The Smoky Corridor

102

Daphne watched Eddie slide down the chute.

When he hit the ground with a soft thump, Daphne crawled into the hole. She was all set to slide down to join her brother when she heard him scream.

“Leave me be!”

Next Daphne heard an angry roar and thrashing and Eddie shrieking.

“No! Stop!”

More howls and bellowing. The shredding of cloth. Snarls and rips and the crunching of bone and sloppy wet feeding sounds.

She blew out her candle.

Bracing her hands against the ceiling, her feet against the floor, she crept down the sharply inclined tube. She moved very slowly, very cautiously, the whole time serenaded by the sounds of someone greedily stuffing his face with food.

“Mmmm … good … brains …”

She reached the bottom. Crawled feetfirst into some kind of darkened cave.

Eddie’s black wax candle lay on the floor, still sputtering, still casting a faint glow—enough light for Daphne to see the most horrific thing she had ever seen in her life.

A lanky beast in a frayed Yankee soldier uniform scooping curdled gray matter out of her brother’s cracked-open skull and slurping it into his mouth.