The Shadow People

by Margaret St. Clair

  I got down on my knees and rolled and pushed myself through the horizontal opening. It was roomy enough, but the floor on the other side was lower, and I had to grope with my toes for it.

  This cellar was much smaller than the other two had been. I wondered where I was with relation to the outside world. I moved my head about, but couldn't pick up the cold draft I had been following. I felt around the circumference of the room—it seemed to be circular—but couldn't find any opening. It wasn't until I stood on tiptoe that I felt, brushing moistly against my eyeballs, the "current of air" I was looking for.

  This time the opening was high up, and bigger than the other two. I could see it, very faintly, darker against the dark, rough wall, and it seemed to be round. How was I to get up to it?

  Fay had stressed that this way to Otherworld was used; I felt around on the wall with my hands until I located two projections, suitably spaced under the hole's opening. I set my feet on them, and was bumping my head on the rim of the hole in the next moment.

  There is no point in describing the next cellar, or the one that came after it, or the one after that. I went on from place to place, sometimes to a deeper chamber, sometimes to shallower, but never, I thought, getting much farther into the earth, until about four o'clock. Then the gradient led me into the open, through a high cellar window and out into somebody's untidy, junk-filled backyard.

  I stood in the weak moonlight—the moon was low in the sky, and only half full—moving my head and snuffling for the cold, outwelling current of disgust I had been following. Whether or not Fay was correct in her ideas about what had happened to Carol, it was certainly remarkable that I had been able to make my way through a chain of basements and cellars this far. It seemed to me I had come a good many miles. I wondered where I was.

  The cold-odor-moisture gradient was very faint. I thought I had it, moved confidently toward the neighboring backyard, and lost it again. I went back to my point of exit from the cellar, and stood there snuffling. I hoped there were no dogs which would start barking at me.

  At last I thought I had found it. It was down low, so that I had to move in a half crouch. I was in this position when, about six inches from my nose, I saw something gleaming among the short weeds and dry grass. It seemed to be a circle of dullish metal. I thought it was probably the key from a beer can, but I picked it up.

  As soon as it was in the palm of my hand, I knew what it was. I had seen it often enough before, gleaming against Carol's light hair. It was one of the pair of engraved silver hoop earrings she habitually wore.

  I drew a deep breath. The track I was following might or might not be the route to the place Fay had cryptically called Otherworld. There was still room for doubt. Fay's strange hints and peculiar allusions were hard to accept. But one thing was certain: this was Carol's earring. Carol had passed this way.

  Chapter Three

  The gradient was strengthening. The coldness and moisture were more noticeable, the repellent quality, almost an odor, was growing nauseating. And mixed with my increasing distaste for it was a new emotion, a disgusted fascination, so that I found myself sniffing for it even while my nose wrinkled with dislike.

  After I had picked up Carol's earring and put it in my pocket, I had found the trail again, in an unpainted, sagging wooden shed across the street. There was a trapdoor in the floor of the shed; when I raised it, the cold, moist air welled up, and I saw a flight of steps. I went down them, turned to the left, and came to a low rectangular space filled with what seemed to be old beer cans. Other ambiguous places had followed. Now I was in a cellar, dark enough, but not too dark for me to see that there was a broad glittering mark on the floor. (The acuity of my vision in these inky places surprised me; the upwelling moisture seemed to have something to do with it.)

  This cellar was the third or fourth in the chain since I had opened the trapdoor. I felt that I was getting deeper. There was a lot of faint chirping in the walls.

  I decided to eat half of one of my sandwiches. I was hungry, and, while the cellar was damp and unpleasant, the next would probably be worse. Besides, there was a crate of some sort I could sit on. The rest would do me good.

  I seated myself on the crate (the cellar was piled with rotting cardboard boxes) and got out my sandwich. It was tuna fish, and the taste mingled oddly with the repellent updraft from the cellar's far wall. But the food was good, and I followed it with a sip of water from my canteen. I felt I had better be sparing with food and water, since I did not know how long I would have to depend on them.

  When I had eaten, I held out my fingers and dusted the crumbs of food from them. There was a twitter, quite close to me, and then a sudden sharp nip on the middle finger of my right hand.

  The nip disconcerted me. I sucked my finger, wondering whether what had bitten me had dirty teeth or was carrying any of the more dangerous viruses. It was not a rat, I was sure of that. The cellar was dark, but my eyes had sharpened, and I could have seen anything that would ordinarily have been visible. I am inclined to think, in view of what I afterward found to be the case, that what had nipped me was some one of the animal hangers-on of the denizens of Otherworld. They have their pets and parasites, as we do, and it is most unlikely they were ever the source of the noises and twitterings I heard. They are called "the silent people", not because they cannot talk, but because they are noiseless in their actions and rarely speak.

  I got to my feet. The small noises were all around me, and I found it unpleasant. Suddenly I remembered my pocket knife. I got it out, opened it, and stabbed at random into the darkness. The squeaking stopped, though I was sure I hadn't struck anything.

  Fay had said "they" disliked steel. I wished I had brought a bigger knife. I resolved, if the track led into a suitable spot, to see if I could find a bigger piece of steel. An old file, a rusty hacksaw blade—anything of that sort would help. I might reasonably expect to find scrap metal in a cellar junk heap.

  I wondered, as I sniffed along the moist gradient toward the small opening in the wall of the current cellar, why Fay hadn't led me directly to the shed with the trapdoor in its floor. Since the track surfaced at that point, I could have followed it from there on perfectly well, and I would have saved hours of laborious clambering. It was possible that Fay hadn't known of any entrance to Otherworld besides the one in the basement of the Shasta Inn (this later turned out to be correct). Or the road down might change from time to time, as a cellar was blocked, filled-in, or otherwise removed from the chain. And finally, there was a certain merit, from the point of view of psychological conditioning, to making a gradual approach to Otherworld.

  The level of the next cellar was nearly six feet below that of the current one; I had to jump for it. It seemed to be a small space, no more than four or five feet across, and I had the nasty feeling that I had jumped into a steep-sided pit. I found the opening, though, and had to jump again.

  This new cellar—underground structure—semicave—was bigger, with a sort of trash heap against one wall. I remembered my wish to find a bigger knife than the flimsy pocket affair that was in my hand. The trash heap—it seemed to be composed of rotting layers of fabric, stained with damp and, paradoxically, bearing the traces of fire—yielded nothing but a nest of sluggish salamanders. But beside the heap, somewhat apart from it on the floor, were several bones with cracked ends. They were beef bones, I think, and it looked as if they had been cracked for the sake of the marrow.

  I wondered how they had got there. People don't usually carry bones into cellars, and if they had been placed there for the convenience of a dog once, it was hard to think anybody would have kept a dog in this dark, wet place. There were no traces of a dog.

  While I had been poking through the pile of fabric tatters, the twittering had been going on around me, always concentrated about my right hand. I suppose the wound on my finger, with its smell of blood, attracted them. From time to time I would slash out with my pocket knife, and then the noise would stop for a little whil
e.

  I sighed. I wished I could have found something a little more efficient to use against my invisible entourage. I was turning my head around, trying to pick up the gradient again, when I saw something gleaming dimly against the wall opposite from the trash heap. It was a long streak, rather high up.

  On impulse I went toward it. The light was a little worse on this wall than elsewhere in the cellar, where the bluish phosphorescence characteristic of Otherworld had begun to show. Even standing directly under the streak, I couldn't be sure what it was.

  I reached up toward it. My fingers found a smooth, cold surface. It was metal, certainly, and—a knife? No. I lifted it down from the two pegs that supported it. It was a sword.

  The lightest place in the cellar was the junction of the two walls opposite, where the wan phosphorescence made something of a glow. I took the sword there to look at it.

  Even in the poor light I could see that it was a beautiful thing. It was about four feet long, the blade two-edged and gently tapering, with—I thought—some engraving high up on it. The blade was not at all rusted, despite the fact that it had certainly been lying against a moisture-oozing wall.

  Above the blade there was a knuckle guard some seven inches long and almost two inches wide, made of a pale golden metal. The form of the guard was unusual—two long concave arcs laid back to back, with an orb between their separated ends. The arcs, except for their flatness, were like crescent moons.

  Above the knuckle guard there was a hilt, comfortably wide, wrapped with leather strapping for security of grip, and above the hilt there was a flat boss of the same golden metal, bearing, on both its surfaces, one of the oldest sacred signs, the pentacle.

  Finding the sword had an extraordinary effect on me. It seemed not only beautiful, but powerful, and to oppose, with its beneficent strength, the peculiar sordidity of the place where I had found it. (That sordidity—the heap of wet, scorched tatters and the cracked bones on the floor—was a foretaste of the cold disgust of Otherworld. It was with me constantly from this place on, like a bitter ache in the bones.) And the sword gave a measure of hope to my quest for Carol. Holding it in my right hand, I realized how little confidence I had had in finding her or being able to rescue her. It was still not probable I should be able to do these things. But I felt it was possible.

  All the same, the sword was going to be an awkward thing to carry. It wasn't especially sharp, but it was both too sharp and too long for me to stick it through my belt, like a small boy playing pirate. I needed some sort of sheath or suspension for it.

  After some thought, I hunted through the heap of tatters until I found several stout, undamaged pieces. I braided them together into a sort of sling, and hung the sword from my belt with it.

  It was time to leave the cellar. I hunted about for the gradient and found the new opening very low down in one wall. I had to lie down on my belly to get into it.

  The air that was coming toward me felt somehow different. When I was through the gap, I saw why. This was no cellar that I stood in, but a large natural cavern. There would be no more cellars. I was on the edge of a new world.

  I stood clutching the sword and hesitating. I felt reluctant to go forward. I had the sword to help me, of course. But in this moment it seemed to mislike me, to be not quite happy in my hand.

  Chapter Four

  There was a dull roaring somewhere ahead. After a moment, I realized it was the sound of rushing water. Perhaps I remembered the angry water I had seen in my scrying in the sherry glass; at any rate, the sound acted on me like a sharp push. I found myself walking forward across the floor of the cavern, my hand on the hilt of the sword.

  It was difficult to tell how large the cavern was, partly because of the light and partly because it was full of damp, confusing echoes. The floor sloped slightly downward. I seemed to be scuffling through dark gray sand. I was alert for danger, but nothing—or nobody—came near me. But among the echoes there were sounds that might have been soft footsteps, and I thought I saw glistening marks on the sand.

  The noise of the water grew louder. When I finally got up to it, I found it was a stream, not wide but dark and exceedingly turbulent, that flowed straight across the cavern. It came out of the rock and roared into the rock. The sandy banks were only a foot or two high. The stream could not have been flowing in its present channel very long, or it would have worn a deeper bed for itself. There is always a water barrier between our world and Underearth.

  I stood looking at the water. It made so much spray I couldn't see what was on the other side at all, but the gradient—the upwelling of cold—definitely led across it. That meant I would have to cross the stream. It was far too rapid and turbulent for me to be able to swim it, but Fay had said there was always a passable way to Underearth. If beings with bulky loads could cross this stream repeatedly, there must be some sort of ford.

  I stepped over the bank and down into the water. It was bitterly cold, with streaks of peculiar soapy warmth, and oddly dark-colored. Even when it broke into whitish foam, it still kept its dark coloration. I think in a better light it would have looked dull red.

  My first step, still close to the bank, had brought the water halfway up my thighs. I couldn't get in much deeper than that and keep my footing. I bent over, probed in front of me with the sword, and found I couldn't touch bottom. One step forward, and the inky water would be over my head. But there must be shallow places. I would look for them.

  I moved along, probing, until the sword touched bottom only a little deeper than where I stood. I stepped onto the indicated spot and probed again. I found another shallow within arm's reach, this time only slightly above my knees. It was a real relief to pause there momentarily. My next step forward plunged me in considerably deeper. It was hard to keep on my feet, the current tore at me so.

  Shallow spot followed shallow spot. I was almost across when the sword encountered a seemingly solid place that gave way unexpectedly. The current there was particularly strong, and I was leaning well forward, my weight behind the probing tip of the sword. I overbalanced. The next moment I was struggling in the furious water, borne helplessly toward the rock wall.

  I flailed with my hands and tried to swim. I wasn't afraid—I hadn't had time to get frightened—but the thought of the cruel rocks and the white spray around them was in the back of my mind. I had sense enough not to let loose of the sword.

  I rolled over and over, tumbled by the current like a sock in a clothes dryer. Spinning and struggling, I managed to stab downward with the sword into the stream's sandy bottom, and deep enough so that the blade resisted the current for a moment. With the sword as a lever, I swung myself forward toward the bank. My feet came down in a spot where the water, though turbulent, was only thigh deep. A moment later I was standing, dripping wet, on the low, sandy bank, safely across the stream.

  My first concern was for the sword. I dried it as well as I could on my wet clothing. Then I thought of the sandwiches. They were still safe in their wax wrappers, and the strap of my canteen hadn't broken. It was darker on this side. The cavern here was lower-roofed, but seemed much broader. Turn as I might, I could find no trace of the gradient I had followed thus far. I walked slowly along the bank of the stream, hunting for it, twisting and bending, but there was nothing. Here, in Underearth, on the other side of the water barrier, the gradient difference had ceased to exist. Or rather, it had spread out everywhere.

  I was standing shivering in my soaked clothes, wondering what to do, when a man—an indeterminate figure—came out of the gloom toward me, his finger on his lips. His face was pale, and whatever the dark garment was he was wearing, it seemed to have holes in it, since I could catch glimpses of pale flesh when he moved.

  He looked at me with great earnestness, a peculiar staring intensity, his eyebrows arched and his eyes rolling, as if he had something of the greatest significance to impart. I said something—or at least made a noise with my lips—and he rebounded from me like a Ping-Pong ba
ll. He stopped at least twenty-five feet away from me, still with his finger to his lips. I took a step toward him. He made a chewing motion with the lower part of his face, and ran off to the left.

  Well, I could go forward. I might be able to catch up with the man who had avoided me, or find some other inhabitant of the subterranean world, and try to find out where Carol was. But when I was at about the point at which the staring man had disappeared, I saw a break in the left wall through which he had probably gone. Should I try to follow him? Had Carol been taken that way? How was I to tell? The opening seemed pitch dark. There were glistening marks on the sand near it; but there were glistening marks everywhere.

  I looked around me uncertainly. Behind me, I saw the tracks I had made up from the water glowing with dim phosphorescence. Finally, I decided to go straight on. The opening in the rock looked too small for Carol, who was of normal size, to have been carried through it. But I was not altogether happy about my choice.

  My uncertainty increased when, fifty feet or so farther on, there was another opening in the rock on the left side. It too was small, but not so small that it would have been impossible to drag an unconscious human being through it. I had come no great way from the river, and already I had found two ways Carol might conceivably have been taken! I began to fear that Underearth, lightless and cold, was a sort of labyrinth in which I might wander indefinitely without ever finding my girl. How could I tell the paths her abductors had taken from all the ones that they had not? But Fay would not have sent me in quest of Carol unless she had thought it possible for me to find her. Very well. I would hunt till I found her. I would bring her back to daylight.

  I would look in the likely places first. This opening, small, low and jagged, did not really seem very likely. I would go on until I found a more probable place.

  Blended with the confusing echoes and the constant sound of water dripping from the roof, I heard a peculiar flapping noise somewhere ahead. When I got up to the noise, I saw it came from a niche in the rock, where two or three men—it was hard to be sure in the wan light—were doing something to another who lay spread against the sand.