“There's nothing here,” I said.
“It's at the bottom,” said Toby.
“What's at the bottom of what?”
“The car. The car's at the bottom of the shaft, just look down the shaft… ”
I looked up at the assembled faces. “Anybody happen to have a flashlight?”
The second trooper handed one down. I stooped a bit, leaned over the black square, and shined the light downward.
Instant vertigo. The shaft descended what had to be at least eighty or ninety feet. As I lurched back I caught a glimpse of two things. A vertical, rusty track with shiny edges; and a big, rusty wheel with what looked to be a very large bicycle chain running in a channel.
“What you got?” croaked Lamar.
“Just a second,” I said. “I hate heights.”
“In a hole?” asked Sally.
“It's a high damned hole,” I replied, irritated. “Just give me a minute.” I took a deep breath, and got down on my stomach, and crawled forward, toward the edge of the shaft. As I did, I heard Sally wondering aloud how you could have a high hole.
Being so solidly supported, I could look down. Sure enough. The wheel, chain, and rails were part of the elevating mechanism. As I looked all the way down, I thought I could see something at the bottom. Probably the car Toby referred to. I also noted that the chain seemed to be oiled. I backed out.
“It goes way down, there's rails and a chain, and I think I can see some sort of car or box thing at the bottom.”
“That's it,” said Toby.
“Can we climb down there?” asked Lamar.
“No,” I said emphatically. “No way.” I simply wasn't about to try a climbing descent to the bottom of that shaft. Not at any price.
“Use the box,” suggested Toby.
“What box?”
“Inside the door, to the left.”
I looked in again. Sure enough, in the corner was a dark gray electrical box, labeled “Square D,” with a lever on its right.
“How does it work?”
“Just pull the lever up or down… whatever way it ain't now,” advised Toby. “It'll bring the car up for you.”
The problem with simple solutions is that they sometimes hide complex problems just under the surface. That was the case here. First, I wasn't sure that I wanted to alert Dan Peale that we were coming after him. If he heard the elevator, and if Huck was still alive, that could easily cause him to kill her. Second, I had no idea what we would find at the bottom, so I didn't know how many of us should be going.
We stationed Borman and Byng at the top of the shaft, as the rest of us backed off and questioned Toby.
We were in a hurry, but we really needed the basic layout of what Toby called “the crypt.”
He said the elevator shaft went to a section of the sand mine that had been closed off for years. There were five big chambers, and Dan had appropriated two of them.
“They're both on your right as you get off,” said Toby.
“Dan got any guns down there?” asked Lamar.
“Guns? No way. He doesn't need guns. You'll see.”
“Knives, though?” I asked.
“Yeah. He's got knives.”
I wanted to ask why the knives if he didn't need guns, but didn't. Time was short.
“How do you see down there?” I asked.
“Turn on the lights,” he said.
“What?”
“Yeah. I mean, nobody uses the mine, but it still has power. For inspections, I guess. We just tapped into the wires in the main part of the mine. That's all.”
Well, sure. “And that's what powers the elevator?”
“Yeah.”
“How loud is it?” asked Lamar.
Toby looked bewildered. “I don't know… compared to what?”
“Can Dan hear it coming down, Toby?” I asked, as patiently as I could.
“Oh! Oh, I think so. Yeah, unless he's in the far chamber, and then if he has the music on, probably not… ”
“Music?”
“Yeah. Dan plays the music really loud when he gets into a mood. Hey,” he said. “He's got all the comforts of home. You're gonna be surprised at what's all down there. It's beautiful!”
“I expect I will,” I said. Then I tossed him a tough one. “Is that where Edie was killed? Is it the crypt?”
He went pale. I think he'd been getting into the whole pursuit thing, and had lost his sense of the real situation.
“Is it?” asked Lamar.
Toby nodded, but didn't speak. That was probably just as well.
“Well,” I said, “let's get going.”
Lamar called one of the troopers back at the house, and had him collect flashlights from the assembled cop cars, and bring as many as he could. They were all rechargeable, and good for at least three hours each.
Lamar took me aside. “You sure he's down there?”
“Nope. But Huck's gone, and didn't have to be if he wanted to off her on the spot. Okay… and she's not anywhere in the house. So that would either leave here, or he's got her to some transportation, and they took off.
They didn't go by us last night at the gate. Nobody did. So the egress point to the house is here. The elevator's at the bottom, but that doesn't mean much. They seem to be able to get out the main entrance, too.”
“Okay.” He really sounded horrible.
“I think he got into the mine last night, or at least yesterday sometime. We were trying to track his progress with stolen car reports, but they could have lagged a couple of hours or more.”
Lamar nodded. “Two hours, easy.” It was almost funny, the way he tried not to talk, and lost.
“Last night, Mr. William Chester made an appearance. Up in here.” I pointed to the general area, and then to the ravine. “Came up that ravine where we spotted him Monday. His car was parked down at the bottom. We followed him, not too far from this place, and Sally and I went down the ravine, and we sent Borman around the bottom. We lost him.”
Lamar looked surprised.
“Yeah. Well, anyway, while we were chasing the goddamned vampire hunter, the vampire was paying a visit to the house. Far as I can tell.”
Lamar shook his head. “Too bad,” he managed to get out.
“No shit. I dunno, though. The silver lining might be that I don't think Dan Peale knew we were up here last night. I think he might think he's gotten away with something. That he has some time to play with.” I looked at him squarely. “But, no. No, I don't know if he's down there. But I think he is.”
We decided that Byng, Borman, Sally, and I would go down, two at a time, via the shaft. Another group headed by Lamar would try to enter at the main mine entrance, about a mile south of the shaft, at the bottom of the bluff. We'd have two troopers at the house, and two troopers at the upper end of the elevator shaft to the mine.
“Hey, Lamar?”
“Yeah?” He barely got it out. He really should have been home in bed.
“If you run across that idiot William Chester, super vampire hunter, see if you can arrest his ass for something, will ya?” I meant it. “Anything. Just keep him the hell out of our way.”
“Sure, Carl.”
“And, if somebody can get ahold of Hester or Harry, get 'em headed back here, too. If we get our boy, they're both gonna want to talk to him ASAP.”
As we waited for the night scope, I thought about what we'd been told earlier about Dan wanting to “experience” Edie's death secondhand. The more I thought about that, the more I thought I knew why he'd taken Huck out of the house. He needed the time to “experience” her terror, by ingesting her blood while he… Jesus. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
The briefing at the top of the shaft was short and sweet.
“Okay, listen up,” I said. “We won't have any radio contact down there. Don't even try. There also might be blasting caps and stuff in the mine, and radio transmissions can set them off. Got that?”
Sally, Byng, an
d Borman nodded.
“We're in a real hurry, here. I think she's being kept alive for a little while, but I can't say for sure. If we find her, don't move her unless you have to. She might have an IV stick in her neck, or something, and she could bleed to death if it pulls out. Understood?”
It was.
“This son of a bitch is about as delusional as you can get, and might really believe he's a vampire, and that he's immortal. He's very likely high on meth, or ecstasy or some sort of combination of the stuff. That means fast and strong. Don't count on stopping him just by sticking a gun in his face. Be prepared to shoot.” I took a breath. “Ready?”
Byng and I went first. The next pair was to be Sally and Borman.
THIRTY-TWO
Thursday, October 12, 2000
05:28
We pulled the lever on the electrical box, and the mechanism immediately started to rumble and grind. Not too loud, though. Great.
The cab took about a minute to crawl its way to the top, and when I saw it I wasn't so damned sure it was a good idea to get into the rickety thing. It was old, rusty, riveted iron bands holding old, rotting wood together. Top, sides, and floor. No door. To give you some idea about the cramped quarters, once we were jammed in, Byng was able to easily reach out and reverse the lever on the junction box. That started us rumbling and grinding toward the bottom of the shaft. There was no light in the thing, either. That was just as well, as we were going to have to dark-adapt as quickly as we could. But I could almost feel damp limestone running by about six inches from my face. I guess you just don't appreciate elevator doors until you don't have them.
It was noticeably cold when we ground to a halt at the bottom of the shaft. Cold, but not as damp as I'd expected. That was a plus.
But it damned sure was dark. There was a faint glimmer of yellowish light, though, off to the right. One point for Toby.
Byng put his hand over his flashlight, and just opened a small crack between his fingers to let a thin beam play over the wall nearest us. His hand glowed red over the lens. Spooky. He found a companion junction box, and pulled the lever down. The elevator car started its labored climb back to the top.
We moved toward the faint yellow light. The surface underfoot was silica sand, packed down into a pretty smooth surface by lots and lots of traffic. Silica sand is about as fine as table salt, or finer. It packs well, and doesn't impede movement the way beach sand would. It's quiet to walk on, too.
We'd gone about thirty feet, slowly, when the motor stopped, the elevator having reached the top. It was the first opportunity we'd had to actually listen for any sounds in the mine, and the faint strains of some music reached us.
“Music,” said Byng.
“Umm,” I said. “From where?” We couldn't really tell. “Close one eye,” I said to him. “I'm turning on a flashlight.”
I followed my own advice, which would enable me to have one eye that had begun to adapt to the dark while I used the other one to follow the beam around our area.
It helped get our bearings, and it also gave us some sense of the size of the place.
We were standing in a chamber about thirty feet high, by about sixty feet square. There was an enormous pillar just to our left, that seemed the same size as our chamber. Past it, my light reflected off the far wall of an adjacent chamber and pillar. That was about 180 feet, and it appeared to just keep going on and on, although the light was damned faint that far off.
Ahead of us was a similar arrangement, and to our right, the pillar-chamber sequence seemed to continue for as far as the beam would reach.
“Big place,” I said, quietly.
“Goes for several miles,” whispered Byng, “north and south. Only about three chambers deep, though. Maybe four, I hear. In places.”
We were in an older part, for sure. The walls and ceiling were covered with little troughs and gouges, made by hand-wielded picks.
I put my hand over the light, letting a small beam escape. I found that, while I could see fairly well out of the eye I'd closed, the red-yellow afterglow in the other eye was very bothersome. Not such a good idea, after all. The darkness was just too complete.
It was still very quiet, and I was beginning to wonder if the elevator had broken, leaving Borman and Sally stuck on top. Even as I was wondering about it, the electric motor started up.
“Sally and Borman,” said Byng.
The four of us assembled, and I came up with a plan. I decided to move toward the light, and see what we found.
“Quite a plan,” whispered Byng, his amusement evident in his voice.
“This isn't exactly D-Day,” I said.
“What's that smell?” whispered Byng.
“What smell?” I really didn't smell anything out of the ordinary at all.
“Reminds me of an Italian restaurant,” said Byng.
“Ah,” I said softly. “That's Sally.”
“What?”
“I've got some fuckin' garlic,” she hissed. “All right?”
Byng cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure.”
We moved toward the light, and the symphonic music got increasingly louder as we went. The lighted chamber turned out to be at right angles to the right of the one directly ahead of us. Maybe I just hadn't understood what Toby meant.
We crept along one of the enormous pillars, attempting to stay in the dark as long as we could. We paused, squatting or kneeling down, at the entrance to the lighted chamber.
Two overhead fluorescent units, of the type you'd find in a home workshop, suspended about twenty feet off the floor, lighted that entire chamber. The light was dim, but not as bad as it could have been, given the vast area they were lighting. It was certainly good enough to let us see the furnishings.
Along the walls were large, predominantly reddish, Oriental-style carpets, hanging from lengths of iron pipe that were wired into rings about fifteen feet off the floor. The hangings were around all three sides of the chamber that were visible to us, and it looked to me as if they were hung across the entrances to other chambers on all three sides.
The floor was covered with new wooden planking that peaked out from under more carpeting that covered most of the floor area of the chamber. The ceiling was formed from transparent plastic drop cloth that was suspended from the iron pipe that supported the wall hangings.
“Lot of carpet, there,” said Sally.
There certainly was. Lots of planking, too.
On the floor were several overstuffed chairs, in two clusters, between which was set a long dining table complete with chairs and a large china cabinet that stood against a wall. The chamber was divided by an enormous breakfront, a good thirty feet long and about eight feet high. Hanging carpets at each end made it an effective wall, splitting the chamber in two.
“That's where that went,” murmured Byng.
“What?”
“That long thing. That was in that hotel, the Larabee, that was torn down about ten years ago.”
Ah. Sure. It had been behind the hotel bar, loaded with liquor bottles and glasses. I'd seen it at more than one fight call.
“That sure as hell didn't come down that little elevator,” said Borman.
Good point. That implied fairly easy access to the main entrance.
“I thought Toby said it was beautiful,” said Byng.
“Well,” I whispered, “it was dark, and he was probably stoned.”
The main point, though, was that there was nobody home. At least, not in this half of the chamber. The music was louder in here, as well. Almost too loud.
“Where is he?” asked Sally, underscoring the point.
“Best bet,” I said, very quietly, “is the other half of the chamber.”
It looked as though there were two logical paths to whatever lay behind that looming old breakfront, one around each end.
“Two around the left, two the right,” I said. “Be fast, but don't make any noise.”
“Be vewy, vewy quiet,” said Sally. “We a
re hunting wampires.”
We all smiled at that. It helped.
Byng and I went right, Sally and Borman left. We crossed the chamber by moving as close as possible to the walls, skirting the furnishings in the middle. Byng and I reached our end of the breakfront first.
Gun in hand, I took a deep breath, gently moved the edge of the hanging carpet aside, and stepped through.
THIRTY-THREE
Thursday, October 12, 2000
05:46
Inside, there were three separate rooms, of a sort. Tall, maybe six and a half foot, walls with openings in the middle. Cubicles, right out of an office supply catalogue. These were a dark, uneven red. I stepped closer to the nearest one. It looked to me as though it had been sloppily spray-painted. I heard Byng come through behind me.
The rooms seemed to be raised on old wooden cargo pallets.
It was much quieter in this area, the music being muted by the intervening carpets.
I heard a click to my left, and looked toward the sound. Borman and Sally were just rounding their end of the breakfront. They apparently had heard it, too, as all four of us froze for a moment.
There was a hollow metallic sound, barely audible above the music. Like somebody striking two large pots together.
“Please don't,” said a quavering, contralto voice. “I didn't tell anybody, please don't, please.” It wasn't a scream, or a yell for help. It was in an eerily normal, almost conversational tone of a woman speaking to someone in the same room. It was Huck.
I heard a deeper, male voice that seemed to reply, but couldn't quite make out the words. But he laughed. Nothing demonic or anything of the sort. That would have been easier to take, I think. This laugh was kind of quiet, polite almost. He was amused.
We all started to move at once. It was impossible to tell which of the three rooms the sound had come from, so each pair took the one closest. We had him trapped, I was sure.
Byng and I won. I stepped into the room on my right, and saw a workbench with wide, sheepskin straps that were restraining a supine Huck, and a man clad only in running shorts standing near her.
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