And Crawling Things Lurk
Chapter 27: Search In Darkness

Don drove over to Vasov Shipping where he had dropped Carl off a couple of hours earlier. He was starting to get antsy about leaving Carl snooping about on his own for too long. Even though he had walked Carl in to where they had found Josie, it was still an easy place to get turned around and lost in a maze of hallways and storerooms. Carl insisted he was an experienced spelunker, but still… After all, they were looking for someone or something that had killed two people and a very capable dog in a really gruesome manner. If something happened to the old guy, he could be in big trouble from the department and the city, and especially from Laura.

When he got there, the door was propped open as he had suggested. He stepped inside and called out but got no response.

As anxiety churned his stomach, he followed the beam of his flashlight around the counter and through the archway, and through the series of large and small rooms and hallways to the big room where they had recovered Josie’s body. When he found no sign of Carl there or in the short hallway beyond, and still no response to his shouts, his stomach began to churn. Carl had said he wanted to check out the place, but what did that mean? It was huge and rambling, even connecting to the line of adjoining buildings all the way out to the highway in a maze of interconnected hallways, rooms, open spaces, attic spaces and maybe even cellars. There was no point in trying to follow any footprints in the dust, not since all the tramping through the place after Josie was discovered and several searches had been conducted.

He had mentioned the oddity of the tracks of the cart going right up to the wall at the end of the wide hallway, so he was expecting to replace Carl there, trying to determine if there was a secret door. Maybe he already determined there wasn’t and had expanded his explorations. But where? Or had he determined there was a secret door and had gone in after which it closed on him?

“Carl!”

Silence.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what Carl had said that the creature they were seeking was probably getting hungry again. Carl was a big, strong man and knowledgeable about spiders, but was he strong enough? This thing had taken on Be-Be and won, apparently without even much of a struggle.

“Carl! You here?”

More silence.

He widened his search, wandered about and into other parts of the building where he diverted here and there into offices and rooms, halls and stairwells and half-attics.

He had been at it for a while – it was easy to lose track of time – when he heard something fall, something that banged and clattered. Too heavy to have been done by a prowling rat, it could have been Carl…but if it wasn’t... He replayed the sound in his mind and tried to evaluate its subtle nuances, assign a cause to it that he could believe. A click or tap had been followed by no more than half a second by a solid, heavy thud, like a board landing on the floor, or a heavy door closing, maybe even a secret trapdoor. And then that was followed immediately by a quick series of light clatters, and finally by a lighter, softer thud. Then silence.

He resisted the urge to call out again. If it was Carl, he might have fallen and needed help. But if it wasn’t Carl, if it was someone or some thing attacking, trapping or confining Carl, did he really want to alert him, her, or it to his presence?

From which direction had the sound come? The building had a way of redirecting sounds as echoes through its varied chambers so that any sound from a distance seemed to come at him from all directions at once. He resumed his search, but immediately paused. He might have heard a light scraping in the dust – a rat or...

Just that quick, he felt his role change from hunter to prey. Had it been aware of his presence from the moment he had stepped in out of the sunlight and called out Carl’s name? He sure hadn’t tried to keep it a secret. But why would he? He was expecting to replace Carl, the world-roving spider expert poking around and replaceing answers. Had Carl found his final previously undiscovered species, and it ate him?

Don didn’t like the way his flashlight revealed his location as surely as a spotlight on a stage, but his eyes would take several minutes to adjust to the darkness if he turned it off. A lot could happen in even one minute. So, as he trailed behind the beam of the flashlight and tried to remember the layout of the place and the way out, his other hand eased his Glock from its holster.

He kept telling himself not to start spinning about in his need to be certain nothing was coming up behind him. Once he began, how long would he take to devolve into a mindless, panicked, screaming...? He had to keep alert to sounds ahead, behind and to the sides, but he had to keep his wits, too.

As he stepped out of another hallway, he heard a sound from somewhere up ahead across the large, open space before him similar to where Josie had lain. He swept his light beam back and forth and saw nothing. Glancing up, he noted the line of muddy brown skylights and turned his flashlight off. Then, not daring to close his eyes for even a moment to speed up their adjustment to the dark, he peered into shadows within shadows. He realized his back was exposed to a hallway behind him and edged over past the side of the hallway and squatted with his back against the wall.

It was muted, but he heard the sound again, sort of a shuffling scrape. He couldn’t imagine what could have made it, and he didn’t want to begin imagining things, anyway. Not any more than he was already doing. He waited.

Another sound, then another and another. Now he recognized them as footsteps on stairs, the sole of each foot sliding in turn as it found purchase on dust-caked wooden stairs that had not been used in perhaps decades, pausing between steps as the strength of each riser is tested to support weight. Problem was, there was no stairway in sight. Nor did it sound like a technique of stair climbing for a spider, even one big enough to make audible footfalls. But how about for a little old woman? Was Jackie right, after all? Was it a little old woman walking up the stairs to take her pet out for a walk, perhaps for a bit of dinner?

The skylights were shedding enough light for Don’s dilating eyes to better distinguish shadows and shapes, doors and counters and hallways. He raised his weapon to eye level and the still darkened flashlight out to the side of it, thumb poised on one and trigger finger on the other.

The next sound was a click, a scrape, a louder, longer scrape, and a door in the wall opposite Don opened inward. Wavering light sprayed out from it into the open space. After the door was fully open, the apparently carried source of the light floated through and was followed by a shadowy form barely visible behind it.

Don’s thumb snapped on his own light, his finger tensed against his weapon’s trigger, and he yelled, “Freeze!”

The figure across the way threw an arm across blinded eyes and dropped his flashlight. Carl’s voice bellowed, “Jesus Christ! Is that you, Don? You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” Don said when he got over to where Carl was picking up his flashlight and satchel. “I guess I got a little spooked. This place gets to you.”

“I guess it would, especially after the way we’ve been talking about over-sized spiders and all.” He stood up and hoisted the shoulder strap of his bag over his head and settled it on his hip.

“I thought you’d be back where we found the body.”

“Well, I did spend a little time there. Checked in all the rooms and all about. Nobody’s been through that door at the end, and even the office window is boarded up.”

“That hallway has got to have something to do with it. Those tracks have to go somewhere.”

Carl’s mouth twisted sideways as he pondered likelihoods. “Only if there was a cart. Maybe we all just jumped on that bandwagon when Jackie insisted whatever he heard sounded like a cart. Maybe something else made those squeaks and tracks and has nothing to do with any of this, which would also include the hallway since the tracks is all that ties it in. I mean, yeah, he and Muri heard faint squeaking in a dark, spooky place that could have been rats or even something at a distance outside, and they associated it with something they were both familiar with and expecting to replace – a cart they knew had a squeaky wheel. Then, when they found faint marks in the dust, they saw them as wheel tracks from the cart they already were assuming was there. You see how one thing can lead to another, and before you know it, have you running full speed in a wrong direction?”

“You do make a good case. I guess I should back off a bit before I get too obsessed about a cart…for now, anyway.”

“Yes. And meanwhile, I got to looking around and found a couple of cellars. They don’t seem to be connected, though, and there could be others. One of them has what looks like a well that’s easily wide enough for a person to climb into. Just above the water level there looked like a side passage, but I couldn’t see far enough into it from up on top. I want to run back home to get some equipment so we can check it out tomorrow. It’s just possible it connects to a cavern.”