Hatch and his savior sat in a carpeted parlor on cushioned chairs facing each other across a low coffee table with a tea service on it. The remarkable fact was that they were both dry, breathing air instead of brine, and speaking in normal tones. When they’d both entered the foyer of the stranger’s building, he had hit a button on the wall. A sheet of steel slid down to cover the street door, and within seconds the sea water began to exit the compartment through a drain in the floor. Hatch had had to drown into the air and that was much more uncomfortable than simply going under, but after some extended wheezing, choking, and spitting up, he drew in a huge breath with ease. The diver had unscrewed the glass globe that covered his head and held it beneath one arm. “Isaac Munro,” he’d said and nodded.
Now dressed in a maroon smoking jacket and green pajamas, moccasins on his feet, the silver-haired man with a drooping mustache sipped his tea and held forth on his situation. Hatch, in dry clothes the older man had given him, was willing to listen, almost certain Munro knew the way back to dry land.
“I’m in Drowned Town, but not of it. Do you understand?” he said.
Hatch nodded, and noticed what a relief it was to have the pressure of the sea off him.
Isaac Munro lowered his gaze and said, as if making a confession, “My wife, Rotzy, went under some years ago. There was nothing I could do to prevent it. She came down here, and on the day she left me, I determined I would find the means to follow her and rescue her from Drowned Town. My imagination, fired by the desire to simply hold her again, gave birth to all these many inventions that allow me to keep from getting my feet wet, so to speak.” He chuckled and then made a face as if he were admonishing himself.
Hatch smiled. “How long have you been looking for her?”
“Years,” said Munro, placing his teacup on the table.
“I’m trying to get back. My wife, Rose, is coming for me in the car.”
“Yes, your old neighbor Bob Gordon told me you might be looking for an out,” said the older man. “I was on the prowl for you when we encountered that cutpurse leviathan.”
“You know Bob?”
“He does some legwork for me from time to time.”
“I saw him at the grocery today.”
“He has a bizarre fascination with that lobster tank. In any event, your wife won’t make it through, I’m sorry to say. Not with a car.”
“How can I get out?” asked Hatch. “I can’t offer you a lot of money, but something else perhaps.”
“Perish the thought,” said Munro, waving a hand in the air. “I have an escape hatch back to the surface in case of emergencies. You’re welcome to use it if you’ll just observe some cautionary measures.”
“Absolutely,” said Hatch and moved to the edge of his chair.
“I take it you’d like to leave immediately?”
Both men stood and Hatch followed Munro along a hallway lined with framed photographs that opened into a large space, like an old ballroom, with peeling flowered wallpaper. Crossing the warped wooden floor scratched and littered with, of all things, old leaves and pages of a newspaper, they came to a door. When Munro turned around, Hatch noticed that the older man was holding one of the photos from the hallway wall.
“Here she is,” said Isaac. “This is Rotzy.”
Hatch leaned down for a better look at the portrait. He gave only the slightest grunt of surprise and hoped his host hadn’t noticed, but Rotzy was the woman he’d last seen at the phone booth, the half-faced horror who’d been mishandled by Madame Mutandis.
“You haven’t seen her, have you?” asked Munro.
Hatch knew he should try to help the old man, but he thought only of escape and didn’t want to complicate things. He sensed the door in front of him was his portal back. “No,” he said.
Munro nodded resignedly and then reached into the side pocket of his jacket and retrieved an old-fashioned key. He held it in the air, but did not place it in Hatch’s outstretched palm. “Listen carefully,” he said. “You will pass through a series of rooms. Upon entering each room, you must lock the door behind you with this key before opening the next door to exit into the following room. Once you’ve started you can’t turn back. The key works only to open doors forward and lock doors backward. A new door cannot be opened without the previous door being locked. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Munro placed the key in Hatch’s hand. “Then be on your way and Godspeed. Kiss the sky for me when you arrive.”
“I will.”
Munro opened the door and Hatch stepped through. The door closed and he locked it behind him. He crossed the room in a hurry, unlocked the next door and then, passing through, locked it behind him. This process went on for twenty minutes before Hatch noticed that it took fewer and fewer steps to traverse each succeeding room to the next door. One of the rooms had a window, and he paused to look out on some watery side street falling into night. The loneliness of the scene spurred him forward. In the following room he had to duck down so as not to skin his head against the ceiling. He locked its door and moved forward into a room where he had to duck even lower.
Eventually, he was forced to crawl from room to room, and there wasn’t much space for turning around to lock the door behind him. As each door swept open before him, he thought he might see the sky or feel a breeze in his face. There was always another door, but there was also hope. That is, until he entered a compartment so small, he couldn’t turn around to use the key but had to do it with his hands behind his back, his chin pressed against his chest. “This has got to be the last one,” he thought, unsure if he could squeeze his shoulders through the next opening. Before he could insert the key into the lock on the tiny door before him, a steel plate fell and blocked access to it. He heard a swoosh and a bang behind him and knew another metal plate had covered the door going back.
“How are you doing, Mr. Hatch?” he heard Munro’s voice say.
By dipping one shoulder Hatch was able to turn his head and see a speaker built into the wall. “How do I get through these last rooms?” he yelled. “They’re too small and metal guards have fallen in front of the doors.”
“That’s the point,” called Munro. “You don’t. You, my friend, are trapped, and will remain trapped forever in that tight uncomfortable place.”
“What are you talking about? Why?” Hatch was frantic. He tried to lunge his body against the walls but there was nowhere for it to go.
“My wife, Rotzy. You know how she went under? What sank her? She was ill, Mr. Hatch. She was seriously ill but her health insurance denied her coverage. You, Mr. Hatch, personally said no.”
This time what flared before Hatch’s inner eye was not his life, but all the many pleading, frustrated, angry voices that had traveled in one of his ears and out the other in his service to the HMO. “I’m not responsible” was all he could think to say in his defense.
“My wife used to tell me, ‘Isaac, we’re all responsible.’ Now you can wait, as she waited for relief, for what was rightly due her. You’ll wait forever, Hatch.”
There was a period where he struggled. He couldn’t tell how long it lasted, but nothing came of it, so he closed his eyes, made his breathing more steady and shallow, and went into his brain, across the first floor to the basement door. He opened it and could smell the scent of the dark wood wafting up the steps. Locking the door behind him, he descended into the dark.