothing familiar, no wonderful landmarks, in any direction. He was lost, lost, lost.
Just as he was about to give up hope, the tunnel he was in broke through into a cavern even larger than the one he’d entered from originally. The odor, which he had gotten used to easily enough before, was stronger than ever. He shone the light up and down, trying to determine exactly how big the place was. A few bats scurried away from the light, flying into sinkholes overhead. Stalactites hung down from the ceiling, and their sisters, stalagmites, pierced upwards from the floor. He saw a lot of multi-colored speleotherms, rock formations frozen in strange and twisted shapes. Spiraling cylindrical helictites grew out of the walls, and murky brown fungi covered the stone drapery hanging from the ceiling. Insects, large spiders with pallid skin, and darting lizards hurried away from his feet into a multitude of holes, pockets and crevices in the walls.
The place had an eerie, ancient look to it, as if it had not been disturbed by a human presence for centuries, as if, in fact, it had not been disturbed by anything save the bats and lizards and bugs throughout history.
But there was something else in there with him besides the bats and lizards and bugs. Whatever they were, they had formed an uneasy alliance with the winged creatures nesting above and the insects and others below, as if the bats and spiders tolerated the presence of the enemy because they had no other home and were too weak to evict the invaders, and the invaders tolerated the presence of the spiders and lizards because they used them and the bats for their food supply.
Until now.
First they had eaten each other, feasting on siblings and spouses alike, working their way out from the enclosure, boring and squirming slowly through the many rocks and crevices They found the cavern at last, and squeezed through the different tunnels, and swarmed out into this, their final home. Then they’d found the bats and insects and consumed them. They lived on next to nothing. One bat was enough for many days. Then one day a few of them had come upon the man, the man who’d fallen down into the area where first they had been kept. (At one point they had crawled up into the building next door, through the floorboards, but the vibrations they had heard had frightened them, disturbed them, so they had gone no further. They had not found anything to eat there anyway.) The man, however, was food. Fine, delicious food. They had subdued him. and taken a quick taste, but that was all. They were too close to the vibrations, so had left some of the delicious food behind. Had they not been so wary and so disoriented, they might have taken the rest with them.
The ones in the cave had also been food. And the ones in the woods. Finally they had ventured out of their dwelling place, had found that in the darkness they could hide and make their way about unseen, though they had never gone far from the caves. The food had come to them. Now it was time, yes nearly time, for them to go to the food.
But not just yet. For they sensed that more food had somehow found its way into their dwelling place.
They waited for the food to come closer . . .
Aiming his flashlight towards the right of the cavern, Walters found to his surprise that it illuminated a rather large body of water—an underground lake. He felt like a primordial man coming upon a stagnant prehistoric sea, a dead sea full of seaweed and the skeletons of Mesozoic creatures. He expected to see giant fish bones sticking out of the water. He stepped closer, ignoring the shrill (Ties of the bats circling up above, concentrating on the lake before him. Yes, it was huge. Absolutely huge. It stretched out towards the back of the cavern, becoming narrower as it turned into a stream which had rim through the earth for God only knows how long, before coming to rest in this monstrous pool near his feet.
The light was reflected by the water, chasing away some of the surrounding shadows. The Chief looked around and saw piles of bones, hundreds of them. Animal bones. And a few that looked . . . human.
Jeffrey, he thought. And then he turned his head back to the underground sea because he sensed movement. Yes, something was rippling the surface of the water, just beneath the tiny bubbles that were rising to burst upon the air. Yes, he could see something. He could see . . .
Oh my God!
The lake . .. the lake was literally alive with hundreds of—there was only one way his mind could describe them—
things, horrible man-sized things with eyes, bright, flashing eyes. And each pair of eyes was focused on him!
The water parted and the things came out. Chief Walters bolted, screaming and running through the pile of ghastly bones, stepping on bits of cartilage, shattering and cracking the pieces beneath his heavy feet. He stumbled and fell to the ground, felt the sharp pain of something jagged caught under his leg. He tried to get up, but couldn’t.
These creatures were hungry; some had not been fed in weeks.
Joseph Walters closed his eyes, for he could look no longer. He felt the stabbing pains as needle-like appendages were thrust brutally into his body. Felt his blood dripping out, draining away. Felt teeth—huge, grinding jaws—ripping away chunks of flesh, biting all the way down to the bone. Heard the horrible eating, swallowing noises of the creatures as they consumed him. Heard the soft roar in his ears as death approached, the rush of blood hurtling towards the gaping wounds in his body. He felt the rendering tear of muscle, the popping and wrenching of sinew and bone. Blood was lapped. Cartilage sucked. Flash gnawed away.
Calm and satiated after their gorging frenzy, the wave of hungry creatures subsided. The lake bubbled briefly as they returned to the water; bubbled, billowed and at last settled down.
All was still.
Chapter Nine
The Milbourne Motel was not exactly the lap of luxury, but it would have to do. David felt at home here; he suspected he would feel at home anywhere as long as Anna was with him. He had gotten used to Anna. That was it. He knew it seemed ridiculous—after all, how long had they known each other? A couple of days? They’d spent one night together, then a few hours one evening after that, and all day today. Yet he had seen her in her most vulnerable state, and therefore understood her better. Not only had they been “intimate,” but they’d been personal, probably the more important of the two. He had tried, in his way, to share her pain.
True, that had not yet come about in reverse. Anna had not yet had a chance to see him vulnerable, to feel his need for her. Or could she sense his loneliness, his desperate need for companionship, his need for love of a certain kind? Did she think he was merely starstruck, or so desperate that anyone would do? Did she feel the same closeness that he did? Some day he would find out. He had to. He was getting in too deeply. He lay on the bed wrapped in a towel, and waited for her to come out of the shower.
Anna’s thoughts were similar as she washed away the dirt and tears of the afternoon, the grime of this most depressing of days. Yet in some ways it had been a happy day, too. Because of David. Because David was there. Not because he was a man, coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress, but because he was David, someone she liked and trusted, and maybe—though she told herself again that it was much too soon—even loved a little.
She wanted to make love to him now, and refused to let thoughts of her brother interfere. It would be no crime against Jeffrey to share this man she cared about, knew so little of, this evening. She knew her desire for him, on the carnal level at least, came not just out of a need to be comforted and held, although she needed that, too. No, she felt pure lust for him as, she was sure, he felt for her. They had both enjoyed it that first time. The second time would be even better.
She cried again in the shower, thinking of the beautiful things in life her brother would never feel or hear again, assuming he had ever had a chance to. How deep had his relationship with Paula Widdoes been? Ah yes, it was she Anna really cried for. The one left behind, the one suddenly left with nothing to do, no one to turn to in that special way that everyone needed.
She turned off the water, got out of the stall, and toweled herself dry, checking her face in the misty-white mirror. She rubbed it with the palm of her hand. Were her eyes too bloodshot, too puffy? She would have laughed at her vanity, only it was no joking matter for a woman in her profession. Ever the model, checking for the first wrinkle, the first dreaded sign of a cold sore or pimple. The ugly lines of fatigue. Those were her greatest enemies. She could not turn it off, this compulsion to always check her beauty, to make sure it was still there. How she wished at times that she could be like other women, without this fear of growing older, of growing old, this lack of purpose, this gap in her sense of self-worth. Was it too late for her to break out of the chain of oppression, the rigid cocoon she’d been imprisoned in? She’d been taught for so many years to be a “lady,” to be feminine and proper and subservient, to dress and walk and eat properly, to subordinate herself to a man, any man. Yet, she was not really like that. Not any longer, if she ever had been. She was not subservient to Derek. But Derek was not faithful so there was no need to be. She was so confused, pulled apart by conflicting mores and patterns and social beliefs.
Derek was on the way out of her life—or rather she was on the way out of his. She would have to be the one to pack up and leave, as Derek had lived in that town-house long before he’d even met her, and she had no desire to stay there and live with old memories, especially since most of them would be unpleasant. She could probably get the house away from him if she tried, but who wanted it? So she was more or less free to pursue her relationship with David Hammond. Or was that the wrong move, a mere flight from independence, a rush to find some other form of masculine security? He seemed to be developing an intense feeling for her—it radiated out of him—or was it merely sexual attraction, a desire to fondle and touch and kiss an object that was held up to the world as a personification of female beauty? Did he see her, really see her for what she was, and did he like what he saw? Were his feelings as intense as hers obviously were? Maybe all his concern, his compassion, was just a reaction to her grief over Jeffrey—a natural softness and caring even strangers give to those who are in emotional or physical pain. But that had nothing to do with love, more with “Christian charity.” Was that all it was? Oh, how she wished she knew.
She stepped outside of the bathroom, her towel wrapped around her, and saw him smiling at her from the bed. He did not pat the mattress, the space next to him, in that friendly but vulgar manner like so many men did. He just smiled and waited for her to come over to him. When she sat on the bed, he asked her if her shower had been nice. She answered the question as if his words had been profound, sighing yes in a low, clear voice, bending over to place her mouth gently above his. His lips pushed upwards, pursing to meet hers. The tips of their mouths touched gracefully, then blended together, their mouths suddenly opening wide, all lips and tongues and moans of pleasure. David’s arms went around her body, pulling her in close to him, enveloping her in a luxurious warmth and sexuality. She responded, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him over, all the way over, on top of her. She squirmed out of her towel, pushed him up momentarily so that she could pull it free and fling it across the room. David’s hands went out to the lamp on the night table by the bed. He extinguished it, then removed his own towel. He was stiff and ready, wanting her to feel how much he loved her, feeling definite lust without apology, but something more also, something that could not be spoken or communicated in any other way but this.
They seemed to melt into each other, the lights from the window speckling their bodies, creating a white-and-black pattern over the bed, a painted backdrop for their passion. He entered her and she cried out with joy. Her fingers scraped his back, grabbed the edge of the sheet. He covered her lips and face and neck and eyes with gentle kisses. His head went back and he moaned softly.
Her fingers found his face and she drew him in for a lingering kiss that seemed to last for the remainder of their night together.
Back in the Hall of Records—a pretentious designation if ever there were one, as it was only a small, cluttered room—Harry poured over various forms and leaflets, looking for further information on Hank Danielson and the Barrows Corporation. Miss Elden, the mousy creature who was mistress of the record room, waited impatiently at her desk in the corner. It was five minutes to five and she was anxious to get home, shove a TV dinner in the oven, and watch the n
ews while whatever it was in the package baked until ready. Under normal conditions her disposition was nice enough. Now it was strained and irritable.
“Have you found what you’re looking for yet, Mr. London? It’s almost closing time,” she reminded him.
“Uh, yes. Yes. Almost there,” he replied. “Just give me a moment more, please. Just a moment more.”
He had found the floor plans of the Forester Building, an old tattered copy that had been lying in back of a drawer since the year one. Each floor had been outlined and built to specification. The Corporation had apparently not made any changes in the design. No new rooms or partitions. No walls knocked down. All that had to be explained was that big hole in the northeast corner.
Chief Walters had said that as far as he knew the hole had not been there when the building had been shut down a few months before. Yet, Harry had always wondered why they’d shuttered a perfectly good building, especially when there’d been civic groups and the like clamoring for office space and meeting halls. It didn’t make sense—even Walters admitted that. Harry recalled someone on the town council mentioning something about “structural weaknesses”; who had it been? It had happened so long ago; no one had paid that much attention, too concerned at that particular meeting with zoning laws and property taxes and other things of larger concern. Whatever, it indicated that the damage to the building might well have happened before it had been closed down; in fact, might have made it imperative to close it down in the first place. Why had no one been honest about it? He could understand the town not wanting to pay good money to fix the old place up when there were better ways to use the cash. But why all the secrecy? Who’d been bought off to hush the whole thing up? (For that matter, why was there such a hush-hush atmosphere surrounding Jeffrey’s autopsy?) He shrugged; there he was—imagining conspiracies and counterplots. He read too many paperback thrillers, that was what was wrong with him.
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