Chapter 3 - Into The Maw

"Who's there?" Renald asked in a cold sweat. The room was completely devoid of light.

"Don't come any closer, for your own safety," the voice cooed in a wide echo that spanned the ebony emptiness.

"I'm looking for an old man."

Renald's voice reverberated into vacuum silence. A slight wind seemed to dance across his body from the east. Clearly this wasn't any ordinary custodian's office.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, but I have to go," Renald anxiously muttered to the void.

"NO!" the voice boomed.

The hairs on Renald's body spiked as the warm liquid voice suddenly turned cold and hostile. He slowly backed against the door and tried to turn the knob. It was locked from the outside.

"Please don't go yet," the voice continued. "There's a reason why you're here." The warmth slowly returned to the voice.

"Why am I here?" Renald asked as his pulse continued to rush while his muscles slowly relaxed.

"There is something I want to show you, but I can only do so slowly. Otherwise, you would probably die of fright."

Renald's heart began to pound in his chest once again as he imagined all of the horrible things that were in store for him. It seemed as though the voice could either be coming from an angel or a beast. It sounded like an angel, but Renald realized that there must have been some good reason why the voice was bathed in darkness.

"Why is it so dark in here?" he asked while wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"It is dark because it needs to be dark."

"What needs to be dark?"

"When I tell you to walk, walk exactly where I say."

Renald took a heavy gulp and shook his head. This is the end, he thought. This is really it. While he waited for an axe to drop on his head, a spear to lance his chest, or a trap door to open beneath him, all Renald could hear was the sound of breathing inching towards him slowly. He all but fell unconscious when the voice said,

"You may enter. Walk slowly in a straight line, but stop when I say so."

Renald clenched his fists and began to step forward. He imagined a hundred different cruel fates awaiting him; instead, he felt a curious warmth envelope his body as his feet opposed a viscous, gravely substance.

"Don't think. Just keep walking," the voice instructed.

Renald nodded and continued ambling in as straight a line as possible.

"Stop," the voice commanded. "Start turning slightly to your right and then walk again."

Feeling stranger and stranger with each passing moment, Renald censured the urge to turn back as quickly as he could since he knew the path would no longer be linear from here on in. Once again, he let fear guide him into following the disembodied voice's instructions, walking at a slight angle until further commanded.

After walking and listening to the voice for what felt like an hour or more, Renald's parched throat and growling stomach began to overcome his normal sense of propriety. He tried to ignore these sensorial urges, but a spark of boredom combined with his need for sustenance invoked a slightly rebellious reaction from him.

"How much further?" Renald asked.

"All will be revealed in its proper time. Keep walking," the voice sternly advised.

Renald continued to trudge along the squishy flooring, turning in accordance with the dictates of the guiding voice, until the voice once again boomed,

"STOP!"

Renald's blood froze in his veins and all hairs stood on end once again as the spectral evocation disturbed the settled pattern his body hitherto accustomed itself.

"Turn around and start walking."

Renald had to think for a second before the confusion he felt turned to anger. Was he just going to walk back and forth in some dark tunnel for no reason? He then realized that it wouldn't be so bad going back to the entrance; then the voice might let him go home and all would be well again.

After what seemed to be another hour or so of following the voice back to the beginning of the tunnel, Renald saw something he hadn't seen in what felt like ages: a speck of white light straight ahead. He felt like running toward the source of illumination, but he knew better than to risk invoking the anger of whatever it was that controlled the voice that guided him through the pitch-black darkness.

As the light grew closer, Renald began to realize that he wasn't traveling toward the entrance of the cave. How could it be? Instead, once he stood at the end of the corridor, he was standing about a mile above the city.

"I thought we were underground," he uttered in disbelief.

"We were," the voice replied. "As you can see, you are in no ordinary tunnel."

Renald's heart began pounding once he looked down from the cliff he stood on and saw a long, cylindrical dirt shaft that extended up from the ground and ended beneath his feet. Something felt very wrong.

"I don't understand," Renald gasped. "How did we go from beneath the ground to above the city?"

"Simple," the voice replied ominously. "I'll show you."

Chapter 2 - Beneath the City Streets

Renald could barely see the ghostly outlines of Abby as she sat in her chair, nervously holding the quivering candle.

"I don't get it. One minute everything was fine, and then the power went out and everyone started freaking out," Abby mused.

"You should see outside," Renald replied. "Gridlock traffic, people pouring out of buildings en masse, confusion, uncertainty everywhere. It's not bad yet, but I'm sure..."

"I wonder how long this will last. Ted left a little while ago; he said I could leave, too, but I volunteered to stay until close in case any clients came in."

"That was awfully nice of Ted to leave so suddenly. I'm sure..."

Before Renald could finish, a tremendous earth-shattering boom split the air while the office shook violently. Wall hangings crashed to the floor, bookshelves toppled over, glass windows exploded, and Renald fell violently backwards. Abby remained safe in her chair, but the small candle in her hands fell to the floor, extinguishing the small light that illuminated the modicum of space between them.

"Renald, are you okay?" Abby asked as she went over to help her colleague.

"I'm, er, I'm okay, thanks. Just hurt my back a bit," he replied while pulling himself up.

"God, that was loud. I wonder if that was an earthquake," Abby wondered.

"It certainly felt like one," Renald replied.

"We've got to get out of here, Renald. This building is over 100 years old, and it's not exactly earthquake-proof." She noticed the chandelier near the front door all over the floor. "God knows how long the old metal support beams would hold out if another quake hit us."

"All right. Let's go."

Abby and Renald felt their way along the wall, guided by the small amount of light pouring in from windows in other rooms, until they reached the stairway door. Once they found the plexiglas doors leading to the outside world, Abby and Renald witnessed the breathless effects of the earthquake. Most of the surrounding office buildings looked okay, but there were cracked roads and wrecked vehicles everywhere: cars in telephone polls, trucks in storefronts, cars on top of other cars. Next to the wrecks, people seemed to be helping and talking, rather than fighting and arguing, about the gigantic tremor that nearly killed them all.

It took a moment for Renald to notice the most striking feature of the post-quake horizon: nothing. Nearby buildings were still intact, but there was nothing but smoke and fire in the distance. It looked as though Renald and Abby were surrounded by a vast wall of fire that separated their city from the outside world.

"Oh my God. The city is on fire," Abby observed in dumbfounded awe.

"This was something more than just an earthquake," Renald muttered as he craned his neck to get a slightly better view of the carnage. "We need to get closer to downtown. That's where the fire is coming from."

"Are you crazy? We don't know what the hell happened over there! I'm going home."

"How? It looks like your car is about five feet below the parking lot, and check out the roads; they're all cracked, sunken, and crowded with accidents and people. Man, I thought the potholes around here were bad before..."

"Shit." Abby pulled out her cell phone, which appeared to have power. She dialed a number and got a busy signal.
"Great. Even the damn cell phone network is down, and I can't walk home; it would take me at least five hours."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going downtown. Maybe we can find out what's going on," Renald decided.

"I guess we don't have a choice."

Renald and Abby trekked along the main roads of the city as they wended their way downtown where the Financial District now lay in ruins. After nearly an hour of hiking over crashed cars, rubbled streets, and piles of trash on every street corner, they arrived at what used to be Stone Corporate Bank, the largest bank in the state. All that was left of SCB was a gigantic hole in the ground that state and local police sealed off with yellow tape. A crowd thronged around the ruins of the once-proud hub of state capital flow.

"I don't believe this. I don't believe any of this," Abby remarked.

As if Stone's collapse wasn't bad enough, Abby and Renald looked around and saw similar sites in the vicinity. J. K. Splatz Advertising, Sterling Communications, Landmark Medical, Cotillard Federal Savings Bank, and every other major building on the same block as Stone was completely gone. Meanwhile, firefighters struggled to put out the remaining fires on surrounding blocks. The city looked like Rome during Nero's terrible conflagration twenty centuries previously.

"There's something odd about all of this," Renald observed as he looked around in amazement.

"Well, yeah, the whole city lost power and then suffered an earthquake."

"Yes, but something more happened in this area. Stone Bank Plaza is completely gone while the surrounding blocks are on fire, and the rest of the city, though shaken up, is relatively okay. Something extraordinary is going on."

"Maybe it was a meteor?" Abby guessed.

"Possibly, but I don't know. There was an old man at City Hall today who told me something about destruction and our time coming to an end. It was..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Renald suddenly saw the old man with the fedora; he was standing on the other side of the Stone crater, not far from the train station.

"Good lord, there he is!"

"Who?" Abby asked.

"The old man! He's the one I just told you about. He's just standing there, looking at everyone."

Indeed, no sooner had Renald made that declaration than the old man looked up at him and gently tipped his hat before walking away, seemingly in the direction of the train station.

"We've got to follow him," Renald muttered.

"Why?"

"Because I think he knows something about what's going on. No one else is going to be able to help us, so we might as well try to ask the old man."

"I don't know. I just want to find out how to go home; this is all too crazy for me."

"Well, I'm going to follow him. Good luck."

Renald began walking in the direction of the train station, at least a quarter of a mile behind the old man. It was hard to see over the hordes obstructing his view around Stone Plaza. Thankfully, the crowds thinned out as Renald moved away from the plaza and closer to the station several blocks over. There were gridlocked cars everywhere, and people were talking on every corner about what was going on, but Renald managed to keep his eye on the old man, who moved briskly despite his hobbled gait.

As Renald rounded the corner of the Federal Courthouse about five blocks from Stone Plaza, he finally approached the train platforms in front of the station. The old man entered an elevator shaft and appeared to take it down. Unfortunately, Renald couldn't tell which floor button the octogenarian selected until he actually reached the old rusty shaft, which had only one button on it: "Basement B". Before hitting the button, Renald looked above and noticed the "Elevator Control Shaft" sign before catching "Out of Order" painted hastily beneath it.

"Very strange," Renald murmured.

After a moment of initial hesitation, he hit the "Basement B" button and waited for the clunky elevator to come back up. Renald almost feared that the old man would be inside when the doors opened. Thankfully, the box was empty, so Renald cautiously crept inside. There were no buttons inside; all he could do was wait for the doors to close. It became obvious to him that there were no lights in the old elevator, so when the doors closed, he was completely bathed in blackness.

"Great. It's a good thing I brought my cell phone."

Goosebumps crawled across Renald's pallid skin as the elevator took a lifetime to reach Basement B, whatever that meant. When the creaky metal box finally reached its destination, the door slid open and a dirt tunnel snaked its way around a corner from the entrance of the elevator shaft. Renald thought about going back up to the surface, but he figured this was the only way to find out what was going on, and he didn't go back on anything once he decided to take action, so Renald began walking slowly into the wormhole and kept close to the right wall. Old lights hanging from strings in the ceiling guided him through the dank, airless passage until he came to a dead end. There was a dirt wall with a wooden door on it that housed a small placard: "Custodian."

"This is it," Renald whispered. "I'm either going to be killed or die of fright. At least I had a good life."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared for the worst before he knocked on the door quickly three times. After a few seconds of silence, the door opened slightly into a void of darkness. From within the black space came a soft, angelic voice.

"Welcome. I've been expecting you."