William Meikle - The Hole

“Just keep the lights on,” she said.

Charlie looked even more puzzled, but he seemed to have regained some composure, and when he raised the cigarette to his lips, his hands had stopped shaking.

“Light’s ain’t gonna keep the VC away, Doc,” he said. “At least it never worked back in the day.” But she saw that he was already wondering whether it had all been in his mind.

“They were never really here,” she said. “At least, not in the sense you think.”

“They were real enough,” he replied. “I ain’t had enough to drink to be having the DTs, Doc, if that’s what you’re thinking?”

She took the old man’s free hand and squeezed.

“If it’s the DTs, then I’m getting them too,” she replied. “No, it’s what we said earlier, Charlie. There’s something in town playing tricks on us. I don’t think it can actually hurt us.”

But don’t quote me on that one.

Charlie looked ready to argue, but thought better of it and went back to sucking down as much smoke as he could get into him. He finally dropped the butt into the nearest sink and turned on the tap, quenching it with a hiss.

He looked at the gloop on the floor, and muttered something under his breath that Janet didn’t catch—something about old man Hopman and the mineshafts that made little sense to her. He turned and looked Janet in the eye.

“You watch out for me, and I’ll watch out for you, Doc. We got a deal?”

She shook on it, and they went to work.

Charlie got three big pots of coffee going while Janet cleared up the mess on the floor. It had already started to rot and stink and took a lot of elbow grease and disinfectant before she was happy it was all gone. It was only after she washed her hands, scrubbing over and over again until her palms felt raw, that she wondered whether she should have taken samples for the CDC.

She was back in the main bar handing out coffee five minutes later when Big Bill returned. She offered him a cup, but he went straight behind the bar and poured himself three fingers of rye, knocking it back in one gulp before speaking.

“I don’t want anybody going outside. Nobody leaves. Got it?”

Janet was watching the sheriff closely. His color was high on his cheeks, and he breathed heavily, as if he’d just been running. He refused to meet anyone’s gaze, and the slightest sound had him reaching for his pistol.

He’s spooked. He’s seen something.

Nobody spoke. The sight of the big sheriff in a funk raised the tension in the room noticeably. To Janet’s surprise it was Charlie who knew what was needed.

“Hey, Big Bill,” the older man said. “If you ain’t gonna pay for that booze, I hope you’ve got enough for all of us?”

A couple of people laughed at that, and the sheriff looked ruefully at the empty glass in his hand.

“I don’t see no barman, do you?” he said. “We can settle up with Tony later.”

Janet doubted that. She’d seen the barman earlier… getting into one of the other buses; one of those lost when the convoy fell into the collapsed road. She didn’t say anything. Charlie had handled the situation deftly enough and the tension, if not gone, had been defused for the moment.

Charlie lightened the mood further by going round behind the bar.

“You heard Big Bill,” he said, loud enough for all to hear. “We can settle up later. Form an orderly queue.”

Within seconds he had several customers, although Janet was amused to see that Fred Grant wasn’t one of them. Sarah Bennett slept with her head on his shoulder, and he stroked her blonde hair, gently, lost in some faraway thought.

Janet passed out the last mug of coffee, and motioned for Bill to meet her in the kitchen. Almost as soon as the door was shut behind them he grabbed her in a bear hug, squeezing so hard she became short of breath.

“Easy, big guy,” she said in his ear. “I might be needing these ribs sometime.”

His grip eased, slowly. When she pulled her head away and looked him in the eye, he had fresh tears rolling down his cheeks.

“It’s that bad?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“The town’s not going to be recovering from this. Ain’t nobody here but those we have in the bar as far as I can tell. Newman’s store has fallen in, as has the bank. Your surgery is still there, but there’s a new hole between here and there. And my office is just gone, fallen into some black deep.”

He paused as if unsure how to continue.

“You ain’t gonna believe me, Janet. But I saw them again, down in the holes. Only they’re not holes. They’re doorways to hell. And there are devils down there.”

She returned his embrace and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.

“You’d be surprised what I’m prepared to believe tonight,” she said. She stayed in his arms as she told him what had happened with Charlie and the resulting mess of protoplasm. Some of the sheriff’s composure was coming back, slowly but surely, but he showed no signs of letting her go.

“More of that stuff we found when the… devils … burned up?”

She nodded.

“I suspect the stuff is the cause of what’s happening here. Though the how of it completely escapes me. And whether it’s the cause of, or caused by, the collapsing ground, I have no idea.”

“Let’s hope we’re given enough time to find out,” Bill said. “Ain’t no way to live, wondering if the ground is going to swallow you up and send you to hell at any second.”

They stayed there, holding each other, until a shout came from the bar beyond.

“Best get through here, Sheriff.”

Several things surprised Fred Grant. He had a girl sleeping on his shoulder, he was sober, and free booze was on offer.

And I don’t want any.

Despite his drinking from the evening before, the time since then had left him stone-cold sober. The events themselves were already taking on a distant, dreamlike quality. But the girl with her head on his shoulder was real. He had got her out of the truck. Maybe he hadn’t saved her life, but he felt responsible for her, in a way that excited and frightened him in equal measure. Maybe it was the blonde hair, and the memory of another girl falling into darkness, or maybe it was just a simple need for contact with another person in troubling times. Whatever it was, he was content, for the moment at least, to sit and let her sleep.

He felt her heat against his arm, like sitting too close to a radiator, but not nearly as uncomfortable. But it brought a memory of another hot body pressed against his legs, and of a glass, spinning, in a cold room, and of words, picked out on the board.

F… R… E… D… I… S… D… E… A… D

He came awake with a start as his head nodded to fall on his chest.

Ain’t no sense in sleeping if that’s what my dreams are going to be like.

He stroked the girl’s hair again, that simple act bringing him more calm than he’d felt since heaving Charlie out of the hole the morning before. He was almost content.

One person in the room wasn’t content at all. Ellen Simmons, taking advantage of the fact that Doc and the sheriff were in the kitchen, tried to take charge.

“We can’t just sit here and wait to die,” she said.

Fred had some sympathy with that statement. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, but at least here they were warm, and had food and light, as long as they lasted. But the Simmons woman wasn’t content with that.

“We’ve been paying that sheriff for years, for what? To sit on his ass and eat donuts? And now when we need him, where is he? Canoodling with that so-called doctor, that’s what. Well I for one am not waiting any longer for him to get a backbone. I’m heading out.”