Rust: Two

by Christopher Ruz

  She fumbled for the maps. Even in the glare of the flashlight she could barely make out the ink, veins of old shafts wriggling beneath the crust of the earth. It felt as if the air around her was a sponge, stealing the light before it reached the paper. It tingled in her throat.

  She brought the paper up close to her face until she could make out the squiggles. "We take the second shaft on the left, after about... half a mile."

  "Half a mile could take half a year, like this." Fitch's voice seemed very far away, even though she could see him stumbling less than ten yards ahead. "And if we miss that turn..."

  "We won't."

  "I trust ya." Fitch turned back long enough to shoot her a smile, but even in the gloom she could see how nervous he was. "Onwards and upwards, yeah?"

  Their progress was slow. Even though the ceiling was high enough that Kimberly didn't have to stoop, she dreaded cracking her head on some unseen shelf of stone and so was reduced to shuffling steps, one hand held out before her, the other clutching the flashlight and map to her chest. The shaft sloped down, becoming steeper by degrees, until Kimberly found herself leaning back to keep from tripping and rolling into the black. The air was dry and sulphurous.

  There was no sound apart from their scraping steps and Kimberly's own heartbeat. No dripping water, no clatter of rocks falling deep in the shafts. No ghosts of dead miners moaning from where they remained chained to the rock, thrashing and biting the air with flame-blackened lips.

  Nothing but the silence, the click of stones beneath her boots, the echo of her own fear bouncing back at her. For the first ten minutes it was strangely comforting, knowing she and Fitch were alone in the mineshaft. But the deeper they pushed and the thicker the air became, the more she felt like the path was vanishing behind her. When she spun and directed the flashlight beam back the way they'd came she could only make out a bare few yards. She got the impression that it wasn't just dark back there, but that the shaft itself was being eaten away, that every step they took was a step they could never take back.

  The ceiling felt lower than it was, the walls far tighter around her. It seemed to take altogether too much effort to suck down air, like the mineshaft itself was pressing on her lungs. When her hands brushed the wooden beams supporting the walls and ceiling, she imagined them splintering violently beneath the weight of earth. How long would she survive if the entire shaft collapsed on her? An hour, trapped in a little air pocket, gasping and sobbing as she sucked down her own carbon dioxide? Or would it be instantaneous, the hill simply slumping and crushing her into a thin red smear?

  She tried to think of open meadows, of wide plains where yellow wheat waved metronomically in the wind.

  It didn't help.

  She stopped trying to keep track of time after they passed the first shaft on the left. Time was Fitch's problem, and she trusted him to know when they needed to be where. Hell, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if they were late and missed the whole party. Maybe Rosenfeld really was holding her back, but shit, that was no reason to throw herself into the lion's jaws. New York would wait. Her boyfriend, whatever his name was, he would wait. Shit, she didn't even like him that much. Years together, long hard years, and he'd never put a ring on her finger. Not like Peter, kind Peter, quiet Peter, holding her to his chest the morning she heard her father had died. Peter with his gentle hands. The warm lump beside her in bed, a quiet reassuring colossus. An anchor when she woke from bad dreams.

  "Stop."

  Fitch's whisper jerked her out of her reverie. "What?"

  "Something ahead." Fitch snapped his flashlight beam off. "Get down!"

  She fumbled for the switch on her own flashlight and they were dropped into darkness. Kimberly's breath seemed magnified in the black. It echoed in her ears, thrumming off the walls. "What's going-"

  "Listen."

  She tilted her head and willed her heartbeat to slow. Was that... no. Nothing but the rustling of her jacket as she pressed against the wall. "There's nothing there."

  "I could've sworn," Fitch whispered. "I could've-"

  Click.

  It was unmistakable. The sound of stones shifting in the black, pressed down beneath an unseen boot. Then a long, jagged exhalation, like someone breathing through a mouth full of pebbles.

  Kimberly groped for Fitch's sleeve. "Jesus, that-"

  "I know."

  Their voices were bare whispers, but Kimberly was still sure she heard the thing in the dark react, turning towards them. She clamped her lips shut, trying to hold her breath. Her whole body trembled and her eyes felt like they were being squeezed by a skull three sizes too small.

  Another click. Stones tumbled. A sound like a child choking on a penny.

  No, not choking. Laughing.

  It chuckled as it moved up the shaft, hiccuping and hacking in between slow, dragging steps. Kimberly could feel it in the dark, only a few feet away, the air eddying as it passed. A swish of cloth. The dull thunk of what might've been steel on stone.

  Kimberly's lungs were burning. She pressed both hands over her mouth to keep the air in but it hurt like razors in her chest. Fitch was silent beside her. If not for the way his coat brushed her leg, she wouldn't have known he was there.

  Shuffle. Drag. Shuffle. Drag. The thing in the dark hissed like a leaky gas main and moved on, rounding the corner and fading into the black. Kimberly's fingers trembled as she released the death-grip she'd been holding over her mouth and nose. "Je-heh-heh-heh-sus," she whispered. "What was that?"

  "Why do you think I'd know?" Fitch clicked his flashlight back on. The beam seemed weaker than before as it played over the jagged walls of the mineshaft, the twisted beams, the floor now less mud than fists of coal beneath their feet. "Lot of space down here. More than enough for a couple nests."

  "You think it was like... the clicker?"

  "God, no." Fitch's grin was ghastly in the flashlight beam. "If it was like the clicker, we'd be dead already. Come on, before that sucker comes around for another pass."

  Kimberly swallowed the lump in her throat as best she could. In that moment when it'd brushed past, the stink of it bleaching her sinuses, she'd almost felt like...

  Like it was looking straight at them. Like it knew, and chose to walk on anyway.

  With the molotovs clinking together on her back and her flashlight slippery in her hand, she followed. The darkness closed around her.

  * * *

  Detectives Goodwell and Chan had been walking for three hours through the rain, cresting and descending the McCarthy Mountain pass, and the mythical Ace Mechanics seemed no closer. The road had looped back and forth across the face of the mountain, turning from deep mud to shale and potholed asphalt back to mud again. The great pines that lined the pass offered a little protection from the rain, their spreading needles forming something akin to a canopy along the shoulder, but it wasn't enough to keep Goodwell dry.

  The rain was in his coat, down his back, in his eyes. It filled his ears and his shoes. His feet were swimming. He'd kept it out of his mouth, but only barely.

  The worst part was knowing the rain would win.

  Goodwell wasn't a weak man. He hit the gym once a week, he kept a set of dumbbells behind the sofa - dusty, sure, but he could still curl seventy pounds on a bad day - and he stayed away from junk food, with the exception of his croissants. Even so, three long hours in the dark and the muck had left him staggering, broken. Every step was a battle to pull his shoes free of the sucking mud. Every drop of rain on the back of his head reminded him of high school, that greasy piece of white-trash Vic Peterson who sat in the row behind him thwacking Goodwell with pencil erasers or wooden rulers whenever he looked away.

  It left his jaw clenched, his hands tight inside his pockets. His right knee was beginning to click and seize. He was so hungry that he could hear his stomach complaining over the distant scowl of thunder.

  Much longer and he'd be on his ass, exhausted, clutching his bum knee as he waited for morning. He'd
fall asleep on the side of the road and long before dawn his head would tip back, his mouth would fall open, and the rain would splash on his tongue.

  And then he'd be the beast's toy.

  "Keep up," Chan barked, and Goodwell hop-skipped through the mud to close the gap. Detective Chan had been setting the pace since they'd left the car behind, but even she was beginning to flag. Whether it was the chill of the wind and sheeting rain, or the weight of so many miles left behind and so many more before them, Goodwell didn't know. It didn't matter. Ace Mechanics wasn't even a spot on the horizon.

  "We should've slept in the car and waited for morning!" he called.

  "No way am I bunking in a car with you, Mister Octopus Hands."

  Goodwell frowned. "Excuse me?"

  "Oh yeah, Snow told me all about you. Called me this morning. Watch out for that guy, he said. One hundred percent philanderer."

  "That's bullshit!"

  "Didn't sound like it. He said you were having problems at home."

  "That doesn't mean I-" Goodwell froze. "He said what?"

  "You and the wife. I don't know, it's just what Snow told me. Said I should keep an eye out, and here we are, alone on a road out in bumblefuck nowhere. You sure that radio wasn't working, Goodwell?"

  Goodwell swallowed convulsively. "I never told him about my wife."

  "Honestly, I've gone through the event horizon of giving a shit. I just want to get to the mechanics, get some fried chicken and forget this all ever happened." Chan sighed, head hanging low, hands on her hips. Her suit jacket was plastered to her curves. "Sorry. Shouldn't have said that. I'm just tired, you know? Thought we'd be back by now. Everything seems longer in the dark."

  "You don't understand." Goodwell grabbed Chan's arm hard enough to make her yelp. "I never talked to Snow about Hannah. Not once."

  "Who's Hannah?"

  "My wife! My-"

  There was a wet, slapping echo behind them. Goodwell spun.

  A shadow waited in the middle of the road, about fifty yards back, shielded by the outspread arms of the pines. Goodwell couldn't quite make it out, but when he brushed the rain from his eyes with the back of his hand he thought he saw moonlight shining on the metal eyelets of sneakers.

  "You see him?" he whispered, and in that moment the shadow melted away.

  Goodwell blinked. Had the figure run? No, the form was still there, that black silhouette against the sky. He could just make it out more clearly now. Not a person at all, but a trick of the light, the torso a black wedge cast by the stump of a fir, the head a hump in the road.

  And the metallic shimmer of those sneakers? They were gone altogether.

  "Sorry." He let Chan go, patting her on the shoulder by way of apology. "I'm just tired. Can't be much further, can it?" He pointed to a shimmer of light on the horizon, down at the base of the McCarthy Mountain. "Is that it?"

  "You're one weird fucker, Goodwell. And no, that's not it. That..." She squinted into the rain. "I think that's the Pentacost Convent. Maybe we can get a lift from a nun."

  A rusted nail ran down Goodwell's spine. "We can't go there."

  "Why not?"

  "It's... You think they'll be happy, getting woken up at midnight to drive a pair of cops in to town? You can't inconvenience a nun."

  "What else are nuns for?"

  "Chan-"

  "Walk all the way back to town if you want to, but I'm not spending the night out here." Chan stomped away, splashing a path through the deeper puddles, pistol waggling on her belt.

  The rain plinked off Goodwell's skull. He watched her recede into the darkness, then glanced over his shoulder.

  The shadow had returned. Closer. No mistake this time - he could see the figure's shoulders silhouetted against the grey sky, shirt tucked in, brassy belt buckle catching the moonlight.

  A smile unfurled in the darkness.

  Goodwell ran to catch up.

  Chapter 18

  She'd grown used to the darkness. It was comforting, like an old blanket thrown around Kimberly's shoulders. It gave her excuses not to see.

  When she kept her flashlight on the path ahead she could pretend there weren't shadowed alcoves where men or monsters or worse could be hiding, side passages where water dripped and puddled from fissures like blade-wounds in the earth. There was nothing but herself, Fitch, and the tiny path picked out in the twin circles of light cast by their flashlights. Nothing at all.

  The air was... moist. Not humid, no. Too cold to be humid. But still, every gulped breath felt like she was drinking from a leaky tap. The smell had changed, too. From rotten pilings to the dry, itchy tang of coaldust, tickling in the roots of her sinuses, to something more earthy, more fleshy.

  It made her shudder.

  The mineshaft split, reformed, split again. The slope was still trending downward, but less so, until Kimberly was almost convinced they were travelling level. That was a small comfort - for a while she'd been worried they were about to pierce layers of tectonic crust and find themselves knee deep in magma.

  The dirt was soft underfoot. Not muddy, like the moors they'd hiked across to reach the mouth of the mine. More like garden soil, the sort you could leave a bootprint in if you pressed down hard enough. No more sounds, no more whispers of things passing in the dark. Just her own footsteps, and the endless black.

  Her torch beam swung left and rested on a humped figure slouched against the wall. Ragged tartan pulled taught over a lattice of bone.

  Kimberly bit back a scream. "Fitch-"

  Fitch came running. "Jesus. Poor soul." His own flashlight beam duelled for space with Kimberly's, and she saw in maddening detail the dead man's teeth, jutting at lunatic angles from his picked-clean jawbone. There was nothing left of the man but his clothes, his bones, and the manacle around his left ankle.

  "Prisoners in the fire, you said." Kimberly couldn't raise her voice above a whisper.

  "They were different times."

  "He doesn't look burned. Just mouldy."

  "No, there, see?" Fitch got low, pointing out a circle of black seared into the dead man's ribcage. "Doesn't make sense, though. Should be black all over. This is more like someone turned a flamethrower on him. Gnawed on him a bit, too."

  Kimberly poked at the man's shattered left leg with the head of her flashlight. "Maybe he had a bad fall?"

  "And maybe I'm the pope." Fitch pulled her to her feet. "Longer you stare at it, longer it'll stare back at you. Come on, lady."

  They left the skeleton behind. The shaft twisted, coiling around itself. Twice they found themselves standing at intersections not marked on the old map Kimberly had stolen, and both times she let Fitch choose the path. At each junction, Fitch uncapped a plastic bottle filled with something thick and dark and sprinkled a measure across the soil.

  Kimberly wrinkled her nose. "Is that... blood?"

  "You can smell it, huh?"

  "Your blood?"

  "Not quite. Something to throw them off the trail if they come sniffin' for us." He grinned sheepishly. "Something I read in a book."

  "Does it work?"

  "We'll find out, won't we?"

  They walked on. Three intersections, four...

  It was the fifth that almost killed her. Where the voice came into her head.

  Fitch's flashlight was beginning to dim as he peered up each corridor, trying to make out shapes in the distance. "Chinese batteries," he grumbled, smacking the flashlight with the heel of his hand. "Say they'll last you a thousand hours. Bullshit."

  Kimberly was at his back, ears pricked. When she closed her eyes she thought she could hear wind howling across an open shaft, sending a keening wail down into the intestinal twists of the mines. Strange, how the wind was contorted by the curves of the walls. It was almost...

  This way.

  Kimberly tried to call Fitch but all that came out was a squeak.

  Been waiting so long. Waiting for you. Send you home if you kneel.

  It wasn't quite a voice in her he
ad, or even a whisper on the edge of hearing. It was a buzzing in her chest that carried up through her bones and into her ears, shuddering like a misfiring cylinder.

  Stop fighting, it said. This could be so easy if you just stopped fighting.

  She ground her teeth together, forcing air into her lungs. "You don't hear that, do you?"

  Fitch turned. "What?"

  "The voice."

  "I hear wind." He rested one hand on her arm. "You okay?"

  "Why can't you hear that? It's yelling."

  Stop fighting stop running stop it all! I'll take you home. I'll show you your love.

  The voice was coming from the right passage. The thought of following it into the dark made Kimberly's stomach turn. "We go left."

  "You sure about that? I think-"

  "Left, damn it!"

  She shoved Fitch in the back, hustling him up the shaft, away from that hissing voice. It was a tongue of stone being scraped over blade-sharp teeth. It was poison in the back of her throat.

  And no matter how hard she marched, no matter the distance she put between herself and the right fork, the voice followed.

  Fitch kept asking questions she couldn't begin to answer. "Is it a real voice, or are you hearing things? Man or woman? Is it behind us?"

  "I. Don't. Know! It's just a voice!"

  The old one lies to you. I am the new Queen, the rightful Queen, and I'll take my place. Running is pain but I can send you home.

  "Stop it!" She waved her hands around her head like she could bat the voice away. The flashlight beam swooped across the walls. "Goddamn-"

  Fitch grabbed her wrist. "Quit it!"

  "You don't hear it! You don't-"

  "Think you're the only one with shit in their head they don't want? You keep making noise like that, you'll let everyone know we're here. That's what it wants!"

  Kimberly's jaw was clenched so tight it made her eyes bulge. "I'm not crazy."