The Chosen Child Read online

  ‘Come on, now,’ he urged himself, under his breath. He swung his right foot around, but he couldn’t feel another toehold anywhere. He would have to try sliding down the rubble a short way, in the hope that he would find one further down.

  His heart thumped and he could hear his blood pumping in his ears. He let himself slip half a metre, then a little further, his fingernails digging into the dust and the disintegrated mortar, trying to stop himself from sliding too far. Two or three metres down, he found another toehold, and then another. It couldn’t be much further now. In fact, he was congratulating himself when a heavy lump of concrete gave way beneath his right foot and he found himself sliding uncontrollably down the rest of the rubble, clawing at anything he could.

  He hit the basement floor so hard that he was convinced for a moment that he had broken his back. He lay there for a while, too jolted by his fall even to grunt.

  ‘Hey – are you all right?’ Marek called.

  Jan managed to lift himself up onto one elbow, and then roll himself over into a kneeling position. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken,’ he called back. ‘Just winded.’

  He stood up and banged dust from the sleeves of his jacket. ‘I’m okay. I’m just going to take a look around.’

  He made a slow circuit of the basement, peering into crevices and alcoves and dust-filled ventilation shafts. On one wall, a torn sheet of wallpaper still fluttered. On another, there was a faded red scrawl ‘Basi’, whatever that meant. Marek followed him from above, walking around the rim of the basement, shining the flashlight down from one side of the room to the other.

  ‘See anything?’ asked Marek.

  ‘Not yet. But these basements are all joined together. I’m going to try the next one.’

  All of the basement doors had been torn off, so that he could see into the next room, where there were stacks of broken packing cases and collapsed wine racks.

  He crunched across a thick carpet of brick dust and pulverized glass. Marek kept on flicking the flashlight around, but there was no sign of anything moving.

  Jan looked upward, and began to wonder how he was going to climb out of here. Maybe there was a ladder in one of the other rooms, or a heap of rubble that was easier to scale. He walked through to the next room, and then turned right into the next, and it was then that he heard the crying again, much more clearly than he had before. It sounded as if it were coming from the opposite side of the room, so he whistled to Marek and called, ‘Over here! I can hear it again!’

  Marek swept the flashlight beam across the basement floor and illuminated the opposite wall. It was still filled with shelves, some of them stacked with dusty jugs and empty pickle jars and rusted colanders. But right in the very corner of the room, there was a triangular hole in the floor, a little less than two metres across, and it was out of this hole that the crying was echoing.

  Jan approached it, and peered down it, but it was too dark to see anything. The sewage-smelling breeze was coming from here, too; and he could hear water gurgling.

  ‘It’s here!’ he called. ‘It’s definitely here!’

  ‘Is it a child, or what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you throw down the flashlight?’

  ‘Do you want me to call the gliniarze?’

  ‘Let me take a look first.’

  Marek came right to the edge of the basement and tossed down the flashlight. ‘Just be careful,’ he said.

  Jan went back to the hole in the floor and shone the flashlight into it. He could see curved concrete piping, thick with whitish slime, and some broken rubble which must have fallen into the sewer when the excavator broke into it. He could also see a small knitted doll, with a serious, frowning face. She must have been wearing a maroon dress once, but now it was greasy and grey.

  ‘Hallo!’ he shouted. ‘Can you hear me? If you’re trapped in there, I can go for help! Don’t panic! I can find somebody to get you out!’

  He paused. The crying went on, although it sounded further away now. The smell from the sewer was almost overwhelming, but he knelt down beside it and leaned over as far as he could.

  ‘Hallo!’ he shouted. ‘Hallo, down there! Can you hear me?’

  There was another scream – high-pitched and drawn out. The sewer pipe distorted it so that it sounded like a slide whistle.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Marek. ‘What the hell’s happening down there?’

  ‘I think I’d better find out,’ Jan told him. ‘You call the police, and the ambulance, too.’

  ‘You’re not going down there?’

  ‘I’ve got the flashlight.’

  ‘Yes, but supposing – ‘

  ‘Supposing what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Supposing there’s somebody down there?’

  ‘Like who? It’s only a kid. She’s probably stuck, that’s all.’

  Marek hesitated for a while. Then he said, ‘Okay. I’ll call the gliniarze.’

  Jan took a deep breath, and then retched because of the smell. But he gripped the flashlight tighter, and made his way right to the very edge of the broken sewer. He knelt down, and cautiously backed his way towards the hole, until he was able to swing his legs down into it. The first thing he felt when he reached the bottom of the pipe was cold sewage filling his shoes: he hadn’t realized it was going to be so deep.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, under his breath.

  The pipe was a little over one and three quarter metres in diameter, which gave him just enough room to crouch his way along it. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around his face like a bandit. He wished he had some aftershave. Anything had to be better than the smell of greasy human excrement. He couldn’t imagine how the Resistance had tolerated spending so much time in the sewers during the war.

  ‘Hallo!’ he called. ‘Can you hear me! I’m coming to rescue you! Just stay where you are! Don’t move, and keep on calling out to me!’

  He listened, but there was no reply. Still – the child hadn’t sounded as if it were very far away, and how complicated could the sewers be? They followed the pattern of the streets, so they must be straightforward, and there were dozens of manholes, in case he needed to climb out of them somewhere else. With his head bowed, he made his way along the pipe, his shoes plashing in the sewage. The flashlight threw curved patterns of light against curved concrete, and gremlin-like shadows that hopped and danced with every step he took.

  ‘Hallo!’ he kept on calling, and his voice boomed back to him, filling his ears.

  He turned awkwardly around to see how far he had come. The arc lamp faintly illuminated the broken pipe where he had entered. He felt as if he had been hunching his way along the sewer for at least five minutes, but he had probably gone no further than crossing Krowleska. His eyes were watering and his nose was running, but he was beginning to grow accustomed to the stench. It was worse when his uncle Henryk came to stay, and spent twenty minutes perched on the toilet every morning, reading Gazeta Wyborcza from cover to cover and filling the room with the stink of beer and yesterday’s sauerkraut.

  He carried on, grunting with effort. Every now and then he stopped to rest, and to call out, ‘I’m coming! Can you hear me! I’m coming!’ His voice echoed and re-echoed until it was so distorted that it sounded as if somebody else were in the sewers, calling him.

  After two hundred metres, the noise of running water began to grow louder. He crouched along a little further, and then abruptly the narrow pipe in which he had made his way from the demolition site opened out into a huge echoing concrete chamber, nearly twelve metres deep, with a curving channel of thick sewage gushing through the middle of it. Waste poured into here from all the main streets around here, and flowed off rapidly south-eastward towards the River Vistula.

  Jan stood above the chamber, shining his flashlight into each of the arches. If he wanted to explore the sewers any further, he was going to have to wade knee-deep, and he wasn’t going to attempt that without boots. He called out. ‘I’m here! I can’t go any
further! If you can hear me, tell me where you are!’

  He waited, and listened, but all he could hear was the endless rushing of water. He didn’t want to be cowardly, but he had come this far without finding anything, and only a saint or a madman would have carried on.

  If there had been a child down here, he decided, it had obviously found its own way out.

  He was about to turn back, however, when the sewage-filled channel below him suddenly churned. There was a moment’s thrashing, and then a figure burst out of the water – a small figure plastered in grey – a figure that opened its mouth and screamed at him aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

  Jan jerked back in terror, and jarred his shoulder against the sewer pipe. The figure was so thickly covered in sewage that it was impossible for him to tell whether it was a boy or a girl. But there was one thing he could tell: it had no arms. It had raised itself out of the water on its knees, and now it was wagging itself backward and forward and letting out bubble-filled screams of unimaginable agony.

  Jan screamed back at it, ‘Wait! Wait! I’m coming to get you out! Wait!’

  There was a flight of deeply-rusted rungs which led down from his own sewer pipe to the bottom of the chamber. He turned himself around and started to climb down them. The figure kept on screaming and screaming; but before he was halfway down, the pipes let out a huge gurgling gush, and hundreds of litres of fresh sewage cascaded into the chamber, and swept the figure into the channel, and under the nearest arch.

  Jan clung onto the rungs while the chilly sewage swallowed his feet and rushed around his knees. He saw soggy rafts of toilet paper and swirls of every imaginable shade of brown. He saw a drowned rat, too, but no further sign of the figure that had risen up out of the channel and screamed at him.

  As quickly as he could, he climbed back up the ladder and into the pipe. He still couldn’t really understand what he had seen. A child, with no arms; or a dog, with no legs; or even a seal, maybe, that had found its way into the sewers from the river.

  Coughing, he started to make his way back along the sewer. All he wanted to do now was to get out of here. His back was aching from bending over for so long. His head was thumping. He felt a rising sense of panic, as if the figure in the sewer had managed to wriggle its way up the rusty rungs like the caterpillar man from Freaks to follow him. He hopped, and crouched, and hit his head again and again; and he kept thinking that he must be nearly there, he must be nearly there. But the sewer pipe seemed to have mysteriously lengthened. He couldn’t even see the hazy aura of the arc lamp.

  After two or three minutes he had to stop, and bend over, his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His stomach kept on tightening, and he retched a long string of chocolate-streaked saliva, but that was all.

  He dragged out his handkerchief and wiped his face. He told himself to calm down. That couldn’t have been a child, back in the sewage chamber. It was a dog, most likely, that had accidentally strayed into a ventilation shaft or an outlet. How could a child get deep down into the sewers?

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be following him. It was mutilated, drowned, and washed away. All he had to do now was find his way out of this pipe and get himself cleaned up.

  He started to crouch his way along again, sweeping the flashlight from side to side. He was worried that in his panic to escape he might have taken a wrong turning, a turning that had no way out. It was a nightmarish thought that he could spend weeks desperately trying to find his way out of an ever-narrowing labyrinth of sewers. He imagined being trapped in a narrow pipe right beneath the massive weight of the Palace of Culture and Science, his flashlight battery failing, and darkness closing in.

  But it was only a few more minutes before he saw the dim light coming from the place where the pipe was broken, and he said his first prayer since his mother had died. ‘Holy Mother thank you for delivering me from harm. I beg your protection from despair, and from all evil things.’

  It was then that he heard the noise.

  He stopped, and listened. At first, he couldn’t make out anything but the trickling of water, and the soft, melancholy booming of air as huge draughts blew along the main sewers. They sounded like massive beasts, calling to each other.

  But then he heard it again. A thick, leathery shuffling noise, as if somebody were dragging a soft but heavy bag along the sewer pipe.

  He turned around, and shone his flashlight back the way he had come. It was difficult to see if there was anything there, because of all the shadows, and the scimitar-shaped reflections. But the odd thing was that the reflections seemed to stop, about fifty metres from where he was standing, and the sewage that flowed in herringbone patterns along the bottom gully no longer glittered. It looked as if something was actually blocking the tunnel. Something very big, and dark, that deadened all reflections and allowed no light to pass.

  Something that made a shuffling noise, because it was coming his way.

  Jan began to back away. He didn’t like this at all. Maybe that small screaming figure in the sewage-chamber couldn’t have come after him. But what was this?

  He kept on backing and backing, shining the flashlight towards the shadowy shape that was following him. He tripped once or twice on uneven pipe joints, and he had to trail one hand along the wall of the sewer to guide himself even though he could feel that it was coated in excreted fat.

  Anything big enough to block up the whole pipe couldn’t move fast. That’s what he reassured himself. But with a hundred metres still to go to reach the break in the pipe, he began to have the unnerving feeling that this thing was gaining on him. It might be heavy, but it moved with remarkable speed. He could hear the shuffling coming nearer and nearer, and it was almost like a train bearing down on him.

  He stopped, one hand balancing him against the side of the pipe, and said ‘No!’ – and then ‘No!’ again, as if he could make this all stop happening simply by not believing in it.

  It couldn’t be true. He had heard all kinds of stories about pets being flushed down toilets into the sewers, and growing to giant size on a rich diet of human excrement – alligators and turtles and even Christmas carp that nobody in the family could bear to kill. But they were stories, right? They were legends.

  If this was anything, this was a man; and Jan could stand up to any man.

  The shuffling slowed; but still it came nearer.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jan called. ‘Why are you following me?’

  The shuffling was slower and slower; but still it came nearer.

  ‘Can’t you speak?’ Jan demanded. ‘Who are you? Listen – you don’t have to be frightened.’

  The shadowy thing was only a few metres away now, but Jan’s flashlight was dimming, the bulb was little more than an orange wink, and the thing was so dark that it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

  Jan said, ‘What do you want? I’m not afraid of you.’

  He thought he could hear breathing, of a kind. Tuneless, patient breathing. Then he heard another shuffle, and a sound like an old, musty velvet curtain being slowly dragged down. There was a smell, too, which he could distinguish even above the cloying smell of sewage.

  It was a smell like very bad meat; like rabbit that had been left hanging for too long.

  ‘You’re not frightening me,’ said Jan. ‘You’re just a man.’

  All the same, he started to back away again, glancing quickly behind him to see how far he had to go. If he bent his head down and really made a run for it, he was sure that he could reach the opening in the pipe before the shadowy thing, or man, or whatever it was, caught up with him. In any case, maybe it, or he, was harmless. Maybe it had followed him along the pipe for no other reason than curiosity. Maybe it, or he, was just a tramp, who used the sewers as a shelter. Maybe he was deaf, or dumb, and that was why he didn’t speak.

  Or maybe not.

  Jan took one step back, and then another. His pace quickened, but he was still too scared to turn his back on the shadowy thi
ng and make a run for it. The shuffling and the sliding noises quickened, too, and Jan had the impression not just of one heavy sack being dragged through the pipe, but many. Many, heavy, and horribly soft, as if they held things that you wouldn’t like to touch. As if they were sodden, too.

  The shadowy thing was advancing so fast now that Jan stumbled. He went down on one knee, but he managed to pull himself up, and twist around, and that was when he started running. His head bowed, his hands outstretched to guide him through the suffocating pipe, his feet making a chop-chop-chop noise as he ran through the water.

  He reached the broken opening. The arc lamp blazed directly in his eyes and dazzled him. Gasping, he gripped the shattered edges of the pipe and tried to heave himself up into the fresh air. He was charged with adrenaline, but he was panicking, too, and he lost his grip and fell heavily back into the pipe. Soil and fragments of concrete showered down on him, half-blinding him, and filling his mouth.

  Whether it was man or beast, the shadowy thing didn’t give him a second chance. He was trying to get a grip on the greasy concrete when he was hit with the force of a speeding car. He was knocked three or four metres further along the sewer, out of reach of the opening.

  He tried to get up. He was so dazed that he slipped over; and then slipped again. He coughed, as if he were going to say something.

  But instantly, his neck was seized, and he was thrown against the side of the sewer so violently that he heard his skull crack. Something huge and impossibly heavy climbed on top of him, and kept him pinned against the curving floor, with sewage water gushing against the side of his face. There was a momentary tussle, and then his whole head was dragged into what felt like a wet leather bag. He breathed in, trying, to shout out, but his nose and mouth filled up with thick, curdled mucus. The stench of rotten meat was overwhelming, but he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t speak. All he could do was wrestle and struggle and try to kick out at whatever it was that had taken hold of him. But it was just like kicking at curtains. The thing seemed to be nothing but fabric, and completely empty underneath.