CREEPY CRAWLERS

Part I

By Wesley Overhults

San Francisco, California

He could hear it skittering around in the darkness even if he couldn’t see it. The noise echoed off the walls of the sewer tunnel, an eerie scratching noise that would have made most people’s skin crawl. He never considered himself most people. He never wanted to be. Maybe at some point in the past he was but now that past was so far away. He wasn’t concerned with the past but rather the future and the wonders it would hold. The scratching noise drew closer, the creature that made it almost afraid of him as he stood there in the sewer tunnel.

“I know you’re here,” he said to the darkness. “After all, I did create you. Come into the light and let me look at my creation.”

The creature somehow understood his words and slowly crept from its hiding place, the dim glow of the tunnel’s lighting enveloping it. He marveled at his handiwork, at the monster that was terrorizing a city. He was the cause of all this and it made his chest swell with pride. It was good to think he had accomplished something in his life. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to show for it.

“You’re looking quite healthy. Getting plenty to eat I assume.”

The creature wasn’t capable of answering with words but he knew the truth. He knew what the thing had been doing down in these tunnels. He would have loved to admire his creation more but the world above called him back. He promised himself that he would be back though. It wouldn’t do him any good to neglect such a prize as what was before him.

“Good, good. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost any of your killer instincts. I’m afraid I have to go but you stay down here and keep doing what you’ve been doing. I promise I’ll come visit you again soon.”

The creature made no motion to follow its creator but as the man departed to return to the surface, the beast looked longingly at him and then darted back further into the tunnels that were its home.

The Next Morning

Rachel Roth yawned as she opened her eyes. For a few moments, she let herself believe that things were normal again. She let herself believe that the bed she was sleeping in was really a bed instead of just a foldout couch. She let herself believe that it was her bed and that the room she was in was her room at the Thornes’ house. It was a nice fantasy, a comforting one because normalcy was something she craved. She had never been normal though and that was the truth. She stopped running from that truth once it became blatantly obvious that there was no way around it. The second she remembered where she really was, the world snapped into the clarity that came with living in reality instead of a fantasy. She had been playing this game with herself every morning since she started living in June Moone’s apartment and every morning she would eventually be hit by the cold, hard reality of her current situation.

“Hey,” chirped June as Rachel rolled over and looked at the older girl standing there next to the couch. “I made some breakfast but I need to eat pretty quickly so I can go do school stuff.”

“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” reminded Rachel, sitting up and taking the plate that June handed her. “Really, I was fine with raiding your stash of Pop-Tarts that you keep in one of the cabinets.”

“I didn’t really know what you like to eat besides that so I kept it kinda simple,” explained June as she dug into her breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs. “It’s actually nice because I haven’t had the chance to really cook in a while.”

Rachel took a bite and then held out for only a few seconds before she set to devouring the entire contents of her plate. She realized that she didn’t eat enough. It was hard to find food when you were living on the streets. You had to settle for rooting through dumpsters but Rachel hadn’t considered herself that desperate yet. She had settled for using the cash she had withdrawn from her bank account before she left Gotham and the cash she could pluck off her drug-dealing victims. She knew they weren’t going to miss it and though she used what money she could to help their clients, she also kept a small portion of it for herself. It wasn’t enough to guarantee three square meals a day though.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized when she noticed June was staring at her. “I don’t really get the chance to eat a lot so my table manners are pretty crappy.”

“There’s more on the kitchen counter,” said June, smiling at Rachel. “Seeing how fast you go through those boxes of Pop-Tarts, I figured you’re always pretty hungry. So what’s your plan for the day? Is it the usual?”

“I find whatever I can to keep myself busy until the sun goes down and then I’m going out on patrol or whatever,” answered Rachel. “I might stay away from Night for a little while until things cool down but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up what I was doing.”

“No, you should keep going,” agreed June. “What you do is important, Rachel. You’re saving people’s lives and I’m the proof of that. It’s just that I’d like to help you if I can.”

“You don’t have powers without The Enchantress,” reminded Rachel. “It’s dangerous out there, June. I can’t run the risk of you getting hurt. You know that we’ve been over this before and my response isn’t going to change.”

June frowned and nodded in agreement. She knew that it was sound reasoning. Without the power of The Enchantress, June was just a normal girl and she already knew what happened to people that came into Rachel’s life without the ability to defend themselves. She wasn’t useless though. June knew that she maybe couldn’t help Rachel out on the streets but she could at least do something to pull her weight.

“We’re friends now, Rachel,” she reminded the younger girl. “To me, that means that we help each other out whenever we can. I know you feel like I’m doing my part just by letting you stay here and I know you’re grateful for that. I just feel like I could be doing more.”

Rachel blinked at the light of compassion and love coming from June. She willed her vision to shift back to normal and the glow of June’s emotions only dimmed to a more tolerable level. Rachel knew that was what friends were supposed to do, help each other out. The problem was that she hadn’t had a friend in such a long time. Maybe she never really had a friend in the first place. Maybe she was always alone in the world but it seemed as if June was bound and determined to change that.

“If I need help, you’re the first one I’ll turn to,” she promised June. “I’m sorry, June. I’m just . . . I suck at this ‘friend’ thing. The last friend I had . . . something bad happened to her.”

“I have to get to class,” said June after taking Rachel’s hand and squeezing it. “I’ll be home tonight and maybe I can help you out with whatever you’re working on. While I’m gone, help yourself to whatever you need. You already know that while you’re here, my home is your home too.”

June waved goodbye as she left the apartment and headed to class. Rachel marveled at the lingering sensation of June’s touch. It occurred to her that nobody had touched her in a long time. She wasn’t a fan of physical contact. She remembered that she had once been okay with it but she had once been a lot of things she no longer was. The last time anyone had really touched her in a loving way or even a friendly way was Eric Andrews, her first and to-date only real boyfriend. She shuddered at the memory because now all her memories were tainted by the stain of the Church of Blood. Rachel liked to pretend that she was done running but the truth was that she never stopped. She was still trying to escape the dark and ugly truth of her heritage and her lie of a normal life back home in Gotham. Maybe it was time to make a new life in San Francisco, one that didn’t have the shadow of the Church hanging over it. Rachel liked to think that it was possible but she wasn’t one to be optimistic about things.

“At least there’s always the internet,” she told herself as she got up and put her dishes in the kitchen sink before going into June’s room and using her computer. “You really need to get a password on this thing, June.”

There was nothing really interesting on any of her usual websites. She had gotten herself into the routine of knowing who posted on what and when they did so. She could practically tell time by it if she wanted to. She also decided to check the local news to see if anything interesting was worth looking into. It turned out that there was, in fact, something unusual going on. It seemed that there was a rash of mysterious murders sweeping across the city. Murder by itself wasn’t unusual. It happened every day in cities all across the world but what sparked Rachel’s interest was the nature of the murders. The bodies were often found in storm drains or in the sewer tunnels that ran underneath the city. The victims looked like they had been attacked by some kind of monster. Normally Rachel wouldn’t have put too much stock in that but lately she couldn’t discount the possibility of anything. If there was some kind of creature murdering people down in the sewers then she was going to get to the bottom of it and make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else. It didn’t matter whether or not this creature was part of Night’s organization, it was killing innocent people and she was going to put a stop to it.

“Sorry, June, but I might be a little late getting home tonight,” said Rachel to herself as she wrote down some information about the murders that she knew she would need later. She would get some more information on what was going on and then go from there. Maybe if she was lucky then she could end this killing spree quickly but she wasn’t counting on it.

San Francisco State University

Going to her anthropology class was hard for June considering that the professor had been murdered by Brother Night’s thugs. Had June not witnessed the things those people were capable of, she never would’ve believed what Rachel had told her about how Dr. Cates died. The idea of being turned into some helpless animal and then devoured by a swarm of flesh-eating insects made her skin crawl and she shuddered at even the mere thought of it. Ever since Cates’s untimely death, the university had sent in a host of rotating interim professors to help the students in the class get through their coursework. Anthropology was never a class June found particularly interesting. The only portion of the class she enjoyed was relating to the artwork of the ancient cultures. June was an art major and had been artistic for as long as she could remember. She was always doodling or sketching. If her financial status had allowed it, she would have gotten a two-bedroom apartment so she had enough space to create a studio. She hadn’t painted in a long time but she wanted to give it a try again. Now she wondered if maybe she should upgrade to the two-bedroom apartment just so Rachel could have her own room. She knew that Rachel would never go for it though if she learned the truth. Friends did things like that for each other though.

June was pondering all of this as she exited the classroom. She was so lost in thought that she almost didn’t recognize him but once she set her eyes on him she knew there was no way she couldn’t place a name to his face. It was ironic considering that she didn’t even know his real name but rather the name he let everyone know.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as she approached Sebastian Faust.

“One of the anthropology professors brought me in for a guest lecture,” explained Faust. “It’s nice to see you, June. I was hoping that we might get a chance to talk about things.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” said June. “I know what you’re involved in and I don’t like it.”

“A regretful association,” admitted Faust. “You’ll be happy to know that such an association has been terminated. I no longer work for that man.”

“What?” asked June skeptically.

“We parted ways,” said Faust casually. “Things weren’t working out and I had already repaid the debt that I owed him. I suppose I have you and your friend to thank for that. Really, it was for the best anyway.”

June tried to read Faust and realized it was a lost cause. She envied the way Rachel could see through people and know the truth. June was by most accounts somewhat gullible. She trusted people, took them at their word and saw the good in them. Could she trust what Faust was saying? Had he really somehow managed to cut ties with Brother Night and his criminal empire?

“Prove it,” she dared.

“That would require the two of us interacting more,” he noted. “Am I worthy of that?”

“You get a chance to prove to me that you’re not involved with him,” said June.

“How would you like me to do that?”

“I want to do something that hurts him and I want you to help me with it.”

Faust arched his eyebrow before his face returned to a mask of stone. He hadn’t anticipated that his deception would require more work. It seemed that June wasn’t as naive as he first expected. It didn’t matter though. Faust had no real love for Brother Night and any excuse available to secretly strike at Night’s empire was one he would gladly take. He could simply tell Night that any lashing out on his part was all a ploy to gain June’s trust. Equivocation was an art he was very acquainted with and a tool he had employed to great benefit over the decades.

“I think I can come up with something that will work,” he told June. “Meet me at the shop tonight and we’ll see what kind of trouble we can get into. I must admit, June, that I hadn’t pegged you for that kind of girl.”

“I’m full of surprises,” she told him.

Public transportation in San Francisco was different than it was in Gotham. As a teenager without a car, Rachel had gotten used to taking the bus to get around Gotham. She had memorized the bus schedule easily enough but since coming to San Francisco she was having a harder time navigating in the city. She chalked it up to having not lived in it very long. Gotham was her home, for better and for worse. Her heart thumped in time with the pulse of its streets and its grime and darkness flowed through her along with her tainted blood. San Francisco was . . . different. It was brighter and more colorful. True that it had its own fair share of demons but everything seemed better than it was in Gotham. Rachel sometimes missed that darkness and grime and then she realized that it was because deep down in some pit of her soul she was her father’s daughter. Maybe coming to San Francisco was the best for her. Maybe its bright colors could flood out the blackness in her heart.

She didn’t really have a lot of information to go on when it came to these sewer killings. One name did pop up though. Erazsmus Tilton was definitely not a name she could forget reading. According to him, his teenage son had disappeared and he believed this killer to be responsible. Since there was no mention in the papers about James Tilton’s body being discovered, Rachel thought it best to talk to the elder Tilton about his son. Rachel had looked into the Tilton family as much as she could given that she didn’t have any connection to law enforcement and couldn’t get access to their files. Tilton was a single father who worked as a biochemist at a local research facility. He was regarded fairly highly in academic circles for his work in the field of genetics. All his published material was on the subject, or at least all of it that Rachel could find. However, Rachel also got the sense from comments made by Tilton’s colleagues that he was a bit of a recluse. She could sympathize with his antisocial tendencies if he even had any. She was certainly not going to judge him in regards to that.

“Hope this works,” she said to herself before ringing the doorbell of Tilton’s home.

“Something I can help you with?” inquired Tilton after answering the door.

“I’m from school and I was just checking to see if anybody had anything about your son,” explained Rachel. “We’re all really worried about him.”

“Your concern is noted,” said Tilton, adjusting the glasses that rested on his nose. “The police have no further leads. They know to contact me when they do so there’s nothing more anyone can do. You would further yourself by going home. The plights of my son and I are not your business.”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Rachel. “I hope they find your son.” She turned to leave and mulled over the information she had picked up from Tilton.

Tilton watched her go and shut the door behind him as he retreated back into the house. Rachel turned and took on last look at him, watching him close the door and go back inside. She had been reading his emotional aura the whole time and it was very strange. Someone in Tilton’s position would light up like a Christmas tree with fear and probably with anger as well. She didn’t catch either of those emotions coming off him. If anything, the thing she could sense most was his lack of fear. It wasn’t exactly courage or willpower. It was just a sureness, a confidence. It was as if his son’s disappearance hadn’t even fazed him, as if everything was going the way it should be. Something was definitely wrong with that but she couldn’t go to the police and tell them that. Rachel knew she could do something about it on her own though and that was what she intended to do. She decided that she was going to start shadowing Tilton to see how exactly he spent his time. She also decided that she was going to have to venture down into the sewers to see if she could draw out this creature. She had been putting off such a course of action because she wasn’t exactly thrilled about going down there but it seemed as if she had no other options.

“Guess I better invest in some heavy-duty sanitizer then,” she cracked to herself. “Looks like it’s going to be an interesting night.”

As she approached a bus stop, Rachel couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching her. It was the same feeling she had the night she first ran into June. She felt like someone was spying on her and it unnerved her. She flicked her eyes in the direction of the feeling but all she saw was a homeless man sitting on the bench waiting with her for the bus. The man was clothed in tattered rags and simply sat there waiting. Rachel went over to him and opened her wallet, fishing out a five-dollar bill and extending it towards him.

“For the bus and whatever else,” she explained as he looked at her and she saw the unspoken question in his eyes. “Things will get better.”

“I’m hoping so,” replied the man as he nodded his thanks, taking the money and slipping it into his pocket. “I just got out here from back East.  Wanted to get some more sun.”

“Yeah, me too,” agreed Rachel, taking a seat on the bench and waiting with the man for the bus. “I dunno, it’s nice out here but it’s so different.  Things are just so . . .”

“Brighter?”

“Yeah.”  Rachel looked at the man and saw that he wasn’t as old as she originally thought. She wondered what had happened in his life to cause his unfortunate circumstances. “I mean I’m not saying that’s bad or anything. It’s just not something I’m used to.”

“It takes a while to put down roots in a place,” reminded the man. “The scary thing is that it happens whether you want it to or not. You live in a place so long, it gets inside of you and pretty soon you wonder how you ever lived anywhere else.”

“Somehow I just don’t think that this place will ever be home to me,” confessed Rachel. “Sometimes I don’t think any place ever will be.”

The homeless man was about to respond but the sound of the approaching bus stifled his words. The bus pulled up to the curb and opened its doors to welcome the new passengers. Rachel got on it and then turned back to see if the homeless man was boarding with her but to her surprise he had vanished.

‘You know he’s going to try to charm you again. I’m surprised he hasn’t done so already.’

June Moone sighed and knew it was foolish to think that she could get rid of The Enchantress forever. She had given up on that hope after awhile. At the very least, the sorceress’s spirit would always be a voice in the back of June’s head. However, June was learning lately that she had more force of personality than she previously thought. She meant what she had said to Rachel that the younger girl was the source of her newfound confidence. Despite her outgoing nature, June was a solitary girl. She kept other people at bay for fear that they would learn the truth about the evil inside her. Rachel knew that evil though because she had something just as bad if not worse lurking in her heart too. Rachel and June understood each other on a level that June hadn’t had with anyone before. The stronger that bond became, the more June was learning that it was time for The Enchantress to just be a voice in the back of her head and nothing more.

“You’re still in timeout until I say you’re not,” reminded June under her breath as she stood outside the antique shop. “If he tries anything magical then you can help me resist it but that’s all you can do.”

‘Oh you silly, little girl. There’s more than one way to charm a person.’

June tried not to think about what The Enchantress was implying. She knew that Faust was shady. She wanted to believe he was telling the truth though. June knew that people could change their ways. She saw Rachel trying to do just that every day.  So if Rachel could rebel against her evil nature then maybe Faust could too. It was worth the risk to give him a chance to prove he was telling the truth or at least that was what June told herself.

“I was wondering if you would even bother coming,” confessed Faust as June entered the shop. “I think I have something lined up if you’re willing to come with me.”

“Sure,” agreed June as both of them left the shop, Faust flipping the sign around to indicate that it was closed and then locking the door behind him. “What did you have in mind?”

“Brother Night has been taking over the city’s drug market,” explained Faust. “Your friend has been cutting into his business but I have a plan that will set him back more than what she’s been doing. Might I stress the danger of her actions? I think it unwise to poke a very angry bear with a very sharp stick and that’s what she’s been doing.”

“She knows the risks,” said June, catching herself at the last minute and not revealing Rachel’s name to Faust. “I don’t think she’s the type that scares easily.”

“Probably not,” agreed Faust. “I happen to know where Night keeps a large supply of his product. I was thinking that we could arrange an accident.”

“Sounds good,” said June as the two of them kept walking. “How did you get mixed up with him anyway?”

“I told you before that I owed him a debt. It’s been repaid.”

“What was the debt?”

“I prefer not to discuss it.”

June noted that Faust was very prickly about the subject and so she chose not to press it. She had taken the same approach to dealing with Rachel ever since the younger girl came to live with her. June wasn’t the gossip-mongering type but she was curious about people. She wasn’t used to living her life with so many secrets and she wasn’t used to the people in her life keeping secrets from her. She had been trying to get Rachel to open up to her but Rachel wasn’t really the type to share. It seemed that Faust wasn’t really that type either.

Faust hailed a cab and then opened the door for June, ushering her inside it. He got in after her and rattled off an address to the driver. The cabby pulled away from the curb and began carrying them to their destination. June watched the world go by from the cab’s window. San Francisco was very different from the small Midwest life she had lived back home. Things were faster in a big city, moving at such a rapid pace that June sometimes felt she would be swept away in its rush. There were times when she missed home. It wasn’t just missing her parents or her friends from high school. It was missing a lifestyle she had grown accustomed to. That life was gone though and it was due in no small part to The Enchantress.

“You don’t seem like a native of this city,” commented Faust.

“You don’t either,” replied June.

“I’ve lived in a lot of places,” he told her. “I find that getting comfortable in one spot for too long breeds complacency and I cannot abide that trait.”

“You’re running from something.”

“You are too.”

June supposed that was fair enough. It was true that she was running from something but the something she was running from couldn’t be escaped so easily. It lived under her skin and its voice was always in the back of her head. June looked at Faust and wondered exactly what he was running from and whether or not he could escape it. It couldn’t just be Brother Night. It had to be something bigger than that.

“I guess that’s something we both have in common then,” she said to Faust as the cab stopped at the address Faust had given the driver.

“Maybe we have more than that,” said Faust as he paid the driver and then they both got out of the cab. “This is the place. How do you want to do this?”

“I can’t really use my . . . thing,” explained June. “She’s in timeout.”

“Well that complicates things,” decided Faust. “Fortunately, I enjoy complicated things.”

Rachel Roth never stopped to think about all the myriad of terrible smells the world could produce. She was sure that she was going to have to wash her current outfit more than once to rid it of the terrible odor that permeated her nostrils and she would have to take at least two showers to get herself decently clean again. She had gotten a map of the city and had figured out that the killings were all localized in one area. Once she got herself into that area, getting into the sewers wasn’t a problem. The problem was that she had to just traipse around in the tunnels until whatever this creature was showed up to attack her. Rachel didn’t enjoy making herself bait for anything. She had spent most of her life trying to blend in, trying to not draw attention to herself so that the more popular kids at school wouldn’t single her out and ridicule her. Now it seemed that she was attracting far worse fates than that.

“I guess I’m going to have to do this the loud way then,” she said to herself.

Whatever debris floating in the water around her suddenly glowed with a black hue and levitated into the air. Rachel picked out some old pipes and began telekinetically scraping them along the walls of the tunnel. The clattering sounds her actions produced were loud enough that anyone or anything along the tunnel could hear them. She wasn’t finished just yet though. She began running as best she could down the tunnel and kept banging the pipes against the walls as she did so. Her plan was to make enough noise that if the creature was nearby it would be drawn to her.

“I wanna be an airborne ranger.  I wanna lead a life of danger,” she sang at the top of her lungs. “Before the day I die, there’s five things I wanna ride. Bicycle, tricycle, automobile, Virgin’s mother, and a ferris wheel. I wanna be an airborne ranger. I wanna lead a life of danger.”

In all her noisemaking, Rachel tried to listen in case something else in the tunnel wanted to make noise too. She stopped in her recreation of 80’s classic movie scenes and could have sworn that she heard something. She listened intently and realized that it must have been her imagination. She continued along the tunnel as she had before and noticed that there was a loose pipe hanging down from the ceiling. She ran and jumped, using her telekinesis to propel her further upward so she could touch the pipe. She never got the chance though. Something pounced on her in mid-air. Rachel barely had time to use her telekinesis to protect herself from the fall as her body connected with the floor of the tunnel. Thankfully her telekinetic shield took the brunt of the force and she used that same power to throw off her attacker. Rachel got back to her feet and dusted herself off before staring at the creature.  She felt a weird emotional aura coming from it. It was primal and definitely not the kind of aura a human being would give off. Yet it had human elements to it and that was what puzzled Rachel. She had never run across something like that before.

“I’ve been waiting on you all night so I guess I can forgive you for being so rude,” she said as she telekinetically moved the pipes in front of her, intending to use them as weapons in what was assuredly going to be a fight. “I was starting to think you were just a myth. You know, back home in Gotham I heard stories about crocodiles living in the sewers but I didn’t believe them. Guess I was wrong.”

The reptilian creature stood up to its full height and Rachel realized it wasn’t that much taller than she was. For a monster, it wasn’t as intimidating as she would have suspected. The creature snarled and sprang with the inhuman quickness of an animal. Rachel reminded herself that just because it wasn’t as big as she had anticipated, it was no less deadly than expected. It looked as if she was going to be in for a long night.

Next Issue: Things get even stranger when Rachel learns the secret origin behind the creature in the sewers and runs across the Ragman.