Paranormal Realities Box Set (5 page)

Rom grabbed me by the arm. “I like not
this challenge.”

“Like I care what you think,” I said.

“Your injury could be worsened and there
is possibility of damage to others.”

“Damage? What damage?” Something told me
he meant something more than the usual risk.

“Are you done flirting? Can we go to it?”
Billy interrupted us.

“Yes.” I turned my gaze back to Billy and
pulled myself to full height hoping I looked tough. Probably not. “Juliette can
call the start.”

“Go?” she said hesitantly.

Ignoring the pain in my leg, I ran,
taking the corner before dashing toward the staircase I’d seen in the hall. Rom
followed closely, his breath practically on the back of my neck. But okay, he
was on my side after all.

At the head of the flight, Rom snaked
around in front of me and blocked the “down”.

“Go on. They could be right behind us,” I
yelled. When he didn’t budge, I tried to scoot by him and he blocked me again.

“Infirmity in the stairs, I believe,” he
said.

“Probably. But we’ll be careful.” My
actions contradicted my words as I hopped down the flight two stairs at a time,
my hand skimming the wood banister. It wiggled beneath my lightest touch. The
treads, though springy and creaking, held my weight.

“Kizzy. Halt.” Rom’s footfalls were heavy
behind me. “Kiz—“

A crack and the snap of breaking wood
startled me. I stopped.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Rom
disappearing downward through a shattered tread, a look of absolute amazement
on his face. As his body hit more treads they splintered and disintegrated.

“Rom!” I clutched at him and the tips of
our fingers made brief contact before he continued through and vanished. A
crash thundered from beneath me.

Peering through the broken planks I
directed the flashlight into the gap. Rom’s body lay splayed out on the
concrete floor, ten feet down.

“Rom,” I cried. Please don't let him be
dead.

My breath caught in my throat and my legs
wobbled. For a few seconds I couldn’t move. Finally, I stumbled down the
remaining stairs and rounded the corner to kneel beside his prone body.

Still. He lay so still. I could think of
nothing more useful to do than shake him by the shoulders. Lame but it worked
and his eyes fluttered and opened.

“Agh,” he moaned lifting a hand to his
head. “Damn Jupiter’s eyes.”

“Are you all right?” I asked. “Do you
think anything is broken?”

“Pride only has suffered.” He slowly sat
up. “Naught else.” Getting to his feet, Rom shook off the dust and broken wood
fragments.

“Good.” I rose also. “Let’s go to the
morgue.”

“A moment.” He halted me with his hand.

“What? You said you were all right.”

“Yes.” His eyes narrowed and his hands
clenched almost into fists. Clearly, he wanted to throttle me.

“We have no idea where the others are,” I
explained with lots of irritation in my voice. “The BQs can’t win.”

He shook his head as if he still didn’t
understand.

“If the BQs win, they’ll make our lives hell.
Even more hell than they do already,” I said. “They’ll show up at every
location we go to just to mess with us. I’m not having that.”

“Down that way.” A voice I didn’t
recognize shouted from the floor above. Must be a BQ.

“Stay here if you want to, but I’m
going.” I said, already on the move.

The bottom of the stairs dumped into a
room. Scanning with the flashlight I saw three separate corridors branching
out. The one to the right must lead to the area I’d seen from the main hall.
Instinctively, I knew that wasn’t the right direction. If a tunnel to the park
existed, and the morgue was in it, the tunnel would be in the direction of the
park.

When I started toward that corridor, Rom
grabbed my arm again.

“That is not the way,” he said.

Seriously, this guy was an obstruction I
didn’t need. Even though he was so freakin' hot.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s go that way.” I
pointed in the opposite direction from the one I wanted to pursue. “You lead
the way.”

“Accord."

That apparently meant yes because he
turned and began walking with careful steps over the debris and trash towards
where I'd pointed. I waited until he’d reached a point at least ten steps from
me before bolting.

The beam of my flashlight jumped with the
motion of my running steps making the way barely visible. My churning breath
and sneakered footfalls, echoed around me. The corridor led into some kind of
boiler room and at its center was a three sided half-wall made of Savannah
brick. The half-wall enclosed a metal grate in the floor. Through the slats of
the grate, I saw a narrow ladder with worn wood treads.

It made sense I would have to go down to
get to the underground tunnels.

The metallic knocking I’d heard earlier
sounded again, this time seeming closer. The hair on my arms stood and I felt goose
bumps break out on my body.
I should stop here
, I thought.
This is wrong
.

“She’s probably down here,” I heard Billy
yell from close by. Too close.

I pried up the grate with my fingers and
quickly clambered down the ladder. At the bottom lay the old tunnel system.
Barely enough room existed overhead to stand upright and some gunk I didn't
care to have analyzed lay under my feet. The scurrying at my feet—No, I
wasn’t going to even think about it.

A sign affixed to the wall directly in
front of me, which read “morgue”, caught my eye. An arrow pointed further down
the tunnel. Shining the beam of my flashlight in that area revealed the passage
was blocked with bricks.

A creepy quiet pervaded the atmosphere.
If this were a slasher movie, the killer would jump out about now.

After extracting my phone from one pocket
of my windbreaker and a purple paint can from another, I clicked a photo of the
morgue sign. That would have to be enough proof for Billy. That and a photo of
my tag.

After bracing the flashlight in a broken
crevice in the wall of the tunnel so that its beam lit my work area, I removed
the cap from the can and stepped up to the brick wall.

Rom’s hand seized mine. Jeeze, I hadn’t
even heard him coming.

“What in the name of Vulcan is it you
do?” he asked. A furious scowl marred his handsome features.

“What does Star Trek have to do with
this?” I pulled my arm out of his grip. “This is the closest we’re going to get
to the morgue tonight. So I’m signing the wall.”

The cap of my paint can tumbled to the ground,
rolled away and vanished into the shadows. I didn’t hear anyone else behind us,
but I knew a BQ could appear at any moment and snatch away my victory.

Rom stepped in front of me. “Do
not—”

Reaching around him, and with a sweep of
my arm, I sprayed a counter-clockwise swirling circle: my tag.

A booming like an overflying supersonic
plane was almost immediate.

“No!” Rom’s cry seemed far away although
he stood beside me.

What followed had to be an optical
illusion. The bricks began to waver, undulate, and turn in a counter-clockwise
motion. The wall didn’t disappear or break apart, but it faded. Worse, I felt
it tugging at my hand as if the wall had become a giant plane engine that would
suck me in.

My hand, still holding the spray paint can,
moved inexorably forward against my will no matter the strength I used to try
to brace myself. Rom grasped my arm but even with his help I couldn't keep my
hand from disappearing into the swirling brick wall up to the wrist.

“Rom,” I screamed.

His face was hard with exertion as he
tried to keep the rest of my arm, and the rest of me, from disappearing too.

Then I saw it. Another hand emerged from
the wall.

The fingers of the hand coming toward me
through the wall flexed and strained mere inches from my arm. My hand was lost
somewhere in the whirlpool. I still had sensation, which comforted me. But the
paint can I’d been holding in that hand had long since fallen away.

After a few seconds, I felt the canvas
glove on my missing hand rip off. The newly bared skin began to burn like the
time when I’d caught my wrist with the flame of the Bunsen burner at school.
Slowly, painfully, and inch-by-inch my arm vanished into the wall. Finally, I
was mired in the wall up to my shoulder.

Meanwhile, the hand coming toward me had
turned into a whole arm covered with coarse black hair. The dirty fingers of
the grasping hand stretched as if to touch me.

Rom’s mouth moved but I couldn’t hear his
words above the rushing sound around us. I thought I read his lips say, “Touch
not the hand.” As if I had a choice in what happened to me now.

Twisting, I half faced Rom and put myself
at a greater distance from the grasping hand and the wall but leaving my arm in
the position of a fully extended wish bone just before it’s about to snap.

At some point Rom had transferred his
hold to my waist, his arms locked like iron bands around me. His arms bruised
my midsection with their strength. His face grimaced, as he held me.

My own legs shook, thighs burning, as I
fought against the forward drag.

Rom leaned down and shouted in my ear,
“At three, pull with all force.”

As if I had more pull in me. But I nodded
anyway.

“One. Two. Three,” Rom shouted.

My eyes tightly scrunched shut, I exerted
every ounce of my strength as Rom wrenched me almost in half. But the effort
worked! I had my arm back...at least to the elbow.

“Repeat,” Rom shouted. “One. Two. Three.”

On three we strained again. “Aghhhhhhhh,”
I groaned. This time my forearm escaped.

Rom released his right arm from around my
waist and I slipped forward to the elbow again.

What the freak was he doing?

Rom reached into a pocket, removed a
paint can and snapped off the cap with one deft move. Lifting the can he
sprayed black paint in hash marks starting at the top of the spinning wall. The
bricks, where he marked, slowed, ceased moving altogether, and then solidified.

Would the whole thing become solid and
cut off my hand?

“Heave,” Rom shouted as he tugged me back
with another violent motion.

The hand reaching through to us twitched
with agitation. As my arm re-appeared, the arm in the wall sank back to its
wrist. At that point, claws popped from the nail beds of the twitching hand
just as I’d seen happen with our family cat. The claws of this hand weren’t
attached to a being quite so tame as our lazy tabby. As it disappeared, the
hand’s claws scored my forearm leaving a long angry cut.

I screamed and was ashamed at its high
girly pitch.

Abruptly, my hand broke free of the wall.
As if a rope we’d been holding in a tug of war had been cut, Rom and I tumbled
back and landed in a heap in the muck on the ground. At the same time, the
clawing hand slipped away and vanished. The last small area of the moving wall
then solidified.

Even though the muck was, well, mucky, neither
of us moved for perhaps a minute or two. Dragging a long breath in and then
blowing out again, my heartbeat calmed. I felt as if I’d just finished a
marathon and had no energy to stand.

“What was that?” I asked, not expecting
him to have an answer.

“Tongue lacks words.” Rom rose and
offered me a helping hand up, which I took. “Let us depart.”

I walked on autopilot all the way back to
the ladder. Climbing up and going through the grate, passed without me
noticing. But I couldn’t ignore coming face-to-face with Billy and Quinn in the
basement corridor.

“Ah ha,” Billy said. “Did you two get
scared and give up?”

“We found the morgue,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” Billy mocked.

“Come.” Rom took my hand and pushed past
the bullies.

“Squares!” Quinn jeered. Their laughter
followed us back to the staircase.

Rom climbed up the undamaged treads and
boosted me over the broken ones before hopping over and up. Back on the main
floor, I spotted Petra and Chase locked in an embrace with mouths devouring
each other. Fantastic.

I started to comment but a flash of blue
lights off the walls interrupted me.

“Police,” one of the BQs yelled from the
main room. “They’re coming in after us.”

Petra and Chase broke apart.

“Damn," Petra said. "I’ll never
get an iPod now.”

To the accompaniment of shouting,
scuffling and running noises in the main room, Rom, his hand still holding
mine, headed for the staircase to the floor above. I stumbled after him. Petra
and Chase followed at my heels. We ran up the stairs, around the corner and up another
flight.