Enter the Janitor (The Cleaners) (Volume 1) (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

Dani kept trying to blink her eyes clear as they walked, but finally decided the light of this realm, not her eyes, was the problem. The finger-flames Stewart conjured didn’t illuminate far enough to imbue her with any confidence. The darkness seemed physical, like the world had been wrapped in black curtains.

They passed by other piles of rubble from the Recycling Center at odd intervals. When Dani remarked at how far some of the debris had scattered, Sydney explained there was no correlation of distance between this realm and theirs.

“People can take advantage of this,” he said. “If you know the ways and have the means to open them, you can sometimes control the entry and exit points. It’s tricky, however, and there are no guarantees you’ll make it back out the same route.”

“So when we reach the intersection,” she asked, “how do we open it?”

He fell silent again and, after a few unsuccessful attempts to force an answer, she gave up and let him sulk.

They discovered no buildings. No paths. Just the bland mountains ahead, looking no nearer for all the time they’d walked. She looked to the creature she’d nicknamed Gnashy. It kept up a steady clip, its hairless, muscled body bunching and pulling in ways that had nothing to do with muscle or bone. Every so often, it dropped to all fours and knuckled along before rising on hind legs again.

Some of her biology studies kicked in, and she wondered what one might discover if they got a gnash on the dissecting table. Did all manifestations and constructs contain nothing but energy and spell cores, or were some of these creatures organic cryptoids that hadn’t been discovered by modern science?

“Where are we headed?” she asked it.

“Place the gnash knows. Hole in tall rock. Keeps non-food from biting off naked heads.”
It pointed a claw.
“There.”

She strained her eyes but failed to pick out any distinctive features along the foot of the mountains. With Stewart and Sydney on either side, tasked to keep a watch for any threats, she focused on making sure Gnashy didn’t get any bright ideas.

Its three wings turned out to be non-functional as far as she could tell. Three thin bones jutted from its shoulders and spine. Flaps of translucent flesh hung down from these and quivered with each step. Were they for heat dispersion? Some sort of sensory organ?

Gnashy’s mouth hung open and it panted with a purple tongue flopped over its rusty teeth. She couldn’t stop comparing it to a puppy. An evil, ravenous, bite-your-face-off puppy, true, but still. She prided herself on using the resources she’d been stuck with, betting Ben would’ve done no different.

She resisted the impulse to giggle as she imagined the reactions of her classmates, or better yet, her family, should she return with such a creature in tow.

Look what followed me home, Ma. Can I keep him?

Gnashy stopped, and she almost bumped into its back fronds.

“The gnash smells food.”

She shook its chain to urge it onward. “Does Gnashy ever stop smelling food?”

Its oversized nostrils flared.
“This is living food. Angry food. Frightened food. Hunt with the gnash?”

“No. No hunting. Bad Gnashy.” She waved to catch the men’s attention. They edged closer while keeping their eyes on the surrounding area.

“What’s wrong?” Sydney asked, setting Ben down to give his arms a rest.

“Gnashy says he smells something nearby.”

Stewart raised his hand. The first match had extinguished, leaving his normal thumb with a blackened nail. Now his forefinger lit the area. Gnashy turned a slow circle, sniffing and licking his bleeding gums. Then he stiffened and stared in a particular direction. The three of them looked that way, and Stewart mumbled something that flared the light a bit higher.

A flash of orange, off that way.

While Sydney might not command entropy for the time, he still proved nimble and fast. Before Dani could call out, he’d sprinted toward the movement.

Someone rose and turned to flee. But Sydney threw himself forward, and the two tumbled together. While the attack looked careless, Sydney rolled through and came up on top. He had a knee on the person’s hips and their wrists pinned to the black earth.

“Don’t move or you’re dust,” he said.

The person beneath him went slack and uttered a soft sob. Dani ran up, Gnashy’s chains jangling as it followed. With a mix of dismay and relief, she recognized the person as the maid she’d faced. While she didn’t enjoy the thought of another body to worry about, at least it meant the woman had escaped the implosion.

“Let her go,” she told Sydney. “I can handle her.”

When he reluctantly did so, Dani planted herself at the maid’s feet. She made sure the woman got a good look at the party surrounding her, and then gestured for her to get up.

“We’re not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

The maid pointed to her breast pocket. Dani mentally kicked herself as she spotted the name threaded on the jumpsuit.
Patty
.

Dani smiled grimly. “All right, Patricia. You know what I am and what I can do, right? I’m sure they sent out memos.”

Patty’s scowl answered that.

“You want to get out of here alive?”

A petulant nod.

“Fine. Then you do as I say, got it? I don’t care where you are on the organizational chart. The Chairman just gave us all the pink slip and had security escort us out without a severance package. Are you going to really keep fighting us because of his orders?”

Patty curled her upper lip. “You’re Scum.”

“They are,” Dani said, circling her head at the other three. “I’m not. Neither is he.” A nod at Ben’s prone form.

“You have a gnash with you!”

“This cuddly fellow?” She couldn’t make herself actually pat Gnashy’s shoulder, so she waved in its direction. “He’s been a good boy so far, and if he keeps it up, he might get a treat later on.”

“The gnash will enjoy a meaty treat.”

“Quiet,” she said under her breath. She beamed at Patty. “We’re just companions of convenience until we get out of the Gutters. You can come with us if you want, but that means you play nice. Otherwise, we’ll figure out some way to tie you up and leave you here for whatever else comes snuffling by. Got that?”

Patty licked her lips. Fear shone in her eyes, but she nodded and stood slowly, as if fearing another tackle from Sydney. Or perhaps it was the way Gnashy kept drooling her way.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Get to an intersection and figure out how to open the way back to our world.”

Sandy-brown eyes widened. “You know where one is?”

“I don’t, but the gnash does, and he’s showing us the way.” Dani saw the planned insult rise to Patty’s lips. “If you have a better idea, by all means, speak up.” They matched glares until the maid looked aside. “Right. Let’s keep moving.”

Dani kept one eye on their beastly guide and the other on Patty. The maid hung back a few steps, but didn’t go beyond the circumference of light Stewart cast. She scowled every time she caught Dani looking.

At last, Gnashy stopped. The peak of the nearest mountain blended into the sky. Only on the furthest edges could they make out the gray blur of an outline. Before them was a cliff wall with an uneven hole cored into the base, large enough for a truck to drive through.

“The gnash has brought you here. Here is a safe way.”

“The cave?” Dani asked, pointing to the opening ahead. “That’s the intersection?”

“No. Old nest of the gnash, carved near safe way. Once, much feeding. Now, only hunger for the gnash.”
Despite its scratchy, needling voice, it still communicated sadness in its tone.

Dani saw nothing but the endless ashen landscape and their tracks marking the way they’d come. The others appeared as perplexed as she felt.

“Where is it then?” she asked.

Gnashy stamped its clawed feet, raising a puff of ashen dust.
“Is here. Can you not smell? Can you not taste?”

Dani raised a hand to her face, preferring to not smell and taste too much of the grit. “You can’t open it for us?” Half-fearing an ambush, she stretched her power out into the earth and air to detect anything amiss.

“Never the gnash opens,”
it said.
“Not the gnash’s place or power. The gnash waits as things go in and out, up and through. Sometimes it pounces. Sometimes it follows and drags food back. Never opens.”

She glanced at Sydney, who shook his head and made a pushing motion, warning her to not call him out in front of the others.

On her order, everyone spread out, though not so far as to lose sight of the others, and none straying too close to the cave entrance. They tramped around in circles, trying to spot the intersection the gnash claimed existed. Dani had no idea what to look for, having expected a miniature wormhole, a door in the earth, maybe a flashing light.

She used the gnash as a makeshift dowsing rod, pulling it to different starting points and then letting it tug her back to the area it had first indicated. Once she triangulated a spot thirty feet out from the cave entrance, she used the toe of her boot to scratch an
X
into the dirt, and called Stewart over.

“Can you sense anything?” she asked.

He sniffed the spot. “There’s somethin’ here, sure ’nuff. Twitchin’ m’nose like an old stink, but I’s got no firm fix. Sorry, lass. If I had an ol’ key or doorknob, mebbe so. Otherwise we ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“Great.” A look Patty’s way, as the woman had sidled up to eavesdrop. “Anything you can do?”

The maid tossed her hair back. “Maybe if I had my broom. From what I’ve heard, you can’t exactly pry these things open with your bare hands.”

Dani suppressed a groan. Now what? She resisted the urge to flop down and pout, not wanting to show weakness in front of the others—or get herself dirtier than she already was. Instead she kept studying the area until she fixed on the black opening in the base of the mountain. She pointed that way with her chin.

“Let’s scope out the cave. At the least, it will keep us from sitting out in the open.”

“What if something’s in there?” Patty asked, scowling at the gnash. “What if your pet is trying to lure us in so its family can pounce?”

“The gnash does not like to share. No family. Nestlings all gone. All tasty.”

“Lovely,” said the maid.

“Then you can help us handle whatever pops up.” Dani thumbed up at the black sky. “Besides, I don’t like this dark sky. Anything could be hiding out above, waiting to swoop down the moment we’re off our guard. At least the cave gives us a defensible position.”

The group gathered at the threshold until their eyes adjusted to the interior. Dani kept her power poised, ready to shake the rock walls down or whip up a gale. With a look between them and collective tense of their shoulders, they ducked inside.

Nothing clawed their faces off. Nothing tore their hearts out of their chests. The first wind Dani had experienced in this realm patted their faces as it passed by, smelling of mildew and leaving her cheeks feeling skuzzy. She ran her gloved hand along the near wall. The mountain’s interior had the glassy, smooth texture of obsidian. The floor of the cave remained the same purple-gray dirt, punctuated by knobby mounds which Dani didn’t dare uncover for fear of exposing bones.

They stopped a few strides further. Sydney breathed in relief as he laid Ben down. Stewart jogged along until he hit a dead end twenty feet down, where his finger-lights glinted off the stone.

“None be sneakin’ behind our backs ‘ere,” he said as he returned. “Good a spot as any be.”

Dani smiled at him, and then at Gnashy. “Thank you.”

The gnash made a sound like a food processor, which Dani guessed was its approximation of purring.

Patty gasped, putting a hand against a wall to steady herself as she stared at the ceiling. Dani frowned at the woman.

“Hey, buck up. If I’m not grabbing my knees, you don’t have any excuse.”

“Dani,” came Sydney’s voice. “Look up.”

She did.

“Whoa.”

Countless black facets composed the roof of the cave. These must’ve drawn in and magnified what little light existed in this realm, for they projected an image of what hid in the dark heavens.

Planet upon planet hung above them, each gray and unmoving. She stopped counting at fifty. Without any sense of scale, Dani couldn’t tell how far away they were, but some appeared as big as Jupiter, while others reminded her of silver moons. Several were frozen in the act of crashing into one another, planet-wide cracks piercing their crusts. None showed any signs of water, orbits, or lights that might indicate a civilization.

“What is all this?” Patty asked in wonder and fear.

“Behold the dead worlds,” Sydney said.

Dani shook herself free from the overwhelming view. “The what?”

“Some people think these are all the worlds Corruption has conquered,” he said. “They became so thoroughly twisted that their very essence died out. Others think these are all the versions of the Earth that were destroyed in other realities. Quantum castoffs, while our own living world continues on.”

“You think differently?”

“I know differently.” He raised a hand to the ceiling display. “We are seeing the future. This is the universe as it is fated to be. Lifeless. Dark. Empty.” He tilted his head back, as if bathing in the non-light. “Yet there is a harsh beauty to it. A peace in understanding that oblivion comes for us all in the end.”

“And that just gets you off, doesn’t it?” Patty said. “You entropy mages are sick.”

He smirked. “Sickness. Health. Death. Life. Darkness. Light. Corruption. Purity. Ugliness.” His hand rose to Dani’s cheek. “Beauty.”

“Evil and Good,” she said, pulling away.

Sydney shook his head. “All the ones I listed are natural aspects of existence, but those two are ones we humans tack on to give our lives meaning. They are the lies we tell ourselves—that this is good and that is evil. That one act of destruction is done with noble reason, while another is thoughtless malice. The distinctions are all in our fickle and easily deceived minds. They have no place in reality.”