by Aiden James
We can’t afford to wait…every second counts! I’ll lead the way….
But the memory of the broken bridge slats now returned to John’s awareness. How in the hell would they get to the other side of the bridge? It just wasn’t possible…. Maybe there would be another way, once they made it past the dragon.
Yes, that’s it. Some other way…. Let’s go!
“Did you hear that?” she asked, craning her neck toward the blackened chasm, where hundreds of orbs still moved, glowing in the distance like colorful fireflies flitting to and fro above the chasm’s depth before them.
Hanna raised her eyes, looking in the same direction as her sister. Even Miriam responded, her head cocked to where she listened intently. Unfortunately, neither male sensed what the females had locked onto…at least not at first.
But then the floor beneath them began to rumble again. Softer this time, like a seismic aftershock. Fearing the room might collapse this time, and ready to force everyone out in a mad dash to the bottom of the staircase, John hesitated after his first step from the room’s present safety. Not because of the serpent menace from earlier. ‘Uktena’ remained quiet for now, though no doubt lurking somewhere in the grand temple…this immense gorge far removed from the modern light of day. Something else gave him pause… something coming.
The multitude of oval lights suddenly veered as a group away from the entrance, speeding into the darkened depths to their left until their glow became barely detectible. While the earth’s rumble continued to grow louder, yet another hostile surge approached, rising from the darkest depths to their right.
“No frigging way!” David hissed, frowning.
The sound of an immense swarm of hornets, or wasps, filled the chasm…an incredible horde of anger roaring as it swerved upward, a swelling black mass still discernible in the pitch void before them. It headed for the entrance.
With nowhere to go, the dying fire that in the meantime had melted the demon’s scepter into a puddle of gold laced with floating gems provided the room’s only illumination. The angry swarm had reached the stairs…moving up fast.
Miriam and Hanna murmured in fear, while Evelyn cried out, her voice panicked… David, too. And the goddamned floor began to shake even harder, making it difficult to stand.
Where are you, Grandfather?? Show us a way for escape!! Don’t desert me now!!!
The sound of canine whining arose from a far corner of the room, drawing their collective attention. Nothing visible, until John remembered his flashlight. He pulled it out of his pocket and turned it on, aiming the beam in that direction. Still no sign of the animal, but some of the older remains fell away from the wall across from the altar, near the log pole racks where David and the women had been bound.
Move now, Running Deer! The Great Mother will soon devour this place. Trust and follow me!!
“Quick! Everyone over here!!” urged John, leading the way to where old bones continued to fall from the wall and onto the floor.
Once he arrived, a cool draft greeted him. Evelyn and David remarked about it.
A hidden passageway beyond the wall??
Aghast looks on David and Miriam’s faces, as well as similar disgust and hesitation from Evelyn. Human remains…corpses from the last millennia, piled here to block the passageway. Some old and decayed to the bone. Others more recent, where the rotting stench announced the presence of putrid flesh long before the flashlight’s glow revealed scurrying beetles and maggots feeding on severed limbs and entrails. But this wasn’t the time to be squeamish.
“Help me pull the rest of this out of the way!”
John raised his voice above the din, being the first to reach in and pull out the debris. Entangled with a severed arm turned purple from recent decay, a child’s ribcage and shreds of an old fashioned shirt from more than half a century ago pulled free.
More cold air! If we just don’t think about any of what’s here we might make it through before it’s too late….
“Hurry!! We haven’t got all damned day!” John glanced warily behind him, directing the flashlight briefly in that direction…the doorway blackened by a deep shadow. The first few specks of whatever made up the swarm now crept into the room, twinkling orange and yellow dots in the light, like sparks from a foundry.
David and the women glimpsed this as well, enough incentive to get moving. Amid gasped breaths and dry wretches, everyone tore frantically at the human wall, until enough of a gap to slide through. As if reminding them to hurry, the wolf barked from within the passageway, two familiar amber eyes provided encouragement to trust and not hesitate.
A thunderous shout from behind them announced Teutates’ entrance to the room, the swarm swiftly surrounding everyone while the quake that had seized the floor traveled up the walls. Miriam and David cried out from stings, slapping at the back of their necks and shoulders.
There really are wasps or hornets with this thing?? Shit!!
With an urgent shove, John sent Evelyn and Hanna through the hole dripping with gore and yellowish excretions unwise to think about. By then several prickling stings attacked a small exposed area on John’s lower back. But he hastened David and Miriam through the hole before either one glimpsed the monstrous giant standing a few feet behind him.
Relying only on instinct, since futile to face the angry demon and expect not to become part of the wall of gore, he ducked without looking back. The top half of his snow suit disappeared, and he felt the thick fabric fall away, Teutates’ razor talons separating it from him without so much as a snag against the stitching. He might not be so lucky the next time.
John launched himself through the hole, surprised when he landed unharmed on the wall’s other side.
***
The narrow passageway sloped upward at a severe incline, which Evelyn remarked might’ve been designed to bring supplies quickly down into the underground temple. The immediate image that came to John’s mind was of sacrifice victims thrown down into this chute. Perhaps the human remains they just removed were part of a plug or clog in such a tunnel. He shuddered at the thought—especially with the bloodthirsty fiend responsible for the demand now hovering on the wall’s other side.
“Evelyn, take my flashlight and lead the way!” he told her, keeping his voice hushed while handing it too her. “David, you and Miriam go next, and I’ll follow behind!”
Evelyn nodded after casting a worried gaze behind him. David and Miriam still grimaced from their latest assault, and as the sting grew steadily worse in John’s back, he understood they’re shared plight.
All the more reason to get moving!
He urged everyone to hurry, casting another nervous glance behind him. The flashlight’s glow moved away, leaving him in deepening darkness. He sensed something watched him from the midst of the gore-filled entrance to this tunnel behind him, and the fluttering mass of stinging insects hovered angrily on the other side of the wall. He could feel the intense malice and frustration from Teutates. But for some reason the demon couldn’t follow him and the others…yet. Something else was coming to the demon’s aid, to eradicate that problem…soon. Then swift vengeance to follow.
Everyone keep moving…. Hanna stay close to Evelyn…that’s it! Good job everyone…now just a little quicker!!
Able to stand at first, he and David soon scraped their heads on the ceiling. To everyone’s dismay, Evelyn reported that the passageway’s size dramatically shrunk ahead of her, where it became just big enough to crawl through. And still no clear indication where this would lead…she grumbled her doubt that it led anywhere.
It simply can’t be a dead end…and do I always have to ask you, Ududu, to appear and help? Would it be too much to ask you to stay with us?? Especially since the buzzing sound is getting louder again… the demon will be on his way again in a moment!
“There looks like a sliver of light ahead!” Evelyn announced, after pulling herself into the hole with Hanna clinging to her jean cuffs.
Everyone else
waited in darkness until their turn…Miriam next and then David behind her. John heard a muffled cry of excitement from inside the chasm, but couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. Meanwhile, the encroaching swarm behind him grew steadily louder.
Teutates has made it through…here he comes!!
“John, get in here—now!” David called to him. “Evelyn just told us there’s a big opening up ahead, and she hears people out there!!”
Spurred by hope, John felt along the walls for the entrance to this narrower section. Just as he pulled himself up into the dark, cramped tunnel, the swarm rose fast along the passageway behind him.
They’re closing in… fast!!
Desperate, he squirmed to keep up, his arms and legs fatigued by all that he’d been through already. David’s voice still called to him, though muffled…moving further away. He could hear excitement ahead of him. His granddaughters calling frantically for him to hurry…. Help was coming. Now David and Miriam’s voices, too.
I can’t move…so tired and…. I’m stuck!!.
You can still make it out of here, Running Deer!! YES, you CAN!!!
A surge of energy accompanied the voice, enough to overpower the fear brought on by the angry swarm creeping up the tunnel to get him. John suddenly pictured his escape. So simple and clever. But impossible to realize unless at peace with himself.
The hornets, wasps, or whatever the little bastards were, managed to squeeze in around him. Several more stings, this time along his neck and right side of his face. But the vision remained strong—even when his booted ankles were seized by a mighty grip. John unzipped the front of his snowsuit and wiggled out. He did so before the entity could crush the bones in his legs.
Scrambling in a fervent fight for his survival, John crawled away from his clothes, while the earthen walls of the tunnel began to crumble around him. Clad only in his thermal underwear, he saw the daylight that brought such excitement to Evelyn and then David. He could even see them, stick figures standing at the edge of wherever this passageway led. And it began to widen again, enough to where he could crouch and move a little faster.
Just a little ways to go… It’s good to see Hanna and Evelyn smile again…and David looks relieved…. There’s Butch, and that kid named Chris—he’s okay…. Thank God most of us made it—
Evelyn and Hanna’s smiles suddenly disappeared and David’s relieved look turned to one of horror—both for what they saw coming up behind John and the imminent collapse of the cave entrance around them all. Something painful ripped across John’s shoulders and the back of his head, the force sending him tumbling down upon the unstable ground, just a few feet from where the limestone entrance to this place gave way to knee-deep snow.
“EVERYONE GET DOWN!!!”
A multitude of small explosions, and the sound of metal ricocheting off the walls around him, hastened the structure’s final collapse. Screams of terror around him as the earth opened behind him, a huge maw prepared to devour the unholy temple in its entirety. A monstrous groan followed, while blackness clouded his vision and awareness.
The last thing he remembered, a lone wolf stood between a pair of snowmobiles, where detectives James Russell and Thomas Calhoun and a Tennessee state trooper crouched with high-powered rifles drawn. The wolf panted, smiling content, and then trotted to the nearby woods. No one else seemed to notice.
Only John.
Maybe it’s better this way…and things can finally return to the way they once were….
“May the Great Spirit make it so,” John whispered, just before he lost consciousness.
Chapter Forty
“Auntie’s place is coming up, just beyond those pine trees.”
David pointed to the craftsman bungalow built in the early 1930s. The only residence Ruth Gaurni’er had ever known, it seemed cold and sullen. He glanced in the rearview mirror, where the looks on his children’s faces matched his own worried look. Even Miriam, who remained reticent following the ordeal in Cades Cove that ended yesterday morning, looked concerned, her brow furrowed as she peered through the passenger window of the second minivan they rented. The previous vehicle impounded by the police, it wouldn’t be returned to the rental car agency in Gatlinburg until Monday morning.
Only Ruth seemed at peace, despite her Chattanooga home’s outward hostility. After all, it still was her home, a place she knew as well as it knew her.
“Wow-w-w!” enthused Jillian, though sounding more like she would if about to mount a scary roller-coaster or visit the commercial haunted houses in Denver during Halloween season. “So that’s your house, huh?”
“Yes it is,” said Ruth, her tone relieved.
David wondered if it had more to do with the strange events in Colorado or the harrowing encounter she and the kids had two nights ago in Gatlinburg, or both.
“It’s too bad ya’ll can’t stay longer with me,” Ruth continued, her sadness slipping through. “But I understand when you can’t get the flight home you would’ve liked. Besides, ya’ll will need a couple days to recuperate from everything you’ve gone through, don’t you know.”
David understood this last part came mainly for him and Miriam, since his wife was due back at work tomorrow, and he would return after New Years Day. Flying back to Denver early tonight left them only a few more hours to spend with his aunt.
The events over the past two weeks still blurred, at least what happened since they arrived in Gatlinburg a few nights ago seemed clearer. The gruesome details of what he’d witnessed in the sacrificial room of Teutates’ temple would never be erased. And his experience with the demon itself left him broken spiritually. Not to mention his tender wrists and the numerous wasp stings along the back of his neck and shoulders, still sensitive. He felt disconnected, whether that meant from God or his life’s purpose here on earth. No matter how he sorted through everything, it would take some time before he felt like himself again.
And I better show up with a smile at the office on Wednesday.
Then there’s Miriam. She worried him, and not only because she came very close to being sacrificed. That would’ve been devastating enough. But something happened to her while pinned to that bloody altar…something taken from her. Her innocence? Not sure if that’s it…maybe just the part of her that believed in ‘good over evil’. Her tender spirit that so loved the simple things in life had been ravished and damaged. Beyond repair? Only time would tell.
“Well, come on inside so we can visit for a little while,” said Ruth, after David parked the Voyager in front of her house. “I can fix some orange pekoe tea for anyone interested in having any.”
“That sounds nice,” said Miriam, pausing to smile at Ruth before gingerly stepping down from the passenger seat.
David again sensed her disconnect, though her tone demonstrated a fight to get through it. That’s good.
“Can we hook up the 360?” Tyler asked, gathering his backpack that contained all of his game gear.
“Son, we won’t be here that long…just a few hours,” David reminded him.
Everyone stepped out of the van and headed for the porch. The pussy-willow’s barren wands near the front door brought back painful memories from his youth. He quickly sought to push them from his mind.
“Ah-h-h, Dad!” Christopher whined. “It doesn’t take that long to set up the X-Box and tear it down. Please!!”
Tyler echoed his brother’s complaint, which drew a pleading look from Miriam to just go along with their request.
“Really, David, I don’t mind if they want to do that,” said Ruth. The first one up the steps to her front door, she had her key ready. “I’ve got an extra TV they can use upstairs.”
She unlocked the door and pushed it open. It let out a painful groan, as if the house actually had gotten used to having no one there.
David set her suitcases down in the foyer, near the oak staircase that led to her bedroom upstairs. Intent on taking them up for her, he paused to take in the essence of the place, which see
med different to him from his nocturnal visit back in October. It didn’t feel the same in daylight.
“Oh, don’t worry about those for now, David,” Ruth advised, peering around the corner from the kitchen, an empty tea kettle in her hand. “We can get them later, after we’ve had a chance to rest.”
“Come in here and join us, hon’,” said Miriam, calling him from the living room.
His heart skipped at the sound of her voice. Almost normal…so soon? Please God, let it be true!
“All right,” he agreed, stepping past Max’s favorite pillow, still lying on the floor near the entrance to the living room.
In the final weeks before Ruth had her cocker spaniel euthanized, his arthritis worsened to the point he could no longer climb up on her lap. David recalled overhearing her conversation with Miriam about her beloved dog on Christmas Eve.
The kids sat on the long couch, the only early American piece that David remembered from his childhood. Everything else had been added since then. Jillian soon listened to her mom and great aunt chat about her extensive bone china tea cup and saucer collection, proudly displayed inside a glassed cabinet next to the kitchen.
After Ruth carried the full teapot and a tray of holiday cookies into the living room, she set them down on the coffee table and settled into her favorite chair next to the television. Miriam sat in a matching overstuffed chair next to her, and David relaxed in an older wooden rocker nearby after adjusting the thick seat cushion.
For the next half hour they enjoyed the refreshments and light conversation, until the boys grew antsy enough to ask her about the TV upstairs. Ruth rose from her chair to join them, but Tyler assured her that he could figure it out on his own. Once she gave him directions on where to find this particular bedroom, just off the first landing, he and Christopher grabbed the backpack containing the Xbox game system and disappeared upstairs.
