The Crymost

by Dean H Wild

  His foot caught on something as he plowed ahead. Cardboard. A stack of broken-down boxes piled layer upon layer until it was heavy and immovable. The next thing he knew he was falling, hands out, grease-scented air whistling in his ears.

  He struck the floor hard, and he banged his temple against a metal toolbox. It filled his head with a brain-jolting sensation and his vision turned into smears of light and dark.

  “Damn it,” he said and rolled onto his back, fishing instinctively for the walkie.

  It came out of his pocket in two pieces. Viable pieces; it was not broken, merely popped open at the seam. The batteries, however, tumbled out and rolled into the blur the world had become. Maybe in a minute he could collect everything up and make it work. He took out his phone. The screen was a senseless haze in the world, a blur. Okay. He rested his head back, drew in a gulp of air. Let things settle. Give it time. Precious time.

  ***

  “Not going to happen,” Will Adelmeyer said. He knew he said it and yet the words were not his. The need to take the heavy wrench off of the basement shelf wasn’t his either, but there the wrench was, in his hand. Hang on, he thought, The Crymost is driving. “Might as well shut her down, Harley.”

  “Come again?” Harley Kroener asked him, hunkered over the generator now parked at the entrance to the tunnel.

  Will shoved him, hard. Harley was a big man but he was off his guard and he stumbled against the wall. Good, a deeper part of Will commented, stay over there. Keep away from me. The force he put behind the wrench seemed to flow from somewhere else. When it crashed down on the generator, a shock of resistance assaulted him. Yet, he struck again, and a third time. Rapid, vicious blows.

  “Here now,” Harley barked.

  The big man led in with his cast held forward as if to plow him out of the way. Will felt the wrench rise again, his arm a senseless marionette’s limb, and when he brought it down this time it landed on Harley’s cast, cracking it with a muffled crunch. Harley drew back, his face compressed with new pain, but his retreat was only a single step. He put his head down and rammed Will’s gut with the top of his head. Will’s wrench glanced off the back of the assailing skull and he stumbled backward, his insides feeling airless and on fire. He fell. Harley dropped over him, his face a working mixture of anger and remorse.

  “Goddamn it, Will.”

  Will saw the fist coming and managed to raise his chin the slightest bit to receive it. The blow was numbing. His vision exploded into a plane of mingling stars. The wrench bounced out of his hand. Good, he thought, make me stop. I want to stop. Then Harley hit him again and made a sound like a sob. The room spun away. Seconds passed, or perhaps minutes. All he knew was his limbs felt his own again. He was sliding along the floor. The tightness of his shirt at the neck and armpits told him Harley was dragging him. Images began to leak through his cracked lids, iron-stained watercolors, but he knew the details well enough to realize what was happening before Harley let him go on a patch of frigid hardwood. The walk-in cooler. It was a good choice. It locked from the outside, and he mentally congratulated Harley on his quick wit.

  “Jesus, Will,” Harley said from the doorway. He flicked on the interior light when he said it. “I’m sorry about this.”

  The door slammed. Will felt it resonate through him with a note of finality, and then the outside locking mechanism slid home.

  Good, Will thought again. His jaw hurt like hell. Good.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mick was unsure how long it was before his arms and legs felt reliable again but at last he rose to his hands and knees. One of the walkie batteries was nearby, the other nowhere to be found. There were packs of double A batteries just outside; he could picture them on a peg behind Roger Copeland’s cash register, for all the good it did him. He took out his phone again and this time his eyes registered. Five forty-five and no signal. Not in this little metal box. He got to his feet, shaky, and stepped up to the door, pounded on it, and groaned at the solid and nearly soundless thunk his fist made.

  A gap between door and frame showed him a vertical pencil line of light near the floor. He knew full well the only way to climb from a dark pit was to find a hand hold in the overwhelming gloom. Sometimes the hand hold was your wife, but sometimes it needed to be your own wiles, and a little luck.

  His gaze fell on a cluttered workbench-like shelf in the back of the room. He dove on it and felt almost giddy when he found an assortment of greasy but sturdy screwdrivers. He went back to the door with three of them clutched in his hand and was surprised when the tip of one fit into the door crack. He slid it upward, knowing the reach to the latch mechanism was a long and impossible one. When it bound up he pushed harder. His hand slipped and his knuckles crashed against the metal door, tearing skin. He sat down and cradled his aching hand, his breath sputtering.

  Dull light near the ceiling above the workbench caught his eye. A duct protected by a grille housed a fan to vent the temperate air of the building. It appeared to be just wide enough for him to squeeze through. A handhold. Just as Hemingway said: luck in one of its many forms. Not always smooth or friendly, but you did with it what you could.

  Mick stuffed his collection of screwdrivers into his back pocket and climbed onto the work bench, which drew out the pain in his thigh and ankle like lamentable taffy. He tore the fan grille loose. It surrendered with a ratcheting noise and he nearly fell off the bench for his efforts, but the first barrier had been bested.

  The fan mechanism was next, mounted a few inches inside the opening by three bolts. The fan blade caught an errant outside breeze and twirled for him as he pondered it. He could see the outside through a second outdoor grille. The sun was pulling down shades of heavy gold. He glanced at his phone. Six fifteen. There was a wrench near his foot and he stooped to get it.

  The work at hand made him think of a pleasant little bit of writing by Dumas, which in turn made him appreciate what it was like delving into a mad priest’s tunnel to affect his escape. This led to Shakespeare waxing of hardhanded men never laboring in their minds until now. And the natural way such a comparison came to light reassured him his hands would never be as hard as some.

  What followed this, in an odd and yet somehow appropriate way, was Robbie Vaughn proclaiming there were by-yourself kinds of people in the world. Right, Mr. Logan? And he had to agree that, yes indeed, there were.

  At last the fan dropped over inside the vent housing. He tore it loose from its wiring and tossed it behind him. Then he hiked himself up into the vent hole and hammered at the outer grille until it dropped to the outside. He wiggled forward, glad no dead priest’s body bag awaited him ala Count of Monte Cristo, only open air and sunlight.

  An external water pipe served as a hand rail to help him ease his way to the ground and he sat against the building to catch his breath. Twin chimes from his phone startled him. Text message. An advertisement: “Thank you for using Active Talk. Call us now or check online for new service specials just in time for summer . . . ” but he felt as if he’d struck oil. He had a signal once again. He thought about calling Will, then dismissed it. The tunnel blocked everything. Instead he got up and limped around to the front of the station, snatched a pair of batteries from the checkout stand and loaded up the walkie.

  “Harley, you there?” he said into the mouthpiece. “I’m on my way now. Harley?”

  He took up a can of plain 10W30 motor oil on the way out and tossed it in the truck. At last, a weak crackle from the walkie speaker. “Mick?”

  “Jesus, Harley. Are you ready? I’m on my way.”

  “I’m in the tunnel.” Harley’s winded sound put his hackles up. “Our friend Will went a little bit ape shit on us. Smacked up the jenny pretty bad.”

  “Damn it.” The lowering sun seemed to burn on the back of his neck. “Is it salvageable?”

  “Should be. But the wheels are screwed up. I’ve been dragging her but its slow work, like dragging my ass through Hell. My wheels ain’t so great eit
her at the moment.”

  “I’ll come as fast as I can.”

  “I’m just about to the end and I know what you’re thinking, but there’s no safe way to climb down through the mercantile anymore to meet me. You better use the tunnel.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’ll have the jenny hooked up by the time you get down here.”

  “Where’s Will now?”

  “Locked him up in his big cooler. He won’t be a bother. Damn, it’s already six thirty. I hope this works.”

  “Me too.”

  Mick’s thoughts turned to Judy. He switched the walkie for the cell phone as he drove to The Chapel Bar.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Judy checked the dashboard clock for what seemed like the hundredth time. Fitful conversation with Beth Ann had died out around six pm, about the time the city of Grand Chute sprawled on either side of the highway.

  “It’s working okay, right?” Beth Ann asked and glanced with distrust at the cell phone on the seat.

  “There’s a signal. Has been since Oshkosh.”

  She glanced at her friend’s fingers, which tapped at the cross around her neck, and she wondered if that particular telegraph system worked as well as saying prayers out loud.

  Nancy’s voice from the back seat startled them both. “I’m going straight to bed. Don’t want to hear about how quiet the streets are out there.”

  Beth Ann turned around and her voice turned hard. “Judy. Stop the car.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Stop it. Now.”

  She swerved into the breakdown lane and stopped with a lurch. As she cranked her head around, Beth Ann was already out of the car and tearing the back door open. Nancy sat forward, rigid, sweat dripping from her chin and the end of her nose, her face ashen. But what caught Judy’s eye was the green light back there with her. It swirled away from Nancy’s head in an expanding corona. Then it simply evaporated.

  “It’s gone,” Beth Ann said with a magnanimous smile. “Oh great God, it’s left her.”

  Judy climbed out and tore open the back door on the driver’s side, barely aware of the whooshing traffic at her back.

  “Driving away isn’t the answer,” Nancy said. Sweat-tangled hair clung to her face. “You put them on the gurneys, roll them away to get fixed. But it’s just a stop-off, you know.”

  Beth Ann stroked her cheek with the back of her knuckles. “You be calm. You’re going to get better fast, I think, now that we’re away from Knoll. But we need to get back on the road.”

  “The pavement always ends. Bridge out.” She let go with a pale imitation of an old Nancy Berns laugh. “But I’ll keep still if that will help.”

  Beth Ann flicked her gaze at Judy. It was brief, like the glint of the cross hanging between her breasts, but it was also bold.

  “Look at me,” Judy told her friend. “You’re better, too.”

  Beth Ann’s left eye was clearer, as if someone had replaced the sanguine ball in her eye socket with a healthier, only slightly stained model.

  “No headache,” Beth Ann said. “None.”

  Judy’s cell phone rang. She scrambled to the front and snatched it up. When the display showed her it was Mick she came close to shrieking with relief.

  “Where are you? Is it done?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Damn it, Mick.”

  “I think Harley is in bad shape. I’m going to him just now. And Will is out of commission the way it sounds.”

  “And you’re going to try to finish this anyway, aren’t you?”

  “You already know my answer. I’m going into the tunnel soon and I know I’ll lose this signal. But I need to know you’re okay. I need to promise Harley that Beth Ann is safe too, so keep going. No matter what. I love you, Judy.”

  “Love you, too. I’ll talk to you again soon, Mick Logan.”

  She barely got it out, her throat had turned to stone.

  And then the signal broke.

  She stood outside for a few minutes, checked something else on her phone and then went around to Beth Ann’s side of the car. “How is she?”

  “Better by the second, it seems.”

  “Okay, good. We’re going into town.”

  What happens along the way is because of what you’re all about.

  Why didn’t she listen to her instincts all along? Maybe because it still seemed a little like madness.

  ***

  When Judy pulled into the car rental place, all was quiet. The young lady behind the desk put down her reading material—a battered novel by someone named Weaver titled Wheel of the Year that she didn’t seem to be enjoying very much—and greeted her with a smile. A short time later an attendant pulled a late model Camry around to the front for her.

  When she walked over to the Kroener’s car to say goodbye, Beth Ann was already behind the wheel with the window rolled down. “I’ll get us there,” she said and reached out to clasp Judy’s hand in a fierce grip. “I know it sounds silly, but angels go with you.”

  “Nothing silly about it,” she said and reached in to give her friend a trembling hug. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Nancy offered a cautious wave from the passenger seat. “Stay safe, Judy.”

  And it was done. Beth Ann pulled into a stretch of sun in a flash of chrome. Like a cross glint. Angels go with you, too, my friends.

  Judy climbed into the rental and headed back to Knoll.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Time was a great crushing force now, squeezing the likelihood out of everything. Still, after he hurried through the bar and down the basement steps laden with a can of gas (only one because the second can was too awkward to handle and threatened to slow him down considerably), a container of oil and one of Will’s flashlights, Mick was unable to keep from stopping outside the door to the walk-in cooler. “Will, you okay?”

  There was a span of silence, and then, “Just great. If you can trust me. Hell, I don’t trust me right now. I hope I didn’t mess things up too bad.”

  “Harley thinks it will still work.”

  “I hope Harley is okay. I nailed him pretty good.”

  “He’s holding his own. Look I’ve got to go. Stay calm. We’ll come for you when this is done.”

  “I wish I could be more help. Damn, I hate it, Mick.”

  “See you soon.”

  He followed his jittering flashlight beam down the tunnel, unable to deny the new scratches in the floor where Harley had struggled with the battered generator. When he caught sight of a spot of fresh blood like a gleaming red coin, he stopped and put down the gas can to fire up the walkie.

  “Harley, how is it coming?”

  Static. A break of silence, then a wheeze. Finally: “Just got to the double barrel.”

  “Good. Sit it out until I get there.”

  “Like I’m some sort of goddamned old man?”

  “Like I need you conscious and upright if you’re going to help me finish.”

  No more words, just a conceding grunt and then the transmission went back to static.

  When Mick walked in, Harley was kneeling next to the double barrel, hard at work. The Coleman lantern cast wild upshot shadows around him. A band of broken cast material circled his arm near the elbow and below it, his exposed arm was puffed and purple and his fingers wobbled like sausages. He acknowledged Mick with a type of resignation. “Take care of the fine wiring on this electrical cable. If you want. If I’m still the boss.”

  Mick’s heart hurt. He would have smiled if things were different and there was no crust of nearly dried blood behind Harley’s ear.

  “Let me at it,” he said, and reached down to open the toolbox sitting next to the generator. One of the jenny’s wheels sat canted at a surreal forty-five-degree angle. Transporting the whole shooting match down here with only one good arm must have been a nightmare, and it made him look at his friend hard and long. “While I’m working, give me the lowdown on how we make this thing go boom.”

&n
bsp; “First thing we’ll want to do is start up the jenny,” Harley said and parked on the stack of rotting batteries. A trickle of fresh blood from behind his ear worked down his neck. “It’s a cheap, donkey-backwards model, so you have to hold the choke down and then ease her back while you punch the starter. Starter’s that button right there, cracked in two thanks to Will, The Crymost, and a Craftsman crescent. It’s loose but I think it will hold. As for this double barrel contraption, there’s a starter switch for the pump on top. You’ll see it when you stand up.”

  Mick finished the cable wiring and straightened up while Harley went on.

  “We let the old girl run for a bit, get the juices flowing. Then we push the igniter lever forward when ready; it’s that red lever on the side. After that, ten seconds to boom. Maybe twenty. My job, anyway. You’ve got to get moving.”

  “Where am I going?”

  Harley tapped his watch. “It’s coming up on seven thirty. Knoll is being Knoll about now. Early birds. You can damn sure bet a few folks are riding out to Pitch Road as we speak.”

  “Jesus, you’re right. We can’t do this.” Mick threw up his hands. “Not if half the town is already up at The Crymost.”

  “It should take only one man to talk people into getting away from The Crymost, if it’s the right man.”

  “Me? There’s a few people I could convince, I guess. If they even show up. Roger. Maybe Corey Schelvan.”

  “The town respects you, Mick. Has for quite some time. And you’ve got something extra, something you brought with you from your days at that school, or maybe something born into you that landed you as a teacher in the first place. You can stand up front and have your say and it makes sense. It’s natural. I’ve seen it time and time again, and if ever there was a time to use such a presence, it’s now.”

  “I can try.”

  “It’s either that or we give up right now. We hand the town over to Thekan and whatever else is coming down the pipe with a handshake and say happy trails.”