Sink: Old Man's Tale

Perrin Briar

His footsteps
kicked up small wisps of dust that swirled about his feet. His shadow flickered with movement on the craggy rock wall, cast by the flaming torch held in his rigid right hand. The flame dripped like thick honey, leaving a trail of fiery breadcrumbs. The fire hissed as the man turned to look first down one tunnel, and then another. He was panting, out of breath. The darkness was cold and indifferent to his desperation.

He had a mustache, thick and bushy over his top lip, and wore the tatty clothing of someone who hadn’t changed in weeks. He studied the palm of his hand. A series of lines crossed it in blue ink. He pressed his finger at a junction where three of the lines met and ran it along one particular tunnel, toward an image of a star. The man looked up.

Shapes had been chipped into the walls. This one showed a water droplet with an arrow pointing left. That one a square with an arrow pointing up. Another showed a star, like you’d see glinting off a gemstone, with an arrow pointing right. The man smiled. He was going the right way. He took a step forward and then froze, stock still.

He turned to look back at the tunnel he had come from. The darkness was impenetrable to the eye. But to the ear, he heard nightmares. He listened intently, and then heard it again. Whispers. It could have been the sound of wind whistling across the edge of a sharp rock, but he knew better. There was no draft down here.

He ran down the tunnel on his right, toward the star. The heat from the torch brought beads of sweat to his face. The flickering flames put on a shadow puppet show of demons. Or perhaps it wasn’t a show. Perhaps they were real.

He stumbled, stepping into a deep recess. Pain shot up his ankle, into his knee. He took another step, this one making him flinch. He’d twisted his ankle. He cursed himself.

Chatter chatter chatter.

The whispering grew louder, like a rising tide in the dead of night. The man kept going, limping down the tunnel. Then he realized he had the glowing ball of flame in his hand. He would be easy to see. And though he loathed to lose the light, he needed to even the odds. He peered at the lines on his palm, memorizing which direction he needed to go. But his sweat had smudged the ink, making the map all but illegible. He tossed the torch aside and stamped on it with his worn shoes.

The tunnel was thrown into darkness. Nothing but his breaths and his fear filled the void. His shoes made scuffing noises. He felt along the tunnel’s cold hard surface, taking left after right, as far as his memory could serve him.

The whispers had quietened. But now he was hopelessly lost. He felt along the wall. His fingertips came to a material softer than the harsh rocks that tore at his skin. He felt the grooves of the shovel marks. It had recently been dug. He knew then he was heading in the right direction, and his heart swelled with hope.

The whispering grew louder, now all around him.

Then a whistling sound, followed by a
clack!

Something skimmed off the ground at his feet. He felt the air disturbance as the object flew past his ankle. The man’s eyes widened and he turned to look back at the darkness. A mistake. He shouldn’t stay still.

Clack!

This one struck the wall just left of his ear. He felt the wall vibrate where it had struck so close.

They found me. And they missed. Twice.
He knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

He turned and ran, ignoring the pain in his ankle. More objects whistled and smacked into the tunnel walls.
Clack, clack, clack!
One struck him on the lower back, the pain instant, sharp, and excruciating. But the weapon did not work as intended – it was meant to trap and ensnare limbs, not the trunk, which was too wide. He changed direction, knowing they would aim again for the same location.

His mind went to those who had helped him. Had one of them blabbed to the guards? Had one of them broken their promise? Or had he simply been unlucky and been spotted at some point? Or perhaps the trail of fiery breadcrumbs had given him away? His heart went to those who had helped him. He hoped their fate was better than the one awaiting him.

The chattering grew louder still, until it sounded like an angry hive of killer bees inside his skull. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t afford to give his position away.
As if they don’t already know.

He ran faster through the tunnels, now taking them at random. He knew now he would not find what he had been looking for. All he could do was try to escape, and then perhaps later, when he was safe, he could stumble around the great catacombs, until either his body or his will was broken.

He took another random tunnel. The whispers died and the clacking objects stopped. The mustached man was exhausted. He slowed to a walk, his hands over his head to expand his lungs. His breaths wheezed from his throat.

He leaned against a wall, and his fingers fell into a deep recess there. It was a straight line. It met another straight line, and another. He felt at it. It was the shape of a star. Beside it, an arrow pointing straight ahead.

I can make it
, the man thought.
I can make it!

He didn’t even hear the clack this time. It flew from the darkness and wrapped around his ankles. He fell forward, his impressive weight taking the fall hard. He pulled against the cord, but the darkness made it impossible. Another swirling noise groaned and wrapped around his feet and one of his hands.

He was doomed.

“No…” the man said. “No! Let me go! Please!”

The whispers grew louder, unbearable, as the figures approached. Though the man couldn’t see them, he sensed them standing around him. Ogling. He shouted in nonsense syllables, not in pain or fear, but out of loss, out of knowing he would never see his loved ones again, knowing he was doomed to live in this world for the rest of his life. He was so close to getting out that he could almost taste it. He sobbed as the figures picked him up and carried him back down the tunnel, deeper and deeper into the Earth.

The red desert
flitted past like the surface of Mars, every bit as hostile, if not as bleak. The Outback was home to a surprising amount of life, not least snakes, which lay bathing across the tarmac road. The driver made no attempt to avoid the hapless creatures, and in fact only seemed to veer toward them whenever he spotted them, his lip curled up in satisfaction with each rendered reptile.

Graham Turner sat in the passenger seat, peering outside mostly because he couldn’t stand to listen to the man in the driving seat talk incessantly and without restraint. Not everyone should be allowed freedom of speech.

Graham let himself listen to what Mr. Pearson was saying for a moment to see if it required him to respond anytime soon.

“…but that was when I realized I was onto a winner,” Mr. Pearson said, “because what he failed to notice was how good I am at performing when the odds are against me…”

Nope. He was still in full boasting mode. Soon his fat head wouldn’t be able to fit inside the car. Listening to his boss was bad enough, but in the backseat was the biggest suck-up the Righteous Brothers (the property development company they worked for, not the crooners) had ever produced, and they had produced some prodigious brown noses in their time.

Mr. Pearson slowed in his spiel as a snake made the mistake of raising its head from the tarmac. There was a moment of silence, and it was heaven. Graham gloried in it, made bittersweet by the knowledge it would end soon. Shame the snake had to fit the bill.

The road rushed beneath them, and the engine roared. And like clockwork, Mr. Pearson opened his fat mouth. But this time he asked a question, letting the dialogue become a real conversation.

“Where are you from, Dwayne?” Mr. Pearson said to the guy in the back.

“Cairns, sir,” Dwayne said.

“Cairns, ay?” Mr. Pearson said. “Good people, the Cairnites.”

“I like to think so, sir,” Dwayne said.

He always answered with ‘sir’. He’d do well at Righteous Brothers.

“Graham,” Mr. Pearson said. “You’re from these parts, aren’t you?”

So that was why he had brought Graham along. Graham did wonder. No one got on well with the boss, Graham even less so than the others. It had surprised him his boss would want to spend any amount of time in a confined space with him. Now he knew why. Mr. Pearson needed him.

“I am,” Graham said. “I left during high school.”

“Must feel strange, being back here after all these years,” Mr. Pearson said.

“Not at all,” Graham said.

In fact, his skin crawled. It was like he’d inadvertently returned to a hated restaurant, only realizing it after ordering the same noxious meal that’d made him quit the restaurant in the first place.

“It’s like returning home,” Graham said.

“We’re going to go see a fella called Jeremiah Witness,” Mr. Pearson said. “Ever heard of him?”

Now there was a blast from the past. Jeremiah Witness. No wonder the boss had been so cloak and dagger about the whole excursion. Jeremiah was a vague shadow in Graham’s memory, but the shadow had a smile, was easy going. Jeremiah would probably listen to their offer, although if they were going to see him in person that meant he hadn’t heeded their numerous letters and phone calls.

“Vaguely,” Graham said.

“A small place like this, I suppose you must all know each other,” Mr. Pearson said. “Living in each other’s trousers.”

It’s pockets, you idiot. Living in each other’s
pockets
.
Mr. Pearson looked pleased with himself. As always, for no good reason. Graham wondered if he’d made the error on purpose as some misguided attempt at humor.

“Cairns is similar to Alice Springs in that regard,” Dwayne said.

He sat in the middle seat, legs splayed wide open, taking up all three cushions.

“You’re right, sir,” he said. “People in these places, they all know each other.”

“All their secrets,” Mr. Pearson said. “I heard some disturbing rumors about old Jeremiah Witness. Some
very
disturbing rumors.”

“What rumors?” Graham said.

“I heard he slaughtered his own wife and then buried her somewhere in the Outback,” Mr. Pearson said. “The police never found her body. It was probably eaten by wild animals, they said.”

He shivered in his leather seat.

“The things some people do,” he said.

Graham couldn’t believe that. Jeremiah used to come armed with a menu checklist every Sunday morning to take the kids’ orders. Mrs. Witness would then make a huge breakfast for each of the kids. They were fun times, happy times. Some of the best from Graham’s childhood, now he thought about it. His parents had left Alice Springs to escape their problems, only when they arrived in their new city of residence they realized they’d brought the problems with them. There was no running from the kind of person you were.

The road took a turn, onto a dusty backroad. It was bumpy and the sporty Mercedes saloon did not take them well. Sycamore trees lined either side, and the memories came flooding back.

Graham had a reasonable childhood. It was full of all the usual comings and goings of random memories, compounded by time and fragmented by rising and falling fads. His days at the Witness household were among his favorite. But he wasn’t looking forward to seeing Jeremiah Witness again. It was like returning to see a girlfriend you had abandoned, only now you needed to ask her a favor.

They had passed through Alice Springs twenty minutes earlier and hadn’t seen more than two or three houses. The Mercedes was a stark contrast to the beaten-up pick-up parked outside a rundown shack. The white washed walls were dirty with red dust.