“So, what were you? Workers getting shops ready for the mall?”
“And some construction workers.”
“I was an OSHA inspector.”
The others laugh.
“That’s not funny,” says the inspector.
I shake the bag a few times to settle the bones.
“I think that’s it. Did I miss anyone?”
“No one who wants to go.”
“Good. Now point me to an exit.”
“No.” It’s a new voice. “He doesn’t go.”
“He’s alive. He’s an invader.”
“He has to die.”
“We had a deal,” I say.
“Not with us.”
Skeletal arms and bodies shoot up from the trash-covered floor. Grab on to my legs and the waistband of my pants. It’s jabbers. A whole pack of them. The meanest I’ve ever seen. Jabbers are just animated skeletons with a little connective tissue holding them together. They’re not very strong or solid, but I suddenly have dozens of hands trying to pull me down. A few more crawl completely out of the floor and pile onto my back. I’m covered in the stinking mummified remains of pissed-off clock punchers looking for some payback from the living.
I’m still weak from the Shoggots. The jabbers pull and push me down onto my hands and knees. I drop the bag of bones. They get my right hand under the floor debris. They want to pull me under and drown me in garbage. I relax and let them pull. Concentrate everything I have into my hand. The jabbers keep puling me down. I’m almost on my belly when I’m able to manifest the Gladius. I drag it from the ground, hacking through jabber bodies and sending a shower of burning trash all over the room. The jabbers back off fast. I swing the sword, ripping through their bones as the other ghosts and poltergeists dive-bomb them, driving them back underground. Another minute and it’s over. I let the Gladius go out and fall against the wet wall, panting and holding on to my gut. I think I’m bleeding again, but when am I not bleeding?
A poltergeist drags the bag of bones to me. I pick it up.
“Okay. Now. How the hell do I get out of here?”
“That, I’m afraid, is your problem. The ceiling collapsed over the door and there are no windows and no ladders down here.”
“Great. Can I get a small fire going?”
“Why?”
“So I can make a shadow. I can get out that way.”
“All right.”
I wrap some of the old clothes and paper around a pipe and pack it together tight. Using a cinder block as a stand, I stick my MacGyver torch on top and wait for it to catch. When it does, it puts out more smoke than light. But it’s enough. I know the corridor above me, so this should be easy. Right. Because everything’s been so easy down here. I step into the shadow and I’m out of the cemetery. Go through the Room and I’m back in the passage upstairs. I sit and pour the bones from the bag into my coat pockets. I slit the lining of my coat and drop in the handful that don’t fit. I stop and fill my lungs with air that doesn’t smell like an abandoned butcher shop.
Now that I’m out, I have no idea where the others might be. For all I know, the group following us is right around the next corner, but I can’t sit here in the dark forever.
“Hello,” I yell. I wait. Nothing comes back. I call a couple of more times. Not a peep. I’m pretty worn out. Maybe I’m not shouting as loud as I think. I take out the Colt, cock the hammer, and fire two shots into the ceiling.
A few seconds later I hear shouts and see pinpoints of lights in the distance. If it’s the other team, I’m not going to be happy. If it’s another pack of ghosts, I’m fucked. I slide behind a big concrete boulder that blocks half the hallway and cock the Colt again.
I hear her before I can see her clearly. I know the sound of her sneakers slapping on the floor as she runs. I stand and she hits me like a little leather freight train. Candy throws her arms around me. I’d do the same to her, but she has my arms pinned.
“This is because I like you,” she says. She lets go and punches me in the arm.
“Ow.”
“And that’s for disappearing again.”
“It’s good to see you too, baby.”
I kiss her and feel the others crowd in around me, hands helping me stand up straight.
Brigitte reaches into one of my coat pockets and pulls out some bones.
“Look. You’ve brought presents for everyone.”
“Don’t lose any of those. I promised some dead people I’d get them out of this dump.”
“We have to find our own way out first,” says Traven.
I look around for Delon.
“How’s that coming, Paul?”
He nods somewhere down the corridor.
“We found the door the Grays pointed us to.”
“Show me.”
Delon walks on and the rest of us follow. Candy keeps looking at me like I might keel over at any second. After my soirée with the dead, I must look pretty bad.
“Where were you? We’ve been looking for you for over an hour.”
“And dodging the other group,” says Vidocq.
“You saw them?” I say.
“Their lights,” says Candy.
“Sorry to slow you. I’ll tell you what happened when we’re out of here.”
Delon is putting his shoulder to the door when we get there. Traven helps him. They both pound on it, but the door won’t budge.“Let me try,” says Vidocq. He gets to work with his lock-picking tools but stops after a few seconds.
“The door is already unlocked. Perhaps there’s debris on the other side.”
“Let me try,” I say.
The others get behind me. I bark some Hellion and concentrate on blowing the door off its hinges. A few sparks dance around the doorframe like a bunch of drunk Tinker Bells giving me the finger. My head goes funny. I fall back against the wall. Traven and Candy grab me.
“Sorry. I think I missed.”
Candy runs a hand through my hair.
“Don’t feel bad. All guys have performance issues now and then.”
“Unless you have some Viagra for magic in your pocket, I think I’m done for tonight.”
Delon probes the door’s hinges with a knife.
“At least you cleared off some of the dust. I think we might be able to pop these.”
“You do that. I’m going to sit here and be useless for a while.”
“Of course,” says Delon. He’s trying to sound neutral, but I can hear the microtremors in his voice. He’s as giddy as a little French girl to see me bloody and weak.
Brigitte and Delon use their knives to pry up the hinge pins. Brigitte knocks hers out first and it clinks to the floor. A minute later Delon’s pin pops out. With Vidocq and Traven’s help, they lift the door out of the frame. Delon shines his light into the darkness. There’s no floor. Nothing in there but a spiral stone staircase. It doesn’t even look like it was built but was carved like a gargoyle from a solid piece of stone. The steps are slick with dripping water. Strands of some kind of spongy green growth hang from the sides. Underneath the dirty water and lichen are images of dragons and sea monsters surrounded by strange writing.
“Can you read any of that, Father?”
Traven comes to the front and shines his flashlight over the stairs.
“No. But the symbol pattern looks like some kind of ritual magic. An incantation. Perhaps an invocation.”
“Of what?”
He shakes his head, still moving his light over the symbols.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know. But it’s possible that the stairs function in a similar way to a prayer wheel. Each turn along the path proclaims the prayer or offering.”
“You mean, by walking down these stairs, we might be calling up something and we don’t know what.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“We don’t seem to have much choice,” says Vidocq. “We can’t find our way back the way we came.”
“I saw something like this back home, in a cemetery outside of Ostrava,” says Brigitte. “I was helping friends kill a den of vampires that had been plaguing the city. There was only one way into their tomb, but everyone who tried to enter was attacked, as if the vampires knew they were coming.”
“Did they?” says Candy.
“Yes. There were runes carved into the paving stones leading to the crypt. Each step completed one part of a hex. There was only one path in, and by taking it, you were creating the spell that would lead to your death.”
“What did you do?”
“We approached slowly, walking in a random and confusing manner. Forward. Backward. We jumped over stones and touched others more than once. Whatever we could do to break up the pattern of the spell.”
We’re Gene Kelly dancing in the rain with monsters. I guess I’ve done stranger things in my life.
“Since you’re the one with experience, would you lead us?” says Traven.
Brigitte goes to the top of the stairs. She starts down, goes over the second step, then back from the third to the second, and down to the fourth. She repeats the pattern as she descends. Stepping over one or two stairs, going forward and then backward. It’s like a demented St. Vitus’s dance or a very odd torment for a soul in Hell, and definitely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, no sea monsters burble up from below and no dragons cook us from above. Her plan looks like it could work. Like Vidocq said, we don’t have any choice but to keep going. Traven goes next, slowly and methodically following Brigitte’s clumsy, stuttering steps. I nod for Delon, Vidocq, and Candy to go ahead of me. I have a feeling that clog dancing with stitches in my belly is going to be slow and painful.
We go down four floors. There are no more landings or doors, just wide, empty rooms stretching out from the staircase, each room a little rougher than the one before it. None of this can be part of the original plans for Kill City. Someone put this down here or built around something that was already in place. I don’t like either possibility. And I sure as shit want out of here as fast as possible.
Each floor we pass is like its own mini-kingdom. More tribes and federacies that call Kill City home. On the first is a mixed bunch of Lurkers, some Nahuals, Fiddlers, and some ragged Luderes. Fiddlers are psychics that can read objects by touching them. Like dice or a whole deck of cards. They often work with Luderes to scam civilian and Sub Rosa casinos. I’d say this bunch has lost its touch. They throw rocks and garbage at us as we go by. There’s nothing we can do but duck and dance faster down the stairs.
The next floor is a beautiful fever dream. It looks like another Sub Rosa family. An old one. Their clothes look nineteenth century, patched and stitched a hundred times. They’re eating fast-food garbage-can scraps from the piers on an elegant dining table set with bone china and lit by white tapers in silver candelabras. Probably the last of their fortune that they were able to save and bring down here. Who knows how many times they’ve had to drag this stuff from hovel to hovel over the last century.
The third floor is like a level of ghosts. We can’t see any forms, just their eyes in the darkness. They’re like cat eyes. Bright and reflective. With a whoop, they rush snarling at us like goddamn Drifters. Everyone ahead of me freezes on the stairs, bunching up. A bad idea.
“Move,” I yell.
Brigitte starts down again, keeping to the far side of the stairs.
The clan on this level is so filthy they shine with it. It’s like they’re covered in oil. They lean from their perch and reach for us with hands like filthy, ragged claws. We keep going but the stairs are slick and we’re walking funny. It’s hard to keep a safe, steady pace.
I hear something slide and someone lose their footing. Brigitte falls against the railing on the near side of the stairs. One of the clan gets hold of her hair and pulls. She beats on his arm with her fists but can’t get any footing to pull herself back onto the stairs. Traven leans over the rail and grabs the one holding on to Brigitte. Plants a kiss on his lips. The filthy guy lets go of Brigitte and screams as loud as he can through his plugged mouth. Traven holds on to him, clamping the Dolorosa on tight, spitting sin and damnation down the guy’s throat. Hands reach from the dark and get hold of the man, pulling him away from Traven. The guy sputters and wails. Brigitte grabs Traven and drags him back onto the stairs. They run and the rest of us follow. Fuck incantations and maybes.
When we hit the bottom of the stairs, everyone is ready. We have our guns out and Vidocq is all set with a potion. But there’s nothing down here except dull walls and a poured concrete floor. Brigitte hugs Traven. Wipes the filth from his mouth.
She says, “Děkuji.”
“Anytime,” says Traven.
We start out and only get a few yards before rubble threatens to fill the passage where some of the upper floors have fallen into this one. We play our flashlights around the room. Delon is the first one to spot the graffiti. On both sides of the passage there are big block letters, desperate messages in a bottle.
HELP US.
WE’RE ALIVE.
DON’T FORGET US.
“My God,” says Traven. “One of the construction crews must have been trapped down here.”
“They never recovered all the bodies,” Candy says.
I say, “Why didn’t they just walk up the stairs?”
“Perhaps something prevented them,” says Vidocq.
“If they got caught in a collapse this far down, it would be a bad way to go. Let’s not end up like that.”
“This is the only passage. Let’s get going,” says Delon.