Those Who Dwell Below the Sidewalk by Ben Farthing

Author:Ben Farthing [Farthing, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Everard struggled against the chains. He pulled the trigger again, breaking a few more links. But while the blast shattered the chain, it didn't even scratch the elevator walls.

Another ding, and the elevator started upwards.

Sweat dampened his shirt. He fired again, wriggled his shoulders. Another two shots and he pulled his arms free.

The lights flickered.

He tried to yank his lower body free, but the chains were too taught, and their weight was too much. His shirt stuck to his skin, now soaked with sweat. This elevator was like a quick-heating oven.

Again, the lights flashed, a slow, irregular pattern. In each moment of darkness, the elevator disappeared, leaving Everard floating in a violet-tinged void.

He thought of the tunnel underground between the Amphitheater and the Junk Shoals, where something breathed inside a wall too small to possibly hold it. They'd explained there were nooks beyond the Periphery, where the NSA forced prisoners to explore. Everard was pretty sure he was staring at one of those nooks now.

Aiming carefully, he blasted through enough chain to get free and stand up.

Movement at the edge of his vision. He whirled to face it, raising the flintlock.

The lights came back on, restoring the walls of the elevator.

A single button made up the controls, and it wasn't marked. Everard jammed at it, but nothing happened.

Darkness. In the distance, something massive stirred, a flowing wrinkle of shadow stretching out to either edge of his vision, yet still impossibly far away.

The lights returned. Everard couldn't fathom what was out there, or how big it was. He did know that he wanted to get out of this elevator. In the movies, people trapped in elevators always removed a ceiling tile, but this ceiling was a single, solid piece of drywall.

He jammed his fingers between the doors, but they didn't budge.

Everything went black, and the approaching nightmare had halved the distance between it and Everard. It's obscure bulk rolled towards him in erratic jerks, dragging itself through the emptiness with invisible limbs.

For all his effort, Everard couldn't focus his eyes on it. It was part of this non-space, but a different shade of nothing. It stretched in all directions as far as he could see, but whenever he tried to look at single spot, there was nothing.

The lights didn't come back. Everard was trapped on an invisible floor floor, suspended in emptiness. He stomped, felt the marble floor under his boots. He kicked down with his heel, harder and harder until he broke off a piece of marble, then crouched to pick it up. He had to feel around for it, but once he held it it became visible. Some part of him was still in the elevator. Maybe that meant he could still escape.

He stood, aimed the flintlock at the floor, and collapsed as the approaching presence forced images, sounds, smells, into his head. They were of him, but through a perception totally alien. He saw his body in a different color scale, impossible colors he'd never seen before, that made him nauseous trying to comprehend.

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