Nocturnal

The Groom’s Walk

Hillary told Aggie to get up. He did so, carefully, lest his feet slip through the bars and that thing below know he was there. She guided him back out the way they had come. As they exited, Aggie heard the hum of machinery, then a distant, heavy click. One last peek down through the bars showed a strong light coming through the door to Mommy’s room. Fully lit, Aggie saw wooden floors and walls that were black with age.

Hillary pushed Aggie through more narrow tunnels until they reached thin well-worn stone steps that led up. After forty or fifty steps, the path leveled out into yet another confined tunnel — but this one led to an open space. In that space, the flicker of torches.

Hillary stopped him just before the opening. She reached into a hole in the dirt wall and pulled out a filthy, gray felt poncho with a hood. She put it on him as if he were a three-year-old. The fabric reeked of mildew and of strange, sour body odors. She reached into the hole again and pulled out a moth-eaten, moldy plaid sleeping bag. She wrapped this around his shoulders, obscuring his shape. Even at his worst moments as a human, sleeping in gutters filled with dirty rainwater, going weeks without bathing, pissing on himself, maybe even shitting himself, he’d never smelled this bad.

She led him out on a flat ledge made of rocks, old timbers, what looked like a dented highway sign, and other pieces of societal refuse. Before him sprawled a huge, oblong space maybe three hundred feet long by two hundred feet wide. The ledge ran all the way around, a path four or five feet wide that dropped off into the open space thirty feet below. Seats of all kinds lined the ledge: folding metal chairs, plastic chairs, benches, logs, barrels, buckets — hundreds of them, all near the edge so people could sit and look down to the cavern floor. Behind those seats, running along the back of the ledge, he saw many dark spaces — tunnels that led deeper into whatever hell he found himself in. A curved, uneven ceiling of dirt and rocks arced above.

Hillary led him to the edge and made him sit on the old highway sign. His feet dangled in open air.

Down below and to his left, at one end of the oblong cavern, he saw the wreck of a huge wooden sailing ship, the kind he’d seen in those pirate movies. The ship’s bottom sat on a little plateau of sorts that held it aloft from the cavern floor. The long, wooden prow pointed to the other end of the oblong space, while the rear of the ship seemed to be buried in the cavern’s wall.

Aggie had never seen anything that seemed so out of place. The ship’s deck looked uneven, but was mostly intact. Some of the chewed-up railing still lined the edges. He saw hatches in the deck, hatches that appeared to be well used, as if they still led down to areas below. A mast reached up from the ship’s center — a mast made of human skulls. The top of the mast was at Aggie’s eye level, thirty feet above the deck, topped by a crossbeam that turned it into a giant T. A combination of burning torches and blazing, mismatched electrical lights clustered at each end of the crossbeam, illuminating the deck below.

At the back of the ship, where steps should have led to a higher rear deck, the wreck merged into the cavern wall as if excavators hadn’t quite finished the job. A door at the deck’s back end looked like it would have led under that hidden, second deck. Through that door, Aggie saw a glimpse of something white and sluglike.

Mommy.

Aggie put it all together. Mommy lived in the captain’s cabin of an old wooden sailing ship. Hillary’s people had put in jail-cell bars and metal grates in the ceiling of that cabin, so that people could look down at Mommy. But how could a big ship like that get underground? Just where the hell was he?

He saw that the cavern floor wasn’t solid. The sides of the mound holding the ship aloft sloped down to a series of dirt trenches that wound in every direction, running all the way to the end of the cavern and also stretching from side to side. The trenches twisted and intersected. They looked to be about ten feet deep, varying from maybe five to eight feet wide. From his spot high up on the ledge, Aggie could see into most of the trenches near him. He couldn’t see into the ones on the far side unless they pointed right at his position.

He realized what the trenches were: a maze. He shuddered, imagined wandering through those spaces, wondered what might chase him.

A flash of gold caught his eye. On the ledge directly above Mommy’s cabin, he saw a golden throne padded with red velvet cushions. Everything in this cavern looked dirty, used, rejected and beat-up, but not the golden throne. It radiated an aura of importance.

“Hillary, what is this place?”

“The arena,” she said. “It is very important to us.”

She patted him on the back as if they were old buddies, as if they were two kids sitting on a bridge during some idyllic summer afternoon. “Now you will see why you must help me.”

Like she needed to show him anything more? “I’ll do whatever you say. I swear to God. I just need to get out of here.”

Hillary patted him again. “Just watch.”

Movement from the captain’s cabin door drew his attention. Masked men wheeled out the boy with no tongue, still strapped to his dolly. His pajama bottoms had been pulled back up. The thin fabric clung to him, matted down by Mommy’s wetness.

Another masked man walked out of Mommy’s cabin. His white, red-eyed mask had exaggerated cheekbones decorated with red spirals. In his hands he held a trumpet.

“Now, the call,” Hillary said.

The masked man lifted the trumpet and blew a long, low note. When he stopped, the note echoed briefly, the tone slapping back and forth from cavern walls made of dirt and rock and brick.

In the shadowy tunnels that opened onto the ledge, Aggie saw movement. People filtered out and started sitting in the seats. No, not people … creatures. Some wore heavy blankets draped over their heads and bodies, but far more wore normal clothes — jeans or shorts or sweatpants, T-shirts, sweat-tops, dresses, tattered suit jackets. The various pieces of clothing covered so many shapes, horrific shapes. He saw skin of all colors, the gloss of fur, the gleam of hard shells, the winking of oozing wetness.

“Yes,” Hillary said. “Everyone comes. Oh, look” — she pointed across the arena to the far side — “I see Sly and Pierre. They are the ones that brought you in. Isn’t that nice?”

On the opposite side of the oblong ledge, two hundred feet away, Aggie saw a thick man with a face like a snake. Next to him, a taller man with a dog-face. Behind them, someone so big the size seemed incomprehensible. And between these three, a tiny form hidden inside a blanket.

Aggie felt the presence of people on either side. He slowly turned to his right. Not ten feet away sat a stubby, bleach-white man with snakelike hair that seemed to wave of its own accord. The man turned toward Aggie, but Aggie looked away quick and pulled his blanket up higher to hide his face. He couldn’t stop himself from a peek to the left — only five feet away, something that looked like a man-sized cockroach.

Hillary nudged Aggie. “Best if you look straight ahead,” she said quietly.

Aggie did just that.

The trumpet player blew a three-note blast, then walked back into the cabin. Everyone on the ledge stood and looked to Aggie’s left, to the golden throne.

From the shadows behind that throne, figures emerged. The first wore a brown trench coat. He had a massively oversized head with an even more oversized forehead, the skin there gnarled and wrinkly. He stood on the throne’s right side. A woman walked out to stand on the throne’s left. She had long, glossy-black hair that spilled over both shoulders. Even from this far away Aggie could see that she was beautiful. She wore knee-high rubber boots, shiny pants and a cut-off Oakland Raiders sweatshirt that revealed a flat stomach. Something dangled from each hip … were those coiled chains? A tattered brown blanket hung down her back, secured by a white rope around her neck.

“Bonehead and Sparky,” Hillary said. “They are Firstborn’s guards.” Her tone had changed. She no longer sounded happy — she sounded disgusted, bitter. “And here he comes, our beloved leader.”

A tall man walked out of the shadows. He wore a long, black fur cloak clasped at the neck with something that gleamed like silver. Aggie saw blue jeans tucked into black combat boots, a black gun holster strapped to each thigh. The creature wore no shirt — short black fur covered a six-pack and a lean, defined physique. When he moved, his muscles twitched like those of a panther. The face looked vaguely catlike, with long, slanted eyes and green irises, a slightly extended mouth and large ears that angled back against the blocky head. He moved to the front of the throne, every motion smooth and easy.

He sat.

Hillary’s lip curled into a sneer. “Firstborn has decided to grace us with his presence. Now we may begin.”

Down on the ship, masked men moved the boy with no tongue. They rolled him to the center of the smashed deck and rested his dolly against the mast of skulls. The mast’s combination of burning torches and blazing, naked electric lights cast harsh, flickering shadows on his terrified face.

Less than an hour ago, that boy had been in the white dungeon with Aggie.

“Hillary, what happens to him now?”

She smiled. “Now the children come out to play.”

Halfway between the mast and the prow, a hatch wiggled. A black-gloved, white-sleeved arm pushed it open.

Two little kids climbed out.

Hillary let out a breathy awwww, then slapped Aggie’s leg. “They are so cute!”

Just kids. A boy and a girl, maybe three or four years old. They wore filthy, secondhand pajamas. The boy was white and blond. He could have been any of the rich little brats from the Marina part of town. His shirt had the faded remains of a San Francisco 49ers pattern. The girl had darker skin and red hair. Her pajamas were blue with a flopping, almost-off iron-on of Barney.

Even from his perch over a hundred feet away, he could see that both of them held something metallic in each tiny, dirty little hand. They moved a few feet from the hatch. As they did, the lights played off the metal enough for Aggie to realize what it was they carried.

Each of them held a fork and a knife.

More kids crawled out, but these weren’t even remotely human. One looked like a wrinkled yellow bat. Another had a bumpy shell, with fingers as long as its whole arm and a huge, hard, long thumb that formed something like a crab claw. Still another resembled a little white-furred, red-eyed gorilla. That one wore a Sesame Street T-shirt and red flannel pajama bottoms.

These creatures waited with the blond boy and the red-haired girl. More creatures came out behind them, but Aggie had to look away — he’d seen enough.

Two white-robed masked men walked toward the boy with no tongue. They undid his restraints. He fell forward. A masked man knelt and tapped the boy on the shoulder, then pointed to the right side of the ship, the side facing Aggie. The boy looked that way. Aggie saw the object of attention: a ladder leading down into the trenches.

The masked men hurried their dolly to another hatch halfway between the mast and Mommy’s cabin. They lowered the dolly, crawled inside and pulled the hatch shut behind them.

The boy with no tongue stood up. Aggie saw muscles under those pajamas. The teenager looked around, clearly stunned by the cavern’s breadth and strangeness — then his eyes fell upon the small monsters.

From inside Mommy’s cabin, the hidden trumpeter played a long, single note.

The boy with no tongue ran for the ladder. He grabbed it and scrambled down, athletic and graceful if a bit sluggish. He hit the bottom and sprinted down a maze trench.

The crowd suddenly cheered, a sound just like every sporting event Aggie had ever seen.

Like a pack of tiny wolves, the children rushed to the side of the deck. Tumbling, little-kid running carried them forward, pajama-clad feet zip-zipping across the dirty wood. They didn’t bother with the ladder — they just leaped, dropping fifteen feet down to the uneven trench floors below. Some landed gracefully. Others hit hard in a clumsy mess of arms and legs. The children screamed and laughed, stepping over each other to chase after the boy with no tongue.

Hillary giggled an old woman’s giggle. She clapped her hands. “So cute!”

The teenager sprinted through the trenches. He banked left and right, without pattern or thought, sometimes turning a corner so fast his momentum would slam him into a wall. Pieces of rock and dirt fell wherever he hit. A trail of dust followed behind him, almost as if he were smoldering. Sometimes the trench walls obscured any sight of him, and sometimes Aggie could see all of the terrified boy.

The chasing children split up and rushed down different trenches, little feet pounding away in pursuit.

Hillary pointed toward the one with the long fingers and the pointy thumb. “Crabapple Bob is my favorite,” she said. “He’s a nice boy. I hope he gets the groom.” She sounded like any old aunt or grandmother watching kids run and play, like this was nothing more than an Easter egg hunt and she was rooting for her favorite to find a hidden chocolate bunny.

The teenager turned down a trench that led straight toward Aggie’s spot. Aggie saw the look of panic on the kid’s face, the wide-eyed stare, the open mouth, the blood-streaked chin, the snot hanging from his nose and trailing across his cheek. And from this angle, Aggie saw the little blond boy with the faded 49ers shirt coming down an intersecting trench from the left.

The little boy turned the corner to block the teenager’s path, then raised his fork and knife. The crowd cheered in excitement. The teenager didn’t slow a bit — he kicked out with all the strength of a muscular, nearly full-grown man. His foot smashed into the little boy’s face, throwing his tiny body backward and into a trench wall. Blood instantly poured from the kid’s mouth.

The crowd booed.

“Aww, that’s too bad,” Hillary said. “I like little Amil.”

The teenager’s running kick had thrown him off balance. He stumbled, then fell to his knees, hands skidding across the rock-strewn path. From behind him came the bat-thing and the nightmarish Crabapple Bob.

Hillary clapped. “Go, Bob!”

The teenager scrambled to his feet. Blood poured from his left knee. He hopped in a mad lurch that threatened to spill him to the ground again.

Kids closed in from trenches on the left and on the right. A mass of shapes and colors, the glint of forks and knives reflecting the flickering torchlight, the happy squeals of children at play. The gorilla boy came from the left, running fast on all fours to pass the others. At an intersection, he shot out and tackled the hopping teenage boy. Together they tumbled into a trench wall, kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt.

Crabapple Bob and the bat-thing dove on the pile. The teenager punched and kicked. The little monsters stabbed. The rest of the children poured in, burying the teenager beneath a pile of twisted, tiny bodies. Forks and knives rose up and down, up and down, flashing clean at first, then trailing arcs of blood.

Aggie watched. That could have easily been him down there. “Why?” he croaked from a dry throat. “Why would you do this?”

“Well, they have to learn how to hunt, don’t they? They have to get the taste.”

Aggie saw the little red-haired girl dart out of the swarm. She held a bloody, severed hand. She ran away from the pack, giggling and gnawing on the thumb like a kid working a caramel apple.

“They’re eating him!” Aggie said, managing to yell without yelling, to pack all his panic and horror into a hissing whisper.

Down in the trenches, body parts came loose. A curl of intestine flipped up, arced wetly, then fell on top of something that looked like a blue-furred wolf boy wearing a Hannah Montana sweatshirt. Blood spread across the trench floor, turning it into red mud. The giggling kids tore at the body, played in the blood-mud like any child in any sandbox anywhere in the world.

Hillary sighed. “They always get so dirty.”

A swarm of masked men, hundreds of them, ran through the trenches and closed in on the kids, white robes swishing with each step. Some of them carried hacksaws. They rushed to the mass of bloody-muddy children, pulled them off and held them up while little hands and feet kicked in protest. Aggie had a brief glimpse of the teenager’s body — pajamas soaked head to toe in blood, right shoulder ripped open, left foot gone, intestine strings spread about and trampled flat into the dirt.

The masked men went to work with the hacksaws.

Aggie felt eyes upon him. He turned his head to the right, as little as possible, and looked out of the corner of his eye — the man with the snake hair was staring right at him.

A tap on his shoulder, Hillary’s mouth near his ear. “Follow me. They have smelled something on you. Keep your eyes toward the ground and make no noise, or you will wind up as the next groom.”

He felt her hands pulling up his blanket, hiding his head and face. It reminded him of being a small child, when his mother would adjust his jacket for him to make sure he stayed warm.

Aggie stood. He kept his eyes cast down as instructed. He followed Hillary’s feet. With each step, he waited for hands to grab him, yank him back, toss him down into the cavern floor where the children would dig into him with forks and knives.

He barely breathed until he again slid into the tunnel from which they’d come, leaving the ledge behind. “Hillary, what happens now?”

“Now they cut up the groom to make the stew. Except for the brains — Crabapple Bob gets to feed those to Mommy. Or maybe they think Vanilla Gorilla got the kill? Either way we will have much stew tonight.”

Stew. The Tupperware. Aggie had been eating people? The realization should have shocked him, he knew, but he’d seen more than he could handle and he just didn’t give a fuck. As long as he got out of here, it didn’t matter at all.

“No, Hillary, what I meant was … what do I have to do so I don’t wind up as stew.”

They exited the narrow tunnel into the hodge-podge hall that led back to the white room. Hillary gave him a missing-tooth smile, her eyelids and cheeks crinkling so deeply he would have thought her blind.

“Oh, that,” she said. “All you have to do is deliver something for me, then you are free.”

Free. Just the thought of it. He would deliver whatever she wanted, no matter what the risk.

They reached the white room. It shocked Aggie that he was actually relieved to see it, to once again be locked behind those white bars. For the moment, he had the place to himself — but he knew more prisoners would come.

Aggie could only hope that when the masked men brought in the next bum or illegal, he wouldn’t be there to see it.