And Crawling Things Lurk

Muri peered about for Jackie as she walked down the slope from the trestle but didn’t see him. At the bottom, she spotted Erica standing up from behind a clump of brush, re-tying her rope belt and settling her oversized pants on her hips.

“Hi, Erica. Do you know where Jackie is?”

The woman’s face broke into a toothless grin when she answered, “Hi, yourself, hon. No, he ain’t here. He ain’t been hangin’ around here so much lately. Been prowling around town every day since Josie disappeared. Says he’s gonna find her.”

“But it’s been two weeks. If he hasn’t found her by now, she’s probably gone away, somewhere.”

“Well, you know what he’s been saying about her getting eaten by someone with big teeth. ’Course, he also says that same somebody had my cart. I’ve got me another one, now, and I got my stuff back where they dumped it out except for my blanket. But if I ever run across whoever’s got the old ’un, I’d sure like to take a swat or two at ’em, big teeth or not.”

“How would you know if it was the same cart? Don’t they all look alike?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Depends on what store they’re from, first off. Then, the stores get different models from time to time, so what they have one year might be different from the next. And, then, after you push one of those things around every day for a time, you get to know every rust spot, bend and crack on it. Everyone always said they knew it was me coming ‘cause they heard my cart’s squeak. One of the wheels had a squeak you could hear half a block away. Kept meanin’ to oil it, but you know how that goes.”

“So, Jackie would know your cart if he saw it?”

“I’m pretty sure he would. Of course, now, if he was blotto like he’s been known to get, he might have confused another one for it.”

“He seemed so sure, though. I’d be ready to believe him, except when he says Josie was eaten. That kinda makes the rest of what he said sound sorta...you know.”

“I know, hon. Sorta like his spider that crawls out of the dark and growls at him and calls his name. It’s called the DT’s. And when you devote your life to something in a bottle, that’s what you can look forward to. I know – I’ve been there.”

“Do you think he found someplace to hang out besides here at the Hole? Maybe he just gets drunk and sleeps where you don’t see him.”

“No…I don’t think so. Could be, but I doubt it. No, I think he’s just set on finding out what happened to Josie. Oh, he still stops by on occasion, usually before noon, and with a bottle to share – but just one. And when it’s gone, so is he – off lookin’.”

“But, where does he go to look?”

“Gosh, where could he go? Alleys and back streets, I suppose. There’s a few spots around freeway onramps where us folks of limited means can find a place to curl up. He might take a bus ride up to Cotati and Santa Rosa, you know, to be sure she ain’t just changed preferences. There’s other towns nearby, too. And when all that’s done, and he’s satisfied she ain’t nowhere else, there’s all the old places along the river. Now, those places are mostly all locked up, but he shouldn’t have much trouble getting into most of ’em unless he was snockered at the time. I guess a person could spend a lot of time just finding their way through all those places. Even with a few burned down, there’s still enough to make a whole ’nother town all by themselves. Well, a little ’un, anyway. It’s a wonder Cedar City or the county ain’t ordered ’em tore down before now. Anyway, if I was looking for someone disappeared, that’d be where I’d spend a lotta effort.”

“I bet he’d like some company in there.”

“Yeah, I ’spect he would. A person could get – oh, now, you just wait one minute, little miss. Don’t you go getting ideas. It’s bad enough Jackie prowling around looking for what may turn out to be Josie’s gnawed bones. Those places are bad enough to go through without always having that on your mind. Don’t you be going in there.”

“But Jackie’s my friend. If he needs someone to –”

“No doubt he needs someone, especially a friend. He has for years, and he’s lucky you come along. But he don’t need you in there with him. Why, he’d be the first to tell you if you tried. And, if he didn’t, he sure oughta.”

“Oh, all right. I’m just worried about him.”

“I know you are, hon. We all are.”

“Well, if I listened to people when they told me not to do something, I never would have gotten to know Jackie in the first place.” Muri didn’t normally speak aloud to herself, but in the musty and dingy emptiness that seemed to be waiting for her to step forward, her own voice was a comfort, even if she didn’t dare more than a whisper. “It’ll probably get me into trouble one of these days.”

With her mind still leaning toward secrecy and sneaking in where she shouldn’t be, she pushed the door shut behind her then gasped at how dark it suddenly got in the forbidding silence. She hadn’t even thought of bringing a flashlight. She felt her resolve begin to return when she turned back to the door and watched it creep open again a couple of inches because it hadn’t latched, although still not enough to shed enough light into the place to make a lot of difference. There were a few windows, but very few, and those that were no longer boarded over were encrusted with so much dust and grime, little light penetrated. And to think she almost came in here when Tory was chasing her. She swung the door around to full open and up against the wall, holding it twice before it looked like it might stay put.

This was the only door she found that wasn’t locked in some way, so that made it an easy decision about where to start. She was tempted to step outside for another lungful of fresh air before delving deeper, but she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to pass a second time through the doorway that seemed to gape like a hungry mouth.

As she took cautious steps to the end of the counter, and then even slower ones through the open archway to the deep interior, it became obvious that the open door would provide very little illumination for her search. She glanced up with gratitude at the dim, brown light filtering through a bank of skylights. She made wide berths in passing roof pillars around which were amassed a variety of abandoned machinery, office furniture, and miscellanea from better days, shadowy islands that could hide any number of perils. Besides the smell of ancient dust and decades of rodent life mixed with the odor of the river seeping up through the floorboards, another stench lurked. Just detectable over the others hung a strange reek of decay and foulness that had a fleeting familiarity.

Heavy dust and undisturbed cobwebs seemed to cover every surface except…was that a faint line ahead of her, faint swirls in the dust trailing through what could be a series of footprints? She just couldn’t be sure in the dim light stretching that far from the little bit of light reflecting over the walls of the customer office from the open door now far behind her.

Even as she peered at her find, the already limited light diminished further as the door she had left open crept back to standing ajar a mere two inches. She should have blocked it with something. She should go back and open it again and block it. She should go home for a flashlight. She should go home and stay there. But, again, she knew if she did any of those things, she probably wouldn’t come back. And maybe those were Jackie’s footprints in the dust. Maybe he was in there and needed her help.

Rows of roof windows served as skylights even though the only light they passed was dusky brown and dim as she made her way across a large, open space surrounded by smaller spaces, rooms, offices and hallways that were little more than black holes. Still, it was enough for her to see the way as her eyes adjusted. If she just kept following the open way, she should be okay. And if it got too dark for her to see where she was going, she’d simply turn around. She didn’t allow herself to think of all the turns and corners she had gone around that would look very different when viewed from the opposite direction.

Something made a noise, faint and brief, off to her left. She wasn’t sure what kind of noise it was, just – something.

She stood frozen.

Fear gnawed at her and peopled her imagination with hulking figures and slinking, fanged things. She had to keep telling herself that phantoms and ghosts were make-believe, not real, fantasies like in the books from the library. At the same time, she wanted the sound to recur. It could be the very thing she had come into this place for. She was conflicted. Should she call out Jackie’s name? Or would that merely spotlight her location for whatever else had made the noise. She was about convinced that it had been her imagination; that she had heard nothing but her own fears and anxieties echoing in their own tunnels, and then she heard it again.

Was it a squeak?

Could it have been Erica’s cart with the squeaky wheel way off in the distance down some long and dark hallway? But it sounded closer than that.

Or a scrape?

It could have been a scrape. Something scraping along on dry wood could make such a noise. Like if something was dragging a –

It happened again, and she only stopped the scream rising from her tight chest by clamping both hands over her mouth. She swallowed twice to get the lump out of her throat.

A shape moved, a shadow flickering across the edge of her vision off to the left of her line of vision. It was close to the direction from which the noise had come.

Suddenly a rat – a big brown one with orange-glowing eyes, but still only a rat – scampered out of the darkness and through a shaft of brown light hitting the floor. When it disappeared again into the dark, Muri had to stop herself from laughing aloud. She did allow herself a heavy exhalation followed by an intake of breath to replenish the one she had been holding for so long.

“See,” she whispered to herself, giddy in her relief, “phantoms have four legs and a long tail and a twitchy nose.”

She leaned over and peered at the floor, trying to ascertain if the trail of disturbed dust continued into the inner reaches of the building or veered off. It was hard to be sure, but she thought it went on the same way she had been going.

While she was bent over, she heard another sound, another squeak.

She stood up and looked into the shadows before her, listening, feeling, thinking. This last sound had been farther away, like it was clear across a great expanse of a room, or possibly down a long corridor or two. Far enough for it to be echoed. But even a sound next to her would probably echo if she listened for it. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a rat. In fact, it sounded an awful lot like a squeaking wheel on a shopping cart. She could be wrong, but maybe not. With tight lips, she took quick steps forward before more thinking could anchor her to the floor.

In the adjoining large room, with the limited light from skylights above her, she viewed her choices. Before her loomed three open doors, probably offices, and the black hole of a hallway entrance. The far-off sound could have been closer and simply muffled by the enclosing walls of a room. Opting for the easiest one first, she peeked through the nearest door.

It was a small room, hardly bigger than a closet. A tiny desk or table filled half of it, and a badly listing chair took up half of what was left. The next room was an office with three desks and cabinets lining the walls.

The third room was tiny, no more than a closet with shelves on three walls, many still filled with stacks of disintegrating paper. A pile on the floor in one corner looked like a long-abandoned nest, and she nudged it with a toe – for no reason, just to nudge it. With a sudden thrashing and a squeak, a mouse jumped out and scurried behind another nearby stack.

Before she realized that’s all it was, Muri’s reflex was to jump back, jarring against the shelf behind her. A stack of paper, crumbling at the edges with the passing years and lubricated between layers by powder-fine dust, tumbled onto the floor like an avalanche of new-fallen snow, loose and powdery. Before she could think to turn toward the door and get out of the confining space, billowing clouds of swirling dust filled the air.

She couldn’t see.

She couldn’t breath.

With both arms waving against the swirl, she made instinctive turns away from the cloud, first to left and then right, then left again but farther around than the first time, but the billowing dust was everywhere. Her shoulder rammed against a shelf. She spun away from it and into another with her other shoulder. She spun again. Blinded and suffocating, panic gripped her. With no sense of where the door was even though it was directly behind her when the world crumbled, she stumbled forward with yet another twist to the side and crashed into another wall of shelves from which another avalanche of dust-covered paper cascaded.

She coughed and tried to suck in air but got mostly dust. She coughed and reached out with both hands to feel for the door, but found only walls – shelf covered walls.

She felt her way along the wall in front of her to a corner, then the next to another corner, then that one to another corner. The panic she fought to resist was about to crush her when she reasoned that the door had to be in the next wall. She tried to hold her breath, to stop inhaling more choking dust, but she needed air. Her body demanded it. She could argue that she couldn’t inhale as long as the dust was there, but her body wasn’t listening; it wanted air. After what seemed half an eternity, her hands groping along the shelf swept through open space, and she lunged forward.

Her eyes burned with the abrasion of the fine dust, and her lungs burned with a need for oxygen. But all she could do was stumble forward with her stinging eyes clamped shut, her gasping mouth open, and her hands with searching fingers reaching out, grasping air, grasping – clothing of someone standing in front of her.

Before she could stop her forward movement, she thumped right up against whoever was there, someone who didn’t move from the impact. She clawed at her eyes, desperate to clear her vision, desperate to suck in air, desperate to not scream for fear of bringing attention to herself. But, of course, she had already done that, so she opened her mouth to belt out a full-throated scream that every saving angel in heaven had to hear.

Before she could make a sound, a strong hand clamped over her mouth. From very close came, “Shhh!”

Now the hand over the lower half of her face was as breath restricting as the dust had been. She couldn’t breathe! She had just taken a life-saving first breath of dust filled air when the hand had cut off any further intake, and now, it appeared, she would never get another. With desperation lending strength to her clawing hands, she pulled the hand away enough to suck in a lungful of the precious stuff, dust or no. But the dust still took its toll, putting her into gagging and coughing spasms that brought cleansing tears to her eyes.

Her eyes had not yet washed clear when the hands holding her released. She started again to scream when it occurred to her that she was smelling a wonderfully familiar odor of old, sweaty clothes, old wine, old urine, and riverbank mud. Her head jerked up and, in the barely adequate light, she recognized Jackie’s face. “Wha – what –”

A soft “Shhh!” was his only response. He raised his gaze up toward the black square of the hallway entrance behind her.

“But—”

“Shhh!”

From far away and very faint came a squeak. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a rat. It could have been a rusty door hinge, but she thought it sounded more like a squeaking wheel on a shopping cart. It repeated two or three times. Then she heard, also very faint, a heavy thump or thud, like a heavy door closing; although, it could have been her own heart pounding in her ears.

Only then, did Jackie step back away from her and speak in a coarse whisper, and, with his eyes glaring in the poor lighting, he didn’t sound happy. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”

“I—I came to find you, to see if I could help.”

“Are you crazy? You shouldn’t ’ve come in here!”

“Well, neither should you, but you did. I came because you’re my friend, just like Josie is your friend.”

“Yeah, but you’re not – you’re too – I’m not...aw, shit. Muri, you shouldn’t be here. Evans’ll kill me.”

“Then, let’s not tell him.”

“We won’t have to. He’ll know, anyway. Somehow, he always knows.”

“Oh, come on. It just seems like it. You heard that sound down there, didn’t you?”

Jackie’s head made a single, slow nod.

“Do you think it was Erica’s cart?”

Jackie’s head made another single, slow nod.

“Want to see if we can find it?”

He looked down at her and shook his head. “Not with you. You need to get outta here. I’ll go on by myself.”

“But I might not be able to find the way out. I might get lost or something.”

“Okay, I’ll take you out and come back.”

“But, you might not find it by then. If we go down there now, maybe –”

“Maybe you’ll get eaten like Josie.”

“But, it sounded like they went through a door. Did you hear that? Why don’t we just go to where the tracks lead to a door, then you’ll know where to start when you come back by yourself with a flashlight – or with Officer Evans.”

Jackie started to shake his head, but he kept looking at the black portal looming before them.

“Come on,” Muri urged. “Let’s just look as far as we can see. Just to see if there is a door, or maybe lots of doors. Just to give you a better place to start next time.”

He gripped Muri’s shoulders and turned her square toward him. Then, glaring into her eyes, he said, “Just until I say far enough. Right?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, stay behind me.”

When they stood in the frame of the hallway entrance, wisps of that familiar, foul odor wafted out at them in enticing tendrils. The darkness loomed ahead in ever-deepening shades of black, and the trail of disturbed dust at their feet faded out to nothing but a wish. Muri was about to concede defeat and suggest they head back out when bright yellow light flared above her.

From Jackie’s hand held above his head emitted a flickering flame. The hallway about them glowed in the yellow-orange light, the walls fading back to invisibility beyond fifteen feet or so. The trail of disturbed dust before them stood out as clear as stepping-stones in a garden.

He looked around at her and grunted, “Just remembered my Zippo.”

The hallway ended after twenty feet and they entered another large room with another skylight across the roof and more doors and walled spaces around the edges. The unusual stench that had been so potent in the long hall was still present in the larger space, and if anything, even stronger. The increased strength of the odor triggered the memory of her encounters with that stink to burst into her mind. Both times she had run across Sofia it had been around the old woman like an aura, not nearly as strong out in the fresh air as it was here, but it was the same smell. And Sofia was a little old woman that, except for the big teeth, fit Jackie’s description of what he called the thing-that-took-Josie. Was what he saw not what Erica called DT’s after all? Could it be? What else was he right about?

The tracks in the dust led out toward the far wall where a door beside the black rectangle of another hallway waited on the far side.

Jackie led around to the right in a wide approach rather than straight across. The door was on their side of the hallway, and it was just another small closet with shelves on three walls. They didn’t go in. As they eased up to the hallway entrance, Jackie held the lighter out away from the wall, so its light would illuminate a few feet into its depth. The tracks in the dust were clear going in. Then, edging closer, he peeked around, pushing the flickering lighter higher and out far enough to shine its light in even deeper.

“Jackie...” Even to her own ears, Muri’s voice was like a kitten’s cry in the forest.

“Shhh.”

“Jackie...what’s that?”

When he turned back to look at her, she pointed across the hallway entrance, toward something out on the floor several feet beyond it where the light from the Zippo barely reached. He raised his hand some more, and the light, wavering with the movement, stretched out. The tracks into the hallway came from that direction rather than straight across from the other hallway. He raised his hand as high as he could, and the still form on the floor took on shape.

“Stay here.”

“But, Jackie...”

“Stay here.”

He stepped away from Muri and across the gaping hallway, and then the few paces farther to a mound of shapeless mass that was all too much like the form of a reclining person. Muri was pretty sure she knew what it was when she first spotted it even though she had never seen such a thing before, not in real life. It was not at all uncommon to see something like it in movies, though – well, sorta – so she had some basis for recognition. She just wished so much that she was mistaken.

She wasn’t.

Jackie’s search for Josie was over.