She leaned through the window toward Trent and whispered, “Turns out you really don’t need as much money as most folks think you do to get by. Besides, I’ve always been a fan of the woods, and we have the best hiking in the country round here.”
It was his turn to lean toward her. He looked deep into her eyes as he recalled the lunch bag with her name on it.
“What’s your name? Wait. Don’t tell me. Kristy. Chris. M-m-m-maybe…Christina?”
“Hey, how’d you do that?” she said, swatting his arm and pulling away from him slightly.
He shrugged and smiled.
“Maybe I can read minds,” he said.
“How ‘bout you, tough guy? You got a name? Cause I can’t read minds.”
He extended his hand to shake, and she gently took it. Her hand was warm and soft, despite the fact that she lived in probably one of the harshest towns in North America.
“Name’s Trent. Pleased to m-m-meet you,” he said.
“That’s a nice name,” she said, smiling.
“Can I ask one m-m-more question,” he said.
“Am I single?” she said, even as it was her turn to blush.
At first he didn’t say a word.
“Well?” he said, after a few seconds.
Her smile faded.
“Sort of,” she said.
The mood between them went from kinetic to awkward, and he could tell that she was about to excuse herself to get back to work, but he didn’t want her to go.
He reached into his left side jacket pocket and pulled out a deck of cards.
“W-w-want to see a quick trick?” he said, as he slid the deck out of its box and cut it a few times using only one hand.
She glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure no one was watching her, then she turned back to him and smiled.
“Pick any card, look at it, and if I can tell you w-w-what your card is, I w-win,” he said.
“What‘re we playing for?” she said, with a grin.
He flashed her a wicked smile of his own.
“Let’s discuss that after we p-play.”
As he shuffled the cards some more, he suddenly realized that his headache was gone, and despite the old man’s words of caution, and the sign warning of bear in the area, he was beginning to think that spending the night in Whittier might not be such a bad thing after all.
Chapter 3
GUESSING CHRISTINA’S card had been a relatively simple trick, and judging by her laughter, he had entertained and maybe even impressed her a little. He claimed it had been a feat of mental telepathy, but he had no doubt that she knew it was just a clever ruse.
Even so, she almost certainly had no way of guessing that he had pulled it off by pre-arranging the deck of cards in a specific order that he had memorized ahead of time. There were easier ways to correctly guess her card, but Trent believed that the brain was like a muscle, and that it benefited from regular exercise.
Sometimes that meant doing things the hard way.
As far as his prize was concerned, he received his coffee on the house, and Christina agreed to meet him for a drink after she got off work that evening at 6:00 p.m.—around the same time he would be returning from his glacier cruise.
He would have to call his cousin to let him know that he would be arriving home late, but he knew that Jay would be more than understanding, once he knew that a woman was involved.
Wishing Christina a pleasant afternoon, Trent stepped off the porch and stood for a second in the light misty rain. Since he still had an hour until the boat set off, he decided to give himself a quick tour of the barracks he had spotted at the other end of town, no more than an eighth of a mile away. To save on time, he hopped in his car, stowed his ticket that proved he had paid for a full day’s worth of parking, and drove over to the barracks.
As he entered the shadow of the large building, the air temperature decreased by several degrees. The building was old and discolored and reminded him of an ancient skeleton that had been exposed to the weather for decades. He imagined that when society eventually fell one day, buildings like this would remain and cause future civilizations to wonder at their purpose. One thing that did not require any guesswork as to its meaning was the Keep Out sign posted on the front door.
He stepped out of the car and walked past the heavy rusted door that led into the building. He decided that it might be easier to slip in through one of the ground-level windows that had long ago had its glass broken out. He looked at his watch and then at the overcast sky before beginning to ease his way in through the window.
Trent set his foot down on the decrepit floor and cursed out loud as he stepped into six or so inches of ice-cold, standing water. He pulled his leg back out through the window and squeezed the fabric of his pants leg to wring out the water that had already soaked in.
He hurried back to his cousin’s car and popped the trunk. Jay, like most Alaska residents, traveled with an assortment of supplies for extreme weather conditions, and Trent was pleased but not surprised to find that these included a pair of rubber waders.
Within a couple of minutes, he was armed with a heavy metal flashlight and was wearing his cousin’s camouflaged rubber boots with his suit pants tucked deep inside. He looked like a businessman who had suddenly decided to go fishing. In the shadow of the run-down building, it was colder and damper than he had planned for, but his thick suit did a good job of keeping him warm.
He walked back to the same window, leaned in, and planted his protected foot knowingly and firmly into the frigid, rancid water. He squeezed the rest of his body through the opening. It may have been daylight outside, but it was dark enough inside the abandoned barracks, that he flicked on his flashlight before sloshing his way across the floor.
He couldn’t decide whether the interior was supremely depressing and eerie or beautiful in its stillness. Best he could tell, the place had been stripped clean of anything with potential value over the years. The walls were covered with graffiti tags ranging from mentions of Satan and devil worship to quotes from The Shining—Red Rum being the most replicated quotation of them all.
During his research the night before, he had read that this building was once known as the city under one roof and had bragged of its own bowling alley, movie theater, and even its own church at one time. The concrete behemoth had possessed everything needed to occupy the soldiers who spent the majority of their time within its concrete walls.
Trent didn’t have very long to look around, but he was a naturally curious person and believed in exposing himself and his mind to something new every day. He also hoped that he could use this experience to help amp up his mentalist act.
During his shows, he tried to instill a certain sense of macabre drama in his audience, but he knew that he sometimes he fell short of this goal. He was a good showman, but he had never been afraid of things that frightened most people. He didn’t believe in the ghosts with whom he at times purported to communicate, and as a child he had never feared the dark or that which existed beyond the immediate explanation of rational thought.
He found it easy to amaze and to fool his audiences, but his lack of direct experience with fear made it difficult for him to give people the chill up the spine sensation that they craved.
No amount of imagination could replace knowing what it felt like to be truly scared—something he thought he might be able to experience in a spooky, abandoned building like the one in which he stood. He had tried similar experiments in the past with no success, but he hoped for different results from the ghosts of both soldiers and animals that supposedly haunted this structure.
He moved his way past mold-covered walls with peeling lead paint and gaping holes probably smashed through by kids skipping school. Soon, he came to a stairwell and opened the door. He shone his flashlight down the darkened set of stairs and felt something unexpected—an involuntary tingling at the base of his spine.
He smiled. This was what he wanted people to feel when t
hey saw his act.
As he started his descent, he noticed a large hole in the right wall of the stairwell. He flooded the dark opening with light and saw the framework for the basement ceiling beyond. As he moved the light away, he thought he glimpsed something scuttle across the ceiling struts—maybe a rat.
When he moved the light back to investigate, there was nothing there.
He turned away and continued down the stairs.
With each step, his body uncharacteristically responded to his surroundings, despite the steady calmness of his logical mind. In the same way that the higher-level, reasoning brains of most of his audience members told them that there was nothing truly mystical about his shows, Trent’s common sense knew there was nothing supernatural to be afraid of in the barracks.
But an ancient part of his brain—his lizard brain—was reacting, shooting his body full of adrenaline just in case he suddenly had to run for his life or even worse, fight for it.
He was hyper aware of his surroundings—more like an animal than a man. The skin on the back of his neck prickled. He chuckled about this being a leftover part of the fear response from his ancient pre-human ancestors, when such a response made their hair bristle in an attempt to make their bodies look bigger in the face of danger.
Once again, these were the reactions and emotions he wanted to instill in his audience. He wanted to reach beyond their reason and touch that old part of them that still cowered at the unknown.
When he arrived at the basement floor, Trent opened the stairwell door and stepped into a surreal landscape that reminded him of an underground cave, complete with calcified stalactites hanging from overhead metal pipes.
He illuminated different parts of the room with his flashlight as he walked forward and through an open doorway. Looking around, he realized that he was standing in a crumbling theater, filled with rows of deteriorating fold-up chairs. There was even a stage and the remnants of what looked like a heavy stage curtain that had long since fallen from where it had once hung. It was funny, he thought, that even in this place, he naturally seemed to find his way to the stage.
As he passed through the theater, he stubbed his foot on something solid under the water and almost lost his balance. His hand shot instinctively out to one of the rotting chairs to catch himself, but in the process of doing so, he dropped his flashlight.
As soon as the flashlight hit the ground, its light went out, and he was left in blackness.
Instead of giving in to the fear that might have gripped a normal person, he took a few seconds to focus his mind and to think. Already his eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness as stray shards of light from the floor above illuminated the theater just enough to see his hand held out in front of him. Not wanting to risk tripping or running into something else, he reached into his pocket and took out his smart phone.
His phone’s display seemed painfully bright as it lit up his surroundings. He launched a flashlight application that produced a beam not nearly as powerful as that of a real flashlight, but good enough for his purposes.
He aimed the light at his feet, looking for his lost flashlight, but saw nothing. He poked around with his foot, hoping to hit it, but to no avail. He quickly decided that it was probably ruined from being submerged anyway, so he decided to leave it and to buy his cousin a replacement the next day.
Using the light from his phone, he navigated his way to a crumbling brick wall that had been partially torn down to reveal an entrance to a tunnel. The crumbling bricks were light red in color and in stark contrast to the concrete walls on either side of the opening. The bricks had obviously been applied after the original construction of the building—probably to seal off the tunnel at some point in the building’s history.
He had read online that the buildings in Whittier were connected by a system of tunnels constructed during World War II, but he was surprised to have actually found one. He was sure the tunnels were a hazard at this point even if they were still open all the way through, but his curiosity and his drive to explore took over once again. As he moved toward the tunnel, his heart began beating faster; he started sweating, despite the cold; and his throat grew dry.
He only had a few minutes before he had to head back to the dock and board the tour boat, but he would never get a chance like this again to experience such an eerie tunnel first hand. He inched forward to the hole in the wall, and then stepped through it.
He was again thankful for his cousin’s thick rubber boots, although he wished he had thought to bring a change of clothes. He was being careful to keep his suit as clean as possible, but given his surroundings, it was going to need a thorough dry cleaning before his next show anyway.
The tunnel was constructed of stained white cement just like the rest of the building. On the right and left sides, pipes of all different sizes and colors snaked away into the darkness. The light from his phone only lit up the area a few feet in front of him, so that as he moved forward, the darkness always seemed to be on the verge of consuming him.
For the first time that he could remember, he felt a tiny seed of fear growing inside of his belly.
He smiled, then stopped walking and stared into the darkness.
Perhaps it was his all-too-fertile imagination, but he felt as though the tunnel was a portal to someplace evil. As soon as he let the first hint of terror in, it started to spread, and suddenly, he felt something intangible floating near him. It reminded him of the part of his routine where he pretended to communicate with spirits, but this time the feeling of an otherworldly presence was real. His eyes started to water as a tingle travelled up and down his body like an electrical current.
From the dark silence in front of him, he heard a scratching sound, like a claw grating against the concrete.
He stepped back as quietly as he could, ignoring his pounding heart, his labored breathing, and his primal urge to run away as fast as he could. Despite his growing fear, his rational mind remained detached and marveled at how quickly he had reverted to an animal-like state—nothing more than a collection of sensory input and potential reaction, aimed at one thing—survival.
Trent stood in the darkness, poised near the tunnel’s exit. His sharpened senses scanned the blackness beyond the limits of his makeshift flashlight for any hint of lurking danger.
He heard nothing but silence.
Trent stepped one foot out of the tunnel, and then crinkled his nose. For only a second he detected the faintest scent of alcohol and some sort of chemical hanging in the air.
As he pulled his other leg from the tunnel, he paused to mentally record what he was feeling. It was fear, mixed with irrational belief that there was something evil waiting for him—the perfect emotional cocktail to inspire awe in his spectators.
Making them experience it would be easier said than done, of course, but at last, he knew the taste of the brew he wanted to serve.
He backed away from the tunnel opening, still keeping his eyes, ears, and nose keen. Within minutes, he was at the bottom of the staircase, then back to the ground level and across the floor to the window through which he had entered.
He poked his head out to the overcast day and breathed deep of the clean, crisp air. The hidden sun did little to warm him, but compared to the darkness of the tunnel, the day was bright enough to make him squint.
Looking at his watch, he saw that it was fifteen minutes after noon. With a curse, he hopped down from the weathered sill and ran to the car. He leaned against it to get better leverage for removing the high rubber boots from his feet. As soon as he had them off, he stashed them back in the trunk, jumped into the car, and drove the two hundred or so meters to the dock where his glacial tour awaited.
Once he was away from the old barracks, his muscles were slow to relax, like he’d just been through a demanding physical workout.
He made a note to himself to start drinking as soon as he boarded the boat.
By the time he had parked his car near the cruise entrance and
made it to the gangplank, it was only five minutes before the launch. Luckily, the seats on the tour boat were assigned, so he was assured of getting the window view for which he had paid.
He stopped briefly in the boat’s bathroom to splash cold water on his face. Then, true to his promise, his next stop was the ship’s bar where he ordered a fine draft of amber Alaskan ale before heading to the upper deck where his seat and table awaited.
As he arrived at the top of the interior staircase, he took in the scene. The upper level of the boat had been modeled after a diner, complete with oversized booths, plastic bottles of mustard and ketchup, and metal boxes of napkins that butted up against the large view windows that wrapped around the entire main level of the ship.
Trent followed the numbered plaques and quickly found the seat that his cousin Jay had reserved for him. There were three people already settled in at his table—an older lady accompanied by a younger woman who shared a similar bone structure and who looked to be the woman’s grandchild, and a slim Asian man sitting across from them.
Trent noted the way they sat and how the two women did not make eye contact with the man across from them. He showed the man his cruise ticket with his seat number on it and slid into the window seat after the man stood up to let him through.
Trent took a long sip of his cold beer, inhaled, and then let out a long breath. It was finally time to see some glaciers…and to have a little fun with the passengers.
Chapter 4
AS THE BOAT got underway, the captain made three promises to his hundred or so passengers over the loud speaker. He promised to take everyone to see over twenty glaciers. He promised that his guests would be served fish and chips for lunch as they made the two-hour trip to the first glacier. And he promised that no one would get seasick.
As such, Trent was a bit surprised when his lunch was served with potato chips instead of french fries. Since arriving in Alaska, he had partaken of fish and chips four times. Once, the fish had been tilapia, once cod, and twice he had eaten fresh halibut.
The Whittier Trilogy Page 2
