Labyrinth

A young thrill seeker and his friend descend into the tunnels below their city for some urban exploration.

Exploration. Infiltration. Adventure. Hallie tied the rope tightly around a concrete support, yanking in firmly to check its hold. It seemed secure, but Sam gave it a tug, just to feel it for himself. The grid of flood drains and maintenance tunnels was said to be huge…and disorienting. Just ahead of their feet was the open grate, blackness looming inside, seemingly leading into an endless abyss. They were already underground, just close enough to the surface to hear cars and noise from above, but the tunnels ran a layer deeper. Sam ran a mental list of his items, one final check before descent: flashlights, batteries, matches, hardhat, camera, water, trail mix, pocket knife, duct tape, air tester, and rope. Lots and lots of rope. The end that was tied to the support led directly to a huge coil, strapped firmly to his backpack. It was their lifeline. He leaned closer to the grate peering deeper inside

“Ready?” Hallie asked, picking up on the subtle shift. She yanked her ponytail tighter, and hitched her backpack up. “You’ll go down first, check the air, I’ll follow?”

Sam nodded, and lowered himself into the grate, clutching tightly to the rope. The descent was ten, twelve feet, maybe, but the blackness made it feel infinite. He touched his feet to the ground, and pulled out the reader from his pack, gazing at the screen. These tunnels could often be filled with odorless, but unbreathable gasses, and by the time you started feeling dizzy or nauseous you might already be in too deep. It was important to keep checking. With a call up to Hallie that they were all clear, Sam turned his flashlight to the tunnel that extended from him in both directions. He grinned.

Hallie touched down with the gentle scrape of hiking boots on concrete, and stepped up behind him. A small click, and her flashlight beam joined his.

“Which way?” though their flashlights were pointed elsewhere, he could make out the silhouette of her tilted head, and the faintest outline of her expression.

“Doesn’t matter to me. Pick your poison.”

She was off before the words were out of his mouth, and Sam followed with a chuckle.

“This is the coolest!” From the echoing noise of her footsteps and the bobbing of her light, it looked as if she might be skipping “This is definitely the coolest place we’ve been yet.”

She had only been with Sam to a few other places, an abandoned rail yard, a defunct motel, an old district of military housing that had been left to rot in the 90’s. Each had been crowned ‘the coolest’ by Hallie, and subsequently usurped by the next place. He shook his head, chuckling. Sure, he had a couple years experience under his belt, but Hallie’s puppy-dog enthusiasm was endearing, and it cut through the darkness almost better than the flashlights.

A shrill shriek, followed by laughter, made his heart skip a beat in his chest, the beam from his light flicking erratically on the walls before landing on Hallie. She had her hand on her chest, gasping between giggles.

“Rat.” She breathed, shaking her head “Hoo! Half scared me to death.”

“They’re just maintenance tunnels” Sam rolled his eyes and chuckled, turning his gaze back to the tunnel ahead “No boogeyman here.”

A sharp punch to his shoulder made him wince “I know that, you dork!” Hallie’s grin caught the flashlight beam, shining briefly in the darkness as she barked another laugh. “Doesn’t mean a serial killer couldn’t be hiding down here.”

“Mmm.” Sam’s lips twitched upwards, into an indulgent smile. “Sure”

“Just waiting for some hapless explorers to wander in, listening to us move deeper and deeper into the tunnels, before he….Gets us!”

She shook Sam’s shoulders, wildly, singing “Reeeee! Reeeee! Reeeee! Reeeeee!” and making Psycho shower stabbing motions with her free hand.

Sam laughed and leaned his head back against her arm, still grabbing onto his shoulder “Whatever you say, Hal.” He pointed up, at the tunnel ceiling “Hey, look at all those pipes up there-”

But Hallie was already trotting off again, darting her flashlight about the room, hungrily seeking out the dark corners, as she ran ahead of him. Her footsteps reverberated all around the dark passage, making it seem like they were coming from all directions at once. Also having noticed the echo, Hallie clapped a few times, then gave a joyful shout. 

“ECHO-oh-oh-oh-oh”

Sam shook his head softly, smiling “It doesn’t work if you’re just saying the ‘ohs’ at the end.”

“Kill-joy!” More echoing footsteps bounced around as Hallie continued to explore.

“Hey, don’t get too far ahead!” Sam called out “I’m the guy with the rope, remember.”

“Yeesh, slowpoke.” Illuminated by Sam’s beam, Hallie stopped, making a large show of mock exasperation. Then, she glanced at the wall, then leaned closer to inspect it. Reaching out to grab something he couldn’t see, she pressed a hand against the wall…and was swallowed

She screamed shrilly, tumbling through the bricks and into a space beyond, and Sam took off towards her with a shout. By the time he reached the newly formed fissure in the wall, Hallie was already sitting up, and checking herself over for injuries. She accepted Sam’s hand as he pulled her to her feet, swearing quietly. Then they both looked at the hole, and the fallen bricks surrounding it.

“They don’t even have mortar on them,” Hallie hefted a brick in her hand, squinting at it. “Must have just been stacked to look like the hole wasn’t there”

Indeed, next to the gap Hallie had made, there were still a few un-mortared bricks stacked snug against the solid wall. In the dark, they made nearly a perfect disguise.  Sam shined his light past Hallie’s face into the gap, and squinted as far as he could into it. More tunnel extended out from the gap, splitting off in the distance.

“What were you even doing anyways?” he asked, crossing his arms. You had to be careful in places like this. It was too easy for a moment of carelessness to turn into a serious injury, and down here, there was no quick hospital access.

 Hallie didn’t respond, instead crouched, digging a small, folded piece of paper from the pile of loose bricks.

“This.” She waved it in his face “This little b*****d was sticking out of the bricks. How should I have known it was booby trapped?”

Shaking it open, she slowly read what was on it

“Hello. You found me. "Deadcrow.”

Sam tilted his head to look at it, squinting. His lip curled slightly. The whole point of urban exploration was to look without disturbing, preserve the integrity of the site. Take only photos, leave only footprints and all that. Obviously a concept lost on the person who had left the note, and stacked all those bricks to hide the tunnel. What a jerk.

Hallie flipped the paper over, then tilted her head.

“Jeez.” She breathed quietly. ‘’What the heck?”

There was a crude smile, seemingly finger-painted, on the back. Below it, there was more writing in small letters.

“Left. Left. Right. Left. Second to the right. Straight. Left.”

It continued for several lines.

“They’re directions.” Sam said quietly.

“To where?”

Sam just shrugged, stepping farther into the new tunnel. Despite his annoyance with whoever left the note, an implacable curiosity was dancing inside him. This is why he explored. This was the reason he went into the dark places, the abandoned places, the places no one else went. The air from the tunnel was cool and carried on it an aura of oldness, mystery.

“Wait. “ Hallie grabbed his wrist, urgently.

“What?”

“Sam! We’re going to follow them?”

Sam was already well down the tunnel, within steps of the fork. Looking back into the gloom, He could only see the faint reflections of Hallie’s eyes.

“…Why not?”

“Couldn’t the air be dangerous, or something?” though she didn’t try to pull him back, there was a note of hesitation in her voice.

“Its fine” With a cursory glance at the air reader, Sam tugged away from her grasp.

Hallie followed after, persistent “It just seems strange. Why was this tunnel hidden? Why would someone take the time to stack bricks up like that and leave that note?”

Sam smiled at her “Let’s find out.”

“I just-“

“Hey.” Sam put a hand on her shoulder “I won’t let anything bad happen. Promise.”

The tunnel they had been travelling before had certainly split off into many side tunnels and offshoots, but while had been maze-like, this new branch was labyrinthine. Several times Sam tried to arrange a mental map of its layout, only to be befuddled by a seemingly impossible turn. Several times, it seemed like they should be circling back to a familiar area, only to have the next turn take them to a completely unfamiliar fork. The style of the tunnels too, changed. Sometimes the walls were smooth brick, other times stone, or dirt. For some portions of the tunnel, dim incandescent bulbs glowed faintly on the ceiling. Others were pitch dark, even with the help of flashlights. Pipes would run along the tunnels for a long while, only to be replaced with bare concrete after a turn, but despite the large changes, it was strangely difficult to tell exactly where one kind of tunnel turned into the next. Once they heard a subway train whistling ahead, but often the only sound was their quiet breaths, and the echo of their footfalls.

Every so often, there were messages along their path, each brief, and in conspicuous locations along their path.

Are you curious about Deadcrow?

Dabbed in black block-letters on the wall.

Deadcrow is curious about you.

Carved on the ground, looking almost like it had been clawed into the concrete surface.

Deadcrow is always curious.

In tiny, white paint cursive letters, surrounded by huge arrows pointing to it.

Hello.Hello.Hello. Helloooo

Stretched out for yards along the ceiling of the tunnel with the lightbulbs

Deadcrow sees you. Yes.

Painted in red around the corner of a turn, along with a large eyeball

Deadcrow sees many things.

More eyeballs

SHHHHHHHH!

Spattered in gigantic letters, stretching from one wall, over the ceiling, to the other

   IT HEARS YOU.

Blocked out in tattered painter’s tape.

With each message, Hallie huddled slightly closer to Sam, and darted her flashlight around a bit more frantically. She was being paranoid, honestly. It just graffiti. Maybe not the usual kind you saw tagged on drainage tunnels, but likely perpetrated by bored adolescents all the same.

Then they reached the end of the directions. Ahead of them was a wall, with two tunnels splitting off on either side just before it, but what was on the wall was far more interesting. Daubed onto the concrete were more directions like before, along with the same leering grin. Sam snapped a picture of them with his camera, before preparing to set off again down the tunnel the picture indicated.

“Wait.” Hallie said. “I don’t like this.”

“Hals, some dumb teenagers probably did this, hoping to creep out any other explorers. Worst case scenario, we run into the little jerk who set this all up, and get to chew him out for it. So why not see where it goes?”

Hallie nodded, but he noticed that she stayed closer to him as they started walking again.

As they rounded more bend, the tunnel began to grow dank. Water dripped lightly from the ceiling, gathered in small puddles on the ground. The walls turned slicker, coated with a thin layer of condensation. The air became cooler, much cooler and so thick that you could almost taste the damp.

“Look over there.” Sam shone his flashlight down a tunnel to the left of them, where a light shone faintly. He began to walk over.

“Didn’t the directions tell us to go right?”

“Yeah, but it’ll take two seconds to check this out.”

A few feet in, the tunnel widened into a small room. A candle burned in one corner, the source of the light they had seen.

“What the-“Sam breathed quietly.

Their flashlights danced around the room. Dirty painter’s tarps lay bundled up in one corner, like someone had been using it as a bed. A few more unlit candles, lumpy, and homemade looking, lay in a small pile in another corner, along with a battered roll of tape, some more tarps, a few maintenance uniforms, a box, and a few cans of paint. No brushes. However, what quickly caught his eyes were the walls.

            The brick directly in front of them was filled by a detailed human face, black paint smeared onto the wall in a surprisingly lifelike portrait of a little girl. Tiny words surrounded her face.

Pretty.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

Sopretty.

Treasure.

On all the other walls was one…phrase? Name? Only, repeated over and over and over again.

DEADCROW. DEADCROW. DEADDCROWDEADCROWDEADCROWDEADCROW.

Slowly, Sam walked towards the box.

Hallie made a small sound as Sam went to pick it up, just a tiny whisper of noise. He held in in his hands, small, wooden, unassuming. The lid slid off almost silently when he thumbed it. Hallie shone here flashlight inside to they could see its contents.

It took Sam nearly a second to process what he saw, but when he did, he let out an embarrassingly shrill scream, dropping the box and the thing inside onto the ground. They landed with a clatter and a thick thump. Hallie too, screamed, higher than Sam, and dropped her flashlight. For a few heart pounding moments there was total darkness as Sam fumbled for his own light, but finally, the room was illuminated again.

The doll, if one could even still call it that, lay limply on the ground, tiny limbs akimbo, hair sticking out in all directions. Its head and hands looked like they’d been chewed up by a dog, and the little pink dress it was wearing hung in tatters around its body. The single blue eye remaining in the caved wreckage of its face stared accusingly up at them, long eyelashes quivering.

Sam kicked it, swearing. It bounced off the wall, skidded with a thump, and landed in a sad pile at the corner of the room. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! The whole thing had obviously been set up as a trick, a joke, and he’d been dumb enough to let it get to him. He grimaced, shaking his head.

“We should go.” Hallie’s voice was quiet. Her nails dug into his arm. For once, he didn’t argue.

God knew this outing had already turned into enough of a mess.

He grabbed the rope trailing behind them, guiding them back to the surface, and gave it a firm tug to reassure himself. With one hand on the handle of the rope holder strapped to his pack, and the other resting lightly the rope trailing out  away from them, he began to follow it, rolling the rope back up as he went.

Once back in the corridor, he saw that something was different. Where there had only been black wall before, there were now words, scratched into the brick.

YOU BROKE THE RULES.

Sam blanched. It had to have been there before. They just didn’t see it. It must have been put on the wall in a way where it wouldn’t be noticeable going in.

That had to be it.

Hallie grabbed tightly onto his arm. Despite himself, Sam’s pace was a touch faster than before.

In the corridor with the flickering incandescent lights, Hallie stopped, swearing quietly.

“I left my flashlight in the room. I never picked it up.” She looked back the way they had come. “I duct taped all special and everything, and I forgot it.”

She frowned, but never suggested going back.

They continued topside, winding up the rope as they went. Sam noticed that they didn’t seem to pass the messages again, but he must have just missed them in his hurry. He was following the rope, and the rope was always right. A skittering noise echoed down the tunnel, and Hallie jumped, pressing close to him.  He put a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly. They continued through the tunnels

 “Hey, look.” Hallie tugged gently on his arm, pointing.

In an offshoot next to them, glowed a small light, strobing slowly, the source of which was just outside the beam of Sam’s flashlight.

“Here, give me that…” Hallie grabbed Sam’s flashlight, stepping closer to the tunnel. Sam caught her arm, tried to pull her back.

“What are you doing?”

“It looks like…” Hallie’s voice was far off, slightly dreamy “It looks…”

She trailed off, continuing into the tunnel, shining her flashlight ahead of her towards the distant, blinking dot. Sam couldn’t see what it was, blocked by her form in the shadows. He too, stepped closer. Hallie glanced back, shifting so he could see the light source: Another flashlight, spinning lazily as if gently kicked.

“It’s mine” She murmured “It’s my flashlight.”

“It…what?”

“I put that duct tape on the handle, it’s my flashlight” Squinting at the tape, she read shakily “Y-you. You forgot this.”

Sam took another step towards the tunnel.

Both flashlights snapped off.

Hallie screamed.

Sam heard a frantic shuffling noise, like boots trying to gain traction on ground, squeaking as they were dragged implacably backwards. Hallie was still screaming, loudly, desperately, but the noise was already receding, pulled farther and farther away, impossibly fast.

For maybe ten seconds, Sam stood frozen, utterly paralyzed. From the direction Hallie had…disappeared…into, came a long, clicking rattle. Fear for his friend, any protective instincts, were instantly swallowed by callous self-preservation. Sam ran, faster than he had ever run in his life, blindly following the rope as he spooled it up hastily around his hands. He told himself that he would get out, that he would get help, that they would rescue Hallie. If she could be rescued. If he even made it out.

 It seemed like he had been running for years when the burning in his lungs finally reached unbearable, and he lurched to a stop, searching desperately for breath as he leaned against the wall, muscles burning. Hallie…Closing his eyes, Sam slid down the wall, pulling his arms and his legs close to himself. His hands clenched against the rope like a lifeline, chafing against the rough fibers. To reassure himself, he gave it a solid tug, to feel that it was still firmly anchored.

It tugged back. Sharply. Three times.

Sam sat statue still as noise filled the pitch black tunnel:  a soft shuffling, clicking, scraping. Something thumped quietly into Sam’s lap, and it took all he had in him not to scream. When the quiet finally returned, stiff and oppressive, he fumbled to grab whatever it was he’d been left, finally identifying it as a candle. With trembling fingers, he dug out his matchbook, and lit it.

ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?

The still wet words dripped red paint onto the ground.

That was enough to get Sam back on his feet and running again, faster than before. He tried to listen that for that thing, whatever it was, that was stalking him, but he couldn’t hear over the pounding of his own footsteps, and his heartbeat rushing in his ears.  Feeling back for the holder of rope strapped to his pack, he could tell that it was nearly full. He was close. So close.

The candle squished in his hand, and gave off an awful, choking odor as it burned. He tried not to think about what this one could be made of, but with a curling sensation in his gut and the feeling of nausea in his throat, his intuition told him the answer.

Unwillingly, Sam slid to a halt again, gasping, throat clenching as the panicky sensation of suffocation rose inside of him.

Surprisingly, it ignited a sudden spark of hope. He fumbled the air reader out of his pocket.

Perfectly normal.

Sam let out a tiny choking noise, digging his nails deep into his palms.

The candle flickered out.

With a noise that was half swear, half sob, Sam dug in his pack, pulled out a match, and lit the candle again, whirling to face whatever was behind him. Just empty tunnel

Again the candle died. A soft laugh sounded behind him.

Shaking, Sam lit another match…There was only one left. Again he spun, then froze, squinting at the ground a few feet ahead of him. He hardly noticed when the candle sputtered and plunged him into darkness again.

Taking several steps forward, Sam crouched and lit the candle again with his last match. In the flickering light, he picked up the end of the rope, tattered and torn as if it had been chewed through.

LEAVING SO SOON?

In the harsh light the red paint looked like blood. Maybe it was. Maybe it always had been. He glanced up just in time to see just the glint of a smile in the darkness.

Then it blew out the light.

 

Author's Note

I just wrote this for fun about a year ago, but I figured I'd post it.