by George Wier
An eerie glow — like that of Captain Ahab’s harpoon from the old film — had formed around the blunt nose of the object as it rolled backwards, smashing the frame that once held it suspended.
It smashed the timbers beneath it, what had once covered a large depression, and butted down with a splash into the water beneath, coming to rest with its tip aimed upwards at a forty degree angle.
Fingers of lightning flashed, and then there was an explosion of bluish light that caused my eyes to reflexively close. I felt a sheet of pain behind my eyes.
And then, for only an instant, there was complete darkness and silence.
*****
I opened my eyes to the pulse of amber and a shaking in the earth.
The maintenance strobe lay on the cavern floor at my feet, now detached from the object. Whatever it had been, whatever life it had contained, was gone now. The cable that fed it was melted and fused to the rock beneath it.
Up above, on the surface, I suspected that a few cities were undergoing a brown out.
Debris threshed down from above. A chunk of stalactite fell close by on my left. And then, in the strobe flash, I saw it coming from above at the point in the cavern roof at which the object had discharged and created a gaping black hole.
An angry torrent of water came shooting down to the cavern floor.
I looked around me for some escape. There was none.
I turned in time to see Sandy struck in the head by a falling chunk of roof-rock and topple over.
I grabbed Larrabeth’s outstretched arm as the wave of water rolled over us and tossed us around like the flotsam we had become.
*****
Sandy’s body slammed into me and for a moment I lost my air. I was spinning beneath the water with my arm around Sandy’s waist. We roiled together, slapped hard against the cavern wall and spun away again. Up, down, sideways — these became confused. My suit, however, held me up until the floor was gone.
The cavern filled. The only light source was the amber strobe, down there on the cavern floor. It flashed and danced and the sensation was that of a Halloween carnival fun house.
A glance upward and the cavern roof was twenty feet overhead.
A pallet of walkway timbers rose up between me and Larrabeth. I felt the jolt through my entire body, and wondered, briefly if I had lost part of my arm.
Larrabeth was gone.
*****
The amber strobe flashed eerily beneath the water. I felt a leak of water against my collar bone. My suit was filling with water, slowly.
In the strobe light I could make out another dark form close by me: Larrabeth. With Sandy in tow I swam to her, slowly. We were being pulled slowly toward the downward torrent of water that rapidly filled the cavern. How much water does a lake hold? Millions of gallons? Tens of millions? Large fish floated by, not level, but with heads and tails at various angles. They drifted the way shocked or dead fish might drift.
With a final kick I grasped Larrabeth’s slick suit somewhere in the area of her upper back and kicked away toward what must be the rising surface.
*****
Our heads broke the surface. Above us, mere feet away, those stalactites which had withstood the shock of the explosion and not rained down on us before reflected grimly in the waning light.
I tried to peer into Sandy’s glass plate, but could make out nothing but shadow. His arms floated freely.
Larrabeth’s form jerked and moved in my grip. She, at least, was alive.
The torrent of water pouring into the cavern also drowned all sound. It very nearly drowned thought as well.
I knew one thing and one thing only, and this I kept in the foreground of my confused mind. The hole from which it issued was our only chance of survival.
*****
Moments passed and the water level continued to climb. Our heads bumped against the uneven roof. I tried to steady us, to keep us from being pulled into the downward rush from above and at the last moment, when I knew we would be dragged away, my chest fetched up against a narrow stalactite. I hugged it between me and Sandy with my upper body and waited.
The water climbed past my head and the pull of the torrent lessened.
The cavern was full. Likely, it would quickly drain off into the other passages Sandy had told me about — his weekend spelunking trips came to mind — and eventually find its way to the mural where a certain square-rigged ship was depicted, forever drowning it.
These were my thoughts, odd, disjointed things. I had two lives in my charge. Of this I reminded myself.
I released the stalactite and with Sandy and Larrabeth in tow in the strobing amber half-light, kicked towards the hole that must lead, somehow to the world above.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I moved in a dark world, devoid of any light.
There was, however, pressure. An intense pressure against the skin of the suit. How long had the elevator ride down to the cavern taken us? A minute? More?
The deepest caverns of which I’ve read are the diamond mines of South Africa, upwards to a mile beneath the Earth. A mile was over 5,000 feet. I estimated we had descended no more than several hundred feet, no more than a tenth that distance.
If that were so, then we were probably somewhere near the half-way point in the trip.
Larrabeth’s suit was rapidly filling with water, this I knew from the insistent tug downwards, the buoyancy from Sandy’s and my suit slowed by the iron grip of gravity and increasing weight of Larrabeth’s form. I still held her with one hand and the muscles in my hand and forearm were weakening. I had one arm around Sandy’s waist, holding him to me in a death grip.
As it was pitch black — there was no way to see and no way of knowing whether they were alive. I felt, though, as if we were moving upwards, slowly. The outside pressure seemed to be decreasing. Possibly we were nearing the surface.
Would we all die here in the darkness?
What a way to go. I’d at least made it home and spent some precious time with Julie and little Jennifer. Pictures of them swam in and out of my vision in the dark, a darkness that I imagined was like the blackest reaches of space.
I lost all time sense. The only thing keeping me going, keeping my legs kicking in swimmer fashion, was the ache and spasm of my muscles and the knowledge that giving up and giving in was never an option.
My head abruptly butted against something, an outcropping that felt like so much syrup. I kicked hard with my feet and dislodged my head and felt motion again.
Mud, I surmised. Lake-bottom mud around a gaping black hole that I could not see but only imagine.
I felt a jerking, a flailing against the grip of my hand that held Larrabeth’s suit. She was alive, if barely so, but a coldness gripped me. It was the flail of a drowning person.
And then light, sudden, invasive. The water sheeted from my visor to reveal a hill crowned with light.
We had made it to the surface. Around us was an eerie landscape, perhaps like something from a computer-generated movie backdrop. Silvery forms flopped in the mud about us.
The lake had drained to the edge of the hole. And down there, in the dark, was a treasure trove, likely buried for all time. The water level dropped as I watched. There was little time left.
I dragged my charges to the edge of the muddy hole, inch by slow inch. I stuck Sandy into the mud there and turned all of my attention to pulling Larrabeth’s inert form to the surface. I waited until the muddy syrup receded past us.
*****
Sandy was still breathing. His breath rasped and wheezed and fogged the inside of the leaded glass. I unzipped and removed his hood. He was still out cold. I left him and turned my attention to Larrabeth.
I ripped the hood away as rapidly as I could. The water had made it up to her mouth.
If she were to live I had mere moments.
I turned her head, straddled her and began pushing inward and upward below her diaphragm. Water gushed from her mouth. A small minnow dislodged from her
throat and wriggled in the mud beside her head. I pushed again and more water spewed. Again I pushed. And again until no water came.
I felt of her carotid artery. Nothing.
I tilted her head back, pinched her nose between thumb and forefinger, placed my lips over hers and exhaled, watching her chest rise. The airway, at least, was clear.
Four more breaths, then I felt again.
Nothing.
I became angry.
“Goddammit,” I shouted at her. “BREATHE!”
My lips again over hers, I forced more air into her lungs.
And this time I got an answer: a small, pathetic cough that meant everything.
I turned her to the side and she vomited a flood of water. I slapped her back and another volley came. She drew in a breath, a deep one, and a fit of coughing ensued.
Her eyes fluttered open. Her face contorted with pain.
“That’s my girl,” I whispered under my breath.
I sat there in the mud with my two patients until I felt they were out of danger.
“Bill,” the voice was weak.
“Yes, Sheriff?” I said.
“See about... my deputies.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
I felt heavy, leaden.
At the edge of the lake I unzipped the suit and stepped out, dropping its weight in the high grass. It was fifty yards from the muddy lake shore up to the building, but still, each yard felt like a mile.
I was tired to the depths of my soul as I dragged myself up onto the truck turn-around and toward the building.
The two sheriff’s cars were there, but Mike’s truck was gone. Of course. I foresaw an interesting encounter between the two of us in the future.
The sky had paled to the east with the coming dawn.
I tapped in the code by the front door, spelling out “gold” on the keypad.
The door clicked as the small green light winked on.
*****
Inside, Jim Cook and Lawson Cooper, Larrabeth’s deputies, were out like a light. Their forms were sprawled on the hard concrete floor of the building. Each breathed, shallowly. Each had a knot on his head where they had made not a light contact with the floor. I was concerned enough about them to fish out my cell phone and dial 911. After a minute of wrangling with the dispatcher, trying to give her adequate directions, I was informed help was on the way.
I was beginning to feel woozy and so opened the only door to the outside and propped it open with one of the boxes that had contained the anti-radiation suits. I breathed in the night air, filling my lungs, and my head began to clear. There was a strange taste on my tongue, sort of like burnt onions. I’d have to look that one up later, but from all appearances the deputies had been somehow gassed.
I went back inside and pulled the deputies to the open doorway, one at a time, then fished in Jim Cooper’s pocket until I came up with a set of keys.
“Jim,” I whispered softly to his sleeping form, “I have to borrow your squad car.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Full morning. It had been an hour since I pulled Sheriff Larrabeth Williams and Sandy Jones from the mud of the bed of a former lake. I’d passed the entourage of sirens and flashing lights along Highway 30 into town, rolling on past in Jim Cook and Lawson Cooper’s patrol vehicle unmolested.
I pulled up in front of the house at 7:40 a.m.
The front door was unlocked. I went inside.
No lights were on, but the sunlight filtering in from the living room windows was enough for me to see clearly.
“Hello?” I called out. “Anybody home?”
No answer. I felt a familiar chill.
I wandered into the living room. I parted the curtains an inch and peered into the back yard.
Mike was sitting there at his picnic table, sipping a longneck beer and surrounded by his beautiful Japanese tea garden. A spray of apricot blossoms was suspended a few feet over his head.
I went through the living room and peered into Mike’s den. There was a desk there.
I sifted through the papers there. Nothing of importance to matters at hand.
The second door was a bathroom, its interior dark.
The third door was Mike and Heidi’s bedroom, deserted.
I went in and began going through dressers, nightstands.
At the top of Heidi’s clothes closet, underneath a layer of fresh linens, I found what I was looking for.
I heard something in the hallway. My hand, holding it, went behind my back.
I turned.
Heidi stood there between me and her bedroom door, regarding me.
*****
“It was storming that night,” I said. “The night that Freddie died. The same night Sandy took me down into the hole.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And you had it with you. The blue bone. You came on to him. You propositioned him in Mary Jo’s house.”
She nodded.
“And you had sex with him on Mary Jo’s bed. That’s why he was naked. His clothes were off before he was dead, not after. You probably killed him at the moment of his goddamned climax.”
She smirked at me, her lips drawing up into a widening grin. There was a touch of something there that I never thought I’d actually see but that I knew must exist. I’d known it from the moment I’d played Brad’s tape. It was the same thing I’d seen on the faces of people who were behind bars, permanently. A species of insane glee.
“And you did it with this,” I said, and brought the object up from behind my back where she could see it.
She laughed.
“I know,” I said. “The resemblance to a sex toy wasn’t lost on you.”
The silence in her room stretched out. I threw the thing on her bed.
“It was you that night in that dark house. I thought it was a man. I knew it couldn’t be Mike. He followed me and Mary Jo into town and took the turn-off to go home, to you. After Freddie was dead, you set the traps for me — the chair, the lamp. Then you went outside, threw the power switch and came back in tracking mud everywhere with Mike’s boots that are in your closet there with the dried mud still on them. And then you waited. You knew I’d be bringing Mary Jo back home. But with the house so dark, you knew I’d come in first, that I wouldn’t let her in without making sure she would be safe. You were playing with me.”
She chuckled. I felt the chill again, and knew I was right.
“You killed Freddie with that thing,” I continued. “Before that, you killed Brad the same way. I have his confession for his misdeeds on a tape. You’re likely going to prison, Heidi. Or an asylum.”
“You think I’m insane,” she said. She laughed again, a wild and mad laugh that sent chills down my spine.
“Bill Travis,” she said. “The man who thinks he’s God. Well, let’s see how much a god can take. Yes, I made love to Brad, just like I did with Sandy and Terry. I needed Brad. I wanted him to call you. I wanted you in on this with me. We could have had anything, everything we wanted together. The wealth of nations, the creature comforts afforded by an army of our own servants. My way to you was through him. But he was loyal to you, Bill. That’s what killed him. At first I saw him as an opportunity. He was so goddamned smart. Mike says that he was decades ahead of his time. He was. His designs built the Dowser. With it we were able to locate gold deposits throughout the world, from one remote location without going anywhere. But Brad was in the way all along. He was between you and me, Bill. He had to die, don’t you see that? So that we could build a future... together.”
“You killed Brad with his own invention,” I said. “You brought his dead body back up to the surface and tried to make it look like an accident. But Mike knew. And Sandy knew. They both thought Terry Throckmorton killed Brad. That put Mike in a horrible position — his own boss the killer of his best friend. You set your own husband up. You’re a liar and a murderer, Heidi.”
The effect was that of a slap. Her head rocked back slightly. Then h
er eyes narrowed and fixed on me with an intensity. A hatred, possibly. I decided she deserved another slap.
“And a whore,” I said. “You sold your own soul.”
“You have no idea what I sold,” she said.
She reached up and pulled at her hair. A wig came off her head to reveal a completely smooth scalp.
“I have cancer,” she said. “Inoperable. I’m dying. I won’t last another year. Your prison and your asylum don’t frighten me at all, Bill.”
“The radiation,” I said quietly. “You went down there without protection. Mike didn’t know you were going down there. Sandy didn’t know either. It was all you. But you had to have a confederate, or you couldn’t have gone down there at all. You didn’t have a key and you didn’t have the codes.”
She stood there, looking at me. The wig tumbled to the floor. She appeared so small, so frail to me. When I had first appeared at her front door on a day that seemed like a lifetime ago, I had noted how frail she looked.
“Throckmorton,” I said. “He had the keys to the kingdom. I can see it now. Mike whispering to you in the night after a long day at work, telling you things he shouldn’t have told anyone. And you began to formulate a plan. But Throckmorton had the last laugh. He didn’t warn you about the core rods. You wouldn’t have known what they were. He trusted you about as much as you trusted him. But you two were sleep-ing with each other anyway. Then you sent him to Sandy’s house that night, the same night you killed Freddie.”
I stood there, regarding her, watching her face and seeing silent acknowledgment there for everything I was saying to her. Also, I was looking at the pictures flitting through my head. That night. That dark night of rain and intense lightning. Mary Jo and Sandy and Dottie, their kids there.
“Sandy had his shotgun within easy reach,” I said. “You set Throckmorton up and you set Sandy up to be ready when he came. You’re responsible for that death as well, and for Sandy’s guilt. All that in one night. My God, Heidi. You’re evil. Cancer — the slow way — is just too good for you.”
