by Dan Dillard
“Yeah. I am now,” Zack said.
He scraped another arrow on the floor before they walked another fifty feet and came upon another adjoining tunnel to the right. Zack looked down the corridor. Robbie grabbed his shoulder.
“Can we just stick with this one for a while. The smaller ones are...” Robbie said, and trailed off.
Zack nodded, and they moved past the tributary.
“Alex!” Zack shouted.
The sound of his voice echoed in the darkness, coming back to them clearly twice, then fading into a hollow reverberation.
“Alex!” Amy called, and then Robbie repeated it.
After another fifty feet, they heard something. It was a voice, small, distant, high-pitched like a bird...or like a child who was scared.
“Help!” it said.
CHAPTER 18
The inside of the stone building was cold, damp, and loaded with cobwebs. The stink of the sewers leaked in from somewhere, faint and tangy. A wrought iron gate, not unlike the one at the entrance to the cemetery, blocked the only visible exit. A large chain with a beefy padlock held it shut. Alex lay on a marble slab atop what could only have been a crypt. He was inside a mausoleum, crying his eyes out, shuddering in the cold and screaming for help.
Through the bars, he saw other graves and realized where he was. Dust fell and tumbled through the sunlight beams that flooded the room. He wiped his eyes.
“Help!” he shouted again.
The creeping mist from the graveyard lapped over the threshold between the lawn of the cemetery and the marble floor of the old structure.
“Help!” he said again, softer and full of fear.
Behind him, on the floor was a large metal grate. The source of the sour smell, it was a drainage grate that led down into the tunnels below. Alex jumped down from the crypt and rushed to the gate, reached his hand through and shook the large padlock. Its weight combined with the weight of the chain made it difficult for his small muscles. It clanked and several birds took off from the trees surrounding the building. The noise startled him and he jumped back, crying even harder.
“Help me!” he shouted.
Minutes passed and when no one answered him, Alex began to look around inside the building for another way out. There appeared to be a large gap behind the crypt, which stretched wall to wall. He climbed back on top of it and leaned his head over the opposite side. On the floor, he saw the metal grate. It was two feet wide and a foot across, plenty large enough for him to slip through, but it was also padlocked shut. Alex climbed down and, on his knees, put his ear to the grate where he heard the sound of running water. The stench that rose from the hollow burned in his nose.
“Help me!” he shouted, his voice growing hoarse from crying and screaming. The words broke up with his tears. He called again, and again into the darkness below.
***
Zack’s focus was evident. His face was hardened and his eyes wide and at the ready. His stance was like many of the adventurers he had seen on television or in the movies, knees bent and hands outstretched and eager. He held his flashlight like a flaming, wooden torch. Robbie and Amy copied him as they marched along stopping only to call for their missing friend and listen for a response.
“Alex!”
Amy and Robbie quickly joined the pattern, taking a few steps and calling, then stopping to listen. Again, they heard the very faint cry, “Help me!”
“This way,” Zack said, and took off running.
One hundred yards down the mislabeled 1st Street corridor, they stopped again and waited for a sound.
“Help!” they heard.
It was slightly louder.
“We’re getting closer,” Zack said.
***
Their cries were heard by something else as well.
“Help!”
The mysterious figure’s ear pricked up.
“Bah,” it said.
It looked back through a hole in the wall and saw Zack, Robbie and Amy were on the trail.
“Dis can’t be,” it said.
Shoving the brick back in place, it turned up the flame on an old oil lamp and set it on a workbench of sorts. There, it unrolled a map. It was a map of the sewer system. The old withered hand with gnarled fingernails traced a path along the map to where the children were, then back to the exit.
“Goin’ da wrong way, dey is,” it growled.
It traced a long, bony finger along the path where the children were walking to a point where the markings on the map changed from the old print, to something sketched by hand. It looked like the work of a child, sketches of tunnels that weren’t on the map…a whole series of them.
“How I’m s’posed to help if ya keep goin’ da wrong way?”
Alex shouted again and the being grunted. It pulled the brick back out of the hole and looked. The children were gone. One hand crumpled the old map while the other replaced the brick. It huffed.
“Dey gon’ find it, they keep lookin’. Find somethin' ain’t got no business wit.”
Alex screamed again, his voice growing more and more desperate. The watcher threw the map into the corner.
“I deal wit him first. Dem others be okay fo’ now.”
CHAPTER 19
Brad rode his bike through town, careful to avoid the windows where his mother worked. He scoured the side streets where he and his friends always played, then an awful feeling came over him, and he knew where they were.
“I shouldn’t have told them that story,” he said, and cranked back on the throttle.
The bike responded, lifting the front wheel off the pavement momentarily as he shot past a few random cars. The drivers each shouted from rolled down windows, honked and gave him dirty looks. Brad ignored all of it. Moments later, he was under the old train overpass staring at the manhole cover which was not where it should have been. Instead, it was still lying next to the hole it was meant to protect.
“You dumbasses are lucky you haven’t killed anyone,” he said, looking around and then back at the open hole.
He spied three bicycles on the side of the road. Their shiny spokes and bright colors were only partially obscured by the overgrown weeds.
“Nothin’ ever changes around here,” he said.
Parking his bike next to the others, Brad removed his helmet and hung it from the rearview mirror. He walked back to the hole, and stared down inside it, remembering what he’d said, how he’d lied to the kids about seeing a ghost.
“Mom’s gonna kill all of us...she might even kill that Robbie kid.”
Brad climbed down into the tunnel, holding his cell phone in his mouth as a flashlight. Halfway inside, he reached over and using all of his strength, slid the cover over and making an awful grating sound. He ducked his head below before pulling it into place with a THUNK and climbing down.
CHAPTER 20
“Anybody see anything yet?” Zack said.
“Nope,” they replied.
“Hear anything?”
“Nope. Not for a while,” Amy said.
“We have been yelling a whole lot. Maybe we just missed it,” Robbie added.
They reached the end of the tunnel and Amy took off running to their left. Zack went after her.
“Amy, what are you doing?”
She kept running, ignoring him. Robbie lumbered behind.
“Amy, what is it?” Zack said.
He finally caught up to her. She swung her light around like a sword, growing more and more frantic. Her face was solid concern.
“You said this would be Nash Street. You said you knew where we were. If this is Nash, where’s the ladder? Where did we come in?”
Zack looked around. Robbie caught up with them. They puzzled for a minute. Zack shined his light on the arrow on the floor then back up the corridor.
“At least we know where we’ve been. We can follow these back or keep going.”
“Follow them back to what? The bugs? No thanks,” Robbie said.
“Ignore the street si
gns,” Zack said. “Something weird is going on around here.”
“Somebody help!” Alex cried and his voice was clearer and louder than before.
“Was that wailing?” Robbie said.
Zack and Amy glared at him.
“I mean are you sure it isn’t a ghost? That sounds like wailing to me.”
They continued glaring at him.
“What?” he said.
“It’s Alex. Come on, this way,” Zack said, and followed the sound of Alex’s voice.
***
Mumbles shuffled through the cemetery. He stared at the old Mausoleum in the distance, holding a tired old hand up to shield the sunlight from his eyes. Above the opening was the word, “CROWE.” It was still chained and locked shut.
“How somebody done got in dere?” Mumbles said.
“Help me!” Alex shouted.
Mumbles stepped up to the doorway and peered in. Alex shrieked and ducked behind the crypt, huddled against the grate on the floor.
“Now, what all dat racket fuh? You be all right lil’ man,” Mumbles said.
He was handling the lock, and reaching down for a large key ring.
“How you got in dere?” he said.
Alex was still crying, but managed to climb back over the crypt and rush to the gate.
“I wanna go home! Please help me get home,” he said.
Mumbles scrunched an impossibly wrinkled face and rubbed a hand over his bald head. He scratched his own scalp it with yellowed fingernails.
“I dint put no lock like dis out here. Who put you here, lock you in like dat? Wadnt’ me, nossir. Got no key for dis lock, here.”
Alex’s blue eyes flooded.
“You mean I’m stuck in here?”
Mumbles leaned down to the boy’s level and raised an eyebrow.
“How you got in here, li’l man?”
Alex spoke through his sobs.
“The Tootheater.”
“Bah,” Mumbles said. “Who dat got you?”
“I put my tooth on the manhole, like I’m supposed to, but he came out of the graveyard and grabbed me.”
Mumbles frowned and looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t you worry none ‘bout him. I get you outta here,” he said.
He gripped the rail of the wrought iron gate and pulled himself to stand with a groan.
“Don’t leave me,” Alex said.
“I got ta get some tools. You sit tight, li’l man.”
He patted Alex’s tiny hand and gave a reassuring, soft smile before he walked away. Alex screamed.
“No! Don’t leave me!”
“Quiet now!” Mumbles said. “I be right back.”
***
Zack and company were stopped at a four-way intersection. Of the three, Robbie looked the most concerned. Zack scraped another arrow in the walk.
“I don’t hear him anymore,” Robbie said.
“Maybe he’s resting,” Amy said.
“What if it got him?” Robbie asked.
“What?” Zack said.
“The tooth guy. What if he’s real?”
Amy shuddered.
“I wanna go home, Zack. Can we just go home now? Find our way out and go home?”
Zack turned toward them, his face was concrete.
“You saw the ghosts, right? At the cemetery? What if one of them was the...” Robbie started.
“Shut up,” Zack interrupted.
Robbie did.
“The best I can tell is Alex got lost behind us. He came down here without us and got trapped somewhere. Maybe the rats chased him too. Maybe that’s why he lost his backpack. Now he’s stuck somewhere or lost and we have to find him. That’s it. That’s the end of the argument.”
Amy started crying and Zack put an arm around her to comfort her.
“Don’t you understand? It’s our fault he’s out here. We have to help him,” Zack said.
Robbie was silent.
***
Alex watched through the bars of the gate while he waited for Mumbles to come back. He wiped tears from his eyes, but didn’t yell anymore. He shook the bars and rattled the mighty chain. He kicked at the bars, growing angry, and then shook them again.
“Aahh,” he growled, a frustrated sound.
Red-faced, he shook the bars again, putting all his rage and fear into it. The whole mausoleum felt like it was shaking. He stopped to find that it was. The building quaked, pieces of marble fell to the ground and a cloud of dust puffed around him. The air was electrified and the tiny hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end.
He turned around toward the crypt, focusing on something unseen. It rose above him, grinning madly, its ghostly arms spread wide. Alex screamed.
CHAPTER 21
The spine chilling scream echoed through the tunnels. Amy’s eyes looked as if they might pop from their sockets. Zack and Robbie ran in the direction of the noise, ignoring the walking paths and splashing through the water. A second scream led them further into the sewer system, only to be stopped by fallen rubble. Rats climbed about the rocks, stopping to hiss at the flashlight beams.
“Which way?” Amy said.
They ran back to the main passage, hearing another scream. Darting in that direction, they were in another long corridor. Quickly, they found themselves halfway down the tunnel, but something changed around them. The bricks were different, smooth instead of painted cinderblock and tile. The lights were different—older—and everything was less slimy. It was cleaner. They stopped and waited but heard no more screaming.
“It got him,” Robbie said. “I know it did.”
Zack stared at the wall, at the different bricks. He walked back and shined his lamp along the seam where one wall met the other, looking up at the ceiling and over to the other side.
“This must be it,” he said.
“Must be what?” Robbie asked.
Amy ran her hand along the wall as if trying to find its pulse. “The Underground Railroad,” she said.
Robbie’s concern changed to wonder.
“Cool,” Robbie said.
The three stared at where they were in amazement as minutes passed by. They all touched the wall, as if drawing some sort of power from it. Fingers ran along the mortar joints and across the smooth bricks.
“How do we get in?” Robbie said.
“I dunno.” Zack answered.
“Alex must be inside,” Amy said.
“I think something got him. He isn’t yelling anymore,” Robbie said.
“Stop saying that,” Zack said.
They walked along further, studying the bricks, the different floor, the old lanterns that swung from the roof. Robbie stopped.
“Zack, give me the prybar.”
Zack stopped, and Robbie grabbed the pack, jerking Zack over to him. He unzipped it and pulled the tool out, then stood like a mad man, holding it over his head. He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, fully prepared to smash it into the wall.
“Robbie, those bricks are huge, they might be a foot thick,” Zack said.
Robbie ignored him and kept holding the implement in attack position. He changed his grip and breathed heavy, psyching himself up for battle. A shadow approached behind them, but none of the three noticed.
“Dude, cut it out,” Brad said.
He grabbed Robbie’s arm and took the tool away from him. All three kids screamed, piercing the air with high-pitched shrieks that reverberating for a full ten seconds.
“Brad!” Amy said and smacked her older brother’s arm.
“What are you doin’ down here. You scared the crap out of us,” Zack said.
Brad looked around.
“Well, you’re in the right place? Get it? Crap…sewer? Huh?”
Robbie, still gripping his chest, lets out a long gasp.
“Why’d you do that?” he said.
“We’re going home, right now. All four of us,” Brad said.
Zack glared at him. “We can’t.”
�
�And why not?”
“Alex is lost down here.”
“Alex? King? He’s like eight!” Brad said.
He didn’t tell Brad the ghost story. It was too soon for that and wouldn’t help his argument. Amy started to speak, but Zack upstaged her and punched Robbie in the arm.
“Ow,” Robbie said.
“We all came down here and somehow we lost Alex. We’ve been searching for him and heard him come this way. So we’re trying to figure out how to get in.”
“Give me the pry bar back,” Robbie said.
“No,” Brad said.
“Why not?”
Brad pointed down the tunnel at the floor at a hatch which was no more than fifteen feet away from them. It was caked with partially dried goo from the sewer, from years of being underground and from who knows what else.
“What’s that?” Amy said.
“Looks like a door,” Brad answered.
“Then I’ll probably need that to open it. Give it back,” Robbie said.
Brad handed him the prybar and they all walked closer to investigate.
“Hey, who smells like burnt rat?” Brad asked.
The others looked at Robbie.
“That’s a long story,” he said.
Amy grabbed Brad’s arm.
“You still didn’t tell us why you’re down here,” she said.
“What do I always tell you two? Stay in the neighborhood. Mom would kill me if she knew you were down here and I was at home. She’d kill me if she knew I was down here with you. Why are you down here? Is this about the story I told you?”
“We were all going to come down here and look for ghosts. Then we saw some at the graveyard this morning. One chased us...and we think it got Alex,” Amy said.
Zack sighed and looked at his sister as if to say thanks a lot for that. “Yeah, so we came down here and found his backpack, then we heard him screaming and it led us here. We’ve got to find him,” Zack said.
“The Tootheater’s got him,” Robbie added.
Zack looked at Robbie and nodded, then back at Brad.
“Something like that,” Zack said.
“Come on, Z. There’s nothing down here,” Brad said.
“Oh yeah? Well you missed the last few hours,” Amy replied.
“It’s cool, sis. I’m here now,” Brad said and huddled his siblings together.
Behind them, Robbie banged on the hatch with the prybar. The noise was deafening and Brad jumped with a girlie shriek. Amy rolled her eyes.
“Not sure that’s necessary, dude,” Brad said, catching his breath. “Come on, let’s get you guys home.”
