Jon Fore - Black Water

He felt as though he hung for just a split second before falling. He was not sure the distance, and at this point, did not bother worrying. He struck the floor hard, sending a raging burst of pain up his feet and into his ankles before rolling through the skeletal debris.

“Ethan!” Abby screamed down to him.

“It’s not that far, just try to roll when you land!”

Madison landed hard, but instead of rolling, she sat smashing a skull beneath her. She shrieked in pain and rolled to her side.

“Is she alright?” Abby shouted down. Before anyone could answer, a tangle of long hair oozed over the edge of the hole.

“Abby! He’s there, above you!”

Abby looked up and screamed in pure terror. The thing pulled an ember from the side of its neck and dropped it over the side, right at Abby’s open mouth. She tried to squirm away from it, but it glanced off her shoulder and she screamed again, this time in pain. She did not wait for another pelting, and let go of the chain.

“Roll!” Ethan shouted to her as she landed, and she managed to do just that, scattering bones as she went.

Another cinder came down and landed close to Madison who began to squirm out of the way on her side, much like a snake trying to escape that which had wounded it. Ethan crawled away from the opening as well, not ready to put weight on his feet quit yet. From above, a screech—more iron across stone—lanced down, sending waves of nausea through them.

“I don’t think he can reach us here,” Ethan spoke his hope aloud.

“I think I hurt myself,” Madison said matter-of-factly. She lifted herself up and threw her bottom out at Ethan. In two places, bone had pierced her jeans and stabbed into the meat.

“That doesn’t look too bad, Madison—could have been much worse. I don’t think I have any permanent injury. How about you, Abby?”

“My feet are ringing like bells.”

“That will pass. I need the first aid kit; we got to patch Madison up.”

“So much for the website, huh?” Madison asked sarcastically.

“You’ll be fine. You could always get a tattoo to cover these if they scar.” He gently removed the bone fragments and was pleased to see they had not gone in very deep. “These look superficial, but I want to scrub them out a bit. These bones don’t look very clean.”

Madison said nothing and just rose to her knees and dropped her pants. Ethan began rubbing the cuts with small peroxide pads, cleaning out the bits of debris.

“Anything for a burn in there?” Abby asked. “That fucker got me in the shoulder.”

Ethan used a few stretchy bandages on Madison before condemning her wonderful flesh to the confines of her tight jeans. “Let me see the burn…”

Abby dropped the side of her flannel then skinned her t-shirt over her arm. There, but thankfully small, was a length of seared flesh. It was cauterized and dry, but clearly painful. Ethan knew that if it had been worse, it would not have hurt as much. That was the merciful thing about burns, if there was such a thing: the worse they were, the less nerve there was to tell you about it.

“It’s pretty much a clean wound, Abby. I can use some of this cream stuff to make it softer and not crack open, but that’s about it.”

“Have at, Dr. Phillips,” she replied dryly.

As Ethan dressed the burn as best he could, Madison approached the flashlight Ethan had dropped and searched upward. “I think he’s gone.” She retrieved the loose flashlight and pistol and brought them back to Ethan.

Ethan began to look around the room with his light while Abby pulled her shirt back on. The space was so large that no walls could be seen around them, just scattered bones and endless brick flooring. “Well, someone has to pick a direction.”

Abby stood and pointed in a direction, wincing at the pain biting into her shoulder. “Let’s go that way.”

Ethan stood slowly, testing his feet. He found them sore and knew there would most likely be bruising later on, but he could walk. “Let’s go,” he said and began leading them in the direction Abby had chosen.

Before they could take their first step, a tapping sound came to them from many directions—a single tap of metal against stone, just once, but enough to freeze them in their tracks.

“What was that?” Madison whispered, and it sounded again.

The sound echoed back to them over and again, its source still unclear, their direction now a question. The tapping sound was somewhat mechanical, but still something they immediately dreaded, not for the burning thing above, but of its own evil merit. Whatever the source, it was clear it was of ill intent.

“Which way is that coming from?” Abby whispered, straining to hear the sound again.

Before anyone could answer, the sound drifted through the darkness of the room.

“I don’t know…” Ethan whispered as he fumbled bullets into the spent chambers of the revolver.

“Witch…” The word groaned from every direction, a hideously dry voice, but wet in its consonants, then the tapping sound again.

Chills rose upon three necks and fear bloomed among them as an ugly flower.

“We can’t just sit here, we have to go,” Abby hissed as she pulled Ethan in a random direction.

Madison came as well, clinging to Ethan’s shirt like a lost child. Within a few paces, they came to the first gravestone. It was simple and arched across the top, pitted gray stone bearing no cross. Inscribed in the stone was a single word, WITCH.

Within a few steps, the three found countless more head stones, rotating outward in a spiral fashion, all etched with the word WITCH. There was barely enough space between them to place a body, if a body actually hid beneath the brick flooring. Abby reasoned that if any remains did exist below these bricks, they would have to be as ashes, a common end to a witch.

The tapping sound came again, this time not near them but to one side. The deceptive echoes had been overcome with what they hoped was a wall close by. They tried to quicken their pace, but the small headstones slowed their progression, the spiral staggered and careless in its construction. The darkness around them was perfect, with the exception of their flashlights, but they finally came to a curved wall. It was not the stacked shale stone of the other rooms or the large stone blocks, but the same small bricks of the floor. They stacked one atop the other with gritty cement and gave no clue as to the direction they should go.

The three paused briefly until the tapping sound echoed to them from the other side of the room. “Witch…”

Abby chose once more and made a right in search of a door or arch, a ladder or rope, some form of escape from the dreadful presence. Their lights seemed inadequate, too weak to guide them through a room of this size, but they continued heedlessly, spurred on by the continued metallic tapping.

Madison had known fear in her life—had thrilled in it, paid for it in theaters and in amusement parks; however, this was beyond even her tastes. A graveyard could be scary enough, but in this pitch-blackness, it could still the heart, shorten the breath. Add to this the tapping. The ominous quality of this metal against stone sound would have been enough without the bone-dry voice calling out from the pitch. This was not scary, it was insanity incarnate, and more than she thought her mind could handle. All Madison could focus on that very moment was Ethan’s shirt. Over and again she told herself not to let go, to grip it like a lifeline, like the only thing left to her of reality and normalcy. Inside, her mind screamed and struggled against reason, writhing in the bounds of her clarity and threatening to push her beyond the extent of her own limit to reason.