We walked under the El across Whitlock to an abandoned public swimming pool. Its buildings and bathhouses had been burned to the ground and lay in rubble. I was the only one who knew how it got that way. That was the time when I was six and a half and living on Aldus Street... when Shugie and I set the creek on fire and destroyed the Hunt’s Point Swimming Pool in a five-alarmer.
I knew the rules of my tribe. The bigger the tale, the bigger the hero you were in the eyes of your friends. But even so, I was still too afraid to tell Junior or Sergie about the fire, too frightened that someday people would find out, and I’d be put away for the rest of my life. It was Shugie’s and my sworn secret.
Rummaging through the debris of the abandoned swimming pool, we found a concrete trap door flush to the ground, hidden in the rubble. Attached to the door was a metal ring. It took the three of us pulling with all our strength to lift it open. At the top of the opening was a waffle iron step leading down into a black abyss.
“Who’s got a match?” asked Sergie.
“That’s no good.” Junior answered. “We need a searchlight or some candles.”
I said, “Miller’s! Let’s get candles from Miller’s.”
The candle revealed a winding stairwell that led into a bottomless black pit filled with unknown evil, with grasping hands reaching out for my legs. My heart pounded up into my head, and the energy drained from my legs. They were numb and rubbery as I slid onto the first step.
The candle’s flickering light made solid objects animated with the quick, jerky movements of a silent movie. Two pairs of spiral stairs appeared, one real, the other its shadow. They swayed and twisted around each other, chewing and digesting me as I descended into its throat. Sergie and Junior followed close behind. The candlelight was absorbed by the total darkness above and below us. We were drowning in a sea of blackness.
It was damp and musty at the bottom of the stairs, with a pervading odor of salty mildew. Out of the depths of the pitch-blackness, another flickering light appeared and lit up a maze of tunnels with interconnecting rooms that wouldn’t stand still. The light floated toward us. Who...or what...was holding it?
We didn’t wait to find out. Sergie, Junior, and I shoved at each other trying to be first to the stairway. A pair of hands pounced onto Sergie’s shoulders and picked him up off the floor. The last thing Junior and I saw was Sergie dangling in mid-air in a circle of candlelight.
Find out what happens in Chapter: Into A Black Abyss, in Survival Of Species... publishing soon!