“What’s happened?” Walters asked.
“Ain’t found nobody,” Stevens said, sitting on the edge of the desk, Walters grimaced as usual, but said nothing. He didn’t want to come off as stuffy or unreasonable, but he hated the sight of buttocks on his desktop. “We searched the whole area five times over. Hanson has taken a bunch of ‘em over to the other side of the mountain. The only thing we can do is look over the whole fuckin’ mountain, and personally, I think it’s a waste of time. Everybody thinks so, but nobody’ll admit it—not in front of the parents, at least. If we call off the whole thing the parents will turn the whole town against us, you bet.” He brushed his hair with his fingers and put his cap back on. “I’m going to take over from Hanson in four hours, though by that time it’ll be too damn dark to see anything.”
“We call it off in two hours, unless something comes up. Think you can handle it?”
“Yeah sure, but—”
The Chief put on his jacket and his hat and started for the storeroom in the back. “I’m going to take another look down where Jeff Braddon’s body was found, while I’ve got the chance.”
“Now? But what for? There ain’t nothin’ down there. You said so yourself.”
“Maybe I just didn’t look far enough.”
“You shouldn’t go alone. You need a whole bunch of men to go into all those tunnels you talked about.”
“Maybe, but I haven’t got a whole bunch of men, and I want you to stay here and hold down the fort. If anything else comes up, Cecelia will have someone to send out on it.”
Walters got himself a large lantern, a heavy duty flashlight, several yards of coiled-up hemp rope, a collapsible ladder and a spare backpack full of first-aid and other provisions which was always left ready for immediate use. Walters wondered why he was doing this. It was clear that the key to whatever had killed Braddon would be found on an autopsy table by a crackerjack pathologist, and not in the empty catacombs below the street. Or was it? They hadn’t come up with anything, had they?
He knew why he was doing it. He told himself that he felt helpless as far as those four kids were concerned; he was in no shape to trudge around the woods, and if they hadn’t found anything yet, they probably never would. He told himself that he had liked Jeffrey Braddon, and had liked his sister, that he hated incomplete investigations and unsolved deaths. He told himself that he had intended all along to eventually make an exhaustive search of the cavern for anything that might explain what had happened to the deceased, to the Forester Building, to the storeroom floor of London Hardware. Yes, all these things were true.
He had also told himself that since it was always nighttime underground, he might as well go now, even though daylight was fast fading and the sun was slowly scraping against the tops of the trees.
But the real reason he went, and he knew it and accepted it, was that there was something he simply had to prove to himself. He could think of nothing more frightening than being beneath the earth in an enclosed space, with dusk fast approaching overhead. The whole picture was macabre and eerie, the stuff of childhood nightmares. He was no longer a child, but a grown man gone to fat at a job that had long since been without challenge or opportunity.
Something about the abyss underneath the town compelled him to come, called him, beckoned him to fathom its unholy secrets. To learn once and for all how and why Jeffrey Braddon died.
He would face the unknown. He was going down into that hole to find out what he could. And he was going to do it now.
Because if he didn’t, he might never again work up the nerve.
Chapter Eight
Forty-five minutes after he’d left Anna to go through her brother’s possessions, David arrived in Milbourne proper. The town seemed slightly bigger on foot than it had when viewed through a passing car window. His limp more pronounced than usual, David walked slowly up the main street, looking in shop windows and stopping in front of the movie theater. They weren’t showing anything that particularly appealed to him, so there went one chance to kill a couple of hours.
In these small towns the drugstores also functioned as magazine stands and stationery stores—they had books and periodicals and things not always found in the typical city pharmacy. He saw one about a block away and decided to investigate. Perhaps he could pick up one or two paperbacks, then sit in the restaurant across the street and read for a while.
David, oh, David, he asked himself, what are you doing here in the middle of nowhere with a beautiful, famous—and married—young woman? Answer: I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.
The block he was on seemed familiar. He realized he was near the London Hardware store. He was suddenly anxious to see this mysterious Forester Building that Harry London had referred to earlier; the one under which Jeffrey Braddon’s body had been found. He saw the building looming up beyond the hardware store, looking ancient and out of place among the more modern buildings on the street. This was it, all right. He saw the same in raised bronze letters above the door.
He stood on the sidewalk in front of the building looking up at it, his eyes ascending to the higher stories, wondering if the building were connected to Jeffrey’s horrible death in more than one way. During the time it had taken to walk from Jeffrey’s house, he’d been thinking about many different things: his future with Anna, his leg, the accident, about Janice and her tragic death. Now he found himself caught up in the same spell that had enveloped Police Chief Walters and Harry London, as well as others in the town who were curious about the strange death of one of their own number. What had killed Jeffrey Braddon? He, too, was wondering. He would like to find out, if only to bring Anna peace of mind. Or might he only unleash unwittingly a barrage of even more horrible facts and memories, creating more agony for Anna? He had no answer.
The door to the Forester Building opened abruptly and out walked Harry London and two solemn-looking men—one portly, the other thin and bald—who seemed deep in conversation with each other. Harry nearly collided with David before he saw him. Startled by the presence of someone else in front of him, London did a neat sidestep and continued on his way, until he recognized David and turned back to greet him. “Hello, Mr. . . .” He tapped his head as if to bring David’s name to the surface.
“Hammond,” David told him. There was no need for him to remind London of who he was, for Harry had not forgotten his talk with David and Anna earlier in the day. Of course, David realized that when people first made Anna Braddon’s acquaintance, they probably failed to notice whomever she might be with, let alone recall them afterwards.
London placed his hand on David’s shoulder, as if to assure him that he would not be forgotten, and turned to the two men who had accompanied him out of the building. “Gentlemen. I thank you for coming. I’ll be in touch with you if anything new develops.” After shaking hands with each of them, he dismissed them by turning back to David. The two fellows walked off towards a parking lot just across the street.
“Would you care to have a cup of coffee with me?” Harry asked. Before David could answer, he added: “Is Anna with you?” He looked around.
“No, she’s still at her brother’s place. I think she needed some time to be by herself.”
“Understandable. Well, how about some coffee?”
David let himself be led to the coffeeshop across the street, while Harry made small talk about the place, its zip-zip service and its tasty food. They found an empty table in the back—most of the tables were empty, but the counter was full—and made themselves comfortable. David was wondering what to say next when Harry surprised him.
“Acid,” London stated. Just that one simple word: acid. David didn’t know if the man was referring to the condition of the coffee they served, or was making a reference to a stomach ailment. He cocked his head and said, “Pardon me?”
“Remember I told you and Anna about the building next to my shop, the one I came out of just now?”
“Yes. That’s why I was looking at
it,” David replied. “Hasn’t been used in a long time, has it?”
“Nope. Anyway, you’ll recall what I said about the big hole in the place, the one that runs all the way from the top of the building to the bottom, or vice versa if you prefer.”
“What about it?”
“Those men I was with are experts in building collapse. You know what they say did it?”
The waitress came and they both ordered coffee. “Have a cheese danish too,” Harry urged. “I recommend them highly.” David acquiesced.
“What did it?” David prompted.
“Acid. Corrosive acid. We thought it had been an explosive, or something worse. But some kind of incredibly powerful acid just spilled down from the top floor straight to the bottom, eating away all of the wood. Probably left that awful stench, too. They say that whatever it was probably seeped next door into my place, traveling from the foundation of the Forester Building to mine. It passed harmlessly through the dirt until it got to the wooden floor in my basement. Voila—the floor was weakened.”
“Why didn’t it dissolve entirely?”
“Because the acid was too weak, too diluted, by then. They looked into my storage room earlier and suggested that it was the wood itself that had weakened—not that something had necessarily smashed through it.”
“Acid? Do you think that’s what happened to Jeffrey Braddon’s body?”
“It’s one explanation. But I think the coroner’s initial report would have found something along those lines. Chief Walters has been good about letting me in on what they’ve found. Which, so far, is nothing. If Jeffrey Braddon was—” he stumbled on the word, “attacked— by animals, it wasn’t animals that anybody’s ever seen before.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not only that. Those two fellas weren’t able to explain the oddest thing about that floor in my storage room.”
David felt chills running through his body, felt a strong desire to be safely back in his apartment in Manhattan where there was nothing more threatening than roaches. “What was that?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.
“They never explained why the cracked boards of the floor were pointing upwards.” He leaned in toward David as the waitress approached with their coffee and pastry. “Something tried to get into that storage room. Something from below the cellar.
“Something big.”
Sam Withers and the five townspeople he’d taken with him reached the end of the main mountain trail at just about the same time David and Harry London were drinking coffee in the Main Street Cafe. There was still a way to go, but for all intents and purposes, they were finally off the mountain. So far they had not found a thing.
Sam Withers had stormed along the trail in much the same way that his son’s friend Jack had the day before, leading the “troops” into enemy territory. He was always a few feet ahead of them, which was fine with them, as they were able to whisper among themselves about the damn foolishness of it, able to grab beers and consume them without calling undue attention to themselves. It had been a long day and a pointless one as far as they were concerned. For all they knew, someone might have been trying to get in touch with them even now, to tell them that the kids were safe and sound at home, their mamas too relieved to even scold them for their thoughtless behavior. We’re even bigger fools than they are, thought beefy Chet Bannon, taking another swig of a once-cold, now-warm bottle of piss-poor bottled beer that he’d been carrying in a small plastic cooler for the past few hours. He was looking forward to going home.
“Say, we’re near those old caves now, aren’t we?” some mother-fuckin’ son of an asshole had the misfortune to say. “Maybe we should check them out, too?”
Chet, now well on his way to insobriety, looked, took aim, and hurled the half-empty bottle at the younger man who’d pronounced those irritating syllables. “Shit! Haven’t we spent enough time looking for those brats? Enough is enough!”
Al Barton, the younger man, easily dodged the bottle, although some of the beer spritzed onto his shirt. He advanced on the drunkard with a rage in his eyes that came as much from the thought of a wasted day as it did from the beer in Chet’s bottle.
“Keep quiet,” Herb Lloyd said testily, fearing Chet’s words would carry up the trail to Doug’s father. “It won’t take long to poke into those stupid holes anyway.”
Suddenly Chet wasn’t standing next to Herbert any longer—A1 Barton was! Chet was lying at Al’s feet, his one hand already covering an eye that was red and rapidly swelling. “I don’t need none of your crummy beer on my shirt, you jerk!” Barton bellowed.
Herbert pushed himself between the two men, fearing reprisals. Chet had had the fight taken out of him, which was just as well, as A1 Barton could have easily torn him to pieces. Herb helped Chet to his feet and dusted him off. “Get home and get something on that eye,” Herb instructed.
By this time, the men had completely forgotten about Doug Withers up ahead, and as far as they were concerned, the search was over and done with. None of them particularly cared if any of those good-for-nuthin’ youngsters ever came back home anyway.
They were passing by the caves now, whooping and hollering, singing old campfire songs and guzzling lukewarm beer, convinced that there was nothing whatsoever hiding in the woods, and not caring if there was. It was getting rather dark now and they hastened their steps. Any second they expected to bump into Sam Withers, and the more sober among them hoped he had not been offended.
Sam Withers, meanwhile, was at the entrance to the largest of the caves, desperately calling out the name of his son. Sam looked a great deal like his offspring, only he had a receding hairline, and his forehead was permanently creased with lines of fatigue and tension and disappointment. If there was one word to describe his personality, his essence, his very soul, it was taut. He seemed constantly on the edge of anxious hysteria, his eyes squinting in constant mental anguish, always afraid of something unknown, something intangible, waiting around that bend comprised of family responsibility and job advancement and financial strain. He was not a happy man. Only one thing really gave him joy—the thought that he was building a better life for his son, a boy he firmly believed would do great things in the world and make his very reason for being worthwhile.
He heard the other men of the so-called search party singing and fighting and cursing behind him, and he couldn’t understand how they could be so callous about something—someone—who mattered so much to him. He made up his mind then and there not to have anything to do with any of them ever again.
Then he saw something caught in the glare of his flashlight.
Something appeared to be—bending, if that was the word—over the remains of a human body. He saw other figures lying in there, too, just on the edges of the circle of light, their bloodied and mutilated forms covered by shadows. The lips of the things—if you could say it had lips—were eating something: a piece of meat, a morsel, no longer recognizable as part of a leg or arm. Blood dripped down from the chewing orifice. Sam stepped back, too shocked to scream, and his light shined over the other bodies which had been formerly hidden by the dark. His eyes widened in pain and disbelief, his worst fears realized.
One of them was Douglas.
And when the creature’s companions came for him, Sam did not even try to run or escape. He had no will any longer, no will to live or to survive. He dropped sobbing to his knees, and let them crawl all over him.
It was only when one small part of his mind realized what was happening to him that he at last cried out.
The men in the woods were not without their more decent impulses. When they heard Sam Withers’ ear-shattering, bloodcurdling outburst, they ran pell mell as one to the caves.
None of them ever returned.
Harry and David were driving up Petemont Road to a spot near the base of the mountain’s northeastern side to see a man named Hank Danielson. The man used to be the caretaker of the Forester Building. Harry’s old Chevy bounced
up and down over the rutted dirt lane through the thick forest which hemmed them in on either side, the sky overhead darkening ominously. “There. I think I see the old man’s cabin now.”
Directly after finishing their coffee, Harry had taken David over to the courthouse. “I’m glad that you and Miss Braddon showed up today,” he had said, his face aglow with fortitude and determination. “You’ve galvanized me into action. I’m a great procrastinator, even about important things like this. Guess I figured Jeff was beyond help. But that’s no excuse, is it?”
They had entered the courthouse and walked down a hall to the room where the records were kept. “I would have put off getting men to look at that floor, at the Forester Building, for days. Weeks! God knows when I would have gotten around to this. Chief Walters said he’d take care of it, but he’s got his hands full, I bet; especially with those four missing kids.” He’d explained to David about the disappearance of the youngsters. Harry seemed to share the viewpoint that they’d be coming home out of the hills any hour now. “They’re gonna catch it but good,” he said.
Harry had gone through various files with the aid of a fortyish, mousy-looking brunette who wore a plain print dress that seemed too large for her. The green eye shadow she wore was out of place on her face, but was obviously a small stab at glamour. With her help he soon found what he was looking for: information on the last tenant of the Forester Building, the Barrows Corporation (although said information consisted only of a main corporate address and the president’s name), and the address of the now-retired janitor and caretaker who’d been put on a pension when the town decided to shut the building up for good. This was the man they were going to see.
“Might as well do it now, though I don’t know what Danielson can tell us,” Harry had said as they got into his car. “But you got a couple of hours to kill, and business is slow today. If my staff can’t handle things—” He paused. “Well, they have to learn sometime.”
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