by Ann Charles
I turned slowly, seeing the diamond-shaped ward on the wall that we’d seen in a video Jane had taken with her phone before she died. Was this ward to keep something from entering the hole from above? Or was it meant to stop whatever was down here from getting out?
Chills peppered my arms. Doc, where are you?
“Violet, come on,” Jane called from the dark tunnel across from the ward.
Pulling the steel bar out of my pants, I stepped into the darkness, holding it and the miner’s lamp in front of me. The warm glow spread out along the rock walls and ceiling, which were held up by thick, cobweb-draped timbers. Ahead in the shadows, I could see Jane waving for me to follow.
Grimacing at the stench, which was twice as strong down here in the dark, I made my way deeper into the tunnel. After about twenty feet down a slight slope, the walls opened wider and the ceiling no longer felt like it was pressing down on my head.
I lifted the miner’s lamp toward the ceiling, surprised to see arched stone structures every five feet or so instead of timbers. They weren’t normal-looking arches, like what the Romans were known for in their heyday. The sides were straighter, coming together with a wedge-shaped keystone set in the top center.
Another thirty or so feet and a bend in the tunnel later, I paused at a fork in the road. The vaulted arches continued to the left, leading into the darkness. On my right, the trail sloped downward at a steeper angle, the tunnel lined by timbers again that were holding up walls and a ceiling of stone.
Which way had Jane gone? I took a few steps down along the right fork, shining the lamp into the inky blackness.
“Violet,” Jane called from the other tunnel, the one with the strange arches. “This way.”
Happy not to be traveling deeper into the earth, I took the left fork, picking up speed to catch her. After rounding another bend, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel—literally. It was bright enough to make me squint, coming through an oval-shaped opening.
I started to jog, my eyes hungry for more light, my heart excited to return to civilization. I saw a shadow pass on the other side of the opening. That must have been Jane.
As I drew closer to the light, I kept expecting the opening to shut in my face, leaving me alone in the darkness. I picked up my pace, sprinting by the end, skidding to a stop at a manhole-sized opening at the end of the tunnel. I shined the light around in what looked like a partially walled-in doorway, the mortar around the stacked stones crumbling with age. Several of the stones lay on the floor at my feet, pulled down by gravity or knocked inward by someone or something on the other side.
I eased toward the hole, listening for any sounds before sticking my head out through the opening.
I was in another basement, only this one was in better shape than Calamity Jane’s. The loosely mortared flat stone walls were light gray, some spots partially covered in a layer of plaster or something like it. White pipes with stenciled abbreviations painted on them were secured to the walls, while smaller silver pipes ran the length of the ceiling. Here, the floor was cement rather than cobblestone.
Careful not to light myself on fire with the carbide lamp, I eased out through the hole in the wall. I managed to scratch my elbow on some rough mortar on the way through, the sting from the injury confirming that this wasn’t a normal nightmare. On this side, the hole was about chest high, but a set of old crates were stacked in front of it, acting as makeshift steps.
I climbed down to the floor, the crates creaking under my weight. When my feet touched the cement, I turned and scanned the area. I was in a small alcove amid several sagging computer boxes and a couple of old five-paneled wooden doors lying on their sides. The place smelled like stale cardboard and damp cement. I sniffed again, picking up a whiff of rot—not cardboard, though. This was the sort of odor that hovered around organic decay.
A fluorescent light hung over the main walkway, which was covered with wide wooden panels on top of the cement. I eased out of the alcove into the light, leaving my carbide lamp still burning for now, and looked down the walkway, first to my left and then to my right. Gray doors were at the end in either direction. Neither door gave any indication as to what was behind it, but the one to my left was halfway open. The light was off in the room beyond it, nothing visible in the deep shadows.
“Over here,” Jane called from the other side of the open door.
I started in that direction, stopping at a junction where another hallway branched off to my right. This hallway was wider and filled with sagging paper boxes, random-sized boards, and what looked like a chrome dumbwaiter door on the wall. The fluorescent lights flickered in the side hallway, making my upper lip sweat. Those suckers had better not go out. I’d had enough of the dark for now.
At the other end of this wider hallway, about twenty-five feet away, was a brown door with the word “Stairway” posted on it. More boxes were stacked two to three high on each side of the door—file boxes, from the looks of them.
A stairway to what? What was I under? Another Deadwood building? Or was I somewhere else now?
I took a step toward the brown door, feeling pulled in that direction by some invisible towline.
“Violet,” Jane called out from the shadows beyond the partially opened gray door. “You’re almost there.”
Almost where?
Something clanged in the darkness beyond the open gray door.
My hackles rose, instinct urging me to take a step back and return to the hole in the wall I’d climbed out of moments ago.
Behind me, I heard hinges creak. I turned partway around, keeping Jane’s door in my peripheral vision. The other gray door was now open a crack. A shadow moved in the darkness behind it.
Shit. Now here I was playing monkey in the middle.
“Jane,” I called, gripping the steel bar in my hand tighter as I glanced back and forth between the two gray doors.
An odd clacking noise came from the other side of the door where Jane was supposed to be, sounding like bone on bone, or teeth clattering, or …
Wait! I knew that sound. The image of my great-grandmother’s craggy face flashed in my mind. She was standing in the attic, holding her bag of rune stones in her gnarled hands, staring out at me from the shadows through her narrowed eyes.
“Come here, child,” Jane said, pulling me back to the present. Only Jane’s voice was rustier now, sounding just like my great-grandmother’s. “I smell death on you.”
Goose bumps raced up my arms and down my back. My breath trainwrecked in my throat behind my tongue, which was curled back in fear, blocking the way.
The gray door opposite Jane’s hiding place creaked, opening wider. I looked back at it. The shadow I’d seen before had taken on a more solid form. I squinted, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
Whatever was in there stood just out of sight. It was big, almost as tall as the doorframe. As I squinted into the darkness, it shifted closer. A pair of eyes reflected the fluorescent lights. They looked like shiny silver coins, large and round. A snuffling-snorting sound came from that direction, followed by the stench of rancid meat.
“What are you?” I whispered, trying to make sense of what I could see.
“Come closer and I’ll show you, Scharfrichter,” it answered in a wet, sludgy voice. A wheezy laugh came through the crack, the hitching sound making my ears ache.
I eased back toward the hole in the stone wall. Maybe it was time to head back to the Hellhole. Maybe that ward on the wall at the base of it was there to keep whatever was hiding in that dark room from making its way to the surface. Maybe this creepy thing was why Jane was keeping the closet sealed shut.
But then why did she lead me down here?
A scuttling sound came through the hole in the wall, reminding me of a dog’s claws on rock—a lot of claws. I looked at the hole, nearly crying out at the sight of a thick arm with long, red webbed fingers ending with sharp talons reaching out through it. It swiped at the air between us, grunting with each sw
ing.
What the fuck was that? Had it been in there with me, hiding in the dark? Did it come from the other fork in the tunnel? The one leading down deeper?
A high-pitched, hissing sound came from the room that Jane had been luring me toward, the one where she was still hiding with her “secret.”
Realization hit me like a Mack truck. That wasn’t Jane. There was no secret to show me. I’d been duped from the start. We all had. That was why Cooper had said Jane’s image kept shifting between the way she’d looked in her memorial ceremony picture and the much more gruesome, already dead vision he was used to seeing. It wasn’t Jane’s ghost back in Calamity Jane’s office. Nor were the closet and trapdoor opened by Jane.
What we had here was an imposter, and I’d been led right into its trap.
I raised the steel rod. “Show yourself,” I commanded to the imposter, not expecting any results. I had a feeling this was really a game of tag, only if I were caught, I wouldn’t get to be “it”—just dead.
To my surprise, Jane strolled out from the shadows into the light. Her smile was wide. Too wide. Frighteningly wide. Her eyes were dark, bottomless, like black holes staring back at me.
“Come closer, Violet,” she said in my great-grandmother’s voice. “I need to show you my secret.”
“You’re not Jane,” I said, sounding far more calm than I was on the inside. “Show me your true self. Unless you’re too afraid to let me see the real you?”
“Afraid?” Not-Jane laughed, but her voice cracked in the middle of it, growing rusty. Then her short blond hair started to turn black and wispy on the ends. The edges of her face softened and darkened, along with her shoulders and arms. Her body shifted, floating, turning smoky gray and then black.
Well, hell. I’d been thoroughly duped.
The lidérc floated in front of the door. Sparks of fire dripped from it onto the wooden walkway.
Get out! A voice shouted next to my right ear, making me flinch. It had sounded like Doc but scratchy and far off, as if from an AM radio station somewhere out in west Texas.
Something creaked behind me. I looked around.
The other gray door now stood wide open. The hulking creature stepped toward me, filling most of the doorway. Its eyes glowed even brighter. Now I could see more of it—maybe too much. Like the imposter’s version of Jane, it wore a fiendish grin too big for its face, filling up all of the real estate below those shining eyes. Its teeth were several inches long and sharp, reminding me of pikes in medieval times minus the heads mounted on them.
A stone clattered to the floor next to me. A quick check on the hole in the wall made me grip the steel rod harder. The red-armed, long-clawed swiper had knocked a chunk of wall loose in its effort to reach me, widening the hole.
Oh boy, I was really fucked now.
Get out, Killer! Doc yelled in my head. This time there was no doubt it was his voice. He must have found me.
“How?” I whispered, inching back toward the lidérc with the bar held out. Of the enemies surrounding me, at least I knew how that one fought in the ring and had a slim chance of not ending up ripped to pieces or chewed up by those spiky teeth.
“That bar will do you no good, Scharfrichter,” the lidérc said, back to using Jane’s voice now. “You are no match for me. I’ve played with your kind before.” It shifted before me, returning to Jane’s image and that big, freaky-ass smile. “And they are dead.”
A movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. The brown “Stairway” door stood wide open.
Now! Doc’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Who’s that?” Jane asked, the creepy smile slipping. She sniffed the air several times. “It appears you brought a mate along to play, Scharfrichter.”
I didn’t dally to share locker room tales about Doc. While the imposter was distracted, I darted in the direction of the stairwell door as fast as my legs would carry me, passing by another hallway leading off to my left with a sign that said something about a boiler room near the end. As I raced through the open stairwell doorway, the steel bar hit the door jamb and broke free of my sweaty grip. It clanged onto the cement floor behind me out in the hall. I turned to go back for it, but Jane-the-lidérc was racing toward me, its feet clomping on the wooden walkway floor, its manic grin leading the way. Sparks flew behind it as it ran.
I glanced down at the carbide lamp still in my hand and then back up at the lidérc. Without thinking, I threw the lamp at the devil, yelling, “Burn, you bitch!”
The lamp sailed toward Jane’s imposter, burning brighter and growing larger as it flew. By the time it reached the devil, the fire was the size of a beach ball. It hit Jane in the chest and lit her up in bright blue flames.
A loud screech filled the basement, but she kept coming. I covered my ears and stumbled backward. A whoosh of air blew across my face as the stairwell door slammed closed, shutting the devil on the other side. Something heavy thumped against the door, making it shudder, but it held.
Then the lights went out, leaving me in a world of silent blackness.
Holy freaking hell! Had I run right into the lidérc’s trap?
I felt in front of me, touching nothing but air, and cursed.
“Open your eyes, Boots,” Doc said quietly. His voice was velvet in my ears, smoothing the edge off of my panic.
“They are open.” I reached out to the side.
A hand caught my arm in the darkness, then another, holding me when I tried to tug free. Warm hands, the touch soothing. They were too small to be Doc’s hands, but the grip was firm as it pulled me forward.
“Focus, Violet,” Doc ordered. “Focus and open up.”
I concentrated, returning to my old standby—a single candle flame. After taking several calming breaths and realizing that my eyes had been closed, I opened them.
I was back in Jerry’s office, standing in the center of the circle next to the chair I’d been in at the start. Only now the chair lay on its side on the floor.
Natalie was holding onto my arm, her brow lined.
At the sight of her brown eyes, and the light reflecting in them, I started to tremble. “Nat? Is it really you?” After being fooled about Jane by the lidérc, I was half afraid this might be part of its game still.
“Alive and kicking, Outlaw Curly Bill,” she said with a grin, using one of my brother’s nicknames from when we were kids. “Welcome back, babe.” She pulled me in for a hug, feeling and smelling like Natalie.
I clung to her for a moment, staring over her shoulder at Doc, who was looking up at me from his spot next to the closed closet door. His face looked pale in the bright overhead lighting, his eyes haunted. His chest was moving up and down rapidly, like he’d just finished running a mile.
Natalie patted my back, and then she coughed, turning her head away from me. “Whew, girl! You stink like bad milk. What sort of hell did you end up in this time?”
Chapter Fourteen
“That damned devil butted horns with the wrong Scharfrichter this time,” I said a little over an hour later while sitting on the counter next to the sink in Aunt Zoe’s safe and warm yellow kitchen.
A long hot shower and several pieces of reheated pizza had been good post-traumatic stress therapy, but the glass of lemonade spiked with a double shot of tequila in my hand was a surefire remedy for quelling any remaining near-death jitters. I took a sip of the sweet yet sharp happy juice, glancing up at the ceiling. Addy and Kelly were upstairs playing in Addy’s room while Layne was busy in the living room watching a documentary on mythological monsters throughout history.
Oh, the irony. If Layne hung out with me, I could introduce him to some nasty creatures face to face. Maybe next time I should call a time-out in the midst of running for my life and see if I could get an autograph for my kid.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aunt Zoe asked me. She was sitting at the table next to Natalie. Her face reminded me of the weather—a mix of dark, angry clouds with more trouble
on the way in the forecast.
Natalie sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. “It means we’re going to kick some lidérc ass real soon, right, Madam Executioner? Hey, how about we throw Rex in the ring with you two while we’re at it? You can use him as a human shield during the brawl. Kill two leeches with one mace.”
“Take the ‘we’ out of that whole notion, Beals,” Cooper said from the other side of the sink where he was drying the dishes that Doc was washing.
“You’re not the boss of me, law dog,” she shot back, softening her words with a wink when he frowned at her.
“That damned mule-headed woman will be the death of me,” Cooper grumbled to Doc, drying the plate with enough intensity to rub the finishing glaze off the dish.
Natalie scoffed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. ‘Stubborn’ is my middle name. Just ask Vi.”
“I thought your middle name was ‘Hell-raiser,’ ” I said, lifting my glass to her and her spunk in a mock toast.
Doc turned my way after he pulled the stopper from the sink drain and grabbed a towel to dry his hands. His eyes had the same haunted look as when I’d returned from my game of tag with the lidérc and its creepy pals.
I raised my glass to him, too—my hero. If it hadn’t been for his directives and the stairway door he’d opened to get me the hell out of that trap, I might not be sitting here.
Doc took the glass from me and downed a big mouthful before handing it back. “That was too close, Killer.”
He’d said the same thing back in Jerry’s office after hugging me so tightly that I could hardly breathe.
“I agree, but now we know what we’re dealing with when it comes to the lidérc.” I set the glass down on the counter and returned to Aunt Zoe. “To answer your question, I mean the Hungarian bastard won’t fool me again like that.”
