Night Film(157)

This corridor was cruder than the others, barely three feet wide, and looked as if it cut straight through granite, the walls slick from water seeping in from somewhere. Taking a step down it, I could see more words had been scrawled on the rocks in the same white paint. Farther down, there were drawings of stick figures with protruding noses and screaming mouths.

I stepped forward to read some of it. If y go father leave all your love right HERE at the floor. WARNING: ye will leav this path neither amimal, vegetabl, or mineral. Say goodbi to ye lamb. May the Lord help y

The match flickered out.

I lit another and forced myself to take one more step inside, holding the flame out. It swiftly extinguished, a subzero wind blasting my face, swelled and quickly dispersed. Then, I heard sizzling in my ears, so deafening and close, I lurched backward, stumbled on the uneven floor back into the alcove, dropping the box of matches.

Fuck. My heart pounding, I knelt down, groping for it along the floor.

It had disappeared.

Something was with me here, standing behind me, toying with me.

Trying not to panic, I wheeled around unsteadily, getting down on my hands and knees, fumbling for the matches in the dirt.

Calm down, McGrath. The box has to be here.

The side of my left hand hit something. Matches. I grabbed them. But somehow, impossibly, the box had been tossed far behind me, wedged against the opposite wall between two passageways. It was like the leviathan’s shadow. It had a mind of its own.

I got to my feet, ignoring that thought, lit a match, and stepped back to the opening.

Crossroads. The tunnel twisted sharply left and out of sight.

I took another step down the passage, the flame burning calmly now. Just for the hell of it, I groped in my pocket and removed the compass, curious to see what direction I’d be heading in.

I could only stare down at it, incredulous.

The red needle was going berserk, spinning madly counterclockwise.

I shook it, but the needle wouldn’t stop rotating, around and around.

It was too much for my mind to compute, so I dropped it back into Brad Jackson’s herringbone coat pocket and, trying to forget I’d ever looked at the thing, I took off down the corridor.



I didn’t know how long I walked.

I had the distinct feeling I wasn’t alone.

It was a bone-chilling understanding that I was in close proximity to something alive and was seconds from running headlong into it. And yet when I shoved the flickering flame in front of me, expecting to see a face, animal eyes—there was only darkness in every direction.

The Spider’s insidious voice began to worm its way into my head, growing louder with every step, as if that day at The Broken Door, he’d been narrating not his own secret, but the future, this walk, my walk. I can still remember the sound of her bare feet, how soft and clean they were, padding along the filthy ground next to mine.

Was that what I was hearing, what I sensed beside me? Ashley?

I kept walking, listening, but there was only my own boots, trudging on.

After a time, the Spider’s voice faded and my mind became blank, a dirty chalkboard, smeared with half-erased thoughts.

Ashley had come this way.

And Cordova. He walked this, every time he had a new child to try and barter with the devil. Anything to save his daughter.

I could discern a strong smell of metal mixed into the heavy moisture and mud. At one point, I heard distant rumbling, as if, overhead, animals were thundering in a stampede across the property, fleeing in terror. I touched the slippery rocks, warm water trickling through my fingers. The walls felt as if they were vibrating. Pebbles came loose from the ceiling, rattling to the ground. But then the noise was gone, the tunnel as silent as before, and I was left wondering if my anxiety, needing some type of outlet, had conjured the whole thing.

I plodded on, noticing that my brain felt loose inside my skull, as if it were melting. I noted with a stab of horror that I was sweating as if I were back inside that greenhouse, as if I’d never escaped, never gotten out from under the blood-splattered lights. Yet I shivered, riddled with chills, the feeble flame I was holding revealing what I already knew: The black tunnel unspooled in front of me, on and on.

The moment I accepted it, understood I could very well die wandering here, I’d reached the end.

A few feet ahead, a bent and rusted metal ladder extended to the ceiling.

I paused, listening, hearing nothing but the wails of powerful wind. I grabbed the rungs and climbed up, my arms and legs oddly weakened and slack as if filled with sand. When I reached the top, I could feel another wooden hatch above me, seemingly identical to the one I’d entered at the gatehouse. I slipped back the rails, shoved my shoulder against it, and opened the hatch.

I was in a dense forest of birch trees, the entire world in razor focus. I could make out every leaf and branch, rock and weed bathed in green moonlight. It had to be a side effect of being submerged for so long underground in blackness, as if my eyes, ecstatic to be granted one last chance to see, were doing their best.

I climbed out.



I took off down a rutted dirt path, noticing, tied to an overhanging branch, a red string dancing in the wind.

A few yards ahead, I saw a bridge. The devil’s bridge.

Simply thinking it sucked the breath from my lungs.

There was no one here. I was alone. The wind was howling furiously, shoving the coattails of my coat so far out, it felt as if a crowd were grasping at it.