V. Larson - Velocity

“This is bullshit,” Shepler complained while trying to pull his shirt loose from a protruding segment of pipe. His elbows jostled a pryamid of boxes and sent a 7up bottle that had been left on top of them down to the cement floor with a crash. Shards of clear green glass sprayed a set of metal bookshelves, clattering and tinkling.

“Look, you stay here and guide me,” suggested Tom. “I want to have a look at what is behind that boiler over there.” He gestured toward the west wall with his flashlight.

“Sure,” Shepler muttered, continuing to tug at his shirt and sweat. When he had freed himself, he sat down with a grunt onto a crate and lit up another cigarette. He sucked on it heavily, wheezed and blew out a gust of smoke with a satisfied sigh.

Tom frowned and considered reminding him of the dangers involved in smoking around old equipment, but then reconsidered. It wasn’t worth it, Shepler would only glare at him with those half-shut piggy eyes of his and continue smoking anyway. He turned to pick his way toward the boiler.

As he came closer he became more sure, and when he finally crested a pile of worn out machinery he was certain. Yes, there was something behind the boiler, some kind of opening. An alcove in the basement wall, perhaps. His flashlight showed the opening as just a black patch in the wall behind the boiler. You could only see it from a certain angle. Tom stood up straighter and shined his light back the way he had come. He gauged it to be 200 yards back to the stairs in the other room. You couldn’t even begin to see that far. The basement was piled clear to the ceiling with junk. He wondered how they had gotten through fire inspections all these years. He suspected pay-offs or brother-in-laws. It was always one or the other.

He turned and made his way around the boiler to shine his light into the blackness behind it. What he saw there made him gasp and draw back.

“What did’ja find?” asked Shepler. Tom smiled at the quaver in his voice.

But the hole behind the boiler made his smile slide away to nothing. It was more than an alcove. It was a room. A forgotten room at the back of this ancient graveyard of brewery junk.

“Found some kind of room back here,” he said back over his shoulder. His voice was hushed. Unlike the stacks and piles of trash in the main room of the basement, this room was nearly empty of debris. A freezing hand tickled his stomach and gave a playful squeeze. How long had it been since anyone had been back here? Twenty years? Since the war? Before that? He knew that the building had been around for a long time and had been a warehouse before it had been a brewery and had been a chemical plant originally, about a million years ago.

He leaned in through the narrow crack between the boiler and the basement wall to get a better look. He saw something. He saw something glitter like eyes then disappear-and then he was falling.

The stack of rotting paper he had been standing on gave way and he half-fell, half-slid into the chamber behind the dead boiler. His flashlight struck the cement floor and everything when black. Only splotchy after-images crawled across his vision like purple slugs. He groped for his flashlight, found it and shook it in desperation. Nothing.

Suddenly, he was afraid. He was caught up by a black fear near to panic. His mouth dried and his heart pounded like a revving engine before a race. He had not felt such fear since his childhood and it was like an old enemy, an old bully, long since left and forgotten, but now returned to taunt him again. It giggled and capered in his mind for a few moments, free to have its way with him, to do its worst. He thought about his heart, whether it could take this kind of shock and that brought on yet another pounding flight of panic.

And then the lights came back on. His flashlight blazed into life again and he swung it around him, eyes wide, mouth open and panting. He gripped the flashlight like a pistol, holding it up in both hands. He found himself sitting on a damp floor in a large room. Alone. There were no eyes. Nothing.

“Tom!” he heard Shepler calling to him. “Tom! What the hell are you doing back there? Where’d you go, man?” Shepler’s voice was girlishly high. He fell into another hacking, coughing fit.

Tom played his powerful beam around the room. There was little to see. A pile of old magazines and a few dozen old pop bottles. Near the opening sat a legless chair, looking old and helpless, like a cripple begging at the city gate.

Then he found a coffee can and a carton of Lucky Strikes. He knew the brand. It was Shepler’s. He never smoked anything else.

He heaved a big sigh. He had discovered Shepler’s hideout. His secret smoking den. It did stink, now that he thought about it, like cigarettes down here. The smell of stale butts was overpowering.

“Okay, Shepler. I found your stash back here.”

“What are you talking about?” came the answer, muffled.

“Cut the shit. Why didn’t you just tell me this was your hideout? Don’t tell me it was anyone else, either. These are your brand.”

There was silence for a few long seconds. Tom approached the magazine pile and took one off the top. He read the faded date on the cover: May, 1916. It all but crumbled to dust at his touch. Rotted by the dampness, he thought. He noticed that it was damp down here, and remembered that this side of the brewery was closest to the lake. Water seeped through the ground to make the walls sweat.

“No one will take your word over mine,” said Shepler. “Just drop it and do your job.”

Tom nodded. It was Shepler’s shrine, alright. He was surprised he didn’t have a mass of ancient girlie mags back here. But there were no modern magazines. Just cigarette butts, thousands of them. He ran the flashlight over the white-gray mass of them. Many of them looked chewed. The man must be desperate to smoke.

He looked back at the magazines. 1916. That was before his grandpa had been born. And he was an old man. 1916 was a long time ago. That chill, that natural fear we all have of the ancient, of rotting tombs and dark, closed-in spaces, hit him all at once. The chill hit like a second wave from his earlier panic. The skin on the back of his neck and his scrotum crawled. Cold sweat formed beads under his arms and matted the hair that covered his forehead.

That was when Shepler screamed. It was a high-pitched, womanish scream. A cry of sheer terror, that any man would have been embarrassed to have attributed to him. The scream was followed by scrabbling noises and what sounded like a man gagging.

“John? John!” yelled Tom as he climbed back out of the alcove and struggled to slide between the boiler and the wall. There was no answer. The boiler, the junk, everything seemed to be fighting to hold him back. He grunted and ripped his pants on a twisted metal obstacle and felt a trickle of blood run down his right leg to wet the top of his socks.

His flashlight played wildly on the ceiling of the brewery basement. And then he was out. The vast cavern of the basement seemed airy and open after the alcove he had left behind. He swung the beam in an arc to cover the area that Shepler should have been in. He breathed hard and sniffed. His nose had started running because of the dust and exertion. Shepler was nowhere in sight.

“John, answer me.”

Nothing. With hands that trembled slightly, Tom immediately followed the emergency code that he had worked out during his long hours of reading fiction in a dark factory. He loaded his pistol with the live rounds from his breast pocket and to his credit he didn’t drop any. Then he switched his flashlight to his left hand and gripped his revolver firmly with his right. He immediately found comfort and a feeling of power in the weight of the weapon.