The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 3: Surfacing (Part 4 of 7)

No light filter through the crack in the corner. Blackness filled the cell like a ravenous beast, swallowing every trace of light. Even the pops and spirals of burned-in afterimages flashing on the retina had faded so completely Horus might have believed he had awoken without eyes.

Only familiarity kept him from a frenzied moment of shock and horror, with his fingers clawing at his sockets. This absolute darkness had long ago lost its novelty and the ability to instill fear into him.

He had learned the lack of light was a blessing. The darker it was, the safer it was. The dead of night was when his captors slept. Sleeping was almost as good as gone. Close enough for Horus. What mattered was no one would come to torment him.

If it was too early, there would be music. It was usually easy to hear. The animals would blare their Princes of Darkness albums until they went to bed or passed out, lolling on a sofa unable to put a new CD in the player. But occasionally, one would patrol after the others were out for the night. The pacing footsteps of this last watchful fiend were harder to make out.

Horus strained to pick up any trace of noise. He pictured the world beyond the dank cell and let his ears travel like a moth through the dark house above him.

It had been months since they took Horus out of the cell, but the memory of the house was burned into his mind. They kept him in a small unfinished offshoot of the cellar. More burrow than room, it was probably once used for storing vegetables over the winter. There was still the lingering odor of rotting pumpkin in the stones and fetid cabbage in the dirt.

Beyond the locked door was a vast storage room. It was like a subterranean flea market, piled high to the exposed floor joists like a hoarder's dream. At the far end, through a narrow path of old furniture and junk, was the creaky wooden staircase. It was exactly sixteen steps to reach the door at the top. It opened up on an unlit hallway, dark and windowless, in the center of the house. Down the left-hand passage was the kitchen, with its painful aromas of food and the clattering of pans. To the right was the entryway.

That was the way they always took him, but they never led him outside.

Sometimes the wooden door would be open, and through the screen, Horus would see the ungodly church just up the hill from the porch. It was a long narrow building with a peaked roof and no steeple. It looked more like a barracks than a church, but it was where his captors congregated to worship their profane god.

But they never let him outside.

Instead, they took him past the stairwell, where on one occasion a Kyle Silver emerged onto the landing, drowsy and wet haired, making it easy to imagine bedrooms and a bathroom above. Then he was dragged and shoved into the threadbare sitting room. The strong odor of stale beer assaulted him. The carpet and the sofas seemed to be soaked in it. It was so strong it buried the smells of cigarettes, marijuana, and vomit, which lingered like quiet ghosts in the dark corners of the room.

They dragged and kicked him passed the dilapidated sofas and coffee tables to the closed door of the back room.

That horrible, horrible back room.

Not even Horus's imagination was willing to enter there. It pulled away, feet from the threshold. Leaving that one room unexamined by his hearing.

Like a cord springing back, his ears relaxed and returned to him in his pitch-black cell. He hadn't detected the slightest sound or movement.

Horus leapt from the bed and scrambled to his hiding spot. He had found a small patch, where the dust and grime had built up enough that he was able to plant his prize and protect it from discovery.

Plant it and watch it grow. See what fruit it bears.

Carefully-very carefully-he retrieved his nail.

He must be careful. Mustn't lose it. Mustn't drop it. Mustn't cut himself.

The edge was coming along. It was no longer a spike. Slowly it was becoming a knife.

Horus worked it over a stone that jutted from the wall, grinding it down. First one side and then the other. Back and forth. Over and over.

There was no telling how much time had passed while he honed his key-his knife-his nail. He was so absorbed with the work Horus hadn't noticed that the crack had become a faint gray.

It was time to plant it in the ground again. Horus blew on the nail, dispatching dust and metal shavings into the air and carefully ran his finger along the edge.

It was such a gentle caress but it drew blood. It was ready. It was razor sharp.

Tonight when they brought him dinner, he would act.