Lost Souls

by Seth Patrick

  The creature stepped towards him. It paused. For a moment Jonah thought it was wary of him, the way Torrance’s shadow had been. And perhaps it was, but only for an instant. It came, striding, Jonah seeing the sheer terror in Tess’s eyes; it swept him aside and he felt the pain of its touch the instant before he was slammed against the wall.

  He heard the generator roaring to life. Sunlight exploded around him. Barely able to see in the glare, he stood again. The creature halted momentarily, screeching as the intensity of the light took its toll, the shadow flesh seeming to boil at its surface, tendrils of black, living smoke streaming away from its body. With each instant it seemed diminished, yet it still stepped forward, strong enough to keep its hold on Tess.

  Jonah ran to it, seeing it weaken, its frame almost skeletal now. He kicked out at one of its legs, pulling away a moment too late as it spun and lashed out, connecting and sending him sprawling back. Yet as he regained his feet, he felt hope. The creature was being torn apart before his eyes. Ahead he saw the front door, the bolts in place.

  He ran at the creature, and had almost reached it, emboldened by its weakened state. All he had to do was slow it down, all he had to do was . . .

  Hope died.

  The front door crashed open, forced from outside. The devastated shadow stumbled onwards and out, taking Tess along with it.

  And through the door came another shadow, even more imposing than the first. Jonah halted, feeling the gaze of this second creature squarely on him, watching the boiling shadow flesh leech from it in the intense light; yet it seemed unfazed.

  Jonah stepped back as the creature’s arm rose. It held something in its hand: a slat from the fencing at the front of the house.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, knowing its intent.

  Hissing in triumph, the creature swung out and smashed the first of the sunlamps.

  46

  It came towards him, taking out the bulbs one by one. Jonah backed away, despairing.

  From behind came gunfire: four rapid shots painfully loud in the confined space. Jonah could see where the bullets tore through the creature, pulling a shriek from it but not slowing it down.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Come on!’ Kendrick ordered. Jonah turned and followed. Kendrick directed him through the door to the basement, down the steep wooden staircase lined with blazing sunlamps. Jonah stood at the base of the steps and watched Kendrick lock the upper door behind him, as a huge crash came from just outside it.

  ‘I think that was the kitchen door,’ Kendrick said. ‘Go on, we won’t have long.’

  There was more smashing; the lamps in the kitchen being taken out.

  At the base of the steps was a steel door. Jonah went inside, seeing Never standing by the noisy generator in the far corner, looking agitated.

  ‘This will hold long enough,’ Kendrick said, pushing the steel door closed and locking it. ‘Kill the power to the upper circuit,’ he called to Never. ‘Before it occurs to them to overload the whole damn thing.’

  ‘On it,’ said Never, hitting a switch. He looked at Jonah. ‘Tess?’

  ‘They took her,’ said Jonah. ‘One of them got inside, it just grabbed her. But it was working. The light was working. What the hell happened? The power kept fading. What were you doing?’

  ‘We put the generator on full as soon as we could,’ said Never, visibly stung by Jonah’s tone. ‘The mains power going wasn’t our fault.’

  They could hear the continuing impacts on the upper door.

  ‘What do we do?’ whispered Never.

  ‘We do the only thing we can,’ said Kendrick. ‘We die.’

  Jonah and Never glanced at each other, then Never shook his head. ‘Shit plan.’

  ‘Look around you,’ said Kendrick. ‘You know how much fuel there is in here?’

  They looked. There were jerrycans everywhere. ‘Way too much?’ said Never.

  ‘You know why?’

  It took a few seconds before Never’s face fell. ‘Now hold on, I can think of better ways to go than burning to death . . .’

  Kendrick shook his head and looked at Jonah. ‘I told you we just had to buy time. So give me a hand.’ The floor was flagstone. Jonah stepped over as Kendrick threw him one of two short metal pry bars. Jonah set his flashlight down and together they lifted a stone near the corner, pushing it to one side.

  Underneath was a hole; there was a smell coming from inside it that Jonah found worryingly familiar.

  The smell of death.

  Kendrick knelt and began to heave up a large black plastic sack, nodding for Jonah to assist. As Jonah took hold, he recognized what kind of bag it was. He dragged it to the centre of the room, while Kendrick called for Never to help with a second body bag.

  One by one, they unzipped them, tipping the corpses onto the stone floor: Hopkins and his colleague.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ said Kendrick. ‘A decoy, when they go through the ashes in the morning. They’ll think we’re dead, for a few hours, at least. Longer, if we’re lucky.’

  Jonah knew enough about what a fire could do to a body to know that if the blaze Kendrick planned was intense enough, fragments might be all that remained. Identification could take days.

  Kendrick walked to the side and knelt, reaching behind some of the jerrycans. He pressed something that let out a short tone.

  ‘The clock is ticking,’ Kendrick said. He picked Jonah’s flashlight up from the floor and passed it to Never, then pointed to the hole he’d taken the bodies from.

  ‘Down. Go a few metres into the tunnel. Leave enough space for Jonah and me to follow. Then we’ll seal it.’

  ‘Tunnel?’ said Never, casting his light into the dark, looking warily at the dank earth below.

  ‘Thank God for Prohibition,’ said Kendrick.

  They heard the upper door give way, accompanied by the screeching of the shadows.

  ‘We know sunlight hurts them,’ said Kendrick. ‘Let’s see what an inferno can do.’

  *

  The screeches continued. One by one, they heard the sunlamps smash.

  The creatures were just outside now; Never dropped into the hole and vanished from sight. As Jonah lowered himself down, the corpses came directly into his eye line, Hopkins still with the towel covering his mutilated face. He thought of the way that Kendrick had kept hold of the corpses, just in case they were needed, just as a way to finesse an escape. It didn’t even seem like an extravagance. It was simply what Kendrick did.

  He ducked down, lying flat and following Never. The tunnel was tight, perhaps three feet across. Cold, damp earth that felt like clay surrounded him, barely high enough for him to be able to rise onto his knees, frequent wooden supports making the space even more constricted.

  With Never in front he felt hemmed in. Buried. He prayed the tunnel was short because more than a few minutes spent here would leave him close to madness.

  Behind him he could hear a deep scrape as Kendrick carefully replaced the flagstone in the basement floor. By now the steel door was taking a battering.

  After a few metres of suffocating progress, Jonah stopped when he felt Kendrick’s hand tug on his foot.

  ‘There’s a support back here I need to kick down,’ Kendrick said. ‘Above us is a mound of earth; I need to seal off the tunnel before the fuel goes up. The rest of the tunnel should hold, but if it starts to give, get moving as fast as you can.’

  ‘How long until . . . ?’

  ‘In about sixty seconds.’

  Jonah found himself counting backwards from sixty as he kept going, the downward slope of the tunnel more and more pronounced. He hissed ahead at Never to speed it up, hearing the sound of kicking behind him, then the soft murmur of a steady flow of earth. He stopped, listening, waiting for the sound to grow, to approach along the tunnel and consume them all.

  All he heard was Kendrick’s breathing.

  ‘Move on,’ whispered Kendrick, and Never picked up the pace, Jonah still countin
g down the seconds in his head. He reached zero.

  Suddenly, behind, above, below, came the thump of ignition transmitted through the ground, and the inhuman screams of the shadows caught in the flame. Jonah paused, breath held for a moment, a trickle of debris falling.

  The tunnel remained intact.

  The screaming was still audible, punctuated by the additional thumps of fuel canisters catching.

  ‘Get moving,’ said Kendrick. ‘The tunnel dips down even more ahead. It gets a little damp then comes back up.’

  ‘Just how deep are we?’ whispered Jonah.

  ‘Maybe fifteen feet,’ said Kendrick. ‘This goes on under a twenty-foot fence by a disused rail track out at the back of the property. When we’re through, a five-minute run along the old railroad will bring us to where I have another car.’

  Jonah tried to picture how far they still had to go before they got out. He’d not paid much attention to the layout of the grounds outside the house. He couldn’t recall even seeing a fence at the rear.

  ‘How far to the end of the tunnel?’ he asked.

  ‘Eighty yards, give or take,’ said Kendrick.

  They kept going, slow progress that seemed interminable. They hadn’t heard sirens yet, but surely the fire at the house had been called in.

  As they went, the muddy clay underneath started to get increasingly damp and slippery. Jonah began to lose his grip, his legs sliding. When his right foot hit a support strut a little too hard, Kendrick scolded him.

  ‘This tunnel is almost a century old,’ Kendrick said. ‘It’s survived a lack of repairs and plenty of subsidence, so be careful.’

  Damp gave way to wet, a thin layer of cold water which deepened as they continued along the tunnel’s downslope. Soon it was a foot high. Jonah started to shiver. Claustrophobia was taking him, now. It felt like the air was impossibly sparse.

  ‘Not far,’ Kendrick kept saying.

  Then Never stopped ahead. ‘Uh, problem,’ he said. ‘It dips right here.’

  ‘Keep going,’ said Kendrick.

  ‘You don’t get me,’ said Never. ‘It dips. There’s hardly any air space above the water. I think the tunnel’s completely submerged ahead.’

  ‘So turn onto your back,’ said Kendrick. ‘We have nowhere to go but forward. It should only be a couple of metres before it rises again. Jonah and I will stay here. Flash your light three times when you’re through, and we’ll follow.’

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Jonah heard the deepest sigh he’d ever heard anyone take.

  ‘Right, then,’ said Never Geary. ‘Wish me luck.’

  It took Never a few moments to turn onto his back, then he started to move forwards slowly, his feet slipping now and again and forcing muddy water into Jonah’s face. Soon all Jonah could hear were the gentle ripples hitting the side of the tunnel beside him. He watched the light as it went. It faded for a moment, came bright again, then vanished.

  ‘His flashlight went off,’ he said to Kendrick.

  Kendrick switched his own off, leaving them in absolute black to give them the best chance of seeing Never’s. ‘It may have failed in the water,’ said Kendrick. ‘Or the water itself could just be too opaque. Keep looking for it.’

  They waited, Jonah keeping watch, hoping for some sign. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.

  ‘The tunnel can’t be submerged for very far,’ said Kendrick. ‘He’s had long enough. Get after him.’

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘Get after him,’ said Kendrick, putting his own flashlight back on. ‘We can’t afford to spend more time here, and that’s our only way out.’

  Jonah twisted until he was facing the tunnel roof. It looked soft, fragile. Given a regular flooding, the supports here must surely be rotten. What if the tunnel was blocked? Slowly, he moved on, Kendrick’s light just enough to see by at first, but his ears were in the water now. His neck already ached, holding his head as high up as he could manage, breathing in the limited air.

  His hands were numbed by cold, his arms and legs were stiffening.

  Buried, he thought.

  His foot slipped; he felt the impact of it against the side wall but kept his head above the surface.

  The water was higher with each movement.

  Buried.

  The light was almost gone, just vague glints now on the wet roof an inch above him. He was breathing through his nose, his panic hard to suppress, moving at a slower pace to avoid disturbing the water. He closed his eyes as the water lapped up into them.

  The sense of being in his own waterlogged grave was unbearable.

  The water was too high now to afford reliable breathing. It was time to go under, to keep pushing forward until his breath failed him or, dear God, he found his shoulders pressing against Never’s dead feet.

  Now.

  He took his final breath, meagre as it was, keeping on going, eyes closed, counting to himself, slipping, feeling complaints from his lungs, wondering how far he had gone, how far there was left.

  His hands were sliding, his feet the only propulsion that seemed to be getting him anywhere, then one foot struck another support and he was certain it moved, certain he’d dislodged it. The pain in his lungs was growing, urging him to take a breath that would be his end, as the walls seemed to narrow and the roof pressed down, down, down above him.

  And then he saw the sparks that preceded unconsciousness, flecks of false light in his eyes; too far to go, his coordination failing, reducing him to a frantic scrabble for any kind of purchase. Too far, and—

  A hand on his shoulder, gripping his clothes, dragging him. A voice, muffled by the water, then clear as the water fell away from his ears.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Never. ‘You’re through.’

  Taking a sudden breath that set him coughing, Jonah opened his eyes, Never’s face right above his own, his flashlight working.

  ‘The tunnel comes out into a brick room, just down here,’ said Never. ‘I thought I’d come back and see if you needed me. You seemed to be taking forever.’

  It took Jonah a long time to answer. Breath was precious. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t see your light. Too muddy.’

  ‘I tried calling out, but couldn’t risk being too loud.’

  Jonah managed a smile, an edge of desperation to it. ‘Come on,’ he said, aware that Kendrick would be coming through any moment. ‘I don’t want to spend all winter in this fucking tunnel.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Never, starting to shuffle backwards, the upward slope quickly taking them above the water. ‘Promise me we can have a holiday soon. Somewhere sunny.’

  They both started to laugh. Then Kendrick emerged behind, and, like kids caught by a teacher, they stopped.

  ‘Break over,’ said Kendrick. ‘Let’s get to the car.’

  47

  It was early morning when Annabel reached the outskirts of Chicago. After leaving the hotel in Billings, she’d ditched the unusual gun she’d taken off the woman but had kept the canister that had saved her. Then she’d spent a frantic few hours putting in as much driving distance as she could before it had occurred to her to change the damn car. However they’d tracked her down, the hotel had required her licence plate at check-in, so she had to assume they had it by now. She had parked up in Rapid City, abandoning the vehicle a few minutes’ walk from a used car lot where a man who seemed constructed entirely from wrinkles, tan and leer had sold her a battered Toyota worth half what she paid. It left her with only nine hundred in cash, but there was no way she was going to use the one credit card she had left; she’d used the other for the hotel, and while both were – in theory – impossible to trace to her, she must have screwed it up somehow. It had to be how they’d found her.

  Cash only from here on in.

  She stopped for gas, and to get change for the road tolls she knew were coming. The exhaustion that had hit her in the hotel – and which had meant she’d stayed longer than planned, long enough to be caught out –
had only grown worse overnight. Further on, she stopped again and grabbed an hour of rest, but, given her underlying panic, she wasn’t certain how much actual sleep she’d managed in that time. She dreamed of that door again, vast and dark, something hitting the other side – a dream triggered by a basic fear of looming peril, that was all, but after that she gave up any further attempt at sleep.

  Her stash of cola was enough to keep her going through the early hours, into the overcast morning. The Sunday traffic was light and the driving monotonous, but her mind was scrambled by the combination of caffeine and adrenaline. She was on autopilot, and glad that she couldn’t contemplate what was looking for her, glad that she couldn’t think clearly about the fate of Jonah and Never.

  And now, after twenty hours on the road, she was nearing Chicago. She came up to an automated toll, dug around in her pocket for the change, and wound the window down. Then she fumbled it, catching the top of the window as her hand went out. The coins spilled from her grip, hitting the tarmac.

  She threw a look to the heavens, swore, and got out. Sparse as the traffic was, there was a car in the lane to her left. The lane to her right was clear, then another car in the furthest of the four. She gathered up what she’d dropped. As she began to stand, she saw a black four-by-four stop behind the car in the lane furthest from her. It was stationary for only a few seconds, the car in front starting to drive off, but it was just long enough for Annabel to note the strange choice, with a free lane right beside her.

  She stood fully. The driver of the four-by-four had wound down his window ready to pay. The man’s eyes met hers then looked away fast.

  Too fast.

  She got back into her car with the same feeling of imminent danger she’d had in the hotel, the one she’d almost ignored, the one she’d thought was stupid.

  The one that had been the difference between escape and capture.

  She sat where she was, money in hand, and waited for the black car to go. Another car entered the lane beside her, obscuring her sight of the black car’s driver, but as the seconds ticked by and the four-by-four didn’t move, her suspicion grew.