by James Hunt
It had taken a moment for the news to sink in, just as it was now. But by the time he arrived at the hospital and heard what happened from the police, Terry was forced to come to the only conclusion that made any type of sense in his mind, which was the same conclusion that he was drawing now.
And it was that his wife of seventeen years, the mother of his children, the person whom he had more trust and confidence in than anyone else he had ever met, had lost her mind.
No sane person heard voices. No mother in their right mind would drink a half bottle of liquor and then put their six-year-old daughter in the car and drive to pick up their fifteen-year-old from school. And no person of sound mind and body would scream and cry and beg for the voices to stop screaming at her, to tell the dead man to leave her alone.
There was no dead man. There were no voices. And after three months of therapy, and hope, and trying to convince himself that his wife was normal and that there was nothing wrong with her, he now understood that his wife was beyond redemption.
Through whatever fantasy that she had concocted in her mind to cope with her condition, it had now come at the cost of losing their youngest daughter.
Slowly, and grimacing as if it caused him pain to lower himself back into the chair, Terry dialed another number.
“911, what is your emergency?” the operator asked.
“Yes,” Terry answered, having to clear his throat. “I need to report a missing child.”
“What is the name of the child, sir?”
“Um, Maisie Holloway. She’s six years old, about four foot three inches, and has dirty blonde hair. She’s also missing her two front teeth.”
“Okay, and when was she last seen?”
“My family and I were staying at the Ghost Town attraction, and, um, my oldest daughter got sick and I left my wife in charge of Maisie.” Terry closed his eyes, forcing the words out of him. “I think my wife may have put my daughter in some kind of danger. I don’t know where she is at the moment, but it sounded like she was driving.”
“Do you know what kind of car she was driving, sir?”
“A 2007 silver Dodge Caravan,” Terry answered. “She’s been off her medication for a few days now, and I think that—” He choked up, sealing his lips tight as he whimpered softly, pulling the phone away from his face so the operator couldn’t hear.
“Sir? Sir, are you still there?” the operator asked, her voice far away.
Terry clinched his fists tight, and then forced the phone back to his ear. “Yes, I’m still here. Um, I think that my wife may have hurt our daughter, or done something to her and… and I don’t know what to do because I can’t leave my other daughter alone at the hospital—” He wiped the tears away quickly, refusing to give them the opportunity to fall. “I’m sorry.”
“I understand, sir, you’re in a difficult situation,” the operator said. “But if you can just hang on with me and give me a little more information, we’ll start searching for that vehicle. Okay?”
Terry nodded, drawing in a few sharp breaths that helped him regain control of his emotions. “Yeah. Okay.” And so Terry answered the operator’s questions, giving her a description of his wife, the license plate number, and anything else that came to mind.
By the end of his conversation with the operator, Terry felt emptied. And while he should have been comforted by the fact that an officer was going to come to the hospital and take a few more statements, he only felt shame.
Shame because his wife had forced him to betray her, that she put their family in a position of danger, and that the only way to get them out was to paint Amy as the enemy. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But Terry knew that it was necessary.
“That officer will be over shortly,” the operator replied. “I’ll stay on the line with you until—"
Terry hung up.
The sounds of the hospital came alive as Terry sat silently by himself, hunched forward with his phone dangling precariously in his hand. They had come so close to being normal, so close to becoming a family again. But there seemed to be no escape from the madness that consumed their lives.
“Mr. Holloway?”
Terry turned, finding a nurse with her hands clasped together.
“We need to take your daughter in for an MRI,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’ll help us narrow down what might be wrong.” The nurse held a folder tight. “There is a waiting area where you can watch.”
“Yeah, okay.” Terry waited in the hallway as the nurses wheeled his daughter out.
Trailing behind his daughter and the nurses, Terry couldn’t rid himself of the visual of a funeral procession. He imagined the black cars and the flashing lights of a police escort leading them toward the graveyard.
The nurse guided him to the waiting area while the other medical staff wheeled Liz into the room with the massive MRI machine. They transferred Liz from the gurney onto the conveyer belt that would slide her into the cave of the machine.
And when the machine started, Terry’s phone rang. He quickly fished it out, hoping it was Amy. But it wasn’t.
“Mr. Mulaney?”
“Terry, I just heard about what happened,” Mulaney answered, the sympathy in his voice convincing, but practiced. “How’s Liz?”
“The doctors are running tests,” Terry answered. “They don’t know what’s wrong with her yet.”
“And, listen, I don’t know if it’s any of my business, but…” Mulaney paused, the moment feeling more drawn out for dramatic effect than a genuine loss in his train of thought. “I ran into Amy when I arrived here, and I just wanted to make sure everything was good.”
“You saw Amy?” Terry asked, watching Liz finally be swallowed by the machine. “Did you see Maisie?”
Mulaney hesitated. “No. She was alone.”
Terry shut his eyes. “Maisie’s missing, and Amy has some wild fantasy that she’s been taken. Do you think you could ask around the resort, see if anyone saw anything?”
“Of course,” Mulaney answered. “I’d be happy to.” He cleared his throat. “And, Terry, I hate to bring this up in a moment like this, but the EPA deadline is tomorrow and I still need you to finish that report.”
Terry frowned. “I’m sure we can get an extension.”
“I’m afraid that’s not a possibility.” What sympathy Mulaney had previously offered had vanished, his tone cold and stern. “I’m going to need you to finish that today.”
The MRI machine hummed, only Liz’s feet viewable from Terry’s position behind the glass in the waiting area. “I-I don’t even have my gear, my computer, my materials—”
“I’ll send my associate over with everything you’ll need,” Mulaney replied.
Unable to come up with an appropriate response, Terry nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Excellent,” Mulaney said, his voice returning to the cheery nature from earlier. “And don’t worry, Terry, I’ll have some of my best men search for your daughter. I promise.”
The call ended and Terry lowered the phone, watching the images captured by the MRI appear on the monitors in front of him.
How had they gotten here? What happened to his family? They hadn’t always been like this. They were normal, they were happy. Were they perfect? No, but they were together. And they were alive. But right now he wasn’t sure if either were true anymore.
48
Douglas Mulaney ended the call, erased his fake smile, and pocketed his mobile. The police had already escorted that Indian woman off the premises and Amy Holloway was long gone. He didn’t like the fact that Mrs. Holloway had been getting cozy with his enemy.
Mulaney spun around, glancing down the street of the shitty tourist trap into the mouth of the mine’s entrance. He was so close to getting what he wanted, so close to extracting the precious wealth that lay in the belly of that horrible beast.
“Sir?”
Mulaney turned, finding his head of security, Bishop, standing nearby.
“What?”
“The police requested a statement and wanted to know if you’d like to file charges of trespassing.” Bishop spoke as rigidly as he kept his posture. At times, he seemed to be more machine than man. “Those charges coupled with the allegations that she was tied to the missing person cases could be the nail in the coffin.”
“Good,” Mulaney said. “The longer I can keep that annoying bitch out of my hair, the better.” He spun back around to face the mine. “I’m so close, Bishop. So close I can practically feel the gold in my hands already.” He wiggled his fingers and licked his lips.
“What do you want us to do about the resort?” Bishop asked.
“Send everyone home,” Mulaney answered, his eyes still fixated on the mine. “I want this place shut down. I don’t need any more interference to slow down my progress.”
“Yes, sir,” Bishop answered.
Mulaney had no intention of stopping the forward march of progress because of some missing child and a woman losing her mind.
“Excuse me.”
Mulaney turned, having not noticed the sheepish-looking woman to his left, unsure of how long she had been standing there or how much she had heard. Her attire suggested she was an employee of Ghost Town, and the dumbfounded look on her face told Mulaney that she was barely qualified for whatever mundane function she had been hired for. “What?”
The sheep held her little hands together and shuffled forward, her chin down as she averted eye contact. “I’m sorry, but I thought that you might want to know that the woman that left in that van was in the mine. And she had a little girl with her.”
Mulaney frowned. “She took a girl into the mine?”
The sheep shut her eyes, shaking her head. “No. I mean, she followed a little girl inside. I think it was her daughter? Anyway, when she came out, she was by herself.”
Mulaney turned sharply back to the mine. Ignoring the woman, he called Bishop to follow as he walked toward it.
“Sir?” Bishop asked, once they were out of earshot of the woman.
“Look at the security footage for the past three hours,” Mulaney said. “I want to know everyone who has been and out of the mine during that time frame.”
“Yes, sir.” Bishop spun around, relaying the message through his earpiece, the device similar to the Secret Service communication links. Mulaney’s security team were all ex-Special Forces, some of the most lethal killers on the planet. There were only two areas of his life that he spared no expense: the security of his money, and the security of his own person.
Mulaney walked briskly into the mine, Bishop flicking on a light as they passed from the sun-soaked afternoon and into the black of the mine. He walked all the way toward the service elevator, the one that Amy Holloway had used before, where they found the remains of the pair of security guards that had gone missing.
Mulaney suspected that it was the protestors who had killed them, but he hadn’t been able to prove it. He stepped into the shaft elevator and tapped his foot impatiently on the descent.
The Holloway woman was so off her rocker that Mulaney wouldn’t have put it past her to kill her own daughter and leave her body in the mine below, causing an even bigger headache for Mulaney to deal with, which would inevitably delay the mine’s opening. There was only so much he could cover up.
The elevator reached the bottom, and Mulaney stepped out of the cage. He walked to the edge of the light provided by the elevator and then stopped, his footsteps echoing deeper into the shaft.
“Hello?” Mulaney asked, trying to remember Terry’s daughter’s name. “Maisie? Are you down here?” He took a few more steps. “Now’s not the time to play games, so if you’re down here, I need you to speak up.”
With no answer, Mulaney continued his push forward, struggling for breath in the damp and musty mine shaft.
The light on Mulaney’s phone revealed something up ahead, and he frowned. “What the hell?”
Eventually, the collapse of rocks forced Mulaney to stop, and his jaw slackened as he surveyed the damage. The blockage was from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It would take an entire crew to remove it, and while that was problematic, the possibility of a six-year-old girl’s body being uncovered in the rubble was worse.
Mulaney gritted his teeth, seething anger as he spun around. “That goddamn bitch.”
Knowing that sulking about the problem wasn’t going to fix it any faster, Mulaney switched gears, trying to flip it to his advantage. He could use this as leverage to ensure that Terry finished the report. He’d feed Terry’s hopes by saying that he heard a little girl’s voice on the other side. And once Terry sent that report to the EPA, then he would have everything he needed from a regulation standpoint to keep drilling. All that would be left would be to move the rocks.
Mulaney stared at the literal blockade standing in his way of a fortune. He had sunk too much money into this project for it to be a failure now. Not to mention his reputation that he could make one of the least profitable gold mines a success.
He didn’t give a shit if that little girl was dead or alive, but he’d be damned if he was going to let one family’s interference stop him now. And if they did, then Terry would have more than one daughter to worry about.
49
Maisie had heard the rumble of the rocks, but the world had gone black before they collapsed on top of her, and it was in darkness she lingered for some time.
The first noticeable change was the temperature. The mine had been cold, causing goose bumps to needle her flesh. But now she was hot, covered in sweat.
Blind, mute, and paralyzed, Maisie floated aimlessly, growing more frightened the longer she was suspended in this darkness.
And then like a light, laughter echoed from the void.
Suddenly, her foot scraped something hard, and the sensation of gravity returned. But when both feet were planted firmly, she knew something was wrong. The ground was hot, burning, scalding hot. And this time when Maisie opened her mouth to scream, the shrillness of her voice made her throat hurt.
The earth was a charred black, with rocky, sharp peaks thrusting toward the crimson sky above. She wasn’t in the mine anymore. She was lost. She didn’t know how she got here. And she didn’t know how to get home.
“You’re smaller than my usual fare.”
Maisie spun around, the motion so fast that it caused her to fall hard on her backside, the ground burning up her shirt and pants. The pain from the burns quickly prompted her back to her feet, and she retreated from the man in front of her.
The man was old and decrepit. His clothes were tattered, what skin remained to him pale and grey. And he was bone thin.
“Who-Who are you?” Maisie asked, her curiosity helping to filter away some of the pain of this place.
“I am the keeper of the damned.” The man kept his back toward Maisie, but his voice still sounded like it was right next to her ear.
“W-Where am I?” Maisie asked, the curiosity fading as the pain continued to reach a higher crescendo.
“You are in a cursed place,” he said, back still turned. “A dead place. And you will stay here with me until it’s over.”
Maisie’s trembling worsened. “Until what’s over?”
The man’s laughter started slow, rolling over Maisie in mocking waves, reaching a crescendo that suddenly cut off in mid-laugh. He extended his right arm and pointed to his side. “Over there.”
Maisie followed the man’s finger, which was aimed at a large rock nearby.
“Go,” the man said, keeping his hand lifted and his finger extended toward the rock. “Go and see what will be waiting for you.”
With nowhere else to go and no one else to speak with, Maisie slowly walked toward the rock. She picked up her pace when she realized how much her feet were still burning.
But despite the fiery pain in her feet, Maisie slowed as she approached the rock. Her instincts were prompting her to run, to turn away and put as much distance between herself and t
he man as she could. But something else drew her closer toward the rock, something deep within her stomach, gnawing at her very existence.
It frightened her to know what was behind that rock, but the feeling to discover what was on the other side was equally as important.
Maisie placed her hand on the rock and quickly retracted it. The stone was as hot as the ground beneath her feet. The heat radiated off the rock, warming her shoulder as she rounded the wide berth.
She moved quickly, nothing but black in her line of sight, and then she stepped on something lumpy and she lost her footing.
“Ow!” Maisie smacked the ground hard. She lingered on the ground, the pain from the fall more excruciating than the burns the rocky terrain offered. She reached for her ankle, which had twisted on the fall, and she stopped her hand before she reached her foot.
A long, white bone lay on the ground. Maisie kicked at it, scrambling away as quick as she could, but then tumbled backward, tripping over her feet.
This time when she landed, the ground was even, and sharp edges poked and prodded the backs of her legs and arms and head. She glanced left and right and found more bones lying beneath her, and the more she moved, the more she tossed the broken skeletons about.
Maisie screamed, no longer worried about the pain from the ground, only wanting to escape the nightmare of skeletons that littered the horizon. She opened her eyes in horror, and her jaw dropped.
The bones painted the black earth white. Empty eye sockets of skulls stared back at Maisie, mirroring her expression of terror and shock.
A shadow approached, along with the sound of footsteps, and Maisie turned to find the man that had tried to hurt her towering overhead, his face still cloaked in shadow.
He laughed, and Maisie cried. And the louder she screamed, the louder the man laughed.
