Strange Eons (16 page)

Then, turning, she swung the open bag forward, smashing it against Jody’s face. A blinding spray of powder exploded from the open compact, and Jody’s arm flew up to shield his eyes from the whirling keychain and the sharp points of the pen and pencil.

As he did so, Kay lunged against him to wrench the revolver from his grasp. Coughing, Jody clawed at her, his face contorted.

Kay wasn’t conscious of pressing the trigger but she must have, because suddenly his face was gone; in its place, a gushing crimson mass receded as he toppled back to crash upon the floor.

Nothing had prepared Kay for the sight—nor for the smell—nor for her own reaction. She turned, stomach churning, the revolver slipping from her fingers as she gripped the side of a display case for support.

For a moment she stood there until the retching subsided; then panic propelled her across the room to the door.

It was locked.

And the lock had no keyhole.

She stared down with numbing realization. Jody had closed the door when he came in; a deadbolt must be locking it from the other side.

There had to be a way.
Carefully averting her gaze from the sprawling figure beyond, Kay turned to pick up the revolver from the floor, then moved to the door again. Standing at one side to shield herself, she took aim at the lock and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Again she squeezed and again the clicking echoed. The revolver was empty.

No way.

She glanced across the room, staring into the darkness where the gods of Egypt crouched and stood, leered and mocked.

Slowly she crossed to them, peering at stone-snouted Sebek, bronze-beaked Horus, the metal maw of brazen Bast. And from above, on his high pedestal, Osiris fixed his eye upon her.

Nye had been standing here when last she saw him. Here, beside Osiris, Lord of the Dead.

The wall behind the statuary was solid and unbroken. Kay ran her fingers across the cold stone surface and it did not yield. There was no secret exit here.
No way.

She turned, gazing again into the eye of Osiris, Ruler of the Underworld.

Underworld.

Kay glanced down into the shadows behind the pedestal, almost tripping over the projection before she saw it. The metal ring looped forth from the iron circle set flush with the floor.

Stooping, she grasped it; the heavy, rounded lid was perfectly counterbalanced so that it rose swiftly, silently, effortlessly.

She dropped to her knees, staring into the dark opening below. This was the way Nye had left, through a trap door. No steps, just a series of rungs forming a ladder.

But where did it lead to?

Kay took a deep breath, then grasped the topmost rung. Slowly she began to lower herself into the Underworld.

Down. Down into darkness, down into dampness. Kay descended cautiously along the metal ladder, moving one hand at a time to establish a firm grip on either side, then lowering her feet to seek support on the next rung beneath. The rungs seemed to be spaced about two feet apart, their flat upper surface narrower than that of an ordinary ladder.
Thank God I’m not wearing high heels,
she told herself.

The light from the trap door opening above grew fainter as she continued her descent. She kept count of the rungs—
thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three
—wondering how much further there was to go. But knowing when they would end was of no consequence. It was
where
they would end that mattered.

For a moment she paused, clinging to the ladder in the sable silence. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and she felt lost; without sight or sound she could only rely on tactile sensation. The metal rungs were cold to the touch, and the air fanning her face and forehead was moist and chill.

The breeze billowing up from below had to come from somewhere outside the pit. If Nye had left by this route, it must lead to an exit.

Slowly, steadily, Kay resumed her efforts. The light from above contracted to a pinpoint, then winked out. She ignored its passing and concentrated on keeping count. And it was after reaching the sixty-sixth rung that her right foot moved down to rest upon a solid surface of stone.

This would be what—a hundred and thirty feet? But that’s thirteen stories down!
Kay tried to remember the height of the cliffside on which the museum rested. She must be at the base, close to actual sea-level here. And now, as she strained to listen, it seemed as though she could hear a far-off muffled booming, repeated at regular intervals; the sound of waves beating against rocky walls in the distance.

She had to be in a passageway of some sort, but there was no clue as to its dimensions or the direction in which it led. She could only follow the current of air moving directly across her face, follow it to its source. And if the booming sound grew louder it would mean she was coming closer to the exit.

Kay released her grip on the metal rungs and instantly regretted it. Now she stood alone in the darkness; once away from the ladder she’d never be able to find it again.

She turned and extended her arms, seeking to touch the sides of the opening in which she stood. Her left hand struck against something solid, which projected outward at shoulder level, and Kay felt her fingers close around a knob or lever. It moved forward with a faint
ping,
and then she blinked as sudden light lanced her pupils.

A dim fluorescence flooded forth from overhead and she could see its source—the roof of the tunnel opening before her here at the base of the ladder.

The narrow aperture seemed to be cut from solid rock; it was perhaps four feet in width and six feet high. Tubular fixtures were set at regular intervals along a sheathed conduit extending along the ceiling of the passageway, revealing rough-hewn walls winding forward. Their rocky surface was moist and mottled by dank greenish patches of lichen growths.

It was a man-made cave, no doubt of that, and obviously an ancient one. But the lighting was just as obviously a recent addition, and the levered wall switch she had brushed against was an incongruously modern fixture.

At that moment recollection flashed; the unbidden, unwelcome memory of the subterranean passageways in Lovecraft’s story,
The Shunned House.

Kay shook her head. It was time to focus on fact, not fancy, and right now only the air was important. The air flowing from the tunnel mouth and emanating from a source deep within. There had to be an exit beyond the passageway.

She moved forward without further hesitation. The corridor was clammy and the smell of the sea was everywhere. The echo of her footsteps blended with the cadenced booming of waves beating against the outer walls. As she had thought, the tunnel wound and twisted its way through rock; soon Kay lost all sight of the opening behind her. From time to time she encountered smaller openings on either side, as though the entire cliffside was honeycombed with caves and passages, but she ignored them and concentrated on following the central, lighted route. The constant draft of air from ahead held promise and she began to quicken her pace.

It was not until she was quite well upon her way that Kay sensed the gradual change in the
quality
of the sound. The echo of her footsteps remained constant, as did the muffled roar of the surf beyond, but now there was something else—something that filled the intervals between the pounding onslaught of the waves. It was the sound of movement; not from without but from
within.

Kay paused, peering forward. The shadowed corridor stretched emptily ahead. She could see nothing moving there, but now as the rushing of unseen waves subsided, the ensuing silence was again broken by the other, fainter noise. What did that remind her of?

Rustling. Insidious scurrying. Racing rats
—Lovecraft’s words. And his story,
The Rats in the Walls.

Something cheeped and chittered in the distant shadows, but the noise came from behind her.

Kay turned, glancing back along the passage. The far-off floor was deep in shadow. But shadows do not slither and squirm. Shadows have no eyes.

She saw them now, darting in the distance; thousands of little red eyes glaring up from a moving mass covering the passageway behind, thousands of bloated black bodies scampering forward in a swarm pouring out of a side opening to choke the central corridor. Now she could hear the sharp claws scraping against the stone, smell the stench of the wriggling horde padding down upon her.

Kay began to run, and the living shadow raced behind her, tiny talons clicking. The creatures were gaining, coming closer; now they were only yards behind her, readying to pounce and leap. Fanged mouths opened, squealing in unison, shrilling their hunger. The hunger of the rats, the rats in the walls—

She saw the side opening ahead just in time; the doorway set in a narrow niche to her left. As she raced toward it the frantic furry forms surged at her heels. Kay turned at the threshold, freezing in panic at the sight of slitted eyes, hairy muzzles, the pointed yellow fangs roped with strands of saliva. A great gray rat leaped forward, launching itself at her right leg. Kay kicked out, screaming, then ran through the aperture, wheeled and tugged at the heavy door, which stood ajar against the inner wall.

For a moment it resisted and she fought to force it forward as the rat horde shrieked and scuttled across the threshold.

Then the door swung shut with a clang; behind it she heard the thumping of bodies, the mewings, the squeaking. But the door held firm. It was a very modern, man-made barrier of machined metal, expertly hung on shiny hinges. Kay stared at it for a moment, panting, fighting for breath and composure. Only then did she turn to gaze around the room.

And it was really a room she stood in now, not a natural cavern or hollowed-out cave. The squared-off walls of the huge chamber were obviously the work of skilled artisans, fluorescence poured from man-made ceiling slots set symmetrically overhead, and the humming that rose around her indicated the presence of machinery operating from some unseen source.

Air-conditioning?
The notion seemed absurd, but that’s what it sounded like—the steady, persistent drone of a giant air-conditioner at work. And it was cold in here, much colder than the damp corridor outside.

Pulse steadying, Kay found final confirmation of human artifice in the contents of the chamber spreading before her. The long open aisle leading to another door at the far end was lined on both sides with solid rows of metal boxes or compartments. Each was four feet high, two feet wide and perhaps seven feet long; their flat upper surfaces were covered by what seemed to be aluminum sheathing. At a quick guess there must be several hundred of the containers standing row on row.

As Kay started down the aisle between them she noted the snakelike coils of tubing winding through each box at its base, linking them together. The humming rose around her, drowning out the noise of the creatures in the outer corridor, but this new sound held a disquieting note of its own; a rhythmic pulsation like the deep throbbing of a gigantic heart.

Kay quickened her pace, doing her best to ignore the sound rising from either side. But she could not ignore the increasing chill and her sudden shiver of involuntary response.

The cold issued from the boxes—hundreds of refrigerated boxes like the storage units of some huge freezer-locker.

Impulse impelled her to glance at a unit to her right; curiosity brought her to a halt and caused her fingers to grip the icy metal handle extending from the thin aluminum sheath covering its contents. The sheath must have rested on runners at each side, for at her touch the covering rolled back to reveal what lay beneath.

It was only another protective layer, this time of thick, clear plastic, but it was quite transparent. And staring down she saw what was contained in the box beneath.

Winding wires, tangled tubes, spiralling through a cloudy liquid that bubbled and shimmered; the strands coiled and twisted to termination in clamps that clung to the form floating within—the smiling corpse.

It was the naked cadaver of an elderly man, gaunt and emaciated, lying face upward in the milky solution that bubbled against the pipe-stem limbs, the bony ribcage, the trailing fringe of fine white hair framing the sunken cheeks.

The box held death. Writhing amidst the wires like a monstrous marionette, the bobbing corpse grinned up through the seething swirl.

And its eyes were open.

Kay did not scream. She stood there, letting the cold flood through her, inhaling the ammoniac reek, as the senseless words burst upon her brain.

That is not dead which can eternal lie—

Lovecraft’s phrase. And, again, his story.
Cool Air,
that was the one, about the crude effort to prolong and preserve life by artificial refrigeration more than half a century ago.

Prolonging life—that was a theme he’d hinted at over and over again. That, and the theme of ancient survivors, resurrected or undying, in
He, The Festival. The Terrible Old Man.
And that other old man, the cannibalistic creature of
The Picture in the House.

But this thing in the box was not nourished by blood, or by primitive methods of preservation. Here was the modern reality of cryogenics. Frozen flesh, thwarting decay in suspended animation, hibernating against the day of revival.

And in the other boxes—

Kay peeled away the sheaths of surrounding compartments at random, knowing what she must find; each box contained another corpse. Here was a middle-aged man, sleek and smiling, cheeks bulging with an obscene plumpness far more hideous than any emaciation. There, the tiny form of a child, twisting and turning amidst the tubes that fed its frozen veins against desiccation and decay. And a young girl, very much like herself; blue lips shaped in a secret smile, glassy eyes mirroring the dreams that come in death.

How many hundreds huddled here, cryonic captives awaiting the summons to rise?

Kay turned away, hastening to the doormat the far end of the aisle, praying that it wasn’t locked. Whatever lay beyond could be no worse than what lay here in this chamber.