The rhythmic dripping of water overwhelmed an otherwise deafening silence, and the air was thick. James opened his eyes slowly, the back of his head heavy and falling against his back. He blinked his eyes, forcing his vision to come to some kind of focus as he looked to the ceiling. The odorless air quickly became pungent, a rotting aroma of sewage and decay filling his nose and creeping atop his tongue. Gagging, he spat the spoiled saliva out of his mouth into the murky water that surrounded him, repeatedly and violently, and placed his nose into the crook of his elbow. He looked around; the tunnel swirled, and his head spun with it. The light from a street lamp shone into the hole, and a distant yelling from above faintly accompanied the dripping; it sounded as though it was submerged underwater, garbled and wordless. 

He remembered a time he had attended church with his grandmother as a kid. A collection of grayed and crinkled women congregated at the altar at the feet of the pastor, overcome with the Holy Spirit during the choir's session. The hymns had overtaken their bodies and their tongues, and they began vocalizing senseless sounds that resembled no language he had heard in his cartoons. He tugged on his grandmother’s gown, unnerved by this outburst, but she simply said, “It’s the Holy Ghost, Jamesy. He’s taken over them.” Had James remained religious, he perhaps would have considered the light a cracked door from Heaven. Maybe he would have allowed the Holy Ghost to overtake his body and float toward the warm embrace of deliverance. But James has not been religious in quite some time, and he already believed himself to be in Hell.

Using his free hand, James levered himself up, his arm vibrating with tremors and a cold fear that stuck to his neck. He bent his leg underneath him, summoning every bone in his body to awaken so that he could gain some balance. As he readied his next foot, however, his knee buckled and he quickly fell back into the inches-deep, discolored water in which he had awoken. James panted, a thickness expanding behind his chest and a cold rush leaking down his spine. He looked ahead of him down the darkened, greenish tunnel. Pipes lined the walls, and several massive, cylindrical openings encircled him. They reminded him of organ pipes, but the cacophonous hymns usually expelled from them had soured in this setting, splintering into eerie echoes of dripping water and irregular, mechanical creaking. There was a feeling, too, one that James could not describe. Not physical. Not emotional. Just a presence. Maybe it was the Holy Ghost standing atop him, ready to rip the soul from his body.

His head beat with pain, and nearly every limb of his body ached and stung with agony. The smell curdled in his nose. With nothing left to spit, James turned over and retched. His throat burned with acid, and swirls of vomit and blood mixed with the sewage water in which he sat. He leaned his head back against the wall he was lying on, looking up at the open manhole he had fallen through. It was just a dare; it was not supposed to turn out this way. 

“Just open it, James,” his friend, Clay, had said, slurring his words. “They got ladders in those things, we could go ‘splore.”

James laughed and stumbled backwards before catching his footing. “It’s shit water. You wanna explore shit water?”

“No, man, it’s an adventure,” Clay responded. He took a swig of his beer and looked at the manhole cover. A mischievous, curious grin crept along on his face.

James knew that look. “What are you thinking?”

“You think there’s a mutant lizard guy down there like that Spiderman movie?” Clay was almost serious.

James scoffed and punched Clay in the arm. “Shut up, dude.” He drank his beer, eyes glued on the cover, and his foot tapping. His drunken mind raced with possibilities. There could be anything down there. Maybe lost phones or keys. Hell, maybe even wallets and jewelry. It’d be a lot easier to just go down and pick it up rather than swiping it off people who are too focused on their phones on the bus or in the mall. Clay looked at him, smirking. “Fuck you, man,” James said, putting his drink down. He went over to the cover, putting his fingers in the slits and lifting. He grunted as he used every muscle to lift the grate, the veins in his neck bulging from the exertion, and his face burning a bright red from the rush of blood. “Come over here and help me,” James panted.

Clay rolled his eyes and set his drink down. Standing across from James, he put his fingers in the slits and lifted. The cover slowly slid on top of the concrete, and the two of them pushed it further to the side to make room for them to step through, knocking James’s drink over in the process. They stood up, stumbling slightly as they did, and high-fived one another. Clay picked up his beer, and James stepped closer to the manhole, crouching beside it and lowering his head to find the ladder. “I don’t see any steps.”

“What do you mean?” Clay burped out.

“There’s no ladder.”

“Course there’s a ladder.” Clay walked over to where James was and crouched next to him, bending his neck from side to side to inspect the hole. “Hmm.”

“Yeah, dumbass.”

“Okay, how could I have known?” Clay chucked a bit and raised his hands up halfway. “I made a mistake. Sue me.”

“I should,” James said, gesturing to his spilled drink. “You knocked my beer over. You owe me another pack.”

Clay scoffed in protest but relented. “Fine, but I get two.” He clapped a hand to the back of James’s shoulder, but it was too hard. James, toes already on the edge of the manhole, stumbled forward, hitting his head on the concrete and tumbling thirty feet into the sewer below. The last thing James heard was Clay shouting. Then everything went black.

He could see a shadow in the opening above him pacing back and forth, and a voice, similar to Clay’s but warped, shouted. James wanted to yell back, to tell Clay to go get help or rope, but he could not. He felt as though his ribs had caved in and were puncturing his lungs as an unrelenting, stabbing pain pulsed behind his chest. He looked around, a revolting mixture of sewage water, blood, and vomit surrounding him. The realization of what he was sitting in caught up to him, forcing him to retch once again. Heaving and desperate to move from where he was, James leaned forward, vomit dripping from the side of his mouth, and crawled across the darkened, flowing stream to the other side of the tunnel. He dragged the weight of himself with his arms, his elbows digging into the rough concrete that split his wet, softened flesh. James stretched his hand out to grab a pipe and pulled himself up. 

The light seemed further from him now, and the volume of the voice had decreased. Wounds littered his body, and the incessant beating of his head vibrated his skull. It hurt to think. It hurt to move. It hurt to think about moving. He lay there looking at the light, his body still, but his heart beating against his ribs with a ferocity he wished he could physically muster. James wondered if he should pray. He remembered how to well enough, but would he say it in the right tongue? 

A groaning rumbled down one of the black, gaping tunnels, vibrating the water around him and retching hundreds of cockroachesfrom the mouth. They stampeded in his direction and ran across him, thousands of tiny legs tickling his skin. James’s entire body went cold, and he turned his neck up, closing his mouth tightly. A warm wind chased after the roaches and blew across his face, the smell more putrid and stiff with rot than before, and a groaning cackling with a low, mechanical clicking reverberated off the metal walls. The smell, the sounds, the cockroaches, the water–it was overwhelming him. James tried to shout, but his mouth felt weak and his head heavy; senseless, garbled nothingness expelled from his lips. His vision swirled once again, and the arm he had propped himself up on weakened. He fell into the water, his face resting in the sludge that flowed just under his nose, and his mouth agape. He blinked slowly, looking at the circle of light. He watched it eclipse, and darkness overtook the sewer.

James lay still–too weak to shout, too weak to move. The darkness swelled in the space, making it hard for him to discern whether his eyes were open or not. The dripping continued, each droplet echoing louder than the one before. Creaking accompanied the water, creating an eerie melody. He thought about the hymns from church–the ones played on the organ, and the choir vocals that clashed with the tuneless dissonance. The volume always seemed to get louder before it concluded, the silence leaving a pressure on the ears from the sudden vacuum of noise. James listened to the ballad in the sewer. He wondered if the women liked the Holy Ghost, or if it were madness that drove them to the altar, begging for the sound to cease. He could understand it, the madness. The dripping grew louder in volume but slowed in pace. Water flowed in and out of James’s mouth, and he bled slowly into the stream around him.

Then, there was a light. A small, illuminated circle that moved from left to right, maybe a flashlight, and a shadowed figure beside him. The light dashed around James before settling on his face. He tried to crack one of his eyes open, but the radiance blinded him. He could see it move, and the sound of water bubbling beside him. The light grew brighter before him, and James felt a sudden rush of calm overtake his body. Maybe Clay had found him. Or maybe it was the Holy Ghost. He didn’t care. He opened himself up to it willingly and fell into its warm embrace.