The New Students 3/4

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The tunnels, they discovered, were as crowded as the streets had been deserted. The glowing moss did not extend into the tunnel proper, but each traveler carried some sort of light: lanterns, flashlights, and more than a few glowing wands. But the half-shadowed faces passing by them did not look as human as one might wish. Some were flat with bulging eyes, others dark, narrow, and heavy with stubble. Thin, gaunt faces, greenish-pale in the underground illumination, seemed to sport too many teeth with much too sharp points on them. A pair dressed in black leather with unnaturally white faces turned as the group walked past, and one slicked back his white-blonde hair and licked his pale pink lips.

"New students," he drawled. "Anyone care to join me in a bite?"

Charles fingered his silver necklace. "Go stuff yourself with garlic," he muttered, pushing the others ahead of him.

Hermione looked back. "Who were they?" she asked.

"Night-crawlers. Not to my taste, I'm afraid." And Charles smiled in a way which showed his own pointed teeth.

Not many steps further, they met a group of extremely squat and bulbous youths, whose enormous eyes seemed to have no lids and whose mouths stretched the width of their faces. Their bald heads were tattooed with dark, wriggling designs on their greenish-gray skins, and their oversized, bare feet exhibited long, splayed toes with a hint of web between them. They spoke in croaking tones, sounding like the last gasps of a pulverized frog.

"The swim team," Charles muttered beneath his breath in a distasteful tone.

But one was carrying a broom, and was dressed in colorful robes. He spotted the brooms that the others carried, and began to croak in excited tones. The others gazed at him, then turned their puzzled attention to the new students. The first one thrust forward, and in barely understandable words he gurgled, "Do you fly? Do you play?"

Harry stepped forward. "I've been recruited to play Seeker for the Deep Ones."

Immediately the one with the broom began to jabber and point to his own broom. The only distinguishable word was "Beater." Then he reached out with his oversized hand, enfolded it around Harrys wrist and forearm, and began to pump him up and down.

"Pleased to meet you," Harry said through rattling teeth.

With many more cheerful gurgles and slaps on the back, the crowd of athletes moved down the tunnel. But one's voice echoed back, a wistful string of barely understandable words, "Sure talk funny."

***

The tunnel was part of a giant maze, with sections joining at unnatural angles, and rooms, both natural caves and the basements of buildings, cropping up unexpectedly around bends and corners. Sometimes they walked down orderly halls with doors on either side, from behind which came the moans and shrieks of the damned, while other times they fought their way over slippery stalagmites and through puddles where ghost-like fish groped their way blindly through the appendages of the rock. As their path angled downward and the sounds of other people diminished behind them, the luminescent fungi grew sparse and dim. Charles flipped on a weak flashlight; the new students pulled out wands. "Lumos," said Hermione, followed by her companions, and narrow beams of light shot out of the tip, illuminating the rocks about them.

There were drawings on the rock here, grotesque illustrations of toothy ghouls dissecting and devouring the remains of human bodies. Some squatted in church yards; others prowled battlefields. A small group, dressed in robes, stood waiting outside the hospital emergency room. Another set glanced furtively about as they prepared to open the back door to a movie theater, bottles of salt and pepper in hand. And a pair, dressed in long coats, waited patiently beside a schoolhouse door.

Ron shivered violently. "How – disgusting."

Charles smiled widely, his teeth quite long in the dim light. "This is the gallery. Our secret collection of Pickman's works. Though I swear that more appear all the time down here, though no one has ever seen the artist." He walked ahead a few more paces, then shone his light through a crack in the rock, a fissure barely large enough to allow a person to slip through sideways. "Here's a shortcut."

"We'll go straight, thank you," Hermione said crisply. She was staring at the map again, as if struggling to read it in the indefinite illumination.

"But this is shorter. You must be ready to end your journey."

"I am," announced Ron, flopping down on his trunk. "We've been walking forever."

"Yeah," said Harry, dropping beside him. "It's been hours, hasn't it?"

"Of course; since we've been led in circles!" Hermione replied hotly. "But the map says we shouldn't go that way, and we're not!"

"Oh, come on," Ron moaned. "What does a stupid old map know?"

"This map knows plenty," she growled.

Absently, Harry lifted his hand to rub the scar emblazoned across his forehead. He stared off into the shadows of the distance, no longer a part of the argument between his friends.

"Let me see that thing," Ron snapped, grabbing the parchment from Hermione's hand.

It was a detailed and complicated drawings, whose lines resembled a bowl of pasta more than a map, and the lines glowed in different colors. Green, according to the legend along the side, was completely safe. Yellow urged caution, orange called for severe caution, and red meant danger. Four tiny blinking icons stood in a yellow tunnel, and the one branching away from them was black.

A tiny little figure with a familiar large, hooked nose was pointing frantically to the black on the legend, which was labeled, "Mortis." Below the figure, a familiar handwriting spelled out, "Idiot! Moron! Imbecile! Can't you see a trap when you're about to walk into it? Do you think your good grades will be of use when your head has been ripped from your body and fed to the Shoggoth?"

Ron pointed to the figure. "He gave you a goodbye present?"

"More of a good riddance present, I think."

"Guys," Harry. said warningly. "My scar hurts."

And Charles was grinning.

Together Hermione and Ron looked down at the map. The tunnel surrounding them had just turned black.