by James Hunt
Terry hesitated, and then finally pivoted toward her. “Amy, Maisie’s dead.”
Amy frowned. “No, she’s not.”
“The mine collapsed and we couldn’t find her body—”
“Because she’s not there, Terry—”
“Enough!” Terry quickly stood, and his cheeks flushed. He thrust a finger at her, and for the first time in their marriage, Amy was scared of him. “I don’t want to hear any more about this curse nonsense.”
Amy stood, slowly, palms toward Terry. “The water I gave Liz is what made her wake up. I got it from—”
Terry leaned into her, lowering the volume of his voice, but kept the anger. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? It wasn’t enough that our oldest daughter was in the hospital, but I leave you in charge of Maisie for one second, and—” Fresh tears welled in his eyes and he stepped away, raking his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Amy.”
“I’m not crazy.” Amy struggled to keep her voice steady. “And Maisie is not dead.”
“Stop, Amy,” Terry said, the anger gone. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“At least give me a chance,” Amy said. “Let me show you. I can prove it to you.”
Terry looked at her, and even before he opened his mouth, she knew what the answer was going to be. “I’ve given you more chances than you deserved.” He turned and disappeared into Liz’s room.
Amy lingered in the hallway for a little longer, and then her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Kara. “Hey.”
“How is she?” Kara asked.
“It worked,” Amy answered, nodding. “She’s awake.”
“Good,” Kara said. “Listen, we should head back to the reservation.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if Terry is coming.”
“Well, has he notified the EPA about Mulaney?”
Amy hesitated, and before she could respond, Kara pounced.
“I can’t go back to my brother and grandfather empty-handed on this, Amy. We had a deal.”
“No, we didn’t have a deal,” Amy said. “My family wasn’t given a choice in this.”
Kara was quiet for a moment and when she spoke again, her tone kind but firm. “Amy, we’re not going to help you get Maisie back until we have proof that your husband has given evidence to Mulaney’s corruption. I’ve already explained that there is more at stake than just your family and our tribe. Let me know when it’s done.”
The call ended, and Amy angrily shoved the phone back in her pocket.
Convincing Terry to go behind Mulaney’s back would be difficult, especially with their financial future at stake. Not to mention the fact that he still thought she was insane.
Amy rubbed her face red, trying to think of a way around it. What more could she tell him? What more could she say to the man that had doubted her at every turn? She had just saved their eldest daughter. What greater proof could she offer than that?
“Mrs. Holloway?”
Amy looked up from the tile, finding a nurse that she hadn’t seen before, and judging by the polite smile on her face, she didn’t know Amy very well.
“Your husband wanted me to tell you that your daughter is ready to see you now.”
“Thank you.” Amy stood, hurrying past the nurse. She wasn’t sure how Liz would react when she saw her again. The first time had been difficult, but she had fought too hard to save her daughter in another realm to lose her in this one.
Amy’s vision tunneled as she moved closer to Liz’s room, and when she turned the corner and stepped inside, she stopped.
Liz sat on the edge of the hospital bed, bare feet dangling off the side, a blue wool blanket draped over her shoulders with Terry on her right. She leaned into her father when she noticed Amy, and Terry kissed the top of her head.
“It’s okay,” Terry said.
Amy smiled, tears in her eyes, but she didn’t step forward, afraid that she might spook her daughter and erase what slim chance the pair had at reuniting.
“Hey, Lizzy,” Amy said.
Liz lifted her face to Terry. “It’s really her?”
Terry nodded. “Yeah. It’s her.” He rubbed Liz’s shoulder and then gave her a light squeeze.
When Liz set her eyes on her mother again, some of the apprehension dissolved and she separated herself from Terry. She narrowed her eyes, examining the mother that she didn’t recognize. “I saw you in our town, but… it wasn’t you. Was it?”
Amy took a single step forward, then stopped, not wanting to push her luck, but no longer able to keep herself still. She remembered the figure that she had seen in that desert realm, where Liz had shouted all those terrible accusations, the hate so palpable that she could taste it. Liz must have had a similar experience. She took two more steps, her heart swelling in her chest. “You were in a bad place, Lizzy. Everything you saw, whatever happened, it wasn’t real.” She pressed her fingers into her chest. “But I’m real. Here. Now.” She gestured to Terry. “So is your father.” She continued to inch closer. “You’re not in that place anymore. You’re safe.” She smiled, and then stopped when she was within arm’s length of Liz.
Liz stared up at her, looking more like a child than the teenager and young woman she was transforming into. She scrunched her face up into tears. “I’m so sorry, Mom.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.” She sobbed, leaning forward, and Amy stepped in to catch her.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Amy said, keeping her daughter safe and still, rubbing her back. “Everything is okay. Shhhh.”
Terry leaned in, offering a hand, and together the three of them held onto one another. And while their family wasn’t whole, they were starting to heal. After everything they’d been through, it was a good start.
Once Liz calmed down, Amy kissed her daughter’s forehead, wiping away the tears on Liz’s cheek the way she did when she was a little girl. She smoothed out Liz’s hair and then tucked the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Better?”
Liz nodded. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Why don’t you lay down for a little bit,” Terry said. “Your mom and I have to fill out some paperwork before we can get you out of here.”
Liz was already leaning backward before she answered, exhaustion taking over as her eyes closed before her head hit the pillow.
Terry headed toward the door, but Amy lingered behind a moment, adjusting the blanket over her daughter, thankful that she was alive and safe.
“Amy.” Terry gestured for her to follow and then stepped out of the room.
When Amy found Terry, he had his arms crossed. She frowned. “I thought you said we have to fill out some paperwork.”
“We do,” Terry said, then glanced back toward Liz’s room and lowered his gaze, his body trembling. “But I haven’t told Liz about Maisie yet.” His voice choked when he spoke her name, and he raised his fist to his mouth, taking a moment before he lost his composure.
“Terry, whatever you think happened to her… It’s not—” Amy shut her eyes. “It’s difficult to explain.”
“Difficult to explain?” Terry asked, his voice an aghast whisper. “Amy, our daughter died.” His lip quivered, and he struggled to hold onto that last thread of composure.
Amy took Terry’s hands. “She’s not dead. But if we don’t hurry, she will be.”
Terry frowned, and then he pushed Amy’s hands off of him and turned away. With his back to her, Amy could only hear the choking gasps and sobs, but by the time he faced her again, his face was red but dry.
“Why do you keep doing this?” Terry asked, shrugging and flapping his arms at his sides. “Is it some kind of coping mechanism?”
Amy stepped closer, extending her arms to try and calm the storm that she saw raging in her husband’s eyes. “Terry—”
“No, Amy,” Terry said, keeping his distance from her. “I’m done trying to convince you to step out of whatever sick fantasy you’ve made for yourself. It’s gone too far. It’s affected our children, and—” His mouth quiv
ered, twisting violently from side to side as grief once again sank its sharp talons into his heart. “I just can’t.”
“Dad.”
Amy and Terry turned in the same instance, finding Liz standing in the doorway of her room, that blue blanket still draped over her shoulders.
“Sweetheart,” Terry said, quickly wiping his eyes. “You need to go lie down.”
“Mom’s right,” Liz replied.
Defeated, Terry slouched his shoulders and shook his head. “No, baby, she’s not right.”
“She is.” Liz stepped from the room. “Whatever happened to me is happening to Maisie right now.” She joined her mother’s side. “You need to listen to her.”
No longer able to keep his feet under him, Terry sat down, collapsing into one of the chairs that lined the hallway, covering his eyes with his palms.
Amy stepped toward her husband, a man that was breaking right before her very eyes, crushed by the weight of the insanity that had plagued their family, an insanity that was brought on by no fault of their own. She softly knelt in front of him, her presence a light breeze on a summer afternoon. “Terry?” She reached for his wrists and gently pulled his hands from his face, revealing a man in desperate need of answers. And for the first time in a long time, they were answers that Amy could provide. “You need to see something.”
59
Amy, Terry, and Liz rode in the front while Ben and Kara remained hidden in the back of the truck. With the cops still on the lookout for Kara, they thought it best not to draw too much attention to themselves.
Terry sat quietly in the front passenger seat, gazing straight ahead, his posture and expression dripping with apathy, his mind and body depleted of strength and endurance. He might as well have been a marionette, bobbing lifelessly from the bumps in the road.
It was late afternoon when they returned to Ghost Town, and Amy was forced to stop when they reached the gate, which was unmanned and closed.
Amy slid the rear window open, looking at Ben. “Do you have bolt cutters?”
It took Ben a minute to work the jaws of the cutters through the steel, but it finally broke in half and collapsed into the compacted sand. They opened the gates and then parked down by the mine.
The group glanced around, confused.
“Where the hell did everyone go?” Kara asked.
“Mulaney had the police kick everyone out after the collapse,” Terry answered. “He didn’t want to increase his liability.”
Ben scoffed. “I’m sure he didn’t.”
Amy walked to Terry. “We need to go into the mine.”
Terry shook his head. “I’m not going back down there, Amy.”
“It’s important,” Amy said, but he still wouldn’t budge, so she stepped forward, playing the last card that she had, though she wasn’t sure how much clout she had left to play. “Do this one thing for me. Just this one thing, and then I promise that whatever you want to do, I’ll do it.” She grabbed his hand, rubbing her finger over the golden wedding band. “Please, Terry.”
“Go, Dad,” Liz said, offering her encouragement from the van. “You need to see it.”
Terry looked to the mine and then finally nodded.
“Wait,” Kara said, removing a necklace and handing it to Amy. “Wear it when you pick up the gold. It’ll protect you.”
“Thanks.” Amy led Terry into the darkened depths, the pair going alone.
It was an ominous sensation, going in alone, knowingly traveling into the belly of the beast. And while the pair remained quiet on the way down the elevator shaft, Amy sensed Terry’s hesitation as the pair sank deeper into the earth.
Amy heaved the elevator doors open at the bottom of the shaft and was the first to step out. She looked back to Terry, who gazed into the foreboding darkness with a dread that she’d never before seen on a human face.
“It won’t take long,” Amy said.
Terry finally stepped out, and the pair walked side by side, all the way to the remaining rubble where the mine had collapsed.
“Why are you doing this?” Terry asked.
But she was done trying to explain. The best way to answer him was not to speak, it was to show. She positioned herself in the cleared space of the rubble and clenched her fists at her sides.
She searched the ground and eventually found a piece of rock with a hunk of gold it in. She turned back to Terry, who remained stoic.
“Just remember that it can’t hurt you.” Slowly, Amy faced the darkened void and picked up the gold. “I’m here, you bastard!”
A hot wind blew from the deepest section of the mine, blasting Amy and Terry in the face, the heat so intense it forced both of them to look away.
“Blood for gold.” The voice growled from the darkness, ominous and foreboding and somehow omnipresent.
The wind subsided, and Amy turned to the darkness, but not before rejoining Terry’s side as a silhouette took shape in the darkness.
Terry frowned. “Oh my god.”
The miner kept its head down, its clothes stitched together haphazardly and barely hanging off its bone-thin skeleton.
It stopped a few feet shy of Terry and Amy then finally tilted its face up, smiling and exposing that single gold tooth. He pointed to the pendant around Amy’s neck. “That magic won’t bring your daughter back.”
“No,” Amy said. “But I will.”
The miner grimaced.
“The tribe cursed this land after you kicked them off, slaughtering their people for nothing more than your greed.”
“Greed that would feed my family,” the dead man replied. “Greed that would put a roof over my wife and daughter’s head. I could have transformed that greed into a gold that would have lasted the rest of my life!” He inched forward, some of his features coming into focus now, and Amy wished that the dead man had kept his distance.
Amy leaned away, the sight of his torn and tattered flesh and the smell that accompanied it nearly bringing up what little food she had left in her stomach. “I’m not here to argue about what you did.” She steeled herself as she turned toward the miner. “I just want my daughter.”
The miner exhaled a wheezy breath, sending another blast of cold air in Amy’s direction, though this one smelled of rotten meat, the mixture of smell and temperature throwing her off.
“Do you know what really happened to us after the curse? What really happened after the collapse?” He paced around Amy, circling her like a shark in the water. “There were sixty men down in the shaft, at least two hundred feet deep. Men with families and children.” He continued to circle, his movements slow but methodical. “Some of the support beams gave way and enough rubble clogged the shaft to prevent any hope of rescue.”
Amy remained in one place, but she turned her head, following the miner on his predatory path.
“A lot of us held out hope, even though we knew that the odds of getting out were slim,” the miner said. “The first day we were down here, none of us stopped screaming. We were always shouting, always letting the people at the surface know that we were still alive. Our voices were the last of our sirens, and the ability to scream our hope. But after that first day, we barely cleared any rubble, and we triggered another collapse of rocks. When that soil came crashing down on our heads, sending us deeper into the mine, most of the hope ran out of the people trapped down here.” He stopped when he faced Amy’s front, and he tilted his head to the side. “Do you know what happens to a man who loses hope? He loses his mind.” He stepped forward, and Amy stepped backward. “After three days, we ran out of food.” He took another step, and again Amy matched it in her retreat. “After a week, we started to hallucinate.” His voice grew deep and his steps more aggressive. “It wasn’t but the next day that we started eating one another. We formed little groups, going after those that couldn’t team up. We didn’t even bother to kill them first, took bites right out of them as they started screaming. Of course, all of us knew that we wouldn’t last much longer, and seeing a
s how we all had to eat one another to stay alive, it was only a matter of time before our group broke up, people turning on one another. And do you know who was the last man standing? Covered in filth and blood and dirt and with pieces of his friend in his belly before he finally succumbed to death?”
Amy eventually ran out of space and backed up into the wall, allowing the miner to catch up, finally revealing the horrid features that ran along the miner’s face.
The flesh around his cheeks and eyes had been eaten away by maggots, leaving exposed bone and hanging bits of muscle. What skin he had left was the pale grey of bad meat, the skin pulled so taut it looked smooth to the touch. The hair on his head had fallen out save for a few wisps of coarse greys. The miner’s clothes were in the same rotten condition as his body, his limbs nothing but bones, with patches of grey flesh scattered about, bugs crawling between the bones and exposed ligaments, the shoes on his feet worn down to the soles.
“It was me,” the miner said, the rancid smell of his breath and the freezing temperature blasting Amy’s senses at such a close range. “I outlasted them all, and my reward was to wander these mines in these clothes, rotting away with my friends rotting inside of me!” He leaned forward, his teeth already exposed, but still baring them nonetheless. “So what do I want? I want out of this fucking mine! I want the life that I lost! I want to see my wife!”
Amy’s back remained flush against the wall, but she held the miner’s steely gaze. “Your wife would have been dead a long time ago.”
“Not here!” The miner sneered. “She is in another realm, this curse keeping me separated from her! I want to be free of this, and I want to be rejoined with her!” The miner took a moment to calm himself, then turned toward the deeper section of the mine. “You give me that, and I’ll let your daughter go.”
Amy frowned. “No tricks?”
The miner turned his head around far enough for Amy to see the single gold tooth in his smile. “The only tricks you have to worry about are with those Indians. I’m not the one who condemned innocent men to their deaths.”
