Mike stiffened; his brain refused to process the events. Probably, about three seconds passed until he understood that his girlfriend was still sitting next to him, alive and unharmed. She had shouted just with fear. At the last moment the ax had changed its direction and fallen upon the mutilated victim on the column, having truncated the longer remnant of her leg by several inches. From a stump blood gushed, and from the tube thrust in her throat hoarse hissing came—the only sound that replaced a scream from her…
The butcher turned again to the passengers of the car, raising his ax. Now most of his face got into the beam of light directed at the nailed victim. Mike’s eye was first of all caught by grinning big yellow teeth and an unshaven chin. Jane squealed again. She really, really wasn’t sure that the next blow would not hit her.
And Mike wasn’t confident in it anymore, either.
The ax began to fall again. But at the very same time the car sharply moved ahead. The sound of the blow—this time ringing, as the ax hit the steel rail—came from behind the car.
The butcher hollowly muttered something and ran after them.
He moved not too quickly, but the car also, after the initial jerk, rode only slightly quicker than a fast-walking person. The light was left behind; now around them there was darkness again which was filled with painful groans and agonizing screams, and behind thumped the tread of the butcher who was gradually reducing the distance. At last his steps began to sound very close, right behind where Jane was sitting—it seemed, the ax could crash down from the darkness at any moment. But the car accelerated again, leaving the maniac behind. The latter, however, sped up—his boots began stamping faster, approaching again. “It’s all fake,” Mike told himself. “He’ll purposefully almost catch up to us, and at the last moment fall back again…”
The ax with a clang hit the board of the car only few inches short of Jane’s elbow.
“Shit!” she yelled. “That could have been my arm!”
Yes, Mike understood suddenly. After all, everything had happened in the darkness. This man, an actor or whoever, couldn’t see that Jane’s arm wasn’t there…
The car accelerated anew, but then the heavy footfalls began to overtake it again.
“Look!” suddenly cried Jane.
Mike, who had twisted his head back in vain attempts to see the butcher, looked forward—and saw the blood-red letters “EXIT” flashing in the darkness. The car rushed straight towards them. “At last,” Mike thought with relief. Then the speed decreased, but only a couple of yards remained to the exit. An instant more—and…
The floor under them yawned, and they flew down.
A second later—a second filled with their joint scream—they understood that it was not a free fall but only a descent on a high-speed elevator. Then a short overload—the pay for zero gravity during the first instant of the descent—pressed them hard to the seats, and the car rolled forward to the bottom of… a pit? a mine? a well? They heard the elevator go up again, having left them in utter darkness.
The slaughterhouse basement, thought Mike who, unlike Jane, had heard this story in his childhood. And he even clearly pictured what they would see when the light turned on again: the paralyzed boy lying in a dirty pool, being eaten alive by rats. The boy, whose body already had been turned into entirely bloody meat— knobby, pitted, bearing only a faint resemblance to a human being—and lots of sharp teeth continuously tearing it, ripping off new small pieces…
But from the darkness no rat peep reached. Only some quiet, spasmodic scraping. And Mike felt—though he couldn’t realize why—how this low, subtle sound made his hair move on his head.
Light, unsteady and wavering, came on, and they indeed saw a boy. But not that one—according to the legend, the victim of rats was white, while this boy was black. Tears flowed down his cheeks, but he couldn’t scream. He was impaled on a long vertical stake which came out from his mouth. All that he could do was to gnaw this thick round wooden pole covered with blood and contents of his intestines; it was his teeth which made that sound. The stake, more than two yards high, was gnawed starting from the top—but now the boy had slipped down it almost to the floor. However, he had no chance to touch the floor with his feet—the base of the stake was too wide.
The flickering light became more and more bright, eventually lighting up not only the stake, but also the vault around. It was indeed a big vault with high concrete arch and blank walls. There were neither corridors nor doors leading outside. The rails ended only few yards ahead. And on these rails stood… other cars. Of the same design, but very old, rusted, overgrown with dust, dirt, and webs. And these cars weren’t empty. In horror Mike and Jane looked at the pale-yellow skulls (on one of them earphones still hung, on another one a baseball cap remained), at the tatter of clothing hanging down from the ribs… it looked like nobody could get out from under the safety bars pressing them to the seats…
“So this is where those who disappear come!” thought shocked Mike… and immediately called himself an idiot. The carnival had arrived in town just a few days ago—how the hell could there be skeletons and rust?! Stage set, everything here is only trickery!
As if in reply to his thought, something began clanging above. The young people jerked up their heads and saw how from the high ceiling of the vault, unwinding on the fly, right upon them heavy chains with hooks on the ends were falling. It seemed that these hooks would fall directly on their heads, but they flew sideways—two at the left and two at the right—and hollowly tinkled against the car boards. And then… then suddenly from under the car bottom an ugly hand leaned out—covered with scars and lacking phalanxes of two fingers (probably, there was a hatch below which had opened absolutely silently)—and began to fasten the hooks to steel loops under the bottom which Mike and Jane hadn’t even noticed when they were taking seats in the car. As soon as the last hook took its place, the chains stretched and jerkily dragged the car up. Having come off the floor, it began to rock back and forth, which was only promoted by the uneven movement of the chains. Halfway up, the mechanism got even more out of sync; the left chains began to pull faster than the right ones, tilting the car more and more to one side; Jane who appeared above screamed in fear again, grabbing Mike’s hand. The young man looked down and understood that they were rocking right over the stake sticking out below. If the safety bar which held them were to suddenly open…
But the safety bar didn’t open. Chains dragged the car upward, into the blackness of the open hatch—and there, at last, leveled and then, having carried the car slightly forward, settled it on the rails. The hooks clanked, detaching. The car rode again through darkness—but not to the exit (the deceptive burning letters weren’t seen any more) but to the next victim.
It was again a woman or a girl—it was impossible to say more definitely. She stood, held by braided rubber restraints on a plane slightly slanted back (to Mike’s mind came the term “exhibition mount”), spread like a laboratory frog. Comparing to her, the guy who was skinned alive could consider himself lucky. She had no face any more. It was cut off completely, to the bone—while flesh on each side of the head was left untouched; the bared skull in this meat frame looked especially terrible. But worst of all was the fact it was a skull of an alive person. The balls of lidless eyes, all in blood streaks of the burst vessels, randomly moved in bone eye-sockets, vainly trying to avoid the beam of a spotlight striking directly into them; through a hole on the place of her former nose frequent breath was heard; the bottom jaw powerlessly drooped, however, when the car approached, it twitched—the unfortunate being tried to say something, but the remains of her chewing muscles were not enough for this purpose. Her tongue still moved in the mouth, but neither Mike nor Jane could understand the lowing-howling sounds… Her body had been treated the same as her head: all frontal flesh was cut off. In the bright light of the spotlight it was clearly visible through the ribs how her heart was beating and her lungs were inflating and deflating. All abdominal organs were also exhibited; they didn’t fall out—probably, due to the back-slanted position of the body. Arms and legs had undergone the same vivisection; the scraped-out white bones glistened in the surrounding of yellowish fat layers and crimson muscles…