THE POLICY

by Bentley Little

  He stomped his foot on the floor, splashing water. The rock beneath felt solid. He moved over to the circle, ready to stomp on it and see if there was any sign of hollowness or weakness.

  And the circle started down.

  Joel and Jorge quickly moved next to him so as not to be left behind.

  Hunt crouched, afraid of losing his balance, acutely aware that there was no railing or anything to grab on to. Joel did the same, but Jorge remained standing, and the three of them remained in those positions as the circle dropped below the level of the floor and the seeping water dripped onto their heads. Then they were traveling slowly through blackness, through what had to be a tunnel. Had Beth seen this? Had she been watching through the door? Did she know what had happened? He should have shouted out to her, gotten her attention. It was important to him that she not be worried, that she not think that he had just vanished into thin air.

  He remained in a crouching position, afraid if he stood that he would fall. This was an elevator. An elevator used by people who worked for The Insurance Group. An elevator that he was allowed to use, that he was able to activate because he was immortal.

  They thought he was one of them.

  The circle stopped descending, and though they hadn’t been able to see anything until now, they found themselves on the floor of what looked like an ancient temple or the main chamber of one of the great pyramids. Blocks of stone the size of Winnebagos were fitted together to form the walls of the gigantic room, and on the blocks were carvings. Words and pictographs and pictures. The words he could not read, ditto for the pictographs, but the pictures, while undoubtedly ancient, depicted scenes that were easily recognizable. Two parents and a young boy, arms around each other’s waists, watching a building burn. A woman crying over a man who had been crushed beneath a fallen tree. Two men arguing over a pair of ox-driven carts whose wheels had gotten stuck together.

  These were ads.

  Insurance ads.

  The massive chamber was illuminated, though there was no visible light source, but the far corners were dark, shadowed, and out of the corner of his eye he saw one of those shadows detach itself from the wall and move. He almost cried out, he was so startled, but an inadvertent stumble backward distracted his mind, and he hop-stepped to balance himself and managed to avoid making any noise.

  The shadow was not a shadow, and when it moved into the light, he saw that it was a tan creature almost the same color as the stone or the sand. It shuffled slowly across the floor of the great room toward an open doorway on the opposite wall. There were legs, appendages that looked like arms, and the remnants of a face, although the features seemed blurred, muted, eroded, like they had been sandblasted or had simply disintegrated over the centuries. He could not tell whether this was some type of monster or whether it was a human who had been alive so long that he had been worn down into this shambling mummylike creature.

  He waited until the thing had passed through the doorway and disappeared into the darkness beyond, then turned to his friends, whispering, “Should we follow him?”

  Jorge nodded silently, and in answer Joel started walking toward the dark open doorway.

  They should have brought flashlights, Hunt thought. How could they have come here so completely unready for even the most obvious situations?

  He needn’t have worried. The space beyond the doorway only looked dark. Once there, he saw that it was suffused with the same sourceless light as the previous chamber.

  They entered a much smaller room, a place with a low ceiling and bare unadorned walls. Before them was a stone table, a huge slab supported by two equally thick columns. Behind it on some sort of bench sat the creature they had followed. This close, he could see that the being had indeed once been human, although its skin had taken on an aspect of petrification, and the features of the face had indeed been eroded away over the years. He had no lips, only a thin line that indicated the presence of a mouth, and the nose had been whittled down to a nostril-less nub. Rather than the large sockets of a skull, there were small crusted slits where the eyes should have been, as though the petrifying skin had grown over the eyes and hardened there.

  Looking at the creature, Hunt remembered suddenly that despite its great age this was the home of an insurance company, and it occurred to him that the great chamber behind him was like the lobby of an office building. And this was where the secretary would sit.

  He paused for a moment unsure of what to do. Should they attempt to communicate? Ask directions? Pardon me, could I make AN appointment to see the CEO? He decided they should simply follow the course they’d been following, and he nodded to his friends so they understood his intention, and walked past the seated creature and into the corridor beyond, waiting for a shouted order or a demand to stop that never came.

  They found themselves in a maze, an endless catacomb of identical little rooms, the ancient equivalent of modern-day office cubicles. Nearly all of the small rooms were occupied, mummified beings of great age moving slowly at their stations, positioned behind sandstone tables and piles of parchment, shriveled heads turning on creaking necks to silently eye them as they walked by. These things looked different from the secretary at the front desk, vaguely humanoid but more mutated, less easily identifiable, and once again he had no idea if they had once been people or were of a different race of creatures entirely. Either way, they were far older than any living being should have been, atrocities that should have died naturally long, long ago.

  As if by unspoken agreement, none of them said a word. The beings they encountered were mute, and all three of them remained silent as well, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, afraid that any sound would alert the denizens of the insurance company.

  They kept walking, down one hallway and then another, and no one tried to stop them, no one paid attention to them. He had no idea what he’d expected to find when they came down here, but this damn sure wasn’t it. Although they’d talked about destroying the agent’s life insurance policy, deep down he hadn’t really thought they’d find a row of file cabinets they could look through or a series of desks they could rifle. Back in Tucson that had seemed plausible, but here in Mexico his expectations had changed, and he supposed that he’d expected to encounter a dark, dank underground world filled with slimy monsters they would either outwit or slide by until they reached the large and terrifying supreme fiend, with whom they would have the inevitable showdown—which, of course, they’d somehow win. After that, they would find the grail-like policy and torch it. The scenario might have been clichéd, but it was nonetheless frightening for that, and just the thought of it sent his heart racing now.

  But this was even creepier. It was not quite as scary, but it was more unsettling, and its disturbing roots ran deeper. This was not some wild raging monster, and they were not dragon-slayers here to kill the beast. This was a well-oiled machine, a company that had been operating since before men were men, and its workers’ utter indifference to them showed him just how puny and insignificant he and his friends were.

  They continued walking, searching for something that would tell them where they could find the immortal policies, some indication that they were on the right track.

  In one room, incongruously, was a computer and monitor identical to the one in the insurance agent’s basement office back in Tucson. The screen was lit and filled with tiny detailed writing, but there didn’t seem to be a power source in the room and Hunt saw neither plug nor outlet. The room was empty, at least temporarily, and he ducked in, hoping to type the word “Tucson” or “Arizona” or “United States” and at least find out something, but the keys on the keyboard were blank, and the characters on the screen were not English, not Arabic, not Cyrillic, not anything he had ever seen. He quickly left before the office’s occupant returned.

  In another, slightly larger chamber, skulls were piled in a bin—human, animal, and in between—and in the center of: the room a flayed mule stared silently at him, eyes rollin
g in unimaginable agony. This was more like what he had expected, and he quickly passed by, continuing down the corridor, hoping that they were not drawing ever closer to some spectacular horror at the heart of the company.

  There was still no noise down here, no talking or grunting or screaming, and the only sounds they heard were their own footsteps on the stone floor and the occasional sandpapery whisper of the office workers shuffling their ancient feet. The noiseless mule had made him even more aware that these corridors were silent, and he tried to walk more quietly.

  The corridor down which they were walking stopped at a solid wall, and they backtracked and took another corridor that finished in an empty room. They were coming to the end of The Insurance Group’s domain and had yet to find any sign of the original insurance policies. He wondered if they would ever be able to find them.

  Then they went down another hallway, a hallway from which many others branched off, a labyrinth that reminded Hunt of something he had read about in Greek mythology. There were no rooms here, only endless corridors, and he walked slowly, carefully, making sure to remember the sequence of each turn so that he did not end up wandering these passageways forever.

  Finally, they reached what appeared to be the nucleus of the labyrinth, the nerve center of the insurance company.

  He smelled it before he saw it, and it was that familiar stench of moist fetid rot. The odor seeped from behind a red wooden door set into the stone wall, a door barely big enough for a child or the dwarf who guarded the entrance above. Hesitating only briefly, Hunt reached out, turned the flat metal handle, and the door swung open. Holding his breath, he crouched down and peeked in.

  The room beyond was in sharp contrast to the monochromatic tan of the surrounding complex. The walls were festive and multicolored, painted with the most elaborately detailed murals Hunt had ever seen. As with everything down here, light from somewhere made everything visible, and what he saw was a pictorial history of mankind, artistic depictions of every important event to have occurred in western, eastern, and middle-eastern civilization since time began.

  Events insured by the company.

  The doorway was small, but the room beyond was large. Not spectacularly large like the lobby, but the size of a small-town banquet hall. In the center of the otherwise empty chamber was a shallow pit ringed by a miniature barrier less than a foot high, and within that enclosure was the power, the force, the brains behind the insurance company.

  It was a creature of sand and earth, a hideous elemental abomination that twined and twisted in its lair and kept its loathsome mouth perpetually open in a silent scream. Despite the foul odor, the air here felt sticky and sweet—it was like breathing cotton candy—and a palpable aura of malevolence, a tremendous sense of negative energy radiated from the room. Everything about the creature was wrong and evil, and as it craned its vile neck upward, mouth opened impossibly wide, Hunt knew that this was a sight which would haunt his dreams to his dying day.

  How something so profoundly alien could set up, organize and run an insurance company, could be behind the bewildering legalese that made up individual policies, could determine the rules and regulations that made covering a Volvo cost less than covering a Corvette, he did not understand. But he knew it to be true, and as he watched, the scenes on the mural shifted, changed. Now they were not artistic representations of the past but real-time views of individuals all over the world: agents and customers of the company. Hunt’s eyes scanned the myriad scenes, and his heart leaped in his chest as in the bottom right corner he spotted Stacy and Lilly, huddled on the couch in their living room, afraid to venture outside.

  If he had been braver or if this had been in a movie, he would have heroically taken out Manuel’s knife, crawled through the doorway, and after a tense fight murdered the beast. But this was not a movie and he had never felt less brave in his entire life. This was an evil so far beyond his ken that he could not possibly fight it, and, without saying a word to his friends, he carefully closed the door and slunk away, trying not to draw attention to himself, hoping against hope that the awesome power of that horrible being was attuned to a much higher frequency and had not even noticed his intrusion.

  “What is it?” Joel demanded, and Hunt heard the rage in his voice. They were the first words any of them had spoken down here, and they sounded unbelievably loud in the stillness.

  He thought of the scene with Stacy and Lilly on the mural. “Nothing,” he lied. He was convinced that destroying that monster behind the door would put an end to the insurance company, but there was no way that was going to happen.

  He still remembered the series of turns that had gotten them to this point and he reversed the route on their way back until they were once again in a corridor where those worn eroded creatures shuffled slowly to their offices. After that thing behind the red door, they seemed familiar and almost reassuring.

  He did not know where to go from here, was tempted to head back to the lobby and start from the beginning, but then he caught sight of real movement in his peripheral vision. Not the slow shambling undead walk of the office workers but the purposeful stride of—

  an insurance agent.

  It was the one they’d followed. He’d apparently left and come back, and Hunt ducked into the nearest empty office, Joel and Jorge right behind him. The three of them stood in the darkness, watching as the agent passed by.

  They stepped out of the office, back into the corridor.

  And followed.

  They moved slowly, at the same pace as the other creatures so as not to draw attention to themselves, but they needn’t have worried. The insurance salesman was oblivious, his mind set on one specific goal, and Hunt watched as he strode down the corridor and turned right.

  He’d been prepared to walk endlessly through the labyrinth in order to find out where the agent went, but to Hunt’s surprise the man stopped at the first doorway he reached and walked right in.

  Hunt thought they’d already walked past here, but apparently not, because behind the open doorway was not another small office with an ancient drone working on some meaningless task at a stone table but a long room filled with wooden file cabinets. The agent was looking through the one closest to the entrance, and Hunt hazarded a quick glance and then walked by, not wanting to be spotted, Joel and Jorge right behind. He went into the first empty office beyond, then peeked around the edge of the doorway until he saw the insurance agent emerge a few moments later. The man did not even glance in their direction but headed back the way he’d come, and as soon as he turned the corner, Hunt was hurrying back to the file room.

  This was what they’d been looking for.

  “Holy shit,” Hunt said softly. “Guard the door!” he ordered, and Joel quickly positioned himself at the room’s entrance.

  The ceiling was low, not like in the lobby, but the room stretched so far back that he could not see its end. Both sides were lined with file cabinets, and he opened the one closest to him, the one the agent had been searching through, and saw folders filled with papers and documents. He lifted one of the folders and found insurance applications identical to those he and Beth had filled out but written in Spanish. He put the folder back, moved to the next cabinet and saw applications in Arabic.

  He closed the door of the file cabinet, looked around. Before him, the wooden cabinets stretched to infinity, but behind him, at the head of the room, to the left of the door—

  —was their insurance agent’s immortal policy.

  It was on parchment and under glass, like an exhibit in a museum. There were only six such policies—one for each continent?—and Hunt assumed that meant that there were only six immortal agents canvassing the earth. Had there been more at one time and had those earlier agents been unable to pay their premiums and then killed off? Or were there only six positions available and once those were filled no one else need apply?

  He didn’t know, didn’t care. The fact that there were only six made his work a lot easier. He
stood next to the case and stared down through the glass at the parchment. Again, the Faust idea returned to him, but such a model was too conventional, too simplistic. What he had here before him was more complicated, more involved. And yet…

  And yet it all boiled down to the fact that the document in the case granted him the power of life and death over the insurance agent. He was in charge now. He was the one who would determine the outcome of this battle. What was behind that glass was not the agent’s immortal soul, it was his immortal policy. He didn’t have a soul, a policy was all he had, and Hunt realized that the Bible was right. In the beginning was the word. And the word was more powerful, more important, more binding than the body could ever be.

  “What is that?” Jorge asked.

  “His life insurance policy,” Hunt said. They were still speaking softly, as if afraid of announcing their presence.

  He leaned forward until his face was practically pressing against the glass. The provisions of the policy were written in an alphabet Hunt did not understand—something far older even than Arabic—but the form and structure of the document were identical to his own immortal insurance, and he recognized the line at the beginning that contained the agent’s name.

  His name was Ralph Harrington.

  Ralph.

  It seemed impossible. The name of evil should not be so average, so ordinary, so laughably mundane. Ralph Harrington? It diminished the man in a way, brought him down to size, made him seem less intimidating, less like some supernatural bogeyman and more like a regular guy.

  Hunt recalled what Del had told him in jail, that names had power, like Rumpelstiltskin.

  Words. Names. These were the things that mattered.

  Out of curiosity, he moved down the case and read the name on each policy. One was written in either Chinese or Japanese characters, another in either Greek or Russian. Two were in an Arabic alphabet. Only Ralph’s name was written in English. (Ralph!) All of the names were in contemporary languages, however, and Hunt wondered if the names changed with the times, if they were automatically updated in some magical way each time the individual agents altered their names to conform with the current era.