Liminal Spaces and Missing Persons, part four

The lights flickered again, and Chris slowed his pace warily but kept moving. After another few steps, they dimmed almost to nothing, and Chris couldn't help but think that if he'd been fleeing in terror he might well have lost his footing and broken his neck. 

Then the light returned, and now there was a door ahead, where the floor leveled out into a small room at the foot of the stairs. 

"Cute," Sherri remarked. She sounded thoughtful. 

Chris kept moving, and the lights flickered again. All of this would have happened much closer together if they'd been running as intended, and likely been far more terrifying. As it was, well... it was still scary, he admitted, but it was also an interesting chance to get a look behind the curtain of how this place had been designed to create a certain effect. 

He reached the base of the steps, hesitated for a bare moment, and then launched himself into the room, spinning around to look for an attempt at ambush. Nothing. All right. The room around him was bare concrete, lit by a single overhead bulb. There was a desk tucked into one corner, hidden from view from the staircase, with an old-fashioned computer and a heavy old CRT monitor flickering with images. The area beyond it was blocked off with a cage of metal bars, and seemed to hold bits of aged electrical equipment: wires, pipes, ducts, and metal boxes that might hold switches or fuses or anything else.

"Anything?" asked Antoinette quietly. 

"Nothing threatening," he answered, equally quiet. 

The two magi entered the room, with Thorin close on their heels. The images on the monitor showed sections of tunnel, as if from security cameras: a view back up the steps, another along the length of the first bit of tunnel, the exit sign above its concrete seal. From the scent-trail, Adam had barely glanced at it; he had thrown himself against the door, and then very likely wrenched it open and gone through. 

Sherri approached the door, studied it for a long moment, and then traced one hand around the door frame. "It's another transition," she said quietly. "As soon as we go through, it'll most likely close behind us and disappear."

"Can you tell what's on the other side?" asked Antoinette. 

Sherri shook her head. "No. Not with the transition."

Thorin gestured at the rusty chair in front of the desk. "We could prop it open," he suggested. 

"It won't matter," said Sherri. "If we come back this way, I'll have to force a way out of the tunnel. If we're going to do that, I'd rather do it from wherever we wind up." She drew a deep breath, preparing herself. 

Antoinette said, "Chris, Thorin, you two go through first. Do whatever you need to; I'm trusting your judgement. Sherri and I will follow. If Adam Davis is alive, rescuing him is our first priority. The moment we have him, we get out. We don't have to end this now; the Ministry can send in a team to burn it out now that we know where it is."

Sherri turned a speculative look back at Antoinette, then nodded approval. Thorin stepped up beside her, and Chris moved to the other side of the door. 

Sherri pulled it open, and the two of them moved through, Thorin first and Chris only a moment behind him.

The lights went out the moment they did, and their first steps were onto an uncertain surface; Chris supposed that they were lucky not to have thrown themselves into a pit, but the thought was distant even to himself. He was too busy feeling the floor through his boots, listening for movements, tasting the air... 

Whatever he was standing on, the surface was rough, irregular but not sharp. He'd have to feel his way, quickly and carefully; this was the moment when they were most vulnerable, and the longer they remained bunched in the doorway...

Something wrapped around his ankle, grabbing tight, and that was enough. 

He jumped loose, shifting his feet into lupine paws and sliding them loose of the boots, came down on something that crunched softly beneath his claws. His form was still close enough to human to have fingers and thumbs despite the fur and claws; he drew his gun as light spilled into the darkness from behind him. 

Antoinette had thumbed on the flashlight under the barrel of her pistol; she was using it to look for threats further out, while Sherri had conjured a wisp of light directly above her head to light their immediate area. Barefoot and enraged, Chris twisted around, looking back and forth. 

His boot was gone. So was whatever had grasped it. His other boot lay orphaned, empty and on its side. The air was dusty and thick with the scent of decay, overlaid with the faint salty smell of blood. The walls and floor...

Bones. Whatever this place had once been, it had been covered over with bones: large bones, small bones, wide and narrow, all fused together into an irregular surface. The room was floored in them, the walls sealed away behind them, the ceiling... skull after skull after skull looked down at them.

"Hello?" called a half-choked voice. "Is-- Is anybody there? Are you real?"

With his skull reshaped to resemble a wolf, Chris couldn't speak -- but his sense of smell was sharper than ever. He pointed with his free hand, and Antoinette turned to point her light. 

The man in the cage of bones could only be Adam Davis. Early forties, on the taller side of medium height, wearing running shoes, shorts, and an athletic shirt, trim and weary and traumatized. He raised an arm to shield his eyes from the light.

Chris looked around again. Whatever this place was, it was large and sprawling and multi-leveled; they were on a lower floor, with balconies overlooking it from above and columns here and there to support the structure. It looked as if someone had taken an abandoned shopping mall and covered it over in bones. How long has this been here? he wondered, and felt the desire for vengeance stir within him. It was never far from the surface, no matter what he decided to be. All these dead can't have come from our world. There are other ways here, passages through the Grey, all leading to this place and whatever lies at its heart. He knew it with an utter certainty. 

Thorin started across the bones that lined the floor, and Chris forced himself back into a human configuration and called, "Wait. Something knows we're here."

The floor and walls exploded, reaching out with skeletal arms and spines that moved like whips, forming bone spikes that stabbed up or out or down. Chris twisted, clawing and biting and slashing, gripping and breaking. He'd resumed a half-lupine configuration instinctively, and even by the standards of the wolves he was tough: hard to damage and quick to heal. He caught a glimpse of Thorin as the Great Cat leapt straight up to the ceiling, sank curved claws into skulls and bones, and hooked his way along towards the cage and the man inside. 

Antoinette had evidently thrown up a spherical ward; the two magi rocked and shifted, trying to keep their balance as the attacking bones jabbed, shoved, and tilted them. Then Sherri lifted a hand and pronounced a phrase, and everything within fifteen feet of them shattered. 

The bones went still. 

Thorin Tanelorn reached the cage, dropped down on top of it, and scrabbled around looking for an opening that wasn't there. Chris shifted back towards the magi, looking around. 

The entire room groaned, the sound shivering through the bones and vibrating the floor, and on the far side of the tall, wide central opening, something lifted its head. 

It was so big that Chris had taken it for part of the architecture, some decorative feature covered over with bone the same way everything else here was. 

"Shatter more of it," Antoinette said firmly. She was talking to Sherri. "I'll keep it off us while we get to the cage." She looked over at Chris, and he nodded, then turned to the thing that had moved. It hung suspended, a closed flower atop a potted plant...

...A skull atop a giant's skeletal torso. 

He was in motion almost before he realized it, tearing loose of skeletal arms and dodging past spikes of bone as he sped on all fours. On two legs, in the Mundus, he was fast. Here in the Grey... 

The bones groaned again as Sherri shattered more of them, clearing a path forward. 

Chris was almost there, though he didn't know exactly what he was going to do when he got there. A berserk, headlong attack did not seem like a reasonable strategy, but it seemed to confuse the bones as well. A skull the size of a moving van turned to look at him with its empty eye-sockets, but it didn't try to actually move until just before he leapt for it. 

There was a terrible shattering sound, and he slammed into a wall that rose suddenly in front of him. He fell, stunned, and saw that the thing had managed to wrench an arm out of the bones it had been fused to. The skeletal hand that closed around him was easily as large as he was. Like hell, he thought, and forced his arms free, losing some fur in the process. Then he grabbed the thumb, forced it back, and wrenched it loose. 

The bones groaned again as the thumb went spinning away. The hand released him, then lifted and slapped down. 

Chris was already moving. He wasn't scared anymore, though he was vaguely aware that he was probably about to die. No, he was far too busy with what he was doing, which was racing up the ribcage as if it were a steep staircase until he came up under the jaw, latched onto one side of it, and twisted with the full strength of his body, legs pushing one way and arms pulling the other. The jaw worked, trying to bite him, but he wasn't between its teeth; he was hanging under it instead. 

The arm came around just as the jaw snapped and he fell; the giant skeleton that had bound itself to all the bones in this place and managed to lure further victims in for years and possibly centuries slapped itself in the face. Chris felt his back strike a rib and tumbled... inside the ribcage, this time. 

"Chris!" That was Antoinette's voice. 

"GO!" he roared back as he got his feet under him. The space here was simple: ribs, spine, heart...

Heart? It was in the right place, but it was bone. And the smell here wasn't blood; it was something fattier, less familiar. Marrow? 

Even in the near-darkness, he could see the insides of the ribcage forming tiny spikes, incipient spears. All right. Let's see who goes down first. He lunged forward, smashed a clawed hand into the heart, and felt the entire room go silent in shock. He wrenched it back out, found the edges of the hole he'd made, and started trying to pry it wider. 

A spear of bone stabbed past him, opening a cut on his arm. Another stabbed into his back, caught in his ribs. It was trying to do something to his bones, but he twisted suddenly and it snapped. The bone heart creaked as he wrenched at it, and a line of cracking sounds ran from his hands to its top. A bone spike stabbed into his left calf and another into his right thigh, but neither found anything vital. He wrenched his left leg loose and raised it, hooked the edge of the hole with his paw, then twisted around so that he was pulling against the far side with both hands. 

He felt it give way violently, drenching him with marrow as it parted. 

The entire structure shuddered. "GO!" he roared again. Then he reached in and drank the essence of the bones. He didn't want it; whatever this was, it wasn't something he ever wanted to become. But it was the only way he knew to make absolutely sure that this thing was dead beyond any possibility of return. He shoved his way out as bone turned to black dust, collapsed, and faded. 

Light filled his eyes, blinding him, and he threw an arm up. The light dropped immediately, and Antoinette said, "Sorry." 

"What was that?" asked a man's voice, still half-choked. "Who are you? What is he?"

"We'll explain later," Sherri said authoritatively. "Right now, the important thing is to get you out." 

Something -- concrete or stone -- creaked, then groaned. A spill of gravel fell to the ground with a rattle-whisper. 

"Chris! Here!" Antoinette's voice was firm enough that he could have followed it without sight or smell, and he staggered across the dust-covered floor as a faint rumbling went through it. 

"There's going to be a door in that wall," Sherri said firmly. "You're going to walk with me until you see it." She was talking to Adam Davis, but she made her voice loud enough for all of them to hear. "You're going to go through it. I don't know if I'll be able to come back for anybody who doesn't."

Chris nodded to himself. Even struggling with the essence of the bonetaker, he knew he could make his own way out. Making his way back to the Mundus alone might be another matter, though. 

A rock the size of his torso fell past his shoulder. Surviving without giving himself away to the others might also be a problem. 

That was well done, said a faint whisper in the back of his mind, and suddenly he felt stronger. He increased his pace, and caught up with the others as they passed through the door that Sherri had promised. 

On the far side was sunlight and green grass, idyllic and unexpected. A massive granite boulder stood behind them, showing no signs of any sort of opening or artificial structure, collapsing or otherwise. 

"Holy shit," said Adam. "What the hell was that? Thank you. Thank you so much."

Antoinette glanced at Chris. "Are you all right?" 

He shrugged, then rubbed at his shoulder. "Nothing that won't heal."

Her mouth twisted. "You can't keep trying to get yourself killed," she said. "I couldn't live with myself if you actually managed it." 

"I'm not going to-- I wasn't. I'm not trying to get myself killed." Chris took a breath. "I just knew that we were all going to die if somebody didn't keep that thing busy. And then when I landed by its heart..." He sighed. "It was too good a chance not to take it. And I was angry. That thing..." 

Antoinette extended a hand, stopped in mid-gesture as if remembering that he didn't like for her to touch him. "All right. We'll talk about it when we get back"

"Look," said Adam, sounding utterly finished, "Y'all look like this is normal for you, but it isn't for me. And if I'm going to, y'know, not start screaming and never stop, I need to know.  What the Hell is going on here?"

Chris looked at Antoinette and stepped back. She sighed, then turned to look at Sherri, nodded, and went to deal with mister Davis.