The Intruders

chapter

FORTY

It was too dark to see, but the stifling air and heavy smells of brick and earth were all too familiar. Madison knew she’d been here before, in dreams and nightmares. Though the man inside kept her plunging forward into the dark, if felt like he was pulling her backward. The darkness didn’t bother Marcus. He knew he had nothing to fear from it. Madison did not want to have him in her head anymore, but it didn’t feel as if she had any choice; if anything, it felt like it was she who was being shoved out. He was increasingly out of control now, too—or she was less able to stop him from doing the kind of thing he’d always wanted. She hadn’t known he was going to stab Rachel’s father—she’d just found herself doing it, before she could do anything to try to stop it. He’d been angry that the woman he wanted to see wasn’t here after all, that this was supposed to be a trap, though Madison believed he’d known this was a possibility all along, that his anger was partly a pose, and this was all just part of the endless game he played with whoever was available.

There were huge amounts of blood all over Madison’s hands and coat, and now she could remember shoving the nice woman in the Scatter Creek restroom, tripping her so she fell and smashed her head against the side of the toilet bowl. Tears were running down her face. She was unaware of them. She was pulled ever forward, as if someone had tied ropes to her arms and legs and was tugging her deeper into the cloud.

Marcus wasn’t interested in the upper part of the building, it seemed. He’d brought her straight down into the basement, opening the door with the second key on the ring from the envelope Madison had carried since Portland. He was muttering things to himself, things she hated to hear in her own voice…horrible, sick things, tasting his own memories on his tongue. Rarely did he use the lighter he’d taken from Rachel, holding it up to get his bearings, before plunging onward into the blackness.

After a couple of minutes, the echoes were different, and Madison realized they’d come into a bigger space. Marcus dragged her onward, not caring if she crashed into things or fell or cut herself.

She stepped on something crackly on the floor, and he paused, her face splitting with his grin, but there was something far more important in this place, something he was desperate to see again and for which this man felt the closest he was ever going to feel to love.

He scrabbled on over piles of chairs and boxes. He flicked the lighter once again, and Madison saw they were in a long, low room now, like a bunker. At the far end was another doorway, blackness beyond. There was a shape to one side of it. It was slumped in a chair.

When Marcus saw this, he caught his/her breath, holding the lighter up above her head until it got so hot that Madison cried out. Then he let it go out and started toward the corner again, like someone going home.

“You have to warn her,” Crane said. His voice was weak.

“Warn who? About what?”

I was squatted next to him, trying to establish where and how he’d been hurt. So far all I could see was blood, and all I could tell was that it was bad.

“Marcus is back.”

“What?” I said.

“Marcus Fox,” Fisher said, misunderstanding me. “The other man on the documents for this building. The one I couldn’t find anything about for the last ten years.”

“You wouldn’t,” Crane said. “He was dead. You’ve got to warn her. Warn Rose.”

My hands froze, and I stared at him. “Rose? How do you know about Rose? Who is she?”

His eyes were unfocused. “Oh, you know Rose,” he said, with affection and bitterness. “Everybody knows…”

His face contorted, and the words became a sharp intake of breath.

“Where did he go? Marcus?”

His face slack, Crane jerked his head to the left.

“In one of those rooms?”

He shook his head. I flicked the flashlight down along the corridor toward the back of the building.

“Into the basement,” Fisher said.

I thought for a second. Amy and the Zimmermans would be long gone by now. There was no point in my running after them. “Gary, go out on the street and get help. Quickly. Get an ambulance.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Find the person who did this.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No. This guy’s badly fucked up. He needs an ambulance, and he needs it now.”

Fisher pushed past me and headed along the corridor. “I don’t care. I have to know what’s down there.”

“For God’s sake.”

I started to move back past Todd toward the street door, but his hand reached out and grabbed my leg. “Don’t let him go down there alone,” he said. “He’ll die.”

“Todd, you need a doctor.”

“Go after him,” he insisted. “Please.” His eyes were strong again, for the moment. “Or he will die.”

I hesitated. “Hold your hands over the wound,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I ran back toward the staircase down into the basement. Fisher was already heading down the steps.

“You’re an asshole,” I said, shining the light so he could see his way into the darkness. He just started descending more quickly. The stairs hit a return halfway down and kept going. There was a full story below-ground, which didn’t make much sense. I knew that there were areas like this in the old town, but here?

We came off the bottom into an open space. There was a door on the left side. Beyond it lay ser vice areas, full of pipes and dampness. There was another door on the right, hanging open. It was three inches thick, with the same reinforcing we’d seen on the top floor. I pointed the flashlight through the gap. A narrow corridor led away into total darkness.

Fisher went through. I followed. The walls on the other side were of old brickwork, the mortar rotted out in parts. I passed a bank of switches and flicked them, but nothing happened.

“Gary, slow down.”

Fisher wasn’t listening. When I caught up with him, I found he’d hit an intersection. The flashlight revealed only about eight feet in any direction. Darkness led three ways. The place smelled of rock and old dust.

“I don’t get it. We must be out under the street by now.”

We heard a sound then, from down one of the corridors. A moan, which abruptly climbed in pitch.

We turned together. The sound came back, splitting into something that could have been fractured laughter or someone choking, then broke into silence. It came from the left corridor.

“Down there,” I said.

He made her go right over to the corner. The thing in the chair was sealed into a plastic bag. When Marcus forced her hands to open the bag, a smell came out that was the worst thing ever, so bad that in the darkness it seemed to fill the universe. Her eyes watered, her stomach dropped out like seasickness, but instead of moving back he yanked the sides of the bag wider. He pushed her hands inside, needing to touch the last place he’d called home. From the smell you thought it would be warm, but it was cold. It was like stringy, fatty mucus with things in it, and there were bones. He made her come farther toward it, bringing her face to the gap, opening her mouth, as if he meant to taste the…

No way.

She’d thrown herself backward, flapping her hands spastically, and stumbled howling back into the darkness, frantically rubbing her hands on her poor coat, the coat now covered in dirt and blood and this appalling, horrendous crap. She’d gone running back across the room then, smashing into things and not caring, until she found another corridor and ran down it—and then into another, bigger space, not caring where she went because she knew now that all corridors were the same.

It didn’t matter how far you went. There was no escape from what was inside.

Gary ran down the left corridor. I began to smell something else, an earthier note underneath the dust.

We came to a doorway and stepped through it into a more open space. Forty feet square, a low ceiling, upturned furniture and wooden crates and debris all over the place. One whole wall was bookshelves, very old-looking volumes, leather-bound, most of them little thicker than notebooks. The room had thick concrete walls and was bone dry, but the odor was stronger here, far worse than the damp and mold we’d been enveloped in before.

As we started across the room, I stepped on something. It made a flat, crackling sound and gave way, dropping my foot onto something uneven.

I pointed the light down. There was a stretch of dark gray plastic beneath my foot, less than five feet in length, an uneven two feet wide.

“What’s that?” Fisher’s voice was dry.

I knew. I’d seen one before. It was a body bag. A good deal of packing tape had been fixed over the central zipper and reinforced the join at the top. The tape had curled a little at the edges, as if it had been in place for some time. I reached down toward it.

“Don’t open it,” Fisher said.

I peeled the tape back, found the zipper. Ran it down six inches. The smell that emerged was like nothing on earth. Fisher turned away jerkily. I shone the light into the hole. A face, or the remains of one. This person had been there awhile, sealed into a tough, nearly airtight bag. She had once had long red hair. She had not been very tall, or very old. Her face had been deeply sliced, in a series of wounds that together looked a little like the number 9.

I pulled the zipper back up, pushed the tape back down around the join. The smell did not go away. That smell is not just a smell. The brain keeps sending out alarms even after the source is taken away. It knows that this odor is a gateway to places you cannot go and stay alive.

Assuming I had removed the source…

I straightened up, remembering I’d been able to smell something of this as soon as we’d entered the room.

“Jack,” Fisher said. “There.”

I pointed the flashlight. Another bag, the same size, on the floor, partially underneath a table. I moved the light again. Found another bag, then another, and for a moment it was as if they hadn’t been there before we came but were appearing now in front of our eyes, multiplying to fill the space, coming closer, surrounding us.

And then one final bag. This was not on the floor but propped upright in a rotten armchair in the far corner, near another entrance. For a moment when the light bounced off the top, it looked like a face, though that must have been the folds, the remaining structure of what was sealed inside. This bag was a good deal longer than the rest. It had been opened, the sides pulled apart.

Fisher grabbed the light from me and pointed it to the side, fast. In the wall there was another door. I saw something in the corridor beyond.

Something running, like a shadow that had peeled itself up from the floor.

Fisher was in motion immediately, shoving a pile of chairs out of the way and starting toward the door. Over his shoulder I saw the shadow again, at the limits of where the light reached, vanishing around a corner.

It had looked like a little girl.

Then it/she was out of sight, just the sound of footsteps running away into the void. Fisher started running, too, calling out something that made no sense.

Calling out his daughter’s name. Her name at first, but then Donna’s, and then just sounds. I began to realize that Gary was not even clear on where he was anymore, or who he was with.

All I could see was the shape of his back as we hurtled onward down the corridor. The walls were stained and wet here, and water dripped from above. The floor seemed to be sloping down. The corridor, this whole subterranean section, had to have been laid when the area was regraded, before the building was even built, a route preserved along the original ground level.

Why?

Fisher shouted again. The sound was flat. The corridor was getting wider now. The echoes of our footsteps were changing, too, and there was another noise up ahead, a sound of fear and dread. We seemed to be running straight toward a dead end now, but right at the bottom it banked sharply right.

And then the walls on either side disappeared.

“Gary, wait.”

My voice sounded different now as well. Fisher slowed, as he became aware that something had changed. It wasn’t just the sound. The air was cooler here. The other sound became clearer, ragged and hitching sobs.

We kept moving forward, more cautiously now. Twenty feet, thirty. Fisher held the light out, spinning it slowly. White jags of light cut through the air without hitting anything.

There was a scream, something that had words hidden in it. Gary pulled the flashlight around, fast.

Someone staggered into view. A young girl, standing in the flashlight’s beam like something transfixed in the night on a backcountry road. Her hair was whipped in all directions, as if she’d been trying to pull it out. She was wearing a coat that was covered in blood and something dark and viscous. Her face was wet with tears, smeared with dirt, the tendons in her neck pulled taut to the snapping point.

“Go away!” she screamed.

As Fisher moved toward her, the girl started hammering at her head and face with her fists. “You’re not allowed in here!”

Fisher held out his hands to her. “Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s—”

The girl’s head jerked up. She stared at Fisher as if he’d appeared out of thin air. She blinked. Her voice changed, rasping deeper.

“Who…” she snarled, “…the fuck are you?”

“It’s okay,” Gary said, taking another step closer. “Everything’s okay. We’re—”

But then there was a clunking sound, and lights started to come on from the far end of the space, flicking toward us out of the darkness, coming on in groups.

I began to see that we were in a big, big space—about fifty yards long and forty yards wide. It was difficult to be exact, because the low ceiling was supported by brick columns that obscured the view. There was a central area of floor. In this was a circular wooden table. There were nine chairs around it, heavy, oak. A glass pitcher in front of each of them, opaque with dust. It looked like something mothballed since the Victorian era, or transported from a medieval hall, or discovered in a bunker on another planet.

Rows of wooden seats ran down both sides of the room, behind a flat front, like pews, each banked higher than the one in front. The light was coming from small, dusty electric lamps set along the rows, making it look like a Catholic church on a long-ago winter afternoon when no one had done much remembrance.

Fisher was openmouthed, taking it in. The girl was staring past him, back the way we’d come.

I turned to see that someone had entered the room. A tall figure, dressed in a coat. I knew immediately where I’d seen him before. In Byron’s. It was the man who had killed Bill Anderson.

He walked slowly down the center of the room, not giving the table and chairs or any of the rest of it a second glance. He wasn’t looking at Gary or me either.

He was here for only one thing.

“Hello, Marcus,” he said as he slapped a clip into the gun he held in his right hand. “At least this time you’ll know it’s me, right?”

The girl turned and ran, heading straight for a door at the other end of the room.

“Time to die!” the man shouted after her. “Again!”

Gary ran after the girl.

I turned back to the man in the coat. “Who the hell are you?”

He raised the gun and shot me, in passing, and then kept on walking as if I were already dead.