by Mark Lukens
Shane rushed over to Laura and untied her wrists. But she wasn’t coming with them. Instead, she looked back at Nick who stood in the water.
“Uncle Nick,” Kristen said with tears in her eyes. She took a few steps towards the river of black water. “We need to get out of here.”
The rock walls rumbled around them, the floor shaking, dust raining down on them.
“You feel that, Uncle Nick?” Kristen yelled at him. “This whole place is going to cave in!”
“You don’t understand, Kristen,” Nick said, still smiling. “You don’t understand what I’ve found here. This is the answer … the answer to everything.”
“What is it?” she asked, seemingly curious even with the danger all around them, hypnotized momentarily by her uncle’s enthusiasm.
Nick shoved the gun down into the waistband of his pants. He walked around in a small circle in the water, kicking the dark water around, still smiling like a child on Christmas morning. “This is life!”
“It’s not what you think,” Laura said to Nick. “It’s a trick, just like everything else here is a trick.”
“No, this is real,” Nick snapped at her. He bent over and splashed the water up onto his face. He stood back up and looked at Shane and Kristen. “I was never going to hurt Laura,” he said, suddenly changing the conversation. “I just needed her to find this place for me.”
“What about us?” Shane asked him. “Were you going to hurt us?”
Nick looked insulted by Shane’s question. “Of course not. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I wanted this for everyone … for the world.”
“What about Harold?” Shane asked as the anger boiled inside of him now. “He’s gone. What about Billy? Where’s Billy? What happened to him?”
Nick sighed like he was suddenly annoyed. “I figured there would be some casualties along the way; there always is when something truly great is discovered.” He looked at Laura. “And you helped me. There was no way I could’ve gotten construction equipment to do this. The machines would’ve torn this place up; they would’ve destroyed everything as we looked for it. No, this place needed to be found, the doorways needed to be opened, and you did it.”
“What is it?” Kristen asked again. “An underground river? That’s what you’ve been looking for?”
“It’s more than that,” Nick said. “This is what explorers have searched centuries for. It’s what Ponce De Leon scoured the Florida beaches for.”
No, Shane thought … it couldn’t be …
“The Fountain of Youth,” Nick said, splashing the dark water again, stomping around in it like a kid playing in a rainstorm. “And it’s going to cure me. It’s going to cure everyone.”
Shane thought of Harold’s explanation of the poisonous gasses drifting up from these caverns under the Thornhill Manor. He wondered if Nick was seeing something they weren’t seeing, believing that this muddy underground stream was the famed curing waters of the Fountain of Youth.
“I’ve got cancer,” Nick told them. “Terminal cancer. They gave me nine months to live. A year if I’m lucky. But now … now I’ll live forever.”
Laura watched Nick, but then everything seemed to disappear …
• • • • •
Laura was in the past now—back to when Thaddeus Thornhill first got to this island with his four native guides
The five men had trekked from the cove and into the jungles, climbing the hills, cutting away branches and vines as they ventured deeper into the brush.
And then they saw the clearing … and Thaddeus Thornhill knew it was real; all the torturing of the LaRoux family had paid off. Even after the father swore that he was telling the truth about this island and its secret, even after LaRoux told him where he had hidden the maps, Thaddeus Thornhill continued to torture the remaining members of LaRoux’s family as the man wailed in misery strapped to the wooden chair, watching his family being mutilated. But Thaddeus Thornhill continued cutting and sawing flesh from LaRoux’s family, breaking bones, inflicting unbearable pain … he had to be sure that LaRoux was telling the truth.
And now, as he stared down into the gigantic hole in the ground, at the ancient stone steps leading down into the earth and rock, he knew it was all true.
Laura felt like she was floating just outside of the group of men, and she felt time shift forward slightly. She watched as Thaddeus Thornhill ran his machete blade through one of the guide’s torsos, the man staring back at him in shock. The other three were about to run, but Thaddeus pulled his revolver out and aimed it at them.
“He can live!” Thaddeus promised them. “But you have to take him down to a river of water in the caverns below. Those waters will heal him. I have to see if it will work.”
Thaddeus held his pistol aimed at the men as they carried their injured man down into the ground, carefully working their way down the stone steps with only a kerosene lantern to light their way.
Laura was underground with them as they went deeper down into the earth, down into a maze of ancient tunnels dug into this rock so long ago. Ancient people built a monument to a long forgotten god here … somehow Laura knew that. But even though that god was forgotten, she felt its presence down here as it roamed these dark tunnels for thousands of years, waiting for someone to come along.
Time shifted forward again and they all stood inside the large cavern. Thaddeus Thornhill raced towards the underground river of black water. The river emptied into a large pool that bubbled like a hot tub and the other end disappeared into the darkness. How far did this stream of water go? Miles maybe. An unlimited supply of these healing waters. He touched the dark water, running his hand through it … the water was so cool, so refreshing. It felt alive somehow.
And it was all his now.
The three men led the injured man into the waters, leaving behind a trail of blood on the rock floor as they dragged him. The man was nearly dead, barely clinging to consciousness. But once he was in the water, he woke up with a rush of energy, his eyes wide with shock and fear. The hole in his abdomen and back stopped bleeding immediately. The other three men backed away, letting the man stand on his own in the knee-high water.
“I told you,” Thaddeus told the men.
They smiled at each other, talking in low tones in their own tongue, crossing themselves in prayer at the miracle they had just witnessed.
And then Laura watched Thaddeus Thornhill shoot all four of his men from where she floated. He knew that the god down here craved sacrifices. He shot each man in the head, one by one. He would’ve loved to have drawn their deaths out, made them suffer for days to show his appreciation to this god for the gifts of these waters, but Thaddeus knew that he would bring many more sacrifices to this god in the future. Yes, many more sacrifices. And he would build a church for this god above these caverns and this underground river … he would build a manor.
And over the years Thaddeus Thornhill had the manor built. And over the years he sacrificed many more people. He made them suffer and then he dipped them down into the healing waters to continue their suffering on and on for the amusement of the god. And then Thaddeus buried them in coffins outside the iron fence around the manor. They remained alive inside those boxes of wood, their minds reduced to white blurs of insanity after decades of confinement.
Laura jumped ahead years in time. She saw a group of men from the islands that had come to find the Thornhills and expose their alchemy and crimes. She watched as they dug a grave up. She watched as they cracked the casket open. She saw the writhing thing inside that used to be a person … someone still alive, someone who couldn’t die, someone infected by those dark waters.
But the islanders saw an undead person … they saw a vampire, a zombie. They hammered a stake through the begging creature’s chest, pinning it down to the coffin. Then they nailed the coffin shut again and left the creature in the ground, shoveling the dirt down over it again.
These zombies could never be killed, and the islanders couldn’t
allow them out of the caskets. They could never be brought back to their islands for proper burials. They were the damned now. And this island was damned. This island, Devil’s Island, needed to be avoided at all costs.
• • • • •
Laura’s eyes popped open. She was back in the cavern now with Shane, Kristen, and Nick. “Thaddeus Thornhill gave sacrifices to it … he fed it. And now it’s strong. It’s so strong.”
The earth and rock rumbled again.
“We have to go,” Shane said.
“Uncle Nick,” Kristen cried. “We have to go!”
“I can’t leave now,” Nick told her, his voice echoing through the darkness. “I can’t leave this now that I’ve found it.”
Laura’s eyes widened in horror. She’d seen the truth in her vision, the truth of what the Fountain of Youth really was. “You have to get out of the water!” Laura yelled at Nick.
Shane and Kristen watched the darkness beyond Nick. Shane saw something moving around back there in the distance, something wading through the water and getting closer.
“There’s something in the water with you!” Laura yelled, taking a step towards the stream.
Shane grabbed Laura’s shoulder gently, keeping her back.
Nick stood very still in the stream, the dark water rippling and bubbling around his legs. He held his pistol in one hand, his flashlight in the other. The lantern he and Laura had carried down here was set down on the rock floor near the edge of the stream. It provided a lot of light, but kept everything beyond them in darkness. And the sound of something wading in the water was in that darkness … something coming this way.
“Uncle Nick!” Kristen yelled. She took a few steps closer to the stream but both Laura and Shane grabbed her.
Nick ignored Kristen. He turned around to see what was approaching from the darkness. And a moment later all of them saw two thin figures emerge, walking hand in hand. They were tall, their clothing rags, their hair stringy, hanging down past their shoulders.
“No,” Nick whispered as he shook his head and took a step back in the flowing water.
“It’s the Thornhills,” Laura yelled at Nick. “They’re still alive. You have to get out of the water. Get away from them.”
The Thornhills stepped into the large sphere of light put out by the lanterns. The husband and wife were impossibly old, but still vibrant.
“This can’t be right,” Nick whispered. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be like this!” He sounded like a petulant child who hadn’t gotten his way, a child cheated out of a promise.
A crashing noise from the stone steps whirled Shane, Kristen, and Laura around. More monsters were coming this way—they were rushing down the stone steps right towards them.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Kristen screamed. The horrors that she’d seen glimpses of outside the iron fence were right in front of her now—no barrier between her and those undead things anymore.
Dozens of the rotting figures rushed down the steps towards them. They moved as one, like a giant creature made up of smaller ones, but all with a singular purpose to move forward. Their arms reached out as they ran, hands curled into claws, mouths and eyes wide open, teeth gnashing. They looked like dead people who had impossibly dug their way up from their own graves.
And maybe they had. Maybe they had been unleashed somehow from their burials around the manor.
Shane stood in front of Kristen and Laura, bracing himself … but what was he going to do? The horde of dead creatures was rushing right towards them and they weren’t going to stop.
• • • • •
Nick stared at the Thornhills as they walked through the knee-high dark water towards him. He’d studied their photographs before beginning this expedition. He’d researched their lives. He could still see their features on these two dead things that walked towards him, but these things were monsters now, like some mummies dug up from a tomb. Their skin was leathery and paper-thin, pasted to their skulls, and it was spiderwebbed with millions of fine wrinkles. Their muscles had wasted away, making them look skeletal, but they still moved forward through the dark water with powerful strides and twitchy movements. And Nick swore he saw a glowing energy in their wide, bulging eyes … maybe the being, the god down here, was animating them.
This was all wrong. These waters were supposed to heal, to revitalize, to bring back youth, not keep someone painfully alive long after they were supposed to be dead.
Nick still hadn’t moved. The warm underground water rippled around his legs, the water constantly moving from the bubbling spring behind him. But now the water felt colder. It felt oily and alive somehow, like some kind of liquid creature that was caressing his legs, stroking his flesh, inspecting the prize it now had in its grasp.
The Thornhills were whispering something as they walked forward. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they kept on whispering the same thing … like some kind of chant or ritualistic invocation.
They’re calling it … they’re calling the being … their god …
Nick thought of what Laura had said, what she’d just warned him about. The being … the Thornhills brought it here or they had awakened it. They had fed it and now it was strong. Was the being in the water with them now … was it the black water itself? Was it some alien creature that Nick could never hope to understand?
The whispers from the Thornhills’ crusty and cracked lips continued as they got closer, their approach relentless and methodical. It was like they knew Nick couldn’t run … like he wouldn’t run.
“No,” Nick screamed at the ancient husband and wife. “No, this is all wrong! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!” He raised his gun and aimed it at the mummified couple. He pulled the trigger and shot Mr. Thornhill in the forehead. His head rocked back, the back of it exploding open in a spray of dust—no blood or gore, only a puff of dust.
Nick shot them again and again. He shot Mrs. Thornhill in the face, blowing away a part of her jaw in a spray of dust. He shot them in the arms, the torso, the legs. The bullets rocked their bodies a little, but the bullets didn’t stop them from coming. Nothing could stop them from coming, Nick realized.
When Nick finally turned to run it was too late.
• • • • •
Shane grabbed Kristen and Laura, holding on to them … and they grabbed at him, all of them huddling together for protection. He was sure he would feel the undead slam into them at any second; he would feel their fingers dig into his skin, their jagged yellow teeth bite into his flesh.
But the stampede of mummified dead passed them by.
Shane turned to look. The horde of dead rushed on past them towards the black stream of water where Nick wrestled with the Thornhills. Shane had heard the gunshots from Nick’s gun, but those gunshots hadn’t even slowed the Thornhills down.
Nick was screaming now.
“Uncle Nick!” Kristen wailed and she started for the stream.
“You can’t do anything for him now,” Laura told Kristen as she held her. “He made his choice.”
Laura’s words seemed to freeze Kristen. She watched as the living mummies splashed into the water, practically gliding across the dark surface. The Thornhills saw them coming and they sucked at Nick’s flesh like they were trying to gobble up his blood and flesh to gain strength for the fight that was coming. But it was too late; the dead were all over the Thornhills, ripping away at them, the victims enacting their revenge.
Kristen crumpled in on herself; doubling over as she sobbed … she seemed to be struggling between sadness, horror, and fear. She seemed frozen in indecision, like she didn’t know if she should run towards the water or run away from it in terror.
The quaking walls and floor made up her mind for her. It was the strongest quake yet. Chunks of rocks fell down from the stone ceiling high above them, some of them landing in the river of dark water, some of them landing on the gigantic ball of dead people. Nick couldn’t
even be seen among them anymore, perhaps already torn apart into scraps by now.
Shane, Kristen, and Laura ran for the stone steps. Another strong shockwave nearly knocked them off their feet. Shane slammed into Kristen and Laura as he was thrown off-balance, almost bowling them over. But they all managed to stay on their feet.
“You okay?!” Shane shouted at them.
Neither one answered, both of them trying to stay on their feet and hold on to their flashlights. The beams of light bounced around wildly.
The world down here felt strange to Shane, like everything he’d thought was solid was now untrustworthy and shaky. It seemed to be a metaphor for this manor, for this whole island.
Shane was afraid he was going to die down here, trapped in this tunnel below the earth, trapped in the darkness within the belly of this beast. He and Kristen and Laura were going to be crushed to death down here and no one would ever find them. They would be stuck down here with the undying dead. He had a horrible thought of being pinned under a rock in the darkness, a leg smashed and useless, and then the horde of dead coming back to find him, perhaps picking up the scent of his blood (or fear) and descending on him like a pack of wild wolves to suck him dry of his blood and flesh.
He pushed that image out of his mind as he tried his best to get all the way up the shaking stone steps. Small pebbles and pieces of rocks pelted him as he ran. He skirted out of the way before one large rock almost landed on him. The air was getting thick with dust.
They reached the top of the steps and saw that the doorway was still open even with all of the shaking. Shane had been afraid that the slab of rock that served as the door might have closed and jammed shut from the quake. But it was still open, the rock still wedged at the bottom of it.
The quaking stopped for a moment. Shane crawled over some large boulders that had fallen down from the ceiling, and then he turned to lend a hand to Kristen and Laura, helping them over the rocks.
Thank God the shaking had stopped for a moment, Shane thought. But he knew it was going to begin again in the next few seconds. What if the tunnel collapsed while they were inside?
