Where Darkness Dwells (14 page)

"Get to your feet, you piece of shit!" someone shouted above him, breaking through the other indistinguishable shouting. "Come on!"

A rock whipped through the air, just wide of his ear, cracking against the wall. Gerald hopped to his feet, his mind still scattered from being stomped unconscious, pain spreading from his skull down his neck and shoulders.

A ring of faces lined the top of the twelve-foot high walls. Shoulder to shoulder, men and women watched him in the pit. Then a trickle of wetness struck his shoulder.

Gerald blinked through the spray, stepping out of range.

"That'll wake you up now!" a man shouted, his fly open. He knew this man. Had worked the mines with him, had trained him. Buford Higgins. He'd been to Buford's wedding, to his funeral, too. But his eyes were different now. Intense, unhinged. The man was crazy.

Gerald wiped the piss from his face, stared at the man whom he once considered a friend. Buford shifted, was swallowed by the crowd. Another face just as mad took his place.

You want to go on living don'tcha?

He'd refused to have sex with the Negro woman.

You can't join the others if you don't.

This must be his punishment.

The crowd jostled, everyone trying to get a better look, their faces twisted with a frightening mixture of hatred and ecstasy. Backlit with torches, their shadows danced along the floor of the pit like gamboling giants.

More rocks flew, some as large as ripe peaches. One thunked against his temple and he staggered. Blood flowed into his ringing ear, down his neck. He swayed on his feet, defenseless, waiting for his end.

What's happening?
His mind was nearly drowned out by the screaming throng.

Above the sound of the crowd,
below
the sound, came the tortured cry of a wounded beast. Somewhere close. Gerald pressed his back against the wall, his heart aching, beating out of control. Searching the dark reaches of the pit, he detected movement at the far side, swaddled in the dancing shadow-bodies of the people above. The beast emerged; nose, face, eyes becoming visible as it left the darkness for the center of the pit. Gray skin mottled with black bruising. Ragged hair splotched with raw bald patches, as if locks had been torn out at the roots. The nails had grown long and ridged with age. It was a dead woman, draped in blood-blackened rags, somehow moving, somehow coming for him.

Keeping his back to the wall, Gerald circled the pit, searching for an escape. A doorway, a tunnel, a handhold to pull himself higher and out of reach. Daubs of darkened blood stained the walls, but he saw no handholds. No way out.

"Stay put, you piece of shit! Fight like a man!"

"Cha-chaaa!" the dead woman grunted at him.

The woman, the thing, because she was no longer a woman so much as a monster, charged him, knife-like nails bared. He tried to lunge away, but the thing was surprisingly swift. It was on him in a second, deftly pinning him against the wall, forcing the air from his lungs. Its eyes were demented, maniacal, hungry; its drooling mouth inches away and closing.

Fighting all the gentlemanly wisdom his father had instilled in him, he lashed out with his fists. With the first meaty impact, the crowd's roar surged, became deafening. He struck the top of the thing's head, hard, repeatedly, to no avail. While it was much shorter than him, it was decidedly stronger. He couldn't get away. He kept at it, pummeling head, face, shoulders, back--he might as well have been punching a wall.

The thing pulled its head back, eyes rolling back to full whites, gray-tinged teeth exposed to the torch light.

"Cha-chaaaa!" The thing's grunts became a mantra. "Cha-cha-chaaachaaar!"

As the thing swept its mouth forward, ready to bite the meat of his throat, not only did the crowd increase in its frenzy, but he also recognized this beast for who it used to be.

Mabel Banyon. His former neighbor. A woman whose delicate skin once favored mild spring days, a woman as tranquil as a baby's contented sigh.

His mind flashed to Mabel's funeral--standing with Betty-Mae and his wife, Junior not yet born, and everyone's sadness such a weighty thing--but was quickly brought back to the present as Mabel Banyon's teeth ripped his shirtcollar and pierced his skin, bored down through his muscle, before clicking together somewhere deep inside his throat. He heard gristly chewing and a contented sigh, then all was silent.

2.

Someone was shaking Jimmy, but he didn't want to rise from the depths of sleep. Waking brought back the pain. Brought back to life his ruined flesh. He shoved away from the needling at his shoulder, rolling to his side on the cold stone slab. He wanted to remain here, unseen, just a lump in a corner of the old mining stables, not moving until long after they had forgotten about him and moved on to torment someone else. But the person shaking him was insistent, even if gentle in consideration of his wounds.

His captors were monsters. Could they be anything else but monsters? Cowering below ground. Beating him senseless. And the horrible things he'd heard. Joyful cries punctuated by tortured cries of pain. Beast-like growls followed by zealous applause.

"Mr. Jimmy, things are stirring up. You best be up and about. They're liable to get surly, they see you sleeping."

Jimmy groaned, his eyelids opening to slits. All he could see at first were the whites of Harold Barrow's eyes. In the darkness of the caverns, his charcoal skin was hard to detect. The old Negro looked concerned, not necessarily for Jimmy's well-being, but for the repercussions if Jimmy wasn't able to work yet. "Leave me alone, Harold."

"They'll get worse on you. They want you digging with me an' Benjamin."

"Let them get worse. Let them kill me. I don't care."

"But Mr. Jimmy, don't you know you can't die here? They bring you right up to where you think you can't take no more, then when you think you're gonna die, you only open your eyes again. Open your eyes to forever."

Jimmy eased to a sitting position. The faraway torches afforded little light at this distance. He could now make out Harold's face. His cheekbones were sharp, as if honed with a whetstone. His jaw line angled to a pointed chin covered in patchy white hair. His head was a mass of wiry whiteness, the hair unkempt, filthy.

"That so, Harold?" Jimmy touched the shackle rubbing the skin of his ankle. They were chained to the wall of a former stables that acted as their quarters. This section of the Underground overlapped with the old mines. The last of the cart mules left the stable long ago, but the ground was still littered with chaff dust and bits of hay, while the air carried a barn's pungent stench. A crust had formed around the ankle iron while Jimmy slept. It didn't take much walking for blood to lubricate the shackle.

The shackles bound their ankles with six feet of slack--enough length to allow them to walk in an awkward hobble in a small circle, to find a spot to squat and shit. When needed in another section of the Underground, their short lengths of chain were unlatched from the wall, and reattached to a waist-high cable lining the walls. Once attached to the cable system, they could move throughout the caverns as far as the cables permitted. Their rattling chains announced their presence long before anyone could see them. The monsters didn't want any surprises.

"You messing with me, Harold? Looking out for me; making sure I don't push them hard enough for them to go back on me, this time with their machetes?"

Harold didn't immediately answer. The old man stared into Jimmy's eyes, a chilling, angry look. He blinked several times, his expression softening in degrees. "These chains are like an umbilicus."

"A what?"

"Ain't you a farmer?"

"Yeah. Well, that's what my family does."

"You ever seen a calf birthed?"

"Plenty times."

"The umbilicus connects the calf to the momma."

"You mean the cord."

"That's right, the cord. Same as people and pigs and such. We got these chains on us, and we can't get away. If we could, God as my witness I would go this instant. Run off like a baby calf."

"What do you mean, Harold?"

"Oh, Mr. Jimmy, you'll see soon enough. You'll see so much you wish you wasn't born seeing."

A man walked along the narrow corridor leading from the main chamber to their stall at the end of the stable. Like a cavorting jester, his shadow danced in front of him on the uneven limestone wall. Hearing the approach, Harold stood quickly, looping a hand under Jimmy's armpit.

"That's trouble walking. Get up."

The man in charge of keeping order, a brute named Arthur Scully, had told Jimmy he expected him to work a full day alongside Harold and his son-in-law, Benjamin. Jimmy despised the prospects of forced labor, but what made it worse was the fact he'd been teamed up with the only Negroes he'd seen. Jimmy had seen Benjamin only once, when he first entered the cavern after swimming through the tunnel. He didn't notice right away--he had been surprised to distraction recognizing familiar faces from Coal Hollow in the gathering crowd--but Benjamin was chained to a wall, the wide meat of his back exposed. Not until Jimmy saw the lashing whip and heard the startling whip-crack did he realize he had ventured where he shouldn't. The crowd had engulfed Jimmy, and as they began to pummel him, George swam for his life toward the tunnel. They were whipping Benjamin even as Jimmy lost consciousness from the violent beating.

There was one other Negro prisoner, Harold's daughter, Edwina. They didn't put her to work along with her husband and father. They had certain other labors for her to attend to that kept her busy.

With Harold's help, Jimmy was able to stand.

"Rise and shine." Arthur Scully appeared from around a rock outcropping. His scalp was hairless and pink. His lips always seemed to quaver, as if he were verging on having a fit. A ham-sized fist swung at his side, an axe handle gripped in his clenched fingers.

Jimmy looked to Harold to see how the old man reacted to Scully. The Negro kept his eyes lowered, and his posture became more slight. His rough knit shirt hung on his lank shoulders. Jimmy tried to imitate the old Negro.

"Boy, you bring your new bitch with you and show him the ropes." He unlocked their chains from the wall, clamping the links over the cable, then relocked it. "You been at it awhile, that won't be no problem."

Scully swung the axe handle down on Jimmy, catching him in the lower back. He gave him one wallop, and then stood back, waiting for a response. Jimmy writhed on the floor, his breaths accompanied by a sharp, jagged pain.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Mornings, now on, you get one smack if you're good. Get your nose dirty, I'll club you 'til you ain't got any face left." Scully laughed, walking away.

"That Scully, he don't like you. That's for sure." Harold helped Jimmy again to stand.

"Bastard. I'm going to get him for that."

"You go on thinking that. Let's get going. Scully won't wait a minute before coming back swinging that axe handle."

Harold tried to aid him in walking, but he shrugged him off. He didn't want to owe anyone anything, especially a colored man.

Their chains rattled as they walked. Jimmy watched Harold pick up a shank of iron and pull it by hand, taking the pressure off his ankle. They passed a rough wooden door set inside a rocky face. A bloody handprint was smeared along the wall, still wet and dripping, as if someone had fought being put behind the barred door just minutes earlier. A chill seemed to pass through Harold as he saw it, but he quickly left the door behind without comment.

After long minutes of silence and near-dark, a low hallway opened off to their left. Harold quickened his pace, keeping his eyes keened ahead. Jimmy heard an animal-like grunting coming from a small, secluded room. He then glimpsed a man's white naked ass jouncing between two thin colored legs.

"Come on now, 'Wina! That's a girl, come on now!"

The girl's legs trembled as the man thrust into her. Jimmy's stomach clenched. He averted his gaze. Harold was staring back at him, his eyes haunted by sadness. Jimmy hurried next to the old man, leaving the unsettling sight behind.

"Harold--"

"Not a word Mr. Jimmy, not a word. I can't speak on it."

Jimmy kept his mouth shut. Harold slowed a bit, his bare feet scraping against the damp ground. They entered a high-ceilinged chamber, nearly running into a couple of men passing a bottle between them, taking long swigs. Upon seeing Jimmy and Harold, they looked disappointed. Jimmy figured that's where the line to Edwina started. Farther off, other men lounged on straw-padded seats cut into the limestone walls, drinking straight from hooch bottles and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. It smelled like a barn, but there were no animals around. Just unwashed, foul-smelling men, sharing dirty jokes and laughter.