by Hamill, Ike
“It’s touching the bottom down there. Won’t be too far. You want me to go first?”
Amber shook her head.
“I’ll be right behind you then.”
“Good.”
# # #
Amber felt his weight on the rope just before sand and a little dirt rained down from above. She positioned a hand above her headlamp to protect her eyes and crouched down as she pointed her flashlight and her wooden spear down the passage.
It started small but then looked like it opened up a few paces in.
Ricky landed on the floor next to her. He pulled his own stake out from where he had tucked it into his belt.
He flicked to rope to tell George that they were down safely.
When Amber began to move down the passage, Ricky put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. He pointed to himself to tell her that it was his turn.
After ducking through the opening, Ricky was able to get to his knees. Amber slid the mirror in after him and he pushed it out in front of himself.
He made his way forward slowly, pushing the mirror with one hand and gripping his stake and the flashlight with the other.
Amber followed.
The passage was almost perfectly round and the dirt of the walls was so smooth that it almost looked polished. Roots that penetrated into the passage had been cut off. On her right, amber saw a rock that had been pressed flat into the wall. She thought about the stone walls out in the woods. According to Alan, they had been created by pushing all the rocks to the permitter of a pasture. It looked to Amber like this passage had been made in a similar way. It hadn’t been dug—the dirt had just been compacted in every direction to make the space.
Ricky gestured back to her and Amber leaned to the side to see around him. There was a small hole—maybe a foot across—in the ceiling of the passage in front of him. She saw tattered, dirt-colored cloth around the edges of the hole. When Ricky repositioned his light, Amber looked up into it, and she saw a grinning skull looking back at her. Her breath caught in her throat and it felt like ice water was flushed through her veins.
“The wife?” Ricky whispered.
For a moment, the words didn’t make sense. Amber realized which direction the passage was leading—directly below the graves of the family. They were looking at the remains of Mrs. Prescott.
Ricky ducked low to move below the exposed corner of the casket. He pushed the mirror in front of him and crawled. Amber didn’t want to point her light up into the casket and see the skeleton up close, but there was something about the…
Amber reached forward and grabbed Ricky’s ankle.
He gasped and turned to see that it was her.
Amber put a finger to her lips and then pointed up at the hole.
Through just that gesture, she communicated the realization to him. Ricky’s eyes went wide and he slowly nodded. Amber pointed past him to the mirror until he seemed to understand what she was getting at. He pressed himself to the side and slid the mirror back to Amber. She positioned it under the hole, pointed up, and then carefully navigated past it. She didn’t want to be trapped deeper in the warren, but it seemed like the best approach.
Ricky said, “It looks like it splits up here.”
He waved her forward. As Amber caught up to him, Ricky turned off his headlamp and kept his eyes glued on the mirror. Amber pointed her lights forward. She went another couple of paces and then clicked off her own headlamp and left the flashlight on the floor before returning to Ricky.
They crouched in silence, barely breathing, as they watched the dark passage behind them. Their bodies blocked most of the ambient light. Amber’s hand gripped tight around the shaft of her spear when she saw the tiny flicker of a reflection in the mirror. Ricky glanced to her to make sure she was seeing it too.
The creature didn’t make it very far.
Its head barely emerged from the hole before the thing was entranced by the sight of itself in the mirror. From the side, Amber could see the swirling lights of its eyes. It chilled her to think what would happen if it turned towards her. She remembered the hypnotic pull of those weird lights. Ricky crept forward with his stake and kept his light off. When he was within reach, he stabbed at the eyes.
Amber heard a pop and then the sound of falling liquid splattering on the mirror. She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of the split passage to make sure they weren’t somehow being ambushed.
Ricky returned to her. His hand was shaking until he took several deep breaths and calmed himself down.
“Give it a second,” Amber whispered in his ear. “In case there’s more than one of them in there.”
He nodded.
They waited a full minute—darkness on one side and the unexplored depths of the tunnel on the other. Amber realized that she was losing her nerve as they crouched in the shadows. The longer they waited, the less like she was going to be able to overcome her fear and move forward. Amber slipped by Ricky and went to the edge of the hole. She peered up into the coffin until she could make out the skull of Mrs. Prescott. Angling upwards, she raised herself up until she was face to face with the skull and could look into the depths of the casket. There was nothing but blackness in there.
Reaching up, she clicked on her light and saw the rest of the skeleton. Most of the casket had collapsed from the weight of the dirt above. Roots were intertwined with the bones. There was barely any room in there. Amber felt comfortable that it was now empty. She withdrew and picked up the mirror so they could continue.
Ricky moved aside and Amber went first.
Twenty-Seven: Ricky
Ricky was barely containing his panic. With each step, they were headed deeper towards their doom—he just knew it. The only thing keeping him going was the fear of being alone in that darkness. There was safety with Amber. It terrified him to think that she might be thinking the same thing about him. Maybe they were both fools, simply propping each other up.
She reached the split in the passage and Ricky looked behind himself again. His light chased away all the shadows and left him wondering what he would see if he turned off the lights. There might be glowing eyes hiding back there, closing in behind them and trapping them underground.
Amber propped up the mirror so it would face behind them and she veered off to the left, where the passage dropped down.
Ricky split his focus—looking forward enough so he didn’t crash into her, but mostly looking back to see if anything else would get mesmerized by the mirror. The next creature might not be as dumb as the first one. They might have watched and learned.
After they had descended for a bit, Amber stopped.
“What?” Ricky whispered.
“It ends,” she said.
He leaned forward to see around her. Above them, the passage widened and lofted up into a small cavern. The walls were smooth at the bottom, but then gave way to rocks and roots. The ceiling of the cave, higher than Ricky could reach, was full of crevices and shadows.
“Look,” Amber said. Her light was pointed at the floor in front of them.
“What?” Ricky asked.
She moved her light closer to one of the mottled spots on the floor. It almost looked like a stalagmite was forming there. Ricky pointed his light up to see if maybe groundwater was dripping from above.
“Alan predicted this. They must roost in here and this is their guano,” she said. “Hold on.”
Amber grabbed Ricky’s hand and moved it so his light was pointed to the ceiling above the spot on the floor. Then she slid to the side to get a different angle on the same spot. They both stared, unblinking at the ceiling as she moved her light around. When they were convinced that there was nothing up there, she motioned for him to put his hand over his lights. She did the same and they let their eyes adjust to the new darkness.
They didn’t see anything above—there were no glimmering eyes of creatures trying to hypnotize them.
He heard Amber gasp and he let his light shine.
She s
hook her head and pointed. “On the floor—in the dark.”
Ricky slowly covered his lights again and looked at the floor. It took a moment to see it. He almost had to look away and let the glow hit his eyes indirectly. The spot on the floor was giving off a very subtle illumination.
“Guano,” she whispered.
“Are we done?” he asked.
“On more passage,” she said.
Ricky led the way.
Climbing up the slick floor required both hands and feet. Ricky felt defenseless as he gripped the stake in one hand and the flashlight in his other. If anything came at him, he was sure that he would lose his footing and slide back into Amber. When they finally got back to the mirror, he was panting and sweating.
He let Amber come alongside him.
Down the straight passage, he could see daylight and the rope dangling down. Freedom was so close—he wanted to rush towards it.
“I think we’ve gone far enough,” he whispered to Amber.
“Let’s just make sure,” she said, pointing her light down the branch they hadn’t explored. It went downwards, like the other tunnel, and swept to the right in a gradual turn.
Ricky held his breath until his heart pounded in his ears.
Amber tried to slip around him, but he shook his head.
“I’m going first,” he said, “and when it’s too much, we’re out of here.”
“Okay,” she whispered, nodding.
He saw fear in her eyes. She was controlling it, but she was frightened too. They were fools, but somehow that made him feel a little better.
Ricky proceeded on his knees, trying to press to the left side so he could see around the turn. The passage leveled out and branched again. One tunnel went nowhere, the other curved around until it nearly doubled back. The floor dropped away until he realized that they were approaching an underground pit. Sliding forward to try to see the bottom, the smell of rot and infection enveloped Ricky all at once. It made Ricky realize that there had been no odor at all up until that point. He tried to back away from the smell but it clung to him even when he pressed back into Amber and the two of them tried to escape it.
She gagged and he wanted to retch. Ricky nearly stabbed himself with his stake when he reached up to cover his nose.
Amber coughed and then went forward. She got close enough to point her light down into the pit and then backed up fast.
“We’re leaving,” Ricky whispered.
Amber nodded, bouncing her headlamp up and down as she did.
They made their way fast back to the mirror. Ricky wedged it into place in the dirt wall, so it couldn’t be easily knocked down. It was pointed down the straight passage from the main entrance. Anything that tried to come from that direction wouldn’t have a choice but to look directly at it.
Amber took care to duck as she went beneath the casket. Ricky did the same. He scrambled backwards after her, suddenly terrified that something had emerged from the pit and was following them. Ricky pushed back through the mouth of the passage, scraping his head on the narrow opening. Amber pushed her flashlight in her pocket, handed her spear to Ricky, and gripped the rope in both hands. She climbed out fast. Her feet sent down sand and dirt. Ricky ignored it and kept his eyes on the passage, holding Amber’s spear in front of him.
“Toss it up,” she called from above.
Ricky tucked his own light away, put his stake through his belt and then threw Amber’s spear up towards daylight. Those were the worst few seconds. He knew that his hands wouldn’t be strong enough to grip the rope. He knew his arms wouldn’t be up to the task of holding him as he tried to climb.
One hand at a time, he pulled as he walked up the side. When he was close enough, Amber reached down and grabbed him under the armpit. Together, they spilled out onto the forest floor. Amber pulled the rope from the hole and Ricky flipped the wooden lid back down into place.
He felt like he was finally able to breathe.
Amber tilled her head back, squinted at the sun and smiled.
Ricky lifted his shirt to his nose and then scrunched his face at the smell. In that brief moment below, it had infused his clothes and was stuck to him.
“Hey, George,” Amber said towards the sky, “I have some conditional knowledge for you—it really sucks down there.”
Ricky smiled and took a deep breath.
“George?” Amber asked.
Ricky sat up and whipped around. His eyes scanned over lonely trees and mossy headstones.
“Where’s your brother?”
Ricky was on his feet in an instant. He ran over to where a pack was on the ground and then sprinted over to where the trail met the headstone.
“George!” Ricky yelled.
Amber was at his back a second later.
“Any sign of him?” she asked. “Where would he have gone?”
Ricky’s heart felt so heavy in his chest that he wondered how it was still beating. His eyes turned to the sky and then he made another slow turn.
His voice barely worked to squeeze out words.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It must be…” Amber started she found her phone and her mouth fell open at what she saw.
She turned it towards Ricky. They had descended into the hole in the morning.
It was three in the afternoon.
# # #
They kept to a slow jog even though Ricky wanted to sprint. Amber kept making him slow down. As soon as the car was in sight, she broke into a sprint and easily overtook him. Ricky saw what she was running towards. George’s pack was leaning against her rental car.
Amber ran around the front of the car.
“That satellite thing,” Ricky said between breaths, “it can talk to regular phones too, right? I don’t have a signal, but maybe he does wherever he is.”
His own idea didn’t make sense, but Ricky’s brain was racing too fast to figure out why.
“Shoot,” Ricky said when he realized the problem. “He has the satellite thing.”
“Had,” Amber said. She pointed towards the ditch next to the road. The device was smashed and in pieces there.
“I don’t…” Ricky started to say. The thought evaporated before he could even express it. Nothing made sense.
“Renfield,” Amber said.
“What?”
“Renfield got him. George was right—they have some kind of human servant and he…” She trailed off as her eyes turned towards the house down the road. “No. Couldn’t be.”
“Let’s find out,” Ricky said. He reached for the car door and had to wait for Amber to click the button and unlock it. The thing wasn’t working. Amber fumbled with the key and then stuck it in the door. Ricky knew what was going to happen before she even got it open—absolutely nothing. The car was dead.
Amber jumped into the driver’s seat and leaned over to unlock Ricky’s door. He simply stood there and watched as she stabbed the start button with her finger and then tried the other controls. The car was dead.
“Pop the hood,” he said.
She found the latch just as Ricky reached the front of the car. There was an empty space where the battery should have been. The cables hung there, connected to nothing.
“Come on,” Ricky said, heading down the road.
Amber jogged after him.
“She’s an old lady,” Amber said. “Maybe she stole my battery, but what could she have done to George? I’m not even sure she was capable of walking all the way back there.”
“Anything could have happened,” Ricky said. “It felt like we were down there for twenty minutes, but it has been hours. Anything.”
“True,” Amber said. “She knows me. I’ll go to the door. You circle around and see what you can.”
Ricky nodded. When they passed a tree that he could use as cover, Ricky darted down the bank to the narrow creek. He followed the creek, perpendicular to the road, until he felt like he could cut back to the right and approach the back corner of the ho
use. When he heard Amber knock on the door, Ricky crossed the side yard and ducked below the level of the window. He went to one of the windows near the porch and rose up until he could see over the sill.
He saw the woman’s kitchen. Through the next window, he saw down the hall all the way to the front door.
Amber knocked loud enough for Ricky to hear it around back.
The woman of the house wasn’t going to be answering. Ricky could see her on the hall floor.
He raced to the back door and found it open. Ricky sprinted through the kitchen and rounded the corner, grabbing the doorway to make a fast stop. Her blood had spread out in a wide pool around her. Ricky could smell it.
Amber banged on the door again. Ricky circled around through the sitting room and reached over to unlock the front door while he kept an eye on the body.
“What…”
Amber’s question died in her throat when she saw the corpse.
“Is she…”
Amber stopped short of the edge of the blood and reached across to touch the old woman’s hand.
“Barely warm,” Amber whispered. She staggered to her feet and retreated until she reached the couch. Amber lowered herself down and perched on the arm. Her fingers dug into the cushion so she could stabilize herself.
Ricky circled the body, forcing himself to really look at the horrific scene and take in the details. The woman’s face was covered by a towel that had wicked blood up from the floor at the edges. There were no visible wounds on her chest or stomach, but Ricky saw a deep gash in her side. Based on the amount of blood, he guessed that she must have more wounds on her back. Ricky and Amber had both been careful to avoid the blood, but there were dried footprints that led towards the kitchen.
“We have to call someone,” Amber said. “She must have a phone.”
Ricky pointed to the small table near the kitchen doorway.
Amber went to use the phone while Ricky crouched next to the body.
Her hands weren’t wounded—she hadn’t tried to fight back. There was blood smeared on the baseboard next to her.
“Nothing,” Amber said, setting the phone back down. “Broken or disconnected.”
Ricky stood up.
