Tim Curran - Resurrection

“Help me,” he said.

Tommy maybe wasn’t so stupid after all. With Mitch’s help, he slid a floor freezer full of ice over the trapdoor. It took a lot of grunting and puffing, but they moved it all right and that thing had to weigh an easy five-hundred pounds. If it wasn’t for the casters it was set on, they would have needed a forklift to budge it. Tommy flipped the latches on the casters, locking it in place.

“That bitch comes up this way,” Tommy said, “she’s got to be one strong lady.”

Having that trapdoor sealed off made something finally loosen in Mitch’s chest. Jesus, this kind of hero crap, it was strictly for cops. Strictly for people that were trained and above all, armed, to get the job done. He helped himself to a carton of cigarettes behind the counter and Tommy didn’t try to stop him; he loaded up, too. Mitch tore open a pack and slid one between his lips. As that old, ugly monkey on his back finally woke up for good and took hold of him, Mitch knew this was how his three years smoke-free ground to a halt. Once an addict, always an addict.

Tommy began rummaging around the shelves beneath the cash register. Finally, he popped the cash drawer and pulled out a key ring.

“Bingo,” he said.

“Bingo?”

“Sure, this is the key to the other door,” Tommy said.

“What other door?”

Tommy pulled off his cigarette. “In the alley there’s a cellar bulkhead the beer guys use to load the kegs. It’s the only other way in or out.”

Mitch felt his chest tighten up again. “You’re not thinking-”

“Oh, yes I am.”

After they’d finished their cigarettes, they went back out into the rain and answered the obligatory questions from the crowd out there. No, they had not seen the crazy woman. She was down in the cellar. And, yes, they were going in the back way to sort her shit out. Of course, everyone followed them around the corner and into the alley. And when they got there, standing in a loose circle staring at that bulkhead like mourners staring into a grave, nobody said much. The rain fell, ran down faces and dripped from raincoats. A steady torrent from a rusty rainspout emptied a short distance away with a sound like a rushing stream.

Tommy fumbled his keys to the big padlock securing the doors.

He almost dropped them twice, all those slack-jawed faces pressing in ever closer. He got the key in the lock and when he did, everyone stepped way back. It was like he was breaking the seal on an Egyptian tomb and they expected hell to come flying out on leathery wings. Mitch did not step back. He was holding the four-ten and willing his hands not to shake. This wasn’t exactly the same sort of shit they’d waded through at the Bell house. There’d been that gnawing sense of being watched at the house, that sense of the unknown…but down here in the cellar, there would be no cat-and-mouse, he was thinking, there would be a sudden explosion of water and then an amorphous, marble-skinned blur would reach out at them with white fingers.

As Tommy gripped the doors and prepared to throw them wide, Mitch felt an irrational, childlike terror settle into him. It made sweat run down his spine and nearly stole the breath from his lungs like a cat licking the milk from an infant’s lips. Going down there would be like descending into some crumbling vampire’s crypt at sundown with nothing but a flimsy stake in your hands. But the child in him was telling him it was worse than that: going down there was like entering the cannibal witch’s lair in some evil fairy tale…and doing so willingly.

Then Tommy threw the double doors open, first the right, then the left, and they clanged hollowly against the brick facade of the building. He jumped back a millisecond after he’d done so like maybe he was afraid some huge spider would rush out and snatch him.

But nothing rushed out.

In the dirty light, they could see the steps leading down into the water, lots of junk bobbing around down there. A rank and moldy odor wafted out at them with fingers of dirty mist.

“You boys…you boys ain’t really going down there,” the old man said. Not a question, just a statement. “You can’t do that.” He was like some village elder then trying to talk some heroes (fools) out of going into the dark forest and seeking the ogre’s cave.

And Mitch thought: Oh yes, we’re going down there, my friend. Me and my stupid associate here. We’re going down into that dampness to fight the monster and nothing you can say will stay us.

Jesus, this was ridiculous. This was a job for the police.

But Tommy was going down and Mitch knew he had to go with him. That’s how it worked. Besides, look at these idiots gathered around them. They were expecting a show and you couldn’t let them down. They had ringed tightly around Tommy and he like a noose. And Mitch, well, he had this ugly feeling that if they didn’t go down there, the crowd would push them down.

“You’ve had better ideas,” he said to Tommy.

“So have you,” Tommy came back. “Like going into that fucking house.”

Touche?.

Tommy took his shotgun and started down the steps and Mitch was right behind him, that baseball bat in both hands like he was ready to knock one out of Wrigley Field in the bottom of the ninth. Tommy stepped into the water first and by the time he found the floor, it was sluicing around his waist. Light came in through the bulkhead and a single narrow window near the ceiling, but still the shadows were sliding around them like snakes. It was oddly warm down there and stank like a polluted tidal pool, dark and fusty. Cases of Johnny Walker Red, Beefeater’s, and Red Bull were stacked along the walls along with towers of beer. Some of the beer cases had broken open and cans of Budweiser and Old Style bobbed around them. In the rear he could see all those shiny aluminum kegs of beer and overhead, ancient rafters threaded with pipes and ductwork that looked like they’d been put in about the time of prohibition.

“You see her down there?” somebody called.

Mitch jumped, slopping forward in that filthy water. The baseball bat was so greasy in his hands he thought it would slide right out of his grip.

“Yeah,” Tommy called back. “She’s right here, holding my ding dong. Says you should come down and get a kiss.”

There were a few uneasy laughs up in the alley. And then, surprisingly, footsteps came down the stairs and somebody waded into the water with them. Not one of the men, but a woman with a fishing hat on. And when she was down there, she looked around for a weapon. Decided against the beer cans and then, comically, grabbed a sack of Gold Medal flour and then another of Kosher salt. They were heavy at least, five-pound bags.

“Come on sweetheart, show yourself,” Tommy said. “I think I love you.”

Mitch giggled and then giggled again as a couple boxes of Stay-Free Maxi Pads came floating by. It was all so entirely ridiculous.

Then there was movement in the water just ahead of Tommy. A ripple, then another as if somebody was swimming underwater. Mitch felt something go heavy inside him, heard the woman in the fishing hat begin to breathe very hard.

“Wait now,” Tommy said.

And then the water ahead of him began to swirl like a whirlpool and then a figure rose up from the murk. Yeah, it was a woman or had been a woman. Her hair was red and hung in foul loops over a face that was puckered obscenely white. Her lips were gray and seamed like an old lady without her teeth in, that mouth shriveled down to something like a blowhole. Her eyes were black and shiny like ebonite.

“Get back,” Tommy told his troops.

Mitch was having trouble moving at all. He kept seeing all that flowing red hair and thinking that Lily would look like that if she was dead…and had come back.