Consciousness returned to Hawks in fits and starts. He was hanging by his feet in a dark place. Judging by the way his head was pounding, he’d been there a while. He struggled to move his arms – they weren’t bound, it was just hard to regain any sense of control over them. It was like dragging them through treacle. He glared angrily at where he imagined his hand was, and tried flexing the fingers one at a time. All seemed to be there, on the right at least. He tried left. All present and correct. By focusing a herculean strength of will, he managed to lift one arm to his own chest pocket and retrieve his box of matches.
He dropped the first one, swore loudly, hoped nobody was listening, and got another out. This one he managed to strike a couple of times before he dropped it, and in the brief glimpses of his surroundings he got, his heart sank. He was underground, in a rough-walled cave of some kind. The dead man had dragged him off to some lair where he would never be found by man or beast. Still, it couldn’t be too far from the church. Scratch that “or beast” part as well because he could feel a rat getting interested in his shoes. Not that that reassured him.
The third match lit, giving Hawks his first real look at the surroundings. He was certainly underground, although the walls he had taken to be mostly stone were actually roughly dug-out earth. An old wooden board was propped up against the wall next to him, with notes pinned all over a giant map of the city that had been pasted up there. He leaned up towards his feet, hoping he might be able to get himself down sooner rather than later because his head was really starting to hurt. The sturdy rope tied tight around his shins, just above (or below?) the ankle gave him pause. He didn’t remember if he had the knife, and besides that he wasn’t sure if using it on anything other than an undead was some kind of sin, and besides that he couldn’t reach his pocket to check if he wanted to, since his overcoat was hanging over his head comically. If he really, really strained maybe he could successfully get one arm out of a sleeve, and double his chances of dropping the coat altogether. No, he only had one option.
The first match, which was the third match, didn’t do much beyond singe the edge of the rope. Two more did similar amounts of nothing. By touch he only had two matches left. He muttered a few words over the next one. Not a poet’s words, but heartfelt nonetheless. They were private, and personal, and hopeful.
That match snapped the first time he tried to strike it. He drew the last match from the box, called it some very nasty names, and lit it in one. Burning fiercely as if to prove him wrong, the match ate through the rope like a hot match through rope.

Matches snapped beneath Hawks as he fell like a cat with a lead weight on its back. Luckily the floor was also formed of dank earth which cushioned his fall. He got up, briefly wondered if the fall hadn’t rendered him blind, then grabbed the tails of his overcoat which were hanging in front of his face and flipped them back over his head. There was a faint, acrid smell in the air which he couldn’t identify, and an iron-y taste settled on his tongue. He stumbled about in the darkness, bashing his shin on something metal that bounced away. Cursing, he ceased his explorations and allowed his eyes to become acclimated to the darkness. He wished he had been more careful with the matches. Remembering something suddenly, he checked his pockets and found to his great disappointment that both knife and gun were absent without leave. Extending his two hands out in front of him, now just about able to distinguish wall from not, he made his way towards the narrow, cramped tunnel that exited the cave.
A small wrought-iron lantern hung from a post at the end of the tunnel, just after a short bend, and Hawks cursed it, knowing that the closer it got the more it would shoot his lengthily acquired night vision, however crude, to hell. He decided, although he didn’t think himself a prejudiced man, that half-blind was better than all-blind in this circumstance.
The lantern in his hand, candle burning brightly at its heart through the distortions of the glass windows that encircled, Hawks was at a crossroads. Literally. He turned in the three directions that led away from that point. He knew he had come from the tunnel that was to his left. Or was it right? He sighed. He looked at the lantern. Left lit. So the thing was still around, or expected to return soon. Then the best thing would be to leave. He pondered trying both routes and just keeping at it until he found a way out or death. That didn’t appeal.
The lantern, enclosed by small glass panes on all sides, burned brightly. He looked closely at it. It didn’t seem to hold any secrets. Four little latches held the panels shut, hinged for access to the candlestick to change it when it ran down to the wax. Suddenly something occurred to him, something he had learned in a tunnel a lot like this one many years before. He had been armed then, of course. One by one he opened the four hinged panels, allowing the air to flow freely over the candle’s wick. This was a big risk. If the air gusted at all, he might find himself not only lost but in the dark as well. He took a deep breath and held the lantern aloft. It burned steadily, straight up. He grimaced. Just the time for a calm night. He kept it over his head anyway. There! A flicker towards the left tunnel! Then the wind must be coming from the right.
Hawks turned towards freedom, and the candle went out. He cursed it, wondered if he was still on church grounds and if that mattered, and began feeling his way along the wall to the exit.
The church. That was where his knife would be. Breathing shakily, he moved along the tunnel, hesitating at the slightest little noise coming down towards him. Finally, he saw it – a pool of moonlight ahead, coming around a bend in the tunnel. He abandoned the lantern, which he had been clinging to as a sort of security, and ran for freedom, ran for dear life towards the light.
As he approached the surface, the incline of the tunnel so slight that he almost didn’t notice it, he recognised the shape of steel bars. As he came closer he realised the spilling moonlight was coming through a door. He was inside a stone mausoleum! There were a few, dotted about the church grounds, for the especially wealthy and well-regarded of the clientele. He gripped the bars and pushed, and was surprised to find the door opened easily. Of course, he thought, that thing has to come and go somehow. What a tunnel it dug for itself! He stopped to catch his breath.

Slowly, Hawks became aware of a sound above him, not quite unlike heavy breathing.

The enormous ghoul dropped down on him like Satan falling from heaven, sending him flying across the grass and into a crumbling headstone. Hawks tasted blood. It was advancing on him. He scrambled, trying to lose himself in the maze of marble and granite, but the thing followed, walking straight through the stone unimpeded.
The big church doors were right in front of him. How long had he been under? He had no way of knowing. Someone might have returned and locked the doors anywhere between that afternoon and now. He pushed, and miraculously the door budged. The looming figure behind him grabbed him by the scruff of his overcoat and yanked hard, jerking Hawks back, trying to throw him, but he wriggled out of it and aimed one last desperate shove at the door. It swung open on oiled hinges and he ducked inside, making a break for the altar. The thing was still behind him as he reached for the knife, still balanced on the edge of the font, and his fingers closed on the handle with its shadow over him. He turned, bringing the stiletto point of the knife down, plunging it through a mighty bicep and precipitating a horrible rotten smell.
The monster swung its other tree-trunk arm and would have taken Hawks’ head off if not for a swift duck. One giant hand clasped around his throat, and at last in a glint of reflected moonlight, stained red by the glass of the window above, he saw the face of his killer, twisted by rage and drooping, peeling from rot. Elias’ hands wheeled wildly, until one plunged into the water of the font and found something. The handgrip of the Peacemaker.
“Who… are… you?” he asked, struggling to close his hand around the weapon. The ghoul roared, something that might have been “death.”
He didn’t know why he knew that the Peacemaker could do what the blade had not. He only knew that it was his only choice. He pressed it to the thing’s chest and pulled the trigger. The .45 slug punched straight through the dead thing as if it were hardly there, blasting clean through and leaving a hole in which he could see the writhing blunt white heads of hundreds of hungry maggots. Then something strange began to happen. The insides of the horrible thing began to fill with brilliant light, as if someone were turning on a dimmer switch inside the rotting body.
The snarling face of the thing was quickly blotted out by the light, and Hawks could see just faintly the shadow of another face in the glow. He cursed. Then as soon as it had come, it was gone. The lifeless thing collapsed to the ground. Hawks shot it again, through the head.