Gold Promise

by Ninie Hammon

  She could feel Lora behind her, holding onto her foot, could hear the others gasping and coughing, the sounds of their life music to Bailey's ears.

  She could think of only one fate worse than drowning here in the dark and that would be to drown here alone.

  Bailey tried to imagine the shape and size of this pile of rocks. On the top of it, she was completely out of the water, several feet above it. The rocks were dry. Since the water in the shaft was at least three, maybe three-and-a-half feet deep now, the pile of rocks was a big one. She turned around carefully on the rocks and eased herself into a sitting position, lifting her head and shoulders up carefully, expecting at any time to bump her head on the roof. But she didn't. Sitting upright, she raised her hand and felt around above her head. Nothing. The hole made in the roof of the mine when the rocks crashed down into the shaft must be at least five, maybe even six feet above the top of the pile of rocks in the shaft.

  "Jeni," Bailey said, reached out in the dark, feeling around, until she connected with a wet body, an arm, Jeni's arm, and they found each other's hands and squeezed.

  "Everybody, wiggle around until you're completely out of the water. Scoot over, there's plenty of space. Hold hands, form a circle."

  With much maneuvering, finally all the girls were out of the water, up on the rock pile, gasping and coughing, getting their breath. The water had numbed Bailey's fingers but the feeling was coming back into them now. She heard someone's teeth chattering. Once they got their breath, felt around until they got a sense of their surroundings and where each of them was in the dark, she needed to gather them all close together, hugging each other to conserve body heat. Hug Sophia, too, who still had not regained consciousness. Perhaps she had hit her head, perhaps she'd almost drowned and the lack of oxygen had … had something. Bailey didn't know.

  Bailey had hold of Lora's hand on the right and Ana's hand on the left. Jeni and Christina were across from her, facing her, holding the girls' other hands. Sophia was lying on the rocks next to Bailey, out of the water but unmoving.

  "What are we to do?" Lora was crying, shivering, her words stuttering out of her throat.

  "We're going to stay right where we are," Bailey said. "The water will go down eventually. And they'll … somebody'll … T.J. and Dobbs and Brice will come looking for us. "

  How she hoped the girls couldn't hear the desperation in those words.

  "Everybody, listen. Try to concentrate on being quiet and just breathing, get your lungs cleared and let's listen. I don't know how far we are down the shaft, how much farther it is to the front of the mine. But once we calm down, get quiet and still, maybe we can hear … the fan at the front of the mine."

  They wouldn't hear the fan! There was no reason in the world T.J. would have turned it on before he plunged into the mine. But getting them to pause, to listen, was a way to calm them, to get them to concentrate on something, soothe their nerves.

  The girls coughed, sniffled and tried to still their breathing. Slowly, they grew quiet and there was only the sound of the water rushing past. Bailey breathed deep in the silence, let out a slow sigh.

  And then the hair on the back of her neck began to stand up.

  A cold terror gripped her for which there was no explanation. She was simply so suddenly afraid she could barely draw in another breath.

  Something was wrong, very very wrong. Every fiber of her being was responding to some danger out there in the darkness, in the wet silence.

  It came over her slowly, the suspicion. Then the suspicion became a certainty for which there was no rational explanation. There was no possible reason to believe what she now believed, but she knew with that part of her soul where all truth lies, that what she sensed was correct.

  She and the girls were not alone on the pile of rocks.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Brice stood beside the open door of his cruiser parked on the shoulder of the road that led to Last Hope Ollie Mine #2, standing still in the midst of the storm of activity around him, watching the torrent of water squirt out the holes in the mountainside. The flooding water had ripped away the fan from the shaft on the eastern wall of the mine and carried it a quarter mile down the road, had washed three mantrips and two scoops up against the single remaining piece of ten-foot fencing that once enriched the whole front of the mine. In a tangled heap of mangled chain that resembled the autopsy of a robot was Raymond Dobson's Jeep, which had obviously been used as a battering ram.

  The surging water had gouged out a chunk of Bethel Church Road and washed it down the hill. Now, there was a rip down the center of the highway where the asphalt had been torn away. Seeking its own level, the water had gushed out across the road and cascaded into the little creek bed on the other side of it, then tore out everything on the creek bank in a pell-mell rush downstream. He had sent units down the road, warning/evacuating anybody who lived close to the creek, which had never flooded before, at least not in Brice's lifetime.

  The world was decorated in what Brice had come to think of as "disaster festive," aglow with red and blue lights — the gumboil machines on the state police units, the red bar of lights on sheriff's department cruisers and the revolving red ambulance lights painted the mountainside and the fifty or so rescue workers in alternating hues of color.

  The state police had set up huge lights, the kind used for nighttime road construction, two on each side of the front of the mine. But beyond that, there was nothing for the "rescue" workers to do, because right now there was nobody to rescue.

  All around him was organized pandemonium; the arriving rescue squad units usually trailed a fire truck from their station, and Brice had summoned a herd of ambulances. How many … injured people would there be? He didn't know. He'd started with half a dozen ambulances and could call out more if he needed them.

  How long the flood waters would rampage out of the mine and down the creek was impossible to guess. What exactly had happened here was hard to know, too, but Brice had pieced together his best-guess scenario from what he had found in front of the Last Hope Ollie Mine #1 on the other side of the mountain.

  What he had figured out took his breath away.

  He had stood here looking at the floodwaters for the past ten minutes, desperately trying to concoct some scenario that would explain it other than the only reasonable explanation — the one that he believed to be true, but that he could not force his mind to accept.

  He had listened to T.J.'s message before he and the other units even got to Rock Creek Cavern on Ohio Route 7 and the words had made him nauseous. What if he had been wrong? Made a terrible mistake? He'd confirmed his mistake as soon as they arrived at the cavern. It was deserted. He had misinterpreted the road sign Bailey had seen in a flashed image. He had been in such a hurry, so … okay, so desperate to find her, that he had leaped on the first explanation and run with it.

  As he stood watching water gush out the mine shafts, sickening certainty settled in his gut, a lead ball of horror that so weighed his whole body down it was hard to stand upright: he had likely gotten the people he cared most about in the world killed.

  He looked away, out into the red-and-blue-spangled darkness, trying to grab hold of his emotions.

  They had found the two vehicles inside the open gate of LHOM #1. A van with one missing wheel, a car with the hood up and one of the battery cables disconnected. And a dead body, a man shot in the face. The lights were on in the front of the mine. The elevator was down at the face of LHOM #2 and the lights were on there. The face was a bubbling, rolling pool of water fifty inches deep, within two inches of the ceilings of the mine shafts that tunneled away from the face, through the mountain to the front of the mine.

  T.J. and Dobbs had found the kidnappers, disabled their vehicles and gone in after the girls and Bailey.

  And then …? Somehow, a continuous miner ripped into old works on the east wall of the mine. The current was strongest in the eastern shafts when he'd arrived. But it quickly spread out. Wh
y a miner would have been running at all, why it would have been cutting into the wall, why …?

  Though he didn't understand the why, he couldn't deny the what. His friends — Bailey! — the kidnapped girls and the kidnappers, too, were somewhere inside that mine. And if they were, they would drown.

  "Sheriff McGreggor," Fletch called out.

  Brice turned to see Deputy Fletcher and a state police trooper rushing through the flowing water, chasing something that had floated out of the mine shaft. The men grabbed it — the body of a girl — before it floated all the way across the pond that had formed in front of the mine shafts, and dragged it through the three-foot water to higher ground where the other police officers and the rescue squad and the ambulance had parked.

  It was clear the girl was dead. Brice got there as they were turning her over, revealing the wounds where bullets had torn into her back. Two had gone through and exited the other side. Two EMTs, emergency medical technicians, and one paramedic were all over her, of course, but moments later one looked up at him and shook his head.

  "She's gone."

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Bailey did not will her mouth to open, did not consciously form the words or provide the will to speak them. Some other autonomic part of her had taken over and was making the conscious decisions she was incapable of making.

  "Who's … who's there?" Her voice was the quavering voice of a terrified child.

  No one replied.

  The darkness responded, though, with a soft, ugly chuckle.

  The quiet cavern exploded into hysterical screaming. All the girls shrieked in terror and the more they screamed, the louder the Beast laughed. What had begun as a sinister chuckle became a rumbling, almost maniacal roar.

  The constant stream of laughter made it possible to figure out his location. He was somewhere behind where Jeni had sat in the circle, before all the girls had fallen back toward Bailey, retreating from the horror.

  "You thought you got away from me, didn't you," said the horrifying, gravelly voice out of the darkness. Yes, he was facing her. Bailey'd never been any good at judging distance, but he was at least fifteen, maybe twenty-five feet away.

  Not still, though. Because he continued to chuckle, she could tell that he was creeping slowly forward — on all fours. The voice wasn't coming from a man standing up. There was nowhere for Bailey and the girls to retreat from him except back into the water. If they got back into the water they would drown.

  If they couldn't run …

  From some deep reservoir — of fear or anger, maybe that was the place where courage lived — Bailey began to feel calm settle over her.

  "You. Will. Die!" The voice rumbled at them like thunder, even deeper and more ragged than Bailey remembered. "You are sheep … and the wolf is coming to eat you."

  Instant terror shocked the wailing, screaming girls into silence.

  And into that silence Bailey dropped words.

  These sheep fight back!

  She spoke the words inside her head without making a sound.

  She, Jeni, Christina, Lora and Ana were uninjured. Five of them. There was only one of him.

  He had two hands. They had ten.

  They weren't unarmed.

  Rocks! She spoke the word inside her mind.

  If they all charged him at once, five of them, hammering his head with rocks from all sides at the same time …

  If they could catch him off guard …

  Surprise!

  She knew Jeni could hear her. Could the others? Had they all been hiding in the closet? Bailey had made only the barest connection to the shadowy figures when she'd painted them. But she'd gotten flashes, multiple images from their minds in the van.

  How many of them had been in the closet? Which ones?

  "I will strangle each of you … like I did Poli." He was closer now. "I choked the life out of her, squeezed … and squeeeeezed."

  He was enjoying this. Eagerness slathered the evil in his vicious voice.

  Together! She wanted to shout the word in her head but she didn't know how to do that. Or maybe she was shouting. All the girls were near her, only a few feet away — not driving down some road, separated by miles. Would that matter?

  "Jeni watched me, saw me kill Poli. Tell them about it, Jeni." When he was speaking, she could get a bead on his location. He seemed no more than fifteen feet away.

  My signal.

  She had to give the girls a target so they could locate him in the dark.

  That was the only card she had to play. She had no idea if it would work now, soaking wet. Picking up the biggest rock she could find with her right hand, she reached into the back pocket of her jeans with her left, pulled out what she'd stuffed in there, and held it out in front of her.

  "Come and get me," she said aloud, striving for bravado but missing by a mile. Her words sounded every bit as terrified as she felt.

  "Oh, I will."

  He was right in front of her, in grabbing range. She thumbed the striker. Prayed.

  Bright light filled the tunnel from the flickering flame of the Bic lighter she'd grabbed off the belt line and only now had a chance to use.

  The light imprinted an image on her cornea and into her brain that would be there for the rest of her life.

  The Beast was on his hands and knees, only a few feet away, a leopard crouched to pounce. The girls — soaked, scratched, dirty and bleeding — had surrounded him. Jeni and Ana were on the left, Lora and Christina on the right. They all had rocks. Ana and Christina had rocks in both hands. Lora's was a hunk of coal as jagged as an ax blade. Jeni held a single rock, but it was the size of a toaster and she had it raised high above her head.

  "Now!" Bailey screamed, her voice a shrill shriek.

  The Beast pounced at her.

  She slammed the rock in her hand down into his face. He was moving, though, diving at her and she could only land a glancing blow on his forehead as he batted it away, grabbing her other arm and twisting it viciously. She screamed in pain and dropped the lighter before he flung her away into the darkness.

  In that millisecond before absolute black erased the world, Bailey saw the movement all around, saw blows from half a dozen rocks raining down on his head.

  He bellowed in pain and rage, grunted, too — the way you cried out when a solid blow has landed. Bailey splashed into the water, the current threatening to rip her away from the rock pile. She scrambled, clawed at the rocks, her left wrist in agony. Held on, crawled up, dragged herself out of the flood.

  All the girls were crying out — words in a language Bailey didn't know, but mostly just sound, inarticulate, guttural sound, a communal growl. One of the girls began to scream. Lora, maybe. There were scuffling sounds and her screams were cut off with a grunt. He was strangling her.

  Bailey dived back up onto the rock pile, felt his arm or maybe his leg and hammered it with a rock as hard as she could.

  The man was cursing, roaring filth into the air, but there was great pain in his cries, too. Now, Bailey could tell where his mouth was, where his head was in the darkness. She struck in the direction with her rock, connected solidly with something. Heard a sound like … like breaking teeth.

  Now there was so much sound it was hard to tell anything. The other girls were crying out, too, screaming and grunting as they struck him. Christina suddenly shrieked, a wail of agony — he had gotten to her, hurt her badly somehow. Bailey felt something hard slide past her ear. His fist had missed but his elbow caught her in the upper arm. His elbow … meant his upper arm was here, his back must be …

  Clawing her way up, grabbing his clothes, she hauled herself onto his back, hammering at him with the rock. He lurched upward, like a bucking bronco, reached to grab her, got her shirt but her arm was slick and he couldn't hold on. She grabbed a handful of his hair — the pain in her wrist a distant agony she acknowledged but couldn't really feel — yanked his head backward and brought the rock in her right hand down with all the force sh
e could muster on his face. He screamed and lurched upward and flung Bailey off his back. She flew into the darkness but landed on the rock pile behind him instead of the water.

  He was yelling now, grunting, just sound, lurching around all over the top of the rockfall, staggering, a wounded bear, striking out. Another girl screamed. Scrambling in the dark, Bailey's hand found his bare foot and she smashed a rock down on his heel. He kicked out at her, but the other girls were hitting him as well and he was fighting them, too, punching them, grabbing them. She clawed her way up his leg, rose up and brought a rock down as hard as she could on what she hoped was his back. But she'd caught him on the hip instead and he kicked out at her again, caught her in the thigh, knocking her sideways. She had a sense of where he was now, leapt on his back and collided with someone already there. A rock came down hard on her upper arm and she cried out, bringing her own rock down on whatever might be below it. As she struck the blow, her fingers felt his ear, and she hammered at it again and again. He was wiggling, squirming, moving and all she and the others could do was rain down blows in the dark, striking each other sometimes, but most of the blows fell on him.

  He was hurt now, badly. She felt his fist connect with her shoulder, but there was no force in the blow. Then she felt him staggering to his feet, throwing the girls off. Someone hit the water. Bailey found his leg and sunk her teeth into his calf, tasting blood, biting as hard as she could. A blow caught her and hammered her aside, knocking her to the ground on her back in front of him. He was almost upright now, and Bailey drew her knees up to her chest and struck out with both feet with all the strength in her body — all the horror and pain and rage in a single blow.

  He'd been straddling her and she got him in the family jewels.

  He didn't even cry out, just grunted and fell forward, but she rolled to the side before he could collapse on her. Then she was on top of him, they all were, grunting and crying and screaming. Hitting him — and each other — but he was below them all now, they could feel him there and the blows landed on him. They hammered him again and again. She got her hands into his hair as someone landed a painful blow on her fingers and she screamed, but still brought her own rock down on his head. Hit him again and again.