Crypt Girls

"Who kept who up all night?! Deceitful woman."

"Oh you love it and you know it."

"I do. I really do. But still, you had better get your poor frail little self out of bed and get ready. I really don't think Mrs. Crenshaw will accept 'weariness from excessive Sapphic indulgence due to overexposure to morally corrupting material' as a good excuse for lateness."

Lily giggled, rolled over until she was crossways on the bed and rested her chin in her cupped palms, bright blue eyes twinkling. "If she did, I'd use that excuse every day."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Mrs. Crenshaw wouldn't consider the Apocalypse as a good reason for lateness."

Lily swung her legs off the bed and self-consciously smoothed her thin, white, chiffon peignoir.

"Well, if we're lucky, maybe we'll get trapped down in the Crypt with your man again!"

They were in fact "trapped" with Ken down in the Crypt for most of the morning. He'd brought several rolls of tracing paper and spent the morning tracing maps, then annotating them from his notebooks, occasionally asking Rose or Lily to hunt down one of the newspapers or books he'd been looking at. He was dutifully marking notations on the traced maps with a variety of colored pencils, then measuring and making more notations. He had a compass and a ruler as well as his colored pencils.

Lily's curiosity got the better of her.

"So, what are you doing?"

Ken finished scribing a red line.

"I don't really have a name for it - I'm looking at connections between events and geological formations for a customer."

Lily looked at the mesh of lines. "Does it... pay well?"

Ken smiled - it seemed just a little less humorless than usual. "It can. It depends on the customer."

Rose sensed something off and was afraid Lily had said something offensive, and started to pull her away, but Ken smiled genuinely.

"If Mrs. Crenshaw approves I would to like to go ahead and work through lunch. If you two have no objection, I'll have lunch delivered here for all of us."

Lilly agreed for both of them - sometimes Rose despaired over how much Lily valued food - and when Mrs. Crenshaw came down to check on them, Ken explained that he really didn't want to lose track of what he was doing and proposed his lunch offer - even offering to purchase lunch for Mrs. Crenshaw. She hesitantly agreed, although she declined his offer for her to join them for lunch, as she was afraid it might show favoritism toward Rose and Lily. Ken wrote out a note and gave her two dollars and a note to give to one of the cab drivers who came to the library to pick up patrons for lunch. He hadn't asked what they wanted, but Rose figured two dollars would certainly buy some good sandwiches.

Rose and Lilly cleared off one of the research tables just in time. Mrs. Crenshaw escorted two large men down to the Crypt carrying large baskets - they laid out an absolute repast. Rose watched as Lilly's eyes almost bugged out of her head at the trays of food being laid out. The smells were indescribably delicious. One of the two men gave Mrs. Crenshaw a basket to take with her when she went upstairs.

It was hardly sandwiches. Instead, a huge array of Italian dishes were laid out, some of which Rose had never seen before.

One of the two men pulled a bottle of wine out of the basket along with three glass, and expertly filled and placed a glass in front of each of them.

"From Mr. Gambini, with his thanks."

Ken looked solemn for a moment and replied. "I appreciate it. And please tell him that the food is up to his usual fine standards."

Rose felt herself freeze, and saw Lily freeze as well, glass couched in one hand, eyes wide.

That, she felt, certainly explained the fine food. Gambini's was the finest restaurant in town. A single meal at Gambini's would cost more than she and Lily earned in a month combined. While that was disconcerting enough, Gambini was also known to be one of the most powerful racketeers and bootleggers in the city. And the familiarity meant that Ken was connected to him.

Lily caught her eye and shrugged, then sipped her wine, closing her eyes for a minute. After the men left, they began their meal and Ken watched bemusedly as Lily tore through dish after dish, declaring each one to be better than the last. Rose could hardly keep up with her, but was surprised at just how much she did eat. Each and every dish really was better than the last.

Despite everything, Ken didn't push his advantage with familiarity, although he responded to Lily's aggressive questioning with wry amusement.

"So, is Johnny Gambini one of your customers?"

"Sometimes. I do occasional research for him. He pays well, and I can always get a seat at his restaurant."

Lily peered at him with narrowed eyes and a slight smile, "What does your... wife think of your work."

Rose was appalled at her lack of subtlety and kicked her under the table, eliciting a yelp.

Ken chuckled. "I'm afraid my work isn't very conducive to marriage."

"Oh, that's a terrible Pity". Although it was quite clear Lily didn't feel bad about that at all.

Rose felt it was a fair enough warning for any girl.

Despite being kicked, Lily kept up her barrage of questions. Which Ken fielded with good humor, and began politely responding with his own.

Lily responded with a flirtatious glee, far too forward for Rose's comfort. Still though, Ken adeptly turned the subject whenever it bordered on true impropriety and made sure Rose was pulled into the banter herself.

By the end of the meal, as they packed up the dishes into the baskets for the men to pick up later, Rose realized she felt she had known Ken for simply ages.

By the end of the day, when Ken prepared to leave, both she and Lily actually felt saddened by his announcement that he would be gone for several weeks.

###

Two days later, Rose found herself working with a large, repellent man with thin, unkempt hair, and staring dark eyes in a lupine face, slouched shoulders, long arms, huge hands and large discolored yellow teeth that reminded her vaguely of shovels. Mrs. Crenshaw, obviously repelled by him, introduced him as Mr. Pike. His furtive looks at her made her uncomfortable in a different manner than those of the frat boys and other men. The frat boys - and most men for that matter - were obviously picturing her in a state of dishabille, but in this man's case his desire seemed less like healthy carnal lust, and far more unclean. A vague foetid odor seemed to cling to him.

He'd asked for several books, some with German and Latin names, only a few of which were listed and most of them were in the restricted Crypt. His agitation at discovering he would have to fill out paperwork was clear. Rose patiently explained that she couldn't even get into the deeper Crypt without Mrs. Crenshaw's permission and keys, but he simply became surly and lurched from the library in visible anger leaving his material on the table.

Rose was hardly sorry to see him leave, but still resented his angry departure and furtive, unhealthy looks. She took the books down to Lilly in the Crypt and described the visitor while they sat, perched on Lily's cart.

Lily wrinkled her nose. "Sounds perfectly horrible. I hope I never meet him."

Rose shivered. "Guys look me over all the time, but the way he did it was..." she just trailed off as metal clinked over by the restricted Crypt. Rose stood up off the cart and stepped off in the direction of the sound, followed by Lily.

"Mrs. Crenshsaw?"

No answer but the creak of metal.

As they rounded the corner, the gate to the restricted stacks stood wide open. Lily pushed past Rose, eyes blazing. "I swear if it's those Kappa Sigma mugs down here again..."

She froze as the grotesque form of Mr. Pike limped out of the restricted Crypt, through the open gate, clutching several volumes in his oversize hands. A string of drool hung from the corner of his mouth, which was frozen in a hideous parody of a smile.

He hissed at them, "Oh, what lovely Queens you will make!"

Rose was about to scream, when they were both seized from behind by several sets of strong, clawed hands and rags dripping with a noxious chemical substance shoved into their faces. The last thing Rose saw as she lost consciousness was a set of yellow, shovel-shaped teeth grinning maniacally in triumph.

###

The old grocery truck sputtered along the dusty road, occasional ruts making efforts to wrench the wheel from Ken's hands. Weeks of dry heat had turned the landscape a dull brown - even the still-green trees were muted and dull. His ragged undershirt and stained work pants were almost the same color as the dull brown fields. A battered Ivy cap perched firmly on his head, twisted slightly to shade his eyes from the relentless stare of the sun.

Over the last three weeks, he'd turned up some interesting facts. The missing truck full of whiskey couldn't have gone far - the follow car had made it to the rendezvous point only five minutes later than expected, found out that the truck hadn't made it and turned right around finding the dead bootlegger only five miles back. There were really no connecting roads, but the ground had been baked hard enough that tracks were unlikely even in the open fields. Gambini was sure of his men's loyalty. And Ken had failed to find anything to indicate he was wrong. There'd been some leads, though - his ragged array of vegetables, bought second hand from Soulard Market, brought a lot of wives out to look them over and exchange gossip. The vegetables were selling better than they should have due to the drought's impact on local gardens and the fact that Ken was selling them below his cost. Stories seemed to center on a creepy hunchbacked man who had shown up a few months earlier - nobody really knew him, and nobody was sure where he was staying, but by the stories he certainly lived somewhere near the point where the truck had gone missing. Ken was sure the missing truck hadn't left the area, and he suspected it was being kept in one of the large caverns he'd found on the geologic surveys in the library.

He pulled the truck into a small wooded draw sheltering a small spring-fed pool off the side of the road and spent several minutes covering with brush. On inspection, it was clearly out of casual view of the road, the small pool had kept the greenery thick enough for a good hiding place, despite the drought. He knew he was going to have to be cautious. Gambini had been right, there was a least one Treasury agent looking into the situation - a known bootlegger, dead with his throat ripped out had drawn attention. The agent hadn't been very subtle, and all the housewives remembered the big blonde man very clearly, Ken had been careful to stay away from the agent's inquiries. The agent had apparently left a couple days ago, but Ken had heard that he had left his suitcase at a rooming house in the area.

Ken pulled a long bundle and an old Army pack from the truck and began to stride quickly, but quietly toward the nearest cave.

###

Rose wasn't sure how long she'd been here anymore, it seemed like forever; she was cold and damp... and so gnawingly hungry. She had woken here, stripped and chained to the wall opposite Lily, whose bruised, pale, grime-covered body she could see curled in her corner, staring hollow-eyed, unblinkingly, around their tiny hell. They fed the girls occasionally, a nasty broth with undercooked chunks of gristly meat. It was probably a measure of how hungry they were that the awful meal was starting to taste normal. Recently, though, all they'd brought was a little iron-tasting water, obviously filthy, even in the dim reddish light that filtered in from the other side of the door. Both of the women felt sick, constantly queasy - and neither could sleep. After a couple days, a sibilant, unceasing whispering began that they just couldn't shut out, no matter how hard they tried. They never said it out loud, but they both knew they would be defiled. It hadn't quite happened yet but the awful men treated them horribly, leering and making grotesque gestures.

Once, a few days ago, one of the man-things had suddenly grabbed Lily and began to force her legs apart - in her weakened state all she could do was cry. But the others grabbed him and began to beat him unmercifully. He kept struggling to get to her right up until they caved his skull in. One of the animal-like men leered at her and uttered one of the few things any of them said. "Not ready yet."

At first she and Lily had talked, kept encouraging each other and looked for a way out, but the chains were massive and they didn't have anything to work with. As time dragged on, hope died and she and Lily had spent more and more time silently staring fixedly into each other's eyes. Lily's gaunt stare began to remind her of their grotesque captors, her shoulders hunching, her hands curling, claw-like. Worst of all, her eyes grew darker and darker, seeming to lose the beautiful blue that Rose loved so much.

Rose started at the sound of the metal door opening and cringed further back into her corner of the stone cell. Two of the misshapen men dragged something in. It was a man, a big, blonde man, badly beaten, breathing slow, shallow, labored breaths. His shirt and shoes were missing. The two captors produced a set of manacles and chained him to a large iron staple in the middle of the floor. Then they adjusted Lily and Rose's chains to give them another couple of feet of movement before walking out.

The door slammed shut.

Rose crawled over to the new limit of her chain and tried to rouse the man. Despite the blood, he felt clean, somehow better than their surroundings. Lily was doing the same thing, gently shaking him and whispering, he moved but didn't wake. Rose leaned closer. His smell filled her nostrils. She felt her mouth water.

Rose jerked back with a start, seeing Lily do the same - eyes wide in terror.

They knew now. They knew what the food was, knew why the food had stopped. The things had just brought fresher food this time. The whispering seemed louder, she was sure they were making vile, unspeakable promises, if only the girls would... Rose heard a high pitched whining and looked at Lily, realizing that both of them were doing it.

Simultaneously they snatched each other's hands in an unbreakable grip.

"NO!" Rose wasn't sure which of them had spoken for a second, then realized it had been her.

Lily locked eyes with her - and Rose could momentarily see them flare to their old bright blue, hard and determined.

"I'd rather die."

They both knew they really would die, and they began to sob, almost silently, leaning into each other. They huddled protectively over the wounded man until they fell into fitful, useless half-sleep.

###

Ken crouched over the dead body - he'd smashed the man's head in with his old trench mace - if the ape-like figure really was a man. The trench mace was swifter and surer than the knife and lot less noisy than the shotgun slung over his back. He'd left his pack with its load of dynamite near the entrance.

After the finding the room with corpses of men and women hung up and butchered for meat, he'd gone back and killed the two "men" he'd knocked out and tied up; there would be no prisoners and he decided he really didn't want to hear any answers they might have. The men were oddly formed, degenerate things, stoop shouldered, heavily muscled with big staring eyes that never blinked and large yellow spade-like teeth. He'd had a bad feeling when he'd looked at them. The repulsive things were familiar. Figures from the past, things he'd hoped to never see them again.

He'd found the truck, although had been abused to the point of uselessness. He'd also found what seemed to the entrance to hell. The cave system was dimly lit with oil lamps placed sporadically throughout the chambers. The floor had been somewhat leveled and various chambers were used as rooms for different purposes. The abattoir had been the worst, but the floors of other rooms were coated in blood. In one room he found the Gambini's nearly pure alcohol. It was originally intended to be cut with water and colorized to produce ersatz whiskey, but it was spoiled for any purpose now - the barrels had been opened and severed heads floated in them.

Looking around a corner down a tunnel that seemed to lead steeply down, he could see two of the repellent men peering through a grating in a metal door. They were talking in harsh voices.

"They haven't fed. Why haven't they eaten?"

"Something is wrong, they're... broken... somehow..."

The other snarled angrily. "We did nothing wrong!"

One of them pulled a set of keys and began to unlock the door.

Glancing once more down the passage, Ken slid toward them silently, trench mace readied.

###

The cover over the tiny grating slid back, letting more dull red light into the cell. Rose looked at Lily then down at the blonde man. He was still alive, she could sense his heartbeat. The mouth-watering smell wasn't as compelling as it had been at first. She felt stronger, better. The unending sick feeling was gone for the first time she could remember since waking up here. Staring eyes leered at them through the window in the door. For some reason, she sensed that one of them was actually "Mr. Pike", even though she couldn't really see them and they were hard to tell apart anyway.

She felt their disappointment at the blonde man's survival. She looked over and saw a defiant look on Lily's face that she knew echoed her own. The horrible men would continue to be disappointed.

She returned her stare to the door as she heard the key turning and found her voice.

"You might as well kill us. It doesn't matter how much you hurt us, we'll never be like you!"

Mr. Pike started to respond, but was yanked suddenly from the window, with an odd crunching sound - moments later, something slammed hard into the cell door. Curious dragging sounds, with shifting light, then the door opened wide. As suddenly as if a radio was turned off, the horrible whispering scratching at the back of her skull abruptly stopped cold. A dark figure filled the doorway, a too-bright lamp in one hand and a heavy club of some kind gripped in the other.

###

Ken dragged the dead men from the door - they had been far too focused to hear his approach, and the mace had made short work of them. Grabbing one of the oil lamps, he pulled the door open.

The room was a scene from a deranged man's nightmares. The walls floor and ceiling were coated in blood, and two lean figures covered in dried blood crouched aggressively over the slumped body of a man. He had just begun to step forward to kill the beasts before recognition sunk in. They were women. And he knew them.

"Rose. Lily."

Rose sat back, stunned as Ken stepped in. Lily started to babble incoherently, and reached for him, but was suddenly jerked short by the chains. He stepped back and yanked the keys from the door and quickly unlocked their chains.

"We have to get out of here, I'm not sure how many of them there are, but it looks like they are... feeding... dozens of them."

He looked down at the big blonde man in a calculating manner.

Rose spoke "We have to take him with us. We can't leave him here for them."

"You'll have to get him - I need to check the passage." He handed her the keys and stepped back out into the corridor as she scrabbled to unlock the last lock. She could feel the hope surging through herself and Lily, feel the weakness and fear dropping away.

Wordlessly, she and Lily pulled the man up - far easier than she expected - and draped one of his arms over each of their shoulders to drag him out.