by Brian Harmon
“I know. Come on. Let’s keep moving.”
Halfway across the empty room, a vulgar sound, like someone passing gas, interrupted the silence of the room.
“Was that you?”
“Not me.”
The two of them stopped and stood, listening.
“Don’t lie!” Cat said after a moment.
“I’m not. It wasn’t me.”
Cat made a noise, a pitiful sort of groan.
“Maybe one of us drug our shoes or something,” Kyle suggested, although it had sounded more like a fart to him, or at the very least like someone making a farting noise.
“Yeah,” Cat said, though she didn’t sound like she believed it. “Maybe that was it.”
“Stupid us. Scared of our own noise.”
“Yeah.”
They took three more steps and the sound came again.
“I didn’t drag my shoe,” Cat whispered.
“Neither did I,” Kyle breathed. “And I didn’t fart, either.”
“Neither did I.”
They continued across the wide room, faster now than before, nearly jogging. Every few steps they’d look back over their shoulders, their hearts pounding.
The doorway opened into a short hallway that led to a concrete stairwell. The light came from a window at the top of these stairs. Like the one in the room where he found Cat, it was too small to crawl through and there was no where to go anyway. They were still on the second floor.
Cat shivered at the thought of descending those dark steps, but said nothing. She watched Kyle, studied him as he looked out at the world they sought to reach, his eyes slowly shifting back and forth. She had never seen him before tonight, but somehow she felt bound to him. She had no memory of having come to this place and had gained awareness of her surroundings with such startling suddenness that it frightened her much more than the darkness and the isolation.
She remembered peering through that other window, staring out at the parking lot far below, feeling desperately trapped, wishing the lights would come on. A feeling of such dreadful hopelessness filled her that all she could think to do was turn and sit in the floor beneath the window and cry, defeated by her fear.
She didn’t know how long she sat there weeping in the darkness. It felt like hours, though it probably wasn’t.
Then Kyle appeared, as though he were her guardian angel, with his short, blond hair and strong, blue eyes. He’d taken her into his arms and held her, had actually crossed this dark place alone to rescue her. Though he may have been as afraid as she, he was the bravest boy she’d ever met. It was the perfect recipe for a small crush, and in the light of her fear, she nurtured it.
A faint shuffling noise startled them and they turned. Wide-eyed, they gazed into the darkness from which they’d just come.
“What was that?” Cat’s voice was barely a whisper, her throat dry with fear.
“Rat, maybe. Stray cat. Anything.”
“Can we keep moving?” She hated rats, but it was the “anything” that really scared her.
“Yeah.”
The corridor at the bottom of the steps was dark and Cat clung ferociously to Kyle’s arm, her long fingernails imprinting small crescents into his skin. It was terribly uncomfortable, but Kyle didn’t want to tell her to stop. He kind of liked that she was clinging to him, first of all. It felt…nice. And the pain wasn’t so bad. It was just enough to offer a little distraction from the frightful darkness. It was something else to think about.
There was a large, metal door on the right near the bottom of the steps that Kyle thought for some reason might be an enormous freezer. It was the only door on that side of the passage. On the left, there were several smaller doors, all of them apparently leading in to the same room, a vast, dark space that could have been endless for all he could see. Neither of them wanted to think of the things that could hide in there, but neither seemed capable of avoiding it.
Kyle felt a great boost of courage from having Cat by his side, but even that was not enough to quash the vulnerability and unease he felt in this strange place. He shivered as though cold, and felt an increasingly urgent need to pee.
As sight dwindled to almost nothing, Kyle abruptly stopped.
“What is it?”
“Thought I heard something.”
Cat made another sick noise in her throat, something that was both a whimper and a sob, and Kyle instantly wished that he’d lied to her.
After a moment of listening to the silence, he urged her to keep moving. “Nothing. Come on.”
“I’m scared, Kyle.”
“I know, Cat. Just keep going. There should be a way out up front.” He tried to sound calm, but his voice wavered when he spoke.
“How do you know we’re going toward the front?”
Kyle had to think. He didn’t know front from back from sideways in this dark maze, yet he felt sure he was moving toward the front of the building. “Just guessing, I guess.”
“I don’t even know what this place is.”
“A factory.”
“How can you tell?”
Again he wasn’t sure. He thought again of the big metal door and how the first thing he thought of was a huge, industrial freezer. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever even heard of such a thing, and yet he could almost picture it with its aisles of frozen shelves. “I don’t know. Kind of looks like one, I guess. Just all emptied out.”
“I think you’re right. I kind of feel like I’ve been here before.”
“Me too. Maybe it’s part of what we forgot. Maybe we know subconsciously.”
“Maybe.”
The darkness was growing thicker and thicker as they moved away from the stairs and their uncertainty grew with it. It was difficult to remain brave as the world around them fell into soul-swallowing blackness.
Cat stopped walking and Kyle, still attached to her just above his left elbow, was halted as well. He could feel her grip tightening.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did you hear something?”
“Like what?”
“Like footsteps.”
“From where?”
“Behind us.”
The two of them stood silently, listening for the slightest sound, trying to hear over the pounding of their own hearts and the shuddering wind of their breath.
There was a sound, soft, brief, like a foot softly falling on concrete behind them, close enough to almost feel, and their imaginations rampaged. The hairs on their necks and arms rose with terrified anticipation and they simultaneously knew that something was there, something very close.
The roar was deafening, like a hundred voices all crying out at once from a single mouth, right behind them. In the same instant, Kyle and Cat added their shrieking voices to the roar and scrambled blindly down the dark hallway, fleeing from the unseen presence that had startled them.
Cat, in her immense terror, was by far the faster, and as Kyle stumbled away from their attacker, trying to make his feet go, she left him behind, an invisible, high-pitched scream streaking ahead of him and into the darkness.
Kyle followed as best he could, but his ankle cried out with each step, threatening to buckle beneath him. Pushing past the pain, he limped forward as fast as he could force his legs to go, following the sound of Cat’s screams as his own whooping bellows threatened to drown her out.
Later, he would wonder how it was that she managed to be so lucky as to pass right through the open doorway, missing the wall on either side completely. Perhaps it was the pain in his ankle, the strange limp that had prevented him from sprinting after her, causing him to veer to the side in his blind rush.
Or perhaps it was simply bad luck.
Whatever the reason, he missed the door completely and slammed headlong into the cold cinderblock, his body mashing against the cold surface like Wile E. Coyote in so many Roadrunner cartoons, and the world took a momentary break as he bounced off it and fell flat onto his back. The world around him lifted like
a curtain and dark unconsciousness rose like water over a drowning man.
As darkness enveloped his mind, he thought he heard someone laughing at him.
Cat’s voice was the next thing he heard. She was not screaming, for those terrified, little girl screams had spiraled away with the rest of the world as he thudded heavily onto the floor. She was crying, weeping in great, wet sobs somewhere in the darkness, crying out his name.
He sat up, his head swimming in air that felt as thick as crude oil, and coughed. His nose was clogged and he could taste bitter, coppery blood in his throat. He didn’t need the dull pain to tell him he’d bloodied it. He could feel it on his lips and cheeks, sticky and dry, making him wonder how long he’d been out. His forehead and the back of his head both throbbed. The wall and the floor. A double whammy. His knee also hurt, having struck the wall just a fraction of a heartbeat before his face. His whole body hurt for that matter, but those were the worst. He wanted to cry, but somehow he didn’t.
Slowly, cautiously, he lifted himself to his feet.
“Kyle!”
Her voice sent gravel through his aching head. He felt tremendous pity for her. She sounded utterly terrified, after all, but he just wanted her to shut up.
“Kyle! Where are you?” Her voice was almost overrun with sobs now, her words broken by her weeping. There was no knowing what she must have imagined happened to him.
“Cat?” The sound of his own voice, so loud within his own head, sent thunderbolts of pain through his skull. He wanted to lie down and just sleep until the pain went away, but wasn’t that the last thing you were supposed to do after a bad knock on the head? Or was that just a myth? He couldn’t remember. And it didn’t matter. Cat needed him. He called her name again, louder this time.
“Kyle?” The relief in her voice was unmistakable.
Kyle felt his way around the wall he’d slammed into and stumbled into the next room. “I’m over here.” God it hurt to talk, but the pain seemed to be getting better. Just a little.
“Where?” She was closer now, moving toward him in the dark. The room he had just entered must have been as large as the earlier ones, and she had probably been wandering blindly since realizing she’d lost him.
“Here.”
He heard her approach, her footsteps shuffling nearer and nearer.
“Where?” This time she was only a few feet away.
“Right here.”
Cat’s shuffling footsteps became a pattering as she pinpointed his location and rushed to him. He felt her hand brush his shoulder and then he was caught in her embrace. She wrapped her arms around him squeezing him as though trying to crush him in her small arms.
“Ow!”
She withdrew as though she’d been slapped. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I just did my best impersonation of George of the Jungle on that wall over there.”
“Oh my god! Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.”
“What was that back there?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do we do?”
What he wanted to do was lie down and die, but there would be better days for that, he was sure. “We keep going,” he replied, and they began to walk again.
With one hand on the wall to guide him and the other firmly gripping Cat’s hand, he led her around the perimeter of the room, pausing every now and then to listen for a phantom noise, each time bracing himself for another terrible scream that never came.
Kyle’s hand struck a doorjamb and he stepped inside, exploring blindly with his hands, hoping for an exit of some sort, but the room was barely the size of a closet, with a counter that ran along two walls. Perhaps once upon a time it had been a small laboratory or a first aid station, but now it was only a small black room in a big black emptiness, so he retreated from the tiny room and continued along the wall.
Farther down, the wall abruptly ended in a right angle and Kyle turned with it. As he did, something unseen fell to the floor with a loud bang somewhere behind them. They jumped, startled, and stood listening. But the silence had returned.
This hallway sloped downward at a gentle angle. At the bottom of the descent, he could again see some light. There was a window down there. With any luck, it would be large enough and close enough to the ground to allow them to finally escape this place.
Again there was the soft, vulgar sound of passing gas and Cat’s fingernails dug deep into Kyle’s left hand, making him bite his lip against both the pain and the fear.
“Kyle, I never thought I’d say this to anyone but please tell me you just farted.”
The strange sound came again, the stuttering, high-pitched rumble they’d heard shortly after leaving the room where he found Cat. It was louder this time, and they could almost feel it, like a deep vibration. It came in four short bursts, one after another, and Kyle realized sickly that it sounded like laughter, as though the very walls of this terrifying place were laughing at them.
“Come on.” He tugged her hand and they began to jog down the shallow incline.
“What was that noise?”
Kyle did not answer her. He held one hand out in front of him, doing his best not to repeat his previous stunt. As he jogged, he was again aware of the pain in his right ankle. He must have twisted it pretty seriously sometime during the night. He wondered if he’d sprained it.
Two-dozen steps brought them to a level floor again and they found themselves standing in another of those huge, cavernous rooms, this one dimly lit from a doorway on the far side.
Kyle did not linger. Gripping Cat’s hand, he led her across the room, straight toward the lit doorway, hoping desperately that this was finally the way out.
About halfway across the room, Cat tripped and would have gone sprawling across the floor if Kyle had not been holding her hand. She spat a curse and blushed hotly. The dreaded “S-Word.” Thank God her dad hadn’t heard her say that.
All around them the room reverberated with that strange, vibrating laughter.
At last they reached the doorway and ran through it, into the short hallway beyond. Two doorways stood to the right, both dimly lit from within. Beyond them the hallway turned left. There seemed to be more light coming from that direction, but Kyle chose the nearest door first.
This room was much less mysterious than the previous ones. Its purpose was obvious: it was the ladies’ room. The mirrors had been removed, along with the paper towel, soap and toilet paper dispensers, but the stalls and plumbing still remained.
A small window was located on the far wall, too high to see either in or out, but a streetlamp of some sort must have stood nearby, because bright, yellow light poured into the room, allowing them to see better than they had since finding themselves here.
“We’re by the front offices,” Cat announced suddenly.
“You remember?”
She shook her head. “No. Not remember. Just know.”
Kyle understood. “Why do we know this place?”
Cat didn’t know. She had been turning around, gazing at the somehow familiar walls, but now she stopped and looked at Kyle. “Oh my God!”
“What?”
“Your face! You’re nose! You’ve got blood all over!”
Kyle touched his nose. He must have bled more than he thought. He stared back at her, really seeing her for the first time. There was blood on her face, too. His blood, from when she embraced him.
Her eyes were red and puffy with tears, her makeup smeared across her face. She looked strange, wearing so much makeup. He wondered if she thought it made her look older.
“You poor thing.”
“I’m okay.”
Cat wiped at her eyes. In the new light her ring and bracelet, both gold, both fine, shimmered delicately. She looked surprisingly mature. “Now what do we do?”
Kyle looked at the stalls. “Well I’ve got to pee really bad.”
Cat’s eyes widened with a mixture of disgust and embarrassment. “In there?
There’s not any water!”
“I don’t care. I’m dancing over here. It’s either there or in the corner ‘cause I’m not wetting my pants.” He did not wait for her approval. He entered the nearest stall and unzipped his jeans.
Cat did her best to ignore the hollow, echoing sound of Kyle using the dry toilet. She turned around, her eyes falling on the place where a soap dispenser had hung and found that she knew precisely what that soap dispenser had looked like. But how long ago had it been taken down? When could she have seen it?
“Do you need to pee too?” Kyle asked when he returned.
She did have to pee, had needed to for a long time, in fact, but she did not want to. “Not in there.”
“Then where? On the floor? In your shoes?”
She gave him a pitiful look. She really did not want to pee in there. The thought disgusted her. But he was right. She was out of options.
“Go on. It’s not so nice, but you can at least go with some dignity. More so than if you pee your shorts.” He stood staring at her, understanding where she was coming from, but frustrated by her just the same. “I won’t tell anybody.”
Cat gave in and walked to one of the stalls. “Don’t look.”
“Ew! Like I’d want to?”
“Maybe. You’re a boy.”
“That doesn’t automatically make me a pervert.” Although there was something there, he realized. The thought of her pulling down her shorts was strangely arousing somehow. He turned and walked across the room, pondering this feeling.
“You won’t leave me, will you?”
“No. I’m right over here.”
“Good.”
Kyle rubbed at his sore nose and cheeks, trying to clean some of the blood from his face. Behind him, in the stall, there was no sound. Pee anxiety. His fault, he knew, but she didn’t want him to leave so she would just have to deal with it.
He stared at the door, thinking about what she’d said about them being near the front offices. He had a feeling she was right. It sounded right. He felt as though he’d been here before, as though he knew these walls. Well, not these walls, but the others. “I think they used to make food here. Snacks or something.”
After a moment’s consideration, Cat agreed that they did.
