“It’s okay. We’ve got you.” It was him – the cop. He had caught her and pulled her into the center of the room, away from it all. While the entire room still trembled, the ground underfoot felt sturdy.
Becky’s vision continued to shimmer; it was like looking down a long stretch of road on a hot summer’s day. She hadn’t lost consciousness; she had passed out enough times in her life to know this was different. She looked back at the hole in the floor. The wailing was gone, the sobbing vanished, the fires of hell extinguished and replaced instead by a simple hole in the ground. There was a faint light in the center but its source was still some way off.
The ground stopped shaking so abruptly that it threw them all off balance.
“Are you okay?” Helen asked. “Come on, you’d better sit down for a second.” She took a step closer to Becky, but stopped. She didn’t want to get any closer to the trapdoor than was necessary.
“No...no, I’m fine. Did you guys hear that? As it opened, did you hear the screaming?” Becky asked, her voice still trembling from the images that her head had produced.
“I didn’t hear anything. Did you, Marcus?” Helen answered before reposing the question to the man they had unofficially elected their leader.
Marcus gave no answer at first; his attention was diverted to the whole in the floor. “No, I didn’t hear anything.” He looked up at the two women. “I think it’s this place; it plays tricks with your mind. When I first got here I kept hearing my wife calling my name – well, more yelling my name, and...” He paused. “Well, the finer points aren’t necessary details at the moment.” He stopped. They didn’t need to know everything yet. Not about his past at least. What would be the point?
“I have it, too,” Helen said just as the silence began to settle. “I keep seeing Luther, the thing who tortured me in Hell,” Helen added, speaking the words before she had a chance to think them through. They leapt from her mouth like a juicy good secret. She was shocked at herself; usually she kept her problems to herself; why would anybody else be interested in what was wrong with her life? Everybody had problems; she knew that.
Marcus moved closer, leaning over the hole, peering into its depth to get a better picture of what faced them. All he saw was a tunnel that descended on the vertical, before turning into a slope that headed away from the hotel – outside – taking the light with it. There was rickety ladder which looked as though it were as old as the earth itself. Marcus understood that at that same moment they would have to make the descent and trust that the wood wasn’t too rotted. It looked old and unstable; a homemade contraption from planks of driftwood and rusty nails – but at the same time he had a feeling that it would hold.
“Well, it would seem that I’ve found the way,” he said as he stood up straight again, hearing his back pop as he stretched.
The two women moved next to him and peered over the hole, both grabbing a hold of Marcus as they did so. Both fully expected their respective demons to come charging at them through the darkness like Graboids, taking them back down below where punishment would be waiting.
“Where do you think it leads?” Helen asked nervously. Sure, there was a light, but where did it come from? It could have been anyone or anything; there wasn’t any way for them to know whether what say lurking in the basement was friend of foe.
“We won’t know if we never go down there,” Becky said, making the first move. More than anybody she was eager to get out of the room. She hoped that getting away from the four walls would stop the voices and cut down on the splitting pain that continued to rip her head apart with the relentless ferocity of a wild dog with a bone.
Becky made the first move and Marcus shot Helen a compassionate look that said she was right. Helen knew it. They had no choice but to follow. After all, they were just rats in a maze. Helen was resigned to follow them, but couldn’t shake the idea that some hidden corner of Hell had been opened up just for them.
Becky went first, stepping gingerly, tapping each of the rickety wooden steps several times with the ball of her foot before taking the actual step in its entirety. Against her better judgment Helen allowed herself to be ushered into the mid position, with Marcus taking the rear, keeping his eyes open and attention focused on anything that may come after them. His footfalls were swifter and more assertive; he reasoned that his two cohorts had passed over them with no ill effects, and he was eager to leave the hotel behind him. He loved his wife, but hearing that voice constantly whispering in his mind was too much; the things she said, the threats she made.
The deeper they descended, the cooler it got, and they all realized for the first time how hot it had been in the room – or maybe hot wasn’t the right word; airless perhaps being the more fitting term. There had been windows, but none open, and it had created a stifling atmosphere, like entering a car left out in the summer sun.
Marcus lost track of how far they descended, but after a while their pace increased, their footfalls became less tentative and more assured. The two women were completely focused on the way ahead; it was only Marcus who noticed that the hole in the floor that had been their entry point had sealed itself tight not long after they had all passed through its threshold. He wasn’t surprised, and so said nothing.
He saw it as a pointless bit of information at the time. After all, there was no other way for them to go and he knew it, they did, and with more clarity each step they took.