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Mungojerrie stood on the second step, peering down the concrete stairwell, sniffing the air, ears pricked Then he descended

Sasha followed the cat

The stairs ide enough for two people to walk abreast, with room to spare, and I stayed at Sasha’s side, relieved to be sharing the point-position risk with her Roosevelt followed, then Doogie with the Uzi Bobby was our tail gunner, keeping his back to one wall, crabbing sideways down the stairs, tosuspiciously clean, the first flight of steps was as it had been on my previous visit Bare concrete on all sides Evenly spaced core holes in the ceiling, which had once been the end points of electrical chaseways Painted iron pipe attached to one wall, as a handrail The air was cold, thick, redolent with the scent of lime that leached fro and turned toward the second flight, I put one hand on Sasha’s ar her, and to our feline scout I whispered, "Whoa, cat"

Mungojerrie halted four steps into the next flight and, with an expectant expression, looked up at us

The ceiling ahead was fitted with fluorescent fixtures Because these lights weren’t switched on, they posed no danger to me

But they hadn’t been here before They had been torn out and carted ahen Fort Wyvern shut down In fact, this particular structurebefore the base was closed, when the Mystery Train ran off the tracks and scared its designers into the realization that their project had been pursued with a truly loco motive

Time past and time present existed here sih we could not see it All ti inexorably to an end that we believe results from our actions but over which our control is mere illusion

At the moment, that bit of Eliot was too bleak for ine what ht wait ahead of us, I mentally recited the initial couplet of the first-ever poetry about Winnie-the-Pooh--"A bear, however hard he tries / Grows tubby without exercise"--but A A Milne failed to drive Eliot froers below, from this eerie confusion of past and present, than I could return to my childhood Nevertheless, how lovely it would be to crawl under the covers with er, 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 fro had been stripped

Tiain more present than tiie murmured, "Give me Colombia anytiojerrie, Roosevelt said, "Got to hurry Going to be blood if we don’t hurry"

Led by the fearless cat, we slowly descended four ar

We found no additional indications of hobgoblins or bugaboos until we reached the bottoojerrie was about to lead us into the outer corridor that encircles this entire oval-shaped level of the building, the round floor of the hangar pulsed beyond the doorway It lasted only an instant and then was replaced by darkness

A general disroup, 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 glooain, and then several ency 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 lu louder They were still distorted, but aln red light in the corridor penetrated to the space at the bottoether 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 illuht, alive with phantom shapes and movement that could be detected only fro ures passed the doorway, darker ht, perhapseven worse As these individuals crossed our line of sight, the voices grew louder and less distorted, then faded as the figures h the doorway

I expected hi no trace behind except the stink of scorched fur Instead, he becaated, 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 froh the building, low and o faintly, as the steel post had vibrated in the hangar

Abruptly, the corridor light flashed froh the doorway at a hall blazingly revealed under fluorescent ceiling panels

Instantaneously with the change of light, my ears popped, as if frousted 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 ht He was standing not on bare concrete but on clean white ceramic floor tiles that had not been there before

I peered up the dark stairs behind us, which appeared to be firmly anchored in our ti was not phasing entirely in and out of the past; the phenomenon occurred in a crazy-quilt pattern