Amrita

  There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect,

  and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.

  Amrita shook her head groggily as they caromed down the rough-hewn corridor. “I always end up running a bunch when we hang out.”

  Oliver had switched on his flashlight to guide their way, and he didn’t even acknowledge her joke, which seemed both way too intense and totally on-brand for him. This kid’s gonna worry himself bald in like two weeks. We should sneak into a movie or something, take it easy.

  She wished she understood what was going on. She’d been talking to Gilman, trying to figure out if she was religious-creepy or molester-creepy, and she’d pretty much decided on both when the lady got up in her face and said… she said… something that sounded like talking underwater, and everything went blurry, and then Oliver had been shaking her, and sure, his face was a lot nicer than the old lady’s, even with his nasty nosebleed, but he’d been yelling and everything was shaking and something huge was swinging around the room and the noise was so stupid loud that all she could do was run with him. She was confused, her heart was going like she’d just jumped out of a plane, and when they got someplace safe somebody was getting punched. The floor was still jumping every few seconds, and those weird trumpet-screams weren’t getting any quieter the farther they got away.

  “Seriously, what even is that thing?” she yelled forward to Oliver.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know! Something really bad.” He didn’t slow.

  “Why are there tunnels under the library?”

  “Why was there a tunnel under the Ambrose house?” he shot back. “I think maybe they’re everywhere.”

  “Is it like the world’s biggest octopus or something? Why’s it so pissed?”

  “I think I hurt it.”

  She thought back to the flash she’d seen of massive black tentacles and red eyes. “Dude, I don’t think a semi could hurt that thing.”

  “I don’t know, let’s talk about it later!”

  The tunnel forked and he took a left. Amrita glanced the other way as she followed him but could see nothing but darkness.

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Away. That’s all I got.”

  Amrita had nothing better to suggest, so she followed. Up ahead the tunnel came to an abrupt end at a brick wall. A metal door sat rusting in the middle, but when Oliver reached for the handle, it was locked.

  “Shit,” she said, looking back. “Do we turn around?”

  “Not unless we have to,” he said, swinging his backpack around his front and pulling out his crowbar.

  “This Boy Scout thing you do is super nerdy, but for now I won’t complain.”

  He flashed a shaky grin over his shoulder as he wedged the tip of the crowbar between the door and the frame right by the doorknob. “From Batman to Boy Scout. What a downgrade.”

  He heaved with all his strength, and the door didn’t move. The rebound of his force on the crowbar smacked his head into the door, and he sagged, grunting. Another freakishly loud roar echoed down the tunnel, and everything shook.

  “Even Batman needs a hand sometimes,” she said, reaching for the crowbar still stuck in the frame. Oliver scooted aside, and Amrita wrapped both hands tight around the steel bar and pulled. She had a good three inches and probably thirty pounds on Oliver, but the door held.

  She didn’t let up. She jammed a foot against either side of the doorframe and put her whole body into it. Her hands were screaming at her, but she held tighter. The door groaned… and held.

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  “Pull on me,” she groaned, feeling the pulse pounding in her forehead.

  “What?”

  “More weight. Pull on me.”

  He hesitantly put an arm around her waist and tugged.

  Her hands were starting to give, and the sound behind them was getting louder. “Dammit, Olly, I’m not made of glass. Pull!”

  He wrapped his arms around her ribs tightly and leaned back hard. The latch gave way with a metal squeal and they fell to the floor, the crowbar clanging to the ground.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” came Oliver’s voice from underneath her. He was wiggling like a puppy. She rolled off him.

  “What happened?”

  He rolled to one side and grabbed his butt. “Landed on my tailbone with you right on top. I think I broke it.”

  She snatched up the crowbar and stuffed it in his discarded bag. “You just called me fat, bro.”

  He paused, looking scared, hands still on his butt. “No, I…”

  “Shut up, I’m kidding.” She pulled him to his feet. “Walk it off. No, run it off. Let’s haul ass.”

  They dashed through the door and found themselves in a claustrophobic cinderblock stairwell with rusted corrugated metal steps. “Never been happier to run stairs in my life,” Oliver said, and up they went.

  The walls kept shaking, and as they neared the top they heard something like pounding down below. She put on another burst of speed, and Olly somehow kept up. The door at the head of the stairs was blessedly unlocked, and they fell through, finding themselves in a fluorescent-lit closet full of big industrial tanks, pressure gauges, and plastic tubing. It reeked of chlorine.

  “It’s the pool,” Oliver said. “I think we’re back in the Y.”

  A clattering of metal sounded from below.

  “Not for long,” she said. “Out, out.”

  The door out of the maintenance closet led directly into the big, windowless pool room. The fluorescent lighting was dim and greenish, and black mold climbed the white-painted brick walls. There were no less than thirty people in and around the pool, aging lap swimmers in latex caps and goggles, young mothers with their children in flotation rings by their sides, fat grandparents in sagging suits sitting on the aluminum bleachers. Amrita stopped in her tracks, arrested by the strangeness. There was no noise in the room except for the lapping of water, and every last person was staring right at them, expressionless.

  “Uh,” she said, “hi?”

  No one responded. No one even blinked. Even the two-year-old in the floatie was fixed, blank, frozen.

  “Come on,” Oliver whispered, pulling at her hand. They skirted the rectangular pool, breathing hard, trying not to make eye contact. It took a million years to get to the door on the far side. When she had her hand on the push bar of the exit she finally peeked back and realized that all the pool weirdos hadn’t ever been looking at them; they were all still staring at the door they’d come through. The door that led below.

  “That’s not good,” she said, and then the maintenance door exploded off its hinges, green tentacles flailing in every direction, clusters of red eyes on all sides, a slime-soaked, toothy maw in the center of the swampy mass roaring death, hell, and nothingness at them.

  Every person in the room turned and pointed at Amrita and Olly.

  “Go go go!” he shrieked, pushing at her.

  She needed no encouragement. Out into the tiled hallway and through the winding corridors of the grimy, aging YMCA they fled. People were moving normally here, seemingly unaware of the trance that had infected the pool, and she knocked over somebody that might have been Mr. Gomez from the next row over from her house. She sure as shit wasn’t going to stop and check. Olly was ahead of her now. The thunderous shrieking of the beast followed them.

  Finally the glass doors to outside came into view, but the squat, toadlike front desk dude stood in front of them with a face like a stop sign. Oliver faked left and tried to dart past him, but the man’s meaty paw closed on his neck, and they struggled, grunting.

  There was no time. Amrita already had a running start, so she did what she did best. She planted one foot, put all her hips and shoulders into it, and launched a fist right into the middle of Toad-Boy’s face. She felt his nose crack under her knuckles, and his head flew back, slinging a thin strand of blood over his shoulder and onto the glass doors. He slumped to the ground, shocked, and let Oliver go. She rebounded, shaking her fist, and grabbed Olly’s hand. Then they were outside. The wan afternoon sun had never looked so good.

  The rumble of breaking brick followed them outside, and the monster’s cry rose in a trumpet of triumph. The sidewalk was no safer than the pool.

  Amrita pointed. “There! Come on!” He was pointing at a pink banana seat bike two sizes too small for them.

  “We’re stealing kids’ bikes now?”

  “You prefer dying?”

  She snatched it up, grateful for whatever brat hadn’t bothered to lock it up or even put it on the bike rack. Is this kid still inside? She shook her head. Nothing she could do either way. Oliver climbed on behind her, and she stood on the pedals, pumping with all she had. They shot down the road, and for the first time in five minutes, Amrita thought they might survive.

  A quick peek in the tiny handlebar mirror showed a thirty-foot-long tentacle twining around the front wall of the building and caving it inward. More tentacles waved airward, but the beast seemed content to bring the building down instead of following them into the open. She turned the corner onto Broad Street and the sight was gone. Oliver laid his forehead down between her shoulder blades and shook. She couldn’t have agreed more. The world had gone insane in the most impossible way and tried to kill them. People were dying behind them. If she stopped to think about it, she’d start crying, and then she’d wreck the bike, and then that thing might just decide to catch up with them.

  Instead, she pedaled harder and forced a little laugh. “Guess I won’t be getting that library card.”