stood in front of Christopher as the nice man’s army moved toward him. Her eyes darted, looking for any means of escape.
There was nowhere to go.
But down.
The hissing lady bent and grabbed the sewer grate. She planted her foot on the side of the street, her shoulder muscles ripping in tiny fibers as her foot sizzled. The sewer grate gave. She pried it open, the metal scraping. The air poured out. Rotten air. Christopher looked down into the sewer. It was pitch black.
“Off the street!” she said, pushing him into the darkness.
Christopher’s feet hit a puddle of blood with a squish. Immediately he realized that the sewer was not a sewer at all. It was the coal mine. Running underneath the street like veins through a cadaver. He looked up as the hissing lady turned and the nice man’s army grabbed her. He saw the deer and the damned striking. Biting. Clawing. She fought back with everything she had. She wouldn’t let them anywhere near Christopher. But there were too many of them. They swarmed her. Christopher watched as the hissing lady used her last ounce of strength to drag the grate back into place with a clank. Just before hands groped into the darkness and dragged her away, screaming.
Christopher ran down the coal mine. His legs almost buckled under him. He listened for any sound, but all he heard was the shuffling of feet. He was in complete darkness. What was down here? He reached into the blackness like a blind man without a cane.
He stopped when he touched the hand.
Christopher screamed. His voice echoed off the cement walls.
“he’S dowN therE!” the voices screamed above. “liSten.”
Christopher groped into the darkness. He felt another arm. Another hand. He turned back around. A hundred feet behind him, he saw the dust kick up as the damned dug their way down. A shaft of moonlight lit the tunnel. He saw shadows of the damned running through the coal mine.
“hurrY! he’S dowN herE somewherE!”
Christopher ran deeper into the tunnel, his hands reaching out. He heard bodies stirring. A bare leg rubbing against the wall like a cricket. A finger reached out and touched his hair. Another grabbed his hand.
More digging behind him. More digging below. The tunnel was filling with the damned. Deer hooves clacked and squished in the bloody street above him. Christopher felt more hands on him. Moaning. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. And he finally saw what was reaching out and grabbing him.
The mailbox people.
They stood side by side like bats hanging upside down in a cave. They held each other in place with one long string.
The string.
The thought came out of nowhere. Maybe he could follow the string out of here. Christopher saw it running down the tunnel in every direction. Tunnels that went into themselves. He was in a labyrinth.
“christopheR?” the voices said behind him. “wE caN seE yoU! wE caN smelL yoU!”
He looked back and saw the man in the Girl Scout uniform leading the charge. Christopher followed the string deeper into darkness. He ran past the smells. The decay. The earth, coal, and wood mixed together like cement. He looked up through the cracks in the tunnel and saw the bottoms of people’s homes. Pipes and basements. Crawl spaces hidden away for rats and glowing eyes. Then, the houses were replaced with tree roots hanging like stalactites on the ceilings of caves. He was under the Mission Street Woods now. Running deeper into the labyrinth. He saw what looked like an opening up ahead. He ran through it and saw a bedroom carved into the tunnel underground. It was filthy. Hateful. Pictures of naked ladies and men with cigarette burns where their privates would be.
A man was asleep on the mattress.
Next to a little kid’s night-light.
Christopher saw a door at the other end of the bedroom. This man must be a guard. There was something on the other side of that door. He had to get to it. It was his only way out. He tiptoed past the mattress. He passed a mirror and looked at his reflection. But he didn’t see his face. He saw the back of his own head. The man in the bed began to stir behind him.
“i’M huntinG thE sherifF noW, christopheR,” the man said in his sleep. “ambrosE iS burying hImselF alivE again. and Again. gueSs whaT wiLl happeN to yoU! herE i comEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Christopher turned back and saw the shadows of the damned racing to become the first to