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EPISODE 48

Hearing their names... or, more precisely, their status... the ragged pair peeked up. One was a man, mud-colored beneath an ancient patina of encrusted mud. The other seemed a woman. It was she who spoke...

"Him be no Slaker..."

"Owww!" cried Howard, for the match had burned his fingers. He dropped it and the fugitives were gone, just as if he had turned a television picture off. The man's voice trembled forward, as if borne upon loose-wheeled caissons of the past.

"Den you be free mans? Free mans?"

"Of course we're free, we're Americans," Howard said, indignantly, and an idea popped into his head. "Say, would you be the McKees? Elias? And Althea?"

"That our names," the slave in darkness answered. "But, by de Lord... you are not bounty hunters?"

"Bounty hunters?" Howard replied, laughing anew at the preposterousness of the slave's suggestion. "Why, of course not! My name is Howard Slack, and this is my wife... and over there, somewhere, that's Timmy Gray. I sell insurance. Here's my card. Timmy's father is the President," he added.

The business card was Howard's ambassador, probing the edges of the darkness. Elias and Althea reached for it, but their fingers groped in vain.

"He President of de free lands?" said a thunderstruck Elias? "Mister Lincoln, father? These free lands?"

"Well, let me remember my geography," said Howard. "The boundary runs somewheres near here, but I just don't recollect which side we're on. I used to know, back when I was in school... the Lincoln School, Timmy, the one before the Modern. Boy, seems like they tore it down a long time ago. Anyway, Waldo's house is even closer to the border. Was closer, I mean... I don't think I ought to go into that part of it..."

"Dog here," Althea interrupted. "But have good dog smell, him good dog. Him not bad dog, like Caiphas..."

"Who?" asked Howard.

"Spot," Timmy responded. "That's his name. Say hello, Spot!"

Spot barked.

"What about the Slakers," Betty questioned the fugitives.

"Oh, dey be de bad mans," warned Elias. "Dey have de chains and lanterns, guns and big bad traps, wif' teeth..."

"We've seen those traps," said Howard. "But how about you?"

"Oh, we wander and wander dis' house of debbils." Elias shifted from one foot to the other, and a muddy noise crept up the wall. "De fat mon... he show us down an' lock de door behin' us. Oh... we walk forever. Den, de Slakers come... no way out, no way back. We locked between de doors..."

"Long time come to pass," Althea added.

"An' we dream," Elias told them. Yes, long time we dream we free, we be in Canada. Den we go up into de light. De window of de world... we go dere when de Slakers not aroun'."

"Take us there!" an excited Howard demanded. So they followed the sound of slave footsteps forward through the tunnel.

"Who know what de light be thinkin'?" mused Elias, from the front of the procession.

"This is so exciting!" Betty said, after an indeterminacy. "It should be in a song by Nat King Cole... or even Elvis Presley!"

By and by the darkness lessened. Howard's eyes, already well adjusted to the tunnel, began to pick out four upright forms, four shadows, and a fifth... Spot... padding relentlessly through the muck. Ahead, a shaft of gray began to take form, a dark gray, only somewhat less dark than the darkness, but... to weary Howard Slack... it seemed imbued with silver, diamonds, like a path up and out of the world and all of its weary dangers, into Paradise.

Reality and perspective dashed the promise. It was only the moon... shining through a tiny barred aperture far, far above the tunnel.

"Yes," Elias said, "...dat be de moon!" He pointed upwards towards the aperture with a prophet's certainty. "An' soon, it come de sun, an' den de moon again. De rain. De food..."

Althea had pounced on something in the muck, and held a soggy square of flattened cardboard to the silvery moonlight. Howard saw the writing shine before his eyes and shimmer, like the substance of a dream.

PREAM...

And then Althea began digging ragged fingernails into the cracks and crevices, greedily licking the congealed Pream flakes out of them... chewing on the cardboard to extract every last nutritious essence of the sugar substitute, thereby answering one of Howard's questions in a manner certainly unpleasant, but... justified under the circumstances. And he wondered if it would be long... how long... before he and the rest would be struggling... fighting for the meager bounty of the aperture and the gutter above.

He glanced towards Elias and saw, in the slave's sad eyes, the certainty that it would not be long before they would be fighting one another... Betty... Timmy... Spot. Spot! Spot was a big dog... he would have an appetite!

The moonlit tunnel took on a sinister and deadly glow.

"Now we go away," Elias said. "We stay too long, de Slakers come."

"Not on your life," vowed Howard. "You said there was a door."

"Door locked," Althea told them.

"No good! No good!" Elias sloshed up and down in the moonlight, as if possessed by a terrible urgency, as if he could not stay long in that moonlight without dissolving into molecules; atoms which would join the light and rise up through the grate. "We take you dere," he sighed, "only beware... de Slakers... dey come soon..."

"Oh Mr. McKee, I hope not!" Betty wailed.

"Ssssshhhhh!" Howard went. "We had better all be very quiet."

The moonlight retreated behind sloshing feet; a vampiress denied her repast. By the time corners had been turned and darkness overwhelmed the seekers, Spot had begun to growl.

"Easy, boy..." warned Timmy.

"Longing for de light," Elias persevered. "It bring de Ol' Man Adams prophecy... de fire and light of angels of de realm an' glory!"

"Who was old man Adams?" Betty frowned.

"He preachin' mans in Barlington," Althea said.

Elias stopped their march and turned to face the newcomers. "Lil' Massa, keep dat big dog silent, dere, o' hell fire do surely come. Dat Caiphas hab ears like de rabbit..."

But Spot barked again and unloaded a volley of howls. From some distant corner of the tunnel came an echo.

"That's a funny echo..." Howard began, but with a moan and wake of churning mud, Elias pushed his way past.

"Dat no echo, dat Caiphas!"

Althea joined him in his lamentations. "Caiphas! Caiphas! Slakers come..."

And then a low, fierce growling answered, a sound of menace no echo could duplicate. Suddenly, there came an uproar and a splashing; then, from around a bend, a shaggy voice... a keening rising on a dull and ochre light...

"There ye be, sooty bogies! Jared, come up... bring the chains!"

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