Nevertheless, how lovely it would be to crawl under the covers with my
own Pooh and Tigger, and pretend that the three of us would be friends,
still, when I was a hundred and Pooh was ninety-nine.
“Okay, ” I told Mungojerrie, and we continued our descent.
When we reached the next landing, which was at the doorway to the first
of the three subterranean levels, Bobby whispered, “Bro.” I looked back.
The fluorescent-light fixtures above the steps behind us had vanished.
The concrete ceiling featured only cored holes from which the fixtures
and the wiring had been stripped.
Time present was again more present than time past, at least for the
moment.
Scowling, Doogie murmured, “Give me Colombia anytime.”
“Or Calcutta, ” Sasha said.
On behalf of Mungojerrie, Roosevelt said, “Got to hurry. Going to be
blood if we don’t hurry.” Led by the fearless cat, we slowly descended
four more flights, to the third and final level beneath the hangar.
We found no additional indications of hobgoblins or bugaboos until we
reached the bottom of the stairwell. As Mungojerrie was about to lead us
into the outer corridor that encircles this entire oval-shaped level of
the building, the muddy red light that we had first seen on the ground
floor of the hangar pulsed beyond the doorway. It lasted only an instant
and then was replaced by darkness.
A general dismay rose from our little group, mostly expressed in
whispered expletives, and the cat hissed.
Other voices echoed from somewhere in this sub-subbasement, deep and
distorted. They were like the voices on a tape played at too slow a
speed.
Sasha and Roosevelt switched off their flashlights, leaving us in gloom.
Beyond the doorway, the bloody glow pulsed again, and then several more
times, like the revolving emergency beacon on a police cruiser.
Each pulse was longer than the one before it, until the darkness in the
hallway retreated entirely and the eerie luminosity finally held fast.
The voices were growing louder. They were still distorted, but almost
intelligible.
Curiously, not one scintilla of the malign red light in the corridor
penetrated to the space at the bottom of the stairs, where we huddled
together. The doorway appeared to be a portal between two realities,
utter darkness on this side, the red world on the other side. The line
of bloody light along the floor, at the threshold, was as sharp as a
knife edge.
As in the hangar upstairs, this radiance brightened the space It filled
but did little to illuminate what it touched, a murky light, alive with
phantom shapes and movement that could be detected only from the corner
of the eye, creating more mysteries than it resolved.
Three tall figures passed the doorway, darker maroon shapes in the red
light, perhaps men but possibly something even worse. As these
individuals crossed our line of sight, the voices grew louder and less
distorted, then faded as the figures moved out of view along the hall.
Mungojerrie padded through the doorway.
I expected him to flare as if sizzled by a death ray, leaving no trace
behind except the stink of scorched fur. Instead, he became a small
maroon shape, elongated, distorted, not easily identifiable as a cat
even though you could tell that he had four feet, a tail, and attitude.
The radiance in the hall began to pulse, now darker than blood, now
red-pink, and with each cycle from dark to bright, a throbbing
electronic hum swelled through the building, low and ominous.
When I touched the concrete wall, it was vibrating faintly, as the steel
post had vibrated in the hangar.
Abruptly, the corridor light flashed from red to white. The pulsing
stopped. We were looking through the doorway at a hall blazingly
revealed under fluorescent ceiling panels.
Instantaneously with the change of light, my ears popped, as if from a
sudden decrease in air pressure, and a warm draft gusted into the
stairwell, bringing with it a trace of the crisp ozone scent that
lingers on a rainy night in the wake of lightning.
Mr. Mungojerrie was in the corridor, no longer a maroon blur, gazing at
something off to the right. He was standing not on bare concrete but on