Message #5097

[Mutou Yami]

Chapter Thirty-Four
Interment

I stumbled along in a sort of disconnected frame of mind. My brain was phoning in the movements necessary for forward motion, and it deserved a medal for even managing that much, but the conscious thought areas were in a state of extreme flux. Thoughts jumbled and bounced around like a large crowd of people trapped in complete darkness. Primary among them were thoughts of poor Maria. She was an enigma, duplicitous and intentionally confusing. She liked to toy with me, to manipulate my thoughts and feelings, and her reasons and motives were known only to her. She was a lot of things that I didn’t particularly like.

But she didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this. She died twice (and that was a truth that was far beyond my ability to comprehend or reason out), and the first time was bad enough. Those images were still burned fresh upstairs, but this… this was so much worse. I was spared actually watching it take place this time, for whatever that small mercy was worth, but seeing her laid out like that, there was no way she died like that. She was placed in that position. She was arranged. She was framed in her bed like a grotesque museum piece, intentionally arrayed for my viewing pleasure. And there was no questioning who planned and executed that idea. None at all. It was sickening, and right up his alley.

This section of underpass ended in a ladder eventually. I don’t know how far it was because I made no attempt to gauge my distance. I mounted the ladder and climbed, though it felt arduous, like I was dragging myself up the ladder with only my arms. My feet seemed disinterested in cooperating. I felt lethargic and only a small part of myself seemed at all determined to break it. That part of me knew I had to let it go and push it aside, that it wasn’t smart to dwell upon it, that it wasn’t safe. I had to be alert and as lively as I could be if I had any interest in staying alive. If I let myself get sluggish, I might be ambushed or overpowered. So, I tried my best to quash it, consciously. I was at the top, and I pushed off the ladder, at least pretending to feel alive and alert. I’d take that, if that was all I could get.

Back in the wood and old-building interior, but there was a difference this time and it wasn’t even subtle. The odors of musty wood and dusty neglect probably weren’t completely gone, but they were certainly overpowered by something else; the rich aroma of earth and fresh mineral. Soft soil. It was very reminiscent of the prison courtyard. I hoped that analogy didn’t go much beyond sensory similarities.

I turned the corner and soon encountered the source of the scent. The hall opened into a very large room, one very different from any other in this labyrinth but similar to that odd underground courtyard, in that there was indeed damp soil beneath my feet instead of rotten old laminate. Grass patched the landscape too, and even the odd patch of crabgrass here and there, though only God knew how it was able to grow down here.

There were also several large stones arranged in a rough pattern. Some of them were unshapely and very worn, so their function, if any, was immediately disguised, but most of them were easily recognizable.

Headstones. It was a cemetery, an underground cemetery. Mystified, I walked along the rows, gazing at the epitaphs inscribed upon the stones.

Edmund Tomassen
19? – 1931
This man was Hung
For the High Crime of
Arson
Justice and Revenge
Have been Served

Franklin E. Sawyer
d. 1841
God Grant He Lie Still

Miriam K.
1898 - 1929
TRAITOR

Se-- --adshaw
d. 1--0
--ank his la--
-ug of ale –nd w-s
----- -- deat-

It was a mesmerizing thing to see, but confusing as well. Why down here? The only common denominator among the interred was that some seemed to be executed criminals. Some of the graves were marked only with sticks, one arranged in a cross, several others adorned with a strange, co-centric emblem. The cemetery itself seemed well-tended, if the location even required tending. There were things along the walls that suggested it did; poles, wooden boards, scattered gardening equipment leaning against the walls and lying about along them.

Near the back of the room, the graves seemed newer, the ground more recently broken.

Gillian Ford
September 19, 1949 – August 1, 1988
May her great faith pave
Her path to Paradise

Walter Sullivan
February 18, 1970 – March 9, 1994
Here Lies
The Thief of the Ten Hearts

There was that name again. Sullivan. From the article on the window of the bar back in town. Again it stirred some faint memory, but any meaning or reference still eluded me.

The last row had the freshest graves and the cleanest headstones. The first two graves looked as though they had just been filled in hours ago, and the last one was as yet unfilled. That struck me as strange. Then I glanced at the headstones, one at a time. The first one sent a blizzard chill up my spine. The second spread it to each of my extremities. The last one… oh God… None of them had epitaphs yet. Yet.

Angela Orosco
December 18, 1976 – May 14, 1994

Edward Philip Dombrowski
June 30, 1971 – May 14, 1994

James Sunderland
July 23, 1965 – May 14, 1994

My legs were suddenly and completely sapped of their strength, and I sat down on the soft loam, just plopped right down where I was, right on the ass. And I stared at that stone, that slab of granite fresh off the chiseler’s table. I stared at my name, my birth date, and what was presumably the date of my imminent demise. That date was entered very recently. I could see flecks of blue-gray dust around the letters and numbers, the small streaks of white inside the bevels that, on the other headstones, had been taken away on the great train of Time and Age. On Eddie’s and Angela’s grave markers, their end dates too were just recently applied. Yet, their graves were filled, and mine was not. Well, not completely filled; both graves seemed unfinished, each with still about a foot to go. I hadn’t seen either of them dead, and of course, I had just seen Angela moments ago. What on earth could this mean?

Mine, though, was considerably deeper. In fact, I could not see the bottom at all. My light saw the edges but in the end, it was completely swallowed by the yawning darkness.

A very old garden hoe was leaning against the wall. Its handle was dry and brittle, and the iron head was so old it would probably crack like glass if it were actually used for what it was made. Holding the end of the handle, I lowered the hoe into the grave. It was deep, much deeper than I thought, much deeper than a grave should be. I was leaning in as far as I could, and the combined span of my arm and the tool was still insufficient. All it was touching was thin air.

I held it now with the very tips of my fingers, trying to get as much reach as I possibly could. The extra few inches made no difference whatsoever in finding the grave’s bottom, but it did make a difference in the strength of my grip. It slipped and fell from my fingers, and I immediately looked in to see where it went.

But I didn’t. It had vanished, completely vanished. The grave had consumed the hoe. Just how deep was it, and why? Maybe that was why Angela and Eddie had unfinished graves; whoever was filling them in gave up. It made just as little sense as most everything did these days, maybe even less. Furthermore, the room was a dead end, just as I had suspected earlier. Now all that was left was to-

No. This was where I was supposed to be. Clarity let a ray of light through the dirty window of my mind. This was where I was supposed to be, as repugnantly morbid as the truth was. The grave may be a grave, but it wasn’t just a grave. It was more. It made perfect sense, now, and I should have realized it the moment I dropped the hoe.

The grave was a HOLE.

The goose just walked over my grave. Literally, in a sense. And there was really no question to ask or decision to mull over. This was the way. I had to go down.

But I couldn’t do it with my eyes open. I couldn’t ignore or forget the fact that I was leaping into my own grave, but at least I could be blind to the it. I even reached for my nose, as if diving into water. There I stood, at the precipice, waiting for the burst of energy that would break apart my unwillingness to do this very wrong thing I knew I had to do. I took small, tentative hops, but I just couldn’t force myself to knowingly take this last plunge. This was the fifth HOLE I had encountered, so obviously I was no stranger to the concept and by now I was relatively secure in the knowledge that my odds for surviving the drop were better than even.

The other HOLES didn’t have gravestones on them, though. Gravestones with my name. Gravestones with the date of death. Today’s date.

I finally took a hop, one of seemingly dozens, and this time I didn’t land on spongy earth. This time I landed on nothing. I plunged down, ever deeper. I didn’t scream or yell or make a sound at all. I just thought. Wondered. Tried to imagine where I’d be when I woke up. What new section of this hell would I find myself in?

I hadn’t quite made up my mind yet when the darkness overtook me and my mind went away.

- - -

The ground was hard.

The circuits in the fuse box had been tripped again, and my brain emerged from its fog, and that was the first observation it came up with. The ground was hard. Cold, too. And the air.

I sat up, and the world around me gradually became sharper and clearer as my body reanimated itself. The world around me was supposed to be the bottom of my grave. Well, apparently, the bottom of my grave was a long, naked concrete tunnel of some kind, and I was at one end of it. There were no doors on the walls around me, just stairs leading into the inky void. Shielded wiring ran along one of the walls inside of a narrow pipeline, and that was something I had seen throughout the labyrinth, so I wasn’t out of that park yet. But wherever I was, it was certainly quite different. For one, it was cold again, whereas the labyrinth was actually quite temperate and still. This cold wasn’t like the cold of the town, though. That was a sort of pre-wintry chill, like the kind you’d feel if you went outdoors at two in the morning in the middle of October. This was very different. I was God knows how far beneath the earth by this point, making exceptions for all the crazy, non-Euclidean geometry, and taking that into account, it wasn’t all that unnatural.

Yet, I didn’t think it was just the chill of seclusion. This felt artificial. Like someone cranked up the air conditioner and left it on full blast for a month. It made me shiver rather violently, and I had to stand up because it was making my skin numb. Having landed on my back, I also had the rifle underneath me, and that was hardly comfortable, either.

There was no railing along the walls, so I had to step carefully as I descended the concrete stairs. It wasn’t long, but it seemed like it, since my body was still in the process of re-energizing. Finally, I reached the bottom, still concrete all around, and now I faced a tunnel that seemed to be a straight shot, at least, as far as my flashlight allowed me to see.

This corridor was long, if the flight of stairs was not. It was like being in that flooded tunnel again, though I had to admit, being dry made it a lot less unpleasant to navigate. It was cold, though, and getting colder. Damn near freezing. My breath came out in wispy clouds, crystallizing in the chill. And soon, I saw why.

My musing was correct, in a sense. I don’t think it was an air conditioner, so to speak, but it was certainly similar. There were holes in the walls, on both sides of me, knee-high. Clouds of very cold air poured out of them, as visible as my breath was. Freezing air. It was freezing, now. I could see water vapor condensing around the holes, which had turned to frost. I could see some of that condensation turned into drops of water that froze solid as they ran down the wall. There were more of these as I continued down the tunnel. Every six feet or so, there was another set of them, pumping arctic air into this concrete grave of mine. It was making my eyes water rather violently, and I picked up the pace, hoping that I would soon find a way out of here and into more agreeable climate.

At first, I thought my flashlight was dying, because everything seemed to darken. Not suddenly, but dimming, a gradual loss of what little vibrance I had. Of course, that was a frightening enough prospect on its own.

Realizing what it really was, now that was far more frightening. Because you see, it wasn’t my flashlight at all. It was still working perfectly fine, far as I could tell. No, it only seemed darker because the walls were no longer pale white concrete.

They were still concrete, of that I was pretty sure. White, however, they were not. Not anymore. One moment, they were. The next moment, they weren’t. The next moment, they were red. Horrible, menacing red. The transition wasn’t neat and clean, either. I probably wouldn’t have been so terrified if it were. The transition from white to red was splotchy, splashed cascades of mess. It wasn’t paint, either. I knew that without looking or even wondering. Looking close only confirmed my suspicions. The red wasn’t uniform. It was patchy, darker in some places than in others. Some of those darker places were lumpy. The whole wall was lumpy.

It was blood.

The dark parts were clots.

All of it was frozen solid, and there was a thin layer of frost over the grotesque décor. Thankfully, that kept it from smelling. Very thankfully. Because, if I had to smell it, if my nose were invaded by that stinking, cloying irony-coppery blood smell, I would start gagging and heaving and I might even pass out, as much as there was here. If it were to thaw, I would go out of my **** mind, because to see these walls drip and puddle and pool, that would without a doubt be far too much for my brittle little mind to handle.

It was barely enough even as it was. I ran. If the corridor seemed long before, it seemed damn near interminable now. This made wading through the flooded corridor seem like walking to the mailbox. I ran and as I did, I knew I was moaning in disgust. No matter how many utterly reprehensible things I encountered, it didn’t seem like I finally reached the point of no return, the point where I couldn’t be bothered or disturbed by what I was seeing. I guess that was a good thing for my psychological well-being, but if there was a way to turn off my sensitivities, I felt like I would sell my **** soul to the devil at that moment if he popped up and explained how.

I was running fast and running almost blind. The macabre, artificial shadow made things even worse, which is why I almost ran smack into the door before I even saw it. As it was, I did manage to catch on and while I did collide with the door, I was able to cushion the blow with my arms. Doing so sent some fresh waves of pain and soreness through my shoulder and the laceration on my forearm, but it seemed preferable to looking like a cartoon character. No one was around to see me, but I had small injuries to several parts of my body. I didn’t need to add my dignity to the list.

The door was as crimson as the walls all around it. I felt very uneasy, and very, very unwilling to see what lie behind it. Even I could see the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and I was absolutely, 100 certain that something very unpleasant was lying in wait for me. I didn’t even want to touch the door handle, and I guess I had a decent enough reason for that.

But, I had seen enough and experienced enough to know that there was no point in hesitating or refusing. And it was that solid, comforting resolve that brought me back into focus, at least, a little bit. I used my sleeve to cover my hand as I touched the handle; I wasn’t going to touch the blood if I didn’t have to. But, the resolve was there. The gallows mentality was there, too. Que sera, sera.

It only helped so much, though. That was why I felt that resolve crumbling as I pulled the nasty metal door open.