Jon Fore - Black Water

“Are you going to tie yourself to us?” Abby asked.

“No, I might fall or something. I don’t want to drag you in behind me.”

“You know this place isn’t…I don’t know…right?” Abby asked almost under her breath.

“I know.” Ethan placed his foot on the first rung and tested it to make sure it could hold his weight. It did, so he tried the next, and then the next until he found himself some twenty feet below the girls and their flashlights.

He found himself in a large room, this time with some sporadic fixtures. The pieces had succumbed to decay and age unlike the house above. From here, four wooden doors led in four different directions.

The oddest thing in the room was an enormous wooden cross leaning in one corner. It was made of wood and nailed together with large, block-headed iron nails. The wood was worked sloppily into a semblance of art, but so poorly as to make it look almost like someone was belittling its symbolism. He signaled the girls to come down while he went to inspect it.

As he expected, at the ends of the crossbeam and near the base, he found stains of a ruddy brown color, almost rust. He knew this had to be old blood, dried and absorbed into the wood. The idea of crucifying people so recently disturbed Ethan greatly, and he jumped when Madison dropped to the earthen floor.

Abby came down shortly after and they began to inspect the room from where they were, using their flashlights like holy relics ordained to ward the bearer from evil. Near the center and cut into the rock under the sandy floor was a hole suited to hold the large cross erect, satisfying Ethan’s questions as to if crucifixion actually did happen and the idea of it not a product of his slowly warping mind.

Abby approached the door closest to her and peered through the tiny window filled with rusting bars. Just beyond was a room, dark and ominous, with what her flashlight revealed to be a large wooden bed. Chains hung from the ceiling and draped to or close to the floor. Odd stains scarred the walls with a dark rust color. As she searched the floor with her light, she hovered on what looked to be a small white stick, dull and a bit dirty. Just before moving on, she realized it was the skeletal remains of a finger and screamed for the others’ attention.

“This must be where they tortured the soldiers,” Ethan thought aloud.

“This place is sick…actually I think I’m going to be sick…” Abby said around a mouth too full of spit.

“Can we go now?” Madison asked, clearly agitated.

“Yeah, let’s check the other doors. You know, I just thought of something: did you say, Abby, that they put a road up to here back in the fifties?” Ethan wondered.

“Up to the house, I think,” she said after clearing her mouth onto the floor.

“How did the Hearts get supplies up here without an access road?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, I’m betting that there is a tunnel out of here near the foot of the mountain. They had to get horses and food and prisoners and, you know, stuff up here.”

“I guess; I have no idea. Why are you asking me?” Abby was beginning to sound irritated as well.

“Just thinking out loud.”

Madison began to climb the iron rungs back to where they had come, and the first one pulled from of the wall. She fell to the floor with an audible rush of escaping breath.

Ethan went to help her up. “You alright? That had to hurt…”

“I’m fine. I guess we aren’t going back up there,” Madison said, still short of breath

“I got the feeling that we were not going to get out up there, anyway.”

“Why not, Ethan? Do you know something?” Abby asked him, accusation in her voice.

“Well, we walked in a straight line and got lost. Turned around, walked in a straight line, and almost fell in a hole. Turned around, there was another hole. You guys don’t feel the, I don’t know, strangeness down here?”

“I just feel like I need to get out of here,” Madison whimpered.

“Yeah, I feel it,” Abby agreed, her face a mask of growing desperation.

“Let’s look for another way to go,” Ethan suggested as he strode to another of the four doors.

The second concealed a rack of chisels and augers and other rusted iron hooks, all for the same apparent purpose. This room as well was spattered in layers of aged blood, rusted into the walls and on the wood racks.

“There seems to be a bit more to this place than what Brighton told us. I think a lot of torture happened here…and not so long ago,” Abby said.

“Who knows?” Ethan replied as he moved on.

“There is a passage in this one,” Madison called from the next door. “It goes on forever.”

Ethan peered into the small door window expecting to see another of the cruel chambers, but instead his light vanished down a lengthy brick passage. A bitter odor drifted in on the stale air; something acrid and woody was burning somewhere. “Do you smell something burning?”

“No…” Madison said thoughtfully.

“Let’s find our way out.” Abby unlatched the door and began walking down the hall.

The others fell in behind her with shuffling feet, scraping at the sandy floor. The walls seemed wet, oozing moisture along their height. The ceiling was tall, easily twelve or thirteen feet up, but it did little to ease the oppressive feeling of being underground. It made Ethan rather nervous, he being slightly claustrophobic.

Abby suddenly stopped, her flashlight held out before her like a shield. There in the glow stood a man, or a man-like thing, its skin a hideous gray color, scabbed and pitched. It wore a jacket of some kind, but shredded and torn and without any emblems. Its head leaned sickly to one side, dangling a stringy mat of hair that collected on the ground. On many areas of its body, small cracks had opened in the mushroom-colored skin, which leaked a puss-like fluid. All along its body, fixed deeply in the skin, were embers, small, smoking embers burning away at its flesh.

Madison looked at the thing, gagged once, then wretched small bits of pasta at the wall. The odor suddenly became so strong it was hard to breath.

Abby began to step backwards, pushing Ethan and Madison with each step. She was terrified beyond reason, and she could not take her eyes from the thing as she attempted to flee.

It turned its crooked neck slowly and peered at them from around the greasy mat of tangled black hair. When it did, Ethan could just make out the rod in his hand, the grotesque rod with the small clasping mechanism at the top. Like the ones in Mr. Brighton’s house, it was a cinder stick, and possibly the very thing that had tormented Chris before he took his own life. It wore as well a cutlass on a ruined belt, more rotten leather than useful harness. Ethan was suddenly sure that this was Captain Black.

Abby finally lost all control, spun on the two she had been pushing, and screamed, “Run!”

They all took off as the grotesque thing dripped and shuffled after them, its hair dragging on the ground, its steps tearing strands free. It trailed behind it the greasy smoke of burning flesh.

They reached the outer chamber quickly and rushed through the door. The first thing Ethan noticed was the cross now stood firmly in the stone cup in the floor. Nailed to the dry wood was the remains of Chris, his body gray with the lack of blood, the flesh of his neck yawning open to show his spine. Adding to the horror of this desecration was a savage mutilation that allowed the softer parts of him to fall out and collect in a pile of bloodless tubes on the floor. Madison vomited again.

Abby screamed an ungodly scream, a scream that Ethan had never imagined coming from a person, and ran to the next door. Madison stumbled and spit as she followed after. Ethan spun on his heels and drew the revolver tucked at the small of his back. He aimed with the flashlight’s help and waited until he could see the thing that pursued them.