Hallowed Read online

  Looking up through the remnants of smoke, I could see Tracy a few yards above and the light from my father’s lantern somewhere beyond her casting a dim light up the shaft. How far up did it go? Like the answer to a bad joke, my mind automatically responded, “All the way.” Only one way out, I told myself. To get to Claudia, to get back to open air again, you must go up.

  I began to march mechanically, concentrating on the rungs, lifting my feet and setting them down, keeping pace with Tracy above me. As I climbed, I studied the walls surrounding me. “These walls are chiseled out of stone,” I called up, “like the walls of the cavern below us. So the house had to have been built around this shaft, right?”

  “Possibly,” Tracy answered.

  It’s a throat, I thought with a brief spasm of terror. We’re moving from the belly to the head.

  “Hey, Jack, do you remember doors in these walls?” Hank yelled up to Dad.

  When he didn’t answer, Hank concluded: “Because I think I remember lots of doors.”

  “Maybe they’re here and we simply cannot perceive them,” Tracy told him.

  “Like we couldn’t see the fireplace?” Hank murmured, running his hand along the wall next to him experimentally and muttering, “Fascinating,” under his breath.

  Suddenly, I felt a cold breeze shoot down the shaft, a gust of icy moisture that seemed to penetrate straight through to my bones like claws. The light cutting through the hazy darkness above flickered. I was momentarily disoriented. My brain told me that I was looking up a shaft, but my mind told me that I was looking down. The world around me began to tilt to one side, and I could do nothing to stop the sensation.

  I froze in place.

  Funny, I never realized until that moment that I was claustrophobic. I flashed back to the elevator car that had taken me down here and how close the walls had been, close as a coffin. Perhaps at the time, I was too intent on finding Claudia to notice. Now, I recalled a moment in one of my dreams, when I had first discovered myself inside the House. The smell of soot and the feeling of being trapped had been prevalent as it was here. Had that been Mr. Wicke’s way of warning me what to expect?

  My hands began to tremble on the rung to which I clung. I focused on the wall and willed myself to let go, reach up, and grasp the next rung. I bent my knee to take the next step up, but it refused, returning to its place on the lower rung.

  “Everything okay, Paul?”

  The words wouldn’t come. I realized that had no breath to speak. The last of the smoke that had been barely visible before suddenly appeared to fill the passage and threatened to choke me.

  My eyes looked down in response to a touch on my ankle.

  The thing looked up at me with red glowing eyes that slid around in their wrinkled sockets, finding me and locking onto my face. Its mouth opened and exposed dark festering rot. I could smell the death and decomposition of it.

  We have you now, the creature hissed, a sound like a night breeze through the stripped limbs of a willow tree. We who cause the earthquakes and tsunamis, the destruction of Man and that which he produces. We have taken everyone that you care about. Even your dear mother is dying a slow death this very moment in the chaos we have released outside at the stroke of midnight. Your world is no more. Your souls are ours.

  I shut my eyes, consciously rejecting the image, but a vision of a constricted vein entered my mind, a tiny squadron of red blood cells slowing and coming to a deep stop at a narrow bottleneck. Like the image of the throat I’d had earlier, again I felt this shaft was part of a larger whole, a sort of living system.

  “Paul?” The grip on my ankle tightened. I found enough breath to scream, the effort bringing stars into the darkness behind my closed eyelids. I began to feel weak. My grip on the rungs began to loosen.

  “Jack! Tracy! Stop!”

  “What’s wrong?” I heard the distant sound of my father call down the shaft. He sounded a lifetime away.

  “Paul?” I felt my uncle’s hands on my ankles, and I focused intently on my memory of his face.

  “I think I might be having some sort of a panic attack,” I managed.

  “Okay, I want you to take a deep breath,” my uncle told me. “From your gut. Ready? Breathe.”

  I sucked air in slowly through my mouth, filling my lungs, opening my eyes experimentally and seeing the feet of Tracy taking a step down to the rung just above the one I held onto. When I peered further up, I saw Tracy and beyond her, a clogged space filled with dark winged figures, staring down at me with hungry glowing eyes.

  Gregori.

  I had to shut my eyes again.

  “Uncle Hank?” I called.

  “Yes, Paul,” his reassuring voice returned.

  “Tell me that my fear is irrational,” I suggested. “Tell me that there’s nothing in the shaft except for you and Dad and Tracy.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, followed by: “Nothing but us, Paul, I assure you.”

  It was at that moment that I saw the doors. An endless litany of doors of all shapes and materials, interspersed as far as the light revealed. I could see open passages as well, directionless darkness leading deeper into the cavern, some as small as rabbit holes. These were the ones that haunted me, as there seemed to be a dim blue light glowing from somewhere deep within each one of them.

  Consciously, I squeezed my eyes shut against the sight. My fingers from my left hand inched across the cold metal of the rung until it found the threads of the friendship bracelet.

  Claudia.

  I opened my eyes and forced myself to look down. Uncle Hank blinked up in the semi-darkness, the swinging light of the lantern above having a momentarily dizzying effect on me. I looked back up and found Tracy and beyond her the silhouette of my father.

  Unfortunately, the doors were still there.

  “Uncle Hank,” I said with a wavering voice. “I see them. I see the doors. Am I hallucinating?”

  “No,” his voice came back somberly. “I see them too now.”

  “The doors?” Tracy asked, running her hand over a wooden gate-like door immediately before her. It was painted solid red with a glistening gold knob. “Do you think there’s a different room behind every one?”

  Appearing above her again, Dad shot out and grabbed Tracy’ s hand defensively. He gave a warning shake of his head. “We don’t need to know,” I heard him murmur.

  Tracy took a deep breath and nodded, slowly withdrawing her hand.

  “Paul, you okay?” my father called down.

  “Okay, Dad,” I tried to sound reassuring. “Just a little dizzy there.” A thought occurred to me and I asked, “What time do we all have?”

  “Quarter past… two?” I heard my Uncle’s voice say with confusion.

  “Same here,” my father called down.

  Tracy nodded. “Why did you ask?”

  “There was… an event,” I attempted to explain. “Like the other few times I felt disoriented, time seemed to speed up. The two seemed to be connected somehow.”

  “A spiritual attack,” Uncle Hank suggested. He began the murmuring under his breath again that I recognized as a Latin.

  “Do you need more time, Paul?” Dad asked. “We can wait.”

  Taking a deep breath, I managed, “I’m ready now,” demonstrating with a step up the next rung. “Let’s go.”

  Dad turned his attention ahead and started slowly up again. Tracy gave me a brief look of appraisal then followed him.

  Less than five minutes later, Tracy stopped. “What is it?”

  “Some sort of entrance,” I heard my father answer.

  Uncle Hank stepped up beside me and held a rung with one hand while he used the other to shine the flashlight he’d fastened to the belt around his waist up into the darkness. Just above Tracy, I could see an opening along the right side of the wall. I watched as Dad stepped into the opening, taking the light from his lantern with him, casting the rest of us in near darkness.

  Tracy continued up, stopping a fe
w rungs above it in order to allow us to come up and all look through the opening together. It seemed to be carved out of the rock face. The stone steps, revealed by the lantern in my father’s hand, led up around the corner and into the darkness.

  He squatted down at the edge of the opening and looked down at us, the lantern lighting him from below, the shadows creating a momentary caricature of my father. “My instinct tells me to keep going up the way we’re going. Logically, that’s where the surface has to be and I was ready to suggest that… until I found this.” Opening his hand, he revealed a silver charm in the shape of a bat lying in his palm.

  I felt my heart thumping in my throat as he reached out and laid it in my awaiting palm. “Is it Claudia’s?”

  I nodded.

  My father took a deep breath and gazed into the darkness behind him as he slid the lantern off his belt loop. “Graham is trying to lead us this way.” He glanced at Tracy, but she seemed to be staring off into the space in front of her. “I’m thinking I should go on up a-ways just to get an idea if it’s the right move for all of us. If there’s some sort of trap, I figure I’ll see it first.”

  “That would be a mistake,” my uncle stated. “Don’t you remember? This is where Ronnie separated from us before, Jack.”

  My father stared at him, his eyes slowly widening from confusion to clarity.

  “I wanted to go that way, because I was sure Tracy was in there and you didn’t want to come. We fought about it for a while, and by the time we made up our minds, Ronnie had already gone on ahead of us. We had no choice but to go after him.” Hank glanced at Paul. “Just like Paul did.”

  Interesting, I thought. Ronnie Wicke and I had at least one thing in common after all.

  After a moment, my father gave a sort of distant nod.

  “Tracy, what do you think?” I asked her. “Does any of this ring a bell?”

  At first, she didn’t seem to hear me. Then the light of the lantern struck her face. Her eyes were wide and frightened as she stared at the open hole in the wall opposite her. “All paths lead to the Fallen,” she muttered flatly, her voice emotionless. “There is no hope. No escape.” Then she began to scream and strike her head against the wall.

  At the same moment I heard a scream come from a distance. I knew the source of that sound as clearly as I knew my own heart.

  “Claudia!”

  Hank rushed up and pulled Tracy protectively against his chest. She fell limply against him. With Dad’s help, the three of us managed to get her down onto the stone floor of the large open passage.

  The moment she was down, Tracy began to thrash about like a patient receiving shock therapy, blood streaming down her temple from where she’d struck the wall. The screaming began again. Hank held her shoulders down and began to pray over her. She responded instantly, the shrieks turning to moans.

  “The scream. That was Claudia,” I snapped, rising to face the dark passage lying before me. Turning back, I reached for my father’s lantern. “We have to go! Now!”

  Recognizing the steely determination in my voice, my father gave a single nod and started past me into the shadows, lantern in hand. I was on his heels until I heard my uncle’s sharp call at my back.

  “Paul, wait!”

  I turned back to my uncle, preparing myself for an argument. Instead, I was met with his beloved Bible, held out to me. I gingerly took the book into my hands and before I could protest, he said, “Give your Dad the backpack. I just need this.” He removed a small red bag marking “First Aid” from the unzipped pack and thrust the backpack into my arms. “Now go!”

  Pulling the straps of the pack over my arms, I spun back down the passage after my father, realizing for the first time that the ceiling stood only five feet high.

  “God walks with you,” my uncle’s voice trailed behind me.

  The corner took a sharp turn and the light from my father’s lantern momentarily disappeared. A dim voice called back: “Hurry! I’m losing him!” Before I could interpret what the cryptic statement might mean, I realized that it wasn’t my father’s voice… or it was, but higher in pitch, as if it had been sped up somehow.

  The dim light of Dad’s lantern sent a grey glow down the steps as they leveled to a straight run of about ten feet. There was a sharp oily smell in the air now. “Dad,” I called up. “Where are you now?”

  I could hear his heavy breathing. “Here!” he gave a labored call. I heard an odd metallic echo that didn’t suit the acoustics of a cavern. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a rumble and the passage shook around me.

  That couldn’t be good!

  I pushed myself as hard as I could, my legs growing warm and achy. The steady slap-slap-slapping sound of my shoes on the rock steps transformed into a clang-clang-clanging. Looking down at my feet, the dim light revealed that the steps had at some point changed from stone to metal. I appeared to be in a stairwell now more suited to an office building than a cave.

  Reaching the next landing, I was so distracted I nearly collided with my father. I barely slowed, taking the steps two at a time now, the oily smell now so strong it was overpowering. “Claudia!” I yelled. In the distance, I thought I heard an explosion.

  “No, Paul, wait! Something’s wrong here,” my father said, placing his open palm against my chest.

  A wall of smoke hit us and the passage suddenly filled with coughing, panicking bodies, all of them headed down. They stared at Dad and me with wide-eyed wonder, bustling past us with the single-minded determination of human survival instinct. One young woman made eye contact with me and screamed, “Don’t go up! It’s Hell itself!”

  There was an impossibly loud explosion and the entire stairwell rocked from side to side like a ride at an amusement park. My uncle’s Bible tumbled from my hand, and I dropped my knees waiting to be trampled by another oncoming herd of humanity as my fingers enclosed around its spine.

  Dad grabbed me and set me back on my feet. He noticed the backpack for the first time and relieved me of it.

  “What the hell is going on,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, barely able to make myself heard. My father gave a shake of his head and urged me forward.

  The mass around me screamed in unison as another blast ripped through the walls around us. I heard an authoritative voice rise above the others: “Continue down the stairwell! There is medical attention below! Please continue down the stairwell!”

  A man dressed in a fireman gear, axe in hand pressed through the clogged stairwell. He made eye-contact with my father and seized his shoulder. “Please make your way down!” His tone of voice left no room for debate as he shoved Dad firmly with a single gloved hand in the direction of the retreating tide. My father began to struggle and I watched as the fireman brought the handle of his axe up beneath my father’s chin, pinning his body against the wall.

  Acting from instinct, I grabbed the arm of the fireman, his arm like an iron bar. His helmeted head turned and stared at me with crazed shadowy eyes, foam leaking from one corner of his mouth. My grip loosened unconsciously.

  “You’ll only die up there, Paul!” the fireman hissed.

  “Go!” my father shouted at me. “This isn’t real! It’s pulling all this out of our goddamned heads! All those documentaries! All the news footage! None of this is real!” When I hesitated, he said: “Go! Go get Claudia!”

  I turned my back to my father, and the light of his lantern, and started into the darkness alone.

  Distant flames bathed the path ahead in orange. The sea of flesh pushed against me until it seemed they were making an effort to bar my way. A burly man in a three-piece suit seized my arm and railed at me with blood-shot eyes: “Goddamit boy, do you want to die!” Coughing uncontrollably, I still managed to twist out of his grasp and shove through the tightening vise of the crowd with all my strength.

  This is all in my head, I told myself as I flattened myself against the wall and screamed for Claudia. As I squeezed my back around another corner, I could hear clearly now
the steady ticking of burning metal and the death-throes of hope-deprived people. In my mind, I could clearly see them wailing like caged animals, flinging themselves out of windows to meet death rather than face the inferno around them. There was a whooshing sound, like the ignition of the burner of a gas stove only a hundred-thousand times louder. Heat blasted one side of my body, and I imagined that I could smell the grisly smell of burning flesh.

  I knew then what I faced. Damnation was around this corner.

  Smoke filled my lungs as I pressed my hands together above my crucifix and touched my nose to my knuckles. “Please help me,” I begged over and over. “Please help me.”

  The noise level suddenly dropped to near silence.

  When I opened my eyes again, I stood on stone steps again. Taking a deep breath, I started forward again following the only dim source of light I could locate, black candles set into the wall fonts every few yards.

  The steps had been cut shallower and steeper here. I had to take them one at a time again in order to keep from falling. The walls around me grew cold and moist, and as my breathing increased, I began to see each puff of my breath out before me.

  Now, I could hear footfalls—more than a single pair--echoing in the distance above me. From the sound quality, I could tell there was a large open area up ahead.

  I heard a child’s scream and another voice yelled: “Let her go!”

  Tucking my uncle’s Bible against my ribs and placing my hand on the grip of my father’s gun, I started forward.

  Chapter 39 Saturday, October 31st, (2:45am)

  Rushing up the final set of steps, I emerged from the passage and gasped aloud. Surely, I must be outside, I thought. I looked up in an attempt to see the moon or the stars but instead saw more darkness. From the rush of wind and the echoes of minute sounds, the cavern must be gargantuan. Limitless darkness surrounded me. The animal part of me began to panic, and I instinctively edged for the nearest wall. Dim light flickered around a distant corner. I slid along the wall toward it.

  There were four flaming torches set in alcoves in the walls, casting an artificial flickering glow to the large open area that appeared to be some sort of large auditorium, or possibly the amphitheater I recalled Mr. Wicke speaking about with Tracy’s voice. A man I didn’t recognize in a dirty, wrinkled suit stood at the top of a series of steps carved in a semi-circle –an altar of some sort--with a child beneath his arm, a knife held at her throat. A teenager that looked to be my age faced him, a crowbar in his hand. “I ain’t kidding! You drop her right now or God help me, I’ll…”