CHAPTER 3. CAN’T YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING?
At the end of the hallway were a pair of double doors, propped open. Through the doors was a huge open space, its walls shrouded in shadow. Our footsteps echoed across the wood floor. At the other end of the room was a locked door, presumably the same door that had slammed. The blood trail that we were following continued under it and beyond.
“Guess Eleanor didn’t give you any keys, did she?” I asked.
“Actually, she did.”
“Ah, so let it not be said that you came totally empty-handed.”
“Ha, ha, hey you’re pretty funny for a big bald guy,” Gil said as he pulled a ring from a deep coat pocket and gave it a dramatic shake. Some of the keys were halfway modern looking. Most weren’t.
“For the record, I shave my head.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” he said as he stooped, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder, and began fitting keys unsuccessfully into the lock. The door was tall and–unlike the others we’d seen–was made of dull unfinished metal. While Gil fiddled with the lock, I turned, keeping a wary eye on the spooky wheelchair at the far end of the room–and our backs.
The room we were in was long and wide, and the main expanse of the space was clear of furniture. The floor was a well-finished, glossy hardwood floor, constructed from long parallel rows of narrow wooden slats. High above us were long, peaked skylights showing the black night sky beyond. A slow rain had begun falling, pattering on the glass. Between the floor and the skylight, I didn’t have a hard time imagining what the room probably was: a gymnasium. In the corner was a doorway leading downward. I aimed the flashlight beam at the doorway, illuminating a sign.
“Hey, I was right,” I said.
“What?”
“Oh, sorry, just thinking out loud. That sign in the corner says ‘Pool–Lower Level.’ We must be in the gym or something.”
“So the bleachers didn’t clear that up for you?”
I turned the beam against the walls, illuminating long rows of old wooden bleachers. Beneath them ran dark expanses of shadow that the beam of the flashlight did little to penetrate.
“Oh.”
“Yeah I’m not too wild about a giant open space that is this dark,” Gil said. “I have an old habit of checking walls and corners first. Shadows are not my friend.”
“Tell me about it.”
At the far end of the room we heard the sound of a door slamming again. The sound echoed through the huge open space. Slow footsteps began tapping across the floor, coming towards us.
“Zoinks, big man,” Gil said, straightening up and coming to my side, our backs to the locked door.
“Boss, I am not liking this.” I turned the beam into the empty space at the center of the gym, light passing over nothing but dusty hardwood.
The footsteps stopped.
“Maybe the invisible man stopped for a quick dip?” Gil murmured, waving his hand towards the steps leading down to the pool.
We waited, but the steps were gone.
“Want me to check for footprints?” I asked.
“I want you and Mr. Flashlight to stay right here with me,” Gil said, turning and trying again to get the door open, this time with urgency.
“Okay, well, hold this,” I said, handing him the flashlight. He took it, his hand shaking.
I walked out into the middle of the floor, right around where the center circle would be on a basketball court. When I got there, I stopped and listened.
I heard the rain. I heard the thunder rumbling overhead and the wind in the trees. I heard the Boss’s key ring jingling behind me as he nervously struggled with the lock. Really, the inside of the gym was quiet. I don’t want to say too quiet, but it was pretty damn quiet.
The sound started very faintly, as if it was coming from a great distance. It grew, but very slowly.
“Quiet, Boss,” I said after a minute. The jingling of keys ceased.
“What is it?”
“Listen.”
It was subtle. For a minute, I thought it was my imagination. I closed my eyes, focusing. After a moment, I heard it again, steadily growing.
“I hear somethin’,” Gil said.
“Shhh,” I said.
At first, it sounded like two pieces of paper being slid against each other. Then it changed, the timbre becoming something more akin to soft tapping. Steady tapping. I took a few steps toward the sound, trying to piece together what it was exactly.
“Dylan, get back.”
“Hold on, Boss. I think...”
“Get back, I said.”
“Wait.” I took another few steps into the darkness. Behind me, Gil was trying to follow me with the beam of the flashlight, but we were too far apart.
“Dylan,” he urged. “Come back, please.”
The sound continued, slow and steady. Somehow, my curiosity was trumping my better judgement, to say nothing of fear.
“It’s just up here,” I said softly.
“Don’t.”
I stopped, almost fully enshrouded in darkness. It wasn’t tapping, it was shaking. Rattling. The sound came out to meet me, a hollow sound, almost like a cheap plastic maraca.
But it wasn’t a maraca.
“Dylan, get back here!” Gil shouted.
“Hold on, that can’t be a...”
“It’s a goddamn rattlesnake, man!!”
Gil was swinging the light around like mad as he abandoned the door and ran towards me, light playing off the ceiling and floor and bleachers. I was frozen, listening to the snake’s rattling tail approach and realizing how stupid I had been. This is what happens when you get a little too brave working with these guys; the detached thought floating through my head.
“Dylan!”
I took a step back as Gil’s light finally landed on the shiny russet and olive scales of the snake, coiled a few feet from me. Slowly, it’s head rose, a long forked tongue flicking from between its open jaws.
“Take a step back, big man, nice and slow,” Gil was saying. He stood a few paces behind me, hands raised like he was being robbed at gunpoint.
“I am. Just quiet down. Calm, Boss. Be calm...” I said.
I took a few steps back, my eyes locked on the snake’s. I’m sure it was my imagination, but they seemed to be glowing.
I bumped into Gil and together the two of us began stumbling backwards. Until we heard it again. Now the rattling was in stereo.
“I coulda sworn that wasn’t there a second ago,” Gil said, his voice wavering.
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“It’s behind me, like four feet maybe? I’d like to say it’s got a lollypop, but actually... it looks kinda pissed. Can we go another direction, please?”
I turned, seeing the coiled shape of a second snake, identical to the first. Jaws wide, tongue flicking, fangs menacing. Unlike the first snake, however, it was uncoiling as it slid toward us.
“To the left,” I said, tugging Gil’s arm. “Left, left!”
We hustled to the left, awkwardly stumbling like a three-legged racer, Gil swinging the flashlight towards the pair of snakes that were now both slithering towards us.
“Up on the bleachers,” I said. “Climb up!”
“No, wait!” We skidded to a halt, two more rattlesnakes slipping from beneath the edge of the bleachers.
“Seriously? We’re in Pennsylvania, not the friggin’ Mojave Desert!”
“Back, go back towards the door,” Gil said, handing me the flashlight. We broke into an undignified run, Gil pulling the ring of keys from his pocket again, eyes moving over the blocky silver and bronze keys.
Gil tumbled to his knees in front of the lock, jamming a key into the lock and giving it a turn. No luck. He tried another. Nothing. He swore, glancing over his shoulder.
I swept the circle of light over the floor slowly, waiting. I could hear the approach of the rattlers, coming left, right, and center.
“Open the door, we got some unfriendly company.”
“It
’s this one, it’s got to be this one,” he said. It wasn’t.
“Dammit, Boss...”
“Hold ‘em off, big man.”
“Easy for you to say!” I said through gritted teeth.
The first snake got within reach of the flashlight, its mouth hanging open, fangs long and curved. The length of its body writhing and twisting, pushing it forward with surprising speed.
The metal flashlight in my hand was all I had. I lunged, swinging the head of the light and catching the snake across the neck, tossing it off into the darkness. It was replaced with two more. I kept swinging.
“Come on!” I begged.
I heard the keys fall from Gil’s hand and clatter to the hardwood floor. “Seriously, man?” Gil shouted. He stooped for the keys and snatched them before rising again. Desperate, he pounded on the metal door with one fist before jamming one last key into the hole. “Open sesame, por favor!”
It wasn’t the right key, but something did happen: something knocked back.
Huge and deep, it echoed through the gymnasium, the impact loud enough and deep enough to shake dust from the high rafters. Gil and I froze, wide-eyed.
The sound hadn’t come from the other side of the door. It had come from beneath us. Great and powerful, it was as if a giant fist had cracked against the underside of the floor.
As one, the snakes withdrew, the rattles on their tales suddenly silent.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“It came from...”
“...the pool?”
It came again, a terrible crushing boom from beneath us, strong enough to knock us from our feet and sounding like a howitzer launched from the next room. A few boards cracked from the pressure, snapping and stirring up countless plumes of dust. After a moment, another crash. More boards broke. Now it seemed like the entire floor was beginning to bow upward at the center of the room.
“The door, get the DOOR!”
Gil turned, spinning the endless ring of keys and choosing a new one, slipping it into the lock and turning. Still wrong.
“How many keys do you have there?”
“This one, come on baby, be my key!”
The lock, stubborn and rusted, tumbled lethargically in the mechanism. Gil cackled, victorious. He pocketed the ring and pulled. The door didn’t budge.
From beneath, the terrible impact sounded again. Boards broke free, coming up and out of the floor and scattering in disarray. From beneath us, I heard a deep, primal roar, so deep and raw as to sound almost geological, like the rumble of a volcano erupting.
“Gil,” I said. “The door... please... the door...”
The floor rose from center court, large portions of lacquered wood breaking free and tumbling from the hill that was slowly rising.
Gil glanced over his shoulder. “Holy cow man, that thing wasn’t there a second ago!”
“Gil, open the fucking door!”
I turned, putting my hand over his and pulling. It didn’t open, but the door shook with a metal-on-metal screeech, opening about a quarter of an inch.
“Again!” I said, bracing myself against the doorframe for leverage. Behind us, I could hear the roar, rising in volume, and the continual cracking as the wood floor exploded in pieces.
Together, we pulled. The door budged again, but still wouldn’t open.
I glanced over my shoulder. From the disintegrating center of the floor, something was emerging, as cracked planks and bent nails flew around us.
“Pull again, Dylan, once more should do it!”
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
Gil turned, following my eyes. It wasn’t too hard to figure out what I was looking at.
“Holy shit,” he echoed.
From the center of the room, a thick vermillion tentacle was rising from the gaping hole in the floor. A gaping hole completely punched out, the floor beneath us was beginning to collapse, weakening and beginning to droop, funneling us towards the tentacle.
“Open sesame!” Gil shouted. “It worked once! One more time, pretty please!”
My shoes slipped on the hardwood and I fell to my knees. It took me a second to get back on my feet, one hand on the doorknob, one on Gil. Together, we pulled. The metal groaned again, the door loosening from the jamb’s terrible grip.
The roaring behind us rose again, the floor quivering as some fresh hell pushed against it. I heard the cracking of two-by-fours and the moan of I-beams bending. Huge segments of the floor fell, disappearing into the darkness below as a second tentacle rose from the pool and began moving towards us.
“Come on, Boss,” I said. “One more time.”
I grabbed Gil’s arm and pulled him up towards the door, his shoes having a harder time finding traction on the floor than my own. The floor beneath us rose, leveling for a moment and giving me the chance to put my shoulder against the door frame and pull.
The door popped open with a crack, the frame coming lose from the decayed drywall.
“All right, go, GO!” I pushed Gil through the doorway into another dark corridor, apparently Callowleigh’s specialty. Beneath me, the floor gave way, dropping downward towards the pool and landing with a splash. I caught the door handle, the entire frame creaking and groaning, threatening to pull completely free of the wall. My feet pinwheeling, I thought for a moment that I was about to splash down in the monster’s baby pool before Gil closed a hand around mine and pulled.
Together, we got my heavy ass up and into the hallway as the last of the gym flooring fell away behind me. I lay on the floor for a second, gasping for air as Gil pulled at my hand.
“Let’s go, let’s gooooo,” he crooned. I followed his gaze towards my feet to see a tentacle, as thick as my thigh, pass through the remains of the doorway and move towards me.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I kicked my legs and pushed backwards. After a moment, I was on my feet, Gil and I running down the corridor with a tentacle at our heels.
We made the first left and immediately crashed into a pair of wide double doors. The doors swung open, and we collapsed on the floor in a pile.
It was a library, unnaturally well-lit by the warm glow of old tungsten lightbulbs. Books were everywhere; shelved on the cases covering every inch of every wall, piled on tables like leaning towers, heaped in mountains on the floor.
“Well, I didn’t see that comin’,” Gil said.