As I approached the base of the main building, I abandoned the easy going of the stairway in favor of the rocky slope beside it. I skirted the building at a crawl, freezing every time I slipped and sent a cascade of pebbles pattering to the canyon floor, listening for any evidence I'd been spotted.
But that sign never came. My approach, it seemed, was undetected. And as I circled the building, a hand against the coarse stone wall to guide my way, I discovered something. Or, rather, I discovered
nothing
– a patch of even deeper black within the darkness that enveloped me, a void where a wall was supposed to be.
I felt around. It was a hole in the foundation, big enough to accommodate a man. Provided, of course, that the man in question didn't mind sucking in his gut and squirming under a clutch of wobbly rocks held in place by the barest hint of crumbling mortar, and each large enough to squeeze the breath from his lungs should they dare to fall.
Lucky for me, I was just such a man.
I tried feet-first, but no dice – the hole was maybe three feet off the ground, and once I stuck my legs inside, I couldn't reach anything to push off of to propel myself inside.
Shit. Looked like I was going to have to go in head-first.
The wall was damn near two feet thick. Chunks of masonry clawed at my clothes and skin as I scrabbled through the hole, leaving behind the subtle illumination of the canyon and plunging into darkness so complete I couldn't see my hands in front of my face. Stone shards sharp as glass bit into my palms. Phantom colors danced before my eyes, blotches of blue and red and yellow-green. I clenched shut my lids, but the blotches remained. My meat-suit's brain trying to make something out of nothing, I suppose. Not so different from how I'd be spending my eternity, if I didn't track down Varela's soul in time.
The wall ended. I spilled forward. A good ten feet of empty space, and then I slammed into the packeddirt floor. For a moment, I just lay there, struggling to reclaim the breath that had been knocked from my lungs. Then I pushed myself up off the floor and took stock of where I was.
There really wasn't anything to see. I mean there
really
wasn't anything to see. The room I was in was windowless, and as dark as the hole through which I'd entered – I couldn't tell if it was ten feet across, or a hundred. Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped, and the air was cool and damp, raising goosebumps on my exposed skin.
My hands splayed out before me like a blind man's, I staggered forward, disoriented by the utter lack of light to guide my way. The ground was uneven, and scattered with detritus – the brittle crunch of paper, the ankle-rolling
clink
of glass vial against glass vial. Occasionally, my way was barred – the cold iron of an ancient boiler, which reeked like blood and rust; the dry creak of old bed-frames, their springs whining in protest as I shouldered a stack of them and nearly sent them crashing to the ground – and I was forced to feel my way around. The going was slow and laborious, and despite the cold, an acrid sweat sprung up across my face and neck – sweat borne of concentration, and of mounting fear.
As I plunged deeper into the dank basement of the sanitarium, I noticed something: a strange, thick, scratching noise like sandpaper against wet wood. I stopped and listened. The sound was rhythmic and oddly repellent, and for the life of me, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Suddenly, though, I knew exactly what it was – my every muscle tensing as realization dawned.
It was breathing.
Breathing, but not human.
OK, I thought, no big. You're just blind and defenseless in a creepy, creepy basement with what is almost certainly a big, scary demon. So what say we see about leaving said basement before big, scary demon decides to earn that big and scary.
I forced myself to take one step, and then another. It wasn't easy. My meat-suit's every instinct was leaning more toward curling up into a ball and crying. Of course, this meat-suit's former occupant asphyxiated in his own home when all he had to do was crack a window, so as far as I was concerned, its instincts didn't count for much.
I inched across the room, hoping to spy something that would signal a way out. My progress was so halting, and the room so very dark, that at times I felt as if I was walking in place. And all the while, the sickening sound of the demon's breathing enveloped me, reverberating off the distant walls until it seemed to come from everywhere, and from nowhere at all.
My foot came down on something soft and slick and alive – arm or leg or fucking
tentacle
for all I knew – and it recoiled beneath me. I pitched forward, falling to the floor. My heart banged out a drum roll in my chest as a massive, unseen hulk shifted noisily beside me in the darkness. But then it settled down again into what I assumed was a skiminduced slumber, the awful meter of its breathing like the devil's own metronome. And once I managed to stop trembling, I picked myself up off the floor and continued on.
At the far end of the basement was a staircase. Well, half of one, at least. The bottom five steps had rotted out, and the sixth, which spanned the space between the two supports at chest height, appeared to be on its way – it was spongy and smelled sickly sweet like fallen leaves after a rain. But at the head of the stairs was an open doorway, through which spilled the faintest hint of candlelight, so one way or another, I was getting up there.
I placed my palms atop the sixth step and pressed, testing to see if it would hold my weight. It sagged and crumbled like wet paper. I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the one above it and pulled until my toes lifted off the ground, and the wood began to crack. Not great, but good enough. The only problem was, I had no leverage – I'd left my sling back at the squat, but thanks to my tangle with the bug-monster, my right arm wasn't of much use. And there was no way I was going to be able to hoist myself up there on the strength of my left arm alone.
After a moment's consideration – and another few moments of trying to talk myself out of it – I decided I had no choice but to go back and retrieve a bedframe from the pile.
Back through the stifling darkness.
Back past that unseen
thing
.
With a steeling breath, I retreated from the faint illumination of the doorway above, plunging once more into the absolute black of the basement. The creature in the darkness shifted, and its breathing hitched and skipped – its sleep turning fitful perhaps as the skim left its system?
I did my best to ignore it. My best wasn't very fucking good. Like trying to catch some Zs on an inner tube while the lifeguard's screaming "
SHARK
!", only maybe not as relaxing.
I found the bed-frames by pure sense-memory, all the while knowing when I passed them last, I'd been close enough to trip over whatever it was that slumbered beside me. I held my breath, lifted a bed-frame off the pile. Rusted springs shrieked like harpies. I froze, and my eyes clenched shut, some lizard-brain part of me seizing up as I waited for the killing blow.
It never came.
I turned and took a step, bed-frame in hand. My right shoulder ached like hell from the recent dislocation, the joint oddly loose and wobbly. At least I hadn't disturbed the sleeping Whatever, I thought.
And that's when everything went to shit.
A chitinous click beside me, a rustle like a snake uncoiling, and once more, the breathing hitched.
And then stopped.
And then sniffed.
I told myself that I was nuts. That I had to be mistaken. But there was no mistake. Silence, and then two sharp inhalations – rapid, regular – as though the creature was sampling the basement air around it.
Maybe it sensed an intruder. Maybe it was just hungry. But either way, I sure as hell wasn't going to stick around to find out.
I abandoned any pretense of stealth, my dress shoes clapping against the dirt floor as I sprinted toward the stairs. The bed-frame squeaked in time with every step, a vulgar parody of sensual passion. I didn't have the time to find that funny. Behind me – hell, all
around
me – the darkness came alive with squirmy, whispery movement, as the creature behind me roused itself and unfurled.
Christ, how big
was
this fucking thing?
Demons come in all shapes and sizes, but most that interact with humankind at least loosely play by the rules of our physical world. If I had to guess, though, I'd say this fucker didn't venture out of the Depths all that often, because whatever the hell it was, it resisted any kind of sense-making. It seemed to fill the darkness, to encircle me without actually giving chase; its size increased with every passing second. I could feel the strain of my poor meat-suit's brain as it tried to make sense of the contradictory input it was being given. The sensation fell somewhere between migraine and amateur lobotomy.
But still, God bless it, that meat-suit kept on running.
Again, that chitinous click, like some horrid beak clacking shut – right behind me, and also to my left and right, and maybe above. I grit my teeth and kept on going.
A faint susurrus of whispered words jabbed into my brain like an ice pick, unknown to me but awful nonetheless. A threat, I thought.
No – not a threat, exactly. More like an invitation.
I was pretty sure I oughta pass.
I slammed the bed-frame against the ruined stairs, the metal feet digging into dirt floor and rotten wood as I wedged it between them. Something cold and slick wound its way around my waist – a tendril seemingly of darkness itself. I kicked and scratched, and scrambled up the makeshift ramp, rusty springs piercing my skin. The creature bellowed – aloud or in my head I wasn't sure – and drew closer, as if intoxicated by the scent of fresh blood.
My hand found the doorframe at the head of the stairs and gripped it, pulling me toward the faint candlelight. The creature tightened its grasp. I locked my gaze on my knuckles, ghostly white in the scant illumination. The pressure in my meat-suit's brain eased, the visual input a balm against the senselessness of the creature at my feet. Behind me, the creature snapped and clicked – in hunger, perhaps, or maybe in anger.
I glanced backward toward it, and the strength of its assault intensified, yanking me backward toward the darkness that enshrouded it. My fingernails dug into the doorframe, splinters plunging into the tender flesh beneath them.
And suddenly, I realized how this game was played.
I tore my attention from the beast that held me, and once more focused it on the door, the hall, the blessed candlelight. That candlelight was my tether to the rational world, and as I fixed my gaze on it, the demon's grip on me slackened. It squealed in frustration, mirroring the squeal of the bed-frame beneath me. Heartened by its cries, I kicked and thrashed – my foot connecting against something hard and brittle behind me, which caved in with a sickening
crack
.
Suddenly – briefly – I was free. As I pulled myself through the doorway, something wrapped around my ankle, and despite myself, I looked back. I caught a glimpse of translucent gray flesh, the glint of jet-black eye – a ruined beak of brownish red. Pain erupted behind my eyes, and I fought to keep from yelling – unwilling to give away my position to whatever else lurked in this godforsaken place.
It dragged me back toward the doorway, toward the darkness, toward its shattered, snapping beak. I skittered backward along the dusty floor, finding no purchase with which to stop myself.
I found no purchase because I wasn't looking. I wasn't looking because I was too busy trying to reach the mirror.
It was but a shard of mirror, really, jagged-edged and dulled with age. It lay on the floor a few feet to the right of the basement door – tantalizingly close. As the creature yanked me backward, I snatched at it.
Glass bit into the meat of my palm, into my fingertips, but I held on to that mirror as though my life depended on it. I'm pretty sure it did.
As I slid through the doorway toward the creature, I twisted in its grasp, angling the mirror as best I could to pierce the darkness of the basement with the hallway's candlelight.
The creature thrashed, recoiled as the light struck it – but it didn't let go. It still had me by one shoe, my leg dangling off the side of the stairwell, shaded from the reflected light by one rotted joist.
I kicked at the heel of that shoe with the toe of the other, over and over again – still sliding backward, toward the pressing darkness.
Finally, my shoe came off, a sacrifice to the angry beast. I flopped back into the hallway with a thud. Then I crab-walked backward a few feet away from the basement door, my meat-suit's survival instinct and terror working hand-in-hand to get me the hell away from there and further into the protective candlelight.
Don't get me wrong – spent and shaken as I was, I appreciated the help. But at that point, it wasn't strictly necessary.
The creature was gone – swallowed by the darkness below.
22.
Upstairs, a quiet cacophony, like a nightmare cocktail party heard through a shared wall. Myriad drips, drops, and plinks as the torrent outside found its way into the decrepit structure – pooling in depressions, leaking through cracks, pouring off of jagged ledges where the first-floor ceiling had caved in. Dozens of voices, some raised, some quiet, talking all at once in tongues both foreign and familiar. The thud of heavy footsteps above – shuffling, skipping about, and unless I was mistaken, dancing. The crackle of a warped and timeworn record from somewhere far away, playing Patsy Cline at half the speed and twice the warble. And the snap and hiss of candles in the damp.
The hallway I was in extended the length of the building, stretching into murky nothingness to either side of me. The floor and walls were blackened and peeling, as if from fire. The ceiling – plaster, by the look of it – sagged in places, and was entirely absent in others, mildew and yellowed water marks blossoming here and there the length of it.