Darkness Whispers

by Richard Chizmar

  “Watch your step,” George said as they started down the hallway.

  Scott used the flashlight to guide them through the wide gaps of gloom where the overhead lights were broken or burned out, but he stopped at the first office with an open door so he could look inside.

  A high-backed chair was overturned behind the metal desk, a framed aerial photograph of the property was smashed on the floor, and two filing cabinets were stripped of their drawers. Paperwork, discarded beer cans, used condoms, and crumpled fast food bags littered the office. A steady stream of dirty water dripped from a yellowed ceiling tile in the far corner.

  “What a fun place,” Scott said as he and George started walking again. “I can see why you’re going to bulldoze it.”

  Dozens of offices and conference rooms and numerous hallways branched off to their left and right. If there had been any twists and turns along the route to their destination, they surely would have gotten lost for hours.

  “Why’d they leave all this stuff?” George asked, pointing at another filing cabinet tipped on its side. Yellowed and wet piles of paperwork covered the floor. “I mean, why didn’t Timlico take it with them when they closed up shop?”

  “Shit, you don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “There was a freak fire here about ten years ago. Some people were killed and the company closed because of the lawsuits. There was no reason to take anything with them, I guess.”

  “How many people?”

  “Nearly fifty.”

  “Jesus, how?”

  Scott pointed the beam of the flashlight at a MagCard slot next to a closed office door. “See these panels?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The doors worked on an electronic passcard system, but when the fire started in the basement, the computer system froze. A bunch of people got trapped in their offices while the smoke was sucked through the ventilation ducts. They didn’t burn, they suffocated.”

  “Jesus Christ. How’d the fire start?”

  “Some kind of freak accident,” Scott said. “A spark where there shouldn’t have been one or something like that. I was just a kid so I don’t really remember.”

  “Damn, this place is creepy,” George muttered.

  They had reached the end of the hallway where the door marked MECHANICAL ROOM #7/BASEMENT ACCESS-RESTRICTED ACCESS awaited them. Looking back, Scott agreed with George’s assessment: the building was seriously creepy.

  “Like something from a low budget horror flick,” he said, trying to sound like he was making a joke. Thinking of the people who had died here made the hallways and trashed offices feel much more sinister than he had expected.

  “This might have been a bad idea.”

  “Do you want to go back? I can handle it myself,” Scott said, even though the building really was more disturbing than he had expected. The debris. The sagging ceiling tiles. The wet floors. The maze of hallways. All the lonely offices full of unfinished business. The empty conference rooms where meetings in progress never concluded. Everything they had left behind.

  George said: “No, let’s just get it done.”

  Scott opened the door to reveal a narrow set of concrete stairs leading down to another door. He and George exchanged a look, but they said nothing as they descended, both of them gripping the rusted railing tighter than they would ever admit. When they arrived at the bottom of the stairs, Scott tugged on that metal door’s heavy handle. The hinges squealed from disuse as the door slowly opened toward him, and he reached inside and found a light switch, which he flipped.

  “Damn,” Scott muttered as several random and yellowed fluorescent bulbs in the basement sparked to life.

  The room was much larger than he had expected. There were hundreds of steel posts supporting the office building above them. Dozens of pipes and ducts crisscrossed the ceiling. There were several wooden benches and metal lockers for the maintenance crew. Most of the lockers were hanging open and a few still had moldy clothing inside. Beyond that were rows full of old desks, filing cabinets, and conference tables, enough to start a dozen companies with, maybe more. And beyond those was a graveyard of forgotten office equipment including hundreds of ancient computers, printers, and copiers Timlico had held onto for some reason.

  There was also water on the floor. A lot of water.

  Six inches deep on this side of the room, at least, and even deeper on the other side where metal steps led up to a landing with a door marked GENERATOR ROOM. The waterline along the lockers lining the wall to their left showed the difference easily, but the difference didn’t make a lot of sense.

  “Maybe the floor is sloped?” George suggested.

  “Could be.” Scott wanted to turn back, but how would he explain that to his sister? They didn’t check on the generator because they got scared of the dark? There was some spooky water on the floor? He’d never hear the end of it, not if he lived to be a hundred. “I think we can handle a little water. Let’s get this done.”

  They hurried across the room, the water rising to their knees even though they didn’t feel any real grade to the floor. Soon they were slipping on rotting papers and other things they couldn’t see below the slimy surface. Doors to their right were marked with notices such as DANGER! AIR COMPRESSION UNITS and WARNING! BOILER AND MAIN ELECTRICAL SYSTEM CONTROLS.

  Scott and George were still a dozen yards from the stairs to the generator room when the few working overhead lights died without warning.

  “Shit,” Scott muttered. He lifted the flashlight, shining it on George.

  “Let’s go back,” George whispered. “I hate the dark.”

  “Why didn’t you say that when I asked?”

  “I didn’t know it would be this dark!”

  “The generator room isn’t much further,” Scott said, pointing the light at the stairs. “Let’s get the generator started and then we’ll haul ass out of here. We’ll be quick.”

  George didn’t look convinced, but he started moving again anyway. Scott did his best to keep the narrow circle of light focused on the door, to keep his eyes on their goal, but something was wrong. The air was growing colder as the water got deeper.

  There was a splash behind them and Scott stopped dead in his tracks. He whirled around, waving the flashlight high and low and left and right, but he saw nothing.

  “Let’s get out of here,” George whispered.

  The air had grown even colder and Scott’s teeth involuntarily chattered as he searched the room with the flashlight again.

  From the darkness came an anguished moan. Then there was another. And then another. Soft at first, then getting louder.

  None of the sounds seemed real to Scott. They were there, but they weren’t.

  Scott opened his mouth to say something to George, but as he drew in a breath, his lungs filled with smoke and he began to cough. The smoke surrounded him, smothering him, and he could barely breath.

  “Let’s go!” George said, diving forward and swimming toward the stairs just a dozen steps away. Scott followed, coughing and struggling to keep the flashlight out of the water, the circle of light swinging wildly around them.

  They climbed the stairs in a panic to the door marked GENERATOR ROOM and they didn’t stop until they were safely on the landing. Scott pointed the flashlight back to where the ripples from their panicked swim were still spreading across the water, but there was no smoke and no one to be seen anywhere.

  “What the hell was that?” George muttered, his words turning to fog in the increasingly chilly air.

  “Just our imaginations,” Scott said, forcing a tight laugh.

  “Our imaginations got away from us. Gotta be!”

  “That wasn’t my imagination. Something’s very wrong here. We need to keep moving. Try the door,” George whispered.

  Scott did as he was told and the door opened without issue. He had expected a small generator like the one at his father’s hunting cabin, but instead he found a control panel that
NASA might have used to launch rockets in the ’60s. There was also a door on the far side of the room labeled: RESTRICTED AREA! ACCESS TO BACK-UP GENERATORS 1 THRU 5! AUTHORIZED MECHANICS ONLY.

  Scott approached the master workstation. The control panel featured gauges and buttons and a few blank screens. None of the controls made much sense without knowledge of the system, but there was a green button labeled ON. Scott pushed that button.

  Nothing happened. No sputtering. No revving of power. None of the gauge needles even twitched.

  “Damn,” Scott muttered. “Should have figured as much.”

  “Broken?” George asked, flipping a few switches as if that might help.

  “Something like that. Maybe no fuel. Or maybe I just don’t know how to run this thing, ya know?”

  “Okay, we tried. Let’s get the hell out of here, okay?”

  “Works for me,” Scott said.

  He returned to the door, but then stopped dead in his tracks as fear tightened around his throat like a noose. The stairs were submerged by water that was quickly rising yet that wasn’t what made a shriek escape from between Scott’s lips before he even knew the sound was coming.

  They weren’t alone.

  Smoke filled the air of the basement, and in the smoke were people moving toward the stairs and the door, their arms flailing above their heads. Forgotten cries and screams bounced off the walls and the foaming water. The people motioned at Scott, calling to him, reaching for him.

  “Holy mother of God,” George whispered as he grabbed onto Scott’s shoulder to steady himself.

  Scott pushed George backwards into the generator room and slammed the door shut as hard as he could. The flashlight slipped from his hand. The bulb shattered when it hit the floor and the instant blackness washed over the two men.

  “What the hell?” Scott said, his voice cracking. “I mean, seriously, what the fuck!”

  Footsteps on the stairs approached the door. The brooding cries grew louder as the pops and crackles of a raging fire roared in the distance.

  “I think they’re ghosts,” George whispered.

  “Ghosts aren’t real!”

  “Maybe you should tell them that.”

  Scott stared into the pure black nothingness as the harsh shouts continued outside the room. Angry hands pounded on the door, scratched at the doorknob. Hoarse screaming followed. Water slipped under the door and lapped at their shoes. Every rapid beat of Scott’s heart was a jackhammer pounding his ribs.

  Then came a moment of surreal clarity.

  Scott cried out: “I think they’re doing whatever they did when they died! I don’t think they can hurt us!”

  George didn’t reply right away. Then:

  “We’re not alone in here,” he whispered.

  Scott started to open his mouth, then stopped. George was right. There was someone else in the room. Deliberate, wet footsteps approached them.

  Scott heard a distinct click, click, click. The sound reminded him of all the times he had played with his lighter, flicking at the sparkwheel, causing the flames to jump again and again and again. Click, click, click…

  “Scott, what’s that?” George asked.

  “A butane lighter…” Scott’s words died in his throat.

  The footsteps were getting closer. There was another series of clicks, then a spark jumped in the darkness. Then another. Then another. Closer and closer and closer.

  “We have to get out of here,” Scott said, fear consuming him. There was another spark, even closer, and he jumped. He stammered, cleared his throat, and forced the words: “Those things out there, I don’t think they can hurt us. But whatever is in here….”

  The thought trailed off and he reached for the door without finishing his statement.

  “Let’s go then, let’s go fast,” George whispered, directly into Scott’s ear, making him jump again.

  Together they pulled the door open, stepped out onto the landing and dove over the steps, through the smoke and the screamed memories of horrendous pain.

  Scott and George hit the water hard, but they began to swim immediately, coughing and choking and splashing. Their arms and legs collided with desks an other objects in the water, but they pushed through the darkness that was threatening to swallow them whole. They had no idea which way they were headed, but they knew they had to keep moving. The smoke was smothering, and there was heat above them, as if the ceiling were on fire but producing no light.

  They pushed on, side by side, gasping for air and swimming. George was next to Scott, keeping pace—and then suddenly he wasn’t.

  Scott stopped when he realized George was gone. His feet settled on the floor. The water was up to his chest, but that didn’t tell him anything. He stayed very quiet as he listened to the noises echoing around the basement. The smoke wasn’t as bad here.

  “George?” Scott whispered. “Where the hell are you?”

  There was movement to his right and something broke the surface, splashing wildly.

  “Help me!” George screamed, his words ending in a wet squeal as he vanished under the water again.

  Scott moved blindly toward the splashing and a flailing hand slapped his arm from under the water. He grabbed onto that hand, pulling as hard as he could. He felt the water move as if a heavy weight were being lifted and then he heard coughing and a loud gasp.

  “Something pulled me under,” George cried, spitting, choking. He didn’t wait for Scott to reply and he didn’t take a moment to catch his breath. He dove forward and started swimming again.

  Scott followed, swiftly catching up. Soon their hands started hitting the floor and they stumbled to their feet and ran, the water sloshing around their knees as they smacked into furniture and equipment, bruising their arms and legs. The pain was tremendous, but they didn’t stop.

  Although there were still muffled screams and splashing, the smoke was gone and the coldness seemed to be drifting away, too. They still had no idea where they were, but soon the water was only ankle deep, so they had to be headed in the right direction.

  They kept running, even though they were running blind, and without any warning Scott slammed into the maintenance crew’s lockers. He howled in pain, the metal edges pushing hard into his flesh. Then George slammed into him, shoving Scott against the metal again, smashing his nose.

  “Dammit!” Scott shouted.

  “Sorry!” George replied. “I can’t see anything!”

  “Come on, I know where we are,” Scott said, holding his aching nose with one hand and using the lockers as a guide to locate the doorway where they had entered the basement.

  Once they found the door again, they rushed up the stairs, climbing them two at a time. Scott heaved the door at the top of the stairs open and stumbled into the hallway, hitting the opposite wall hard and falling backwards. George tripped as he passed through the doorway and landed next to Scott, gasping in short breaths. The door slowly closed behind them.

  Scott and George lay there, listening to the storm raging outside and their own heartbeats echoing in their ears. Off in the distance, past the end of the hallway, lightning flashed outside the open loading docks at the far side of the warehouse.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Scott said, his breathing heavy. “Let’s get the hell out of this hallway and never come back.”

  They got to their feet and held onto the walls to steady their trembling legs as they walked. They didn’t stop moving until they had reached the warehouse and made their way to the open dock doors. Mary was working at the other end of the building and Scott had no idea what he would tell her when she returned.

  Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and heavy drops of rain spit on Scott’s face, but everything about the moment was refreshing to him. Deep down, he felt like he had been born again. He realized he was crying.

  “George, I think we’re lucky to be alive,” Scott said as he watched the storm’s fury and wiped the wetness from his face.

  When George didn’t reply, Scott
turned to ask if he was all right, but the words never left his lips.

  George stood in the shadows a few feet from the loading dock, his head tilted down and his chin rested on his chest. His thumb flicked at the sparkwheel of a silver lighter—click, click, click—until a flame jumped to life in the darkness.

  When George’s emotionless eyes rose to meet Scott’s gaze, Scott wanted to scream but he couldn’t. Besides, screaming wouldn’t help him now. Screaming wouldn’t help at all.

  Scott had learned that lesson from the shadowy souls in the smoke, the echoes of the workers whose deaths were seared into the memory of the building. Screaming wouldn’t open locked doors, it wouldn’t extinguish flames, and it certainly wouldn’t stop whatever dreadful horror was about to happen to him.

  Scott realized all this and something else even more important:

  George had found what they left behind.