Andy’s boots rang out loudly as he stepped out over the top of the ladder onto a grey metal platform flecked here and there with rust and lined with indentations. The volume of the moaning increased as soon as he had topped the ladder. The scratching intensified along the wall we climbed as well, and it shook with a series of hollow thuds. A thick metal door was set into the wall alongside a square hole cut into the platform through which passed the elevator’s cable. Andy pulled a key from his pocket and grinned at me. “They still trust me with this,” he said as he inserted into a single stout lock. The door swung into the barn as he pushed it emitting a concentrated rush of filth that gagged me. Andy snickered and stepped out onto another narrow platform into the darkness of the barn on the other side of the doorway. I followed him though I was wary about the lack of light and as I stepped out onto the platform, which was lined, I heard another rapid succession of thuds slamming into the wall beneath me. The moaning rose again laced with angry hissing and my stomach sank with my suspicions. Andy lit a lantern with a match and then swung it out into the blackness with a maniacal glee. Below him thralls twisted and writhed in one undulating mass like entangled worms exposed to the day, their faces screwed up into horrific snarls. They hurled their bodies into the wall beneath us as they leapt for us and then scratched at it as they tried to climb. They tried to climb on top of one another reaching for us with arms that ended in only nubs, but never succeeding in getting more than one thrall on the back of another with their lack at cooperation. I instinctively stepped away from them, my back against the wall, my heart rushing in my throat and my arms coming up in front of my chest. What kind of fools would keep this many thrall? No one could expect to keep them secure. Everything in my mind and body screamed to run but I stood petrified, quivering against the metal wall as I imagined them swarming me, ripping my limbs from my body and devouring my blood as the vamps had done on the streets of the vampire city. Andy hung the lantern from a hook on a railing that ran alongside the platform and pulled another one off the wall and lit it. The platform ran along all four walls so that we could walk around the entire building with the ceiling just above our head. He moved to another wall lighting more lamps grinning at me. “I love seeing fresh meat wet their pants,” he laughed as he walked around the barn occasionally yelling taunts at the thralls. “It’s the best part of this job.” The light enraged the thralls so that they cried out louder and flung themselves higher, biting and flailing at each other when they fell back to the concrete floor having failed to reach me. As the barn grew lighter and I grew more confident that the thralls would be unable to leap out of their containment, I ventured a couple of small steps towards the railing so that I could see more clearly their twisted faces. An oddity struck me; their maws though pulled back in ugly hisses exposed only bare gums patched in black. In fact, their mouths were nothing more than empty holes. Their fangs were gone. In fact, they had no teeth whatsoever. No teeth and no hands. Down in their disgusting pit they bit at each other with no effect and struck one another with their nubs. I move right up to the railing which roiled the creatures even more and though I started when one leaped right up underneath me slapping the platform with its amputated limb I didn’t move back.
“Now you see that their harmless.” Andy said. “Well at least mostly harmless.”
“Are you just waiting for them to die?” I asked.
“Hardly, though they will die eventually.” He pointed to one lying in a corner flopping and drooling onto the concrete. It grunted and squirmed in protest as its fellows stepped on it but didn’t get up. “That one there will have to be dealt with soon, though let’s not deal with it today. If anyone asks just to say they were all still on their feet when we were up here. It’s a major pain when one dies.”
The thralls were all naked and shoeless and their feet had been worn ragged by the rough floor. Though they were of all skin tones and colors their skin shared a waxy pale dullness which would have signified a life-threatening illness in any man or of course thrall sickness. They moved with various degrees of intelligence, some simply hurling themselves at us and then lying about viciously with their stumps as they fell back to the floor, some scrambling back and forth with their hands on the wall feeling for handholds, some climbed onto the backs of others and then leaped and still others simply stood looking at us with cocked heads and a gleam in their head. Their voices had been reduced to groaning, hissing and full-throated roars of rage.
“What do you keep them for, then?”
He waved me over to him. “Here crank this.” A slightly rusted handle stuck out of the wall disappearing into a pipe visible through cracks on the other side. I began to turn it as he walked along looking down at where the platform joined the wall. It caught, but I was able to turn it without applying too much force though I had to grip it with two hands and the pipe began to gurgle. A trickle of brown water spurt onto the platform with the wet hiss of escaping air.
