Bottom Feeder

by Matt Cole

  Chapter 32

  Something intangible, evil and dark was in the air.

  Gary Chapel spent a restless night, hoping that his belief in Mike Leopold would pan out and not have him committed alongside Leopold. His mind spun with ideas and crazy thoughts, going over the information and team the two men had amassed the night before. Chapel could not quiet the questions and concerns or images in his mind and when he had finally drifted off, his dreams had been splintered and sharp—more nightmares than dreams. One moment he was wooing Deena Hopping, his hand in hers, the two sharing sweet embraces and a tender kiss. It was then he’d heard the voice, deep and malevolent. “She is mine!” And then she was pulled away from him violently by a huge, long tentacle, her face twisting in fear, and he was standing on the brink of a yawning, deep, dark canyon in the earth, snow falling all around.

  Chapel had awoken shouting her name and had finally given up on sleep, spending the next few hours swilling coffee and going over the plan again. He studied the maps, trying to piece together so rational explanation to this bizarre series of events.

  And why he—one of the most logical and sane people in Strafford—had suddenly thought it wise to listen and belief the town’s insane person—Mike Leopold?

  None of this made any sense, he thought, as he tried and failed to rationalize his actions in the coming hours. He could not.

  Gritting his teeth, Chapel shoved the images from his mind and began to focus on his task.

  Chapel knew he was risking his career with his actions he was about to undertake. Whether the sheriff liked it or not, he intended to run his plan today. It sounded crazy even to Chapel…whatever, he thought…because Deena Hopping’s disappearance and life was at stake.

  * * * *

  Gary Chapel shut the door and eyed the sky warily. Another strong winter storm, perhaps even a blizzard, was bearing down on the area. Another night had passed with no news of the disappearances.

  And he still hadn’t heard one damned word from Mike Leopold and the rest of the team. Not one.

  The guy wasn’t returning his calls, nor had he bothered to phone and give him an update on the status of the recruitment of the players for the team.

  It hasn’t even been twelve hours and here you are jumping out of your skin like a nervous school boy. You’re a damned homicide detective and have been in more stressful situations than this. Give the guy some time, he told himself.

  But that was the problem.

  He felt like time was against him. He did not have the luxury of it, not a minute.

  He couldn’t just sit around and wait, for Christ’s sake!

  Turning his collar to the wind, with Leopold’s damn mutant and massive dog leaping and bounding in the fresh snow, he glanced down the lane to the main road where the lights were glowing, lights that had making a steady stream out of Strafford. Many of the town’s people were evacuating after the recent rash of sinkholes.

  Chapel worried about his job at the Sheriff’s Department.

  His forced leave of absence—Jesus ‘Fucking’ Christ, it seemed like a lifetime had passed.

  He didn’t want to wait another minute he needed to find Deena Hopping and the others missing people now.

  Where the hell were Mike Leopold and the team?

  * * * *

  Don’t stop.

  Must keep going.

  You will find your way out of these tunnels!

  Deena was exhausted. She’d followed the length of two tunnels and found nothing, no exit, and no other secret chambers where the monster could have stored his victims away. Her legs threatened to give out and she could barely hold the handle of the poker as she made her way along the length of what appeared to be a main tunnel and each of the offshoots she’d explored until she was certain they would go nowhere.

  Deena’s task seemed impossible and she was certain she had been at it for hours. The flashlight’s beam was turning yellow, dying slowly. She shook it violently several times, hoping to get a better connection with the batteries and to prolong its life. She could not get lost in these tunnels without any source of light.

  Deena sighed in frustration and made herself concentrate on her footing and how much she hated slinking about underground at the best of times. That was a more profitable line of thought; it gave her something to curse at besides her own stupidity for mixing in something like this.

  Reviewing the marks she had made on the floor, she inched her way backward hoping to find herself in the ante chamber once again. However, her marks had disappeared and it was then that Deena realized that she had been going in circles and had inadvertently erased her own marks.

  She reached the last crumbling passage and brightened as she saw daylight ahead, but she also reached up to stretch her aching muscles before she crept the last few yards forward. If the creature could be stopped, there might already be a chance that she’d survive this.

  There was not much hope of that, Deena knew.

  Biting her lip, flashlight tucked under one arm, poker raised to defend herself, knife tucked in her waistband, and Deena slowly emerged from a tunnel into a clearing down the street from the rental house on South Douty Street. Snow blanketed the ground and immediately she was chilled to the bone as she had been extremely hot and sweaty.

  She was free.

  It was also amazingly dark outside as Deena ran wildly to find someone to help her. However, the street seemed to be deserted. Power must have been out as the light poles were dark. She was having trouble getting her bearings and seeing where she was running.

  That was one reason Deena did not see the large sinkhole that had opened in the road.

  * * * *

  The person Gary Chapel wanted to see was Mike Leopold, and the once believed crazy man was walking into the house.

  Considering how things were going with the task or mission—and at the present that was it was stalled as Chapel waited for Leopold to assemble a team—Chapel wanted to throttle the man, or at the very least tell Leopold to take a long jump off a short pier, but Gary had been insistent.

  “I’ve got the team ready and you need to see them,” Leopold had said on the phone ten minutes before his arrival. “If it were up to me, I’d say we’re ready to go today, but you’re the one in charge.”

  “You think we’re ready? We don’t really know what we’re up against? There could be more than one of those monsters down there? We should do some recon first and get a plan together that works to our advantages,” Chapel could not believe what he was planning to do. This would not only cost him his job as Sheriff Department detective it could ultimately cost him and many others their lives.

  “These guys are good,” Leopold assured Chapel.

  Chapel had doubted it. “What do you know about these guys and their abilities? Honestly?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m scared, nervous and worried that we’re running into a shit storm of uncertainty and death.”

  “These guys will prove their worth.”

  “Let’s get going, we’ve got a busy day.” Chapel wasn’t buying the boldness of Mike Leopold. Mike had been known to brag and exaggerate on more than one occasion in the past. Chapel was not so much worried about the team but Mike himself.

  “And lives to save,” Leopold added.

  It wasn’t as if Chapel didn’t have enough to do.

  Outside a mother of a storm was passing through again, though the weather service said that it should break up by late that afternoon. God, Chapel hoped so.

  Chapter 33

  Deena fell.

  The cold radiance of the street above failed to light the sides of the hole, so she fell blind, just as if she had into the night sky. Time vanished, and her sense of motion failed as well, so she felt as though she hung suspended in the column of limited light. She might have fallen for a matter of seconds, but it seemed like hours.

  Strangely calm, she kept her feet below her and stretched her arms to the side
, one hand clenching the flashlight she had grabbed before coming down. Air rushing past her ears was the only sound, and it faded into a dull roar.

  Slowly a shape took form below her—the only feature she could make out in the limited light. A mouth gaped wide to receive her, like the jaws of a huge shark waiting to engulf her when she reached the end of her fall. The shape grew larger, though she couldn’t tell whether she fell toward it or it surged up to meet her.

  The Master?

  Then it was upon her: the face of a great monster carved into the floor of the basement.

  You are now mine. I will feast upon your flesh and soul. The creature spoke to her mind, bypassing both ears and language, but carrying the same pulsating tone she had sensed when she first entered the house. Anyone who would enter my lair must be prepared for what lies beyond.

  Deena peered into the darkness for a sign of the beast, cursing the lack of light her flashlight afforded her. She felt blinded; her eyes were unable to disseminate the gloom of the shadows around her. Deena had a vague sense of the ceiling arching overhead and smooth, round tunnels under the concrete floor leading off into shade.

  A wail filled Deena’s mind, different from the torrent of thoughts with which the monster had assaulted her mind. That attack had called her own mind up against her, but this was an intrusion, a blast of psychic force so great that her vision began to cloud over. She clamped her hands to her ears but could not block the sound, and squeezed her eyes shut to no avail. She dropped to one knee, searching for the still point she had found in her mind before, when Joseph was beating her, the focus that would enable her to shrug off the psychic attack again.

  Her mind reeled, and though she rose once more to her feet and opened her eyes to search for the source of the assault, she could do nothing more than stumble half blind along the nearest tunnel, careening of the smooth dirt walls seeking escape from this nightmare.

  The entire surface of the tunnel, top, sides and bottom, is lined with calcite crystals, so closely packed together as to form a continuous sheet and most of them of great size, and well formed faces.

  Planes or crystal ghosts, sometimes with pyrite crystals, marking stages of growth in the calcite crystals, are often distinguishable. The entire absence of anything like stalactites was noticeable, and together with the presence of the crystals, show that the cave was completely filled with water during their growth.

  The cave had a wide and elevated entrance; passing into it a hundred yards or more, the passage narrows, and in order to go further a stream of water has frequently to be waded through; this passage she made her way through without finding any object of interest; but a few hundred yards from the entrance, by diverging to the right, she entered a large chamber, studded with stalactites and stalagmites, many uniting and forming solid columns of support. Many of these are very beautiful, and often as white as alabaster. There are other large rooms, but they possessed no peculiar interest. Found large deposits of earth on the floor having a saline taste.

  A natural opening in one side by which it may be entered, but the space within is too limited to invite a lengthy stay. That portion of the outside which is nearest the wall was formed with sufficient irregularity of outline to admit of an ascent to the top, and the view obtained is well worth the difficult scramble up and the apprehensive slide down. Being raised so high above all objects that divide attention or in some degree obstruct the view, permitted a limited freedom of outlook that sensibly increases the appreciation of the vastness of the enclosed chamber and its enclosing walls.

  * * * *

  Carrying a cup of coffee, Sheriff Lindsey Hill walked into the task force room, where those on duty were gathering.

  The notes that Detective Sergeant Patrick Townsend left with them appeared to be authentic. Sheriff Hill had checked, double-checked, and tried to call Gary Chapel, but to no avail—the best detective she had on the force, including herself—she noted silently—would not answer her phone calls.

  She set her cup of coffee on the table already littered with half-full cups and notepads as others took seats, the sound of chair legs screeching across the floor accompanied by muted conversation.

  Detective Sergeant Townsend entered the room and stood near the desk where Sheriff Hill was. The meeting was informal, just a means to update as many as possible who were working the disappearances and with the newly formed sinkholes.

  Sheriff Hill said, “I’ll make this quick as we’re all busy. At last count the number of people missing has reached twelve. Most of the town has evacuated and there was no progress in locating the missing. We have a list of the missing. But as we all are aware of that is not our only problem right now. The sinkholes keep opening up all around town. We have not had any reports of injuries as a result of them and I would like keep it that way. We have enough on our plate already.”

  There was a moment of silence as they were all lost in their own thoughts and ideas. Then Townsend said, “We could use all the help we have available including those sent home.”

  Sheriff Hill understood the remark. “I agree, unfortunately I have not been able to reach those officers who are not on call. I assure you that we will not give up and I just want to thank each and every one of you for all of your hard work and the long hours. Now everyone has their assignments and we need to make sure to communicate with each other. We are to work in pairs and teams only. I do not want anyone alone. Now get to work and be safe.”

  As they bustled out, Sheriff Hill saw the worry in their eyes. They all believed that somewhere out there around the town, in the snow, among sinkholes, were twelve missing women. Perhaps they were already dead, their bodies blue and frozen. But they needed to be found nonetheless.

  Chapter 34

  It opened out a kind of alcove and spreading out from this is the corridor, a room about one hundred and twenty-five feet long and seventy-five feet in width, with a low, narrow passage, or crawl, leading from the northeast into a grotto, a dome-shaped room, there were a great number of bats congregating in it. It is about forty feet in diameter and fifty feet in height. On one side of this room is a narrow ‘squeeze’ opening into a passage several feet lower than the floor level of the grotto and leading to another room, which she discovered bore indications of having been occupied by a human beings who had tried to escape by tunneling, or by reaching a hole in the roof; which is said to be impossible for him to have done without outside assistance. As no bones have been found Deena may hope the assistance arrived in time. That was if any help was coming. When the discovery of the room was made, a quantity of loose rock was piled before the entrance, so if Deena was to ever escape it; it was not to be by that way.

  After crawling back to the corridor, through the same small, but dry passage of seventy feet length, she saw a narrow ledge of fine crystals, a deposit of salts, and a few bats that in the dim light looked white but were a light tan color with brown wings. A good specimen hanging on a projecting ledge of the wall remained undisturbed, giving an opportunity for careful inspection so that we presently discovered it to be a mummy; which naturally suggests that this portion of the cave, being dry and opening out of the great temple-like auditorium as an alcove, could be converted into an imposing crypt. It was a frightening thought for Deena. This could be her final resting place.

  Making her way across the room to its southwest extremity over a varied assortment of boulders and down a drop of eight or ten feet, she crawled into another tight-fitting dry passage lined with beautiful glittering onyx like clear ice banded with narrow lines of red, of which broken fragments covered the narrow floor and made a dazzling, but distressingly painful rug to crawl over.

  She made the long crawl through mud and cold water it was at first suggested and then strongly advised and yearning to see what is considered the cave’s chief ugliness was not easy to overcome, but after careful attention to the deep mire of the approach.

  The ascent is difficult, as the soft clay was deep and wet and the sides
are reeking and covered also with soft yielding clay.

  When the top of the slide is once reached, a low passage six feet wide and two feet high is discovered, and stooping low, or actually lying flat down, she entered. The top of the passage is of smooth rock and the bottom is of wet clay with an occasional variation of sharp gravel. The air is good, if you were a lizard, she started forward. In places the passage widens to ten or twelve feet and again narrows to six feet.

  On the opposite side of the room from which she entered there is a hole or opening in the wall. It is large enough to go through but it goes into the great dark room on the other side. An abyss confronted Deena, a sheer precipice which descends for many feet, perhaps hundreds. No woman or man knows.

  The room runs directly into the mountain and is about ninety feet high, and where she landed it proved to be twenty feet wide. It extended in both directions, but much the farthest towards the right hand. The outer room is encrusted in fine white water formations. It formed a Gothic-like ceiling from which hung pendant at all places brilliant and sparkling stalactites; some being of immense size and length, from ten to twenty-five feet. Others are not so large but are brilliant.

  She was running next the creature she could feel chasing her, rocks lashing her face, thin roots grabbing at her feet as she passed. She was hunched, looking for something on the ground, and she had no face in the darkness. She caught a glimpse of it—whatever the monstrosity was—and then it was gone.

  To the rear of this great pillar the room is divided into three galleries, one above another. With great difficulty and much danger she climbed into each of these. The floors were all like the pillar of pure white onyx, and extended back a distance of thirty or more feet. The floor of one formed the roof of another. They were muted with hanging pendants and the side walls were all veneered with the same white and crystalline formation.