The Lost and the Damned (21 page)

“I’m not going any farther,” she said, stopping in place. I stopped a step or two ahead of her.

“Come on, it’s not too bad,” I said.

“Yeah, it is. Look, I’m wearing slippers here. Hospital slippers. They’re not exactly good arch support. My feet hurt.”

“I’m sure you can keep walking,” I said. “We haven’t been walking that long.”

“Sure, I can keep walking, but that’s not the point. My feet hurt. I don’t want to keep walking if we’re just walking for the sake of walking.”

“But we’re not going to get anywhere standing still,” I countered.

“I have yet to be convinced by the idea that walking is any different,” she said petulantly.

Frustrated, I threw up my hands. I decided that if she was willing to stay there, that was her choice. If I walked away, I was sure she’d follow. I wagered she was more afraid of being alone than losing the argument. I hoped.

I turned around and walked forward quickly. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do. I turned and stepped forward, banging my face on something hard. I stumbled back in pain, holding my nose, hoping it wasn’t broken.

Behind me, Katie started laughing. That just made me mad. Here I was in pain and she was laughing at me. But the longer she laughed, the more I softened. It was not a mocking, malicious laugh. It was a laugh of genuine mirth and the first real laugh I had heard her make. It made me realize that for all she had been through, there was someone special underneath all those defenses and trauma.

She kept laughing, covering her mouth. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing,” she said between giggles, trying to stifle herself, “But it’s so funny.”

“It’s not funny!” I said, my voice muffled from my hand holding my nose. I knew I was blushing.

“No, you’re right, it’s not funny,” she said, still laughing. “It’s fucking hilarious!” she said, descending into another fit of laughter, clutching her sides.

Finally, after I was thoroughly ridiculed, she seemed to recover. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, still smiling a dazzling smile. “Are you hurt?”

I rubbed my nose.  It didn’t seem broken. “Only my pride, I think.”

“It was really funny,” she said.

“Yeah, I got that,” I said, still rubbing my nose. “So what did I walk into?”

I turned around and still saw just whiteness. I reached my arm forward, finding nothing in front of it. I took a step and my finger tips touched something hard and unyielding. I pressed my hands against it and identified a hard surface. I followed it up and down to the “ground”. What was it? An invisible barrier? The edge of the world? A wall cleverly painted white? It was a new mystery, but it was something.

“What is it?” asked Katie.

“A wall? I have no idea.”

She walked forward, arms held in front of her until she also touched it. “Wow, trippy.” She felt around it. “Maybe it’s a force field.”

I shook my head and continued feeling around. I discovered that it ended about a foot to the left of where my hand first touched. After that it was just empty space. “Hmm,” I said.

“What?” asked Katie.

Not answering, I waved my arm in the space next to the surface, confirming it was completely empty. Tentatively, minding my nose, I stepped forward in that place. I turned my head right, looking at the surface. After a moment I relaxed and stepped forward. It was more obvious from the other side.

“Hey, where’d you go?” asked Katie. “You just disappeared.”

“Walk around it,” I said.

Katie stepped around, saying a simple, “Oh,” when she saw it.

On this side it was plainly a large metal door. This door had seen some very bad years. The door had visible rivets that had rusted over. There was no sign or designation on the door. It was just a giant rusted metal door with a handle.

“I guess it rains a lot here,” Katie said.

I gave her my best what-the-hell look.

“Well, you see the rain could have caused it to rust up so heavily and…”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said.

“Just trying to help.”

I tapped the door, hearing an obvious metal sound. I gently touched the rust, trying not to cut myself on it. I can’t remember the last time I got a shot, but lockjaw was not appealing. The rust felt real, the metal strong, probably heavy. Steel?

“So we have a big metal door standing in the middle of whiteness,” prompted Katie.

“That sums it up,” I said, staring at the door.

“You plan on opening it or just staring at it?” asked Katie.

“I figured that we might want to check it out first and…”

“So when there’s nowhere to go, you are all gung-ho about walking, but once we have a place to go, you get cold feet?”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew she was right. I just had a bad feeling about the door. But at the same time, where else were we going to go?

I wrapped my hand around the handle which was thankfully free of rust. I took a deep breath and pulled. The door was much heavier than I expected, but not too heavy I couldn’t move it. I had to lean back to pull it open. At first I didn’t think anything was happening. Then with a squeal of metal, the door began to slowly open. I continued to lean back, taking a step back so I could lean more and more. As I pulled it open, Katie looked inside.

“Whoa,” said Katie, staring through the door.

I gave the door one final pull, then stood up straight, wiping the sweat off my brow. The door was wide enough for us to comfortably get through, even if it wasn’t completely open. I walked around and stood next to Katie, looking through the doorway.

We looked into a dark dimly lit passage. It was similar to a steam tunnel, pipes lining the passageway. It disturbed me to see that pipes seem to travel from either side of the door from our side down the hallway. The passageway was dark and dank, lit only by hanging lights in metal cages. Much of the metal in the tunnel was rusted. Water leaked from many of the pipes. The floor was covered with a thin layer of murky water. The air that spilled out of the door was thick and musty. It looked like we were going to go from a white nowhere to the dark bowels of a building or sewer system.

“Do we have to go in there?” asked Katie.

“Do you want to stay here?” I countered.

“Good point,” she said. “Still…”

“What?”

“Maybe the whiteness isn’t so bad,” she said.

“I thought you hated it?”

“No… well, yes. It’s just that…”

“What about it?” I said.

“This just looks like the set of a horror movie.”

I admitted she had something there. I didn’t like it either. Still, one of us needed to be brave. That meant convincing her of it. “It’s just a steam tunnel,” I said, “Lots of buildings have them. Disney World has them, and that’s the happiest place on Earth.”

She immediately waggled her finger at me in air. “I don’t want to even start with how many things are wrong with that statement.”

“Okay, forget Disney. But lots of places have them.”

“And this is just like those?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How many have you been in?”

“Well, none,” I admitted.

“And so you see my point,” she said.

“Then this will be my first,” I said, stepping forward into the passageway. The water splashed as I stepped in, murky water sloshing around my shoes. I turned around and stared back at Katie.

“Fine, fine,” she said, “I’ll go in, I’ll go in. But ask me to split up and search the place, and I am fucking gone.”

She walked to the doorway, then took a very slow tentative step over the threshold to the passage. Murky water welled around her foot.

“Eww! Eww! Eww!” she said, her face twisted in disgust. She saw my doubting look. “I’m in a fucking slipper! It’s like a thin piece of rubber and then fabric. Eww! I can feel the water between my toes! Eww!”

I began to walk forward, peering forward in the corridor. Behind me I heard Katie making further sounds of disgust. I knew she was having a tough time, but I also knew it was just dirty water. I tuned her out and concentrated on figuring out what laid ahead.

The steam tunnel went straight. I didn’t see any intersections. I saw at least one hatch on the ceiling, but it seemed pretty rusted. There had once been a ladder that went up to it, but the ladder had also rusted and broken into pieces. I alerted Katie to the pieces, then went onward down the hallway. The air was very humid. In some places, steam spewed forth from a pipe, almost obscuring the way ahead. By the time we reached the door, we were both having very bad hair days.

The door was another large metal door like the one we had entered the steam tunnels in. That at least provided us some continuity. It didn’t look quite as rusted as the other door, so I had more confidence in it opening than the last one. Without a word of discussion, I grabbed the handle and pulled. While the door moved easier, I was still leaning back in a puddle of water. I slipped at first, but after much effort I pulled the door open enough for us to get by.

The room beyond was strange. That might not be the right word to use. At this point in my journey, strange had lost all sense of meaning. The room was different and confusing. I had not seen a room like it, though I had no great knowledge of steam tunnels and the inner working of utility systems. It did not make sense to me, but without knowing its intended function, I couldn’t say if it was pointless.

The room was round and made of metal. I could see the rivets, knowing that the room seemed constructed of sheets of metal. The ceiling was flat. It was the bottom of the chamber where things differed. There was no floor of the chamber. Instead, the floor sloped down like a funnel, growing ever narrower to a three foot wide circular hole disappearing into darkness. The room had only two doors; I could see the other door across from us. Between the doors was a bridge made of a metal grate, like a catwalk. The bridge was about thirty feet long and about three feet wide. The metal grate had a very wide pattern, each hole in the grating two inches wide, giving a very good view of the funnel below. Above the catwalk hung three large lamps enclosed in cages, each over a different section of catwalk. The lights were currently off, but there was enough light from the corridor to give a dim view of the room.

I walked forward into the room, pausing before going over the bridge. I took a step onto the bridge, putting my weight onto my foot. Then I shifted my weight. The bridge shook a small bit, but overall it seemed to stay in place. Katie peered around the door before coming into the room. “What do they use this room for?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said, shifting my weight more. The bridge still seemed pretty secure. “Access room? Overflow?”

“Sure,” she said, not convinced, still clutching the door and peering from behind it. “How’s that bridge look?”

I jumped up and came down hard on the bridge, a loud clank echoing through the chamber. “Seems pretty stable.”

“I guess so…” she said, not moving.

“Come on,” I said.

“I just don’t know about this room,” she said. “I have a bad feeling about this room.”

“I have a bad feeling about this whole damn place; I’m not sure how you can say it about just this room.”

“I just…”

“Come on, there are as many chances of monsters behind you as in here.” Oh how I regret these words.

“I guess you’re right,” she said, stepping around the door to join me at the start of the bridge.

Behind us, I heard the noise of metal sliding against metal. I spun around quickly, just barely seeing a new door slide down in front of the door, ceiling off our exit. This also cut us off from our light source, plunging us into darkness.

I heard Katie shriek while I twisted around, looking for anything in the darkness. I tried not to move; I couldn’t remember how close I was to the bridge or its edge. I hoped that Katie would do the same, but all I could hear was her shriek. She was closer to the door so she should be safer. A moment later, the thought sparked in my head: someone knows we’re here!

Suddenly I heard a siren. Not a police car siren, but more of a red alert siren. Below the bridge at the opening of a hole, a red light turned on. This was more similar to a police siren light, causing red light to spin around the bottom of the room as the siren blared. It wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the whole room, but the red light spilled up through the grate holes in the bridge as it spun. I watched as the light spun and revealed portions of the metal walls – rusted metal walls stained with something very dark.

My thought was very clear: We’re fucked now!

I looked down through the grates.  Something was moving near the hole. It was right near the light, so every time the light went my way I was blinded again. It was something pale white, dyed red by the light. Something moving. Writhing. Were those arms? Legs? I was confused. I couldn’t get a good look at what was there, but something was coming out of the hole. Maybe some
things
. I just wish I could get a good look at what was down there.

All three hanging lamps began to flicker and then turned on. I could finally see the chamber more clearly. Metal sheet walls, attached with rivets. The walls were covered with rust and dried blood splatters. The entire funnel section was completely covered with dried blood. It was very clear to me; blood dripped down into the funnel. That was the function of this room.

I looked down at the hole. I saw the most disturbing thing I had seen so far since I entered the hospital. Scrabbling up from the hole was a monstrosity. Multiple monstrosities. These were beings of pale flesh and mockeries of the human forms. One form was a human-like torso, stopping at the waist, with two arms and a head. The head had a gibbering human-like mouth with sharp teeth. The worst part was its eyes. Instead of eyes, it had blank, smooth flesh. It didn’t even have eye sockets that skin had grown over. This thing was conceived without eyes. No two of these creatures looked alike. Another was a set of legs attached to a torso, armless with eyes peering out from its chest. Another was a head, torso, but no limbs. All were weird amputee mockeries of humanity.

I watched them all pulling themselves up with whatever locomotion they had, hauling themselves over the lip of the hole to the bottom of the funnel. The walls of the funnel were steep, so I thought at least that would keep them down in the funnel. What were they waiting for? Was this some sort of feeding mechanism? Were they waiting for blood to drain into the funnel?