But dry. Oh hell, yes, drier than dry. Like I been inhaling bone dust and ashy cremains.
The passage began to widen and he felt hopeful.
I’m going to get out of this shit. Just you watch and see.
It was optimism that he figured was neither unrealistic nor misplaced. A good state of mind was more important than anything now. If he could keep his spirits bolstered, his mind would react in kind and find a way out. If he let despair overtake him, he would panic and go mad scrabbling in the muck and darkness. That was unacceptable. He had a wife and son. He needed to get back to them. Besides, the others would be moving heaven and earth to find him. But they couldn’t do it alone; they needed his help.
He moved on, duck-walking down the tunnel.
Now and again, he would pause and listen. He wasn’t sure what for, but it seemed necessary. In the back of his mind he told himself that it was for the sound of his rescuers. Maybe it was, partly. But the dark truth was that he had grown up in Haymarket and he knew the stories like everyone did. Insane things about the underground network of passages and, worse, who had tunneled them out.
He stopped again, breathing slow and even, encouraged by his own bravery, his cool head. He listened and heard nothing but the sound of water dripping, an occasional clod of mud falling.
Christ, it was like the soundtrack to an old movie or something.
Now that the passage was wider and taller, he moved forward at sort of a hunched-over crouch. The water had deepened some, it was up over the toes of his boots now, but it did not alarm him. This is the direction he had come from and this was the one that would get him back out.
Wait until he told people he had been down beneath—
Shit.
He shined the light around and there was no mistaking what he was seeing. There were skeletons jutting from the bowed red clay walls, five or six of them still articulated by the dried mud itself. They looked like they were trying to crawl free, and for a moment, as his heart seized in his chest, that’s exactly what he thought they were doing.
But no, they were long dead.
Yellowed and pitted, crumbling from age. They had been down there a long time and looked oddly like withered corn shocks as he caught them out of the corner of his eye. Alarmed, he fought back the panic that rose inside him like bile. Gruesome a discovery as it was, they were still just bones and completely harmless.
And you don’t have time for fear. You panic now and you’ll look just like them after a month down in this goddamn hole.
He moved on.
With a sort of sinking feeling in his gut, Kopecky realized that the passage was gradually canting downwards. It would take him deeper into the black bowels of the earth and the realization of this ignited a primal dread inside him. His skin pulled tight, his face and neck felt prickly. He waited there, unsure what to do now. The light trembled in his hand. Water dripped from above and ran down his face like tears. He began to feel the effects of confinement, of gnawing claustrophobia. He was breathing hard like the air was no good. The walls seemed to be pressing in on him. For just one sweaty second there, he thought he saw them moving.
He edged his way farther down the passage.
Jesus, it just kept going down and down. Its cant was gradual, but the farther he went, the higher the brown slopping water rose until it was nearly up to his knees. But just ahead, the light showed him that it opened up again. He would go that far before turning back. He would see what there was to see… even if it was just more old bones.
You’re doing okay, he told himself. Just keep your nerve.
He relaxed a bit. He couldn’t let imagination master him. He had his light, he had his gun. The walls were not closing in on him and the air was just fine. The very fact that there was air was proof positive that this network connected with the surface somewhere.
He barely even smelled the gaseous stink now.
After a while, he figured, you could get used to just about anything.
He made himself move on until he was in a chamber that was tall enough to stand in. The water was up above his knees by then and steadily rising. It dripped like rain from above. About all he could hear was it constantly dropping into the puddles around him.
He moved on.
It was narrowing again, the floor dropping away much faster. He kept at it until the water was up to his thighs. He didn’t like that. He saw no sign of light ahead, as from an opening to the surface, just a heavy weave of darkness that was black and cloying and sewer-smelling. The passage opened up again ahead, but only into a pool of murky water that looked deep.
No, no way in hell he was going down there.
Time to backtrack.
He put the light back the way he had come. Yes, it was more reassuring to go in that direction. At least the tunnel canted gradually higher and he would be out of the water. He figured he couldn’t have been too far under the surface. Worse came to worst, he was going to dig his way out like a rat.
Behind him, splashing.
A bolt of white fear exploding in his belly, he turned around quick. For just the briefest of seconds, the light reflected off what looked like dozens of shining white eyes. He nearly dropped the light, a small, strangled cry breaking in his throat. When he got control of it, he aimed the beam back down there.
Nothing.
Just that dark pool of filthy water. A few ripples played over its surface and he did not want to know what was causing them. He turned and started up. He made it maybe ten feet when he heard the splashing echoing up from the pool again and his flesh went tight like rubber. He put the light back there and saw nothing.
It’s your nerves, it’s just your goddamn nerves.
He breathed in and out and turned back… and cried out.
Movement.
Just a hint of it. As he brought the light back around, he saw a dark elfin shape scurry past. In his mind, he had a distorted image of something like a hunched-over black cat walking upright, front paws dangling from chest level.
He moved the light around in trembling arcs, but there was nothing there. Still, he took no chances. Kopecky was a cop with a cop’s sense of reality. He didn’t believe in boogeymen, but he had been raised on the local superstitions and spook stories. His cop’s gut sense told him to err on the side of caution and he pulled his Colt 9mm from its holster.
He moved on, the passage narrowing.
The clay walls pressed in, the roof angled downwards. Water dripped on his head, making his scalp feel sodden and oily. Tree roots reached down like dead fingers. One brushed the back of his neck and he nearly cried out. He moved the light around, scanning it back and forth. And as he did so, he saw something that did make him shriek.
A face.
Again, he saw it for no more than a second, but it was definitely a face, white and grinning, looking swollen as if from insect bites. Its eyes bulged from their sockets like white eggs, huge and sightless.
Automatically, he jerked the trigger of the Colt and sent two rounds in its direction. Whether he hit it, he did not know. He moved the light around and it was gone. It was not in front of him or behind him. It had just disappeared like a ghost.