Nightcrawlers

8

When Kopecky opened his eyes, he was alone in the mud and the darkness. He tried to think, tried to put it together. They were moving through that field and then… and then those shapes came out of the fog. Not human shapes at all. No, debased, degenerate, grotesque. Then he went down the hole.

You didn’t go down, you were pulled down.

That’s when panic hit.

He tried to scramble to his feet, but the mud was slippery like some semi-gelatin ooze. It smelled like corpse slime. Gagging, unbelievably gagging, a yellow and aged stench that crawled down his throat and settled in his gut. He managed to rise finally and immediately bumped his head on the earthen roof of the passage. A jutting root nearly tore his ear off.

He was in a tunnel.

A subterranean crawl space made for dwarves or troglodytes. Frantically, he felt at his belt. Yes, he still had his gun but his radio was gone. Not that it would have done him much good down in this stygian hole anyway. He fumbled around on his belt until he found his little penlight. He thanked God he carried it now. He also thanked God that he was not overly claustrophobic.

He got the light on.

It was practically blinding in the blackness.

Above, a little light like that would have illuminated five or six feet, but down there it was like a searchlight. Such was the quality of the darkness.

Yes, a tunnel with walls of earth. He saw no opening above, yet he must have gotten down here somewhere. He had figured he fell through a hole from above, but there was no sign of one.

Okay. Just think. Do not panic—think.

He panned the light over the muddy floor. He could see what looked like a drag mark fading into the distance. He must have been knocked unconscious when he fell. Yes, that had to have been it. Then he pulled himself this far by sheer instinct alone, not really awake, just scratching his way forward like a mole.

He would simply go back that way and get out.

That’s it.

That’s all there was to it.

He began moving back down the passage, trying real hard not to think of what the tunnel was for or who had dug it. It wasn’t a good idea to be thinking about things like that. The tunnel seemed to be arching steadily toward the right at a gentle angle. There was very little to see but tree roots spoking down, mud, and standing water that he splashed through or planed over like a belly-skimming kids. The stink was hot and gassy. It made his throat feel dry even though he was wet and filthy from head to toe, his uniform pants soaked, his boots full of sludge, his shirt smeared with drying clay.

But dry. Oh hell, yes, drier than dry. Like I been inhaling bone dust and ashy cremains.

The passage began to widen and he felt hopeful.

I’m going to get out of this shit. Just you watch and see.

It was optimism that he figured was neither unrealistic nor misplaced. A good state of mind was more important than anything now. If he could keep his spirits bolstered, his mind would react in kind and find a way out. If he let despair overtake him, he would panic and go mad scrabbling in the muck and darkness. That was unacceptable. He had a wife and son. He needed to get back to them. Besides, the others would be moving heaven and earth to find him. But they couldn’t do it alone; they needed his help.

He moved on, duck-walking down the tunnel.

Now and again, he would pause and listen. He wasn’t sure what for, but it seemed necessary. In the back of his mind he told himself that it was for the sound of his rescuers. Maybe it was, partly. But the dark truth was that he had grown up in Haymarket and he knew the stories like everyone did. Insane things about the underground network of passages and, worse, who had tunneled them out.

He stopped again, breathing slow and even, encouraged by his own bravery, his cool head. He listened and heard nothing but the sound of water dripping, an occasional clod of mud falling.

Christ, it was like the soundtrack to an old movie or something.

Now that the passage was wider and taller, he moved forward at sort of a hunched-over crouch. The water had deepened some, it was up over the toes of his boots now, but it did not alarm him. This is the direction he had come from and this was the one that would get him back out.

Wait until he told people he had been down beneath—

Shit.

He shined the light around and there was no mistaking what he was seeing. There were skeletons jutting from the bowed red clay walls, five or six of them still articulated by the dried mud itself. They looked like they were trying to crawl free, and for a moment, as his heart seized in his chest, that’s exactly what he thought they were doing.

But no, they were long dead.

Yellowed and pitted, crumbling from age. They had been down there a long time and looked oddly like withered corn shocks as he caught them out of the corner of his eye. Alarmed, he fought back the panic that rose inside him like bile. Gruesome a discovery as it was, they were still just bones and completely harmless.

And you don’t have time for fear. You panic now and you’ll look just like them after a month down in this goddamn hole.

He moved on.

With a sort of sinking feeling in his gut, Kopecky realized that the passage was gradually canting downwards. It would take him deeper into the black bowels of the earth and the realization of this ignited a primal dread inside him. His skin pulled tight, his face and neck felt prickly. He waited there, unsure what to do now. The light trembled in his hand. Water dripped from above and ran down his face like tears. He began to feel the effects of confinement, of gnawing claustrophobia. He was breathing hard like the air was no good. The walls seemed to be pressing in on him. For just one sweaty second there, he thought he saw them moving.

He edged his way farther down the passage.

Jesus, it just kept going down and down. Its cant was gradual, but the farther he went, the higher the brown slopping water rose until it was nearly up to his knees. But just ahead, the light showed him that it opened up again. He would go that far before turning back. He would see what there was to see… even if it was just more old bones.

You’re doing okay, he told himself. Just keep your nerve.

He relaxed a bit. He couldn’t let imagination master him. He had his light, he had his gun. The walls were not closing in on him and the air was just fine. The very fact that there was air was proof positive that this network connected with the surface somewhere.

He barely even smelled the gaseous stink now.

After a while, he figured, you could get used to just about anything.

He made himself move on until he was in a chamber that was tall enough to stand in. The water was up above his knees by then and steadily rising. It dripped like rain from above. About all he could hear was it constantly dropping into the puddles around him.

He moved on.

It was narrowing again, the floor dropping away much faster. He kept at it until the water was up to his thighs. He didn’t like that. He saw no sign of light ahead, as from an opening to the surface, just a heavy weave of darkness that was black and cloying and sewer-smelling. The passage opened up again ahead, but only into a pool of murky water that looked deep.

No, no way in hell he was going down there.

Time to backtrack.

He put the light back the way he had come. Yes, it was more reassuring to go in that direction. At least the tunnel canted gradually higher and he would be out of the water. He figured he couldn’t have been too far under the surface. Worse came to worst, he was going to dig his way out like a rat.

Behind him, splashing.

A bolt of white fear exploding in his belly, he turned around quick. For just the briefest of seconds, the light reflected off what looked like dozens of shining white eyes. He nearly dropped the light, a small, strangled cry breaking in his throat. When he got control of it, he aimed the beam back down there.

Nothing.

Just that dark pool of filthy water. A few ripples played over its surface and he did not want to know what was causing them. He turned and started up. He made it maybe ten feet when he heard the splashing echoing up from the pool again and his flesh went tight like rubber. He put the light back there and saw nothing.

It’s your nerves, it’s just your goddamn nerves.

He breathed in and out and turned back… and cried out.

Movement.

Just a hint of it. As he brought the light back around, he saw a dark elfin shape scurry past. In his mind, he had a distorted image of something like a hunched-over black cat walking upright, front paws dangling from chest level.

He moved the light around in trembling arcs, but there was nothing there. Still, he took no chances. Kopecky was a cop with a cop’s sense of reality. He didn’t believe in boogeymen, but he had been raised on the local superstitions and spook stories. His cop’s gut sense told him to err on the side of caution and he pulled his Colt 9mm from its holster.

He moved on, the passage narrowing.

The clay walls pressed in, the roof angled downwards. Water dripped on his head, making his scalp feel sodden and oily. Tree roots reached down like dead fingers. One brushed the back of his neck and he nearly cried out. He moved the light around, scanning it back and forth. And as he did so, he saw something that did make him shriek.

A face.

Again, he saw it for no more than a second, but it was definitely a face, white and grinning, looking swollen as if from insect bites. Its eyes bulged from their sockets like white eggs, huge and sightless.

Automatically, he jerked the trigger of the Colt and sent two rounds in its direction. Whether he hit it, he did not know. He moved the light around and it was gone. It was not in front of him or behind him. It had just disappeared like a ghost.

He sensed movement again.

Panicking, he shined the light in every direction, looking for a target, anything to take out his fear on. He heard more splashing from the pool farther down the passage. He caught a momentary glimpse of something in the light like a huge white spider skittering away. He fired. Something brushed the back of his neck. He turned and fired.

They were all around him and he knew it.

But they were so fast, so well adapted to their environment that he never stood a chance against them. He fired twice more at leaping shadows. A white hand came at him like a blur out of the darkness. Before he could even get the gun up, gnarled gray talons laid his cheek open. The skin hung open in a flap.

He needed room to fight, but the tunnel was confined and claustrophobic.

Another one of them came at him, but this time he heard it and brought the butt of the gun down on its head before it reached him. It made a squealing sound and vanished. Its head had been soft like the bell of an inky cap mushroom.

Kopecki got off another wild shot and then he was crawling through the water on his hands and knees as they closed in on him. If he could just make it to the place where he found the skeletons, he would have room to fight. But they weren’t going to allow that because he was much bigger than them and his size and strength made him dangerous on open ground where he could use these things to his advantage.

They dove on him, tearing and clawing and biting.

He felt their scabrous little hands brush his face, their pasty and reptilian-feeling bodies. He hit at them, shot at them, blindly kicked out at them, but it was just no good. One of them buried its face in his throat and bit out a chunk of bloody meat in a red spray.

He screamed.

He made a gurgling sound.

Then he dropped the light. It was waterproof and floated in the rippling water, casting a weird glow over its surface that reflected up the walls. He swung and fought, but they kept clawing him until he was laid open in a dozen locations. Then they climbed him like starving rats, biting and tearing like they wanted to dig into him. He fired off one last round, tried to get off a second as he screamed with horror and pain but he couldn’t make it happen.

In the glow of the light, he saw why.

He couldn’t pull the trigger because his fingers were gone, chewed to nubs.

Then he saw them. They were small, primeval things, naked, their flesh pallid and strangely mottled. They were albinos from living in the close darkness, spawning in it like cave rats. Their eyes were bulbous and white, set in bloodred sockets, mouths oval like those of sea lamprey, gums pink and set with crooked yellow teeth. Matted hair bleached of color hung from their scalps in twisting greasy braids like looping roundworms.

They made piping sounds as they fell on him, more coming out of the walls of the tunnel like burrowing worms.

He screamed as his blood turned the thrashing water pink around him.

He stared into their cruel, subhuman faces as they made to strike. This was the last thing he saw before they took his eyes, ripping them out by the cords of his optic nerves.