Trembling With Fear 03/29/20

 

Flow in the Dark by Donna J. W. Munro

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When the sinkhole opened up in Marion’s front yard, the neighbors watched her survey the damage and shouted encouragement from across their chain-linked fences.

“Quite a hole you got there. Doesn’t stink. That’s good. Could be an old septic collapse and then you’d be up to your ears in shit,” neighbor Joe said, scratching his beer-belly thoughtfully.

On the other side, Holly balanced her boy on a cocked hip and watched as Marion dropped a stone down the throat of the hole. “Watch out, Mar. Might have more collapsing to do. Like that sinkhole downtown that swallowed a whole street, houses and cars and all.”

Holly was right. Just as Marion stepped back from the lip, it trembled and crumbled, widening its mouth by another two feet all the way around. It was at the edge of her stamped concrete patio and her elephant ear plants were gone down into the dark of the wide hole.

“Who should I call?” Marion choked out at the neighbors.

“The city,” they settled on after floating unhelpful suggestions like Roter Rooter and a landscaping company and the Ghostbusters.

On the phone, no one knew where to send Marion’s call. The city manager sent her to public works. Public works sent her to the building engineer. He’d put her on a hold that stretched into an eight-minute-long ordeal and while she sat on the patio, bouncing her knee nervously, another two feet crumbled away from under the chain-link she shared with Joe and he was screaming that she’d better do something.

“What am I supposed to do,” She screamed back, cupping her hand over the phone.

From the mouth of the hole, an acrid mist rose like steam from a pipe and groaning echoed up its long throat.

The phone in her ear clicked from hold music and a soft voice took its place.

“Marion? I’m with the university geology department. Has it started to smoke yet?”

“Yes,” Marion answered, “just now. And there are noises… like someone is in pain.”

“Okay. We’ll be out soon.”

“Thank you, my address is…”

“No need. We’ve got a fix on you. The instruments locked as it opened.”

“Oh… See you soon.”

“And Marion—” He paused like the words needed to be put in the right order. “Don’t talk to anything that comes out of that hole, ok? Tell your neighbors to just stay inside.”

As the call ended with a click, the mouth of the hole widened into Holly’s yard, the run of chain-link, sagging in the air like a swaybacked bridge. The smoke swirled with yellow and orange. The others ran inside their houses, though Marion wondered if the hole wouldn’t just swallow them all up. It might be right under her feet. The thought sent her scrambling back from the edge, to the step of her kitchen door, but seeing them stopped her.

Little round eyes peered over the edge of the chasm, black circles lit, glowing out from a face too smooth and white to be skin. A tiny mask, set on a small head with sooty hair standing out at all angles. Stubby little fingers clutched the clumps of grass that rimmed the hole. 

“Help me,” cried a voice as sweet as a kitten’s. 

Marion couldn’t let the child hang there, though the geologist’s words ribboned around her mind. Before she could think another thought, her feet carried her to the edge where she gathered a boy no older than three into her arms. The smoke’s thick stench burned her eyes and she suppressed a gag, but she managed to carry him back to her house. 

Inside the kitchen, she set him on the edge of the sink where the back window let sunlight in. 

“Here we go,” she said with a singsong voice. She pulled his arms out of his coat, wool and so old-fashioned. His shoes were nothing you’d buy at a big box store. They were cobbled, leather shoes. She pulled them off and warmed some water to rinse away the drying dirt. “Where’d you come from?”

The boy shook his head and let it droop, then pointed out the window. 

Marion could see the whole sinkhole, so wide it touched the back end of the neighbor’s house behind her. No more fence. The dark had swallowed it. But from that dark rose others dressed in long smoky robes that slithered as they climbed over the lip of the hole, onto her patio. Their faces were covered, like the boy cooing from her sink, sliding his sooty hands along her skin and leaving streaks of muddy ash on her forearm. 

The five of them stood taller than most grown men and their masks were something from a nightmare. Diaphanous covers with horns and ridges, deep black holes for eyes, no mouths or noses, just like the boy. The boy muttered behind the mask, sounds almost words she might understand. 

Marion snatched the boy up and backed just as the five figures turned toward her house, toward the window she’d been standing by. Could they see in? She shuffled back with the boy clutched to her, mumbling behind his white mask. Cold fear froze her against the kitchen wall as the tallest figure pressing its mask against the glass until it filled up the whole view and blotted out the light. 

She bit back a scream and spun with the child rushing into the living room toward the front door. 

The child’s moans began to hitch, rhythmic and sharp, sounding like giggles to her frightened ears. 

“Quiet now!” She peered down into the boy’s black eyes. The edge of his mask pressed into his skin, a seam she touched with her fingers. She could just her fingers under it, but he gasped scared wheezes that made her heart squeeze tighter in her chest. His body clung to her tightly, bruising her sides with surprising strength. Behind them, the back door clattered and the knob twisted. 

They wanted in. 

Marion glanced down at the boy. She had to save him… 

Didn’t she? 

What had she brought into her house?

Cold pressure folded her into a squat. Her breaths came in razored pants and her stomach knotted and clenched with every rattle of the door. The boy was silent when she slid her fingers under his mask. He sat in the fold of her knees, hands still pressed into her side, face turned sideways on her chest like a sleeping doll. 

She tugged at the mask, but it didn’t come away easily. 

It ripped like a scab.

The pounding on the door stopped. 

She pulled again, unable to stop, even as blood and stringy skin pulled away with the mask. 

She pulled until it was in her hand and she stared into the boy’s ruined face. No skin covered the muscles twisted into a smile and slick with the blood that freckled their surfaces. And his eyes.

She’d thought his eyes were hidden by the depth of the mask’s eyes, but they weren’t. They were just black holes deeper than the cavern in the yard. Deeper than forever. 

The little boy clutched her harder, pressing into her sides, flowing into her skin with a hot, prying persistence. 

The front door banged open as the boy completely melded into her, his insides conquering her veins and byways, staking claim to her muscles. The echoes of his thoughts and her fears entangled behind her fluttering eyes. Just a child, she kept thinking. But what he knew and shared with her wasn’t some child’s understanding. It flowed inside her synapses like streams of flame.

“Marion?” Holly called. 

She was flanked by men with guns and shovels. One kneeled and gathered Marion up in his arms.

“Come on!” He shouted, herding them all out of the house. 

As they exited, Marion clutched the mask to her chest. She felt her house collapse behind them with an exhalation of held breath, heard the creaking and cracking and final tumble of all she’d owned. She peeked over the man’s shoulder and saw five figures descending back into the hole.

The man set her down on the asphalt inside the cordon the police had set up around the hole where her yard and house had been. The man turned her toward him and stared hard, looking into her eyes.

“You didn’t talk to them, did you?”

Marion didn’t answer. Instead, she asked, “What were they?”

The man shook his head. “We don’t know. They dig holes under particular people or places they want. The hole will be gone tomorrow. Anyone who goes down disappears. Anyone who talks to them disappears. Marion?”

She struggled to follow his words, even though she wanted the information. “Disappears?”

He nodded. This was the geologist she’d talked to. She remembered his voice. He knew more about the under people than anyone. She admired his eyes. They’d be beautiful in the dark. 

She whispered to him, touching the soft skin of his neck, “They sing in the dark.” Then she pressed against him. She and the boy within her, pressed and flowed and he didn’t fight. Those who heard the voice of the hole didn’t fight. 

Soon, the geologist would know the underworld forever.

Soon, he’d flow through the dark.