by Byron Craft
Startled from his reverie, Alan shouted back, “What?”
“Time to go Alan. We can come back tomorrow.”
“I can’t leave,” he complained.
“It will take an hour to drive back to my place, and we will be just in time for dinner. I am hungry, and I need my rest.”
“I have spent the last ten years of my life searching, and now I am here. This is everything to me, Thomas. I can’t go.”
“I am not going to leave you here!”
“Yes, you can,” he answered in a calm but authoritative voice. It was an assertiveness that surprised Ironwood, coming from Alan. “I have an extra battery for my flashlight, and there is plenty of oil for the lamp. There are coffee and sandwiches in your car. If you fetch them for me, I’ll be just fine. You can return for me in the morning.”
“There’s a blanket in the trunk of the Jeepster, I’ll bring it as well,” Ironwood muttered reluctantly.
“Very good,” he replied serenely returning his focus to the work at hand. “A blanket would be nice. Now all means of survival will be at my disposal.”
***
Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house. Jason had just finished helping Gwen pack up her essentials. He was probably crazy to suggest that she move in with him and he guessed that she was equally as crazy when she answered, “Yes.” Was he in love? Were they in love? That was it; they were crazy in love. It was, of course, too soon to tell. Rescues can trigger the light fantastic. He did pull her out of that hole under the house, and she was responsible for him overcoming his claustrophobia. Good God, he hoped he was doing the right thing. After all, he couldn’t let her stay here.
As if on cue, while stuffing the last article of clothing into one of Gwen’s two suitcases, the house began to shake. The structure trembled and shook from its foundation to its rafters. Gwen let out a yelp. Jason grabbed the two suitcases and headed for the door. Following his lead, Gwen tossed a freshly pressed uniform on a hanger over her shoulder and sprinted alongside him.
Slightly winded and standing in the front yard they could easily see what was causing the tremors. Gwen put her arm around Jason and squeezed him close to her. Dumbfounded for an instant, Jason watched as a series of tentacles the size of tree trunks burst up from the hole under the house grappling the joist above and collapsing the floor they supported. He watched, feeling like a child experiencing a nightmare, as the cavity in the earth increased in size and Gwen’s living room furniture slid downward chasing the floorboards and carpeting into the hole. Within seconds, the tentacles became a fountain of a primal force shooting straight up with the intensity of an element as destructive as a typhoon. Jason imagined its nightmarish appendages were slithering, exploring every room of the house. Was it searching for them? The creature beneath imbued with unearthly powers turned Gwendolyn Gilhooley’s house inside out as if it was a piece of origami. Drywall, two by fours, roofing, everything that comprised the place she once called home was dragged below. Wires cracked and circuits blew as it settled into the hole in the ground where the house once stood. A broken pipe expelled water like a severed artery releasing blood.
In a few minutes quiet descended upon the property. Some of the remains of the post war housing building materials protruded from the cavity. It appeared to be sealed tight. Nevertheless, thought Jason, he’d have the guys bring the dozer along tomorrow with several cubic yards of hard pack soil to finish the job. He’d make sure that the thing never got out of that hole in the ground again.
Some of the people that lived on Nimitz Boulevard had gathered behind them, asking questions. Jason ignored their inquiries. Tossing the two suitcases into the F-150’s truck bed, he turned to Gwen and said, “Come on, we’ll come back for the Neon later.”
***
Ironwood felt the rush of warm air bathe his face when he came topside. It was still over 100 degrees outdoors, but it was a welcome relief after exploring that cold dark network of tunnels. To stretch his legs and work a little warmth into his tired limbs, he walked a short distance, his pointed boots leaving a string of meandering arrows in the sand. The sun was beginning to sink low on the opposite side of the wide sky. While ambling some, he read that an email had come through on his iPhone. When he came above ground, returning to the desert terrain that surrounded the Morley property, his phone had chirped as it downloaded an email. It was from Captain Eastwater. What the hell did he want? There were several attachments. There was no message, just the attachments. Ironwood opened the first one, walked back to the house, sat down on the wobbly front steps of the old house and mulled over its contents. It was a photo of a top secret document. It looked to be very old. Then he saw the date in the upper right-hand corner. It had been typed in 1942. Why was he sending this to me?
Each attachment was a snapshot of another page. Within twenty minutes he had finished reading the entire document. He was starting to sweat from the afternoon sun, but he still felt cold inside. Seventy some years ago there was, a thing living in a section of the tunnels. Something horrible unless the report was the result of a delusional mind. His phone played a few bars of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” It was a text message from Vice Admiral Hawkins; “got capt e’s phone, sent you his photos.”
Things were falling into place. In the video that Hawkins had shown Alan and him, Captain Eastwater and Congressman Stream discussed photographing a top secret document. The attachments must be what they wanted.
Before leaving Alan, Ironwood questioned him about the grant he said he received from the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation. Even though the foundation had run out of capital years ago, Alan Ward insisted that that was where he got his funding. He added that he had received a cashier’s check in the mail along with a brief note explaining that his request for funds had been granted, however, there was no conditional use agreement included in the post, which is standard procedure for all grants. The funds undoubtedly came from another source but Alan’s expertise in such matters was lacking, and his joy in receiving the money overcame any suspicions he might have entertained. Did Stream have anything to do with the phony grant? Was Alan a dupe in some master plan? He was starting to make sense out of the conundrum, but the picture was not clear yet.
Ironwood got the sandwiches and coffee from the backseat of his Willys-Overland Jeepster and headed back into the Morley house. Stopping abruptly, he returned to the Jeepster. “Damn,” he said. “I almost forgot my little friend’s security blanket.”
CHAPTER 21
ENCOUNTERS
Captain Clayton Eastwater strapped on a Heckler & Koch .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. Dangling from his belt, along with the firearm, was a KA-BAR US Navy fighting knife and two fragmentation grenades. He walked over to a large metal ammunition case, inserted and turned a key in a lock, raised the lid and removed two Colt M16A2 rifles. “Here,” he said, handing the weapons over to two men wearing desert pattern camouflage uniforms and helmets of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion. “I doubt we will need to use them, but it is always best to be prepared gentlemen.” Eastwater handed both of them three thirty-round clips and then closed and re-locked the metal container.
The rest of the seabees in the tunnel looked on in amazement. It was beyond any protocol they had ever witnessed. After a grueling ten-hour day of digging and using every tool at their disposal to penetrate the stone barrier, they finally succeeded. A blast of frigid air accosted them the moment they broke through. There wasn’t enough time to run additional electric cables into this new section of the tunnel because, in their point of view, the Captain was overly anxious to the point of being reckless to go exploring. The additional section of the tunnel had not yet been deemed “secured.” At this late hour, there were no engineers available to inspect the structural integrity of the disinterred passageway. They were also well aware of the commissioned officer’s ill temper. Offering the politest suggestion could have your head chewed off by Captain Eastwa
ter and cause you to lose several weeks of shore leave, i.e. "liberty." No doubt about it, they were going to keep their mouths shut and just observe.
***
Alan Ward sat back in the rickety chair. His curiosity was high, and his mind was racing. Isaac Morley had painted an accurate albeit bleak picture of his years of research. He had also mapped out, in extreme detail, his areas of exploration. In his overly enthusiastic and naïve excitement, Alan had thought that the cylindrical room in which he sat was the remains of an ancient library. In reality, according to Morley’s notes, this was just the tip of the iceberg. What he was witnessing were items that the old scientist had selected to examine in his makeshift study. Everything in this room originally came from a much grander library, and he was about to discover it firsthand.
Alan picked up his flashlight and inserted a fresh battery into it. He was determined to trace the route that Morley and his servants traversed many life times’ ago. Out of the circular room and through a maze of connecting tunnels he wondered, how often did they walk these passages throughout the years? The hardships must have been unbearable by today’s standards, he decided. No central heat, obviously no air-conditioning to waylay the grueling heat of each summer and the scarcity of clean water and decent food. To compound, the hardships were the crude scientific tools of that era the nineteenth-century scientist was cursed to use must have been analogous to a prehistoric man trying to construct a wheel using stone tools and sticks.
Alan used Isaac Morley’s journal as a guide map and rounded a corner into an adjacent passageway. The tunnel abruptly terminated about thirty feet in where a wooden door endured as a colossal guardian. Alan had read in the journal that this tunnel, different from all the other arteries Isaac and his men had explored, opened into an immense cavern. That cavern was the library.
The English teacher from Miskatonic stood at the massively thick pine door listening through the latch hole. Overhead he observed a pair of wires attached to the tunnel’s ceiling. By now, Alan had also learned that Morley had constructed a bomb. He called it his “safety device.” He had recorded that there was a creature walled up behind the door. Morley had become uneasy about it escaping. Worried that someday the door may not hold, he planted an explosive charge above the door frame sufficient enough to bring the ceiling down collapsing the artery with rocks and earth from the desert above. The bomb, made out of black gun powder, was placed in a tin and tightly encased in a block of paraffin wax. The wires from the detonator were strung along the ceiling beyond the tunnel opening to a small niche in the adjacent artery. From there Morley had attached the two wires to the screw terminals of a static generator. Alan had observed the generator/detonator when entering the passageway. One thing that Alan knew for certain was that after one-hundred and thirty plus years Isaac Morley’s monster, if indeed it had once existed, no longer walked the earth. With the air and confidence of a make-believe seasoned explorer, he lifted the latch and opened the door that had remained closed for nearly a century and a half. The wrought iron hinges protested through an epoch of rust.
***
Eastwater had his men spread out. Both were a couple of paces ahead of him. The two seaman in camo were spaced one on his left and the other on his right. All were wearing Orion Helmet Lights with a battery life of thirteen-hours. They were prepared for anything. The force of three was there on the premise of locating and rescuing the absent seabee. Seaman Rinaldi was still missing. Chief Petty Officer Domingo Mercado’s body had been discovered two days earlier, and Seaman Jonathan Dexter was now a nut job. The seaman was in a psyche ward probably drooling all over himself, the Captain supposed. That left Rinaldi unaccounted for, at least for the time being. It made the perfect cover for his quest. Eastwater didn’t believe the bull about a monster in the tunnel. It was crazy crap that Lieutenant Hayward Phillips wrote in his report back in ‘42. The guy was high on morphine, probably tripping 24/7. As for Mingo, Rinaldi, and Dexter, they were most likely doing drugs as well. There had been a few meth heads in their outfit recently that had been discharged. That stuff was wicked. It fried the brains. Every day there seemed to be a new deadly class of synthetic hallucinogens available to the right buyer. Whatever those three morons had been doing in the tunnel that night, it not only fried their brains but it cooked them for good.
Eastwater didn’t believe in monsters in his closet or under his bed. And, even if there was one back during World War II, that was almost seventy-five years ago, and by now the thing would be good and dead. If they did find Rinaldi, he would probably be dead as well, either that or a babbling idiot like Dexter. He could care less if they find him. Because Eastwater was there for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The one thing he thought credible in that 1942 report was the existence of an underground lair full of valuable scientific gadgets that would reap a fortune on the black-market. Congress Stream was certain of it as well, so much so that he had put his political career at stake to uncover it. The discovery of the toppled monolith that blocked the tunnel’s passage was additional proof that it was worth the treasure hunt. The seabees he had selected for the hunt were loyal to him. He would have to cut them in on the spoils unless, unless he could find a way to eliminate them.
The captain thought that it was dreadful that any place could be so silent. He found himself wishing that some sound would break in on the awful silence. They moved through the stygian darkness like phantoms threading their way through a dim labyrinth without the aid of map or compass. Consistently five-meters across, the cave continued. Eastwater watched as the seabee on the left cracked a glow stick, shook it to get maximum illumination and then tossed it forward.
The two men ahead of him stopped and raised their right hands gesturing to be quiet. The one on the right pointed into the darkness beyond. Captain Eastwater crept stealthily forward and stopped, standing between the both of them. He noticed that a trail had been wiped clean in the tunnel floor leaving it polished, almost glistening. He wondered why his men had stopped. He was about to question their actions when he heard something. It was similar to the sound of an insect scuttling across paper only louder, and it was growing in volume. It was coming closer. A bittersweet smell assailed his nostrils. The screeching of seagulls was unbearable.
***
Alan Ward left the wooden door wide open behind him. He crept inward on the balls of his feet. The tunnel appeared barren, empty. Feeling silly he straightened up and walked flat footed towards the opposite wall. Something clinked and rattled beneath his feet. Jumping back, he shone his light on the floor. Bones, a pile of bones littered the area. Alan's knowledge of human physiology was limited. Nonetheless, a rib cage and thigh bone of considerable size made it obvious it came from a large animal. Upon closer inspection he observed, strewn amongst the slaughterhouse rubble were smaller, thinner frames possibly belonging to humans. Moving a little to one side his foot struck an object that rolled. He turned quickly, to face an invisible intruder, Alan’s light caught the reflection of a human skull looking up at him. It rocked backward and forward on the tunnel floor. The chin bone had dropped down, and he expected its oral cavity to burst forth with hideous laughter. Fighting the bile that welled up in his throat, Alan shifted his light in the opposite direction. Laying as if in wait were two complete human skeletons. Stepping back towards the door he entered through, he could plainly make out the headless remains of another corpse stripped clean of its flesh and organs lying in the middle of the tunnel. Adding to Alan’s revulsion, it became clear to him that the rocking skull had been dislodged from its body by him when he came shuffling through the area. Could these be the remains of Isaac Morley and his servants? Morley did just up and disappeared! There are no records of his whereabouts since his trek to the Mojave. Alan tried to calm his jittery nerves. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to, man up!
Something reflected his light amidst the mound of bones. Bending over Alan reluctantly reached for the object. His hand momentarily brushed again
st the fingers of a skeletal hand. He felt the electrical charge of revulsion run up his arm. To his loathing, he had to sift through a few more bones before he could get hold of the artifact. It was a gun. A revolver. It was nearly a foot-and-a-half-long. It looked very old. Even with all of dust and grime that had accumulated on the weapon over the years, a portion of the nickel plating along its barrel still cast a reflection. Alan shined his light on it and he could make out the maker’s name engraved into the metal, “Colt Walker.” Again recalling Morley’s notes in his journal, he was mindful that the old scientist was in the habit of toting a handgun. Evidence, if not conclusive, that this section of the tunnel had become Isaac Morley’s resting place.
Remembering that the great wooden door had been latched from the outside when he first opened it, Alan was overcome with dread. The door may have been the cause of Morley and his servants’ demise. Upon close inspection, he could easily see that his suspicions were correct. When the door closed, there was no way of opening it from the inside. The old gun, after all these years, was useless as a firearm but it would make an excellent doorstop, he decided. He wedged the barrel of the gun between the door frame and the door forcing it to remain wide open.
Before leaving the area for other points unknown, Alan took notice of the walls in that portion of the tunnel for the first time. It was a polygonal artery like all the others they had seen and the walls, ceiling and floor were covered with the same five-sided notched tiles they had witnessed as well, but with one exception. Hanging from the ceiling and walls was a translucent material resembling a curtain of shredded flesh. Coming closer, a piece of the substance broke off easily between his thumb and index finger. It was rubbery. It reminded him of tripe. The tips of his finger and thumb started to heat up. They became hot and burned as if they were dipped in acid. The fleshy material stuck fast to his skin. Producing a pocket-handkerchief, with his other hand, Alan clamped down on the mass and ripped it free from his two fingers. Throwing the kerchief aside, he rubbed the offended appendages. Much of the burning subsided, spitting on the injured fingers, he rubbed them again. His saliva seemed to do the trick. It was time to press on.
