I was gripping Bitchmaster's armrests. I was not the only one.

Ash had hold of the right, and Nip clenched the left so tight his knuckles creaked. Even Billy had drawn back from the doorway, toward us.

Fear is magnetic.

Perhaps that explains why we went inside. Surely it wasn't curiosity, and surely it wasn't the switchblade either, if that had ever been a genuine threat at all. No. We went into the dark, our little light flickering between us, because we were pulled. Because the fear in us felt the fear inside that room and went to it, like a child to its mother.

There was no lip at the doorway, only a smooth gap between floorboards and carpet. But I felt the threshold all the same. I felt it in the tiny hairs on my arms and in the toes of my unfeeling feet. An electrical chill. A shiver in the dead air. My mind flashed back once more to the old football field. I saw the sun gauzed in smoke. I saw the grass moving around me, quivering in a breeze that was not there, did not exist. Ash's nails dug deeper into my armrest and Nip made a low, sick sound in his throat. The smell clinging to Billy, the smell sweating from the house . . .

. . . it was not an undersmell anymore.

It had graduated.

This is what dying smells like, I thought. This is the smell a body makes when it's rotting on the inside, and it can no longer shit . . . only leak.

Billy closed the door. He moved toward us, and the carbide lamp threw long dancing shadows off our bodies. Where the shadows stopped sat a raised bed, its covers thrown onto the floor, its mattress bare except for oily stains. I had an idea what those stains were. Some of them still looked damp.

Light caressed something hunched behind the bed.

A chair.

It was empty.

"Dad?" Billy stopped and swung the lamp. The dark flushed from one corner of the room and filled in the other. "Dad?" He turned back to us slowly. His arm was shaking. "He was here when I—"

From underneath the bed reached a huge red hand, its fingers melted together.

"What?" Billy said, seeing the expression on our faces.

Nip lifted a stiff arm. Pointed.

Billy twisted, and the hand pulled back into the dark. He looked questioningly at us. Nip continued to point. Ash and I continued to stare. Billy got down on his knees, lowering the lamp.

A baby-smooth face appeared beneath the bed. It shrieked as the light touched it and hid itself behind swollen red hands. Finally, I recognized those hands for what they were. Oven mitts.

Billy pulled the lamp away. "Sorry, sorry."

There was a whisper. "It hurtsssssss."

We shared a glance at that, Ash and Nip and I. You'd better believe we did. Leonard Higgins, the dead man on the radio, the miner long-ago buried inside Widow's Peak, moaned in the recesses of my mind . . . it hurthhhh, it hurthhhhhh.

"Dad. We have company. Do you know company? Dad?" Billy reached under the bed. He cried out and snatched his hand back, waving it in the air. Blood sprinkled the carpet. "Shit, fuck. What did I tell you about biting? What did I say?" His bleeding hand closed into a fist. He slammed it into the mattress, shaking the entire frame. I heard a whimper. Billy leaned over. "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean it, I didn't. Dad?"

Mumbling. "Soon, soon, soon, opening soon, opening, soon, soon—"

"Dad."

"—soon, scream, scream, it will scream, soon, soon, soon—"

"Dad, listen."

"—opening to scream, opening to—"

Billy spoke like he was giving a command. "Carl Rascoe."

His father's disjointed flow of words came to an abrupt halt. Then, slow and smooth and eerily distant, like the recording of a voice rather than the voice itself: "Carl Rascoe was late. He got out of his truck, one hand on his hardhat. The light on the sonofabitch was busted, but would Blackstone fetch him another one? Sure they would, for fifty bucks. Fifty bucks! For that much you could get a tight little mouth to suck the dickspit out of you. Carl zipped his coat and started across the clearing. It was hot down under, awful hot, but it'd take a long time to get there, as deep as he was going."

Billy turned to us. His face wore a strange mix of emotions. "It's the same every time he tells it. He won't stop now, not until he reaches the end. He can't."

I thought of wheels rolling down a slope, spinning faster, faster.

Nip and Ash pressed close.

Under the bed, the voice in the dark told its story. "Above Widow's Peak . . ."

♫

Above Widow's Peak the sky was a sharp acid blue. It stung Carl's eyes just looking at it. He kept his head low as he walked to the pithead. What an ugly bastard that thing was. A hundred feet tall and black, it stuck up out of the clearing like a charred middle finger. Fuck you, too, thought Carl. He boarded the cage below, where men in orange overalls and white undershirts stood waiting to head down into the mountain. A greasy elbow nudged him.

"You on basement again, Rascoe?" said Gabriel, laughing with his eyes.

"That's right."

"Old man must love you."

"Must."

The spick grinned and turned back to his buddy, Mike, who was playing on his smartphone with a tar-stained finger. Welshers, both of them. And even worse poker players. They always got down in chips but never got up from the table. Not until they had bet something their wives would be sore about them losing later.

"Thirty seconds!" shouted the operator. "Next bus down ain't for an hour, so get on or get left behind."

The stragglers made their way to the cage. As they crowded in, Carl felt the steel floor tremble beneath his feet. He spread his legs wide, making extra room for himself, and stared up through the grated ceiling and interlocking beams of the pithead. He could feel the sun high on his cheeks where his beard didn't grow, even though the sun itself was hiding behind the mountain. That was light for you. Light was always nosing around, looking to explore, expose. Pull the blinds and in it comes. Open the door at night and out it goes. The dark was different. The dark liked exactly where it was. Wherever it was.

With a deep chunkchunkchunk, the cage rumbled into the earth. Carl closed his eyes as the ground closed around him. If my body is buried down under, carry my soul up above. His father's prayer. Johnny Rascoe hadn't gotten buried himself. At least, not under rock. His heart had blown out while his whale of a second wife was impaling herself on him. Personally, Carl would take a cave-in.

The shadows deepened inside the cage. Men drank coffee from tall thermoses and ate pastries from waxy wrappers. Mike and Gabriel huddled over the smartphone like it was a fire, their faces blue in the backlight. They were watching some dog howl along to an acoustic guitar. Carl reached for his Newports, then made a fist and dropped his hand. No smoking in the underworld.

The howling cut off. Mercifully.

"Damn reception," said Mike, "didn't even get to the best part."

The cage ground to a stop and a dozen assholes, all wearing jackets and thick denim jeans, strolled off into Loading Station A. Or The Warehouse, as most called it, because it was so damn big. Steel ribs braced concrete walls. LEDs glared down from high overhead. The thump and grind of machinery echoed off every surface. There were six tunnels on this level, each radiating outward from the main shaft. Some tunnels went as far as a mile, following the rich veins of ore snaking through Widow's Peak. Carl would have given his left nut (and his left nut was the healthy one) to be digging in The Warehouse and not the basement.

A chilly draft blew into the cage as its gate closed. Carl bundled himself in his coat. Above his head a lightbulb flicked on, then the trip down continued.

"Think your lady'll let you out of the house tonight?" said Gabriel.

"Hard to say," said Mike. "Think your lady'll let you back into the house?"

"Hard to say."

Elbowing, laughter.

God, it was going to be a long ride.

Carl crossed his arms and set his jaws. One of the suspension cords gave off a periodic, strained tick. The gate opened, more men got off, the gate closed. Tick . . . tick . . . tick. Water began to trickle inside the shaft. Tick . . . tick . . . tick. Carl loosened the collar of his jacket. It was getting warmer.

"They should install seats on this thing," Mike grumbled.

"Big leather seats," added Gabriel.

"With cup holders."

"Hell, put a projector in while you're at it." Gabriel made a box with his hands, like a director squaring his shot. "Hang a screen right up there on the wall."

"A little girl-on-girl action to start the day right, know what I'm saying?"

"I know what you're saying."

Carl caught his hand fumbling for the flask in his inner breastpocket. He gritted his teeth. Just a little while longer.

"Think of the echoes."

"They'd call this the moaning shaft."

Mike swung his head Carl's direction. "What do you say, Rascal?"

"I don't."

"You prefer stud-on-stud instead?"

Tick.

"He's imagining the money-shot, Gabriel."

Tick.

"I think you're right, Mike. Just picturing that splat up on the screen, bigger than life, has old Rascal all hot and bothered."

Carl saw himself dragging Gabriel's face against the cage wall, peeling the flesh off like cheese through a grater.

"His pants are tickling, I bet."

"About to be wet, I bet."

Carl's voice squeaked out of his throat. "Enough."

Gabriel and Mike turned to each other.

"Enough, he says."

"Thinks he's our boss, doesn't he?"

"Sure seems like it."

"Guess he forgot we aren't on his crew."

"Guess so." Mike thumbed his chin in a considering way. "Must not remember we have titles ourselves."

"What's yours say?"

Mike peered down at his Blackstone ID. "Mine says, Fuck That Guy."

"That's what mine says, too."

"No, yours says Senior Field Operator."

"Fuck That Guy is in the fine print." Gabriel dressed his voice in a heavy Spanish Accent. "And that's Señor Senior Field Op. to you, sir."

The cage gave a bump, and the door opened on Loading Station C. Another group of men exited, their footfalls bouncing off the curved walls and ceiling. A tractor pushed its enormous drill bit into a tunnel's mouth. Carl closed his eyes as the descent carried on, the cage falling slowly through blackness, into blackness.

Half a mile down.

Halfway there.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

____ ____

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Poor Things, please consider hitting the vote button—it will help other readers find the story. Comments are always appreciated, too. Seriously, I love them.

Coming up, Billy's dad reaches the basement and makes a frightening discovery . . .