Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  “Why don’t you tell us what’s really happening?” asked someone else. “You know, don’t you?”

  “I’m as much in the dark as anyone else. Look, we just have to sit tight and wait for the emergency services. Whatever’s happened, it won’t take them long.”

  “Twelve hours is long enough! Why isn’t there anyone here? Why aren’t you taking us out of here?”

  “That’s all there is to say!” snapped the paramedic. Steadying himself, he jumped down from the table, asking himself the same question he had been fielding since the ’quake.

  “Why doesn’t anyone COME?”

  Chapter Nine

  Looting

  When Alex looked away from the clearly distressed paramedic, trying to maintain calm, Candy was no longer there. He spun around, not believing that she could have left without him seeing her. But she was nowhere to be seen in the packed community hall.

  I need a drink.

  “Oh no…”

  He pushed past the two ladies and their little boy, straining to look through the crowd towards the exit. He felt sure that he saw a flash of auburn hair and the sleeve of a pink blouse. Yes, it must be her.

  “Excuse me!”

  Alex hurried through the crowd, almost stumbling over a man lying on the floor with a broken leg. For a moment, it looked as if the man’s wife would physically attack him. But he quickly stepped over the prostrate form and pushed ahead. No one tried to stop him.

  Outside, the street was littered with broken glass and debris. Ahead, the shattered fascia of a row of terraced houses. Rising above the roofs, the omnipresent swirling cloud of dust stretching far away to left and right. The light was fading now. There was a stillness that unnerved Alex. When he moved out into the street, the sound of his feet crunching on the broken glass seemed unnaturally loud. It felt as if this entire area were somehow a film set, built to depict this disaster.

  “Candy?” His voice sounded lost and forlorn.

  Somewhere off to his right, he heard the tinkling of glass. He couldn’t see any movement, but he headed in that direction, taking care not to snag his legs on any of the debris or fragments of broken windowpane.

  “Candy?”

  At the end of the street, Alex paused to look at the swirling dust cloud about thirty yards away down a side street. Like a living curtain, it rose to the sky; blurring and fading as it ascended. Impossibly alive and churning. Now he knew that the paramedic was right. This cloud that hemmed them in on all sides couldn’t be caused by fires. Because if there was a fire, there would be the sound of fire. Crackling and roaring. But there was only silence as the clouds churned and twisted, self-regenerating and deeply unsettling to look at. Then Alex saw the storefront down the side street. Like most of the other buildings, its windows had been shattered; a glittering lake of shards lay in the street before it. He could see the sign from here: Off-Licence.

  I need a drink, Alex.

  “Candy?”

  Alex hurried down the side street, aware that he was drawing close to the dust cloud. He felt as if it were somehow alive; as if it were waiting for him to come close, so that it could suddenly swell and billow out in his direction, swallowing him, plucking him up from the street to suck him screaming into its churning depths. There was another tinkle of glass from within the store, and it gave him an added surge of courage. Gritting his teeth, he reached the front door and peered through the shattered pane into the darkness.

  “Candy, love? Are you in there?”

  More glass tinkled.

  Alex shoved the door. It shuddered open, jamming on the littered floor. He squeezed in and stood for a while, until his eyes were accustomed to the dark.

  “Come to stop me?” said Candy’s voice from the darkness. “Or come to look after me?”

  “Jesus, Candy. We’ve got to get back to the others. This building might not be safe.”

  “Safe?” And suddenly Candy stepped out of the darkness. She’d found an unbroken bottle from one of the shelves. It looked like vodka. She drank; an extravagant and defiant gesture, as if she were rehearsing for the part of a drunk. “Nothing’s safe, lover boy. Look at me. I never have any luck, do I?”

  “Candy, please…”

  “I mean, if I was lucky, then the ceiling would come down on top of us. Then we wouldn’t have to suffer each other any more.”

  “Candy! Come away from here! If the rescue services come and we’re not at the community centre…”

  “Let them come. I’ve got a home from home here.”

  Alex pushed past the jammed door, angrily striding towards Candy’s shadow.

  “Don’t you…” she began, but Alex had dashed the bottle from her hand to the floor. She swung hard at him, hitting him on the side of the face and making him stagger back. “Big man! Big fucking man!” Whirling away from him, she seized another unbroken bottle from the shelf next to her. Without even looking at the brand, she smashed the neck of the bottle against the shelf and poured it straight into her mouth.

  And then there was a sound in the darkness behind her.

  Candy turned in alarm as another shadow emerged slowly from behind the main serving counter. It seemed as if the figure had been lying on the floor and was pulling itself to its feet. Now it rose slowly. Bracing both hands on the bench, it stood there silently, looking at them.

  “You going to pay for that?” asked a man’s guttural voice.

  “What?” asked Candy, backing off.

  “I said are you going to pay for those bottles?”

  “Well…yes…Alex, pay him.”

  “Otherwise you’re looting. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Look,” said Alex, taking Candy’s arm and pulling her away. She refused to let go of the bottle. “No trouble. We didn’t think anyone was in here. After what happened.” He strained to get a better sight of the man. It was impossible in the gloom. He was just a hunched silhouette, standing beside the cash register. He seemed to sway for a moment, putting a hand on the register to regain his balance. “Are you all right? Are you hurt…?”

  “There’s punishment for looting in a national emergency,” continued the figure. “Did you know that?”

  “I’m not looting!” snapped Candy. “I needed a drink, that’s all.”

  “Very serious consequences,” said the silhouette.

  “Pay him, Alex, and get me the hell out of here.”

  “I don’t have any money…”

  “You see?” continued the figure. “No money to pay. So that’s looting. Isn’t it, Candy?”

  Candy paused, defiantly drinking from the bottle again. “Do I know you? Is this your store?”

  “Oh, I know you, Candy. And your husband. I know you both very well.”

  “What’s he talking about, Alex? I’ve never been in this store in my life. You know this character?”

  “There’s a darkness in you both that will destroy you,” said the shadow. “Not the drinking. That’s a symptom. No, the real problem lies deep, deep down.”

  “Who the hell is he, Alex?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alex uneasily. “I’ve never been in this place either. Who are you?”

  “Alex, your wife thinks that you killed your son. And Candy, you think that Alex is responsible. That’s why you hate your husband so much. But don’t you know, Alex? No matter how much forbearance you show, you hate her just as much as she hates you. That’s the darkness. Now, do you want to know the real truth…?”

  “Who the hell are you?” shouted Alex, pushing past Candy. The shadow remained unmoved, its voice just as cold and balanced as before.

  “The real truth is very simple. You see, you both killed your son. You’re both to blame.”

  “Let me see your face.” Alex bunched his fists.

  The man laughed.

  “I said, let me see your face!”

  “Do you want to know something else?” asked the silhouette, moving slowly around the edge of the serving counter. “Somethin
g about little Ricky? Shall I tell you? All right, I will. Little Ricky damns your names in hell. He hates both of you, just as much as you hate each other.”

  Alex stepped forward just as the man moved into the faint light spilling down from a ragged hole in the ceiling.

  And then Alex stopped when he saw the man’s face.

  Candy saw him at the same time, and stifled a scream as the vodka bottle fell from her hand.

  The man was perhaps in his late fifties, and wearing an apron with the motif Best Booze in Town. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, since he’d been helping out in the cellar when the ’quake hit Edmonville. When the ceiling began to shudder and shed clouds of plaster dust, he had clambered quickly up the cellar stairs in time to see and hear several hundred bottles of assorted liquor falling from their shelves and shattering. He had clutched at the door frame as the front window fell out and the ceiling came down. But he had no time to question what was happening, because the splintered wooden beam from the ceiling had split raggedly and plummeted from overhead. A fifteen-inch splinter from the beam had stabbed into his right eye like a wooden dart, erupting from the back of his skull to splatter the red jelly that had been his brain down the back of his shirt and his trousers. He had died instantly, and had lain there for thirteen hours behind the serving counter.

  Until Alex and Candy had come in.

  “Not pretty, is it?” asked the walking corpse with the wooden shard protruding from its face and a black-red stain all over its previously pristine white apron. “Being dead, I mean. Tell you what’s worse…”

  “For Christ’s sake, keep away from me.” Alex backed off, flinching in terror when Candy grabbed his arm with both hands.

  “…what’s really, really worse…”

  Candy backed into the jammed door, making it shiver on its hinges. Neither she nor Alex could really believe what they were seeing or what they had heard, but both were filled with an undeniable terror. Now it seemed as if the world really had ceased to exist. There were only two of them, and the nightmare man-who-should-be-dead-but-wasn’t.

  The man stopped and cocked his head, giving them a ghastly smile.

  “Watch and see.”

  “You’re…hurt…” began Alex, knowing that it was a ridiculous thing to say. “You need help. There are some people back at the community centre…they can help.”

  “No one can help,” said the man-who-should-be-dead. “Not me…or them. Now, come on. Watch.”

  He was leaning towards them now. Not coming on any further, but leaning forward at the waist, and thrusting his mutilated head forward. There was something leering in his hideously destroyed visage, but worse than that was a palpable feeling in the very air that something was going to happen. Something so terrible that it should have them both clawing around the edge of the door and running out into the littered street, before they could witness it. But for some reason they held back. There had been so much unreality, so much nightmare. Perhaps here and now there was a very real confirmation provided by this living-dead man that everything they’d experienced was some kind of fantasy. If they stayed and watched, maybe nothing would happen…and maybe then they’d wake up. Or maybe something impossible would happen, and that in turn would wake them from the nightmare and catapult them both back into the real world—even if it was, for them, such an unhappy world.

  But then it started to happen.

  And they weren’t waking up.

  The store-owner’s face was still thrust forward in that leering pose, and something was moving there; moving where the ugly, splintered shard of wood had embedded itself into his eye socket. Now it seemed that the man was straining, his already half-destroyed face grimacing with effort. Impossibly—so bizarre, and yet so obscene in the context of this nightmare—it was as if the man were straining to pass a bowel movement. Even now, he was letting out an explosive breath with the effort. Holding his breath now, and squeezing again…and they could see that it was the shard of wood itself, in his face, that was moving. Inch by inch, it was squeezing itself slowly but surely out of the ruptured eye socket. If there had been three inches of shard to begin with, now there were four. Now five…now six.

  Alex recoiled, Candy clawing at his back, when the bloodied wood suddenly popped out of the eye socket. With a liquid hissing, as if fuelled by compressed gas, it shot across the store and embedded itself like a dart in the wall not one foot from where Alex had been standing. The man laughed at their terror; a sharp bark of derision. But both Alex and Candy were still frozen, unable to comprehend. And in sheer glee at their fear, the man arched his back, throwing back his head as peals of manic laughter filled the store. The noise of his laughter was somehow wrong. Now it seemed as if there were more than one voice laughing, even though there was no one else in the store. It was as if a dozen men and women were somehow sharing in this hideous joke, the sounds of their deranged laughter erupting from the wide, wide mouth of the store-owner. When he looked directly at them again, the torrent of noise was still erupting from his mouth; a howling, shrieking horde of mad revellers.

  The sound galvanised Alex. Shoving Candy back, he dragged the door open and pushed her out on to the street. Lashing with his foot, he kicked the door back into place and saw the man still standing in the same position, staring at him.

  “Oh Christ,” he said then. “Oh Christ…Candy…RUN!”

  As the shriek of laughter reached an insane crescendo, it suddenly became the sound of a rushing, howling wind. And in that moment, Alex saw something even more impossible than everything they had so far witnessed.

  A black torrent, like an explosion of tar or oil or black water, exploded out of the dead man’s ruined eye socket. Instantaneously, it gushed out of his wide-open mouth, out of his ears; exploded from between his legs. Alex saw the man’s remaining eye fly out of his head as another black jet of liquid erupted from the socket. In a moment, it seemed that an exploding black geyser had burst forth from every orifice of the store-owner—gathered and launched itself in a boiling, churning black fury at the shattered door.

  Hand in hand, Alex and Candy fled back the way they’d come, down the side street and towards the main road. Candy knew that Alex had seen something else back there, and twisted to look back in shock when the front door of the store exploded out on to the side street. A black tidal wave gushed out of the doorway and the shattered window frontage, crashing in a great black wave against the cracked fascia of the buildings opposite before churning angrily back upon itself. The tidal wave filled the street, and with the tumultuous sounds of a roaring storm changed direction and hurtled after them both as they ran. As the black torrent surged and splashed against the walls on either side of the street, clouds of sprayed droplets beaded and flew in the air like black mercury, splattering the brickwork but quickly speeding back into the main black mass, behaving like no liquid on earth; as if each drop were a sentient, living part of the whole.

  The sight served to slow Candy, her legs weakening. Alex knew that if he turned to look, whatever was happening back there would also rob him of strength. He could not see the black wave hurtling down upon them, but he could hear the howling of the tempest.

  “Candy, come ON!”

  He yanked at her hard, and Candy whirled away from the terrifying sight as they reached the main street. The community centre was perhaps three hundred yards away. Would they find safety there? Candy was weeping now as they ran, her fingernails biting into Alex’s palm as they clung to each other.

  The tidal wave exploded into the main street, crashing against the buildings on the far side; boiling and churning and erupting. Again, it seemed to gather itself, waiting to build up bulk and weight and power.

  “Alex!” screamed Candy. “Alex, make it go away!” And then the black torrent surged down the street, filling its entire width as it bore down upon them.

  Chapter Ten

  The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

  Panic

  At first, I thought I mus
t still be lying in the street. Because the first thing I saw was Wayne and Damon standing above me, arguing. Wayne had a sticking plaster on his forehead, a big one. Then someone stepped between them to look down at me; a middle-aged guy wearing a blue, official-looking shirt and a worried expression. Now I could see, and hear, that Damon and Wayne weren’t arguing with each other; they were arguing with this new fella.

  “You all right, son?” asked the stranger. Then I could see a ceiling above him, and realised that I wasn’t still in the street, after all. I tried to speak, but my mouth didn’t belong to me any more.

  “All right,” said the man when he saw me struggling to reply. “Don’t answer me. Just take it easy and…”

  “No one came!” shouted Damon, grabbing the man’s shoulder. The man slapped the hand away, still looking at me. “We were stuck under all that fucking rubble, and no one came. Had to dig ourselves out! Where were you?”

  “You’ve had a crack on the head,” the blue-shirt went on, still talking to me and ignoring Damon. “Don’t think it’s a fracture or anything. But you might be a little concussed. Just rest.”

  “We could have died!” snapped Wayne.

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t,” said the blue-shirt tightly, as he turned from me to look up at them. Now I could hear the hubbub of other voices and turned my head to see that the room we were in was full of people. Some of them were lying on the floor like me, others were bandaged and hobbling about. Kids were crying, people were arguing with each other. There was fear here. I could see it and taste it. There was a sign just above what looked like a restaurant serving hatch: Edmonville Community Hall. I realised that I’d been here a few times, once for a friend’s wedding party, another time for a disco.

  “Well,” the blue-shirt asked Wayne, “are you going to tell me what this lad’s name is, or what? We need all the names for the rescue services.”