The Lost and the Damned (26 page)

I panted, trying to catch my breath. I began to wonder if I was running the wrong way. Maybe it was in the other direction. I turned my head and nearly fell over from what I saw. Behind me, not two feet away, was a door.

It was a large rusted door, just like the one we saw before. The riveting and style were a little different, but it was obvious it was from the same building as the one before. Like the other, it was so rusted I felt like I would need a tetanus shot just after looking at it. Tentatively I grabbed the door handle, and readied myself to pull the door open. I swallowed hard – I wasn’t looking forward to what I might find on the other side. I pulled, feeling resistance from the weight of the door. Digging in my heels, I pulled with both hands, slowly opening the door.

Steam spilled out of the crack in the door. When it was open, I saw another steam tunnel. Dripping pipes lined the walls. Thankfully, the floor was mostly dry except for the occasional puddle. Instead of the overhead lighting of the previous tunnel, this tunnel was lit by small red and yellow lights in cages above the pipes. Stepping through, I noticed it was much hotter than the last tunnel. The air was thick and hot, making me work to breathe. I began to sweat. With the heat and red lights, the whole tunnel took on a hellish appearance. I thought about leaving the tunnel and looking for another door, but a loud noise alerted me to the fact that the door closed behind me. With no handle on this side, I could only move forward.

I walked down the tunnel, trying to stay away from the pipes. They radiated heat and I didn’t want to burn myself by carelessly brushing against them. I wished for a draft to bring in some cold air, but I didn’t think I’d find one of those until I reached a room. However, a room could bring danger. I shuddered when I thought of those deformed monsters. I also looked suspiciously at the red and yellow lights – I didn’t want them to suddenly shut off like in the funnel room.

I came to a T-shaped intersection. Pipes stretched left and right. To the right the tunnel was hotter and I heard a faint sound of machinery. The left tunnel was cooler, but I heard a strange sound from it. There was what sounded like the flapping of bird wings. The flapping seemed off, wrong. I’m not sure what gave me the idea that it sounded wrong, but it set off my danger sense. Taking heat over danger, I took the right tunnel.

The farther I walked down the tunnel, the louder the machine noise became. It was a methodical thumping sound. The heat continued to rise, causing me to continually wipe sweat from my brow. The lights were all red now; none of them were yellow, not since the intersection. I wasn’t sure if that was a color coding of the tunnels or if it was red for danger. I didn’t see any Danger or Do Not Enter signs. I saw a drop of water leak from one pipe and then land on another where it sizzled and evaporated. If the pipes weren’t dangerously hot before, they were definitely that way now.

As the heat rose, it became harder to breathe. I noticed that the air in the distance began to shimmer from heat and steam. Sweat kept dripping into my eye unless I wiped it constantly. It was almost too much when at last I saw a door in the distance. I thought it a mirage at first, a trick in the shimmering haze of the hallway.

As I got closer, I could see something hanging from the ceiling near the door. It was a little reddish-pink thing. It wasn’t until I was right under it looking up that I realized what it was, which caused me to stumble back, just barely keeping myself from burning myself on a pipe. Above me was the skinned carcass of a small animal. It was maybe the size of a squirrel, but I couldn’t tell what it was without its skin. Nonetheless, it was a gristly omen for what might be beyond the door. For a split second I had second thoughts about what might lie beyond the door, but the heat swept those thoughts away. I pulled open the door.

I cheered inwardly when I saw that it was a room rather than more tunnels. A room meant space, space meant not being stuck between two hot pipes. Across from the door was a large mechanical pump which blocked my view of the room. The rest of the room continued to the left and beyond the machine. The pump was connected to pipes and thumping every second. It was the pounding sound I had heard in the tunnel. It was so much louder now, pulsing through the room. I looked up and saw more bad omens. At least a dozen carcasses were hanging from ceiling. They were all small animals, growing larger as they led to the center of the room. Rats, rabbits, cats, a dog. I felt sick to my stomach. The room was still hot, but not nearly as hot as the tunnel. To escape the heat, I put my revulsion aside and stepped into the room, pulling the door shut behind me.

The pipes that connected to the other end of the pump led back to the left, ending at a gigantic boiler. That explained the layout at least. Hot water was boiled here, went to the pump, which then sent it out to the rest of the facility. Red lights near the boiler and a collection of candles all over the room cast it in an almost demonic light. As I walked forward and turned the corner around the water pump, I realized that the candles were surrounding a table. There were white candles on the floor, white candles on the edges of the table, white candles on pipes, white candles on various free places. I couldn’t quite see what was on the table. It looked like a person or a mannequin was on the table. I walked closer for a better look.

One look had me retching in the corner, inadvertently putting out some of the candles. I didn’t have anything left in my stomach from the body I discovered in the library bathroom, so I wretched bile for a moment before fits of dry heaving. I don’t know how long it was, but I eventually recovered enough to stand up in this twisted place of horror. Was this some sort of unholy altar, a temple of murderous intentions, or was this just the best kept secret of some sick bastard? On the table was the body of a woman. At this point, just a dead body would not have brought on sickness. It’s what had been done to this body that made me ill. This body had been mutilated. Not just stabbed or pierced. Someone had mutilated this body with the patience and precision of a surgeon, carving flaps of skin, separating muscle from bone without hacking, draining off blood to give him room to work. The face had been transformed by a knife past the point of recognition, leaving it a skewed death mask with a grin made by sliced skin. I knew it was a woman only by the additional flesh that I assumed were breasts. Someone had taken this woman’s body and taken all humanity from it.

I felt myself feeling sick again and looked away. I stared at the swinging carcasses hanging from the ceiling. What was this place? It was the lair of a maniac, a monster. I looked around the area and found a lighter, some gloves, and a piece of brown leather. I picked up the leather and found that it was a knife holder, the sheaths of knives knitted into it. It was empty. There must have been at least a dozen slots for knives of various lengths and thickness, but none of the knives were there. The sudden thought hit me.

If the knives weren’t here, were they in use?

I spun quickly, searching the flickering light for a knife wielding maniac with a dozen knives. There was no one there, just flickering candles and swinging animal carcasses. Fear welled inside of me. I had been at some fucked up places in the last twenty four hours, but this was by far the most unholy. I just wanted to be out of that room. I didn’t want to be near that body, but even more so, I didn’t want to meet the room’s owner. I reached into my pocket and felt my gun. Even with that, I didn’t feel comfortable around the person who did what I saw on the table.

I needed to get out of there. I looked for another exit, but found only the door I came from. I turned to stare at that door, not wanting to go back through that heat. As I stared at it, I felt the strangest feeling behind me, all the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up and a shiver going through my body from top to bottom. Slowly, almost not wanting to see what was there, I turned around. There was no one behind me, but what was there was no less strange: the boiler had changed. On the front of the boiler was now a large metal door. I was positive it had not been there before. This was a clean gunmetal-grey door. Unlike previous doors, this one was not rusted and ill-cared for. This door was new and clean. It was in stark contrast from the rest of this place.

I paused. Was the absent killer beyond that door? Or did that door lead to a place of deeper horror? Was this the killer’s frozen body locker? Why was there even a door on the boiler? Wouldn’t that open up into superheated water? I put my hand against the door; it was cool, in contrast to everything else in this room. It wasn’t cold like a freezer, just cool and unaffected by the heat in this room. I pulled the door open. In further contrast to the other doors, this opened easily, new and well-oiled. Beyond the door was night.

Night, not blackness like I had seen through so many other doors. I saw night, a dark sky full of stars and a moon that was full. I saw familiar stone stairs and scientific machines. I saw a place without blood and steam. Almost without thinking about it I stepped through the door, glad to be away from the place of death and mutilation. There was a strange sensation as I stepped through, like an invisible film was pulled away from me, leaving me in cold night standing on the stairs of a familiar pyramid. This maze of corridors and places had brought me back here again.

I stood on the steps of the Well.

The night air was refreshing after the boiler room and I breathed deeply. It was colder than the last time I was here. Stepping out of the door put me halfway up the pyramid and the wind whipped around me. Floodlights had been placed every few levels on the pyramid, so I did not have to worry about losing my footing in darkness. I looked down and saw the same trailers and machinery as before, but the site was empty. That wouldn’t be surprising, since I would guess the scientists didn’t work around the clock.

I looked behind me and saw the door hanging there in space. This was a surprise, as previously the doors either disappeared or closed behind me. Instead I saw a rectangular shape cut out of the space in front of me. It didn’t look into the boiler room as it did before. Now it looked into blackness. It was eerie to see the backside of a door hanging in space, but the blackness was familiar. I was not about to step back into it, so my next thought was where to now?  Up the stairs or down them? I couldn’t just sit here on the steps. Well, I could, but it wouldn’t really get me anywhere.

I decided on Up. I didn’t expect there would be a way out of here, but I wanted to see what was on the top. That’s where the special part of this place had to be. The rest of it was just a regular pyramid, which is not to belittle the nature of pyramids. I just wasn’t sure why they would need all this machinery for simple archaeology. Something else was going on here, so I assumed it was happening up top. At the very least, maybe I could get a view of the surrounding area.

Climbing up, I caught a brief moment of a voice, but it was soon gone with the blowing of wind. A few more stairs up, I could hear more. By the time I was nearly at the top, I could hear that someone was speaking in cadence. The more I listened, the more I realized it was chanting. I couldn’t understand it, but I wasn’t sure if it was the wind interfering or if the language wasn’t English. I’ve never been too good with foreign languages, so it could in fact be Greek to me.

I reached the top of the steps, then stopped in my tracks at the top of the pyramid, confused by what I saw.

“Hey, I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” I finally said, waiting for a response that never came.

Max stood on the top of the pyramid, reading aloud from a large book in that undulating cadence I heard. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he was passionate about it. His hair wasn’t disheveled like in the hospital, it was relatively well kept. He wore his lab coat, which I could see had blood on its shoulder, though I did not see a wound on him. He stood in front of a stone table in front of a gaping hole that seemed to be part of the pyramid itself. There were a strange variety of objects on the stone table, including at the most grotesque a severed human arm. Some of the objects on the table were glowing, but at the moment, I had other concerns. Like Katie.

Near the table of glowing objects sat Katie, staring raptly at Max’s impassioned reading of the book he held. She sat in a simple chair, her arms slack at her sides. Even though I had spoken, neither reacted to my presence, Max engaged trancelike in his reading, Katie staring straight forward at him. Ignoring the glowing objects as I passed them, I went to Katie.

“Katie, I’m so glad I found you!” I said when I stood next to her.

No response. No flicker of her eyes, no turn of her head. It was like she didn’t even hear me.

“Katie, are you okay?”

Still no response. Now I began to wonder if she had reverted to her catatonic state. I waved my fingers in front of her face and her eyes did not even react to my movement. Great, I thought, we’re back to this. I didn’t like Catatonic Katie nearly as much as Awake With Color Commentary Katie. I had actually started to miss her cursing. I didn’t want to go back to leading her around again.

I ran my hand through my hair. “Dammit Katie, what happened? What put you back in this? I thought that the Well was what woke you up.”

I looked back at the glowing objects. I really should figure out what’s up with those, I thought. Instead I turned back to Katie. “We were doing okay, weren’t we? Sure there were monsters, but we were getting out of this place. Together, right?” I looked around, thinking it was futile to mention getting out of the mental hospital when we were currently on the top of a strange pyramid in some undisclosed location.

“Dammit, what happened when we were separated? Something must have put you back in that state.” I looked her over, looking for scrapes or cuts, some clue to hardship that happened since we had gotten separated such a short time ago. She had different clothes. I had left her in sweatpants and the sneakers she had taken from the half faced person in the library. Now she had nice pants and shoes. “You had to have found someplace safe. At least safe enough for you to feel like you could change clothes and spike your hair.”