The Digging Leviathan (38 page)

William was nothing but a toy—a mouse in a maze. They were running him for sport. But knowing that did him no good at all. He’d keep running. It was impossible, though, that they’d let him get to his goal. They’d simply wear him out. How had Frosticos gotten ahead of him? Slipped past in the darkness while he fiddled with the batteries? It was unthinkable. But there he’d been.

William couldn’t run forever. It was a matter of hours before the diving bell would drop into the sunlit sea. So there was no possibility that, as if in a nightmare, he would simply run endlessly through darkness haunted by a reappearing Frosticos. The idea of it was unnatural—impossible. Sooner or later it would come to a confrontation. Frosticos wanted to destroy him. It was simple as that. But he was greedy, and that would
be his downfall. Frosticos thought of himself as a sort of artist—that was his problem in a nut—and he wanted sorely to turn this present effort into an epic, the stinking, self-satisfied monster. Let
him
take a long look in a mirror. He’d find he had the face of an ape.

William lurched along, his breath tearing in his lungs, unable to convince himself to slow down. There was no use shining the light behind him; it wouldn’t tell him anything. Frosticos might be anywhere. He was ubiquitous. He wasn’t fooling anyone. It was a simple matter—once he’d discovered William’s destination from the cab driver—to simply clamber in and out of the sewer, appearing for a moment, then disappearing, taking a car a mile up Hawthorne and waiting for William to pass, then popping off and doing it again. But there would be a time, perhaps when daylight made bouncing in and out of sewers impractical, that he’d act, when William’s fate would be played out in the darkness, and even his screams would go unnoticed or unremarked by the dawning world above.

He staggered to a slow walk, forcing himself along, his flashlight on but pointed groundward. He wheezed and coughed, stopping finally to pull his canteen from his pack and take a long chink. He rummaged around and found the apple. He wondered, suddenly, what would happen if he simply didn’t go on—if he sat down and had lunch, read Pince Nez, let a couple of hours slide by. What would Frosticos do? By now he was more than likely some ways farther along, perhaps a hundred yards, perhaps a mile. Maybe he’d stopped at Winchell’s for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, laughing to himself at the thought of William, terrified, quaking in the sewers below. What if William simply didn’t accommodate him?

Somehow, William couldn’t imagine Frosticos simply quitting—going home to bed. Surely Frosticos couldn’t take the chance of William slipping away down a sidestreet, jogging over a block or two, and continuing on. Someone, it occurred suddenly to William, must be shadowing him and had been all along. Then furtive steps in the darkness could easily belong to anyone. To whom? Yamoto? William set his teeth. Of course.

He shined the flashlight down the sewer as if it were a revolver drawn to mow down a gunslinger. Nothing was there—only the same silent darkness. The half-expected white
trousers were nowhere to be seen. But how far did his light shine, forty feet? Maybe not even that. He threw his apple core against the far wall of the pipe and got to his feet. He was unspeakably weary, mainly because he’d stopped to rest. He’d lost momentum.

Fifty yards farther along, he spun round again with his light, and again there was no one. Ahead was the mouth of a small pipe leading off to the right. He was suddenly certain that Frosticos was in it—lying in it perhaps. Or that he’d come racing down it toward William on all fours, like a dog, his eyes wide and wild, his teeth sharpened, moving unnaturally fast. William could see it. He knew it was coming. Ten feet away now.

Did he hear footsteps again, shuffling up behind him? Frosticos, perhaps, eyeless, a bleached skull grinning and chattering, sitting atop the white collar. He couldn’t make himself turn. He was two steps away from the tunnel, edging across toward the far side of the pipe. The sight of Frosticos rushing toward him as if up the barrel of a telescope, growing as he rushed, frothing and barking, played against the back of his eyelids like old, scratchy, jumpy film. It would freeze him solid when it came—turn him into a lump of salt like Lot’s unfortunate wife.

Then he was past it. He strode on, his eyes clutched shut, still anticipating the sudden scramble that would announce the end, the sudden touch of a moist hand round his neck. But there was nothing. No one had been in the tunnel. He’d been tormenting himself with imagined fears. He turned and lit the corridor behind to prove it to himself, and saw, he was sure of it, a white patch of moving cloth, just out of flashlight range, disappearing as if someone had stopped suddenly and retreated. It was Yamoto. It had to be. Frosticos was waiting ahead.

William began to run, stopped abruptly, swung around, and once again caught sight of the vanishing white patch like the wisping away of a ghost. If it was Yamoto, William would deal with him. It was one thing for the man to torment him by day in his own home, masquerading as a gardener, clipping the shrubs and peering in at the windows. It was another to follow him into the sewers—quite likely with murderous intent. But William would deal with him. He’d done it before. He grinned at the thought of Yamoto’s screaming terror when he’d
surprised William in the cab of his truck. And his gibbering complaint when William pulped the begonias—what had that been but fear? William would show him fear.

There ahead was another pipe leading away. It was time to act, decidedly time. In a moment there would be one less villain afoot in the sewers. He’d use the flashlight on him. He had the spare penlight, after all, and there was every chance that once he was rid of Yamoto, he could give Frosticos the slip. He could as easily jog down to Crenshaw, all the way out to the coast highway. With no one to alert Frosticos, his game would become impossibly complicated.

William switched off his light, plunging the sewer into darkness. He ran his hand along the wall until it slipped into the open pipe, and in an instant he clambered into it, his heart clanging, not allowing himself to think of the waiting Frosticos. There was no sound at all. He strained to hear the quiet pad of approaching feet. It was impossible that Yamoto could have seen him—unlikely that he could have guessed his intent. William crouched at the edge of the pipe and peered out into the larger tunnel. He could see nothing. He was struck with the sudden certainty that a heavy blade, an ax perhaps, would whistle down out of the darkness and sever his head where it poked out. He pulled farther into the pipe.

Who could say what sort of weapon Yamoto carried? A meat cleaver? He’d seen too many movies His elbow struck something solid. He froze in a crouch. It hadn’t been flesh. It felt more like wood—debris, perhaps, wedged into the pipe. He jabbed at it, making out the edge of some rectilinear object with his elbow. There was no sound beyond.

He couldn’t wait in the pipe, that much was certain. Surprise was everything. If Yamoto had stopped to wait him out, William might as well be on his way. Yamoto, after all, might easily have seen the tunnel ahead, might have understood William’s turning off the flashlight. He’d have to take a different tack, perhaps continue on in the darkness, feeling the wall like a blind man until another opportunity presented itself.

Still there was no sound of footsteps. He clicked on his light, poked his head out, and illuminated the empty tunnel. Then he turned and shined the light behind him, at whatever it was that blocked the smaller pipe.

It was a steamer chest, open, standing on end. William screamed in spite of himself, spilling out of the mouth of the
pipe and into the stream of water. He was up at once, bathing the chest in light. In it, strapped upright with leather belts, were the remains of something—some fleshy horror. A corpse that might once have been human, but might just as easily have been a beast. It slumped there in its bonds, a ruin of scars and transplanted limbs, its mouth lolling open, nothing but a toothless slit in its face, its nose a black hollow, its eyesockets empty. The thing had no ears, and its arms, strapped across its chest, ended in webbed fingers. William backed away down the pipe, staring at the steamer trunk. It was meant as an advertisement—that much was obvious. He began to run, jogging at first, then racing along, pounding south toward the ocean and the diving bell that would transport him to another world. He didn’t think. There was no use thinking. He couldn’t reason through it. They’d gotten to him again. Who had it been in the trunk? What poor, harmless thing was it that had been reduced to such a state? Certainly not Reginald Peach. The idea of it made him sick. But it couldn’t be. He was too valuable to sacrifice for such a lark. This had been a failure, put to good use despite the failing.

William slowed finally, unable to maintain the pace, and sure once again of the sound of distant footfalls: Yamoto. A voice sounded behind him. William couldn’t make it out above the sound of his own labored breathing and footsteps. He stopped, listening. He had no idea where he was. His pocket watch showed that it was after eleven. He’d been making good time. Perhaps he was nearing his goal and had crossed under the coast highway into Rolling Hills. There was the voice again, calling his name. The footfalls grew louder. It had come down to the final confrontation. He braced himself for it, for the first chill glimpse of whatever it was—Frosticos, Yamoto, Lord-knew-what—that would materialize from the dark, distant tunnel. There it came.

It was Elijah, hairy and wild and ancient. William jerked upright, aiming his light, unbelieving. It wasn’t Elijah; it was William Ashbless, limping. In his right hand was a leather sap. The bastard! It had been Ashbless all along, terrifying him. And here he was, setting out to cosh William into jelly. We’ll see, thought William, setting his feet and glancing over his shoulder in case another attacker approached from up the tunnel. He was dead tired, and his eyes felt as if they were loaded
with sand, but he was damned if he couldn’t fight off an ancient poet with a sap.

“Come along!” he shouted, waving the flashlight in his right hand and his penknife in his left.

“Whoa!” hissed Ashbless, putting finger to his lip and shaking his head. “Pipe down, for God’s sake, or we’re both done.”

William lowered the penknife as Ashbless shoved the sap into his coat pocket and strode up toward him looking furtively behind as if fearful of being followed. “I took care of the Oriental,” he said, taking William by the shoulder and hurrying him along.

“Yamoto?” asked William.

“I didn’t ask his name,” Ashbless replied. “I just flattened him. They’ve been onto you since last night. Trying to take a cab to Palos Verdes was foolish. Damn foolish. Everyone knows—Frosticos, the police. I read the article this morning in
the Times
, then straight off ran into Frosticos and three others in the passage off La Brea. They were onto you then.”

“So they printed the letter!” cried William ecstatically.

“Shhh!” whispered Ashbless, looking around. ‘They paraphrased it, but the spirit of the thing was there. It’s been on the news all morning. What I’m telling you is that they don’t mean to let you out of this tunnel alive.”

“You came down here to tell me that?” asked William, suddenly suspicious again.

“No,” said Ashbless.

William waited for an explanation, ready to bolt. He studied it out. He could twist away to the right, flailing at Ashbless with the light. If he connected and the flashlight was wrecked, he’d run off down the dark tunnel with his penlight. Better yet, he’d take Ashbless’ light. He must have one on him.

“I’ve freed Reginald Peach,” said Ashbless.

“What?”

“Peach. You wouldn’t believe his misery. He escaped twice, but they hunted him down. They won’t find him again, though. He’s agreed to take me to the Earth’s core. Maybe we’ll run into each other there.”

“Reginald Peach,” said William, unbelieving.

“He’s quite an inventor in his own right. And he has certain powers. I think you understand me. Do me a favor if you get topside again. Tell Basil for me that I made an effort to free
Giles and that I succeeded with Reginald. I’m afraid he’s misunderstood my motivations.”

“So have I, apparently,” said William, more than half convinced. ‘Thanks for taking care of Yamoto.”

Ashbless waved it off. It was nothing. The least he could do. There was the sound of rushing water ahead, of a subterranean river flowing through a deep channel.

“Where are we?” asked William.

“Nearly under the Palos Verdes Hills. This is as far as I go.” He produced a broad flashlight from under his coat and shined it ahead into the darkness. Vague shapes were outlined in the gray. William could feel cool, fresh moisture off the water. Ahead was an arched bridge, spanning the channel, and tied to it was a long, low craft, almost a gondola, straining to be away in the current. Above the waterline the sides were painted with crocodile men and bird-beaked children and strange Egyptian hieroglyphs, obviously, thought William, produced for some colorful carnival ride.

Sitting in the stern was the strangest apparition William had encountered: a half-naked man with pearly semi-translucent scales and webbed fingers, his head encased in an unbelievable spiral seashell with a porthole window in the front. Bulbous eyes stared out through the glass. The enormous shell, oddly, was filled with water—a helmet aquarium that encased the head of Reginald Peach. Two coiled tubes dangled into the water behind the boat.

William was stupefied. He could think of nothing to say. He’d never, in fact, been introduced to Reginald, hadn’t even seen him. It was true that he had a passing familiarity with some few of his offspring, but it would hardly be decorous of him to mention it.

“William Hastings,” said Ashbless, gesturing, “Reginald Peach.”

Peach dipped his head almost imperceptibly, and to William’s surprise, said “Glad-to-meet-you,” in a bubbly voice that was quite clearly radiated through some sort of machine—an artificial voice box. William said he was happy to meet Reginald too. And in truth he was. The man was fascinating. Imagine the stories he could tell—the filings he’d seen. William had half a mind to induce Ashbless to let him go along.