Highway To Hell (25 page)

“It’s nice to meet you, Becky.” Helen flashed a half smile as she spoke in the hope that it would mask the apprehension she felt.

Marcus turned, opening his mouth to speak, when it hit him: an idea of such clarity he felt himself recoil as it came into his mind. The yellow ‘balloon’: it wasn’t a cloud over them, it was showing them the way, as it had been since the start.

“Watch out,” he said as he bent down onto the balls of his feet. He grabbed the legs of the bed, and in one powerful movement pulled it from the floor and threw it out of the way. Dust billowed up from beneath it – no, not dust, but dullness; the same strange chalky mist that had covered their previous room also. The sudden nature of Marcus’s action kicked up a small storm and for just a second, the true colors of the room were revealed to them.

The women both jumped and shrank away from Marcus as he threw the bed. His chest tensed, and his shoulders bulged as he threw the bed. Becky let out a small shriek; she had been around enough violent men in her time to become sufficiently scared of the consequences if you get in their way.

“There, look,” Marcus said, panting. His time in the judgment cell and hotel room had left him weakened. He had no idea how long it had been since he had last eaten or drank anything, and it wasn’t until that point that he realized how his throat ached for a sip of water or how his empty stomach flapped around inside his body like a windsock at an airport, desperate for some meager level of sustenance.

The women stood together and simply peered forwards, craning their necks, neither one wanting to move any closer until they knew what it was they were supposed to see. It was Helen that saw it first: a faint outline on the floor.

“A trapdoor,” she said in a voice filled with wonderment. She took a step away from Becky, but found her gaze moved from the floor to Marcus and so she stopped. She didn’t know what it was about him, but he made her nervous.

“Now we just need to figure out how to open it.” Marcus began to plan things out. Stepping closer to the trapdoor, he crouched down onto his haunches. He placed his hands on the floor, in the center of the faint, but now that attention had been drawn to it, clearly visible square.

“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything,” Becky said. Her arms were crossed, but she no longer hugged herself.

“Come here and you’ll see. Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” Marcus looked directly at Becky as he spoke from his squatted position and he saw her face change, relax. “I saw your face change when I moved the bed; it’s a face I’ve seen one or two times before, you know. It’s fine, you don’t have to say anything, but just know that we’re in this together, alright?” he continued, holding her gaze so that she could see his words were genuine.

With memories of rash decisions still lingering in her mind, Becky moved closer, until she stood between Helen and Marcus, leaning over them, not wanting to crouch for fear of not being able to stand up again. Her body was weak with hunger; her legs trembled, and visibly, she guessed, for Marcus rose and steadied her by placing an arm around her shoulder. She looked, squinted at the ground – she even tried crossing her eyes like one of those magic eye puzzles that she had never been able to see as a child, but she just couldn’t see it.

“It’s here.” Helen pointed at the ground, tracing the outer edge of the square with her index finger.

“I see it!” Becky squealed with delight. A childish smile graced her face. She stood with slack jawed amazement as a bold black line appeared before her eyes, travelling along the floor like the lines of an earthquake in a cartoon. The line wasn’t much thicker than a hair’s breadth, but saw it. She could see the shape and that made her happy; she wasn’t the one behind left behind this time.

“It’s hot – ouch, really hot,” Helen exclaimed as she stood up, shaking her right hand as she did. She put the burnt finger in her mouth and felt it throb against her tongue.

The trio stood side by side. Marcus loosened his arm around Becky and when he felt her stand on her own he removed it completely.

“Is it just me, or is anybody else starving?” Becky said at the same time as her stomach gave a loud lengthy growl.

“Oh God, I could eat a horse sideways,” Helen remarked as she continued to suck on her burnt digit. None of them had even thought about food until they got close to the trapdoor, but now the hunger grew inside them like a parasite.

“I think we’re getting close,” Marcus offered. “It’s our bodies catching up with us, what has happened, how long we have been gone,” he reasoned, and while he was aware that it sounded as if he knew what was happening, the reality was that it was all guesswork. If anything came out in some sort of sensible order it was pure coincidence. Nothing that had happened to them had been normal in the terms that they had been raised to believe, and so why should this time around be any different? If they felt hungry it was because they hadn’t eaten in a long time.

“How do we open it then?” Becky asked, looking around the room, struck by a sudden feeling that something was watching them. Not in that creepy mansion sense of the eyes in paintings moving, but rather like being in a police interview room, all of them hidden behind the mirror, watching her every move. She was sure of it, even before the hairs on the back of her head stood on end.

“No idea. I think we just have to wait. The last time it appeared when it was ready to,” Marcus answered. His left arm was crossed over his body, while his right rested with its elbow on his forearm. He stroked the thick layer of stubble that had appeared on the lower half of his face as he thought. He knew they were being watched, but there was nothing he could do about it.

VI

The first cracks appeared just as the ground began to rumble beneath their feet. A gentle shake at first, but it escalated to a tremble that rattled the windows in their frames. The loose fitting shelves in the closet fell from their holdings, creating a strange sound, muffled by the unusual atmospherics of the building. It sounded haunting and melancholy. The line traced its way round the outline of the square, not following the faint but crisp shape, but rather tearing the floor open. Wooden splinters shot into the air before they rained down around them like Lilliputian arrows fired at invading giants from another world. Helen flinched, ducking backwards, while Becky remained stationary while Marcus stood tall, watching the scene as it unfolded with a curious intensity.

“Get back,” Marcus said as he stepped before both of the women, spreading out his arms and holding them in front of them, creating a temporary barrier. His block soon turned into a swimming motion as he pulled his arms backwards, sweeping the women with them, just in case. The crack made the first turn and sped towards the second. Its speed along the third straight slowed, even stopping twice. Yet each time it started again. Reaching the third and final turn without any further problems, the line then decided to straighten out, moving crisply and cleanly towards the finish.

All three of them held their breath as the vibrations that shook the room increased, and until it was a tremor. The building seemed to shake in fear of what lay ahead… lay in wait.

“Becky, get back a bit; we don’t know what’s going to happen.” Marcus called. He found himself shouting even though there was no real need for it.

Becky ignored him, or so he thought. In reality she didn’t even hear him. She heard a faint sound, like someone talking through a wall, or underwater. Becky heard her name – or the last syllable of it, at least – but her focus was elsewhere. She watched as the crack in the floor spread, first becoming a thick black line in place of a thin grey draft. She looked on as it widened, and with it came the voices. They hit her like a rush of air escaping a recently discovered tomb, opened for the first time by eager scientists and archaeologists whose only interests deep down are to better their own names.

At first the rush of air sounded like the wailing song of the helpless, a truly lonely sound that Becky was sure would break her heart in two all over again. For hidden within the mournful cry, she head her daughter. Crying as she left her womb, ripped into a world that was destined to look down on her. She heard the cry of a baby’s first teeth and first fall when learning to walk. She heard the crashing sound of a bicycle falling, the tears of a child with knees scraped and bloody. The gap spread, opening like the legs of the crack whore she once was, and with it came the howls of disbelief, of refusal, as her daughter was told who her mother was, hearing the truth that her real father was just some bum, who was bored with his own wife and kids and too spineless to leave them, yet couldn’t keep the itch in his pants. So he had offered a girl half his age three times the going rate to go to fuck unprotected. To Becky three times meant three times as much escape and so she had accepted without hesitation. She heard her daughter scoff as she was told her mother didn’t care. They told her that he could have fucked her all night wherever he wanted for just a small rock or a few hundred bucks and a cup of coffee.

She didn’t feel Marcus grabbing at her as the crack spread further, cutting the square from corner to corner like a sandwich. She heard nothing other than the cries of her child before they turned into the wails of a woman, a woman so desperate to avoid her mother’s life that she unknowingly runs harder towards it. The screams turned to moans of pleasure and ecstasy. Then screams of terror and pain as her legs were spread against her will. Men, sometimes in groups – she could hear their taunting laughter – ploughed her young body with their own instruments of torture. Becky heard the weeping shallow breaths of depression as her baby took her first hit from a crack pipe handed to her by some pimp in an alleyway. Becky clasped her hands to her ears. The square disappeared, revealing a black void, and in the center a dot. A dull yellow light fought its way through the darkness. To Becky, it didn’t look like the light at the end of the tunnel, but rather the headlight of the oncoming locomotive ready to meet them halfway. The light cast long eerie shadows on the walls and Becky screamed as her daughter’s weeping turned itself to the guttural screams of terror that brought back the images of the endless rows of bodies being burnt, turned on roasting spits, helpless and at the mercy of the merciless, flames forever licking at their wounds. She could feel the heat of the fire flicking through the floor, tasting the air for her scent. It was then that Becky understood what waited for her in the dark: Adramalech. His burning, fire filled eyes would fill the void, and the festering open wound that was his hand would reach through and pluck her from the group, just as King Kong first abducted Fay Wray’s unforgettable character from the safety of her hotel room.

It was then that Becky felt the tremors, felt the floors beneath them begin to melt and roll as if they stood on a waterbed. She threw out her arms for balance as the screams in her head grew worse. The cries of those who were left behind, strapped to their tables for however long their sentences were deemed to be, the cries of her daughter’s life, marred and influenced by the absent parents, the mother who cared so much for her baby and died in a fight to keep her, and the faceless father who didn’t even know she existed. Becky’s world became vague, her head became warm and heavy, and she was sure that she cried out her daughter’s name before the darkness consumed her.

VII

“It’s okay. We’ve got you.” It was him; the cop. He had caught her and pulled her into the center of the room, away from it all. While the entire room still trembled, the ground underfoot felt sturdy.

Becky’s vision continued to shimmer; it was like looking down a long stretch of road on a hot summer’s day. She hadn’t lost consciousness; she had passed out enough times in her life to know this was different. She looked back at the hole in the floor. The wailing was gone, the sobbing vanished, the fires of hell extinguished and replaced instead by a simple hole in the ground. There was a faint light in the center but its source was still some way off.

The ground stopped shaking so abruptly that it threw them all off balance.

“Are you okay?” Helen asked. “Come on, you’d better sit down for a second.” She took a step closer to Becky, but stopped. She didn’t want to get any closer to the trapdoor than was necessary.

“No... No, I’m fine. Did you guys hear that? As it opened, did you hear the screaming?” Becky asked, her voice still trembling from the images that her head had produced.

“I didn’t hear anything. Did you, Marcus?” Helen answered before reposing the question to the man they had unofficially elected their leader.

Marcus gave no answer at first; his attention was diverted to the whole in the floor. “No, I didn’t hear anything.” He looked up at the two women. “I think it’s this place; it plays tricks with your mind. When I first got here I kept hearing my wife calling my name – well, more yelling my name, and…” He paused. “Well, the finer points aren’t necessary details at the moment.” He stopped. They didn’t need to know everything yet. Not about his past at least. What would be the point?

“I have it, too,” Helen said just as the silence began to settle. “I keep seeing Luther, the thing who tortured me in Hell,” Helen added, speaking the words before she had a chance to think them through. They leapt from her mouth like a juicy good secret. She was shocked at herself; usually she kept her problems to herself; why would anybody else be interested in what was wrong with her life? Everybody had problems; she knew that.

Marcus moved closer, leaning over the hole, peering into its depth to get a better picture of what faced them. All he saw was a tunnel that descended on the vertical, before turning into a slope that headed away from the hotel – outside – taking the light with it. There was rickety ladder which looked as though it were as old as the earth itself. Marcus understood that at that same moment they would have to make the descent and trust that the wood wasn’t too rotted. It looked old and unstable; a homemade contraption from planks of driftwood and rusty nails – but at the same time he had a feeling that it would hold.