The Paupers' Crypt (9 page)

Owen looked at Brian and John with his deathly grin.

“Jesus Christ,” John hissed. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Owen said with feigned innocence. “I believe in fairness. The three of us shall draw lots. The shortest straw will be my dinner. The lucky one may pass through the door.”

“And what if it’s you who draws the short straw?” Brian asked.

“Then you both walk out,” Owen said. “And I wait until Josephus sends me one of his smaller gifts.”

Brian saw John look from Owen to the door, and he knew the man contemplated a run for it.

Owen noticed as well.

“I can assure you,” Owen said softly, “I am far,
far
stronger than I look. You would not be the first meal I’ve had to shoot on the run.”

John glared at the man, but he took a step back.

“Excellent,” Owen said, keeping the pistol aimed at John. “Now, we simply need something so we can draw our lots.”

Owen’s eyes roamed away from John for a brief moment, and John charged him.

Before Brian could call out for him to stop, the older man had thrown himself at Owen. The two men and the chair went over, the pistol barking twice in the room.

Brian ran around the side of the table and came to a sharp stop.

John was dead.

He had an exit wound the size of a fist in the center of his back. The man lay sprawled across Owen, who was crushed beneath John’s weight and pressed against the chair.

Owen was dying. The skeletal man gasped for each breath, and Brian knew Owen’s weakened body could not push John’s dead weight off. Brian felt neither pity nor compassion for the cannibal.

It took Owen a long time to die, and then Brian realized he was alone in the Paupers’ Crypt.

Chapter 24: An Unpleasant Discovery

Josephus felt the gunshots, and he smiled.

Owen had played his part, as Josephus had known the man would.

Time was no longer what it had once been for Josephus. He had lost his sense of it when he was imprisoned; death had not returned the perspective to him. Hours could pass, and he would surface amongst the living only to discover it had been months or years. At other times, he could sit for a decade in the darkness and learn that less than a week had passed in the light of the sun.

There was something dark and twisted about the Crypt. It had been there before Josephus’ arrival, and it would remain after his departure, if such a thing were ever to occur.

All of this passed through his mind as Josephus made his way easily through the warren of passages and rooms which existed in the Crypt’s special world. He knew his way to Owen’s room; he had fashioned it himself before he had put the prisoner in there.

Owen, a portly man, now, nothing more than skin and bones and appetite.

The image of the gaunt cannibal made Josephus smile as he opened the door to Owen’s room with some excitement. He was certain the man would be carving his dinner into acceptable portions.

Yet Owen was not in his chair. The chair was not even at the table.

Confused, Josephus made his way towards the far door only to come upon a strange scene. Owen and the other man, dead.

Brian had slipped away.

Rage flooded through Josephus, and he turned upon the bodies. Both of the spirits were hiding. Movement caught his attention and Josephus looked under the table.

Owen’s ghost hid beneath it.

Josephus smiled, reached out and grabbed Owen quickly before he could slip away. The man’s spirit babbled incoherently and tried to wriggle away, pulling and sliding between Josephus’ fingers. But Josephus merely smiled, brought Owen closer. He was far too strong, too powerful for someone as pitiful as Owen to resist. With a pleased chuckle, Josephus slowly squeezed Owen’s soul until the light in it faded.

Josephus grinned, for Owen’s screams of terror and pain was delightfully refreshing.

Chapter 25: In the Darkness

Brian closed the door behind him and stood alone in the darkness. He had nothing with him. He had forgotten the light.

Part of him wanted to turn around and see if he could find the door handle, but that wasn’t an option. He was afraid to return to Owen’s room. There was always the chance that the spirits of both John and Owen could come back.

Back was the wrong way to go; he needed to get out of the crypt, immediately.

Brian stood in the darkness of the newest room. He tried to close his eyes but felt dizzy when he did. Frowning, Brian reached out, turned slightly to the right and found a wall. It was cold and felt like stone. Drops, of what he hoped were water, slipped around his fingertips, and he began to walk.

He never lost contact with the wall, and he took small steps. The floor felt smooth beneath his shoes, and he had no desire to fall in a hole or to trip over something in the darkness.

In his ears, he heard his heart thump. His breaths came in long and slow. He continued to move along the wall. He smelled water and earth. Nothing more. His footsteps were muffled, as though there was something which deadened the sound in the room.

Images flashed through his mind. Owen and John. Malachi and Mitchell. The ghosts in the cemetery. Jenny smiling at him.

The last image made him happy, and he tried to focus on her as he continued on.

He tried to check his phone, to see what the time was, but when he took it out of his pocket and tried to see it, nothing happened. After several attempts, he realized the battery was dead, and he dropped it back into his pocket

Brian decided he would count his footsteps, to keep himself occupied. He stopped at one thousand. The counting was helping.

His stomach growled. An image of Owen flashed before him, and his desire to eat vanished.

“Brian.”

He stopped and looked around. Someone had called his name. A man.

Brian opened his mouth to reply and then stopped.

What if there wasn’t anyone?
Brian wondered.

What if someone is waiting for me to speak?
Brian thought.
What if someone is hunting me and merely wondering where I am in the room?

Brian continued to move forward.

“We know you’re in here, Brian,” a voice said.

He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

Something cold brushed against his arm.

“Are you close to us?” a second voice asked.

“Closer than he wants to admit,” said the first.

He heard someone chuckle and say, “We’ll find him, soon.”

With the next words spoken, Brian could hear no difference. It was as if the two voices had become one.

“True. We have enough time, and he’s lost.”

“Alice down the rabbit hole.”

“Eat me, drink me.”

“Shh. You’ll remind him of Owen.”

Horrible images flashed through Brian’s mind. He had a sudden, irrational fear that John was still alive, and that Owen had been only pretending. Brian vividly imagined how John would have been butchered efficiently. Owen would be sitting in his chair. Brian pictured blood spilling out of the corners of Owen’s mouth as the man took small, delicate pieces of John’s liver and chewed them methodically.

Owen’s dead
, Brian told himself sharply.

“Is he, though? You’re stronger than we thought, Brian.”

“Stronger than any of us thought. To be honest, we thought you wouldn’t have made it this far.”

“Of course, Mitchell did help, which was rather unsporting of him.”

“It does make the game rather more interesting, though, does it not, Brian?”

Brian didn’t respond. He continued forward, each step cautious, his hand always on the wall.

“Will you stay down here with us, Brian?”

And Brian saw himself trapped, forever, never dying as he wandered in darkness. He could see himself, eyes blind, beard long, and clothes turned to rags. Two dark shapes near him, always questioning and wondering what to do with him.

Brian felt panic well up within him and nest in his throat almost threatening to erupt in an uncontrollable scream. He fought it back viciously, forcing the unwanted and base desire to flee, back into the darker recesses of his heart.

“Oh, he is strong. Far stronger than we knew. Do you think he’ll escape Josephus?”

“No. Oh no. I think dear Brian is in for something far worse than he can imagine.”

“Tell us, Brian, do you think you can defeat Josephus?”

A dark form suddenly filled his mind. Beautiful blue eyes peered out from the shape’s depths and sought to punch through Brian’s thoughts. Hatred poured out of those eyes.

“Yes, you see a glimpse of Josephus. You see your death.”

“Come, Brian, come. You have days of walking left. Let us see what else we can pick from your mind.”

A cold, needle of thought punched into his memories and spiders swarmed out.

Brian nearly staggered under the weight of the recollection.

His grandfather’s garage. On a spring day, looking for old comic books in the rafters. Seeking boxes of his father’s Batman and Superman stories.

Then the spiders.

Spiderlings. Recently hatched and ravenous.

Brian had never seen the web, nor had he spotted the hundreds of small shapes clinging to the rafters. He had crawled shirtless through them towards an old Army footlocker stored in the back. Brian was brave, as much as a ten-year-old could be. He was fearless, focused on the comics. He wanted to read about Lex Luthor and the Joker, Robin and Jimmy Olsen.

And he hadn’t noticed the spiders.

Their webs had wrapped around his flesh, fine strands of silk he had barely felt. He could feel them crawling on his back and shoulders. The faint caresses of hundreds of legs. He had thought it was the heat of the attic, the disagreeable act of sweating.

Then the biting had begun, and he had stopped, surprised.

The pain was nearly instantaneous.

Dozens of bites, scores of them. Hundreds of them.

He had yelled in both shock and horror. He had beaten his shoulders and back and then his neck until his hands ached. Finally, satisfied they had been killed, Brian had fled back the way he had come, only to move into another nest of recently hatched spiders.

Fear had overtaken him, driven him to the edge of awareness and he had fallen out of the garage’s trap door. Four feet down and onto the roof of the 1967 Impala his father had been restoring.

The spiderlings had continued to bite him.

Brian shuddered, came to a brief stop until the memory and the phantom pain of the old bites passed. With a deep breath, he pushed on.

“Let us see what else is there,” the first voice said.

The cold pierced his mind again, and Brian forced himself to walk on.

Chapter 26: Researching, 4:00 PM, May 2
^nd
, 2016

Jenny’s head hurt.

She sat on the floor in Leo’s old building. Piles of books surrounded her. She had a notebook and a pen. There were only a few sentences jotted down on the open page. Barely a hundred words after hours of research.

Jenny closed her eyes, leaned against the wall and took a long, deep breath.

Shane had left an hour earlier. He had gone back to his house to see if Carl had come up with anything.

With a sigh, Jenny opened her eyes and looked at the last book she had pulled from the shelves. It was short and thin, bound in a beautiful marbled cover. The title was written in gold letters down the spine
: The World Behind Ours
, by Anonymous.

Leo’s information on the book had been scant. It had held only the title, the unknown author, the date of publication, which was listed as “1932 (?)”, and the single word ‘Behind.’ The word had been underlined several times.

Jenny picked it up, opened the book and began to read,

“
It should come as no surprise to us, when we pause to actually consider the idea, that there is actually more to this world than we can see. The supernatural and the paranormal are often scoffed at by traditional scientists and to those who cling to the narrow boundaries of the scientific principle. There is a large part of the scientific and rational community who believe if it cannot be seen, it cannot exist.

“
This faulty logic is what kept the world in darkness and believing it was flat, as well.

“We believe in a Heaven and a Hell, and the Catholics believe in a Purgatory. Could there not be another world, perhaps even multiple worlds, which exist in the shadows of ours?

“We cannot deny the existence of ghosts, although the naysayers howl out their disagreement. They declare the idea of spirits is both primitive and barbaric. Yet the evidence, although it cannot be repeated upon demand, is there. Recordings of hauntings have been made for as long as there have been people to jot them down, and it continues.

“
This small book is not a defense of the supernatural. You, the reader, must accept the supernatural as an undeniable truth or else you shall gain no benefit from this work. My goal here is to examine the evidence of a world behind ours, one which is in its shadow. This shadow world is ever-present, and sometimes we interact with it, although we are usually unaware.

“Occasionally, however, stories arise of the shadow world breaking into ours. They are often fearful tales of being trapped, unable to return to our own place and our own time. There are many tales of such occurrences, perhaps the most famous one being that of Rip Van Winkle. We must ask ourselves was this really a story, or perhaps some bit of history Washington Irving was privy to.

“A telltale sign of this hidden world slipping into ours is the unexplained arrival of large swaths of fog …”