I
Robert didn’t notice it until his boot brushed against its soft mass and it startled him so that he jumped back and he jerkily brought the flashlight around on it. The thing was small and wrapped up in cloth and slumped against the wall of the tunnel. Robert expected something to happen as he looked at it, shaking slightly and poised for motion, but the thing didn’t move and he just stared at it. Even with the beam of electric light trained on it, he couldn’t discern a definite form from it because of its cloth covering. He thought it might be an animal, but more likely a human. He’d never encountered any bodies besides human bodies in the tunnels, but it was strange that it had a cloak draped over it and it was so small.
He steadied his breath and reproached himself for being excitable and he kept the flashlight trained on it. He bent down closer and became convinced that, whatever it was, it was dead. He could tell by the smell and its stillness. He looked at it with pity, but didn’t get too near to it or touch it.
He stood up and scanned the tunnel with his flashlight. It was completely silent except for the soporific drips of water that echoed intermittently off the rocks. He turned to walk on. The shadowed mass flinched on his periphery, which startled him and he did a double-take and shined his flashlight on it, but it was lying motionless against the wall.
He started to walk away and took a few steps and then paused. He turned around and put the light back on the cloaked body. He hesitated and then moved closer. He crouched down and took its arm from under the cloak and it seemed like a child’s and he felt for a pulse on the paper thin wrist and he felt a dull throb from the artery. He pushed off the hood that shrouded its head and saw that it was a boy with sunken cheeks and a sweaty mat of blonde hair. He stood up and looked down at it and it couldn’t have been more than four years old. He looked down at it for a long time and then finally tucked his flashlight under his arm and hoisted the child over his shoulder and continued down the tunnel.
XXII
How many months, years, lifetimes had he lived down here? Since yesterday? Or the day before? The infinite chain of yesterdays he’d leave behind and bequeath to the creature in Catherine’s stomach. Thousands of yesterdays spent deep beneath a surface that he couldn’t remember anymore outside of the rare strikes of memory that came coupled with a feeling of selflessness breeding fleeting glimpses of an open soft blue sky and the sensation of a breeze brushing around his flesh and a darkness now . . . a terrible deep darkness broken only by the feeble penetrations of electric flashlights and dancing candle flames. Headaches. Nightmares. Moments of beauty. Moments of beauty when his thoughts unraveled around him as a silk robe sliding off his body in the serenity of this eternity of wet granite walls and their deep darkness.
He stroked Catherine’s thigh in the dark. Traced his hand over her swollen stomach, its hill of flesh where the creature kicked from inside. And the boy that had died that night in the corner. How he had carried its body for miles through the maze of darkness until he was almost lost himself and he put the body in a giant crevice in a wall far away and retraced his steps back home, an entire day’s, or an entire night’s (the distinction no longer mattered) journey. Who knows how many hours he spent carrying that body as far away as he could, the work of a lifetime, and how Catherine had cried and said before he left with the cold body in his arms that she didn’t do it, even though she hadn’t wanted it she had taken it in and she didn’t do it even if she had thought about doing it. And how that boy’s soul had entered into Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from a dream and shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt the child enter her, enter into the creature in her stomach . . .
. . . after Margaret never came back, how long ago? Eddie had looked out into the tunnels and wouldn’t look at Robert and said in a low voice that cracked with static that he found her body without its head in the tunnels past the east line, her neck like a drainage pipe that led to a puddle of dark blood, past the east line where she never should have been and how they couldn’t make sense of it because it didn’t make sense. And now she was inside Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from another dream during another night and she shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt herself enter Margaret, and Robert now kept his hand at rest on top of her navel, which rested slightly on the warm down-slope of the hill of flesh as it breathed rhythmically, and he could feel the faint kicks from Margaret and how Margaret was probably still holding onto all of those skulls she so desperately traded for their survival and how one of those heads belonged to Catherine . . .
. . . and now they were near starving. Eddie kept them alive with what little he could get and Robert looked through the darkness to where Eddie was snoring gently in the corner.
IX
Catherine stared into Robert’s eyes. She could see nothing. Nothing. Emptiness. Two little black holes imploding into the same enormous void.
III
When Margaret came back that night, Robert showed her the child and Margaret responded excitedly.
“Does he have a name?” she asked walking over to the corner where it was sleeping.
“I don’t know,” said Robert, following her. “At this point we’re just hoping that he makes it through the night. He’s only woken up once, and that was only for a couple minutes. The rest of the time he’s been like this.” He looked down at the boy and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Oh poor baby,” cooed Margaret and she crouched down next to the child and cradled his head in her arms and petted him gently across the brow. “We’ll get you feeling better in no time,” she assured it as she put her hand on its chest. “He seems to be breathing fine,” she addressed Robert, “Which is a good sign at least. How did you find him?”
“In the tunnels, he was slumped against the wall. Scared the shit out of me at first, my foot hit him and I didn’t know what it was.”
“Where’s Catherine?”
“I think she’s further back somewhere. Lying down.”
“Is she alright?”
“I don’t think she’s feeling well.”
“Does it have something to do with the boy?”
“That’d be a safe bet.”
“Did she say why?”
“I don’t know. She’d probably tell you if you asked her. She’s been behaving strangely toward me.” Robert watched as Margaret cradled the boy’s head in the candlelight. “How was the run? I’m guessing it went alright.”
“Yeah, but I think Reg’s ripping me off. Or someone’s ripping him off.”
“Why?”
“He gave less food than we agreed on. Said he didn’t have a choice. I mean, I’m bringing more heads every run and getting less food for them every run. Either Reg or the market is screwing me. I’m trying to figure out which one.”
“Especially because there might be another mouth to feed now.”
“Yeah,” Margaret looked up with an expression of concern. “I hadn’t thought about that yet.”
“Is Ed coming back tonight?”
“I hope so. I want to see what he thinks about Reg. He’s usually good with figuring these things out.”
VII
Margaret switched off her flashlight and the familiar and complete darkness flooded the tunnel like a silent ghost of a predator. She guided herself forward by stretching her arm out and sliding the tips of her fingers along the wet, bumpy wall. She could hear clearly now the sharp taps of footsteps echoing behind her, further behind her in the dark corridor, probably covering the same ground she had covered a few minutes ago. She listened to the lucid clicks of the footsteps through the monotonous drip of cave water that leaked through the rock. The footsteps were keeping pace with hers, maybe even gaining, definitely heading in the same direction and belonging to more than one person. And now her shoulder was beginning to ache. She adjusted the strap of the bag so that the weight shifted. She kept listening to the footsteps and concentrated on the sensations that ran from the slimy contours of the wall through her fingers and into her chest.
The events of the past twenty-four hours had her empty stomach in knots as she went over them in her head. Corifon had acted strange when Margaret had arrived at his place on the surface. Didn’t say a word when he opened the door, just ushered her in, his shifty eyes scanning the walls as if he was about to be shot in his own living room. He handed her the bag, put a finger to his lips and ushered her back out. Then the police outside of Brunswick
The officer who had read her papers had an incredulous smirk on his face while he scanned the information and Margaret thought she was done for. They pulled her out of the car and began to search the vehicle and she stood there and shot glances at the stars that she so rarely had the opportunity to see and her heart was pounding in her ears. Then they stopped the search without checking the trunk, thank god they didn’t check the trunk, but that seemed strange. It was too obvious a place to not look. Why wouldn’t they check the trunk? And then Reg’s place had been entirely empty when she brought the heads over in the morning. Everything was cleared out. No trace of residency. Just an empty cavern and so she had to leave without being able to rid herself of the bag. And now this: the footsteps behind her, her being alone in the dark with this bag and she could feel through the bag the eerie, curved shapes of skulls as they jostled against the back of her thigh, and suddenly she wanted to fling the bag away and start running but her cargo was too precious. Abandoning it would start a whole new chain of problems. She hadn’t slept for forty hours now. The footsteps behind her were getting closer.
Usually she was at peace in the darkness. She could travel the branches of cave for miles without light or the slightest trepidation, relying only on her instincts. But now the darkness seemed a horrible nightmare, warm and viscous, oozing and enveloping and suffocating her. And the bag was getting heavier and she repositioned the strap but her whole shoulder was aching. She imagined the lifeless eyes that were staring void at the canvas walls on the insides of the bag, the mouths slightly open, the cold tongues curled and motionless within. She started feeling dizzy and sick.
Then she heard footsteps coming from further up in the tunnel. And the footsteps behind her were still clicking closer. And the clicking started to spin a web around her and she stopped, then started walking back the way she just came and then stopped again and pressed herself against the wall. A drop of water fell from above and rolled down her cheek.
Now adrenaline was pumping through her blood and she could feel the blood pounding in her ears. They were approaching from both sides. She snapped her flashlight on and ran the beam of light over the walls, looking for cracks big enough to slip through, to exit from. Nothing. Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming closer from both sides. She dropped the bag, no longer caring about its contents as she frantically ran up and down the corridor, shining the flashlight and searching for an escape. Nothing. Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming ever closer from both sides.
She switched the light off again knowing that she had seconds before they came. She slipped down to the ground and put her back up against the wall and breathed heavily. The footsteps were louder on both sides. She started to cry but the sob got caught in her throat as she burrowed her head into her palms and tried to make herself small. Then the footsteps came right up to her and stopped and her fingers were glowing red against her face but she couldn’t bring herself to move her hands away from her eyes.
V
Just a vague disbelief of all that had ever happened to him . . . a general confusion when he’d drag his hand over the bumpy, slimy surface of a wall, the cool, wet sensations of the rock. He was necessarily there, but he knew he that he wasn’t really there. An existence he could only define by rejecting what was all around him, rejecting what his perceptions gave him until there was nothing . . . but then again, he might be jumping to the wrong end of the spectrum, taking a road that only showed him half of the truth. There could also be everything. Not only the little that he saw, felt, heard . . . but also everything that he couldn’t see, feel, hear, touch, and this list ran off into the infinity.
He was stuck between these two ends, these two extremes, knowing that if he could truly understand both, he might be able to prove they were the same thing, that the spectrum was really just a circuit.
II
“What are we supposed to do with it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t just leave it to die out there.” He looked up at her from a bowl of soup.
“We can’t do anything for him. You know that. The last thing we need is a child to look after.” Robert stirred the soup thoughtfully and watched as the little pieces of vegetable surfaced briefly in the steaming brown liquid.
“You think we should just throw him back into the tunnels?” he asked. “Just leave him and hope that someone else finds him before he dies?”
“We could put him on the surface. He’d at least have a better chance of surviving up there.” Robert watched the candlelight flicker over Catherine’s face. The boy was sleeping over in the corner on a bed of clothes that Catherine had laid under him. A little while ago the child had woken up with a sickly look in his eyes and they had silently fed him some water before he went out of consciousness again.
“That’s bullshit,” Robert responded, “they’re probably hunting for him on the surface. People don’t end up down here by accident, they’re driven here. Someone desperate for that child to live probably put him down here or else he was abandoned by people already down here. Either way, they won’t tolerate him up there.” There was a silence and Catherine looked at the wall behind Robert and her yellowed retinas gave off a wet glimmer in the candlelight and her bottom lip quivered.
“We’re going to look after him,” he said firmly. “We’re not starving and we can spare a little of what we have to keep him alive.”
“Alright,” said Catherine quietly, “you’re right.”
They finished the rest of the meal wordlessly. The candle on the table was nearly stumped and started to sputter and Robert looked over at the child through the dancing shadows. Catherine stood up and went to a horizontal jagged crevice in the wall and pulled a candle from it. She came back to the table and blew out the nearly stumped candle and darkness descended on them. Robert could hear her trying to get the new candle into place atop the soft wax of the old candle. He took his matches out and struck one. In the match light he could see she was crying but she was trying to hide her face so he didn’t say anything as he lit the candle. Then she walked off, deeper into the cavern to be alone and Robert watched her recede into the darkness.
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