I love the fall. And I love the early morning when the sun hasn’t yet climbed into the sky. But I knew that this autumn morning would not be enjoyable. I stood on the north side of the Broadway bridge. To my right stood Mattoon’s train station. Below me a dozen people braved the autumn chill to stare south, eager to catch an early glimpse of the 5:23 to Chicago far on the horizon. I could feel it rumbling in the distance. Soon they would be gone, and I would have to do what I was there to do.
I am not a man known for his courage. I’ve got a very intimate relationship with the path of least resistance. Given the chance to face my fears I usually turn tail and run. When the occasion calls for a hero I usually look for a better man. They aren’t exactly in short supply. But there are some horrors in this world that only I can face.
The train roared into existence from the south and shook the bridge beneath me. The scream of metal echoed for miles as the serpentine vehicle ground to a halt. No one disembarked. All the station’s people climbed aboard the train and were carried off to whatever adventures called them north. Meanwhile, I was called to an adventure of my own. God, how I hate adventures. But my mama taught me that when you’re the only person that can do something that has to be done…well, you see where I’m going with this.
I gave a resigned sigh and walked into the station. My footsteps echoed eerily as I made my way down the stairs. The bottom floor was large and hauntingly vacant with a dozen long, wooden benches. The elevator and the train museum were on the other end of the room. Train museum, I shook my head. How the hell did such a small, boring place like Mattoon, Illinois wind up the home to so many secrets? What mad god decided that a place with a train museum would inherit an Underground? Probably the same sick bastard who decided that I should be the one entrusted with the key.
Finally, I found the courage to turn left and face the cashier’s window. It was enclosed in wood and meshed glass. Before the rise of the internet, clerks would sell tickets and reservations from inside but that was a long time ago. That desk hadn’t been manned since I was a boy.
A deep breath and a barking command from my willpower moved me forward. I marched ahead, convinced that if it took too long I would do what I did best: run away. I reached the door to the desk area and stared at it for a moment begging for some kind of reprieve. When none came, I turned the knob and pushed it open, freeing a gust of stale air. I closed the door behind me and moved the dusty carpet to reveal a panel in the floor. The handle was a ring of rusted iron. I took hold and pulled hard. The panel groaned indignantly before opening for me. Underneath, a set of coarse stone stairs led down into darkness. I looked around the station one last time, hoping that anyone at all would be there. A janitor. A late passenger. A photographer. Surely, this wasn’t something I could be seen doing, was it? But there was no one.
I turned on the flashlight of my cell phone and descended into the dark, closing the panel above me. In all reality, there were only nineteen steps – six to the landing and thirteen the rest of the way – and the tunnel was only about two hundred feet. But the darkness seemed unending. When I finally reached the door at its end I was almost relieved.
Almost.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew my keychain. I didn’t fumble to find the right key. I didn’t need to. In my hand any key was the right one. Part of the curse of being me. I slid the key into the lock and turned. The door eased open and revealed the stuff of my nightmares.
I found myself at the top of a “T” intersection of two narrow, brick streets. There were old log cabins, school houses, colonial homes and modern storefronts. The floor of my home town loomed overhead, a ceiling to this living perdition. Black iron lamp posts stretched from the ground and painted the scene in a color I couldn’t name and dare not describe. At the edge of my vision someone scurried into an alley for reasons I lacked the courage to contemplate.
This was the Underground. The place where Mattoon’s lost and secret things ended up when they had grown too terrible for the sunlight. This was where broken promises came to fester into something worse.
I was being watched. I was always being watched in this place. The eyes of the insidious presence felt like earthworms sliding against the nape of my neck. Tears of dread and violation threatened to burn their way down my face. I kept them at bay. It wouldn’t do to have my eyesight compromised in this place. There was much more than my life to be lost here, after all.
I started to walk and kept my eyes straight ahead. I stayed out of arms reach of the doors and I was careful not to glance into the windows. Some things could not be unseen and if the horrors of this place marked me too much, I would wind up like one of my predecessors – a permanent fixture in this dark locale. Of course, the true horror was that this fate was inevitable. One day I would be slinking into alleyways seeking the profane delights they offered. Joy and fear would be one. Pain and pleasure would be inverted. I would be pressed beyond the subtle comforts that even madness could provide. My caution would only prolong an unavoidable destiny.
But I’m given to understand that my caution – or my cowardice – is the reason I was chosen. A braver man would want to glimpse at every curiosity, wonder at every distant movement or, worse yet, try to rescue those who had been consigned to some wretched end. Whereas a coward would be too scared to do these things until forced.
And right now, I was being forced.
Finally, I reached my destination. It was a small shop with a neon sign that twisted out the name “Clive’s Curios”. The windows were tinted so that no one could see inside. I opened the door and went in. It looked like the pawn shop of the damned. Did you ever lose your best pen? Or your favorite toy? Or an earring? Well, if you lost it in Mattoon, it might be at Clive’s. There was no rhyme or reason to the merchandise. A jar of offal sat next to the instruction booklet of an 80s video game. A wooden yard stick was balanced on a Rubik’s cube next to a Magic 8 ball. CDs, moth-eaten sweaters, porno magazines, ballpeen hammers, library books and bloody knives were just some of the trinkets I walked past on my way to the counter.
Clive was one of my predecessors from decades passed. He was a rail-thin white man with a dusting of freckles splashed across the bridge of his nose. A polished ivory smile cut his angular face in two. His eyes were the color that blazed from the lamp posts outside. He wore a ragged, brown suit with a silk tie and a checkered driver’s cap. He wagged his long forefinger at me. “I knew you couldn’t resist me for long,” he sang mischievously. “I knew I’d see you again!”
“I have to see it for myself,” I murmured.
“Yeah. That’s how the Underground gets ya. You think you’re safe and sound in your chicken-shit behavior. We wear cowardice like a suit of armor. But we’ve all got something. A question we need to answer. A riddle we need to solve.” His smile somehow got wider. “Something we need to see for ourselves. It pulls us back here until one day that door to home don’t open no more and you’re stuck making a life here like the rest of us.” One of his eyebrows arched upward in bleak joy. “So, stop and think real hard. You sure you want to do this?”
“Just show me.”
He reached down and pulled it out, slamming it onto the counter. Literally, the thing from my nightmares. A four-sided pyramid – black with white edges and carved with ancient, unreadable lettering. I felt something squeeze on my heart. A few of the tears in my head burned free. It was real. Holy shit, it was real! What the hell did that mean?
“Well,” he said. “What do you want to do now?”
I looked at him and then at the pyramid. That was the question, wasn’t it?