ESCAPE by Douglas L. Wilson
He awoke with a start. Blinking up into the yellow-tinged darkness he had the briefest of moments to wonder just who and where he was, and then the pain came. His back and legs burned like fire, like a hundred glowing cigarettes being crushed out against his skin. Turning his head ever so slightly, the tiniest of movements really, caused a whole new realm of pain to erupt along the right side of his skull. Forcing himself to sit up lest the stinging pain bite deeper than it already had, he was greeted by the sound of crunching and the shifting of what felt like shards of glass settling beneath his weight.
Pallid jaundiced light vaguely lit his surroundings from above. Craning his neck to look upward, a movement that practically trebled the pain along his right temple, he saw a halo of black surrounding the dim yellow circle that was the entrance to the pit. He was at the bottom of this hole, whatever it was, and he needed to get out. He might not remember who he was just now, but he knew with certainty that time was of the essence.
Reaching around with hands outstretched he felt the curved walls of the pit surrounding him. Smooth rocks the size of ripe winter melons were stacked one atop the other, staggering their way up and around and held in place by decaying mortar that poured from the gaps at his touch like sand through an hourglass. Slivers of whatever littered the hard-packed floor still bore hungrily into his legs and butt. Fighting the dizziness sweeping through his head in waves he forced himself to stand, the sounds of crunching and breaking beneath him echoing loudly up the shaft like a string of firecrackers.
Shuffling his feet in an attempt to burrow down through the wreckage beneath him to solid ground, he lost his balance and fell sideways against the wall of the pit. His skull erupted in fresh pain, practically begging him to stop this insane idea of righting himself. Reaching up a trembling hand he felt the gash and the welt along his right temple, he felt the dried blood and the bruised flesh, and he knew that someone had hit him. Most likely the same someone that had thrown him down here.
Pushing himself slowly away from the wall, he re-centered himself in the pit, and that’s when he heard the wail. It drifted down from above, down through the circle of light that was his only escape, and its anguish made him shudder. Another sound followed the first, a blood-curdling scream that caused him to cover his ears and duck as if expecting a physical blow. Panic welled in him.
Looking down for the first time since letting his eyes adjust to the weak yellow glow from above, he found himself standing not in a pile of kindling wood, and not amid a sea of broken glass as he’d originally considered most likely, but in a pile of bones. Human bones. Every bone in the human body lay crumbled and crunched around him, and many times over it appeared. Some were old, ancient even, and crumbled to dust at the slightest pressure, while others were newer and still held their original shape and color. Sweeping his hands down the back of his pants he felt the remnants of the bits that had been drilling into his skin fall to the floor.
Turning his attention to the walls surrounding him, he forced himself to focus through his confusion. Shuffling his feet through the bones, their clattering and scraping only serving to set his nerves further on edge, he heard an odd tinkling sound from beneath, like someone jingling a ring of keys.
Dismissing the seemingly out of place noise as pain induced nonsense, he placed his back against the smooth stone wall and reached forward. The pit was too wide. He’d hoped to force himself upward using his feet and his back as leverage against each other, but it was just too far across. Standing in the middle he could rest his palms comfortably against the smooth stone on either side of him, but there seemed no way to climb.
Looking back down into the eerie pile of rubble, an idea occurred to him. Maybe there was no way to use his body alone as leverage, but there might be a way to make use of the dried human remains he seemed to have in abundance.
Reaching down into the remnants of humanity he swatted aside the smaller bits to dig for the larger, newer, and less decomposed of the lot. Again that odd jingling noise reached his ears, and again he dismissed it. Empty skulls stared accusingly up at him, their hollow eye sockets black against the surrounding yellow-tinged darkness. His fingers finally wrapping around one of the bones he sought, he shuddered as revulsion gripped him. Forced by survival to use that which seemed repulsive, he lifted a severed tibia from the heap. The end had broken off perfectly, leaving a jagged yet lethal point.
His dizziness beginning to abate, and the throbbing in his temple easing just enough to loosen that particular vise, he reached back down into the fell pile for the remaining bones he needed. One more tibia, severed like the first yet not quite as new, and a half dozen rib bones to press into service as pitons. It was time to climb.
***
Inserting the end of one of the ribs into the mortar gap directly before him, he was satisfied to feel it bite hard into the hollow intersection of three wall stones. Turning to his right he placed another of the smaller bones in the same fashion, stuffing the remaining ribs into his pants pocket for use on the way up. Reaching up with the stronger of the two tibias, stretching as high as he possibly could, he wedged the narrow end into a mortar gap and pulled himself up, placing his left foot on the first rib he’d inserted. He was now a good three feet above the floor of the pit.
A fresh scream from above, closer now that he was nearer the top, made him shudder, and he came awfully close to losing his grip on his makeshift tools. Keeping his right hand locked fiercely on the shinbone he’d inserted into the wall crack, and keeping his left foot teetering precariously on the higher of the two ribs he’d placed, he reached up and placed two more, forcing them into the stone gaps with all his might. He prayed they’d hold.
Swinging his second makeshift pick up and over his head, he buried it deep into another void. Sand fell into his upturned face, sticking to his sweat-soaked skin and pouring into his mouth. He ignored it all, he had to, he couldn’t afford to let go. Pulling himself upward on shaking arms, he stepped upon his next two rib-bone pitons. He was a good twelve feet above the bottom of the pit, and squinting up into the round yellow light he guessed he had but ten to go. That’s when the smell hit him.
Sweating and panting, weakened by the blow to his head and the immense physical strain, he had no choice but to breathe deeply of the stench wafting its way down into the upper reaches of the pit. It was the smell of human waste, thick and foul, but there was an underlying odor of something deeper, something stronger and more wretched. It was the gangrenous reek of death. It seemed in that moment as if he were climbing out of one fell pit and straight into another. He continued his assent.
His final two rib bones placed, and the shinbones forced once again into the gap-toothed rock wall, he was now within a foot of the top. Yellow light forced its way past him, lighting the pit below just enough to show him the circular graveyard from which he’d ascended. Reaching one arm over the rim of the pit he stabbed the sharpened end of the tibia into the hard-packed earth like a miner’s pickax. Out of reach now of his highest makeshift piton, he forced the toe of his boot into a crevice and pushed. His toe slipped. He lunged, his feet scrabbling wildly for purchase, and flung his other arm over the edge of the hole in a last-ditch effort to save himself from falling.
Plunging the second shinbone into the earth beside the first, he held on for dear life. Pushed beyond the limits of endurance, the last of his strength fading with each gasping breath, he pulled himself from the pit with a grunt and rolled flat onto his back.
***
His head pounding like thunder and every muscle in his body burning like fire, he stared weakly up at a concrete ceiling. Rubbing the sand and sweat from his eyes, he blinked several times before he could bring anything truly into focus. The concrete had been painted at one time, blue maybe, but it was mostly a cracked and faded gray now, littered with great snaking gaps that exposed rusted steel reinforcement wire and electrical conduit. Craning his head back toward the light source that had been his salvation from the pit, he found a lone bulb burning inside an industrial cage fixture. Spiders crawled listlessly across the filthy glass surrounding the bulb, their empty webs hanging in tatters.
Forcing himself to his feet amid a fresh wave of dizziness, the rank odor of waste and decay assaulting his addled senses like a storm surge, he slowly took stock of himself and his surroundings. Clad in black trousers and boots and a dark gray button-down shirt, he was reminded vaguely of a uniform, but there was no insignia or adornment of any kind on the ragged clothing, only filth.
Another moan reached his ears, but it was abruptly cut off, as if a hand had been placed over a mouth. He was standing in a long, ell-shaped room. The walls, much like the ceiling, were constructed of cracked and spalling concrete and covered in filth and layers of dust so thick as to look almost like velvet. Behind him was the pit, the two shinbones he’d used as picks still sticking out of the hardpan like broken saplings.
Shuffling away from the edge of the gaping hole he moved toward the middle of the room, and toward the table. Standing alone in the center of the cramped chamber, the surgical platform rested directly beneath the lone industrial lightbulb that served as the room’s only source of illumination. Constructed of stainless steel, the dull flat surface was practically covered in what he somehow knew to be dried blood. Leather straps, worn and frayed by overuse, hung limply down either side of the platform to the dirt floor, their brass buckles lightly scraping the crusty earth.
Whispers reached him from around the darkened corner, muted voices that were filled with pain and anxiety, with fear and hatred, and they made his skin crawl. An agonized scream rang suddenly out, and again was silenced by an unseen hand. Moving past the table, being careful not to step on what looked to be the freshest of the bloody pools surrounding this hellish work station, he bumped a standing tray containing surgical instruments. The tray fell over, spilling its contents onto the grimy floor in a cacophonous din that only served to accentuate the ensuing silence.
Not a sound could be heard now, either from around the darkened corner that was the origin of the screams and whispers, or from his own terrified body and mind. He held his breath in anticipation of the footfalls that would announce the coming of his captors. Surely they’d been alerted to his emergence from the pit by now. But nobody came.
After what felt like an eternity staring down at filthy bone saws and bloody clamps and scalpels, at crud encrusted rib spreaders and the odd speculum or cleaver, the whispers began again. Another anguished moan was cut off by angry mutterings.
Moving past the spilt implements, their chrome and steel edges glinting in the yellow light, he made his way to the center of the ell-shaped chamber. To his right was a door, a large steel entryway surrounded by cracked and peeling concrete and resting at the top of three short steps. Almost halfway up from the top stair a flat steel bar crossed the door from side to side, with each end resting in C shaped brackets attached to the concrete jamb. A padlock hung from the left-hand side of the bar, and the right side was bent outward to prevent the bar’s removal.
Just above the crossbar, tacked to the door with mushroom headed rivets, hung a sign with a strange yet somehow familiar symbol. The background was red, faded now to a darkened pink, but the image in the center was jet black and seemingly untouched by age. He only wished he could remember what the symbol meant.
A set of keys dangled from a nail beside the door, and he knew with a certainty he couldn’t explain that the key to the padlock was on that ring. He had but to reach up and take those keys and he would be free. He would be free of this torture chamber; this hall of the damned. All he had to do was take those keys. Reaching up a trembling hand, feeling his freedom so close and so easily attainable, he froze when he heard a voice in the darkness behind him.
“Help me.”
***
Turning toward the startling plea, he found himself staring at the alcove that had until now remained hidden around the corner opposite the door. He dropped his hand from the key ring, but that was the only concession he was willing to make. The alcove was cloaked heavily in darkness, the weak yellow light from the lone bulb seeming reluctant to turn that particular corner.
“Please,” the voice begged, “before he returns.”
Moving reluctantly away from the door, he shuffled slowly toward the foul-smelling recess. The nearer he drew the more his eyes adjusted to the darkness engulfing the alcove, and he began to see things. As it was in the pit, the yellow light penetrated just enough to illuminate the edges of things, just enough to reveal a wall of bars gleaming dimly out of the darkness.
The stench assaulted his senses with renewed vigor as he drew nearer the entrance to the cave-like recess. Stepping tentatively forward, forcing himself toward what he somehow recognized, yet deeply dreaded, he spied a single eye floating spectrally behind the bars, like a pale little moon hanging in the blackness of space. Pain flared in his right temple, suddenly and brutally reminding him of his predicament. Someone had hit him. Someone had pushed him into that pit. Still he moved onward, drawing nearer the cell as if being pulled by an unseen tide.
A hand thrusted suddenly outward. The floating eye became a face that wedged itself between the rusted bars. “Please help me,” the prisoner begged.
A scream erupted from somewhere behind the caged man, trailing off in gurgles of agony so pain-filled that it almost hurt his ears.
Turning toward the sound, the prisoner yelled, “Shut up, damn it. I’m trying to get us out of here.”
He took another step closer to the cage. The prisoner, who he could now see was an older man with wild gray hair and what looked to be a week’s worth of beard stubble, had grabbed the bars on either side of his face and was forcing himself into the four-inch gap. One of his eyes was bloodshot, the white gleaming a sickly yellow in the weak light, and the other eye was gone, leaving a gaping black, blood-rimmed hole.
A scraping noise, like the slithering of a snake over dead leaves, made its way to him from behind the older man. Pulling herself across the hard-packed dirt floor with fingers that were hooked like claws, a woman came into view beside the old man. Wearing the tattered remnants of a nurse’s uniform, it’s color almost completely black from wallowing in whatever filth resided in the recesses of the cage, she drew near the bars. He gagged at the stench that advanced before her in waves like heat from a furnace, but when his eyes came to rest on the lower half of her body he recoiled in horror.
The skin had been flayed completely from her left calf, exposing blood-encrusted flesh caked with dirt and rife with infection. Her right leg was broken in a compound fracture, the fibula poking angrily through the gangrenous skin like an accusing finger. Her eyes were the worst of it, though. He’d never seen such raw insanity in the eyes of another human being. Her pain and anguish, which surely should have killed her long ago, had instead kept her alive to live in unbearable agony and madness. What kind of monster could have done this to these poor souls?
***
“I told you to stay out of sight, Lydia,” the old man snapped. “Look at him, he’s terrified at the mere sight of you. He’ll never let us out now.”
Turning his attention back to his potential benefactor, and watching intently for any signs of recognition, the prisoner said, “Please, sir. Let us out before he comes back. The keys are hanging beside the door. Please, in the name of God don’t leave us here. You know what he’ll do when he gets back.”
Reaching up to his throbbing temple, he tried desperately to recall what had happened here. He still had no idea who he was, or what he was doing in this godforsaken chamber of the damned, but he realized that if he left these wretched souls behind to save himself he would be no better than the monster that had locked them in here. Turning away from the bars, and away from the stench and the misery, he ran back toward the door.
Removing the keys from the rusty nail, he was turning back toward the cell when something struck him as odd. Looking back at the huge steel door, the strange black on red symbol staring apathetically down upon him, he knew something was wrong. His temple throbbed, burning like fire as he stared blankly at the door. Whatever it was that was bothering him was pushed aside by the voice of the prisoner. “Hurry, damn it! He’s coming. He’s very close now.”
Moving back toward the cell, the keys jingling loudly on the ring as he shuffled along, he came face to face with the old man. His hands trembling wildly, he skimmed through the keys trying to figure out which one would open the cell door.
“It’s the skeleton key, you idiot,” the nurse cackled. Then she screamed in agony as her skinless calf involuntarily spasmed across the floor, leaving in its wake a trail of greenish red slime.
“Shut up, Lydia,” the prisoner hissed. “He’s getting it.” Turning his attention back to the task at hand, he said soothingly, “That’s it, young man. That’s the key. Quickly now, he’s almost upon us.”
Fighting his rising gorge as the smell of rotting flesh seemed intent upon invading the very core of his being, he shoved home the skeleton key and turned. The lock opened with a muffled click. Reaching forward, he grabbed the bar nearest the lock and pulled. The cell door swung open on squealing hinges.
“Well done, my friend,” the prisoner said, adding, “hurry now, we’re almost out of time.”
“What about her?” he asked, nodding toward the huddled mass of decaying flesh that used to be a nurse.
“Don’t worry about Lydia. She can take care of herself. Come now, my boy. We must make haste.”
Ushering his savior back toward the chamber door, the former prisoner stated urgently, “Open the padlock, quickly.”
Turning toward the door, and away from the man he’d just freed, his eyes came to rest on the padlock. He suddenly realized what it was that had been bothering him earlier. The door was locked from the inside. How could anyone be coming soon? How could anyone be on the way to punish them? Looking up at the strange black and red symbol attached to the door he finally remembered what it was. A swastika! Realization flooded his mind.
***
Turning back toward the prisoner, a knowing smile beginning to bloom upon his dirty face, he was just in time to see the old man swing a long piece of steel pipe at his head. He ducked it, barely, and began backing his way toward the upended pile of surgical tools.
“You’re going to finish paying your bill, Dr. Mengele,” he stated angrily, “you and your hellhound of a nurse. I promised you a taste of your own medicine, and by God you’re going to get it.”
His lips peeled back in a feral grin, the old man snapped, “You helped us willingly enough, Herr Oberst. Now you wish to recant? Do you not yet know where you are? Do you not yet know what this is?” He swung the pipe again. “Give me the keys, Herr Oberst.”
The old man moved to his left while he talked, keeping his remaining eye on his enemy while edging himself toward the spilt surgical tools. Then he swung the pipe again, this time aiming lower, and it connected with the back side of the younger man’s legs.
Screaming in agony, the Oberst fell to the floor. Using his arms and hands, he dragged himself away from his attacker. “Give me the keys and I’ll kill you quickly this time,” Mengele wheedled.
The steel pipe swung again, but he rolled out of the way just as it thudded hollowly into the dirt. A look of feral hatred on his face, Dr. Mengele swung downward again. Again the Oberst rolled aside, but this time his roll forced him away from the table and closer to the pit. He began to realize what the old man was up to, and a strange feeling of déjà vu stole over him. That’s when the steel pipe came down upon his right temple like a thunderbolt. He dropped the keys beside the pit as he began to lose consciousness. Dr. Mengele screamed in triumph as he shoved the Oberst into the hole. With his last ounce of conscious thought, the dying man snatched the keys as he tumbled into the darkness.
He fell backwards into the refuse pile, the bones of those he’d brought to the Doctor to torture and murder over the years waiting to receive him in their stinging embrace. An anguished scream followed him into the pit as the tinkling sound of keys landed with him, striking the bone pile and slithering their way to the bottom.
***
He awoke with a start. Blinking up into the yellow-tinged darkness he had the briefest of moments to wonder just who and where he was, and then the pain came. His back and legs burned like fire, like a hundred glowing cigarettes being crushed out upon his flesh. Turning his head ever so slightly, the tiniest of movements really, caused a whole new realm of pain to erupt along right side of his skull.
THE END/THE BEGINNING
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #1 ‘ESCAPE’ by Douglas L. Wilson @anglrsg9 – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote! ” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
