Resurrection

I’m in the basement, a single light bulb hanging from the rafters. I’m pleasantly surprised at how dry and mold-free the place is. Still, it’s a cluttered mess, with several large wooden tables smashed to kindling, and racks of electronics gear along one wall. Oscilloscopes, power supplies – all of it old vacuum tube stuff from God knows when. What it’s doing here is anybody’s guess.

I unload one of the racks and decide to keep the antique electronics gear. With some sprucing up, they'll make excellent art pieces at a high end furnishings shop. After the heaviest oscilloscope nearly destroys my lower back. I start sliding the now-empty rack away from the wall.

Then I see it.

A scuffed, gray metal door, heavy duty rivets around its edges. Looks like something from an old 1950’s nuclear missile bunker. Imagine my surprise when I push the handle lever and the door latch clicks open.

I pull it open with a rusty squeal and smell dust and old electronics. Also, an unpleasant, sour odor underneath it all. Before entering, I grab a tripod-mounted LED work light and drag it behind myself. Flipping the switch, I can make out a square room, about twenty feet wide, with a large round pressure hatch, about six feet in diameter, on the far wall.

This is nuts! Like something from a World War II submarine. There’s a black circular window, about a foot across, near the top of the hatch. Why would this exist in a neighborhood once filled with doctors, lawyers, and steel plant executives? 

I inspect the hatch. No labels or markings. Grasping the central wheel, I strain to turn it. No dice. But there’s something else in this room – a control panel of some sort, on the left wall. A series of old analog electrical meters, with various black knobs and control switches. Down in the lower left corner, there’s a tarnished silver switch in the off position.

I flip it, then jump when a deep, crackly hum plays from a ceiling mounted speaker I didn’t know was there. Not only that – the panel’s meters glow with a soft yellow light, several of their needles twitching with life. All of this entices my curiosity.

Nothing on the panel is labeled. The large, faceted power lamp glows like a ruby, and there’s a set of three nixie tubes glowing orange behind a thick pane of glass. That’s the old-school way of displaying numbers electronically – inside what look like vacuum tubes. Right now, they’re displaying 100. Is that Amps? Volts? What? 

With my cell phone, I shoot a brief vid of the panel and the chamber, then take some stills of the control panel. As I do, there’s an irresistible urge to play further with it. Look at those knobs and switches! Whatever this is, it’s at least seventy or eighty years old, and it can't do any harm.

After all, I’m in the midst of a formerly posh, now abandoned steel town residential neighborhood. It’s currently under renewal as local developers resurrect a poverty-riddled city from its own ashes. I’d glimpsed maps of this region a few weeks ago. The only things we had worry about were radon gas in basements and the abandoned coal mine shafts spiderwebbing the city.

My curiosity burns. Yet, somewhere, in the back of my mind, I hear the slightest peep from my own common sense – about leaving all of this to the experts. Then a renewed itch, almost obsessive in intensity, silences the inner voice.

I flip a heavy, Bakelite toggle switch. Then another. With each action, it feels easier. More intoxicating. 

Nothing new happens.

Turning up a large black dial, I smell hot electronics. The meter needles are now halfway up their analog scales.

There’s a loud crackling noise over the speaker, and something starts flashing green on the panel. It’s a large button, about an inch across, trapped beneath a domed glass cover. I try unsuccessfully to pry off the cover, then fetch a hammer from my toolbox.

For five or ten seconds, the hammer hovers an inch above the glass. Then I shatter it, with a tinkling of shards on the floor. I drop the hammer and bring my finger over the flashing button. There’s a strange but pleasant sensation of static electricity, as if some force is pulling my finger down.

I press it.

All at once, a loud, mechanical sounding voice, like that of some robot in an old 50’s sci-fi movie, announces:

“Containment breach initiated. You now have 100 seconds and counting.”

The floor begins to vibrate, followed, seconds later by a deep shudder that brings dust and bits of broken mortar down from the ceiling. The counter has already ticked down to eighty-nine. I surmise those tubes are displaying seconds.

A blue glow emanates from the hatch window, and a deafening hiss erupts it's broken gasket. A cold, acrid, white vapor sprays out through the seam, and I start coughing.

Curiosity gives way to terror. 

I’ve initiated some process that I have no idea how to stop. The monotone voice keeps counting down, in unison with the time remaining on the nixie tubes.

“Seventy-two…. Seventy-one… Seventy… Inner constraint system disabled. Stasis umbilicus retraction in five seconds…”

I frantically flip toggles and press buttons. I flip the main power switch, but nothing happens. A deep moan – like some immense creature is awakening – reverberates through the walls, and the light through the porthole pulses with blinding intensity.

“Thirty-three… Thirty-two… Vital signs restored. Full life status in twenty-nine… Twenty-eight…”

I’m immersed in a deafening, blinding chaos of sound and light. Then the muffled sounds of heavy metal bolts and restraints being sheared from their moorings. Something crashes into the hatch, and wriggling, glistening tentacles flail just behind the glass. The horrid moans become roars, and I can hear, feel, the rage of a caged beast struggling for freedom.

With my sweating back plastered against the wall, I watch on – helpless, horrified, as the counter reaches twenty seconds. The thing inside rams into the hatch, causing its thick, heavily riveted surface to bow outward. It repeats, then again, again…

“Nine… Eight…”

The next crash blows the hatch clean open on its hinges. It swings violently and smashes against the wall beside it, then hangs there, the metal on the hatch’s inner surface shimmering, glowing with heat. Soaring temperatures sear my face, and I shield my eyes to protect my corneas from being burned to ashes.

“Three… Two…”

Something emerges from the smoke and pouring from the open hatchway. 

First, a wriggling mass of slimy tentacles. Then a huge, armor-encrusted body – like that of some monstrous insect. Finally, a face, with three huge white glowing eyes that pierce my soul and burn straight through my mi—