The Long Sleep

XII

He began to look for a way out of the tunnels.

Although he supposed it could have been his imagination, as overwrought as he was, Joel swore that the damned moss sensed his fear. It knew. It also knew that he wanted out — and it wanted him. The spongy tendrils, as thick as spaghetti now, writhed much faster and more violently than they had done before. And when he squeezed through a tight passage, he had considerable difficulty escaping from the moist, clinging vegetation — as if it were trying to grip and hold him…

Ten minutes later, after he had taken several turns in the drainage network, he found an exit. The wall ladder was hidden beneath the moss, and he saw it only when the light from his dying candle was reflected by a pitted metal rung, the only bit of the ladder that the moss had not claimed. A glint of orange caught his eye, then the sheen of machined steel, and there it was.

The moss writhed so fast now that it made a soft whispering noise like the hissing of a snake.

He put the candle on the floor and sought the other rungs. He ripped the moss away from them. Thousands of icy tendrils curled and wriggled wormlike in his hands. They lashed around his fingers and encircled his wrists, struggling to save themselves. But he was stronger. He tore the moss away in huge handfuls, tossed it to the floor behind him. In five minutes he had cleared the lower, half of the ladder.

He started to climb.

Below, the moss closed over the candle and snuffed it out. The tunnel was as black as the inside of a sealed coffin.

On the rungs above him, the moss fought back, whipped his face, seeking a hold on him.

He tore it loose and pitched it to the floor.

Pulpy, disgusting strands slid into his nostrils, pressed insistently at his tightly closed lips, and slithered into his ears as if striking for the ear drum and, eventually, the brain.

Cursing, he freed himself and continued the climb, holding tightly to the ladder with his right hand and fighting the vegetation with his left.

The moss hissed in the darkness.

The hoary strands that grew from the ceiling groped at his back, clutched his neck…

Fifteen minutes after he'd started up, Joel reached the top of the ladder. Gasping for breath as the moss roiled about his head, he found the access plate, prized it away, and levered himself into the corridor overhead.

Strands of moss lapped out of the hole, examined the hall floor, and strained to touch him.

He dropped the access plate back over the opening, then lay on the floor in the dim purple light and listened to his heartbeat gradually slow down.

He recognized this place. Behind him the hallway went on for a hundred yards until it came to a set of bright yellow doors. The doors were closed. No other rooms or corridors opened from the hall. The walls were gray and undecorated. The ceiling was low, gray, and contained one central lightstrip. In front of him the hallway ran another hundred yards and ended at a pressure hatch and a four-foot-square computer display screen which was built into the wall. He knew — intuitively or perhaps because he had been here before — that the room beyond that hatch held all the answers to this puzzle.

Getting up, he wiped his hands on his slacks, and he walked down to the pressure hatch.

When he stepped on the metal grid in front of the hatch, the computer screen lit up, a restful shade of blue. Stark white letters began to move across the face of the unit.

cycle for admittance.

He hesitated for a moment, then realized that he had no choice. This was the quickest way to learn the truth. He grasped the steel lock wheel in the center of the door and turned it.

He wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but he did as he was told. In two minutes the hatch sighed and popped loose of its heavy rubber seal. A green light winked on overhead, and the display screen confirmed the light:

He swung open the door and stepped into the room beyond. It was perhaps forty feet long and thirty wide, completely unfurnished. The walls were plated with steel, as was the ceiling; it looked like a room in which treasure was stored — or from which one might defend a treasure. It was illuminated by a curious gray screen in the far wall, and it was the dreariest place he had seen yet, worse in its way than the storm drains. But when he saw that the fuzzy gray screen was actually a giant window at least six-foot-square, he was elated. He walked towards it, hesitantly, much as a religious man would approach the altar of his god.

I've been here, he thought. Many times.

His footsteps echoed on the metal floor.

It's a bad place, he thought, suddenly.

When he reached the glass he found that it was extremely thick, perhaps a foot deep. Beyond it, shifting mists the color of rotten meat formed hideous cloud-images: insubstantial dragons, towers that broke apart as if shaken by earthquakes, piles of corpses, slavering things … Of course, there was no intent behind the smoke, no plan or program. The images were what he made of them; and because past association with this place had evidently left him full of terror, the images had the quality of nightmare for him. The mist eddied, roiled, formed and re-formed itself, pressed against the glass. It was, he sensed, more an oily smoke than water vapor.

Panic rose in him.

He told himself to take it easy. This was the answer. This was the first thing he had to learn before he could figure Galing and his crew. This was where it had all started.

His stomach tightened. A pressure built behind his eyes, and he was breathing raggedly.

Easy now…

He took the last two steps to the window and pressed his forehead to the cool glass, squinting to see through the dense, shifting smog.

He knew there was more out there than smoke. He was sure that he had seen the — other thing, whatever it was, but he could not recall the nature of it.

Then the smoke parted.

He closed his eyes. “No,” he said. When he opened them again, the smoke was still drawn back.

It's just another illusion, he thought.

But he knew it was not. He choked and staggered backwards as if he'd been struck.

How could he have forgotten this? No man could ever forget that inhuman, maniacal spectacle. He was unable to look away; he was mesmerized by horror.

Finally, as if the evil had filled him up and overflowed from him, he swam forward into darkness, finding peace for at least a few brief minutes.