\chapauth{Brushingworth} \chapter{Chamber Pop} Feebly, Luke Bavarious reached into his mouth and pushed on his molar. He winced as it shifted unpleasantly in its socket. Pain shot down his jaw and Bavarious clenched the edge of the sink. The dried blood caked onto his hand cracked and fell into the sink in large flat scabs. Bavarious raised his head and turned on the water, hot all the way. Steam rose from the large sink. Bavarious was in the basement of his office building. The door he had just stumbled through was still open, letting in the night's biting cold air; Bavarious didn't notice. He spat twice, three times, into the sink and plunged his hands into the water, clenching his fists at the near boiling temperature. The liquid was quickly polluted to a dark red. ``Shit,'' Bavarious let out as he finally opened his office door on the sixth floor. Inside the lamp on his desk lit the dim room. Someone in the plastic chair preceding his desk turned. What the fuck, Bavarious thought suddenly, but he let out no sound. ``Ah, you're back,'' said the small boy sitting in front of him. ``I've been waiting almost an hour.'' ``Well sorry kid,'' Bavarious responded as he trudged to his desk chair, ``I've just about had enough people for today.'' The kid stared at him unblinking. He was probably thirteen or fourteen. ``Mr.\ Bavarious? I need to speak with you about an important matter. Don't you think it's a little funny that a kid like me is here to see you? Let me introduce myself, I'm Oscar Crowley.'' While the kid was talking, Bavarious unloaded his Berretta and gave the kid a sarcastic glace every now and then. ``Alright listen punk.'' Bavarious gestured with his Berretta as he spoke, ``Today's over. Finished. All that's left for me is a bottle of Jack back home. If you've got some sort of way of paying me outside of Monopoly money and lemonade stands than tomorrow you can come back and give me your sob stories, tonight go home. It's passed your bedtime anyways.'' Bavarious was spread eagle hanging upside down on the moldy couch. He watched Law and Order on the TV upside down in front of him and sipped whiskey from a bottle, most of which by this point dribbled down his forehead. He didn't hear anything when the figure slid open the kitchen window. From the fire escape a dark and dim figure in combat boots stepped into the apartment. Bavarious, due to an insurance commercial that annoyed him even in his inebriated state, lifted the bottle for another swig and saw in the reflection of the moving glass a dark figure lunging toward him. Bavarious raised his hand to stop the intruder but the figure quickly batted away his drunken defenses and closed two gloved hands around the detective's throat. Bavarious' eyes bulged and he coughed a mixture of alcohol and vomit. Flailing, Bavarious saw that he was still holding the bottle of Jack and quickly smashed it over the head of his assailant. After gasping for several minutes, Bavarious got up to check on his unconscious prisoner. The man, if it was a man, was clothed only in a long brown overcoat. His head and face was covered by the coat's large hood. The man's head was completely devoid of hair, Bavarious couldn't tell if he was shaved or simply never grew any. His face was what made Bavarious recoil. Under what should have been the man's eyebrows (which were also missing) was nothing but a series of gashes and burns. Large scars ripped up and down the man's face, the larger ones continuing down into the robe that Bavarious didn't want to look under. The only human feature about the man's face was a vertical gash, about three inches wide and four inches tall, where the intruder breathed harshly. {\em I need some coffee}. Bavarious walked unsteadily in the gutter. He had left the man/thing in his apartment exactly where he had fallen. Probably not something he would have done sober but, tonight he wasn't in the mood for procedure. His boot caught the edge of a storm drain and he tumbled, scraping his hand on the concrete. He sat that way for awhile. Watching the dirty water funnel into the sewer. When he was ready to keep moving, he looked up. Standing right next to him was Oscar Crowley. ``I told you,'' said Oscar disappointedly. ``What the fuck are you talking about kid,'' Bavarious spat, feeling only slightly embarrassed at his language in front of the boy. Turning, Oscar walked away from Bavarious. ``You're gonna lose yourself in darkness, man.'' {\em What?} Bavarious watched the little boy walk away and thought about the cryptic message. Did the boy know something about the monstrosity that had just attacked him? He had to find out. Getting up, he stumbled down the street and turned into the alley he had seen the boy enter. Suddenly, he halted. Down the three foot wide alley was nothing but a couple of garbage cans, a dumpster and some wires running through the water on the ground. What slowly dawned on Bavarious was that this was the very same alley that he had encountered the monstrous noise violator early that day. He slowly walked to the end of the alley and back three times, looking for any way the boy could have left the alley without him seeing. On the third trip back he gave up and decided to go for that coffee after all, but stopped halfway out. He had been running his hand down the eastern brick wall of the alley and this time he felt a faint vibration in the stone. He put his ear up to the wall and listened. At first he didn't hear anything and the wall seemed to have settled, but a few seconds later he hear a slight thudding sound and felt the wall shake once again. Bavarious scanned the wall for a window or drain that might lead inside the building. Seeing nothing left the alley. From the street the building didn't look like much. He couldn't hear the thudding from this far, and the front wall didn't seem to be shaking. The front had an old-fashioned lighted sign that read ``Larry's RR'' and offered a jukebox, soda fountain, and coffee. The front windows were broken but had been boarded up by strong looking wood. {\sc Blackout Armistice} was splashed across the left board in black spray-paint. After trying and failing to make sense of this felonious abstrusity, Bavarious looked up to examine the upper floors of the building. Most of the windows were boarded, plenty were broken, through a few he saw a spare bookcase or desk but nothing was moving in any of them. The longer he contemplated the lofts; he began to notice something about the rooms. He couldn't quite focus on it immediately, probably thanks to the last of the Jack still digesting in his stomach. Suddenly he caught it. In a few of the rooms he could see the same orange-tinted light faintly. Every so often the light would flicker or go out altogether for a few seconds. While this could have been attributed to a bad electrical line, Bavarious noticed that in every one of the rooms the light responded identically, as if the same bulb was burning out at the end of every kitchen socket. Bavarious pulled his Beretta. {\em I'm going in}. He wasn't sure why he was going in, but he was sure he was going. He leapt up onto the right display window and landed on broken glass. With the butt of his gun, Bavarious smashed into the wood. Chips flew away but the barricade seemed unharmed. He tried several more times and then went the front door. Bavarious couldn't see through the glass door but it seemed to be blocked only by paper. I hope I'm not gonna regret this. He pulled his leather sleeve over his right hand and slammed the butt of the gun through the glass door. It shattered and the glass fell on both sides of the door. Through the paper he could see the decay of an old caf\'e and the same orange light. He reached through the tear and tried to unlock the door. The lock seemed to be rusted. Sighing, Bavarious steeped one leg then the other through the door, kicking away the rest of the paper. On the other side of the dining room the orange light poured underneath a door that Bavarious thought looked like a bathroom. He crossed the space quickly and approached the door. It was indeed a bathroom, but the sign had been defaced. What had once been a standard female figure had some sort of black stain on the front of her skirt and was dripping black liquid from between her legs. Bavarious thought it was the same spray-paint as the outside proverb but he didn't examine it closely. He stood with his hand on the door for a moment and suddenly he hear the same thudding, much louder now, and a shuffling murmuring. Inhaling, Bavarious opened the door with his Beretta drawn. Inside Bavarious took one and a half steps before stopping dead in his tracks. His eyes glazed over and the orange light of the room shined off them like blisters. The room was cavernous. The entirety of the building had been hollowed out and Bavarious could see the rooms he had seen from the streets above. They seemed to be perfectly untouched until they simply ran out of floor. They gaped out into sepulchral like pockmarks as if someone with a wrecking ball had tried to demolish the building from the inside out. On the floor of the room were fold-out metal chairs arranged in rows giving the building a church-like atmosphere. The chairs were almost completely filled with people. Bavarious couldn't tell much about them due to the brown hoods they were all wearing. Somewhere in his brain Bavarious recognized them as the same that the man who had tried to kill him had worn. The same part of his brain that realized there were over four hundred of them. That part of his brain wasn't really important to Bavarious at that moment. In fact he barely even noticed the room or the people in the chairs. His eyes swept past them and were drawn to the sight they were all apparently there to witness. At the far end of the room, a few yards to Bavarious' left, was a man standing like an accursed teacher at a rusted wooden fold-up table. Lying on the table were various medical instruments and a small girl. Bavarious thought she might have been seven. She had long tangled blonde hair that stretched past her shoulders and ended soiled in the puddle of blood that she was lying in. The girl had been split open vertically from neck down; the cut had not been clean. The man at the table had removed most of the contents from inside her but apparently left the connections. Spare blood vessels and muscle ligaments crisscrossed over her and draped down to various organs that were spread out on the table. Terrified, Bavarious noticed that the girl was breathing slowly into a mask that was connected to a makeshift airtank below the table. Bavarious looked away and saw that at the front of the table, a few feet from the first row of chairs, was the body of the man he had shot earlier. The body was similarly dissected and seemed to be waiting for some sort of terrible transplant procedure. Bavarious stood frozen. He mouth was slightly open. Suddenly, he saw a door across the room open and Oscar Crowley step out. He was also petrified by the scene and stood standing for several moments. When he saw the girl on the table, however, he shouted ``Sam!'' and charged up the room. The onlookers seemed shocked as well and Oscar made it almost all the way to the front of the room before one of the men in robes reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. He was stopped dead by the strength of the man. Slowly the nearest of the congregation raised from their seats and helped subdue the boy. He kicked and bit at all that came near him but eventually they dragged him to the front of the room in custody where the standing man removed the mask from the girl and placed it over Oscar who spat into the mouthpiece but eventually slowed his thrashing and eventually closed his eyes. From there most of the group returned to their seats while a few laid Oscar next to the splayed corpse. Suddenly, Bavarious realized he was sobbing.