Джош Малерман - Inspection

“Let him go,” D.A.D. said.

Collins and Jeffrey only stared. Had D.A.D. changed his mind?

“You mean it?” Collins asked.

“I always mean it.”

The Inspectors let J go.

J rubbed his shoulders and his armpits where they’d been holding him.

“And what would you do,” D.A.D. asked him, “if you didn’t listen to me, if you could make up your own mind? Hmm? Where would you go?”

D.A.D. spread his arms out, mocking J with false options.

J looked to Inspector Collins. Inspector Jeffrey. How different they looked without the dogs behind them. How different they looked, slouched, guilty, against the walls in the basement.

“Show us,” D.A.D. said. “Show us what you would do.”

J stood up straight, inhaled deep.

Then he ran.

Past D.A.D. as the man reached down to stop him.

J turned right, entered the darkness of the tunnel, felt free momentarily, invisible to both D.A.D. and the Inspectors, undetectable by the Parenthood, gone. Behind, already far behind, he heard the echoes of shoes on gravel.

“K!” J called.

His voice came back to him, swallowed then repeated by the throat of the tunnel.

K!…K!…K!…K!…K!…K!

The steps behind him were losing speed, losing volume.

K!…K!…K!…K!…K!

He was almost free, it seemed, free now in the darkness.

K!…K!…K!…K!…

Meet me in the tunnel after dark.

“K! I’m here!”

D.A.D.’s laughter behind, the huffing of the Inspectors. Were they close again?

“K!” he cried.

And K responded. K’s voice in the tunnel. Here.

But it was too late for him to recognize it as a warning.

“J, STOP!”

His nose struck the Plexiglas first, the impact crushing it to the side of his face. The rest of him followed. His teeth, cheeks, and chin flattened to the divider.

K screamed his name again as J was thrown back from the wall and fell hard to the tunnel’s dirt floor.

Lights came on.

On his back now, J brought a hand to his bleeding nose. Through watery eyes he saw what he’d hit. He saw K on the other side of it. And beyond her, a mirror of the blackness he’d run through.

As the blood poured from his nose and outlined his lips, J smiled.

Meet me…

But K was pointing behind him, telling him to get up, GET UP, GET UP !

There was blood on K, too. All over her face and hair. On her hands and arms.

“What happened to you?” J said, trying to stand.

But K was shaking her head no. No no. Turn around. Don’t think of me. Don’t be distracted by me.

The Inspectors tackled him to the floor, his teeth smashing a second time.

K pounded on the glass.

Don’t worry, he tried to say. Don’t worry, K!

A hand went over his mouth, then his eyes. Then he was being dragged again. Back.

Between fingers he saw the color red rushing to the glass divider. Saw D.A.D. pointing at K. Saw K reach for the tunnel’s dirt side. Heard D.A.D. yelling at her.

The lights went off. He swiped the hand from his mouth.

“LET ME GO!” J yelled.

But they pulled him from the tunnel, back into the cobblestoned halls. Then deeper into the basement.

J, blind and bleeding, remembered D.A.D. as he’d looked just before the lights in the tunnel went off. Saw the fear and confusion on the man’s face.

He looked more afraid than K did.

When Collins finally removed his hand from J’s eyes, someone tugged hard on his hair.

D.A.D. again. He brought his nose to J’s broken face.

“How does it feel to know the one decision you made on your own was a bad one?”

But D.A.D. didn’t wait for an answer. He looked quick down the hall, back toward the tunnel.

J heard a creaking behind him. Jeffrey opening a door. He craned his neck enough to see something he didn’t think even Lawrence Luxley could’ve imagined: A spot where two basement walls met was revolving, opening to a hidden room.

It didn’t matter that the door looked nothing like the one he’d been raised to fear. It didn’t matter that there was no label on it at all.

It was the Corner, no matter what J said it was.

“I’m sorry,” Collins said.

J fell as he was shoved hard into the room. There he saw scant light from a distance, felt a concrete floor beneath his scratched palms, and heard harsh wheezing from only a few feet away.

“K?” he asked. But he knew she wasn’t in here with him.

As D.A.D. yelled for the Inspectors to follow him, the door swung closed.

“No,” a voice answered. “I’m not K.”

J was too weak to be afraid of it.

“Who’s in here?” he asked.

A man leaned forward on what J’s eyes now told him was a wooden bench. The man wore cracked glasses, and his face and arms looked as battered as J’s own.

“Lawrence Luxley,” the man said. “We’ve met.” J’s eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to see the sad smile. “But you can call me Warren.”

“Jesus Christ,” Warren said. “They didn’t even let you get dressed?” Then, “Come on, sit down.”

His voice was hoarse. As if he’d been yelling.

“I don’t belong in here,” J said.

“If there’s one person who knows you don’t belong here, it’s me.”

In the dim light of the second room, J saw two markers in the dirt.

“Sit down,” Warren said.

J did, feeling the cool metal lockers against his back, relief in his bleeding feet.

“I think they went after K.”

“Where is he?”

“Her,” J said.

Warren was quiet. Then he chuckled. “My God,” he said. “Things have changed quickly around here.”

“She came to my rooms. She figured it all out. Everything you were trying to tell us.”

“So you read the book?”

“Some of it.” Then J gave Warren the most exhausted, the most meaningful and meaningless compliment he’d ever received. “It’s the best book in the world.”

“Thank you,” Warren said, holding back many emotions. “You don’t seem very surprised to discover Lawrence Luxley is also Warren Bratt.”

J stared into the darkness, his eyes still adjusting.

“I’m just worried about K.”

“I understand. But worry about us, too. We’ve got probably ten minutes to live.”

Some silence then.

“What’s going to happen to us?” J asked.

“I can’t say for sure. But it can’t be worse than what’s upstairs.”

J understood.

“Are we going to die in here?”

“Yes.”

J looked to the scant light emanating from the second, deeper room. It stretched into this one, curling over a concrete lip like a piece of yellow fabric. At the very extent of its reach, J saw the soles of two shoes.

He sat up quick.

“That’s a person!” he said. “Who is that?”

He hurried to the body on the floor. As he rolled it over, he saw it was a man. Old enough to be an Inspector. Old enough to be D.A.D.

He inched away from the dried blood upon the man’s chest.

Warren said, “I think it’s one of your fathers.”

“What does that mean?”

“One of your real fathers. Here to see if his son was okay.” Then, “Hasn’t been dead long, I don’t think. Minutes, maybe, before I arrived.”

J inched toward the body again, touched the man’s head, his shoulders. He opened the dead eyes with his thumbs. Closed them again.

He thought of a figure crouched behind Mister Tree far below his eighth-floor window.

“We’re gonna die like him,” J said. “Just like this.”

“Well,” Warren said, “I should know more about this than I do. But what I believe will happen is that door we came through is going to open. Someone is going to come through it. And, yes, they’re going to kill us.”