Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage

by Vargus, L. T.

  “So does this guy have a name aside from Worm?”

  “I’m sure he did, but I didn’t know it.”

  “It didn’t strike you as odd that he called himself Worm?” Darger knew it was a stupid question, given the circumstances. Everyone here called themselves by a new made-up name. What was one more?

  “Sometimes people have troubled pasts. It’s not in my nature or my interest to pry where they don’t want me to. Especially with non-family members.”

  “What if it meant he was hiding something?” Darger said. “He could have been a criminal with a violent past.”

  Curtis narrowed his eyes.

  “Do you not believe that people can change?”

  “No,” Darger said flatly. “People changing? I’ll believe that one when I see it.”

  “Well, I suppose we have a difference of opinion then.” Curtis rubbed a callused hand over his mouth. “I got the impression he was a bit of a drifter. He seemed intrigued by what we’ve built here. He came to many of our functions. But he always stayed on the fringes. I’m not sure I had any conversations with him directly, now that I think about it.”

  Curtis’ eyes brightened.

  “You know, if you want to know more about Worm, Sandy is the one you should talk to.”

  “Sandy?”

  “She’s our master gardener. She’s the one who keeps all of this going. It was her idea to turn this place into a flower farm.”

  “OK, but before we do that, can you tell us the real names of Trinity and Amaranth? I assume you knew that, at least.”

  “Of course.”

  Curtis opened a drawer and pulled out a Macbook Pro. He propped the screen upright and turned it on.

  “We have a database with member information. Emergency contacts and the like. This should only take a moment.” He clicked a few buttons. “Here we are. Stephen’s contact was an aunt. Rosemary Mayhew.”

  “We’ve been in touch with her already.”

  “OK. Let’s see. Trinity’s birth name was Courtney Maroni. Her contact is a sister. She lives in Idaho, if I recall correctly. They weren’t close. Trinity had a troubled background. Broken family. Abusive stepfather. But here’s her sister’s phone number in any case,” he said, grabbing a small pad of paper and scribbling the digits. “Then we have Amaranth, formerly Bailey Harmon.”

  When he finished copying down Amaranth’s information, he handed Darger the paper.

  “This is a local number,” Darger said, recognizing the area code.

  “Yes, she grew up here in Pennsylvania. One of the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, if I recall correctly.” Curtis tapped the pen against his palm. “Her parents came to one of our festivals, I think.”

  “You don’t discourage them from seeing their family of origin?”

  “Of course not. Not if they’re healthy relationships. But a great many families are not. They’re toxic,” Curtis said. “Society acts like family should always get a pass, but I think that’s a terrible message. That we should accept abuse from the very people who should give us unconditional love? Absurd.”

  Darger’s mind puzzled over the fourth body for a moment — another dead male, definitely not Worm.

  “You would have mentioned if anyone else had gone missing from your… family… recently?” she said. “It just seems odd that three of our four bodies came from here.”

  “Given what you’ve told me? Of course I would have said something if that were the case. But no one has gone ‘missing,’ and I can’t think of anyone I know who matches your John Doe.”

  Darger glanced over at Loshak, who gave a slight nod.

  “Let’s go see what Sandy can tell us about Worm.”

  Chapter 29

  He hurried through the tunnel. Felt his feet tilt that little bit deeper with every step.

  Multiple copies of his shadow fluttered around him, a version of him cast from every single light bulb strung up along the wall. The bulbs buzzed endlessly, faint and high-pitched. The sound reminded him of the deer flies that used to swarm him in the summers as a kid, clusters of them orbiting his head and matting themselves in his hair.

  He was late. Again. Instinctively his hand sought the left hip pocket of his cargo pants, fingers wriggling into the opening, seeking the smooth plastic shell of his phone to check the time.

  No phone there, of course. Cowboy would never allow that.

  Instead, he had the walkie talkie in the opposite pocket. He fingered the button just to hear it crackle and click. He’d never actually used the thing. It was for emergencies only.

  Anyway, if he hurried, maybe no one would know how late he was. So long as it never got back to Cowboy…

  He picked up the pace again. Weaving around the curves. Turned sideways to sidle around some support beams. Instinctively tongued the back of his front teeth, something of a habit.

  The place where the tunnels transitioned to the caves rushed toward him. The dirt walls sheared off abruptly up ahead, that rocky mouth opened wide, ready to devour him once again.

  The sand crunched under the tread of his work boots one second, and then he’d transitioned to the stony floor of the caves, and the sound changed to a dull clap that rang out against the rock walls.

  He always felt a shred of relief upon reaching the natural rock. Never quite trusted the engineering that went into Cowboy’s tunnels the way he did mother nature.

  Still a long way to go, though. He fished his water bottle out of the cargo pocket of his pants. Tipped it to his mouth. Sipped.

  Christ, he hoped no one else was down there yet. The explosives guy, especially. Total prick, that one. Always grinning that sadistic smile. Wheezing out laughs at everyone else’s suffering. The little fucker would positively delight in letting Cowboy know about his tardiness. Tattling. Snitching. Anyway, the prick usually didn’t work the early shift, so maybe there was hope. Hell, he wouldn’t even think about working the early shift himself if the pay wasn’t so damn good.

  Climb down into a hole to rove around under the ground and dig and blast and excavate first thing in the morning, sometimes into the middle of the night? Hell no.

  For $1,500 a week, though? Hell yeah.

  He was a little over halfway toward the $44,000 he needed to buy that used 2005 Dodge Viper from a dealership in Chicago. His dream car dating all the way back to his high school days. Convertible. Copperhead orange. Only 21,000 miles on it, despite its age. Practically mint condition.

  And once he had it? Well, Rhonda would have no choice but to take him back, would she?

  As he rounded another bend in the cave, his vision started to get hazy. Clouds seemed to spread from the glowing light bulbs hung up above him like gauzy halos, but he blinked a few times, took another drink of water, and it went away.

  A little too much Jim Beam last night, methinks. He chuckled softly to himself at the thought, listened to the whispery sound shimmy around as it ricocheted off the walls. Knowing he had to work another shift on a short turnaround, he’d slept in the compound last night — the small cluster of cots Cowboy called “the barracks.” He’d chugged Jim Beam to kill the time, to slow down his higher brain, perhaps to knock himself out more or less. Well, whatever. You work for a crazy weirdo, and you spend eight to fourteen hours a day underground, buddy. Gotta blow off some steam somehow. Hell, taking a few toots of bourbon is better than going on a killing spree, ain’t it? OK then. So maybe drinking a lot of bourbon ain’t so bad, either.

  Another laugh wheezed out of him. Sizzled between his teeth. Puffed out of his nostrils.

  The air grew colder around him as he worked his way deeper into the caves. The chill slowly saturated his arms the way it always did, gripped the meat of his triceps and spread from there.

  His eyes traced along the wire running from light to light along the top edge of the cave as he walked. The bulbs flickered faintly, brightening and darkening subtly like a candle’s flame, something you only noticed if you were paying attention. He wondere
d, not for the first time, how long this project had been in the works before he got here. Months? Years?

  Some people have too much damn money.

  The cave opened up into a vast chamber then, growing wider and taller at the same time like he’d stepped into a living room with a high ceiling. Moss climbed the walls in this portion of the caverns. Glistening green.

  The lights only reached part of the way up, so the ceiling of the chamber was swathed in shadows. Silhouettes of stalactites hung there like giant bats. That used to give him the creeps when he first started, but now the open air of the cavern always felt like a relief. He couldn’t remember when that change had occurred, but he was glad for it.

  Moving to a small rack along the wall, he pulled a hooded sweatshirt off a hook. Slid it over his neck and shoulders. It was cold against his torso, made his skin tighten at its chilly touch, but his body heat went to work on it right away, softening the cold and slowly flipping it to warmth.

  Multiple tunnel mouths gaped on the far wall, giving several choices for leaving this big chamber. He walked that way, chose the second from the left. Ducked into the smaller opening and crouch-walked into the shadows there.

  This one was a bitch.

  As the cave winnowed down to its narrowest stretch, he had to get on hands and knees and then onto his belly. Feeling that tube of rock squeeze around his ribcage always made his skin crawl.

  He got down, felt the cold earth immediately transmit its chill through the fabric of the sweatshirt, through his skin, instantly getting at the meat of him. He wormed forward. Slithered over the icy rock.

  He could feel the walkie talkie in his pocket as he squirmed, his pants pulled taut around it, its hard edges digging into his hip and thigh. He blinked hard as the rock seemed to squeeze around his back, constrict around his shoulders. Flinched at its touch.

  Too damn tight.

  He fixed his gaze on the small circle of light ahead, that narrow opening to freedom, and that made him feel better. For a second the light disappeared as he wriggled down a dip — a moment of darkness that always took his breath away — but then it bobbed back into view as he breasted the next rise.

  When the tunnel opened up again, he got to his hands and knees to crawl again. Soon, he could stand once more.

  He always felt warmer and lighter once he’d exited that tight gap. Like he’d left some kind of baggage behind. Squeezed away some of life’s heaviness to carry on lighter than he’d been before. He’d traversed the darkest part of the passage, and now he moved deeper into the stillness.

  Almost there.

  Today’s dig site had undergone blasts recently, so he’d mostly be clearing away debris into one of the side chambers, a task he often worked solo, especially since so many of the other workers had quit in the past few months. He didn’t mind it.

  The stillness was the one thing he liked about working underground. Things seemed alright when he was down here alone. Nothing in his head. The world above ground stressed him out, made him feel trapped. It was like all the layers of rock and dirt between him and the outside world somehow blocked that feeling out and made the real world meaningless for a bit. He found a peace in it, a sense of intense freedom. Funny how that worked — some sections of the tunnels were about as spacious as a coffin, and yet this was where he felt free.

  Once again his eyes traced along the string of lights hung along the right-hand side of the tunnel. He always thought that it looked like an oversized string of Christmas lights — the spacing and proportions adjusted, of course, as though he were made miniature when he stepped underground and the bulbs were still full size.

  His eyelids fluttered. The lights suddenly seemed to swirl before him, the whole string of them tilting impossibly upward.

  He stopped. Closed his eyes.

  The gritty backbeat of his footsteps cut off beneath him. The silence stretched out.

  The usual stillness of the cave persisted around him, but his world still tilted and lurched inside, even with his eyes closed. Wooziness roiled in his head.

  Instinctively, he flexed his hands. Found them numb, a little weak. He balled his fingers into fists, but he couldn’t hold them that way for long.

  Jesus. Maybe way too much Jim Beam, but…

  He didn’t actually let the thought form all the way, didn’t let the fear that this was something more, something worse, congeal into a concrete fear in his head. Because he’d read a book in school once that talked about how miners used to take canaries down into mines with them in the old days, because sometimes digging underground could unleash pockets of toxic gas. But Cowboy had always assured them that the air down here was clean, that they tested it regularly. So he made sure those ideas stayed abstract, distant.

  He took a step. Felt his legs wobble underneath him, those usually sturdy limbs gone rubbery in this moment.

  Right away he squatted down. Didn’t want to fall in here and brain himself on a jagged piece of stone.

  He chugged water. Put his head between his knees and breathed. Eyes closed. Mind blank. He focused only on the wind filtering in and out of him.

  Probably just dehydrated. He took another big drink of water. Felt the cool of it touch his tongue and tumble down the drain of his neck. That emptied the bottle. He wished he’d grabbed another one from the mini-fridge in the barracks.

  In any case, his mind seemed to be steadying.

  He opened his eyes. Blinked a few times.

  The world remained steady before him. Constant. Reliable. Solid as the stone it was.

  He stood up, and his legs, too, felt stronger. He took two steps forward. Slowly. Carefully. So far so good.

  He stabbed his tongue into the back of his front teeth again. They felt cool to the touch.

  And then the lights snapped off around him.

  The cave plunged into darkness.

  Chapter 30

  They followed Curtis out of the office and out through the flower processing room. Darger had to shield her eyes from the sun when they emerged from the barn.

  Their shoes crunched over the gravel path that led to the entrance of the nearest greenhouse. A fan came on as soon as Curtis opened the door, some automatic mechanism that kept the climate of the greenhouse constant.

  The air was heavy inside and smelled of the forest, leafy and crisp and green.

  Just inside the door, Curtis stopped.

  “Could you wait here for a moment?”

  “Sure,” Darger said.

  She and Loshak watched Curtis zig-zag around rows of tables holding trays of plants in various stages of growth. Some were only seedlings, others were bursting with flowers.

  There were three women at the far end of the greenhouse, transplanting starts into larger pots. They were just as quick and efficient at their work as the people in the flower packing area. This was obviously a task they’d done many times before.

  The one Curtis pulled aside was a squat older woman with leathery brown skin from years spent under the sun. Unlike most of the women in the camp, who seemed to favor hippie-ish garb, this one wore a chambray work shirt and denim cut-offs.

  Curtis leaned close and whispered something in the woman’s ear, then pointed at where Darger and Loshak hovered near the door. The woman nodded.

  “Sandy will be with you in one moment,” Curtis said when he’d returned to them. “I’ve instructed her to answer any questions you may have about Worm.”

  Darger wondered if that meant that she was under specific instructions to not answer questions about anything else.

  “And again, if you could leave out anything regarding the passing of Puck and the others? The loss of three of our members is going to hit the family hard, and I’d like to be the one to deliver the news.”

  Always the need for control, Darger thought. She imagined Curtis hurrying back to his office to start composing whatever sermon or eulogy he’d deliver to his “family.” Then she felt a little guilty. Surely even charismatic cult leaders felt
grief.

  “We’ll try not to mention it,” she said.

  “Thank you.” He reached for something in one of his pockets and handed Darger a business card. “And in case we don’t speak again before you leave, here’s a card with an email and phone number where I can be reached, should you have any further questions.”

  “We appreciate that,” Darger said, making a show of passing the card off to Loshak, who tucked it in his jacket with a smirk only she saw.

  “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, given the news,” Curtis said, shaking each of their hands. “But I do hope we meet again.”

  He said that last part as he stared into Darger’s eyes, and she couldn’t break the eye contact fast enough. She waited until he’d left the greenhouse before she allowed herself to fully relax.

  “This might be our chance to inquire about the soil details,” Loshak said, keeping his voice low. “But we’ll have to tread lightly.”

  Darger nodded but couldn’t say anything because Sandy was approaching.

  She took off a pair of work gloves and shoved them down into one of the back pockets of her shorts.

  “I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’ve been up to my elbows in compost all morning,” she said. “I’m sparing you, trust me.”

  They introduced themselves, and then Darger dove in.

  “Curtis told us you could tell us about Worm.”

  “Ah yes. Worm was my jack of all trades.” Sandy winced. “I expect Curtis probably told you about the drugs? A shame about that. We first hooked up with Worm because we needed someone to operate a backhoe when we were putting in some irrigation lines. Hired him for that job, and it turned out he was a fairly handy guy in a lot of ways.”

  “Did you know his real name?”

  “Nope. Sorry.” Sandy crossed her arms. “He’s kind of a squirrelly guy, actually. Maybe that shoulda been his name instead. Squirrel.”

  She let out a chuckle that sounded forced to Darger’s ears.

  “What about where he was from?”

  “Afraid I don’t know that either,” Sandy said with a shrug. “All told, Worm was only really around for eight months or so. I wish I could tell you more, but Curtis was pretty clear about cutting ties with him after the whole debacle.”