Free Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens by Jeremiah D. Schmidt Page B

watched him pass with
pitiless black sockets. He wondered briefly why only skulls until
he remembered the day him and his sister dipped their father’s body
in the drain line.
    Lydia had made mention of taking their
father’s head to the crypt keeper and having him interred as the
Church of the True God would have dictated, but neither wanted to
do the deed of sawing off Art’s head, or carrying it off to the
Barrows, so they’d just fed his entire body to the waters instead.
They didn’t feel bad about it. Most disposed of their dead in the
same way, a kind of ‘completing the circle’ ceremony they called
it. The bodies would help feed the finslugs and the finslug eggs
would help feed the ratties, and round and round it would go. Only
the most devout Truists adhered to the burial customs anymore, and
then only if they had the token to pay the church’s crypt keepers.
Owing to their prices, the cheaper option was to just give
over the head; and here they’d been piled, and in some cases right
to the vaulted ceiling.
    A series of turns and a break in the crypt,
where a sewer line flowed, reminded Fen he was on the right track
and nearly there, but that didn’t help. He kept seeing flashes of
things moving outside his light and hearing whispering that
couldn’t be passed off as tricks of the wind.
    Could it be crypt keepers? He asked
himself once, not sure if that made him feel better or worse. It
was said crypt keepers had been priests sent into the Barrows as
punishment, and that they were as vile as any dangerman or looter.
But then it was also said that all the crypt keepers had been
driven off from the Pinprick’s barrow once the Gutter Lady came
moving in, and now she haunted the passages exclusively.
    Knowing he’d already run into her once,
though, didn’t make the prospect of a second encounter any less
terrifying, and he thought to turn around immediately and run back
to his hovel after the concrete passages gave way to yellow brick
arcades, thick with cobwebs and lined in shelves. On those ancient
shelves were stacked bodies. Skulls had been one thing, but full
bodies were another, and the ones which were shrouded were worst of
all. He couldn’t help his mind from believing these unseen horrors
were going rise up and come for him.
    Fen stopped and turned, unwilling to go any
deeper, but as he did he heard children’s laughter not far down the
way. According to Time’s instructions he’d only a single passage
left, and the sounds he heard were less terrifying and did more to
arouse his curiosity than sending him fleeing; mostly because he
detected the giggling of numerous girls.
    Fen swept back his shaggy hair and arranged
it into a passable style before straightening his jacket and
braving what was supposed to be the last stretch. A kilometer in,
and a few twists and turns later, and he stepped into a cavernous
space lit-up in torchlight. It must have been an old theater or
stadium (maybe from the original city that existed back more
centuries than Fen could count), and from where he stood at the
main entrance, it swept down into a bowl that ended at a stage. The
whole thing looked be cut from yellow stone, but it had somehow
melted into dripping formations that hardened to leave caves and
cut-ins from which harrowing catwalks had been strung from wall to
wall. It looked like a multilevel gymnasium, and all of it lined
with kids at play. They ran across the walks, sending them shaking
and swaying, all the while screaming in glee. They climbed up and
down the walls and chased one another between the rotted seats.
They gathered in numerous circles to talk or play games…there had
to be a thousand rat pups, maybe more. It had to be every child
that had gone missing as of late, all happily enjoying life in this
secret oasis surrounded in death.
    Fen stood for a while dumbfounded until first
one child took note of him and then another and another. It was
like an infection of silence that went rippling