Stories from the Ether Volume I: The Secret of Rue McGrath & The Excerpt
W.T. Hughes
Copyright W.T. Hughes 2010
Stories from the Ether Volume I
The Secret of Rue McGrath
and
The Excerpt
By: W.T. Hughes
Thanks to Renee and Darrin for all your support
The Secret of Rue McGrath
My price range for an apartment was rather lean after the divorce, and each rat hole I found for rent was worse than the prior. She had emptied the savings account before she ran off with the neighbor, and I had lost my job the month before when the factory shut down. With no job and no money one’s options for accommodations in Boston are very limited. Most places I could afford were in Dorchester, a crime ridden pool of decay if there ever was one. The buildings would have been condemned if the city ever bothered to inspect them. Then I saw it, an ad for a small apartment in Jamaica Plain that was within my price range.
I went to see the place expecting the worst, but while it may not be the best section of the city it was heads above Dorchester. The building was a plain enough brick construction, however what struck me immediately was the lack of ne'er-do-well’s standing on the stoop outside. All of the apartments I had visited before I could not enter without either threats of violence, offers to purchase drugs of all types and quantities, or outright assault in some cases.
The hallways were free of loiterers and were thankfully absent of the smell of urine. Bolstered by this unforeseen bit of luck I kept my expectations low as it seemed to make little sense for an apartment here to have such a low rent, there had to be a catch. I asked a resident passing by where to find the building superintendant. The lady, who I later would come to know as Miss Gardner, directed me down a long hallway past the maintenance closet, it appeared that he lived in the basement.
It is customary for a superintendent to live in an apartment in the building, so it struck me as strange that in this instance that apartment was the basement. Reaching the door at the end of the hallway I knocked and proceeded to wait. After some minutes had passed the door opened, and before me stood a squat man whose flaming red hair and freckled face gave away his ancestry before his surname was even spoken.
Rue McGrath was his name, a man in his 40’s I would have guessed. He stood stooped shouldered as if a heavy weight had been laid across his back for time indeterminate. His eyes were ringed by black circles divulging the fact that this man saw little sleep. All in all it was obvious that Rue McGrath was a man who bared great stress in his everyday life, and it weighed on him like a load of bricks. He asked me if I was here for the room and led me to a door in the same hallway just down from the basement entrance. It was small, consisting of an open area with a kitchen and what could possibly pass as a living room with a Murphy bed, and a small bathroom with a standup shower rather than a tub. As I told him it was plenty enough for me and I would like to sign the lease he gave me a warning. The reason it was so cheap it seemed is because it was right above the basement, and he had projects on which he worked at night, all night in fact. This caused much noise and previous tenants had complained that noise kept them awake and made living there unbearable. I assured Mr. McGrath this would be no problem for me as I slept very little myself. This was true as of late as the stresses of my life kept me awake until the point where my body would simply shut down for a few hours of required sleep, so I signed the lease and collected the few boxes with my meager possessions and moved in.
***
That very night I came to understand what the hunched little super had meant by the noise. It began as soon as the last rays of the sun disappeared from the small window in the back of my new apartment. A hammering began, almost as if a member of a chain gang were below my floor working on a never ending rock pile. It would come in a steady rhythmic almost hypnotizing pattern for a while then stop, only to start up again a minute later. For the next three months I spent my evenings reading as I had a distinct lack of cable or a television for that matter, and the ever present pounding becoming little more than mere background noise.
The daily grind of my life dulled my senses to everything around me. I spent my days searching for work among the ever depleting factory jobs, or performing whatever odd jobs I could find to gather whatever money possible. Finally my fortune shifted, I had acquired a job as a security guard at a warehouse. It paid less than I would have liked and starting everyday at 1 pm and ending at 10 pm it was an off shift job, but it was steady work and the only thing I could find. Each night I arrived back at my apartment building to see a truck parked in the back alley and two men loading something into the dumbwaiter. I would make my way to my little flat to hear the incessant hammering well under way. That which had not bothered me those many months when I had no legitimate work now grated on my nerves.
On the second week of returning home from my new employment I made my way down the alley behind the building to the truck and the men unloading their cargo. I found they were delivering bricks, typical square red bricks such as used to build walls across the nation. I would come to find that these men delivered the bricks, two hundred of them in fact, every evening at 11 o’clock. They delivered these every night regardless of holidays or weather and were paid a handsome amount by the buildings owner to do so. Armed with this knowledge I retired for the night, in my bed my mind wandered on the purpose of why so many bricks would be delivered every night and where they were going. The delivery men seemed to not know nor care to their destination or purpose.
Never had I seen any such load removed from the building during anytime of day, but the basement could not possibly hold the endless supply of enumerated brick could it? I rose from my resting place and made my way down the hallway to the basement door. Pressing my ear tightly I listened, all I could hear was the never ending hammering and an occasional curse from what I could only expect was Rue McGrath himself.
Returning to my apartment I walked the floor, attempting to find the spot that would appear to be closest to directly over the spot on which Rue McGrath stood. I found it near the west corner of the room, and from here the hammering pierced the wood and carpet as cleanly as if I were standing in the basement itself. Knelling I felt the immediate area and found something strange, apparently underneath the carpet in this very spot seemed to not be the oak floorboards one would expect, instead I felt the rigid slits of a vent. Procuring a knife I began hacking at the carpet around the area, with each hammer blow I hacked more and more furiously until the vent was exposed to the open air for the first time in unknown decades.
Pressing my eye downward I stared through the slit into the abyss below. There in the fluttering light of a lamp I could see the back of Rue McGrath. He seemed to be working at a furious rate, but what he was doing I could not tell. He would move about and then disappear from my view only to return a moment later to begin work anew. I spent the entire night staring through the vent, pressing with such force I started to feel a trickle of blood where the skin had been rubbed away from hours of movement against the vents unforgiving surface. As the sun broke through my small window the hammering stopped and I saw McGrath stumble away from the spot where he had been working and not return. Standing I began pacing single mindedly like a legionnaire marching to battle. I had to know what was going on under my feet, I had to discover the secret of the bricks and Rue McGraths nightly vocations.
***
Having lingered in the building during the
time I was without employment I was aware that everyday at 1 o’clock Rue would go collect mail from a P.O. Box. I met him as he exited the basement door where I stood leaning against the wall waiting. As he turned to look at me the surprise rippled across his craggily face. I quickly slid my hand onto the door jam and pressed the putty I was holding into the latch. I engaged him in small talk as I stepped forward to draw his attention away from the fact there would be no tell-tell click of the door locking as it swung shut. He ended our conversation curtly and departed as I waited in growing anticipation. As soon as he left the building I quickly opened the door and descended the stair into the mystery shrouded basement.
It was an austere place, an unmade cot in one corner, and small refrigerator beside it and a hotplate on a workbench. A trunk sat at the end of the bed, I opened it to find plain clothes neatly folded and stashed away. The wall, for the most part, was made of large concrete blocks like you would find in the foundation of any building. However one section along the back was different. The ten foot long section of wall was made of the plain red brick the likes of which I had seen delivered on the evening before. The same red brick which I had been informed two hundred of were delivered each night.
A quick count showed that around 400 of the bricks were used to build the wall, and there was a pile of almost 100 bricks just to the left of this red barricade. But where had all the bricks went? Two hundred delivered each and every night? And why, why would there be such a barrier placed in the middle of what would only be described as the most common basement wall in Boston otherwise? I pressed my ear to the cold surface and noticed that some of the cement, used to mortar the bricks, was still wet. Closing my eyes I concentrated on hearing any sound issuing from whatever mysterious void lay behind this clog in the basement, but no sound issued from behind that numb unyielding curtain. Opening my eyes I continued scanning the room, on the workbench sat a hammer, could that be the source of the ceaseless pounding I heard night after night? Surely with the volume of those blows which echoed through the floorboards into my apartment it would need to be a sledgehammer and not this snub little carpenters hammer.
Looking at my watch I saw time had passed quicker than I had realized and it would not be much longer until Rue McGrath returned with his mail. Yet I felt empty, unsated that I had discovered no more than a sparse reclusive little room and the mystery that had beset my mind was no closer to being resolved.
Going back to the trunk I quickly began rummaging through it trying not to overly disturb its contents. There I found a metal ring with several keys. Praying to whatever god may be listening at that point in time I made my way to the door. I began checking each of the keys hoping one would prove to unlock the basement door. The third of the keys I tried did just that, and I quickly detached it from the key ring and slid it into my pocket. Placing the keys back into the trunk and straightening its contents as best I could I removed the putty from the lock and shut the basement door until I heard a familiar click. I made my way back to my apartment and saw I had completed my clandestine operation with perfect timing as none other than Rue McGrath entered the buildings front doors. I deposited myself on my small bed and smiled, that night I would solve the mystery, that night I would know what secrets Rue McGrath held in that basement and what strange work he was producing.
***
I awoke shortly after five in the afternoon. The sun would still be in the sky for another hour but I could already feel my anticipation beginning to boil to the surface. I paced and watched the clock tick minute by agonizing minute until finally Ra’s boat made its journey into the underworld and the void of darkness had engulfed us all. Within minutes the hammering began, and I went to the vent and peered into the basement below. Once again I saw Rue McGrath working in the area that I now knew as the brick wall. I waited for a single outstretched excruciating hour to be sure Rue was engrossed in his task before departing for the basement door.
My hands were slick with sweat and trembled as if with a palsy as I slowly inserted the key into the lock. Ever so carefully I turned it, nigh willing it to refrain from making noise as the lock gave its tell-tell click letting me know that at last the secret of Rue McGrath would be mine. I opened the door just enough to squeeze my way through and stepped onto the stairs noiselessly. I had left my shoes in my apartment, wearing only my socks in an effort to dampen any possible sound that may divulge my pressence. Trying my best to be no more than a whisper I slowly made my way down the steps until I neared the bottom and had a clear view of the sparsely decorated expanse. There twenty feet away stooped Rue McGrath.
His back was to me as he stood before the mysterious wall. And the hammering, oh the hammering, that cacophonous ringing echoing off the walls seemed to come from the wall itself. Yet as I watched I saw that in his hand Rue held no hammer but only a trowel which he used to smooth cement around a freshly placed brick. Finished with his existing task he stood up, at least as much as he could with his perpetually bent frame, still facing the wall and waited. I stood not even daring to breathe as that incessant hammering grew louder and louder, Rue turned to his left and reached out to the pile of bricks nearby and picked one from the top and then I learned the secret of Rue McGrath.
***
At first I thought it was melting, one of the bricks sitting at waist level suddenly stood out among its brethren. The outline of grayish cement which embraced each of those red building blocks disappeared into the ether, the brick itself seemed to begin to slide, or at least parts of it, and that is what caused my now flittering mind to believe it was melting before me. But as the first layers fell away I saw that in actuality it did not run as a liquid would, but instead blew as it had turned to a powder. Within seconds it was nothing more than a small pile sitting in the gaping empty space in the wall, back shrouded by nothing but the most utter blackness. Then an eerie green light began to glow, its luminescence highlighting Rue McGrath even though shadow still seemed to form around him.
A gust of hot air blew forth from the hole, reaching all the way across the room and striking me in the face like a blast from the sand scorched deserts of the far-east. My heart was racing, it felt as if it was in my throat choking me, and my breath was coming in short erratic bursts. As I watched Rue step over and began lining the hole in the wall with cement from his trowel. All this time the incessant hammering had stopped only for a few seconds and was now once again as strong as ever, Rue seemed satisfied with his cement placement and started to move a new brick forward when it came through.
***
It slowly snaked through the hole in the wall like a maggot burrowing through ripened flesh, a dark tendril that seemed to be more an absence of light than a thing of dark color. Like a compressed smooth octopus tentacle the thing wriggled through just a few inches, the sheer malevolence that issued forth from this blighted coil spoke of abysmal horrors which only reside in the deepest recesses of the human subconscious. This billowing pressence of all terror struck me like a physical blow to my chest. I tried to scream, my mind wanted to let forth a primal howl from somewhere deep within the bowels of humanity itself, but I was unable.
I could not scream, nor even take a breath. It was as if Cotton Mather himself had laid a stone upon my chest, extorting me to admit my witchcraft for daring to view the unearthly spectacle before me. Through it all, the unnatural light, the seething black tendril, and the sense of unyielding evil Rue McGrath stood unperturbed. Moving his hand forward he slid the brick into the emptiness where the tendril was writhing from. It fit like a puzzle piece blocking out the strange light, this cut off the malevolent thing from it source and the tendril evaporated into the air, like someone swiping a finger through a smoke ring. As the tendril dissipated there was a gut retching baleful moan that seemed to reverberate more within my mind that within my eardrums. This was enough to finally break my paralysis and allow me to scream.
***
Rue turned at t
he sound of my frightened wail, his eyes wide and face drenched in perspiration. “You idiot fool, why are you in here, what have you done, get out now” he howled at me like some wild eyed stygian. He started towards me with his stoop shouldered amble, but only made it a few feet. For as he turned his back another of the bricks dissolved and blew away like a dandelion on a breezy March day.
I saw it of course, as I was still facing the wall clutching to the banister like a drowning man to a life preserver, but Rue…Rue never saw it.
***
I know now that the only way to hold onto the edge of your sanity in such a situation is to concentrate whole heartedly on a task and only that task. Rue was concentrating on filling the holes, when I distracted him his concentration fell solely on me as if the wall no longer existed. The tentacle of the darkness snaked out of the opening in the wall and as if it could sense this distraction it quickly shot towards Rue’s back. It wrapped around his neck and he was stopped in his tracks, his eyes bulged like disks and his face distorted in abject fear. His single mindedness was now gone, and he suddenly realized what had happened.
I watched helplessly as he flailed uselessly at the thing around his neck, and I cringed as I saw the tip extend out even further, like a man extending his finger to point, and plunged up Rue’s nose. The noose around his neck was now so tight he could not even gag as the tendril made its way down his throat, and he began to look sunken as he dried up.
***
The eyes were the first to go. They deflated like someone letting the air out of a balloon, collapsing in on themselves. The skin was next, it became sunken and gray, cracking away and falling off in flakes. Followed quickly by the rest of the fleshy parts of the human anatomy, the muscle and tendons and organs, all returned to dust.
The skeleton was all that remained in the decrypted grip of the thing, and quickly enough it to turned an ashen color and as the tendril let it fall to the floor it vanished in a puff of dust. This had all taken less than a minute even though it seemed to play in slow motion, and now the horror from some unknown abyss made its way along the floor in my direction.