by Glen Krisch
"I'm here, love. Always here for you." He touched the door, longing to touch his wife's cheek and the delicate line of her neck, yearned to pull her to him. He swigged from a new bottle he'd taken from under the seat of his wagon. The cheap 'shine was still high in the bottle, just below the level of the narrow neck. He was never so happy or miserable as when he had a full bottle, and in the Underground he had time enough to ponder, time enough for eternity to come and go.
"Sorry for my rudeness. Wanna pull?" He offered the girl the bottle. For the first time since he knocked on the door of the Fowler home, she looked terrified. Her eyes were wide and she reflexively placed her hand over the swell of her belly. He waited for her response, and she eventually shook her head no.
She cried softly. Her hatred bled away and she didn't seem so confident now in her chances of escaping.
"Char-char-char!" Mabel cried out, and as always, he heard a meek remnant of her former voice. "Charrrr-les!"
He unsteadily closed with the girl until he loomed over her, looking down the angle of his nose. "You ready for this?" he asked the girl.
He hadn't told her his intentions, but she wasn't waiting to find out. She took a stumbling stride, but only one. It was easy. He reached for a long lock of blonde hair, grabbed it like a horse's reins, and heeled her to the floor.
She screamed so loud it popped his ears.
"Char-Char-Charles!" Mabel echoed the girl's scream. She began pummeling herself against the door, but when he had constructed it he had used the finest timbers. She would pulp herself before breaking through.
Charles shook his head, trying to clear the swimming numbness. He tightened his grip on the girl's hair, wrapping it around his fist a couple times. Using one arm, he pulled her over to the door.
Fearing he would rip out her hair at the roots, she half walked along with him.
He reluctantly set down his bottle and use his free had to reach inside his shirt for the key hanging on its twine necklace. He ripped it off, and never thinking he'd willingly remove it from his body, an odd despair settled over him. Neither the girl struggling at his feet, nor his shrieking undead wife behind the door, would let him dwell on any thought or emotion for more than a split second.
"Please, please, stop! Whatever you're doing, please, don't." Snot dribbled down the girl's lip, mixing with tears.
"Charles!" Oh, his poor Mabel. Sounding so normal, so alive. Hearing her voice reassured him that this was the right thing to do. It made everything all right.
As he worked the key into the lock, Mabel slammed into the door. He nearly dropped the key, but he squeezed it, stabbed it into the lock, turned.
How easily everything could have fallen apart if he would have dropped the key.
"Please! I'm begging you, I won't tell anyone."
The key engaged with a click he felt but couldn't hear over all the hysterics.
The door flew open, a shadow seemed to fall in its wake. Then he saw her sharp nails flailing, her ashen skin, eyes wild and seeking.
He shielded himself with the girl's body. She screamed and writhed in his arms, trying to get away. Mabel was shredding and tearing into the girl as if she were a plaything thrown into the pit. But he held fast, more out of a sense of preserving his own safety than anything. The girl screamed once more, more shrill and maddening than any of the others, but it was her last. Mabel swiped her claws across the girl's throat, and her voice was silenced.
Maybe it was instinct. Maternal instinct. Or perhaps some small part of her brain still functioned on a human level, but Mabel halted her assault, stepping away from the girl, apprising her as an artist would a canvas.
As the girl's body fell to the floor, Mabel looked at Charles.
He extended a trembling hand to touch his wife's cheek when she stepped closer. She flinched at his warmth, appeared ready to snap at him with her vicious teeth. But she didn't. Her eyes held his, and she did understand. In that moment, it felt like all those years ago, when she could look into his eyes, knowing exactly his intentions.
8.
None of the knowledge passed on to Arlen gave him any forewarning that he would see Ellie Banyon and Jacob Fowler lurking in the shadows of the Underground. They seemed raw with fear as they bumbled their way down the tunnel. When he heard their approach, he didn't know who it was. Not wanting his destiny so easily derailed, he pressed flat into a vertical crevasse. A handful of uncertain strides and they were upon him, walking side by side, inches from his hiding spot. At first he didn't know who they were, but his vision was well adjusted to limited light. To conserve fuel he would often work his gopher hole in little or no light once he found a ripe vein to tap, digging at it by feel. He thought about calling out to them--they had both been nice to him, and now more than ever he valued those who had acted so graciously--but decided against it the last second. He didn't want to have to explain his reason for being Underground or what he was carrying. His rucksack was heavy with dynamite. If they got hurt, which he thought was more likely than not, he would feel bad, but that couldn't be helped.
He listened, waited. When he figured they were gone, he waited five minutes more. Then he left his hiding place, listened again, then went on his way. He was close, he felt it in his bones. They ached from the damp. The air was laden with the smell of it, earthy, moldy. Cleansing. He needed to find a single wall, but it had to be the correct wall. Otherwise, it would just be a tremor rumbling through the tunnels. Maybe there would be smoke or a collapsed stretch of tunnel, but little more. Once he found the right place to stash his bundle, there would be a lot more than just a little trembler.
He'd found the six sticks of dynamite in a damp crate in an abandoned shaft of the Grendal mines the previous spring. He almost didn't bother opening the crate; it was oily and sodden, but when he unwrapped the oil-clothed bundle inside, the sticks were dry as bone. They must have been there a considerable amount of time since they had a timing wick instead of a plunger detonator. Those sort of things hadn't been used since…
…the mines opened in the 1840s, and even then, those wicks were quickly abandoned for more modern, safer detonators…
He knew this information as if he'd been there wearing his helmet with its candle flaring on its brim, crawling through the deplorable murk of the early mine.
Recalling whose knowledge he just accessed would be easy if he tried, but he didn't have time to waste. His fingers fluttered against the uneven rock walls, ten independent divining rods searching for a sweet spot. He closed his eyes despite the darkness, concentrating, calculating, understanding.
He never told his mom about his find. At the time, he didn't think she'd let him keep the explosives, but maybe she knew all along. She always seemed to know what was on his mind. So he'd locked the dynamite away for the most opportune time to use it. There wasn't a lot of it; he'd figured if he'd ever come across a large vein in his gopher hole, he'd use the sticks to blow it wide and get to its root. Strike enough coal to keep his mom comfortable in her waning years. Now that she was gone (I miss you already, Mom) would there be a more opportune time?
A spreading numbness in his fingertips quickly became a thrumming vibration. He could sense it in his fingers, his arms, the sound of it seemed to fill his ears. His memories. His family's memories. Rushing water, violent, kinetic. He pressed his hands flat to the wall, the tips of his index fingers meeting, his thumbs also, as if he were about to push the wall in and let loose the stored energy hidden behind it all these many millennia.
Behind this wall, the underground lake. Waiting.
9.
"Ellie, you won't tell anyone what I did, will you?" The guilt had gotten to him, enough so that he broke their silence. He didn't know how much time had elapsed since they saw the living remains of that colored man, but he couldn't stop thinking about the total lack of sound after he pushed him into the lightless abyss.
"I didn't see nothing, Jacob." For once Ellie sounded younger than her age. Normally, talking to her was like talkin
g to someone from his own class at school, but now he was reminded of the fact that she was five years younger than him.
School. Class. He couldn't imagine rejoining his schoolmates when the school year started in a month. "Whatever happened, you wouldn't have done nothing wrong. You always do the right thing."
He felt better for a few seconds then realized that wasn't true. If he always did the right thing, he would've done something, anything, to prevent what happened to George (and possibly his brother), and he wouldn't worry his mother so often. She didn't deserve it; she'd been through too much trauma in her life and had withstood every wave of it. Just as soon as they got out of this, he would hug her, ask her to forgive him for all he'd done, and do his best not to bother her nerves another day of her life.
The torch's flame was once again dying, and there was little for him to do. The fabric trick worked for a few minutes, then the light would quickly peter out. They would soon again have to walk in complete darkness.
Fretting over the dying torch, he heard noises coming from branches in the tunnel. It didn't appear that Ellie noticed it. She was just a walking, blinking, scared little girl, not ready or willing to take on anymore of the unknown. He tried to steer their path to avoid the sound. They were voices, he could tell now. Rising and falling in volume and intensity. It sounded like an animal articulating with a human voice. Then came the sound of metal impacting stone, followed by a high pitched scream. A familiar scream. His mom.
"Miss Fowler!"
"Shh! Quiet. I have to hear… wait, there it is. It's this way. Let's go!"
"What's she doing down here?"
"How would I know? Be quiet."
"Maybe she followed us down here."
They followed a sharp-turning left bend, then a less severe right. There was light ahead. Rich, warm and golden. At the same time, his torch gave up its flame. He tossed it aside.
"There's people ahead. I bet Dr. Thompson's there. We're saved, Jacob!"
He didn't respond, but he did feel a rush of relief knowing they weren't just drifting farther into the earth with no end in sight.
There was a soft noise behind them as if someone had kicked a rock. Before Jacob could turn around to investigate, a hand reached around from behind him, slapping over his mouth. From the choked scream next to him, the same thing happened to Ellie. He felt instant rage. They had come so far, had done so well to stay hidden.
His mom was in trouble. Somewhere close. And someone was keeping him from helping her. He started to struggle, jerking from side to side, search for a weak point in his captor's hold.
Jacob's shoulder knocked into Ellie's as the person pulled them against his chest. Both filth and a trace of dread emanated from their attacker.
"Shh," a quavering voice spoke as the person leaned over their shoulders. "Don't say nothing, knucklehead."
The hand eased from Jacob's mouth and it was all he could do to stifle the volume of his voice. "Jimmy? Is that you?"
His brother answered by hugging them both.
"Jimmy? Hey, Jimmy?" Jacob said after several moments.
"What is it?"
"You stink worse than a pig sty."
"Sorry 'bout that. Been awhile since my last bath."
"Mom's in trouble. She's up ahead."
"I know, that's why we can't go that way."
"What do you mean? We can't just leave her."
"We're not. We can't just storm down the tunnel like that. Not this tunnel. There's a better way that's quieter and more roundabout."
"But, Jimmy--"
"Jacob, you listen to me. You don't understand what you've gotten yourself in to. They will kill you without batting an eye. They don't care you're a kid, or Ellie, either. They'd kill you like--"
"Like they did George," Ellie said, and it wasn't a question at all, but confirmation of what she'd been thinking for a while.
"Yeah, like George."
They all embraced, no hint of embarrassment ruined the moment for Jacob. He had longed to see his brother again, more than anything, and now here he was.
"I missed you, Jimmy."
"I missed you, too. We better get going. We'll find Mom, then get you out of here."
10.
Cooper held Jane as they cowered in the middle of the high-walled pit. Blood stains patched the rough ground and walls. The group of men who captured them (and killed Greta, and oh God, George and possibly Jimmy, too) gathered at the pit's mouth, animatedly discussing their fate. Their appearances were returning to normal; rot receded, wounds healed, but Cooper thought they sure were an ugly lot just the same. When they were at their most degraded, he couldn't distinguish one man from another, but now he could easily size them up. Two of the men were identical, he realized, the same as they appeared in his dreams. Two of three identical brothers who stormed the Blankenship home in search of runaway slaves. They looked like misplaced farmers. These two were the most vehement of the bunch. They raised their fists in anger as they vented their wrath. They spit into the pit, disgusted with intruders in what they termed their "Paradise."
Every time they mentioned his "nigger blood," Jane winced at his side. Trembling as she looked above, her eyes caught firelight. She had yet to react to his pronouncement. He feared he might have misjudged her. They wouldn't be in this whole mess if he hadn't opened his big mouth. Jane wouldn't be shying away from looking at him if he would have kept his secret to himself.
But her clammy hand fell into his, and he clutched it, and for the briefest moment, it was like none of this was happening.
"They're going to kill us," she said angrily.
"If we let them." He tried to sound more courageous than he felt. A rock blurred by his shoulder, cracked against the wall behind them. The man who threw the rock wore an unabashed grin. Cooper's courage was swiftly fleeting. There was no place to hide, no way to scurry up the walls without being attacked and thrown back down to break their necks.
Jane inhaled sharply. He followed her line of sight to the gathering people, now standing three deep all around them. Of all the people, one person focused Jane's attention.
The woman stood out as she had when Cooper saw her in the normal aboveground world. Luscious lips painted red, flowing hair catching and holding the dim surrounding light. An alluring figure, yet one glinting with barely controlled anger.
Thea Calder.
She saw that they had taken note of her, and it seemed as if the crowd did also. There was a temporary ebb in the volume of the throng, broken when Thea bunched up her fists and stormed off, the crowd parting before her like a split seam in fabric. The crowd roared as if making up for the momentary quiet, before finding a steady static hum.
Slurs and spit and more rocks hurled into the pit. Cooper and Jane huddled low, covering their heads with their hands and forearms. This caused another roar to ripple through the crowd, this one tinged with laughter.
Yes, yes you are getting to us, Cooper thought.
A voice cut through the rest. Confident, somehow mirthful, Cooper recognized the voice from his dreams, and just recently, as the leader of the bounty hunters. Ethan Cartwright. "You two make a wonderful couple, I've gotta give you that. Ted Cooper. That's a white man's name. You have your white skin, your greasy white man's hair. You have white man's money, yet, you're a nigger. How about that, friends? Vic Borland heard it from his own mouth. That'll show you what they'll do, what they'll try to get away with. But it never works out the way they want, taking and taking and taking some more, taking right from the white man for his own. It never works.
"And you, Jane Fowler, cowering in filth with your arms draped over a nigger, when all these years you wouldn't let a white man come within an arm's length. Toiling along at your pathetic farm since your husband's demise, all these years acting more a man than not, not even attempting to keep your place. Makes you question things, folks. It surely does. What really happened to Dwight Fowler? How convenient a death he had. You, taking up his plow, his sweat and
toil, taking up the burden of your land as if you were a man. Makes you wonder if Jane Fowler would rather take up with someone of the fairer sex, doesn't it?"
A grumble flowed through the crowd, agreeing with their leader. She no longer looked at the crowd. She dipped her face to her palms, sobbing.
"These two are vermin. Deserving of each other, deserving the same fate--"
Ethan's speech became a garbled scream. Cooper looked up and saw someone attacking him. A long knife handle protruded from Ethan's neck, and a group of angered men were prying the attacker away from their leader.
"This must end!" the attacker shouted, his voice drowned by the shocked clamor of Ethan's followers. Cooper saw clearly the gray wispy hair cut in a blunt Magee haircut, and the angular frame of an old man unfamiliar with manual labor. But he'd never seen such rage in the man or the vigor in which he moved. Dr. Thompson lunged with a blood-soaked hand for the knife sticking from Cartwright's neck. His fingers closed on the slick handle and held. The doctor's eyes lit up in triumph as he twisted the blade and tugged the wound wider.
"I will end this, Ethan. Even if I have to cut your head from your shoulders!"
Ethan's eyes boggled as his blood poured down his front. Thompson yanked back on the knife and a crimson spray arched down into the pit. He struck again near the original wound, driving the blade to the hilt. The room was strangely quiet. Ethan's followers stood back, unsure what to do, or perhaps even glad for the attack. Many in the crowd stepped away, as if it were possible for them to be sickened by the sight of blood.
"This must end! You--"
Ethan mustered his strength and punched the doctor in the Adam's apple, silencing him. Thompson went over in a heap, grasping his crushed throat. Two of the Borland brothers rushed over and grabbed the doctor by either arm, securing him long after any practical need. The old man's face was creased with veins, his skin darkening to purple as his air flow ceased.
Ethan took hold of the knife handle and pried it from his neck. Blood dripped steadily from his drenched shirt, but his strength never appeared to ebb.
