Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 78 - Into Darkness

“Well, I’ve got a quick way through that glass door,” Charlie said, returning to the semi.

“He’s going to smash it,” Jeremy said.

“I have no problem with that,” David responded.

Lumbering out of the eighteen-wheeler’s cab, Charlie hoisted a cross-shaped tire iron in one of his bony hands and a large flashlight in the other. As he approached, he beamed a toothy smile at them.

“That’ll do it,” David said, taking the flashlight from Charlie.

Without being instructed, the brothers backed away from the front entrance as Charlie pulled the neckline of his t-shirt over his face to shield his eyes. Gripping the tire iron with his right hand, he hefted it back in a wide-arcing swing. He brought his arm around, tossing the metal in a spiral so fast it looked like a spinning circle as it careened across the small concrete walkway and smashed into the glass door just below the stenciled name “ENH Initiative.” Obliterating the address beneath the name, the tire iron shattered through the mirrored glass, which splintered into an intricate spiderweb of tiny pieces with a large hole in the center where the tire iron had easily sailed through.

Charlie lowered the t-shirt from his face, and the three men stood dumbly looking at the door. An eerie cracking sound emanated from it for several seconds, an auditory omen that something else was about to happen. Then, all at once, the remaining glass that had not been blown out of the center shattered in a cascading waterfall of jagged puzzle pieces, loudly crashing to the concrete and bouncing off the ground like droplets of hail falling from the sky.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Charlie said.

He walked over and solidly kicked the door’s frame, then jumped back as more loose glass remnants fell to the ground.

“What say we make our way in?” he suggested.

David flicked a switch on the flashlight and took the lead, bending low as he sidestepped through the shattered doorway. His brother and Charlie followed behind, stepping carefully as the glass crunched with a preternatural loudness beneath their feet. The lobby was pitch black save for the yellowish beam that David scanned over the plain walls, projecting jittery shadows that shimmered like strobe lights. No decorations were beset upon the walls, and little more than a simple desk was pushed to the side of the room with a single chair behind it. No plants, magazines, or anything typical of a business’ reception lobby could be seen. The entire room was a study in generic decor, lacking any semblance or markings of a significant scientific laboratory.

On the far opposite end, a corridor seemed to lead down a longer path that vanished into deeper darkness past the flashlight’s beam, but nearer to them was a metal door marked Staircase.

“Which way, do you suppose?” Jeremy asked.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’m not much interested in splitting up at this point,” Charlie said. “Especially with just the one flashlight there.”

“That’s fine,” Jeremy said, quickly glancing at his brother.

David nodded in agreement. After their experience in North Carolina and then again in Cornerstone at Mickey and Grace’s house, the brothers found themselves uncharacteristically mistrusting of anyone but each other.

“What’s down that hall, you think?” Charlie asked.

At this point in the building, there were no directional signs on the walls, no indication even of what this place was. Everything was barebones and plain, almost misleading, in its simplicity and its corresponding absence of candor or color. The place looked like a front for a completely different kind of business.

David walked over, pulled open the staircase door, and shone the light down the first flight of steps.

“Kind of weird, don’t you think?” he asked. “To have stairs leading right off of the lobby like this? It’s not a parking lot entrance, I don’t think. And it seems strange to have immediate access to a utility room or something.”

“So what do we do?” Jeremy asked. I’m not exactly excited about going down a dark staircase.”

With his foot still propping open the staircase doorway, David pivoted and shone the light back down the lengthy corridor.

“But it doesn’t look much better down that way,” he said.

“Hello!” Charlie suddenly called out loudly, a low echoing boom reverberating down the elongated passageway. Both David and Jeremy jumped, startled.

“Shh!” Jeremy hushed him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What’s it matter?” Charlie asked with a grin. “We’re here to find people, aren’t we? So let’s find them!”

David pointed the flashlight toward his brother, lighting him below his face. Jeremy shrugged, frustration scrawled across his brow.

“Heeelllllooooo!” Charlie called out again.

“I don’t think…” David said and was stopped mid-sentence.

Faintly behind him, a guttural moan rose from the open staircase door.

“Uhhhh…”

David spun and shone the flashlight down the staircase again.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, and Charlie and Jeremy stepped closer to the doorway.

“Uhhhh…” they heard again, a painful, desperate sound.

“There’s someone down there,” David said.

From below came a faint but still audible tapping sound — a metallic clink, clink, clink.

“Help,” they heard from a whispered, garbled voice that rose from the stairs.

Jeremy stooped and snatched up the tire iron that had come to a halt next to one leg of the plain wooden reception desk. Stepping forward with the iron before him, he stood beside David at the top of the staircase, looking like a vampire hunter brandishing a crucifix. Jeremy and David stood shoulder-to-shoulder, seemingly frozen in place, blocking the doorway with their bodies.

“Whoever that is, we’ve got to help,” Charlie said, pushing his way through, trying to wedge his own body past David and Jeremy.

“Wait!” Jeremy commanded in a harsh whisper and grabbed Charlie by his knobby shoulders.

Looking at David, Jeremy’s eyes were wide and panicked.

“A trap?” Jeremy asked.

“A trap?” Charlie scoffed. “There’s no trap! There’s someone needing help down there!”

“This happened to us before,” David whispered to the old man.

“Someone needing help, or saying they did,” Jeremy added.

“Ah, you’re both a couple of sissies.”

“This,” David said, pointing to his still bruised, yellowish, and puffy right eye. “This happened last time we tried to help someone who asked for it.”

Again, from the staircase, the low moaning voice rose to them.

“Hello?” the voice murmured. “Help?”

“There’s three of us,” Charlie said.

“We don’t know that there’s only one person down there,” Jeremy answered.

“The front door was locked,” Charlie argued. “We’re out in the middle of a nowhere business park. Ain’t seen anyone else around. If someone’s down there setting a trap for us, then they’re obviously pretty stupid. I’m banking it’s someone in trouble.”

The old man pushed through the two brothers who were blockading the doorway.

“Give me my light back,” Charlie said and snatched it from David’s hand without waiting.

Moving faster than David and Jeremy would expect for a man his size and age, Charlie shimmied down the staircase like an adolescent, effortlessly bounding down the concrete steps.

“He’s a spry one,” Jeremy said.

“Makes us look like old geezers.”

They saw the light flickering madly at the bottom of the stairs as Charlie hit the landing and started down the next flight.

“Let’s get moving,” David suggested. “Don’t want to get stuck in the dark.”

They heard Charlie’s flopping footsteps as their own joined the echoey chorus within the stairwell, the slapping sounds of their feet reverberating off the walls in an offbeat cadence. Then, below them, the flickering light beam froze, and Charlie’s clapping footsteps halted.

“I don’t believe it!” Charlie called out. “What did she do to you?”

David and Jeremy, grasping opposite handrails, skittered down the steps, hit the landing, then began the final descent to where Charlie had stopped at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. The beam of light shone upon a man in a beat-up body, possibly around thirty years old, his thinning hair drooped down over his eyes. A trickle of blood had dried upon his swollen bottom lip and down the line of his chin onto his neck.

“Gordon,” Charlie said as he bent low beside the trembling figure. “What the hell did that damn woman do to you?”