Seize the Night

tries to teach us by refusing to show Himself in this world. Patience.
    Orson and I stood still and vigilant until well after the final echo of the noise faded. Just as the subsequent silence grew long enough to make me wonder if what we'd heard had any significance, a voice arose, deep toned and angry, as muffled as the clang had been. One voice.
    Not a conversation. A monologue. Someone talking to himself—or to a small, frightened captive who dared not reply. I couldn't make out the meaning, but the voice was as hollow and grumbly as that of a troll in a fairy tale.
    The speaker was neither approaching nor retreating, and clearly he was not in this chamber with Orson and me. Before I was able to determine the direction from which the growled words came, the troll fell silent.
    Fort Wyvern has been closed only nineteen months, so I haven't had time to learn each niche of it as thoroughly as I've acquainted myself with every cranny of Moonlight Bay. Thus far, I've confined most of my explorations to the more mysterious precincts of the base, where I'm most likely to encounter strange and intriguing sights. Of this warehouse, I knew only that it was like the others in this cluster, three stories high, with an open-beam ceiling, and composed of four spaces—the main rooms in which we stood, one office in the far right corner, a matching room in the far left corner, and an open loft above those offices.
    I was sure that neither the sudden noise nor the voice had come from any of those places.
    I turned in a circle, frustrated by the impenetrable darkness.
    It was as pitiless and unremitting as the black pall that will fall over me if, one day, cumulative light damage plants the seeds of tumors in my eyes.
    A louder noise than the first, a resounding crash of metal against metal, boomed through the building, giving rise to echoes that rolled like a distant cannonade. This time I felt vibrations in the concrete floor, suggesting that the source of the disturbance might be below the main level of the warehouse.
    Under certain buildings on the base lie secret realms that were apparently unknown to the vast majority of the soldiers who conducted the ordinary, reputable army business of Wyvern. Doors, once cunningly disguised, led from basements down to subbasements, to deeper cellars, to vaults far below the cellars. Many of these subterranean structures are linked to others throughout the base by staircases, elevators, and tunnels that would have been far less easy to detect before the facility, prior to abandonment, was stripped of all supplies and equipment.
    Indeed, even with some of Wyvern's secrets left exposed by its departing stewards, my best discoveries would not have been possible without the aid of my clever canine companion. His ability to detect even the faintest fragrant drafts wafting through cracks from hidden rooms is as impressive as his talent for riding a surfboard, though perhaps not as impressive as his knack for occasionally wheedling a second beer from his friends, like me, who know full well that he is incapable of handling more than one.
    Without question, this sprawling base harbors more installations that remain well hidden, waiting to be revealed, nevertheless, as interesting as my explorations have been, I've periodically refrained from them.
    When I spend too much time in the shadow land under Fort Wyvern, its disturbing atmosphere grows oppressive. I have seen enough to know that this netherworld was the site of wide-ranging clandestine operations of dubious wisdom, that numerous and diverse “black-budget” research projects were surely conducted here, and that some of those projects were so ambitious and exotic as to defy understanding based on the few enigmatic clues that were left behind.
    This knowledge alone, however, isn't what makes me uncomfortable in Wyvern's underworld. More distressing is a perception—little more than an intuition but nonetheless powerful—that some of what happened here was not merely well-intentioned foolishness of a high order, not merely science in the service of mad politics, but pure wickedness. When I spend more than a couple of nights in a row under Wyvern, I'm overcome by the conviction that unknown evils were loosed in its buried warrens and that some still roam those byways, waiting to be encountered.
    Then it isn't fear that drives me to the surface. Rather, it's a sense of moral and spiritual suffocation as though, by remaining too long in