Speaking to the Dead

Short Fiction by Lynn LeFey

Click, slip, click… my mind… is glitching. Too much coffee. I'm awake … well at least my body is, but my brain keeps wandering down dark corridors of thought.

My stomach is sour from the coffee, and my mind won't shut down. I don't drink any more. I swore it off, and now in social situations, with friends, while they're having their polite drink or two, I have coffee. I'd have a polite drink or two as well, but that would lead to a third, and a forth… and so on. I guess that makes me an alcoholic.

The party's over. It has been for hours, but I can't sleep. After wandering the various rooms of my large home, I come to the cellar. I used to have an incredible wine collection. I had to sell it off. I couldn't trust myself. Now I stand looking at the empty racks, covered in dust. I don't know why I'm here. There are paths that are well trodden in our homes and in our minds. We keep those places well lit, clean, tidy. This is not one of those places. This is the dark place to which we banish evil thoughts. This is the place we never see and never want to see. Behind one of the wine racks is a small door. I pull the wine rack aside. It scrapes at the stone floor.

This house sits near the banks of the Missouri River, just West of St. Louis. It has caves and underground crevasses around it. The river erodes the bedrock at various layers, and sometimes wet caves form. Sometimes the grounds settle when a cave collapses. That's what happened here. This piece of land had dropped nearly 17 feet at one point, but it was sound now.

However, this ground had some dead, dry caves in it, which were accessed by this door. I don't like that place. I never have. I don't like big dark places that seem to go on forever. There is something particularly unnerving to me about any place where the boundaries were unknowable with their utter darkness beyond. There were cave systems that stretched for hundreds of miles. I might literally wander a lifetime and never see it all. The thought makes me shudder.

Now I stand looking at the door. I don't know why. There has been this feeling my whole life, that I was missing something. There has been with me this notion of understanding at the sadness shown by vampires at the loss of their reflection or shadow. Silly? Perhaps, but I nearly cry when I think of that, and I've never known why. I had pressed for that memory once, and I'd had nightmares for months after. If ever there was a place that someone's shadow would retreat to, it would be down there.

I can feel the cold air leaking in from around the old wooden door. I grab the old glass doorknob and turn. The metal sounds as though it has never been oiled. That was certainly the case since my parents passed away nearly ten years ago. The rusty screech runs straight through my back teeth, and I pause momentarily to let the shiver subside. The hinges don't respond much more favorably when the door is pulled open.

I am greeted by a strong cold breeze, and utter impenetrable darkness. Between the metal creak, the cold breeze, and my own fear, I am momentarily near panic. My throat has gone very dry, and my already soured stomach tightens. I feel the party's hors d'oeuvres arguing.

There is a stairwell that looks like it's carved from the natural bedrock leading down into the darkness. There is an old rusted metal railing bolted to the stone wall on the right.

I stop, and back away. When my terrified mind tells me I've gone far enough to assure that no horrific monster was going to pounce me, I turn and sweep my eyes across the huge ancient timbers that supported this house. Mounted to one is a large rechargeable flashlight. The little green charge light glows like a beacon. Ah, every now and then, technology is a wonderful thing.

I flick on my wondrous little techno-pal and turn it's mighty halogen beam into the darkness. My feeling of technological superiority fades somewhat when I still see almost nothing, just tiny glistenings some indeterminable distance off. I assume those are wet spots on some distant wall. I point the beam down the stairs. About 30 feet down, they just ended in a great stone wall. At the bottom, it appears that the railing pulls free from the wall. Hadn't I once been told they'd used this cave for storing casks of wine?

My mind is now quite awake from the odd surroundings, the cold, and the massive caffeine coursing through my body, making my heart pound in my ears. God, I don't know why, but I'm terrified. It's just a staircase, just another wine cellar. There is a memory that was relevant to this place. I can feel it. What was it? My mind sends one of it's thought processes off to retrieve it. I don't know why I would feel this way. I've never been through this door before tonight.

I put my right foot down on the first step and some little voice in me is screaming to stop. I put my hand on the rail, and the odd feeling of rust crushing against my hand again set the worst cold shiver through me. I never realized I had any irrational fears until this moment. Well… Okay, I've never been much for haunted houses. Stuff jumping out at me from the darkness made me freak, no matter how hard I tried to repress it. But that's the same way everyone feels. That's normal.

Step by step I go down the stairs, perhaps three quarters of the way. My bladder is throbbing. Again, too much coffee. At the point where the stairs end, it's still a good 6 feet above the floor of the rough cut cellar to my left. The railing is pulled away from the wall there, twists across the steps, and disappears between the floor of the room below and the wall ahead of me. Odd. After a moment, I realize this must have happened when the land around the house sank. Who knows how old the railing was? It was caked thickly in rust. I swept the beam around the room, especially where the wall ahead of me met the floor.

Again my child voice urges loudly for me to leave, to brick up the door to this place, fill this whole chamber with cement and never come back. I am about to do just that when I see a large dark hole only a few feet beyond where the stairs meet the wall. I move toward the bottom of the steps, hoping to use the railing in my climb to the floor of the cellar room below.

At the bottom of the steps, I grab the rail and as I try to screw up the courage to hop down, there is a hideous, loud crack of stone and the bottom 6 steps break away from the wall. They begin to slide away into the darkness below. One by one, bolts pop like ricocheting pistol rounds as the railing pulls away. The stone of the crumbling stairs and floor below me rips the railing off leaving only the top three supports remaining.

My right hand, which holds the rail, tears across the jagged rust as I dangle over the darkness. I think I scream, but it doesn't really matter. I have a death grip on the rail. Instinctively, I drop the flashlight and grab the rail tight with my left hand. For a moment, I wonder why my inner thighs are warm, and then understand. At least my bladder's not throbbing anymore. Unfortunately, my right forearm is also warm, and I can feel blood from my shredded hand trickling heavily.

The sound of the tumbling debris and splintering stone subsides, leaving only the creak of metal railing, swaying in the darkness, straining under the weight of it's passenger. I am paralyzed with fear. I don't know if I'm strong enough to climb hand over hand up this railing, but it wouldn't matter if I could. My right hand is pretty well connected to the railing, and removing it probably won't allow me to use it again or at least not any time soon. I know it's bad, because I don't feel anything yet. I tug once, twice, and finally pull more upward than outward, hoping to free the hand. It pulls free. Unfortunately, it spins my body in doing so, and I lose my grip on the railing.

It is bad to be staring into the darkness. It is far worse to be falling into it. It is only a moment, I'm sure, but it is a moment in Hell. The landing is not much better.

I crash against uneven crumbled stone far below. I think perhaps I am knocked out for a moment. It's hard to tell. I come out of the disorientation and realize the pounding headache. My tongue feels like it's been bitten through on the left side, and there are some gritty things in my mouth. It takes only a second to find the broken tooth to which the fragments belong. I spit out blood and broken tooth. My jaw hurts, and I think it may be broken. Both of my arms seem to be intact. Ribs seem okay as I give a gentle rotation to my torso. Left leg seems okay. Right leg… I can't feel it. Can't seem to move it. In the utter darkness I feel along the thigh. Just above the knee, there's a huge knot. Below the knee, I am following the bone and find a sudden unexpected protrusion. A spike is sticking out of the shin about midway down. My stomach rolls when I realize it's the bone.

By stupid luck, I lean back to take a breath and my left hand lands on the flashlight lying beside me. Click. Nothing. I smack it on the side with my right hand. It flickers to life. The hand tells me not to do that anymore. It feels like my right hand has a lighter ignited in the palm. I turn the beam, now somewhat dimmer, toward the hand. There are chunks of rust still lodged deep in the hand. It looks really bad, the ring finger stands straight out. The tendon for it is severed. My stomach does a full roll. I look away, swallow back the stomach acid and hummus. Again I spit blood.

A sudden terror seizes me. I was going to die. In a fucking hole in my basement, I was going to die. A very sick sense of déjà vu hits me. The voice is screaming in my head, I TOLD you, I TOLD you not to come down here!

I have an odd numb sense about everything. I sit there on sharp jags of stone, and I hear an echo from the past, a terrified child-me screaming in the darkness. This was not the first time I was in this hole. The fear and the pain had broken some old wall in my mind, and I can hear myself screaming. No, not me, or not JUST me…

The smell of the wet earth down here was sickening. I shine the beam of the flashlight around. I think that maybe I have double vision. It takes a lot of effort to keep things focused. A cold wind blows up from below, and steam drifts off my body in the chilly air. I'm losing blood. I have to get back up out of here. I shine the beam back up from where I came. Surprisingly, the end of the railing is dangling only eight or so feet above the rubble. Shit. So close.

I can't jump that high. I can't jump at all. I don't even know if I can stand up. When I try, I get the first taste of real pain. The bones in my lower leg grind, and I get a bright flash of light in my vision, then gray out. I hold on until the pain dies down.

I'm going to die. I know it.

Using the side of the cavern, I try to hobble on. I don't think I can get out going back up. The breeze I'm feeling has to be coming from somewhere, so I go deeper. On a whim, I check my belt, reaching clumsily with my left hand across to my right side. My cell phone is still there. I flick it open, and turn it on. No signal. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're under about twenty feet of solid bedrock, genius! For no good reason, I fold it and put it back onto its belt clip.

There are a few trickles of water running at various places toward a single stream. I follow it, carefully climbing down over the uneven slick rocks. Every jostle to the right leg makes me want to scream.

The liquid on my body is cooling and I'm feeling frozen to the core. About twenty feet down, I see the most unusual thing. There is what looks like a shiny box ahead of me. As I get closer, I realized it's real. It is a box, about six inches thick, fifteen inches long and twelve inches wide. Its brushed stainless steel is engraved on the top: 'In loving memory of Adam'. It had two locking clasps on the right side. Who was Adam? Adam… close to my name, Andrew. The name is close because the person was close, my mind says. Echoes of the boy's voice again, a plea for help cut off.

A shadow, a twin, my brother. I remember mom bringing this down here now, when I was very young. My parents died when they were in their fifties. My dad had looked so old for his age, like presidents do after their term(s). I guess I'd never thought of it before. They'd never been exactly what I'd have called the most bouncy folks. They were consumed with grief.

Adam had died down here. He… we had come down here. Only I had gotten out. The ground sank. The ground sank and we were trapped here. Only… Only…

The funeral … the photograph. Only a photograph. The remains were never recovered. Long efforts were made. Enough to make the hole that had drawn my attention earlier.

There is the sensation of wandering off from my body. I feel myself slump against the wall of stone, the jarring of the bone, the flare of pain, but it seems so far away.

I stagger, and fumble against the rocks. I can't feel my body. I'm numb. I press my lips against the back of my left hand (that would be the one NOT slick with blood), hoping to feel SOMETHING. I'm pretty damaged, I think. It's getting hard to tell for some reason. Maybe…maybe I'll just sit down and rest for a bit.

I close my eyes. I turn off the flashlight. Time stops. I'm slipping away. The sharp chirp of my cell phone wakes me. I open my eyes to total darkness. I retrieve the phone instinctively with my right hand. Again, it tells me in clear signals of pain to stop that. I pass it to my left hand. Somewhere I think I realize that I have a chance to get out if I can get a message through to whoever's trying to call. Please, please, please, give me a clear signal.

'Hello?' I manage in a clear calm voice.

'Hey Andy' comes a young boy's voice, 'Its about time you came to visit. I've missed you.'

In horror, I look at the phone, to see the strength of the signal. None. No signal. I know the voice. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had the faintest memories of my lost brother. I guess he'd found my number. No, that's impossible. He's dead, and my phone is unlisted.

Click, slip, click. My mind was glitching again.

'I…'. I can't think of anything to say.

'You're not far now. Come on, get moving' comes the young voice, quite enthusiastically.

'You're dead, Adam. You're dead, and I'm about there myself' I was beginning to lose it.

'I know Andy, but you're not dead yet. Not dead, but close enough to visit. Please Andy, I'm just a little further down. Bring the box.'

I kill the phone, and put it away. I wonder if that call will show up on my phone bill.

I turn on the flashlight again. Dim, but still working. I scoop up the box under my right arm. I can't go on. I'm sitting there trying to figure out how to move, shining the flashlight absently down the cramped tunnel, when I think I see something. I put down the box, and hobble the few feet to what looks like a pipe about an inch and a half in diameter sticking out of the soft earth.

When I reach it, I see that it's the wooden handle of something. I pull on it, and retrieve a busted pick from the mud and crumbled stone. The handle is splintered pretty badly a few inches below the head, but otherwise seems sturdy. Great. Now I have a stick! I laugh. No, not a stick. The splintered end looks sickeningly like the bone fragment of my leg. It's a replacement for my broken bone. The thought of splinting my leg didn't sound very pleasant, but better than hobbling along, feeling the bone grind.

I retrieve my little swiss army knife from my pocket and try fruitlessly to use the useless little scissors to cut away my pantleg. I finally resort to a few quick slashes from the little blade. Somewhere, in health class maybe, I'd been shown how to splint a compound fracture. Never thought I'd be doing it, especially not to myself. I start cutting the pantleg into strips. It's a slow process. My right hand is not making the task any easier, and I can't really feel my left hand well through the cold. I end up mostly grabbing the material with my left hand and teeth, pulling apart, listening to the cloth shredding. I keep swallowing blood from my gashed tongue. I can't say I'd recommend this as a tourist attraction.

A little searching finds two stones which I should be able to use to… reset the bone. I tie the bottom of the pick handle to my ankle using shreds of pantleg, then stick my foot between the two rocks. I pull back and realize the foot is going to pull out from between the two rocks. I move it enough to feel the bone sliding. The pain is pushing back the numb edges of unconsciousness. I try again, this time using my left foot to hold the right foot down, placing my left palm and right elbow on the ground and pulling with my arms.

Grind, grind, POP. The bone goes back into place. A lightshow plays in the darkness, and I scream. I lay on my back shivering uncontrollably. The pain washes over me and slowly subsides. I finally manage sitting up and tying the handle to my leg below my knee.

Ah… yeah… that's so much better. I can just lay back and relax for a minute. Again, I turn off the flashlight. I lie there against the cold wet earth. This is where I'm going to die. My body has stopped shivering. I guess that's a good thing. I don't care any more really. The sound of the trickling water seems far off now. I'm coming to join you Adam…

The phone rings again. I jolt at the sound. Again, no signal, but I answer it anyway.

'Hello', I whisper.

'Andy, get up. Get UP! You're not done yet. Get moving, and bring the box', the voice of a very insistent child, seeming as excited as any child would be on Christmas morning.

'I can't, Adam. I'm broken'

'You can, Andy. You're doing great. You did awesome at setting your leg. Please Andy… I've been waiting so long… Please?'

I am being cajoled into action by the voice of my long dead brother. But something in his voice rang with such conviction, such love and desperation. I am wracking sobs. I'm going to die. I'm already speaking with the dead. How far from death can I be?

I sit up and turn the flashlight on again. Dimmer still… but enough light to see by. I roll on my left side, and totter upright.

In my right hand, between my index finger and thumb, I hold the phone. I begin to hobble on.

'Andy?'

'Yeah?'

'You're forgetting the box.'

I put the phone away, and again scoop the box up under my right arm. Moving was only marginally easier with the leg splinted, but it at least didn't hurt as much. I think my double vision is returning. Maybe I make it a hundred feet this way. How far down have I gone? The river can't be much farther below.

I stagger farther, until I come to a place where the stream drops suddenly about ten feet. Below, it looks like a little shallow pool below with a muddy bottom. Shit.

At the far end of the pool are a skull and ribs, protruding from the soft earth. Adam.

It's only a four foot drop if I'm hanging. Four feet. That's nothing. I can do it. I know I can. I'm fooling myself. I toss the box into the soft earth beside the pool of water below. I toss the flashlight down as well. Please survive the fall, little guy. I don't want to be alone in the dark down here with my dead brother so near. The flashlight lands and continues to shine, barely.

I swing my splinted leg gingerly over the edge, into the darkness. I cling to rocks and swing my left leg off as well. My grip slips, and what was planned to be a minor four foot drop turns into the full ten feet, landing on my back in the chilly water at the bottom. I reflexively hold the bad leg up through the fall. My double vision worsens, and through the water rushing in my ears I hear a loud ringing sound. I thought I was cold before. Now I lay in the water, feeling the few dying embers of heat in my body fade. I can barely breath, I manage to feebly push myself to the side of the pool, slowly heaving my heavy form onto the mud near the remains of my brother.

'Adam… I'm not doing so good here.' I say. I think I say that. I'm glitching again, and it's hard to think with the sound of a jet engine in my ears.

I pull myself to the box, and in the slowly fading light of my flashlight, I pop open the clasps. Within are old photos, pictures of me and my twin. Happy little brothers. There is also a pair of bronzed baby shoes. No wonder mother always looked so tired and sad. I only lost a brother I barely knew, she lost a child. And me, a constant reminder of that loss.

I was supposed to have a brother, and I was robbed of that life. I guess it doesn't matter, I'm dying here as well. I watch the last flickers of light die off in the flashlight.

'Adam, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were just a little farther down. We weren't more than a few feet from each other.' I say.

'It's not your fault' I hear softly from beside me. The voice of a half-sleeping child. My eyes well up with tears. Have I been punishing myself my whole life for having been the one lucky enough to live? And again, here in the darkness, it doesn't matter. I have joined him here in his grave. I'll just lie here, beside the brother I never knew, but only knew wasn't there.

'I've missed you', I say to him.

'Yeah, me too', he says, 'but you're just here to visit. I don't want you to stay. Just… Just take the box with you, okay?'

I guess I understand. He wants some part of him to get out of this hole, a photogragh, a pair of shoes, or even just a memory. Something to mark that he had ever touched the earth.

'Adam, I don't know how to get out of here. I can't see.' I paused, 'I'm scared. I'm cold and broken, and I think maybe I'm dying.'

'Just a little farther down, you'll see sunlight. You just need to make it a little farther'.

I close the box. It's hard working the clasps because I can't feel my fingers. I'm not really sure they're there except a vague pressure on my joints. I drag myself on my hands and knees through the pitch black. Cold wind blows in sharply now, and within a few minutes, I come to water. Some ways ahead, in the water, I swear I see light. I sit and stare at it for a few minutes. I can't tell. My head is spinning. I can't concentrate on a thought. Light. Water. I'm cold. I just want… I just want to rest for a minute. Just a minute.

I close my eyes. I sink from my hands to my elbows. I'm going. I'm…

I am shocked through to the core with throbbing pain. I think I rolled as I drifted to sleep. The quiet right leg is now speaking loudly again. Grinding bone fragments.

When my eyes open this time. My head is a bit more clear. The light in the pool is still there, but more obvious now. I can see the silhouette of my hand against it. It's real. There is light ahead. Slowly I drag myself into the freezing water. It's much colder than the rest of the water had been. It's been outside, in the cold autumn air, instead of in this world of perpetual darkness, where it's always fifty five degrees. Just a short duck under some stone, and I'm free.

I take a deep breath, and go under. I'm trying my best to navigate in the cold murky depths, with a metal box under one arm, a splinted leg, and tangled vines around me. The box is hard to hang onto. It's so light it tries hard to make it to the surface. Too much air in it. It's making it hard to swim. The pick handle catches in the tangles of weeds. I'm stuck.

I again pull my little pocketknife and cut the cloth binding the splint to my leg. I pull free and pull water through my left hand desperately. I'm beginning to run out of breath. Spots of bright light start glinting in front of my eyes. No… real light… no, I think perhaps it's both. I cling to the box with a death grip. It pulls me up, into the light, into the air. I paddle feebly to the edge of the slow river. The sun shows just over the horizon. Wisps of fog hang over the water. A fisherman and his son sit about 20 yards from me in a small aluminum bass boat. I think I call for help.