Canyon Echoes

by Miranda Nading

  Something in Julie's voice told Gracie she meant what she said. It was no idle threat made just to get her to obey. The small part of Julie that cared for Gracie, the part that had loved her like a mother, was gone. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “No more than you deserve, you traitorous little witch.” Julie shook her, using her grip on Gracie's hair, making a painful point of her frustrations before pointing to the cuffs at the foot of the bed with the gun. “But at least you'll get to keep your clothes on.”

  At the end of her tether, Gracie fought back a sob and pulled her feet up. Resigned to her fate, she snapped the cuff around one ankle, before she cuffed the other one. Each click as it tightened was like a gunshot to her heart. If she had run while she'd had the chance, had forced Julie to shoot her in the back, her pain would already be over.

  As she cursed her inability to think or react fast enough, Julie stepped up behind her. Gracie prayed that the fugue that had taken her over after seeing Lester's body would come back, wipe aside her conscious mind and relieve her from the pain she knew was coming. Deep into tunnels that few, if any, knew about anymore, Julie could take all the time she wanted to make Gracie pay for whatever she had done wrong.

  “Take your jacket off and lay down.”

  Trembling, not from cold but with unchecked terror, Gracie slid the jacket from her shoulders and eased back, her hands clutched tightly against her chest.

  “Cuff your left wrist.”

  “I can't,” she sobbed. “I can't do this.”

  Even when Julie pressed the barrel of the gun to her thigh and pulled back the hammer, Gracie held tightly to her hands. Nails dug into flesh in a desperate attempt to hold on.

  Instead of pulling the trigger, Julie snapped the gun up and pistol-whipped her.

  With no chance to brace herself, the scream that erupted was blocked out by—–

  Dirt clods rolled away as the little hand searched for the source of the dirty locks. Pale flesh, speckled with dirt held the glow of the moon, silently begging the little girl to keep cleaning it away.

  Julie brought her back with a sharp slap to the face before yanking one arm up and locking it into place. “…don't you dare!”

  Still dazed by the blow to the head, Gracie was helpless to stop Julie as she grabbed the other wrist and wrenched it up. With one hand, Julie pressed her wrist against the cuff and snapped it in place with expert fluidity.

  Crying out against both the haunting vision and the onslaught of pain, Gracie pulled on the cuffs making her shoulder sockets and her bruised temple burn in protest. “What did I do?”

  “You know damned well!” Julie yelled. “Where did you go tonight? Who were you with? You betrayed me to a ranger, didn't you?”

  “I didn't tell anyone!” she screamed. “I didn't know!”

  “Liar!”

  Somewhere behind her, a switch was flipped and an electronic hum filled the room. Beyond panic, words, incoherent and senseless fell from her lips as she tried to beg Julie not to do this.

  With what appeared to be the red alligator jaws of a set of jumper cables in one hand, Julie stepped into view. The set that would lock onto the positive post of a dead battery to charge it. In the other, she held a ball gag. “I was going to use this so you didn't bite your tongue off or break your teeth. But I want to hear you scream.”

  Quick as a striking snake, Julie hit the metal bedframe with the electrified tip. The current raced through the bedframe and into the cuffs that held her, before sinking its teeth into her flesh.

  As every muscle in her body seized, including her heart, the world didn't fade away, it fell, crashing around her as if reality were merely a curtain waiting to go down after the show.

  Pale cheeks were followed by full pink lips. Still the little girl didn't stop her vile chore, calmly pushing the moist earth away from blue eyes that were clouded by death, but nonetheless familiar. Gracie stared down at her own visage.

  The little girl in the ghost white nightgown turned to look up at her, over her shoulder, speaking for the first time since Gracie's visit to Sulphur Caldron. 'You were s'posed to protect me.'

  Gracie fought her way back—

  'Why did you leave me alone?'

  —from those horrible blue eyes, the living and the dead, staring at her, accusing her.

  Her lungs betrayed her by sucking greedily at the scorched air around her, inhaling deeply the scent of burnt flesh and life. As her heart fluttered and found an unsteady rhythm, Gracie began to scream.

  38

  The scream died as quickly as it had begun. As if someone hit an off switch on a radio, leaving nothing but the echoes in its wake. Hudson froze, listening, waiting.

  Silence.

  After the initial surge of power through the lights, those that were left intact resumed their weak luminescence. Whatever was drawing power from them was still in use.

  Understanding hit him like a blow to the heart, nearly dropping him to his knees. Having gotten to know Gracie, having learned more about her past, electrocuting her crossed the line from craziness into full-on sadistic torture.

  Desperation clung to him, pushing and demanding that he do something, anything to stop it. But in the dim underground, he had no idea which way to go, or how to cut the power.

  The hotel that had originally stood above them had covered nearly one square mile. If these were indeed maintenance tunnels, they could cover just as much ground. As he took tunnel after tunnel, easing his way through the labyrinth, he became convinced they covered ten times that.

  Before he could do anything, he had to find the two women. He had to find Gracie, or at least her general position. If he managed to kill the power before then, he might wander these dark halls for years without finding anyone. Much less a way out.

  The way sound bounced around in the cement tunnels, it was easy to get disoriented, turned around. In the darkness that would follow killing the power, it would lead to nothing but madness.

  When the lights flared again, he clenched his fist and waited. The hardest thing he had ever done in his life was try to stop his heart from overriding his brain. Knowing that Gracie was being tortured, that the next round could kill her, threatened what little self-control he had left.

  He forced himself to stand still and wait for the scream that would follow. It was the only chance he had of finding her. The initial outcry of pain and terror had to be chased. He couldn't allow the dancing, drifting echoes to distract him, pull him off course.

  As the lights faded and he prepared himself to chase the scream, it didn't come. The certainty that Gracie's heart had failed during the last assault wrapped around him like a cold blanket that quickly turned to steel, squeezing him and making it hard to breath. Fighting to remain calm, he counted and listened.

  A full minute passed, an eternity to Hudson, before a scream finally ripped through the tunnels. Even as he ran, he knew it wasn't Gracie. There was no pain in that scream. It was the embodiment of fury, rage. It was Julie.

  A darkness that had nothing to do with the lighting in the tunnels settled over Hudson. The day Janette died; something in him died with her. Finding love again had never been an option. It just wasn't something he thought about, or even wanted.

  Until Gracie. She was more than a woman, more than a second chance at love. She was his second chance at life, a way to start living life instead of just going through the motions.

  Losing her, the same day that he finally acknowledged the devastating numbness inside him, the same day that he opened his heart to the possibility of truly living again, was too much.

  If Gracie died, so be it.

  If he couldn't save Gracie, Julie would pay with her life.

  As far as Hudson was concerned, if he died tonight, he was ready. But not before he choked the life out of Julie Haeussler. There would be no court, no judge, and no jury. Not for either of them.

  Nor could he think of a better tomb than these dark, forgotten tunnels.


  39

  “—you've been a naughty girl, Gracie.”

  Gracie turned away from the little girl kneeling in the dirt, from those accusing blue eyes. Her world seemed to tilt, wobble, and then she found herself looking at her stepfather. She wasn't a little girl anymore, now she was sixteen. Over of his usual blue chambray work shirt and jeans, he wore a white lab coat, stained red with blood.

  “Naughty girls need to be punished.” He pulled his hands from behind his back. Instead of the belt he'd always used on her, he held a ball gag and the thin Electro-Shock Therapy paddles the doctors had used on her in the sanitarium.

  “You're dead,” she whispered. Even as she spoke, fresh blood seeped through the white coat from the two dozen stab wounds she'd inflicted years ago. A soft pat-pat-pat sounded, as blood dripped slowly to the ground where it began to pool. “You can't hurt me anymore.”

  He threw down the ball gag and grabbed her by the throat, squeezing, digging his fingers into her tender flesh. When he spoke, the smell of sour whiskey washed over her, but it was Julie's voice she heard. “I'm not done with you yet.”

  Air burned her sinuses and throat as her lungs fought to start working again. Julie hovered over her. Julie, whose hand gripped her throat, “I say when you die, you little bitch. Not you. I'm not done with you yet.”

  Gracie began to laugh. Not the hysterical laughter of someone pushed over the edge of sanity, but the calm laughter of someone who knows a secret and was overjoyed in that knowledge. It was the laughter of the Other, as she finally slipped to the surface.

  In the sanitarium, the electrical charge was tightly controlled, her system closely monitored. With the crude equipment Julie had set up, how many more jolts could she handle, before her heart finally refused to start beating again? One? Two?

  The Other was pretty confident that it would be no more than two. Maybe only one if she could piss Julie off. Make her careless.

  Either way, it would be over soon. All of it. There would be no more nightmares, no more midnight panic attacks. There would be no more self-doubt, no more conspiracies and paranoia. No more loneliness.

  She hadn't prayed since she was a little girl. Not since the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her stepfather changed from beatings to rape. She'd prayed then, begged God to kill her and make it all stop. When He failed her, when He refused to give her relief from the abuse, she ceased asking.

  Now, handcuffed to a mattress that smelled like mildew, ozone thick in the air from the current running through the metal frame, the smell of burnt flesh thick in the air, she prayed for the first time since she was a frightened, hurt little girl.

  The only thing she regretted was leaving Fred and Ginger to an uncertain future. She prayed that wherever they ended up, they would be together and they would be loved.

  A tear slipped free as she realized that wasn't exactly true. She would regret one more thing. Not having the chance to find love. The short time she'd spent with Hudson had infected her. The infection bloomed into that nasty little four-letter word. Hope.

  “Stop laughing,” Julie seethed. Her anger growing.

  Without realizing it, her silent prayer changed. She prayed Hudson would keep Fred and Ginger, make them his family. She prayed they brought as much joy to his life as they'd brought to hers. She prayed, and she laughed.

  “Stop laughing!” Julie screamed and struck her.

  The blow to her face stopped the laughter, but only for a moment. Gracie met Julie's eyes and laughed louder, harder. She closed her eyes and remembered that moment on the deck of the overlook. That moment when Hudson held her in his arms, struggling to decide if he was going to toss her over the edge or protect her. She held onto that feeling, wrapping it around her like a warm blanket.

  Enraged, Julie screamed her fury to the ceiling and hit the metal frame with the alligator clips. Sparks jumped around her, scorching the mattress as Gracie's body went rigid, her muscles and joints galvanized by the white-hot current.

  40

  Hudson slid to a halt as the corridor he was running hit a dead end. Well, it wasn't exactly a dead end. At his feet, mere inches from his toes, a tunnel dropped away into the darkness. Old rebar, twisted and sunk deep into the cement wall, followed it down.

  A cheap ladder in aging concrete, he didn't think Julie would have taken Gracie into that dark abyss. Even if it held their weight without pulling free of the crumbling anchor points, there was no light whatsoever to indicate how deep it actually went.

  Turning to look back the way he'd come, there were several corridors that shot off the main tunnel. Any of these could have been the source of that scream. Or none of them.

  Frustrated, he took a deep breath, ready to scream out a challenge to Julie. Ready to end this once and for all, one way or another.

  Before he could follow through, the scream came again. Still Julie, it held even more anger, more wrath than had been conveyed by the first.

  It was also close. Before she could stop and the misleading reverberations lead him the wrong way, he chased it down the hall to the first corridor on the right. Just as he turned the corner, the lights went nova.

  This time, however, they didn't fade but continued to burn bright and fierce until light after light exploded around him. When the storm ended, Hudson was left standing in true darkness.

  With sheer force of will, he managed to keep his thumb from pressing the little rubber button that would bring his flashlight to life. Nothing could be heard except his own desperate, harsh breaths through his nose.

  Forcing himself to calm down, he slowed his breathing until he could listen for sounds emanating from the dark corridor that stretched out before him. He was sure this was the one. In the second before the lights exploded and he'd ducked to protect his eyes and head, he'd seen two things.

  First, and most importantly, the tunnel ended. Not like the one he'd just come from, but a true dead end. There had been no corridor in any direction. No branching tunnels that traveled deeper into the catacombs.

  Second, there were six doorways, three on either side of the hall. As he crouched in the darkness, he was certain that Gracie, or her body, waited in one of those rooms with Julie. To escape, Julie would have to walk right past him. And she'd be just as blind as he was.

  Hoping that she was convinced of her isolation, he remained crouched next to the wall. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine the halls around him and get his bearings before moving forward.

  Shuffling sounds, quiet enough to make Hudson doubt their reality, drifted through the darkness. Unable to wait any longer, he stood and turned, taking one step to the left, so he stood in the center of the hallway. Stretching his arms out to either side, he walked forward, slow, silent, counting each step.

  If Julie tried to leave, she'd walk right into him. Surprise would slow her reaction time and he'd have his hands around her neck before she could do anything about it.

  When he was fairly sure he stood between two doorways, he moved to his left and entered the first room. Keeping a sharp ear out for noise behind him, he walked carefully into the room. With his back blocking the door, he readied the flashlight, cupping one hand around the lens to keep the light to a minimum.

  He hesitated to turn it on. He wanted to hit the light and shut it back down quickly, just enough to glimpse the room in front of him and determine if they were there. Yet it would be on just long enough for Julie to realize she was no longer alone.

  He stepped back into the hallway. Leaning around the doorway with nothing but his flashlight and face, he could duck back before she could get a shot off. If she were even in there.

  That thought was chased rat-quick by another, more disturbing one. What if she had already made it into the hall with him?

  Before he could give in to paranoia, he cupped the light and hit the switch. Glancing in the room, he left the light on a half a second longer, enough to check out the corridor from the corner of his eye.

  Nothing, in the r
oom or the corridor, threatened him. There was no sign of Gracie or Julie.

  He stepped to the other side of the hallway, and waited, listening to see if the light had given him away. Only silence met his expectant ears. It could have been his imagination, but the quiet felt pregnant with expectation.

  She knew he was here.

  He was sure of it.

  Choking down his doubts, he moved into the doorway of the next room. If he stopped now, if he started second-guessing himself, he would be frozen in place, waiting for Julie to come to him on her own terms. He couldn't allow that to happen.

  As quickly, but as quietly, as possible, Hudson hit the button on his flashlight and shut it back down before moving to the center of the hall to track to the next set of doors.

  This time, when he stepped through the doorway and to the right, he crouched down and held the light well above his head. Whether Julie was in front of him, or behind him, she'd fire the gun high. If she were in the room with him, he'd throw the light and attack.

  The scene exposed by the brief flash of light seared itself into his brain like the negative exposure on old strip of film. He stopped breathing.

  Julie was nowhere in sight, but Gracie lay handcuffed to a bed in the center of the room. She hadn't flinched from the light, hadn't moved.

  Now that he'd seen her, the stench of burnt flesh assaulted his senses. The machine used to electrocute her sat dead in the corner, killed when the old fuses had been blown by the power surge.

  41

  Gracie knew she wasn't dead. If she were dead, she wouldn't feel like she'd just been run over by a Mack truck. Her chest, her head, everything but her arms screamed in protest.

  Whether it was nerve damage or lack of circulation, her arms were dead weight. Numb. There was no feeling left in them, no strength. None of her commands to pull against the cuffs holding her wrists was obeyed. Not so much as a rattle of the cuff's chains against the bedframe met her feeble attempts.