From the Underworld

From The Underworld

Ali sat before the TV set, staring at the screen with a fascination not seen at school. The fifteen year old jackal was perched on the edge of the couch, ears perked up. Annie, his fourteen years old kid sister, sat beside him, watching the TV screen as intently as her brother.

The evening news showed pictures of one of those people claiming to have been transformed into a creature of solid, living rubber by some strange ooze coming out of nowhere. It sounded like something taken from ancient horror movies, but there they were. The actual pictures showed a guy who had been dug out of the remnants of his hopelessly wrecked car, squeezed to pulp by a drunk driver’s truck. The driver had been trapped in a tight spot inside his wreck, but after the firemen had cut him out of his tin casket he emerged seemingly unharmed. Some pictures from the hospital showed a wolf who seemed as though cast in red rubber and polished to a shiny gloss. Someone poked a syringe into his arm but was unable to inject anything or retrieve blood. Another accidentally cut the rubbery guy with a scalpel, and the camera showed how the wound closed up without as much as a single droplet of blood, or any other bodily fluid for that matter. The reporter, clearly as confused as the emergency room personnel, babbled on about the strange circumstances and about x-ray pictures showing nothing but structures that were identified as lungs and a digestive system. And nothing else.

The previous week another channel showed someone else who had been rubberized. The guest in a talk show, a vixen, this time all in white. She wore loose clothing in various colours, obviously made of rubber, too, and she talked about her ‘new life’. No illness, her cancer gone, no hunger or thirst. All her senses were as sharp as before and all her friends and colleagues had eventually come to terms with her new look.

There was more to it, but Ali and Annie were sent to bed by their parents.

Next up on the news was the weather and Ali sat back on the couch. “They don’t know where they come from”, he said in a thoughtful tone.

“Yeah”, Annie answered.

“We can go and discover the whereabouts, like scientists! We can become famous!”

“Yeah”, Annie exclaimed in a serious tone.

“Is that all you have to say? ‘Yeah’?” Ali stared his sister in the face, head tilted a little to one side.

“Yeah!” she replied shortly after, gleefully

“Stop being silly!” Ali laughed and tickled his kid sister. Despite younger, she was his height, and about as strong. She squirmed and giggled. Ali stopped, and sat back. “We could –“ he began as their father entered their room and interrupted what the young jackal had to say.

“You could go to bed”, he said, switching off the TV.

“Daddy, we're on vacation!” Annie protested.

“It\'s gone midnight”, their father stated in a calm manner, and more quiet, not really intended for the two: “Why they broadcast children’s movies that late in the evening is beyond me.” He watched his children scramble off their bed and get ready for the night, then left the room. Brother and sister made whispered plans for their expedition under the sheets until both fell asleep at last.

---

Early next day Ali and Annie went off to the children’s playground to gather their friends and make plans. One after another they trailed in, intrigued by Ali’s enthusiasm: Dean, a short, stocky husky with white and blue fur; Sandokan, an indian red dog, silent and tall as a beanstalk, and his girfriend, Bronwen, a fuzzy collie girl, the talking, singing, dancing counterpart to her quiet boyfriend.

“So, what do you have in mind?” Dean asked. The children sat around the rim of the smaller of the two sand boxes in the playground. Ali sat across from him, a long willow branch handy. He was ready to scratch pictures into the evened out surface of the sand in the center of the box, where a few lines were already visible.

“Well”, he answered, “we all know that all rubberized people are located in the vicinity of our city –“

“They reported eighteen others on the southern continent”, Sandokan interrupted unexpectedly, startling the young jackal. Everyone stared at the red dog. Ali then shrugged and continued:

“Right, but I don’t want to travel that far. So, I recommend going underground instead. More precisely here.” He poked the branch into the sand where some lines met: “Subway station of Bread Way and Sirius Street.”

“Why there?” Bronwen asked.

“Here is where many of the subway lines meet. This station goes down the deepest of all.”

“So you think it’s down there?” Dean asked and bit off a large bite of a salami sausage he had brought. “They say it’s some strange virus, maybe native to this world.”

Bronwen giggled: “My father says they are aliens who lost their costumes. And Ms. Shatner, our neighbour, claims they be the manifestation of evil in our world.”

“She dubs everything she doesn\'t understand evil ”, Sandokan chimed in.

Annie laughed. “Good thing breathing does not take lots of understanding of the world, or she would peg it an evil act!”

After the laughter Annie\'s comment sparked in everybody died off, Dean spoke up. “You seem to have thought it through pretty well. So what do we need for our expedition?”

“I made a list. Here,” Ali said and produced a couple sheets of paper, and distributed them among his friends.

---

The rocky ground underneath the city was as porous as a slice of cheese. Many subway lines followed natural caves and caverns, some of the latter were used as storage and machine rooms. About half of the lines were still uncharted to this day; A computer crash destroyed a lot of data, and a fire in the city’s archives did even more damage to it, destroying even the original building drawings. And since everything worked nobody saw use in going down there to make new maps. Over the years some lines and caverns went out of service and were simply given up. Rumour had it that there was a train standing deep down in the bowels of the city, long forgotten in a dusty, closed-up station, full of hapless dead passengers still sitting there quietly, waiting for the train to reach the terminal.

The subway system was home to the homeless, hiding place for the wanted, and it’s inhabitants provided a good reason for unruly pups to finish their peas.

The five friends met the next night a hour before midnight, at the entrance ot the Bread Way station. During the day they had gathered supplies and hidden them for later. So when all their parents went to bed early that night – that night’s TV program would later be awarded the most boring program of the decade – they picked up their respective back packs and gathered in a dark corner of the city plaza. Their back packs were filled with ropes, torches, knives, and food and drink. They wore warm clothes and sturdy boots. Sandokan had managed to bring maps of the charted parts of the subway tunnels.

“Everyone ready?” Ali asked at last. The others nodded, the young jackal could almost hear their hearts beating loudly. “Then let’s go. Dean, wait!” The husky, who was already on the way to the station entrance, stopped in his tracks. “I know a better entrance, away from surveillance cameras. We wouldn’t want anyone follow us, right?”

Sandokan studied his maps. “That deep car park over there?”

Ali nodded and led the others to the stairwell of the nearby deep car park. They climbed down the stairs until they reached the lowest deck, five stories down. The whole level was dark and full of dust and litter, and looked as if it had laid unused for years. It served as a resting place for some homeless people, who laid strewn about, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. In one corner stood a wrecked car on flat tyres, pilfered for parts and long forgotten. All this was illuminated by Ali’s torchlight, and they entered the scene in silence, to avoid waking up anybody sleeping.

Ali and Annie went first, then Dean, Bronwen and finally Sandokan, who closed the door behind him silently. The air was stale. It smelled bad and of things better not imagined. They sneaked around the heaps on the floor towards a heavily corroded door in a far wall. They stood before it and Ali gripped the handle, moving it slowly, trying to avoid making noises. He winced at the creaking. Bronwen sat down her back pack and produced a can of spray oil, which she used on hinge and handle. A minute later they were able to sneak through the door without much noise. They followed a corridor into a silent machine room. Lamps under the ceiling were long gone, as were parts of the machines, pilfered for parts like the car.

The five gathered in the room. Ali grinned at Bronwen. “Werever did you get the idea of bringing a spray can with oil?” he asked her.

Bronwen shrugged. “The door to our appartment used to creak. I simply didn’t have the time to bring it back.”

“Someone else had an idea I didn’t?”

Sandokan put down his back pack and pulled a short sword from it. The sheath bore some stitched ornaments. He held it into the torchlight, and the stitches glittered in the light. After he acknowledged the collective sigh of admiration he slowly pulled the sword from it’s sheath. The oddly shaped blade shimmered in the light. “This was handed down in my family since a hundred generations”, he explained with his calm voice, “and one day it will be mine officially.”

“Can you use it?” Annie asked.

“No. Please don’t tell anyone we might encounter.” With that he put away the blade and nestled the sheath to his belt. Then he shouldered his back pack again.

Another door led from the machine room into another room, this time filled with narrow drawers and a dirty table. Another door finally led into a subway station. It looked out of service, judging by the dirt on the floor and the lights being out there as well. Dust puppies the size of new born cubs piled in places. Old ads hung from frames on the walls, some of them advertising for companies long gone.

Slowly, Annie walked through the dirt toward the subway rails. “The station is closed, but... It looks like the line is still in use”, she whispered, looking down on the rails, and then stepped back again.

“So where are we now?” Dean asked nobody in particular. Sandokan studied his maps, with Bronwen illuminating them from behind with her torch.

A howling sound emanated from the tube, and a rush of air blew the dust around. Annie stepped back further as a subway train howled past them before vanishing at the other end of the station.

“That was line number nine”, Annie told them as she turned around and rejoined the others.

“So... We’re here”, Sandokan mumbled, marking a spot on his map with a glowing red marker. After a moment of map studying they left the station through the exit tunnel, walking on the sidewalk along rows of cables and the occasional lonely light indicating emergency exits. Another train rushed past them and they ducked into a niche. After a lengthy walk they reached a turn-off and followed it. The tunnel led downward into the rocky bowels of the city, and the rusty train rails indicated it was unused.

They used only one torch at a time to spare the batteries. Rats and other underground creatures fled the piercing beam of light, and their shrieks and the scraping of their claws were heard through the darkness around them.

Another turn-off was sealed off, apparently it had been left unfinished. A short walk after that they reached a large corridor that led away downward in a slight curve. Part concrete and part natural rock, its floor was strewn with little stones and dust which seemed to originate from the ceiling.

“Where does this corridor lead?” Ali asked Sandokan, who was busy flicking through his maps. “We left the maps already,” he answered. “I have to mark our path on the maps from now on.”

“Okay, well… how about we take a break?”

Everyone nodded, and Dean immediately slumped down on the ground, dropped his back pack and searched through it. He found a sausage and took a big bite from it. He happily chewed on his mouthful.

“Who are you?” a strange voice echoed through the tunnel behind them. Startled, the children stood up, and Sandokan drew his blade. They aimed their collective torch beams at a whiteish figure that approached them from further down the tunnel. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the figure demanded again.

“We, uhm, we…” Dean stammered.

“We are looking for –“ Bronwen started to explain, cut off when Annie grabbed her muzzle with both hands, stopping her reply. “For a friend,” the jackal girl finished the sentence.

“A friend?” the tall stranger echoed. Ears perked up toward the children, he slowly stepped onwards, closing the gap between him and the five friends. He was a male white dog, or maybe a wolf, with threadbare clothes and dirty fur. He did not shield his eyes before the bright torchlights, instead he held his eyes simply shut. One hand was hanging relaxed down his side, the other was held softly against the tunnel wall. His steps were sure as though he had spent his whole life underground.

Ali coughed. “Yes, a friend of ours seemed content in exploring the tunnels under the city. He’s lost for days now, and the police seems to have chalked him dead already.” His words sounded hollow and ridiculous to himself, but the other seemed not to mind.

“Ah yes, a friend.” The stranger stopped some five paces away from the children. “The last youth I saw were my own fifteen years ago, the night before I had to flee the world above.” His voice sounded rough, creaking like old hinges, long unused. He still held his eyes closed after the children lowered their beams and shut them off except for Ali, and they realized the stranger was blind. He turned his head a little bit, toward Sandokan, and said, “Put away your knife, son, before you hurt yourself with it.”

The red dog hesitated a bit, but then put away the blade.

The stranger then turned to face Dean who still stood with sausage in hand, and a mouthful of half-chewed meat. “Say, could you spare a bite for a starving dog?”

Dean snapped out of his daze and looked at the thin figure, and the sausage in his hand. He swallowed his bite. “Well, I.. of course I do. Just a moment.” He reached down and retrieved another sausage from his back pack and stepped forward. Standing before the stranger, he held the sausage up. Then it dawned on him that the other was blind, and he simply took the white dog’s free hand and placed the sausage in it. The stranger smiled and lifted the sausage to his nose to take in the smell. Then he took a bite off it and chewed, smiling. The children saw some of his teeth were gone. “What were you eating down here anyway?” Dean asked before he could stop himself.

The dog swallowed. “Rats, son. And other creatures that live here. Nothing you kids would want to know about, I guess.”

Ali looked at the others, and nodded. “Say, if you have been living down here for so long, would you happen to know where this corridor leads? The one to your left?”

The white dog stopped chewing. “I wouldn’t recommend going down there, son. There is something strange down there. Something… don’t go there, please.” He sounded seriously concerned.

Ali looked at his friend’s faces. Annie grinned broadly, and Bronwen said, “Sounds like this would be the way we should go, don’t you think? I mean, are there some gangs hiding there, or a huge monster, thriving on hapless children?”

“No, I don’t think so. I never went down to explore it myself, but there is definitely something strange down there. Again, please don’t go there.”

“Thank you for your advice, sir”, Ali said, “but I fear we are determined to go.”

“In that case I’ll sit here and wait for your return.” The stranger felt for the rusty rails and sat down. “Please tell me your names, so that I can point anyone searching for you in the right direction.”

The five told him their names and started down the corridor. After a good distance the corridor became a natural cave, with walls full of gaps, holes and curious forms created by water trickling in. many tiny tubes that led away from the main tunnel, and sometimes they saw crystals in every possible colour growing there. The ground became uneven, and they found themselves climbing across the forms.

After what seemed like an eternity of climbing through caves, tunnels and up and down gaps, they took rest in a cavern shaped like half an egg. Beautiful crystals grew in many spots around the walls, and the list from their torches made for multicoloured reflexes everywhere. They dropped their back packs and sat down to eat and drink. They all started to feel their muscles. Yet nobody complained, the thrill of their search was still there.

After a while Ali stood up, wandering around the cave, and looked more closely at the crystals. When he reached out for a set of crystals that seemed to lay loosely onto the rock one of his feet slipped off the rock he was standing on, and he fell backwards. Arms flailing about, he shouted out in surprise: Instead of hitting the ground, he fell further through a dark hole. Before anybody could react, they heard nothing but a noise of something hitting a lake, and Ali’s yell cut off.

They jumped on their feet, torches ready, and gathered around the hole in the cave floor through which the jackal boy had disappeared. Their lights reflected on a shiny surface, idly rippling like a sea of jelly. But no sign of Annie’s brother. A hefty discussion later they agreed to letting Sandokan down through the hole on a rope to examine the cave underneath, and so they did. The red dog reported a huge cavern with low ceiling and the ground almost entirely covered with some black liquid. Then, as they pulled him back up: “But I think I know how we can get into the cavern. Follow me.”

He led his friends back through the tunnel they came in until they reached a gap in the wall, and after some climbing they stood before the lake. A torch left behind above shed some light onto the lake which appeared strangely undisturbed, considering that someone had fallen into it a couple minutes before. Dean knelt down and stuck a finger into the lake, and retrieved it with some difficulty. The liquid stretched and slowly slipped off his finger to snap back with a wet sound. The husky sighed heavily. ”I don’t think we can find him in there,\" he said. \"This is like jelly, or something.”

“Shut up!” Annie interrupted him at the top of her lungs, her voice showing that she was insistent on not crying: “He ain’t dead, I know it!” She pushed the husky out of her way, ready to dive into the silent lake. Bronwen caught her in the last moment, and they started to yell at each other, Annie now on the verge of bursting into tears.

A loud whistle from Sandokan silenced them both, and everyone turned to follow the red dog’s torch beam with the eyes. About the spot where Ali had hit the lake’s surface, something moved slowly. Flat forms emerged from the liquid, and started to move toward where the four stood. A minute of silent watching later the forms had almost reached the rocky beach. Bronwen took hold of one and pulled something like a shirt from the black ooze. It took not much effort, as though the ooze wanted to get rid of it. The shirt looked like the one Ali had worn, but was made from soft, translucent rubber. As were the other forms they pulled off the surface, his trousers, undies, socks, boots… boots and coat were considerably thicker that the shirt, but still soft, like thin, perfectly treated leather, a little like hairless skin… They handed the clothes around, each feeling the strange new condition of the slightly translucent clothes. Suddenly Dean caught sight of another motion on the lake’s surface, and they turned to watch what the next surprise the lake would give them would be.

Ripples like those in water disturbed by a stone only much slower became visible about the middle of the lake, and the ripples moved toward where the four stood. After some time the ears and then the head of a jackal emerged from the ooze, not exactly featureless, but without eyes, nostrils or mouth, and as Annie put it, whispered under her breath: "It's smooth... just like a balloon". So was the rest of the figure, as it stepped from the lake like a statue of rubber come alive. They stepped back as the statue finally stood at the edge of the lake. It was the same size as Ali, and Annie recognized the facial features. The figure’s eyes snapped open, and eyes the colour of bronce scanned the gathered friends. The mouth opened, and the figure took a deep breath, and then it blew out his nostrils.

“I hope you missed me”, the figure said with Ali’s voice.

“Of course we did!” Annie cried and threw herself into Ali’s open arms.

While they hugged, the others watched them, ears perked in surprise and interest. Bronwen poked her boyfriend’s ribs with an elbow and said with a giggle: “I think you’d look good that way, too.”

“I don’t know.” Sandokan shrugged. “I wouldn’t like being black. If I could choose, maybe…" He turned to her and continued with a soft smile: "But only with you by my side.”

The collie girl giggled. “Deal. But not today.”

“Hey Ali, how are you, and how did id feel to be, ehm, like…” Deans voice trailed off, he was unsure what to say.

Ali took a deep breath. Annie stepped back, and she giggled when she saw her brother’s new body’s details. He noticed her and the others' gaze, and realised how very naked he was. Quickly, he scrambled for his clothes, and they helped him get them on. “At first it was like falling into a sea of redberry jam," he explained while he dressed. "It was all around me, seeping into me through every opening and pore of my body. When it filled my lungs, I was just about to panic." He stopped dressing for a moment and frowned before continuing: "It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t about to suffocate. The worst part is when your heart stops beating. It gets replaced by a hot spot inside your chest... Feels like... I don't know... Like it\'s my life force, or whatever… well, then I lost my shape, and became one with the lake for a time." He looked back at the lake with his ears perked curiously: "Until now…”

Ali became quiet, fumbling with his shirt’s buttons which refused to keep a hold in the soft rubber. Finally he decided to wear the shirt unbuttoned. Sandokan had cut off a length of rope which now served for a belt, since the one Ali had worn was now too soft and stretchy to hold his trousers in place. “But hey, at least now I know where the others got touched by the lake! When I was one with it, I felt all of it, and there are strings of it leading up to the surface," he said and turned to Annie: "Sort of like the tentacles on the big squid we saw on the telly the other day. They resurface in certain spots up there," he said, nodding towards the cave\'s ceiling.

“Really? Where?” Annie wanted to know.

“I’d have to find out when we are back.” Ali was finished clothing and stood there, arms opened. “How do I look?”

“Like some ancient god of the dead” Sandokan exclaimed giggling a contagious giggle, and soon they were all giggling and laughing with him, relieved that their friend was safe.

---

The old dog actually sat where they had left him, just like he had promised. He perked his ears up and toward them, and stood when they finally reached him. “So did you find what you were looking for?”

“Sort of”, Ali laughed. “I guess you guessed already what we were after?”

“Not really. I never went far enough to find out. So what is it, pray tell?”

“A lake of rubber”, Bronwen answered.

“Rubber?” The stranger tilted his head a bit. “Say… Ali? Your movements sound different. What happened?”

“You know, you best feel for yourself”, Ali answered and stepped forward so the other could touch him. And so the old dog did, feeling the soft rubber shirt and the youth’s smooth chest underneath it, and the just as smooth face. “Are you wearing some kind of scuba suit? And some strange mask?”

“No, that’s actually me. An all new body made of rubber”, Ali giggled.

“Hum. You can tell me your story on our way up. If you would follow me?”

---

The old dog led the group through some even more remote and unused tunnels and corridors than they went down there through. They stumbled through another out of service station, where they found a subway train, dark and forgotten. They explored the train full of fear of what they might find, but it was empty. No corpses looking at them with empty eye sockets, no bones strewn around. And no driver\'s ghost either, since all the trains were remote controlled. The train was simply sent here, stopped, switched off, and then finally forgotten by some bureaucrat up in the town hall.

All the time Sandokan did his best to jot down their way on his maps.

They left the station through another tunnel and reached a maintenance corridor, leading to a hub-like room from which other corridors led away into darkness. They followed one and stood before a rusty door like the .

The old dog turned to them. “Behind that door you will find the Bread Way Station. Thank you for your company. It was an absolute pleasure meeting you all.” He gave a little bow to then and turned away again, and was about to vanish into the darkness of the tunnel system underneath the city.

“Wait!” Bronwen grabbed his threadbare coat sleeve. “We don’t even know your name. You can’t just go like that!”

The stranger hesitated. “Beyond that door”, he finally answered, “my name was Ron Giligan.”

“Giligan”, Bronwen mused for a moment, then perked her ears and smiles up to him. “And you fled from there fifteen years ago. Because they accused you of stealing eight million credits, killing someone, and leading your company into ruin, right? They would have deleted your personality. I read about it a couple weeks ago, when they found a skeleton and first identified it with you.”

Giligan took a deep breath. “I wasn’t guilty.”

“Of course not, they found the one guilty of the crimes several years ago. You have no reason to hide anymore.”

Giligan swallowed hard. “Is that true?” he whispered.

Bronwen nodded. Then she remebered the other being blind and answered, “Yes, absolutely.”

“Aren’t you fed up with eating things better left unnamed?” Dean chimed in.

“Don’t you want to feel the sun on your fur again?” Annie asked.

“Come with us”, Sandokan added.

“Allright”, Giligan sighed. “I guess I have overstayed my welcome in the underground a bit anyway.”

Ali grinned and turned to get a tight hold of the door’s handle, pulling hard. As he ripped the door open, some subway employee almost fell forward, about to open the door with a set of keys. Behind him there stood a gathering od police forces, more employees, medics, and the families of all the children.

When the six stepped into the light they were greeted by their families, and some reporter’s camera’s flashlights, and Giligan was the only one not squinting from the bright light. They got sent to their respective relatives, and while their mother took Annie into a hug, Ali’s father caught hold of his transformed son, startled at first but then hugged him tightly.

“Boy, you have changed a bit. You feel so soft, I hope I do not hurt you squeezing?”

“Not a bit”, Ali laughed, “It looks like i'm pretty elastic.”

Annie and Ali changed places, and his mother squeezed him even tighter. Ali began to feel like a balloon in the grip of a little child content to make him pop, but he felt no pain. Just relief. He had discovered a great secret, and lived to tell people about it.

In the background Giligan got interviewed by the police. Some dog family got led into the fray, and they appeared to be the old dog’s family, happening to live not far away. After a bit of hesitation when they saw the old one’s condition, Ali watched the reunited family move in and hug him tight, with tears of joy flowing down their cheeks and soaking the fur on their faces. Ali smiled even broader and closed his eyes, burying his muzzle in the fur on his mother's neck.

The interviews the police made took up the rest of the night. They learned that they were gone almost two nights and three days, and that they had found Ali’s list on the family computer along with the maps Sandokan had found on the 'net on his family’s machine.

Finally the police comissioner interviewing the children said, “So. Let me see if I got this right: Am I to understand you actually learned what this transformation stuff is all about?”

The young jackal nodded, idly rubbing at his chest with a blunt-clawed rubber finger. “But all I can say now is that this lake of ooze is a creature native to this world, sleeping for eons down there.”

“Do you think it will go and transform us all?”

Ali shook his head: “I don’t know,\" and then looked up to the commissioner, smiling broadly as he continued. "But if, then not as slaves or something. It’s more like the living essence of the former masters of this world. They were long gone when we came here first.”

The comissioner sighed. “In that case I am curious where this would end." Putting his pen away and sending Ali off, he looked around and spoke lowly to himself: "At least we can save on food costs…”