by Judith Price
There before her she saw a small wooden trap door, the size of an attic door. Old rusted metal rivets broadcasted its age. Jill grabbed the cold handle and yanked it. Metal scraped against metal as she continued yanking. The latch bolt popped, but the door did not move.
“You’ve been bad. Very, very bad.” Jill clenched in a scream and rammed her shoulder hard against the small door while pushing the handle down. The door moved. Shards of pebbles cascaded onto her as she pushed her way through and jammed the door closed. She whirled and what she saw almost made her drop the pick.
Twenty-nine
The rain pelted down puppies and kittens. The wipers whacked each time they made a pass over the windshield. The police cruiser pulled into the silent parking lot of Luray Caves. Officer Brett Roberts, a young punk of a cop spoke first. “I’ve tried to reach the manager, a Miss Mandy Humphrys, but it appears her mobile is switched off or something. Might have something to do with the heavy rain.” He said with a backwoods twang.
“Is it normal to turn off your mobile phone here?” Tracy asked.
“Ma’am, in these here parts you’re lucky if someone even has a mobile phone. She’s important though, so she has one. She’s a well-respected curator of our cave system. It’s the largest in the US. She’s highfalutin, from Chicago or some place like that.” Gravel spit under the tires as he pulled up beside Jake’s Crown Vic.
“That’s Agent Acker’s vehicle.” Tracy blurted.
“So, they are still here,” Eric’s voice pitched.
“What’s this all about again?” Officer Roberts asked for the third time since he’d picked them up at the helipad. “Sheriff said it might have something to do with those murders you folks pulled from our department. Sheriff’s not too happy ‘bout that. That’s why I had to come. He didn’t want to have ‘nutten to with the feebs.” Officer Roberts sucked more saliva, moistening his tobacco-filled lip as he put the car in park.
Both Tracy and Eric jumped out of the car simultaneously. Rain pissed down as if the sky had just chugged a beer. Tracy checked the driver’s door of the Crown Vic. Locked.
“It’s locked,” Eric shouted across the hood of the car to Tracy after checking the passenger door. They bee-lined it for the awning that hung over the large glass doors. The officer’s belt jingled as he ran up behind them.
“Gawddang rain,” he sucked in and then spat a wad of black tar off the side of the porch.
Tracy pulled at the door for Luray caves. Locked. “Are you sure you can’t reach the manager?”
The rain drops pelted the metal above them when Officer Roberts cocked his head to the left and squeezed the trigger on is walkie-talkie. “Breaker one-nine.”
A squeaky female voice snapped back. “Ten-four.”
“Any news on Mandy? Do you copy?”
“I told you, Brett, I’d let you know when I reached her.”
Officer Roberts scuffled his boots on the porch. “Roger that.” He shrugged towards the two agents. “Maybe their car wouldn’t start and they caught a ride into town.” The gangly cop surmised.
Tracy and Eric had their backs to him as they scanned the parking lot. “Is there an office somewhere around here?” she asked looking back over her shoulder.
Officer Roberts spat again and cinched up his pants, pulling up on his belt. “Nope, office is inside these doors to the right. The only thing back there is that old cave system.” He huffed. “Some folks say it’s haunted.” Eric turned around and listened intently. “Ya know, after what happened to old man Fisher. Tragic really. I always liked the old coot, always giving me those mint jelly candies whenever my Ma brought me here. You know, the ones shaped like trees.” The officer sucked in the left side of his lips, slurping a bubble of saliva, and spat. “Shame, really. What a way to go.”
“Way to go?” Tracy queried looking back to Officer Roberts.
“The old man impaled himself on one of those stone spikes.”
Eric interrupted. “The old cave system, does it look like this?” Eric held up the stalactite image.
The officer took the image and tilted it up to the streetlights. He slowly nodded. “I think so, don’t know for sure. I ain’t never been in there.”
Tracy reached over and grabbed Eric’s arm. “Come on,” and they darted back out into the rain.
Thirty
The dark night pressed down hard. Raindrops bounced off her face as she looked up trying to find some familiar sight. She could only hear the sound of the rain splattering on the side of rock.
Intuition pushed Jill to the right. Go along the edge of the cave, she thought to herself. It had to lead somewhere. There had to be a road—that parking lot. There had to be hope. If she stuck to the edge of the rock mountain overgrown with dead shrubs, she’d find something. That much she knew.
Jill hobbled over small rocks trying to maintain her balance. Fear snapped all around her like the breaking twigs under her feet. Snap. Snap. Snap. Brush turned into trees now as she moved further into the woods. A branch whipped the left side of her face. The sting burned her cheek. Her foot rolled off a sharp rock and she stumbled forward, losing her footing. Her hands hit the rocks hard and the pick flipped up grazing her shoulder before flying past her. Her knees felt sheared off as they hit the ground. She scrambled back to her feet and stopped. Fear ripped through her tearing at her sanity.
The sliver of moonlight reflected off something in the woods to her right. Jill froze. Cognition became her friend as thoughts passed by. Who the hell am I running from? Jill huffed. The Iceman looked pretty dead. But Jill didn’t touch him, she couldn’t know for sure. Maybe that smudge was his mistake. That bastard was screwing with me. He had to be.
Jill looked through the trees attempting to see anything. What the hell? Maybe I have a concussion, and I am dreaming. Maybe I am in a viewing and I can’t get out. Thoughts rushed through her. Then she sensed it. A presence. Evil. She’d sensed it before. “You’ve been bad, very, very bad.” It came as a growling whisper. Jill stumbled forward as if she had been pushed. Her body crunched as it rolled ass over teakettle.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Jill yelped each time she felt the pain. She landed face first in a small body of water. She jockeyed for position and spat out mud and leaves, reaching for anything to pull herself out of the bristling water. Suddenly, she felt a hill of dirt and dog-paddled up the steep incline. Then her fingers hit gravel. She crawled onto a dirt road, a goddamn dirt road.
She sat on her haunches and flicked at her eyes until she could see again. She tried to catch her breath, she tried not to scream. She looked around frantically.
To the right, she saw streetlights about a half-mile away. She gathered the only strength she had left and in some sort of awkward skipping-jogging move, she began to run. Run!
She didn’t look back to see who was chasing her. “Get to the light. Get to the light,” she told herself. Hope surged through her when she saw a small storage shed. She limped up behind it. A tall light pole beamed in front of it. Faster Jill. Two feet to go to get to the light. She almost smiled when she rounded the corner.
Pain shot through her midsection when something came at her from behind the shed and squarely hit her. She descended backwards, her head hit the ground hard with a crack knocking the wind out of her. Gasping trying to catch her breath, trying to understand. The large figure all dressed in black straddled her. Stars popped in front of Jill’s eyes like old fashion camera bulbs. Through them she could see an ice pick, lifted high, waiting to plunge downwards.
BAM! BAM! BAM! Blood spurted from gunshots, two wounds to the chest and one to the head. It was the last thing Jill saw as Mandy the manager’s body fell back, dropping the ice pick to the ground.
Thirty-one
Two Days Later
The glare of light in the crisp white room was blinding. The sound of machines bleeped in a choreographed manner. Dr. Anna Campbell stood at the foot of the bed and eyed the patient’s chart. Her long red hair was tied up in a
neat bun and her breasts attempted to push past the green surgery smock. A smaller, younger man in a white lab coat complete with white trousers and polished white shoes, stood beside her.
“How long you been working at County?” Dr. Campbell queried, smiling towards the young doctor before she looked back at the chart.
“Second week here.” Dr. Lee chimed. “It’s okay, ‘lot different than Colorado Springs, but I’m enjoying it so far,” he said looking towards the patient. “She’s looking a bit worse for wear.” He said moving closer. “I heard it was the Iceman that did this to her. Is it true?”
Dr. Campbell shrugged. “Seems that’s what the media fuss is all about. And I can see why, she’s the only one that managed to escape that maniac. We’ve lowered her meds now and she should be coming out of the induced coma anytime. The swelling is manageable and her prognosis is positive. She’ll make a full recovery, well, physically anyway.” She looked over at Jill then handed the chart to Dr. Lee.
“So what happened Miss Oliver?” Dr. Lee said rhetorically. “Skin avulsions on her palms and fingers ripped deep into the subcutaneous layer of the skin.”
“She must have been fighting hard.” He paused and continued reading. “Anterior dislocation of her right elbow, required a reduction maneuver while she was comatose.” Dr. Lee flipped the chart page. “Third degree tears to her ligaments in her left ankle and a deep laceration to the frontal bone scalp.” Dr. Lee looked up at Dr. Campbell who was staring down at Jill. “That’s the extent of her injuries, lucky lady.” He looked over at Jill when he heard her moan.
“Well, that and her teeth. She was definitely hit hard with something to knock out three of them.”
Dr. Campbell reached down and placed her hand on Jill’s left forearm. “Miss Oliver,” she said softly. Jill’s eyes fluttered as she began to come back to reality. Jill’s head stirred and her eyes darted under her closed lids. “Miss Oliver,” Dr. Campbell gently squeezed. Jill’s eyes popped open and a soft scream pushed past her lips.
Jill frantically pawed the air and she shrieked. “No, no, no.” The door pushed open and Eric rushed to her and grabbed her left thigh.
“Jill,” he said. No recognition. “Jill,” he commanded. Comprehension filled Jill’s eyes as she stared at Eric. “You’re okay, Jill. You’re okay.” A nurse came in and quickly thumbed out a bead of morphine into Jill’s IV. “You’re in Richmond County Hospital, Jill. You’re safe here,” he said. Jill’s eyes softened slightly, then darted towards the two doctors standing on the other side of the bed.
“I’m Dr. Campbell and this is my colleague, Dr. Lee. Do you understand?” Jill slightly nodded. “We’ve been treating you for the past fifty hours, you are going to be fine, Jill. The worst is over.” Jill’s eyes glazed over. “You’ve been in an induced coma to be sure the swelling in your brain had dissipated. We don’t feel you will have any permanent damage and the rest of your injuries are minor. You’ll have to stay another twenty-four hours for observation, but then you can go home.” Dr. Campbell placed her hand on her forearm again. “What you’ll need, Jill, is some good old-fashioned rest. Dr. Lee will be taking care of you from now on.”
Dr. Lee nodded. “I’ll stop in and see you on my next rounds, a few hours from now.” Jill attempted a dry-mouth thank you, but nothing came out as the doctors left the room. The nurse recorded Jill’s vitals and then hung the chart at the foot of her bed and scurried out of the room.
The plastic green chair scraped the floor as Eric pulled it closer to Jill’s bed. “How are you feeling?” Jill just closed her eyes and sighed.
Several breaths later she opened them. “I … I feel like …”
Eric paused before he asked, “Do you remember what happened?”
Jill closed her eyes.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it now, Jill. We can talk later if you want.”
She sighed again. “It’s fine, Eric.” She tried to shift, but with both hands bandaged in wads of gauze and her right arm in a sling, it made moving her body an impossible task. “I, ah, I was being chased in the caves after I escaped from the Iceman.” Jill winced then blinked attempting to keep the morphine at bay. The sound of air whooshing from the door hydraulics caught their attention and they looked in the direction of the sound. Special Agent Tracy Olsen pushed through the doors.
Dressed in a tight blue pantsuit, her brown curly hair looked disheveled as if she’d aged a year in the past two days.
“I just got the call that you were awake,” she said, a little too matter-of-factly. She marched over to the bed. “You’re not looking so hot, Miss Oliver,” she said as she scanned Jill’s dressings. A slight tinge of pink spotted Jill’s head bandage. “Must have been quite the harried experience down there.”
Jill didn’t know if it was the drugs, but something seemed different about Tracy. Then, as if a large rock had been dropped on her chest, Jill gasped, “Jake?”
Tracy cleared her throat. “We haven’t found any signs of Agent Acker, which is why I am here to see you. Time is critical right now. All the while the docs were placing your brain on rest, Agent Acker is still unaccounted for.” Both Eric and Jill looked at Tracy perplexed. A cold stare migrated back from Tracy and Jill suddenly felt a chill. “When was the last time you saw him, Agent Oliver?”
“I, err, I last saw him in the cave system after we escaped from that janitor, Matthew. The janitor?” Jill questioned.
“You’re worried about a serial killer.” Tracy scowled.
“No, I …” Jill was becoming flustered.
“He’s alive. Agent Oliver, Matthew. Yup, so rest your worried head.” Tracy’s brow knitted. “We found him in the cave where we believe he killed his victims.”
“But I saw him. He was dead.” Jill looked confused.
“Let’s just stay focused on finding Agent Acker, shall we.” Tracy snapped.
This made Eric stand up. “Is there a problem?” he queried.
“A problem, a friggn’ problem? Of course there's a goddamn problem. Agent Acker has been missing for over forty-eight hours while Miss Psychobabble has been nice and warm, tucked into bed. A man is missing, Agent Wallace, an FBI agent. And she was the last one to see him alive. We have a team searching everywhere. We've even brought K9 in.” Agent Olsen planted her right hand on her hip and shifted. “Now answer the goddam question. Where did you see Agent Acker last?”
“Now, Agent …” Eric began to protest.
“It’s okay, Eric,” Jill paused, still confused, then recounted the last whereabouts of Jake.
“If you think of anything else, you have my number,” Tracy sniped. She was about to pivot out the door when Jill piped up.
“Agent Olsen, why are you being so hostile? Can’t you see that it’s obvious that that manager of the cave system was chasing me? She knows those caverns well. She was trying to kill me in those caves and when she couldn’t catch up to me, she chased me into the woods and was going to stuff a friggin ice pick in my face.”
Tracy turned back towards Jill and said in a monotone voice, “We have CCTV camera footage accounting for the whereabouts of Manager Humphrys. She was at the Rainbow Diner and according to the waitress, she was there to meet a no-show and arrived back to the caves approximately eight minutes before you reached the storage shed. She was never in those caves, Agent Oliver. She didn’t have time. She must have seen you on the security camera above that trap door where you came out. It’s solar powered and only turns on when that door opens. She’s got the surveillance screens in her office. The only people who were in those caves were Agent Acker, McGregor, and you.” Tracy snapped again and then walked out the door.
“What the hell was that all about?” Jill looked at Eric perplexed.
Eric’s shoulders slightly shrugged and he sat back down. A minute of silence passed until Eric asked, “You hungry, Jill? Can I get you anything?” She held up her bound boxer hands.
“How am I supposed to eat with these?”
She placed them back on her lap. “She said no one else was in the caves.” Jill looked confused and the haze of morphine hung in her eyes. “It had to be that manager that was in the cave.” Jill sighed again.
“You sure someone was chasing you? Did you see anyone?” Eric asked.
Jill paused to recall and she said, “Ah … no, not exactly.” Eric waited for Jill to continue. “I thought it was McGregor because before the crazy fuck knocked himself out, he was talking to himself in different voices. One sounded like a husky woman who smoked too much. It all sounds a bit crazy.” Jill looked up from her hands into Eric’s eyes. “Do you think it’s crazy? Do you think I’m going crazy? I mean he was telling someone that they were 'bad, very, very bad.’ Like a child being reprimanded or something. I know I heard him. I know it.” Her eyes closed and Jill continued slowly. “I escaped from him a second time. It was after Jake disappeared. I was trying to find my way out. I heard this voice again—it sounded the same.” She sighed heavily, opening her pleading eyes. “It just doesn’t make sense.” She was more confused than ever. “I heard movement all the time.”
“Movement, are you sure it was movement? I mean, those cave systems seem to always have an hum with the movement of air.” Eric said.
“Well, I thought it was movement. I know I should have told her, but Agent Olsen seemed so stuck on the fact that I was alone down there.” Jill shook her head wearily and looked back down at her hands. “When I was climbing over one of the jagged rocks, I dropped the lantern and it smashed the glass and went out. I could swear I heard the cracking sound of someone walking on the glass. And then someone rapped on my shoe as I was climbing over it.”
“Rapped?”
“Yeah, I felt something tap the bottom of my shoe. Like tap, tap, tap.” Jill made a knocking gesture in the air with her left hand. “How do you explain that, huh?” Jill’s voice almost cracked. “And what about the woods? There were sounds all around me like twigs breaking and I thought for sure there was someone in the shadows of the trees. I was moving fast but I felt it. I felt that someone was there.” Jill eyes said it all.
