Brian Keene - Urban Gothic

She paused, tilting her head and listening. The snuffling thing was gone—or at least silent again. Kerri tried to do the same, working as quietly as possible. With little to go by but her sense of touch, she eventually uncovered the wood’s dimensions. It was bigger than she’d imagined. She pulled along the first edge and got nothing for her efforts. The second edge had a bit of yield, and the third edge lifted awkwardly a few inches, slowly and with a wet sucking sound.

It’s a door, she realized. But to where? A sub-basement? Who puts a door in the floor of a cave?

The air billowing up from below smelled different. Not fresher, but less vile. It was a welcome change. Taking a deep breath, Kerri slid her arm into the black space and felt the coolness beneath. Her fingers failed to touch anything but open air. Whatever might be hidden below was too far down for her to reach it. She stretched farther, trying to feel for some stairs or a ladder, when behind her, there came another noise. It sounded like something metal being scraped across stone. Several guttural voices echoed from either side of her. As she listened, they turned to whispers.

Cautious but quick, Kerri slipped her body lower. The wooden slab dropped as she did, scraping along her shoulder blades and then her back. It was heavy enough to pin her in place. She struggled with it, still trying to stay quiet, and pushed the door up long enough to slide the rest of her body beneath it. Her feet touched something solid. Standing on it, she ducked her head and lowered the door back into place. Then she explored this new area. Her left hand scraped along what felt like a stone wall. It was dry and cool. She raised one foot and thrust it out into the darkness. Kerri sighed with relief when she found another stair. She slowly started down it, wondering what was at the bottom.

***

Javier had lost his belt. He remembered that much upon regaining consciousness. He fumbled around in the darkness, searching for the makeshift weapon, and then it all came rushing back to him. The belt had been ripped from his hands by a shadowed opponent during his escape. But then what? He lay on the ground, defenseless and aching, trying to remember what else had happened. His face hurt, and a nauseating mix of blood and mud blocked one of his nostrils and filled his mouth. Coughing, Javier pushed himself up into a sitting position and shook the muck from his face and hair.

What the hell had happened?

He remembered running. Shouting at the others to follow him, trying to clear a path for them by taking the creatures on himself. And he had. He’d cut through the motherfuckers like a buzz saw, relishing each of their grunts or cries of surprise and pain. Whoever these people were (because despite their deformities, Noigel and his friends were clearly human), they obviously weren’t used to having their prey fight back. He’d been doing fine until he lost the belt. Then they’d closed in on him, and his fear had overtaken his bravado, and Javier had fled.

Javier couldn’t remember anything past that, no matter how hard he tried, so he decided to take a different tack. He gingerly felt his body, wincing as his fingers found dozens of shallow cuts and bruises. He didn’t think he was injured too badly, however. He listened, hoping to hear Heather or Kerri or Brett, but the darkness was silent. It seemed to press against him, as if trying to climb inside his body. Javier mentally pushed back. Satisfied that he’d live, at least for the moment, he felt around him, patting the ground. Then he reached out into the black void. His fingers came in contact with a stone wall.

Then he remembered. The wall. He’d run into it in the dark. He hadn’t known what it was—he hadn’t been conscious long enough to wonder. All he’d known was that he’d run headlong into something hard. Then he’d woken up again. He now assumed that he’d hit the wall with enough force to knock himself stupid.

His luck had held twice tonight—first with the glass pit and now with this . . . whatever this was. He assumed caverns of some kind. Natural or man-made. Or maybe both.

He slid over to the wall and rested his back against it. The silence deepened. There was no sign of his girlfriend or his friends. No sign of their pursuers, either. He was on his own down here. The realization filled him with shame and worry. He felt responsible for all of them. No, it wasn’t his fault that they were in this mess, but as far as he was concerned, they were under his protection. And they wouldn’t have entered the house in the first place if he hadn’t been the one to suggest it after Brett’s stupid outburst.

“What the hell was I thinking?” He muttered the words to himself and spit a trail of saliva and mud away from his lips. “Should have confronted those guys and just apologized for my idiot friend. Or called the police right there.”

He fumbled for Brett’s cell phone. He’d still had it in his hands when they were attacked, but now it was gone. He tried to remember whether he’d stuck it in his pocket as he ran. He wasn’t sure. If he had, his pocket was empty now. Javier’s heart sank. It must have fallen out of his grip during his dash through the cellar or when he crashed into the wall. He patted the ground, searching for it, but his effort s were futile. His hands came up empty. Javier was overcome by a wave of confusion, fear, and despair. Heather, Brett, and Kerri might be dead and he was lost underground, in total darkness, with no weapons to defend himself.

“Well, fuck that noise.”

Javier listened to his words echo. Wherever he was, it sounded like a wide-open space. Grinding his teeth, he slowly got to his feet, taking his time and trying to keep his balance. His legs felt a little wobbly and his head light, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to allow that. Javier had been in bad situations before—situations nobody knew about. Not even Heather. They’d happened when he was younger, before his family had moved to East Petersburg. Ancient history. He’d lived through them, and he intended to live through this one, as well. He forced himself to move forward, trailing his hand along the wall so that he had a frame of reference in the darkness. Javier told himself that he didn’t need the cell phone anyway. Using it to light his way at this juncture would have been foolish. The last thing he needed to do was advertise his position to the cannibalistic freaks.

He made a silent vow to buy Brett a new phone as soon as they got out of here, and then wondered if he’d ever see his friend again long enough to keep that promise.

Water dripped down on his head. Javier glanced upward and then felt foolish. He couldn’t see anything. He made his way through the subterranean chamber, determined to find the girls and Brett if he could, but to also find a way to escape. It had to be down here somewhere. Brett had overheard the killers say so. Javier stopped in his tracks, chilled by a sudden terrifying thought. What if Noigel and the guy wearing a woman’s skin had just been fucking with Brett? What if they’d known he was hiding in the kitchen and rather than killing him right then and there, they’d toyed with him instead, leading him to believe that the basement was the only way out of the house?

If so, there was nothing he could do about it now. Javier seriously doubted that he’d be able to find his way back to the basement stairs, even if he did find Heather and the others. He started walking again. His back felt tight and his neck was stiff with tension. He ignored the aches and pains, doing his best to listen for any possible sound, but other than the occasional drip of water, the area remained deathly still.

***

Paul woke up in transit and captive. He’d been trussed upside down on a long, metal pole. Steel, judging by its texture and weight. It would have probably fetched him a nice price at a scrap yard. Rough cords cut into his wrists and ankles, chafing his skin. He bobbed and swayed as his captors carried him along, trekking through some sort of underground tunnel. Paul was staring at the ground, so he raised his head a little and glanced at the walls. They seemed natural, rather than man-made. A cave, maybe? He’d never heard of caverns beneath Philadelphia, but the idea wasn’t so surprising. Pennsylvania was riddled with limestone caverns and shafts, as well as abandoned iron ore and coal mines.