by Tom Hunter
‘’Do you think I’m like him?” he’d asked her once, his eyes wide and wondering. He was too young to have to take on the reigns of the Ashbridge empire, she’d thought at the time.
“Who?” It had been a standard response to deflect any potential dangers of discussion. But, of course, she knew exactly who he meant. She’d been trying to discern the same thing herself as he asked her much the same question whenever they began to put a plan into action. Once, he tried to be careful in his dealings. Now, he operated in chaos and destruction. Now he was more like a child who didn’t get his way than when he had actually been a child.
“Clark,” he’d gasped in a ragged voice. “I want to do things differently. If I use this plan, do you think it will work or will it be too much like his modus operandi?”
“You are your own person,” she had cooed. “Whatever you decide will be all yours.”
Noah Ashbridge, even in his more innocent days, had learned somehow early on how not to get his hands dirty. There were plenty of incidents, Ms. Welker recalled, in which he’d left Thomas Knight for dead, but the man was like a bad penny. He kept turning up at the most inopportune times. She frowned. Yet, Noah never did any of the actual killing. That was left to her or Ramon or any one of Noah’s henchman he had available to him.
What if he knew this day would come and he’s been asking me to keep him back from the edge…? Her thoughts trailed off as flashes of recent conversations pinpricked her mind. And what if I have failed in that one, simple task? Ha! Now look who’s full of doubt, she chastised herself.
Ms. Welker straightened herself as she realized her thoughts had begun to weigh heavy on her shoulders. She looked into the flame of the torch as though it held the answers and in the mesmerizing flames, she made a promise to herself.
“You’ve stuck yourself good and proper, kiddo. At this point, the only way to rectify the situation is to help Noah see his plan all the way through. Neither of us is much good at this trust thing, but we’ll have to believe these far western states will pay Noah’s ransom demands. When the boy gets his gold, he’ll hang up this foolishness and we’ll retire somewhere to a lovely, private island. Far away from prying eyes and any remnants of the Ashbridge family’s world.” Warming to her newfound ideals, Ms. Welker smiled. “Then, we can both be happy.”
She realized with a start that when she’d begun her journey down to the depths, she’d been looking for a way out. An escape back to the surface. Instead of continuing and looking for, quite literally, the light at the end of the tunnel, Ms. Welker turned around and walked back to the command center room in which she’d left Noah.
“Sorry, I kept you waiting,” she said, sweeping back into the room. Noah looked up from his place at the controls and nodded. Ms. Welker joined him without another word.
Twenty-Four
The police captain had made good on his promise and outfitted Thomas Knight and his team with all the spelunking gear they would need for their journey. From past experience in the caves, the team had even added in a few requests beyond their usual fare to make easier work of getting from the surface to Mochni’s village.
In a jumble of backpacks and rope, they added low-frequency radios, strong carabiner clips, and spikes for their shoes should they need to do any rappelling and to grip undulating earth should it begin to rumble awake. Plus, at Abby’s and Dr. Cunningham’s insistence, Camelbaks full of water as well as several canteens of water and non-perishable MREs should they caught below for an extended period of time. Though Mochni insisted they’d be able to find food, he realized at Abby’s suggestion, that with the devastation, destruction, and delay of their return, the food might not be as readily available as he remembered. It would be one of his duties as chief to replenish the Woidnuk food stores.
“We’ve only got about a day before Noah makes good on his threat,” Thomas had reminded them. “We probably won’t have a chance to use half this stuff or eat this much. Though the water will be a godsend down there,” he admitted with a wide grin as they entered the caves.
Mochni’s large form loomed before them, leading the way to his village. Loaded down with gear and lost in their thoughts, it was Alexia who was the first to speak. “Oh, Mochni!” she’d cried softly. “I’m so sorry,” she said, trailing her fingers along the four long claw marks along the wall and pockmarks the size of bowling balls. Her fingers skipped and dipped along the wall’s pebbly surface.
A morose Mochni had tossed casually over his shoulder, “Thank you.” His great shoulders rose and fell as his eyes scanned the path before them. Then, “Here. Home,” exclaimed Mochni, pointing to a large, circular opening just a few feet from one of the Kisgar’s holes.
“How do you know it’s this one and not that one over there?” Robbie had asked, genuinely curious.
Mochni shrugged. “I just do.”
They’d passed through the remains of the excavation site they’d first come upon in which they’d discovered Reginald Ashbridge’s journal and barely registered its shattered remains. They were focused now was on getting to the Woidnuk village to gather a force capable of helping them defeat Noah.
As they followed Mochni through the opening and down a long tunnel, Thomas was caught with memories of the first time they’d come down this tunnel. He and his team were being arrested as trespassers. Which is, I guess, what we were, he deduced. Guess I’ve never really ever thought of it that way before. Usually, I discover artifacts from civilizations long dead. Meeting the Woidnuks had been an eye-opening experience. “Oof!” He’d bumped into Pediah, who had stopped suddenly. “What is it?”
“Look.” Pediah pointed forward with his flashlight. Thomas followed the beam, held up his own lantern, and gasped. Alexia, Robbie, and Abby followed suit. The once well-kept village was a mass of rocks and rubble, sticks piled and broken, doors were non-existent or held by the thread of stubborn will from hinged corners. Windows, though they’d never seen any glass, offered yawing soulful eyes which looked upon their new world in mute stoicism. The activity which once bred community had stilled and the emptiness emanated from the pinpoints of Ramon’s bullet holes to the Kisgar’s great scoops of earth and wood and bone.
Mochni stood still. He didn’t need the light. He could feel the pall in the air of the death and destruction. His people had lived down here for generations and nothing, until now, had invaded their tranquil space. Now, someone was using a problem they had once borne and now corrected, to their own advantage and gain. And he stood alone as the chief of a people, the mantle of his father, now cast upon his shoulders. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to find Thomas Knight at his side.
“Where should we go from here to continue the search?” he asked quietly. “There is no one – ” Thomas had beamed his light across the breadth of the village.
“I know. Please. A moment of quiet,” Mochni asked, though it was not a question. Thomas understood and nodded. “Of course.”
Pediah, in his eagerness, did not hear Thomas Knight’s response. “Do we have time for that?” he asked, not intending to be insensitive. Thomas turned his head, narrowed his eyes at his friend, and shook his head ever so slightly. He’d only just noticed something else, and at Pediah’s soft, “Oh!” he knew he’d seen it too.
Mochni had stopped at the edge of a large crater which had devolved into a cliff’s edge. This was the last place he’d seen his father, Lt. Whipkey, before he fell to his death and was swallowed by the earth.
Thomas stepped toward Pediah and whispered. “Let’s give him a moment to mourn.” The others caught up and stood together in silence, offering their own wellbeing wishes to the dead.
“So many dead,” Alexia whispered under her breath. She shook her head at the terrible cost so many had had to pay. And more to come, she thought, if we do not solve our little problem.
Mochni turned and nodded to Thomas, Pediah, and the others. “Thank you. I needed…another moment…to say…goodbye.” His words came out slowly a
nd choked with emotion. Remnants of tears still glistened at the corners of his eyes and as he wiped them, he began to tell a story.
“My mother’s home. Before she married my father. It was at the center of the village. She was well-known and well-liked, of course. But, on the walls, someone – her father perhaps – had carved an old legend on the inside wall.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember which wall in particular it had been. “It…” Mochni searched for the word. “Predicted now,” he explained. “Someone in my mother’s family – perhaps her father again? – had the gift of foresight…or perhaps experience and created the legend to help our people find safety in their time of greatest need.” Mochni paused and considered his friends before him. They would be part of his family and people, too, in body and in spirit. He shrugged, “It may help us find them now. We must go see the legend and pray it helps to lead us to any of my people still living.”
Before anyone could ask or wonder how the legend might help, Thomas Knight mused, “It’s because of Ecknom’s Folly, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. Mochni nodded and Thomas continued.
“Mochni’s people have faced these creatures once before in their crazed state of berserker. His grandfather must have known it might happen again and had planned for just such a contingency. It stands to reason his people would need to know how to get out of danger quickly and safely.”
“Yes. Yes.” Mochni nodded excitedly. “We must go. Now.” He motioned for them to follow him and he leapt forward, eager to see his family home once more.
Short, squat huts squashed together like deflated souffles flanked either side of Mochni’s family home. When his grandfather had died and his father had become chief, Lt. Whipkey had insisted on a second layer and enforced it with a mix of sunbaked mudbrick and stone. It was one of the few houses still intact. Mochni burst through the stone door and held it open to welcome the team inside.
Twenty-Five
They entered a large cavernous room with ceilings so high, even Mochni looked small. Wide circular walls embraced the home’s occupants and like a chieftain’s home, it too boasted carvings and hieroglyphic writing and paintings on its walls. To add depth and breadth to the room, stone and clay art pieces decorated the large hall, and inset into the walls themselves were small alcove depressions which held additional statues, images, and artifactual shards of the Woidnuk’s own collection.
Mochni saw Thomas staring at these treasures and remarked with a grin with the same air he’d seen Robbie use. “What? You thought only surface dwellers collected things?”
Thomas Knight’s jaw dropped. “Guess I hadn’t really ever thought about it before. Hmm…” he rubbed his chin as he considered Mochni’s remark.
Mochni tapped a finger to his lips in imitation of Alexia and made a three hundred sixty-degree turn to scan the walls looking for the legend he’d only just mentioned. He’d turned slowly and scanned the room as if seeing it from a distance.
The stillness weighed heavy on him, the dust and stagnant air, a reminder that no one lived here anymore. It was as abandoned as the mine had been but without the luxury of time to forget. He could still hear his parent’s voices, the constant buzz of conversation of visitors, and the energy of living beings in the room. That had been sucked from him in the blink of an eye at the first re-awakening of the Kisgar with Ecknom’s Folly. And now that he knew what ‘folly’ meant, he wished he could go back in time and throttle that old ancestor of his people before he could cause damage.
But you cannot do that, Mochni. It doesn’t work that way, he imagined his father explaining. Now you must work to right the wrongs that are happening now, regardless of the events which have led you to these days. He shook himself from his reverie to address his friends.
“Please, my friends. Help me search for writing, any writing, I can translate. We will need clues to solve the legend.” Each had nodded and been pulled like spokes from a wheel’s axle to search.
Alexia sneezed. Pediah coughed. The dust was settling into their lungs and the cold was settling into their bones.
Abby wrapped a sweater jacket around her tighter. She knew this feeling, these smells. She closed her eyes and breathed in another age, another world, still shell-shocked she’d been down here, and in this house, speaking with Lt. Whipkey and his wife only days ago. She shivered against the echoes of death. She was getting too well acquainted with the reaper for her taste, and he was getting closer.
Thomas had spied a slight depression in the wall between two paintings and had shown great interest in the paintings to better investigate. He had pushed at the center of an arched frame and the door had swung to revealing a large side room. As he stood on the other side of threshold and considered which way would be best to turn a noise made the decision for him. It was an odd sound, he thought, like someone raking piles of autumn leaves, rocks, and coal briquets quickly and efficiently. Scrape, scrape, woosh. Scrape, scrape, woosh.
He raised his lantern high and peered deep into the shadows and jumped back at the silhouette of an old woman. Much smaller than Mochni and in the dim light, she looked almost like any other human woman. But it was the spear she thrust at him in defense of herself which held Thomas at bay. He’d whistled softly at his discovery and immediately wished Mochni was in the room with him.
The old Woidnuk woman stood to her full height and thrust her spear once more missing Thomas by inches as he dodged out of the way. “Help!” he’d roared praying someone was nearby. The woman, at his voice, shrunk back into the shadows of the wall. Then, she flew forward again, “Wait,” she cried softly. “You are English.” She shook her head. “You speak English.” Thomas nodded his eyes fixed on her spear.
“I am sorry,” she began as she moved slowly from her shadowy refuge. She looked at her spear. “For the attack. And…the shock.” Her English was simple, but not broken. Someone had taught her and done it well.
Abby was first through the side door and gasped, her eyes were wide, her hand flew to cover her mouth. It was Mochni’s mother! But, she had…her thoughts faded as she watched a ghost come to life. The woman wide eyes seemed cartoonish in her sallow and sunken face. Through her clothes, Abby saw that her ribs protruded from her skin adding depth to her ashen, scaly epidermis. Why had they left her like this? Abby wondered, then in anger. Her own people!
Pediah, Alexia, and Robbie had gathered in silent awe and watched the transformation of this Woidnuk woman from waif to wife to mother as Mochni raced into her arms. He said something in the Woidnuk language and the woman had smiled and nodded.
Then, in English, Mochni exclaimed, “But I saw you jump! I saw you follow father. I thought you were dead.” He hung his head still ashamed he had not and could not do more to bring his father back. In his eyes, Mochn’s mother saw his father, Lt. Whipkey, and took his face in her hands..
“No, my dear Mochni,” she began, her heart full and her eyes brimming with tears. “It is true you saw me jump. Yes. But I did not die as you can see.”
“Yes, but…how?” Mochni had not understood the word incredulity until that just moment.
“I…I’m not sure,” she began. “When I saw your father jump into the crater to give you time to get away, to save you, I acted without thinking. But, then, something happened. I fell only to an outcropping below. I rolled against the wall of rock itself…” she considered him then and a lightbulb gleamed. “Of course, you would not have seen me as I was knocked out unconscious. I could not call for help.”
Twenty-Six
Stunned silence filled the room as Mochni’s mother told her story. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she spoke of her decision to send Mochni to help retrieve Ecknom’s Folly.
“When we first discovered it was missing, along with the scrolls,” she explained to Thomas and his team, “I could not imagine what would happen. I feared that if we did not send someone, our world would fall, a repeat of the time of Ecknom himself.” Her eyes flitted to Mochni. “It seems just moments ago, you were young
and carefree. But, now, you have the mantle of adulthood on your shoulders. You are not only the man of the household now, but also the leader of a people. It is your birthright. But you should have had more time before it became so.”
“Mama,” Mochni began, kneeling at her side, clasping her hands in his. “What happened to our people? Where is everyone?”
“The people who did not run and those who still lived, gathered to discuss next steps,” she explained. “As the wife of the chieftain, it was my duty to help guide them. It was days before I knew what to do and had recovered. I was thankful for several friends who stayed to care for me. As soon as I was able, I began to study the old records of chieftain’s wives past to see if they had any hope or help to offer us.”
“And what did you find?” asked Thomas gently, though he suspected he knew the answer.
The old woman smiled sadly and strode toward a painting on one of the walls. Staring at it, she spoke even more slowly. “I learned that the last time the Kisgar had rampaged, during Ecknom’s reign, our people had found refuge in the incomplete temple.” She turned to Thomas. “I believe you know the place. It is where you found the drum,” she explained.
“I see,” Thomas responded in a soft voice. He didn’t know why he kept his voice to a near whisper, but felt the cold press of death and somberness in the air. He had made the subconscious decision, he realized with a start, to speak as though in a library, or perhaps, a church in honor of the dead.
Though her smile did not waver, her shoulders rose slowly to her chin in an exaggerated shrug, as she finished simply. “And that is where they are now. The ones who survived. Even now, they pray to the gods for a hero to save them.”
