 CHAPTER 10 (section 4) copyright © 2001, S. Y. Affolee Adrian stopped his truck about a block away from the small museum. In the darkening light, the street became all shadows and dark lines. It was difficult to tell where anything was. Swiftly, he got out of the truck and walked toward Hermione’s Elanne Antiquities, glancing in at the windows. The shop looked dark and closed. An iron grate came over the door and a sign proclaiming its closed status and hours hung haphazardly in the front. He stuck a hand to knock on the door. When no one answered, he stuck his hand through the grate to try the doorknob. It didn’t budge. For a moment, he stood in the building’s shadow wondering if he had made a mistake, if Simone was at that moment somewhere else, helpless in the face of several attackers. He thought about breaking the glass to get in, but then remembered that museums of any caliber had alarm and security systems. A moving shadow he saw from the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned, thinking he saw something disappearing into a nearby alley way. Unconsciously, his right hand rested against his jacket, in the place where he had at the last moment stashed a revolver. The police may have deemed a kidnapping not worthy of their attention, but that didn’t mean that he would go into any situation unprepared. Quickly, he followed where he thought the shadow went and discovered himself in a dark alley way with two sheer brick walls on either side. As he walked through the alley, he noticed that the other side was getting darker instead of lighter. It was another brick wall. A dead end. He let out a frustrated breath. Was he going to spend all night futilely chasing imaginary shadows? He leaned against one of the walls attempting to slow down his harsh breathing, trying to clear his mind to think logically. That was when he heard a scraping behind him. Hastily, he turned around, initially not seeing anything. He took out a pocket flashlight and shined it against the wall, examining each brick. One of them, about shoulder height, seemed to be slightly indented inward into the building. Curiously, he put his hand on it and pushed. The brick moved further inward, scraping softly until he heard a faint click. An entire portion of the wall seemed to roll away, revealing a dark hole that was illuminated faintly by red pulsing light. He stepped forward and suddenly felt a whoosh of air behind him. When he looked back, he saw that the wall had closed up. Ahead the passageway sloped downward. The light came from periodic light fixtures on the ceiling and the walls and floor were made of stern concrete. He turned off his flashlight and followed the path, listening for any abnormal sound, but only hearing his own footsteps and breathing. After a minute, the passageway widened out into a small antechamber that in itself looked like a dead end. The chamber was circular and also lit in red. It was empty except for a few boxes stashed at one end and a complicated network of pipes that lined the walls. Looking into one box, he found only yards of cloth. As he stood there, he heard footsteps. There was a little space between the piping and the wall, so he slid into this cramped hyperspace to watch who arrived. It appeared to be a man and woman. “Hurry,” one of them said, “We’re almost late.” The other nodded, and they went to the boxes, pulling out the dark fabric. They turned out to be long robes which the two quickly loped over their heads. Once they were dressed, they stood in the middle of the room. One of them crouched over and touched something on the floor. A whirring noise could be heard and the section of the floor depressed and the two were taken to a lower level like an elevator. When the floor returned back to normal without the two people, Adrian squeezed out of his hiding place and hastily donned a robe. At the last moment, he took another and stashed it inside his jacket. Like the ones before, he stood in the center of the chamber and kneeled down, searching for whatever mechanism that they had activated. There was a slight depression on one section of the floor. When he moved his finger over it, he heard the elevator mechanism start and the floor beneath him move. For a moment, there was total darkness until the floor stopped. In front of him, he saw another tunnel, this one suffused with cooler blue light. Hastily, he got off the transport mechanism and traversed the tunnel, and in a few moments, he found himself facing three portals, ones on either side and another directly in front. Since the ones before him had already passed, he was temporarily at a loss to which door he was to choose. He turned the knob to the door in front of him and it came way easily. There was noise in the room and it was lit with regular white light abet poorly. Cages lined the walls. Some of the cages were smaller and held animals like dogs and cats and goats. Further in the room were larger cages. Some were empty. Some held people, but they were obviously dead considering the knives stuck in their chests. A soft groan from nearby caught his attention. In one of the cages near the end, a small woman huddled in the corner. Adrian practically ran, and seeing that the cages could be open from the outside but not the inside, he flung the door open. “Simone!” She slowly turned her face toward his voice and opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her face was pale, ashen. He lifted her out of the cage, hugging her, calling out her name. “Adrian, where am I?” Her voice was faint as she clutched his arms, her face buried against the folds of his cloak. “All I remembered was the chloroform they used to drug me. Oh god, my head. I have the most horrible headache.” “Are you all right?” “Just hold on a moment.” She breathed in deeply. “In a couple of moments, I’ll have my head cleared. Where are we?” she repeated. “I don’t know. We’re in some underground compound beneath Hermione’s Elanne Antiquities. I don’t know what this place is, but we have to get out of here.” “Wait a minute.” Something flashed in her eyes. Simone was nearly back to her normal self. “Perhaps we could see what this place is first. Where did you get that cloak?” He sighed. “Why am I not surprised that your still this headstrong after being kidnapped? Here.” He withdrew the extra cloak he took with him. “I followed others down to this place, but got lost around here. Come on, I’ll show you.” She tugged the cloak over her head and followed him out of the room. “Is this some sort of slaughter house?” she remarked as she passed the cages with the dead victims. “Do the police know? Did you bring back up?” “Martinez said no. The commissioner is diverting all manpower to working on the Johnson murder case.” “Doesn’t that strike you as odd, though?” she remarked. “Yeah. And I don’t like it one bit.” They came back out into the tunnel with the blue light, only to encounter another cloaked figure coming from the opposite direction. The other did not seemed at all fazed at their appearance. Instead, it just nodded to Adrian and Simone and opened one of the other doors and walked through. They followed. “Checking on the blood sacrifices?” the man ahead of them said. “Yes,” Adrian replied curtly. “They’re all in order.” “Good. I think we’re almost late though. Greenville doesn’t tolerate much tardiness, especially for something like this.” “Greenville?” Simone hissed. Adrian squeezed her arm in warning. The passageway emptied out into a large hall lit with torches and candles at the corners. But most of the room was unlit. People in cloaks littered the outer perimeter around a large circle that had been painted on the dark floor. A platform stood on the opposite end. One of the black cloaked figures stood up there, his only distinguishing feature a golden chain linked about his neck in the same pattern that characterized the cuff link that Adrian had found earlier. There was also a pedestal on the platform and a cubical object stood on top of it. The Rose. Adrian and Simone made themselves to the back of the crowd, yet staying near the entrance. The figure with the neckalace spoke. It was Thomson, or rather Greenville. He spoke in a bastardized form of Latin, droning in a monotonous litany. The rest of the congregation bowed their heads and they followed suit as not to be discovered. A cold biting breeze began at their feet, blowing inward, toward the enclosed circular area. The wind moved upward and noticeably people’s cloaks began to rustle. Greenville continued chanting. A harsh noise, not dissimilar to breathing, came from the center of the room and suddenly all of the lights went out, plunging the room into a stygian darkness. There were gasps around them from surprised, and possibly frightened, Dark Viper members. Something faintly glowed from the center of their engraved circle. A dark thin, slithering shadow. Someone screamed. The shadow hissed, whipping backward and the scream was silenced. There was a moment when everything seemed to freeze. A few people had lit torches and in the center of the room, they saw a huge serpentine thing with a large mouth full of dark teeth. Its eyes were red with yellow slitted pupils. It hissed softly and blinked. Its eyelids opened and closed horizontally instead of vertically. Greenville started chanting again, but was hushed when the creature whipped its head about and swallowed the man whole. People started screaming again and Adrian grasped Simone’s elbow. “We have to get out of here!” he yelled. They and about twenty other people crammed into the tunnel leading outside. They heard a loud hiss and the lights went out again. Wherever they stepped, there seemed to be water trickling along the ground. Resolutely, they plunged forward clasping each others hand as to not lose each other. When they reached the intersection, the blue light was flickering, in danger of going out. Adrain turned on his flashlight. Blood was draining out of the tunnel. A cloaked figure was following them. The hood was thrown back, revealing the face of Professor Olivia Fitzgerald, her face white with fear. “Oh god,” she panted as she steadied herself at the edge. “What the hell was that thing?” Suddenly a long tentacled thing latched onto her foot and she toppled to the ground screaming. The thing dragged her back toward where they had previously been. “Come on!” Adrian cried, tugging at Simone. They ran down the blue tunnel and jumped on the elevator mechanism. He bent over, feeling the floor for the button that would take them up. Simone glanced up to see a large trunk-like thing with writhing vines off shooting from it rise toward them. The vines looked like tiny snakes attacked to the trunk by their tails. They whipped themselves about, their mouths sharp and hungry. She took out her pistol and fired. The things shrieked. “What the hell are you trying to do?” Adrian shouted. “I’m trying to buy us some time.” She fired again. Finally his fingers brushed against the button and the elevator moved. As they came in sight of the red illuminated chamber, the elevator halted. “Oh my god,” Simone muttered as he immediately hoisted her above the edge. He grabbed the edge and climbed over just as the elevator crumbled beneath his feet. They ran again, only to be stopped by the wall that Adrian had passed through earlier. Simone found a lever and pulled it. The brick door slid open. Adrian stepped outside, only to hear a scream. Looking back, Simone had fallen to the floor, desperately trying to clutch the concrete sides. Something had caught at her feet. He picked up Simone’s dropped pistol and fired once into the darkness. There was an enraged hiss as she gasped, struggling to right herself. Instead of waiting, he scooped her up and pounded out of the alley, down one block to where his truck was parked. The twisting snake-like tentacles oozed out of the building, crawling along the street until one of the tentacles knocked over a nearby fire hydrant. A geyser of water spewed out, showering the entire area with a thick blanket of water. They heard a frightening screech and where the thing used to be, a plume of steam rose, coating the dark air with a thick cloud of gray smoke. |