by catt dahman
“Sheriff McLendon, the room is empty. Well, I mean no one is alive in there.” The man reporting, was pale and shaky.
Virgil ran to the crack in the wall, shoved through and looked at the entrance to the room. All the rocks were removed so a large opening yawned before him. He felt sick. All of the rocks were stacked outside the hole; the creatures had dug through and gotten into the room.
Inside, Anita was in pieces and most was missing. Her splinted leg, IV bag, and a few bandages were all that remained. A fireman leaned over and vomited.
Fin and Ben Johansson popped into the room from the tunnel and stream and began cursing. They saw the remains scattered all over the room.
A grey skinned kid lay dead, stabbed several times. He looked to be in his mid-teens but it was hard to tell. The boy’s skin was crumbly and grey tinted, his bones looked brittle and bowed, he had sores, cuts, and scrapes over his body, and his head looked mal-formed. Instead of ears, there were just holes and little bits of flesh; his teeth were bad behind deformed, flappy lips.
In the corner, Howards clothing was completely blood soaked and tossed into a heap. It had been torn off his body and only Howard’s shoes and socks looked to be missing. His hand lay in the center where it had been torn or hacked away. From the amount of blood, it was clear that he was also dead, and that he had been taken back to the Grey’s camp. The Greys took people back for food; Virgil shuddered.
Virgil scanned the cave again. Had the rest of the group run through the other tunnel where the water came from? It was all Virgil could think of, that the rest ran after the battle. If they went out the entrance, there would be blood there, but there was none, only a few tracks towards the stream of water. He motioned to Fin Carter.
Fin scooted through the other way and popped back in less than a minute. “It’s easy. There is a room and tunnel not two feet over. It’s a duck you make, and then take a few steps, and then there is an open room. The floor is soaked with blood, so someone is hurt very badly. We need to go find them. They need help.”
Virgil asked a few of the firemen to go back to report the situation, and he led the rest back into the cold water, pushed against it, and popped into the other room. There was a lot of blood. Virgil examined the blood splashes and tracks and knew someone wearing boots was bleeding heavily from severe cuts. A few others might be injured as well because there were random droplets that had come off someone trying to hurry along. He walked slowly, watching the ground as the rest looked ahead.
As they walked, Virgil saw something. Vigil ran to a body, whitish grey in color, naked, emaciated, and dirty. The woman’s hair was long, matted, and filthy; her body odor made Virgil’s eyes water. Several stab wounds to her chest had killed her, but her legs and arms were removed, butchered. Her clan, or the other clan had removed the best meat, leaving the meat that was stabbed by the newcomers. Maybe they had some rules or beliefs, after all.
Next to her, Connors’ shirt and pants were in a red-soaked pile. He was killed by the clan properly and could be consumed entirely. Virgil hoped that Connors was dead before they took him away.
Sadly, Virgil half-turned, “I am pretty sure that Connors was killed here; he was hurt anyway, bleeding badly, and I think they killed him and took his body. Someone took this woman out as well, so they are fighting back,” Virgil said. He picked up the woman’s spear and was prepared to use it. It was primitive, but better than the spear he used before, that they had made.
The others muttered about losing Connors.
“Where are they headed?”
Virgil shrugged, “I’m not sure.” He followed the few blood drops he could find. “Someone else is hurt, but not badly.”
Around a corner, Virgil saw movement.
“Be ready!”
“Virgil….” Tina Rant stood up from behind some rocks in a side, small, open area. The remaining members of the group hid there, waiting for someone to come for them.
Virgil hardly saw Tina because from one side, Greys came at them, and from another side, Whites poured from a crevasse. This was the final battle and the insanity had to be stopped. What had gone on for almost a hundred years had to be finished and the evil had to be stopped. In a fraction of a second, Virgil cursed Edith and John Kingsborough, and Charles Fontaine Moreau for sending countless people down here for no other reason but to get rid of them.
Workmen, children, wives, friends: no one had been safe from being dropped into the hellish basement, and it never stopped as more victims fell in from the woods, were dropped in from the house, or however they came to be trapped down below. Fury hit Virgil with all its force and he faced the creatures, the beings who were once intelligent, normal people but were now filthy, cruel animals. He felt no pity, although it would have been alright to feel some. He felt only anger.
Axes slammed down on limbs and spears stabbed back and forth. One side yelled orders and roared; the other side screeched, muttered clicking noises and howling strange guttural words as they fought. Tina and Ed joined the fight. George took a hard blow to his head.
Virgil straddled a creature that tried to dig broken fingernails into his neck. Virgil stabbed with his knife until he hit a bone, jarring his hand so badly that he lost his grip. The knife flew away. Without hesitating, Virgil grabbed a rock the size of a grapefruit and, using both hands, pounded at the man’s head.
Later, the medical examiner would find this body interesting because it had a shoulder full of old buckshot. Ten years before, this person, when he was still a person and not a nauseating creature, had fought over a shotgun. A second man, ten years before, managed to tilt the gun towards his attacker and would-be murderer, and shot him. Unfortunately, the second man, who just wanted to fight back and survive being kidnapped, lost his footing and he and his friend, the third man, fell into a hole that sent them sliding and falling into a deep, old silver mine.
That was Henry Davis, who was shot, Danny Thomas, and the third man was Bobby Dowd.
The man who was shot, the one whom the medical examiner would find fascinating, fell, covered with buckshot, bleeding, and flopped the wrong way. He slid into the hole as well. Despite the conditions below, the first man, the evil man, would survive and learn to hunt underground. He would help lead a pack of insane, gibbering creatures that ate bugs lizards, frogs, and injured people.
This was the man that Virgil finished off, beating the man’s skull to mush. The man was Henry Davis. His victims were dead, luckily for him, because otherwise they would have ripped him to pieces.
Of the other two, Bobby Dowd didn’t survive the slide and fall into the basement; he was dead and became food, the first that Henry would partake of, and the beginning of his leap into pure, endless insanity. Danny Thomas survived and was mostly unharmed; despite what Henry did to him and to his best friend, Bobby, Danny Thomas was a good kid and raised to be forgiving.
He helped bandage Henry after removing as much buck shot as possible. His mind stayed solid longer than Henry’s did. He refused the meat of his friend’s body even though he grew very hungry. Slowly, the conditions they lived in and the wait for rescue began to ruin Danny’s mind. Constant fear, hunger, and failing hope nagged at him constantly. Slowly, Danny forgot his life before; his mind erased it in an effort to keep Danny sane.
The pack didn’t speak, so Danny and Henry stopped speaking. They ate meat, and the men ate meat to avoid starving. The pack hunted. They all hunted. Time passed. When Danny saw his father, the sheriff, he felt a faint itch in his head, but that was all; he didn’t remember the man before him and only saw food.
Virgil didn’t know that and he didn’t care. He finished his job and turned to help Fin finish off the Agent’s second kill, a woman that screeched as the light stung her eyes. She barred broken, blackened teeth at the men. Although her skin and face looked old and wrinkled, she was of child-bearing age because she was big with pregnancy. Virgil and Fin backed away for a second, repulsed by her greasy flesh, but a fireman slammed hi
s axe down, almost cutting her head off.
Virgil refused to turn around when he heard a faint mewling; the sound cut off as the fireman swung again.
That quickly, the fight was over. George was injured with his broken finger and a long gash along his arm and a bump on his head. Tina was fine except for bloody hands that she got tending to the injured and when she and Ed grabbed one of the Whites and stabbed it. Her face was blood-splattered and while fighting, she had made horrible noises, primal sounds.
If someone had filmed the battle and then analyzed the footage, the person would have wondered why in the space of a few hours, trained law enforcement began to turn feral with vehemence and panic. The watcher would wonder at the ferocity of the battle and how a few hours could change anyone trapped underground with cannibals. Nothing brought on such terror as cannibalistic adversaries.
Ed shoved a wad of cloth back to his shoulder where he had been speared. The wound was already contaminated, but what mattered to Ed was that it bled a lot and hurt like hell. Tina helped keep pressure on the wound.
The firefights were unscathed and Johansson grinned manically.
“Where is Doctor Everett?”
Tina pointed.
The doctor was huddled behind the rocks, shaking uncontrollably. He was uninjured, but was in shock. His reaction was also expected under the circumstances. With help, he and George bother were able to walk slowly back to where rescuers waited; Doctor Everett, Agent Ed Ripley, and George were quickly taken away to the hospital but managed to speak to the attendants and their friends.
“How many more are down here?” Smithers asked Virgil. The people guarding the basement had shot and killed two white skinned creatures but so many fired guns that it was impossible to know who fired the killing shot. Those bodies had been removed before the rescue team got back with the rest of the survivors.
“Not many. I’m guessing only, but you’ll find a half dozen adults and about the same for children or …newborns. They’ll have two nests down there. One will be very crude and those are Whites. The other will be a little less crude and those are Grey’s. Are you going in?”
“We are. We’ve got it now.”
“It’s confusing down there,” Virgil said.
Fin shrugged, “Nothing Johansson and I can’t figure out by now. Go check on your wife.”
“Is she okay?”
Josie nodded, “Lana is with her and Gina and we need to take Tina now. Baths, food, sleep, and someone to watch over them is all they need. If you take Vivian, Lana can sit with Gina, and I can get Deputy Rant comfortable.”
Tina, tough and able to handle anything, had bright eyes that glittered with shock and misery. She was at her limits, but had Virgil asked her to help him in some way, she would have dug in deep and stood next to him in battle or search.
“Fairalee, can you go care for Viv? I still need to debrief with Agent Lord. Tell her I’m fine and unharmed.”
“She’ll be fine,” Fairalee helped Josie with Tina and they left the basement to go to their warm, clean rooms.
Upstairs, the cooks were busy making comfort food for the victims and those helping with the search: protein rich oxtail soup, a stew of pork roast with carrots and potatoes, cream of tomato soup, vegetable and beef-barley stew, and potato soup. Big serving bowls of the soups and stews lined tables upstairs while more cooked on stoves. Cooks set out smaller bowls, napkins, spoons, glasses, and carafe’s of blackberry, lemon, and peach iced tea.
Some of the staff took trays of food and drink upstairs via the elevator, to those who were playing nurse and those who were scratched and tired, but unhurt.
Virgil sat down at a table with Agent Lord and Acting-Sheriff Smithers and filled them in as he ate clam chowder, drank a glass of white wine. And gulped peach iced tea. He finished covering his chowder with black pepper and looked at the tiny bits of potatoes and the big, fat clams that swam with bits of green onion, marveling at rich, delicious food, and allowing pity for those who had lived below.
“We tried to capture the tow that came at us, but Virg, you saw them. They didn’t react to verbal commands or act as if they saw us as a threat. They came at us, drooling. Dear God, I’ve never seen such a thing,” Agent Lord drank his wine and asked for a refill.
“That’s why everyone is coming out of there shell-shocked. It’ll hit me later, I figure,” Virgil said. He explained how each person was lost.
“I think the biggest work is still ahead of us.”
“I wonder if it will ever be finished,” Virgil said quietly, “This place is cursed.”
Chapter Fourteen :
Over the next week, Virgil and his people helped out, but the FBI took over and conducted most of the work, allowing locals to help a little. The subbasement was mapped out and cleaned out of monsters. Most fought back and were killed, but a few were captured and taken away; even the FBI was unsure what to do with some of the creatures they brought out.
With help from the nearest college’s engineering students, all of the traps, thirty-three in total, were dismantled after they were investigated and notes were made. Corresponding rooms had to be made safe via removing the triggers that caused deadly reactions. The safe and fun parts of the house were untouched.
In time, it would all be discovered and the mysteries would be solved, but in the week Virgil and his team remained, every trap was fascinating to discover.
The hole in the woods was quickly located and sealed for all time with debris and concrete. No one else would fall in and become a victim.
Historians arrived after Virgil left, but they spent months going over everything found in the subbasement and figuring out what happened to each person down below. At least three of the Kingsborough children lived for some time after being sent down to the hellish area, and there were signs Constance Moreau lived a few years as well. Bones were brought up, to the light, studied, cataloged, and while some went to the college for anthropological studies, most of the ones identified went into graves. They were finally at rest.
Some of the people studying the situation claimed the Kingsboroughs and Henry Fontaine Moreau sent people down below as a tribute or sacrifice to dark gods; some claimed the three people were psychopathic murderers; some thought it was pure accident that the victims lived, bred, and survived below; another group declared it was all something supernatural.
George and Gina perked up the first week and in time, they, Lana, and Rick stayed and helped Josie run the house as experts filled it as they worked. When they had time, they planned new tours and decided how they would run future business. Josie thought to set up models representing the creatures down below, and Gina said that was fine, but that she would never conduct that particular tour. George declined as well. In time, Josie hired more guides, and the new people handled the tours of the subbasement, the most popular tours they had.
The press covered the horrific events all over the world. The details of Sheriff Thomas’ death and the way he found Danny were altered a little to protect the memory of the sheriff; his widow moved away to live with her sister within a month. The deputies, especially Connors, were painted more as heroes to the press and it gave their families a little peace.
Howard’s and Anita’s grown children came to the house and sat with Agent Lord and Virgil, listened to the details of their parents’ deaths, and thanked the lawmen for the closure, and left, planning funerals.
Lisa’s mother and stepfather broke down as Virgil and Vivian spoke to them at their home, giving them the facts of the case. Their only consolation was that Virgil promised that the kids who, through their prank, caused Lisa’s death, wouldn’t get away with everything. Smithers brought in every one of the teens, their parents, and in some cases, their lawyers. They sat and were simply asked to hear the entire story from Virgil, Vivian, and Tina.
Trish, Tammy, and Steve cried openly as they listened and swore they would apologize, in person to Lisa’s parents. They kept their word. Years later, Tammy too
k her own life with a razorblade and Steve and Trish died after using bad heroin, not pure, but cut with cleaning fluid.
Al, Judy, and Dustin listened with pale but steely faces and unflinching eyes. When it was over, Virgil told them they could play tough, but that everyone knew their part in Lisa’s death. A town reporter smiled hatefully at the trio.
Tim ran out of the meeting half-way through and it was said he and his parents never spoke to the rest of their family and Dustin again.
Judy was not chosen as prom queen. Her scholarships to several prestigious colleges were revoked. When the other students harassed her and it became too much, Judy dropped out of high school. She worked at the Five and Dime when her parents told her to shape up or get out.
Al and his parents moved to California and no one ever spoke of them.
Dustin was sent to prison after his constant drunkenness led him to commit vehicular manslaughter when he drove into a group of little ghosts and goblins who were trick or treating.
On their last day at the Kingsborough House, Terry Cromer came over to see Virgil, Fin, and Vivian. The four took a pitcher of iced lemonade and glasses, and went out into one of the gardens to sit at a table. A tall oak provided shade while peppermint fought with a slender, dropping Eucalyptus tree to scent the garden.
Vivian breathed deeply, “I appreciate the good scents so much more now.”
“I know. Funny how the simple things mean more now. I wanted to thank you all for believing in my innocence and solving the case so we could find Shari,” Terry said.
“You’re welcome. What are your plans?”
Terry hesitated only a second, “It’s time to go home. Bad memories here for sure, so it’s time. I have healing to do, and so does my family, and Shari’s family as well. A lot of healing. Thanks for making sure the press didn’t get all the details, too. That would have…been…I can’t imagine….”
“It’s okay. The public doesn’t need to always need to know all the details. We gave them enough fodder for their readers. It’s time to understand this place and clean it up. Our work is done.”
