Gregg and Jill were again standing outside the door marked Chambers, only this time, they were both going in. The tunnels beyond could lead them to the remaining young girls, who, God willing, were still alive, and neither Gregg nor Jill had any real idea what to expect, but both were ready to face what ever came their way.
Gregg had his Colt in one hand, and the old man’s flashlight in the other. Jill’s confession of her not firing a gun before hadn’t filled Gregg with much confidence, so he did his best to instruct her how to hold it, and how definitely not to release the safety catch, until she, beyond any shadow-of-a-doubt, needed to use it. He hoped he was quite clear on that point. She’d emptied the box of spare bullets into her two front pockets, and was currently standing behind Gregg at the Chambers’ door, ready to follow him in.
Earlier, in the station room, Jill had given Gregg his jacket back to protect him from the possibility of dripping water in the tunnels; he’d also donned the old man’s hat for the same reason. Jill tore a hole in a plaid woollen blanket she’d taken from the cupboard in the station room and pulled it over her head, much like you would a poncho. And between them, they looked like two failed auditionees for an old Spaghetti Western.
Gregg stood closest to the door, he was about to step through when he turned to face Jill. ‘Are you sure you’re ready to do this?’ he asked. ‘I have to warn you, it’s not a pretty sight in there.’
Jill bit down, clamping both lips together whilst taking deep breaths through her nose; three rapid nods answered his question.
Gregg slipped the flashlight into his pocket before looking into Jill’s eyes, then took her hand. ‘I’d close them if I were you,’ he said to her. ‘You can open them once we’re in the tunnel, okay?’
More rapid nods.
Once her eyes were shut tight, she took another three breaths and, using only a solitary nod this time, signalled her readiness to Gregg. Gregg, making sure he had a firm grip of Jill’s hand, pulled open the door to the hum of the flies; which somehow seemed louder now. Moving as quickly as he could whilst towing Jill, he started to dodge between the corpses, being careful not to catch her, or himself on any of the empty hooks.
Jill had little choice but to allow herself to be pulled across the room; her trust in Gregg being the only thing she could rely on right now. But before they reached the shaft taking them into the tunnel, Jill’s shoe caught a twisted floorboard causing her to stumble and break free of his grip.
Reflex automatically kicked in and she opened her eyes to see the brutal savagery bestowed upon the six bodies around her. Down her nose and through bitten-lips, she let out a long, muffled scream. She saw Gregg only two steps away from her, and the hatch only two steps away from him. And like a ferrit down a burrow, she bounded into total darkness. Gregg following as he fumbled for the flashlight.
Standing at the bottom of the shaft with her hands just above her knees, Jill breathed out what little air she had left in her lungs before taking a few rapid breaths to get some oxygen into her blood. She then stood upright, brushing back a few strands of stray hair from her eyes. ‘That’s what she meant wasn’t it,’ she said. ‘That Ella woman, hooking up?’
Gregg nodded. ‘I really hoped you wouldn’t have to see that,’ he touched her arm. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, can’t get any worse, right?’
He was thankful she couldn’t see his eyes clearly. ‘No, course not. Things can only get better.’
The tunnel spanned a little over six-feet in width, just about wide enough to have three people walk along shoulder to shoulder, and its height peaked at around eight-feet. The air inside the tunnel was cool, and smelled strongly of the damp earth surrounding them.
Gregg flashed the beam over the earthen walls of the tunnel to see thick, moist, globules of mud dribbling down intermittently, as though racing one another to the floor.
‘This doesn’t look good,’ he said, turning the beam on one of the struts. ‘Most of these uprights have kinked under the strain, some are even snapped in two,’ he added, pinching at one of them and coming away with a handful of wet, rotting wood. It felt about as sturdy as soggy cardboard. ‘Not good at all.’
‘Well that lot must think it’s safe to use, or they wouldn’t use it, right?’
‘They’ll only use it when they have to, like tonight.’
‘Well we don’t have a choice then do we? Because like it or not, Gregg … you have to use it too!’
She was only being honest with him, he knew that, and if she hadn’t used the word “we” he may have sensed an air of detachment in her voice. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said, setting off along the tunnel.
After travelling for about twenty yards, they reached a left turn where Gregg pulled the map from his back pocket. ‘Okay, about two-hundred yards down there on the left, is another tunnel, that one leads to the schoolhouse, and the one on the right goes to a garage, which one would you choose?’
‘I thought we were going to the town hall, to try to get the girls out.’
‘Eventually we will, but we have to be sure all of the other buildings are empty. We don’t want to get butt-fucked now do we?’
Jill frowned. ‘Butt-fucked?’
‘Yeah, taken from behind, shafted up the a-’
‘I get the picture, Gregg,’ she said, stopping him. ‘Okay then, we’ll go left to the schoolhouse.’
‘Left it is,’ obliged Gregg
With every forward step they took, the wooden floor seemed to give that little more, as though the ground beneath them were growing softer all the time. Gregg saw many reflective jewels passing through the flashlight’s beam as they dropped from the roof of the tunnel. A number of which, had already hit his new hat, but so far, no burns.
A few minutes later they reached the cross-roads, garage to the right, schoolhouse to the left. The map showed the schoolhouse tunnel to be as long as the one leading from Chambers, and before they reached the end of it, Jill pulled on Gregg’s arm.
‘What happens if we come across one of them in the schoolhouse?’ she whispered.
Gregg looked left and right before he neared his face to Jill’s. ‘I’ll do the shooting; you just hold your gun out, as more of a threat really. Oh, and try your best to look menacing, okay?’
‘You mean like this?’ she said, standing bow-legged, her gun outstretched in both hands.
Shining the flashlight over her pose, Gregg smiled. ‘Yeah, something like that,’ he said, looking at her for a moment longer than he’d intended to.
Jill stood after she noticed the light lingered on her. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘What? No, everything’s fine, just fine,’ he so lamely assured her.
When they reached the end of the schoolhouse tunnel it turned a sharp left, heading for the library. And just in case anyone should be lurking beyond the hatch above them, Gregg lowered his voice. ‘We’ll do the schoolhouse first, and then checkout the library.’
Jill said nothing, but did show him two thumbs, in a perfectly silent response.
Gregg shone the flashlight up at the hatch, and although the ceiling of the tunnel was around eight feet above them, the hatch door looked to be another four, or maybe even five feet higher than that. He slipped his gun into the back of his jeans and was about to stand on the first step when he noticed it snapped in two. He then placed his weight on the second step, only to see it snap like a stale biscuit. After resting his weight on the third, that one did the same.
‘You try,’ he whispered, passing Jill the flashlight.
She took it, passing him her gun in return.
Gregg held Jill firm by her narrow waist and helped her get a foot on the fourth step. A little at a time she rested her weight on it, it seemed to hold.
‘Move slowly, only putting part of your weight on the following step, and if you think that will hold, carry on,’ he instructed.
Jill did just that, and with some trepidation, climbed for two more steps, then a fourth and fifth. She continued up until her head touched the wooden hatch leading into the schoolhouse. Once she’d steadied herself, she held the flashlight side on to it and pushed up using both hands. That’s when she took the full weight of the hatch, causing the stair beneath her creaked.
She felt sure it was about to give way, she was going to crash through, land twelve feet below and break both legs in the process, and then Gregg would have to finish her off like some lame horse. She swallowed, closed her eyes, and pushed. The damp, sodden wood beneath her feet began to bend, giving out a soft, rubber-like creak as it took the strain, but it held.
The room above was in total darkness; Jill flicked the flashlight over every wall and in every direction she could. She needed to be sure there were no more corpses hanging around. It certainly didn’t smell like there were.
‘Looks all clear,’ she whispered, shining the flashlight on Gregg.
‘Okay, see if you can find something for me to climb up.’
Jill hopped up the last of the stairs opening the door to its maximum, expecting it to rest on a chain as she’d noticed the one in Chambers did when she flew past it. But the sudden loud bang as it hit the floor behind, echoed endlessly off the walls. If anyone was in the building, they’d know for certain they weren’t alone anymore.
As the room settled back into silence, Jill listened for any distant noises, but other than the howling wind outside, all was quiet.
As she stepped from the shaft, she tripped, dropping the flashlight. Only she didn’t trip, something gripped her by the feet, wrapped itself around them, and was now starting to squeeze. In a bid to get free from its grip, she tried to kick out, but that made matters worse, and what ever was holding on to her, had now begun to get tighter. She reached out, feeling for what it was. It was cold and wet, slimy and thick, and ... meaty? She felt its muscles, rippling under its skin, and then it hit her, like a Mike Tyson bout clincher, it hit her, but no way was she going to let this take a bite. It was a snake, a huge snake, a powerful snake, and if there was one thing she hated, it was snakes. Spiders, bats, mice and rats, she was fine with, but snakes, no fucking way.
She felt its thick body tightening even more around her ankles, squeezing them. Her feet became cold, the blood ceasing to flow. As panic started to set in, she reached behind for the flashlight. If she shone the beam into its eyes, she just might scare it away. She grabbed the flashlight and turned back to the snake, giving it the full-beam treatment. But she was out of luck, as cold and as wet as it was, and as slimy and as thick and as muscular as it was, this particular length of muddy rope, wasn’t going to scare that easily.
She heard a whisper from below. ‘What the hell’s going on up there?’
‘Oh ... nothing,’ she said, pointing the light once more at Gregg. ‘I’ve managed to find some rope though. I’ll tie it off and throw it down to you.’
‘Great, make sure you tie it well.’
Jill studied the rope with the flashlight to find it was already secured to a steel pipe running along the bottom of a nearby wall. ‘Okay, here it comes,’ she said, kicking it into the shaft.
While Gregg pulled himself up, Jill located a light switch and flicked it, two long fluorescent tubes out of six, flickered into life.
‘Hey, lend a hand?’ said Gregg, his head and shoulders above the hatch
She took his hand and helped him scramble from the shaft, albeit in a rather undignified manner, then she pointed out the rope. ‘It was already tied to that pipe, does it mean were not alone?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Well they might know we’re here too then.’
‘I know, I heard,’ he said, brushing himself off. ‘We’ll just have to be very careful, and very quiet, do you remember quiet?’
‘Hah, very funny.’
The room they’d emerged into seemed to be some kind of storage area, containing about a dozen small wooden desks. Jill switched off the flashlight handing it back to Gregg; he in turn gave her back the 3.57.
Gregg pushed open a door to find a large classroom. To their left, half way down the room, was a black chalkboard on wheels, in front of that sat a desk, much bigger than the ones huddled in the centre of the room, which numbered only eleven. In the opposite corner, to their right, was another door.
Gregg and Jill set off across the floor at the same time; Gregg walked to the bottom of the room, towards the windows, and Jill crossed the centre of the floor stopping at one of the small desks, where she sat in its wooden chair. She drew her finger across the desk’s surface, drawing a line in the years of accumulated dust lying over it.
‘Well one thing’s obvious,’ she said, in a hushed tone, ‘there are no children in Martinsville. Not anymore anyway.’
Gregg was standing by one of the windows looking out across the street. The sun was up, but due to the thick clouds, it wasn’t giving off much light.
‘Yeah I noticed that yesterday,’ he replied. ‘About an hour before they were on to me. There were dozens of people on the street, but none of them were kids.’
Jill opened the desk to find small scraps of paper scattered inside. One of which, had been neatly folded into quarters, she opened it out and began to read the scribble in a raised whisper.
Gregg came to stand beside her.
“Wot I did yestaday”
By David Marsh age 8
‘yestaday me and my frend jim went out to play in the sun we have been frends for a hole year now it must be a year cause I was 7 and now Im 8 so that makes a year oh an jim is 9 wen he nockt on my door he ad is kite so I got mine and we went to play in bones creek jim sed its calld bones creek cause is dad fownd a milyon bones ther an giv um to is dog but I dont fink that is treu it wernt windy ther so we went to the pits to frow stowns in an jim fel in the water I showtid sum men an they came ovre but dint get him out I wish I cud swim so I cud hav help jim now jim int sat naer me in scool no more thats wot I did yestaday”
Just below the essay, David Marsh had drawn a face, its features out of proportion, and its hair unkempt and thick. Beneath the face he'd written: "My Frend Jim".
Jill stared at the drawing and sighed. ‘Poor kid,’ she said.
Gregg took the piece of paper from her, putting it back inside the desk. ‘Come on, Jill. We need to look this place over.’
As Jill stood away from the desk, a dull thud sounded in the room above where they were. She instinctively scanned the ceiling. ‘Is someone’s up there?’
