Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2)

by Miller, Jason Jack

  Together we looked up at a tiny circle of sky. Gray, pre-sunrise clouds moved slowly above the trees. I said, “A ventilation bore.”

  “A way out?” she asked.

  “No.” I hated to say it. “But we’re close. Listen.”

  On the ground above I heard something. Voices. “Maybe that’s what we thought we heard this morning.”

  “So they’re looking for us?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out as we go.” The bore hole was really just rain while you’re adrift at sea. A sip of fresh water in an ocean of salt.

  Step step step step step beam.

  Step step step step step beam.

  Step step step step step beam.

  That six inches of sky brought us just enough hope to kill our conversation. The idea that the Lewises were still out there made my head hurt.

  After another forty minutes or so the rhythm finally broke. I hit my toe. White light flashed past my eyes. I let go of Alex’s hand and grabbed my foot. “Found the main fucking shaft.”

  “You okay? How do you know?”

  I found her hand and guided it down to the ground, helping her to see the rails and ties, the spikes that held it together. She helped me up and we changed course for the first time in a day. Suddenly everything changed. A stiff breeze at our backs practically led us to the entrance. The rails were like a red carpet.

  “We’re not out yet,” I said. “We still may have a ways to go, or another cave-in.”

  “I know, Henry. But right now we have more hope than we’ve had in days. So let’s not be a party pooper, okay?”

  “You’d better be smiling when you say that.”

  The hill continued to grow as we walked, never steeper than fifteen degrees, but steep enough to make walking quickly difficult. My legs quivered like sewing machines needles, my chest groaned like the overburdened slats of a mine car.

  Then up ahead we saw light. A beacon in this black sea. At once everything changed. Somehow we picked up our pace. We tried jogging, a shuffle through the darkness that should’ve been a run. But we didn’t dare pick our feet off the ground.

  A shaft of light stood before us like a Christmas tree. Narrow at the top, wide at the bottom, like a bore hole that had crumbled. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. Wind blew through the trees above. Rain fell through the hole.

  Alex stepped into the beam and bathed in it. She held her palms up and let those platinum rays wash away the coal dust that coated her skin, matted her hair, turned her white dress black as night. Her legs and boots were covered, her hands and the sleeves of her jacket drenched in black. She squinted into the gray sky. She shivered in the rain.

  “You’re a ghost,” I said with a laugh.

  “Can we climb out?” She marveled at the hole, and threw her head back to let her eyes bathe in the radiance while they blinked away water. Blue sapphires in a matrix of stone.

  “The ceiling’s too high. But it means we’re getting close.” I stared into her eyes to make sure I hadn’t missed something. Chicory blue.

  The air vent had been punched right through the stratigraphy. The layers that kept us buried down here. But it was hope.

  While the rain washed coal from our skin, we drank. And I listened for Charlie’s guys. I couldn’t hear anything except for the wind and rain. Finally I pulled her away. The mine shaft past the vent was straight, the walls smoothly carved. The floor was flat. We were no longer bisecting stratigraphy, climbing out of the past. We were moving along on a plane of sandstone, the same sandstone that peeked out all along Blackwater Canyon.

  We’d arrived back in the present.

  Alex kept turning around to look at the light, like a moth to a candle. “C’mon, Alex,” I’d say.

  Even after a few hundred yards it was still visible behind us. A tiny pyramid of light in a black vein that led straight from the heart of the earth. A single point of light that faded like a votive on an altar. Then it was gone.

  Up ahead there was another. This pyramid was wider at the base, perhaps an indication that the surface was much closer. I pretended I could smell wildflowers. I pretended I could smell warmth and dryness. Clothes left on the line. Those were what I pretended I could smell. Instead I heard dogs.

  Alex protested as I dragged her away from the light. “Please,” she begged.

  “We can’t stop.”

  She repeated her old routine, always stopping, always turning to look. Like it was some kind of game.

  “I know, Alex,” I’d say.

  But we came upon another—this one was wider than the last two combined. I could hear birds and the wind. And I could see treetops. Rain fell in rivulets down from the surface. All around our feet were old leaves and branches blown in from above. A billowing cumulonimbus crackled with lightning.

  Small tears pushed the coal dust from the corners of her eyes and I could see her skin again. The little streams carried the filth away.

  “Let’s stop, please.”

  It was my turn to give her strength. “Outside we’ll find a stream.” I gently pulled her along. “We’ll take off our clothes and swim and eat berries. Then we’ll build a fire and I’ll add wood all night so it’ll burn until morning.”

  No matter how much she protested I pulled her on. And no matter how fast we moved, it was never fast enough. The airshafts grew shallower and more frequent. I focused on the day ahead, the afternoon that waited for us.

  We gained speed with the breeze, our confidence grew in the light. Like wind into a sail it fueled our escape. “Look!” Alex said.

  I strained to see. “We have to be quiet.”

  It was an aperture. An opening. Rotted soft planks covering a portal that led back to our world. A world where reason was worth its weight in sunlight. A world I understood. A whole world filled with birds and rabbits and mosses and ferns and sun-baked rocks and copperheads and spruces and oaks and huckleberries and laurel. All I had to do to taste it was inhale. All I had to do was breathe.

  The wind brought thunder, the beautiful crack of thunder echoing through the canyon. The sound was like a tree falling, an explosion, the creation of a world. Music to my poor ears. My music. The soundtrack to my world.

  I could see Alex in the light now. Pulling me along with her whole body. Arms pumping. Legs reaching, hungry for their next step.

  “You have to slow down.” I kept my voice low. “They could be waiting.”

  She slowed down, but kept walking. “There’s nobody out there. Listen.”

  The boarded entrance was only ten or so yards away. I stepped carefully while watching for movement on the other side. I put my finger up to my lips and waited for a long time.

  “Hold your breath and listen,” I whispered.

  A voice came on the wind, a squeal that arrived from behind us. Low pressure grew. My ears popped. I heard a building whoosh that I thought was rain. A nondescript wall of static, like an ongoing wave at the ocean. Like a spring wind whipping through the attic. Squeaks punctuated the wind. A chatter beneath the low roar. I knew what was coming. I turned and pushed Alex flat to the ground.

  The farthest visible shaft of light decomposed in a cluster of indistinguishable pixels. Black specks appeared and suddenly were gone.

  “Henry—”

  “Shhh. Stay down.” I whispered.

  The next shaft of light turned dark the same way, almost like the earth itself was falling back into darkness. The squeal grew louder. A fecal scent blew through the mine shaft.

  The shaft of light closest to us had been swallowed up by the colony. They came right at us. I covered Alex’s head. They were on us, like a fog, their black wings bearing a very clear message. The squeal of their echolocation had the same effect on me as fingernails on a blackboard. Alex tried to squirm out of my grasp. “Get me out. Please get me out.”

  The bats swooped and swerved around us, always waiting until the last possible second to veer away. They created their own wind. I coul
d smell the must that clung to their fur as they buzzed my head.

  “Henry!” She wriggled free and got to her knees.

  I grabbed her ankle with my good hand and she pulled away, spinning me toward the entrance. “Alex, don’t!”

  She ripped the old boards away from the wooden frame that held the rock ceiling up. Splinters clung to the nails that still hung firm to the frame.

  I stood and tried to pull her back. “They’re going to be waiting. Stop it.”

  Yellow smoke filled the mine shaft entrance. A pair of hands broke through the barrier from the other side. I lifted my arm to defend myself, sending a shout of pain through my ribs and shoulder. They grabbed me by the hair and throat and pulled me to the ground. Another set of hands grabbed my wrist, and I screamed in pain.

  The first thing I saw was Lucinda Tasso jamming something into Alex’s mouth.

  Instead of running toward daylight and freedom we’d run right into a trap. The snake’s nest. In the moment it took to register, Odelia Lewis, pushed a dirty, fetid ball of hair into my mouth.

  The smell, like spoiled milk and road-killed groundhog made me vomit. An image of the dead animal came to me while I fell to my knees. I couldn’t shake it. It lay there, bloating in the sun, inviting scavengers and decomposers to feast. The taste was in my mouth. I had to spit out greasy fur and black bits of meat.

  Poison. She’s poisoned me.

  A pain in my gut. Cramping. I dry heaved, but the only thing that came out was that smell, almost a liquid. I couldn’t get my breath. My stomach and intestines knotted, rotted like I was dying on the inside first. I held my breath thinking it was the smoke doing it to me. The pain, like the biting of a thousand spiders expanded throughout my midsection. Convulsions wracked me, twisting my tender ribs. Every time I exhaled that smell came from my mouth.

  It’s not magic. I tried to say the words but couldn’t.

  “Henry!” Alex yelled a muffled yell. I looked, but couldn’t see her. Lucinda’s fingers were bleeding like Alex had bitten her. One of Charlie’s guys moved in with a length of rope. He made like he was going to tie Alex up.

  Air filled my stomach, and I tried coughing to free myself from it. The swelling pain grew. I wanted to cut it from my body. I pounded my guts with my fist to release it.

  From the ground I took a piece of wood ash from an old fire. Thinking the charcoal would neutralize the poison, I chewed on it.

  “Spit that out, boy!” Odelia clawed at my tongue, her long fingers had black tips, like they’d been frostbitten, with points of bone protruding from the end. Just like Katy said. The bones scratched my mouth and lips. When her fingertips touched together, they clicked and clacked like wooden spoons.

  One of Charlie’s guys held me to the ground. He put his knee into my ribs then settled on me with all of his weight.

  I tried to force cinders down my throat by the handful. Old pieces of red dog. Anything I could swallow. Odelia grabbed me by the hair and pinched my nose, scratching it and making it bleed with her bony claws. I held my breath.

  Now that Alex was tied up, Lucinda dropped to the ground next to Odelia and pushed something into my mouth. It was gray and soft like wax, with bits of all kinds of things mixed in—hair, insects like cicadas and grasshoppers, tiny bones. Jane’s thistle pendant dangled from a silver chain around Lucinda’s neck.

  I held my breath for as long as I could. The smell stuck to my skin, almost like I could feel its oily tang. And when I could hold my breath no more, Lucinda pushed the hair ball into my mouth. I spit again and again, but I knew by the way she walked away, she’d done all she needed to. Odelia let me fall to the floor. I grew dizzy.

  A sound came, a slurping that I felt as much as heard. Something changed inside me. My innards shook passionately and the sucking sounds increased, rumbling my body, shaking my eardrums like thunder in my head. My guts heaved and burned with a searing pain like they were being liquefied. Something began to drip from my mouth.

  Alex screamed. I tried to get to my knees.

  Her name got lost in the wave of vomit that rushed up my esophagus. Mud and stones poured from my guts, sediments forcing their way through my mouth, scraping my teeth, cutting my gums. It tasted of the river, of the mountains, of the earth. The taste was my birth, my death and all that came in between.

  The sediments spilled onto the red-dog floor then began to spread, forming mountains and stream valleys in miniature. I pushed up on my hands and looked for Alex in the clearing smoke.

  Another rumble formed in my bowels. I shook my head. I wanted to black out. Odelia and Lucinda tormented Alex, tying bits of bone, like jawbones from raccoons or coyotes, in her hair. Alex cried, but did not scream. Lucinda smeared blood across Alex’s neck. It dripped down over her sternum. Alex had managed to free her right hand.

  A cool, viscous gel filled my mouth. Instinctively, I coughed, but the inhalation forced the thick mucus back into my trachea. I clutched my throat and tried to force the substance back up with my hands.

  My air was gone. My breath taken from me, locked up in my lungs. I gripped my throat even more tightly to keep the eggs out of my chest.

  “You’re choking yourself, Henry! Stop…” Alex yelled.

  My eyes searched the space for her, but I was starting to get dizzy. I was drowning so far above the river, so far away from…

  Tripping. Just keep one foot on the ground, Henry.

  I dropped back onto my hands and knees. In one violent spasm the slime left me and hit the ground with a thick slosh.

  A mass of salamander eggs spread across the coke ash and coal dust. The jelly- like mass wriggled on the floor. Young hellbenders swam in the clear gel. Blackness clouded my vision. Took away my thoughts.

  Grass and moss sprouted from the walls and ceiling of the mine. Mushrooms and slime molds covered the floor. Logic told me they’d drugged me, but my brain knew that what I saw was real.

  Just keep one foot on the ground.

  Alex screamed. They’d bound her to one of the roof supports with bailing twine. They secured her neck and her waist to the beam. Alex’s hands clutched at the rope around her neck while Charlie’s guy tried to get her wrists. On the floor was a ring of candles, really just lumps of gray wax with animal teeth and feathers suspended in them. Outside that was a larger circle of skulls, deer and bear, and rocks that had been doused with a thick gray fluid. They had Alex’s laptop and phone, my baby pictures and clothes from her suitcase alternating with the candles and skulls, all stuff they stole from the house before burning it. Alex’s hairbrush had been turned into an altar. A small votive sat on it, burning. Melting wax dripped through the bristles.

  Alex struggled and kicked, knocking away part of the circle. I was proud of her for putting up such a fight. She bit Lucinda on the forearm, drawing blood. Odelia slapped Alex so hard I could see the red mark forming beneath what remained of the coal dust.

  Lucinda grabbed Alex’s right arm and struggled to remove the ring from her hand. But Alex was stronger. She made a fist. An iron embrace that said the ring belonged to her.

  Odelia said, “Just hand it over. There ain’t no way we ain’t taking it. It belongs to Darren now, and his kin.”

  Lucinda pulled Alex by her hair. Her brown eyes screamed nothing but hatred and rage. Alex brought up her elbow and caught Lucinda’s nose. Blood trickled over her lips, down to her chin. When Lucinda reared, Alex whacked her again.

  Odelia grabbed Lucinda by the chin, tsk-tsked the blood, then pushed a hairball into Alex’s mouth. She clenched her jaw, refusing to let them do to her what they’d done to me.

  Odelia slapped Alex again. Her bony fingertips drew parallel lines of blood. She picked up a stoneware jug that’d been sitting near the post. Charlie’s guys went outside the second Odelia snatched it off of the ground—like they were scared.

  She had an ash branch with a rag tied to it. She dunked it into the jug, taking great care not to get any of the liquid on her. Odelia dabbed it in A
lex’s hair and on her bare skin. She said, “Who’s next, girlie? Your mama, that gossipy bitch? To think she sent you up here to consort with these devils. Maybe we’ll cut her little tongue out when we’re done here.”

  Alex clenched her eyes and lips. When she exhaled through her nose Odelia moved aside to avoid getting sprayed. Laughing now, Odelia soaked Alex’s shoulders.

  “Little city bitch sleeping with that Collins girl, like she was your girlfriend, right? Bet you all thought it was real funny how we got our issues with each other, huh? Where’s that little fornicator now? She could a had Billy but now she’s swimming. Well, you’re going to swim now, too. You all can swim together forever, you little fornicators.”

  Odelia saturated Alex’s jacket and dress, dabbed her breasts and jabbed the rag between Alex’s legs. “You like it down there, don’t you?”

  Rage consumed me, but I was paralyzed. An object, rather than a person. Mushrooms sprouted on my hands and forearms, decomposing me. All I could do was watch.

  “They all drowned, sweetie. One way or another they ended up at the bottom of the river. Them girls never learned. But we showed them.” Odelia retreated.

  From the ground, a sea of larvae wriggled toward Alex. Shiny white grubs about the size of my thumb covered her feet and began to climb.

  Much to Odelia’s dissatisfaction, Alex didn’t scream as the larvae gorged themselves on the brown liquid. They grew as they ate, nearly doubling in size until they covered her completely. The cowl of grubs pulsated in a unified, silent feast.

  Rain fell outside. Lightning brought with it the smell of a faraway world, telling me I wasn’t dead. Water splashed in through breaks in the walls and ceiling. It felt cool on my skin. Even though I knew they’d drugged me, I couldn’t do anything about it. Anger seemed to push reality even further from me.

  Alex had stopped moving beneath the sheen of larvae. The insects had changed color, their white had transformed into a glossy brown like hardened pine sap. The pupae quivered. A buzzing hum filled the room as the cicadas emerged from their sleep. Red eyes appeared from within the hard, brown shells. The massive insects climbed over each other and over the dry husks of their brethren, working toward the room’s ceiling. The air exploded with a buzzed vibrato that rattled my skull. The horde moved to the walls and roof, always buzzing. Some landed on me.