Hellworld

by Tom Leveen

  I closed the cover, my thoughts accelerating. Insane . . . What if something had gone wrong with John Prinn? What if . . .

  What if it wasn’t an accident after all, and he’d done something to them?

  “Plum?”

  Crap. Dad had woken up, and here I sat on a pile of Mom’s clothes.

  “What’re you doing?”He didn’t look or sound fully awake yet, standing in the doorway and rubbing his eyes.

  I stuffed the book under a mound of shirts so Dad couldn’t see it. I didn’t know why; instinct, I guess. Something told me he didn’t know this copy of the book existed, and I didn’t think showing it to him would be a great idea.

  “I thought, um . . . I thought maybe I’d clean up a little. You know. Donate some of Mom’s stuff?”

  I may as well have stabbed him in the gut with a spear. He dropped his hand from his face and didn’t make eye contact with me as his face twisted and shoulders hunched.

  “Yeah,”he whispered. “Okay.”

  He turned and shuffled back down the hallway. I heard him fall into the couch. A second later he began to cry, the sounds muffled against the couch cushions.

  Way to go, Abigail. Way. To. Go.

  I put all of Mom’s clothes back. John Prinn’s book mattered more now, but I couldn’t do anything about it until I got to an Internet connection.

  I had to tell Charlie what I’d found.

  By the time I’d finished with the clothes and went into the living room, Dad had fallen back to sleep. Just as well for what I needed to do. I hid the book in my room and rushed outside, heading over to Mrs. Brower’s. I knew she had Internet and would probably let me use her desktop to access it. My phone was a cheap month-to-month, calls and texts only.

  Mrs. Brower opened her security door a minute after I rang the bell. “Come in, Abby! What can I do for you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  That struck me as somehow morbid and ironic all at once.

  I’d never talked to her directly about Dad’s depression, but I knew Mrs. Brower to be pretty bright. She had been a nurse back when, according to her, women could be nurses, teachers, or mothers, and nothing more. After her husband passed away, she went back to school and got a degree in psychology, which she then used to work at elementary and high schools as a counselor until retiring a few years ago. She probably could’ve diagnosed Dad just based on how my dad’s walk changed, how often he stayed home, how little he weeded our yard. That was another one of my jobs now, and I’d fallen behind again.

  I felt sure Mrs. Brower had kept up on Mom’s case in the news, maybe even on the crazy quote-unquote documentary TV shows. We’d gotten calls on our landline for a long time, people asking for interviews from all these shows like Revealed: Top Secret Files and Abducted. Vultures is what they were. Dad eventually ripped the phone jacks out of the walls, and after a few months of past-due notices, I managed to get the line shut off. Ever watch a twelve-year-old girl try to argue with a phone company rep? Good times.

  But Mrs. Brower and I had never really talked about the case itself. She’d expressed her condolences, and had been keeping Dad and me in dinners and desserts for a long time. One of the many things I loved about her: a lack of curiosity. Or perhaps an abundance of tact.

  “Hi, Mrs. Brower,”I said, walking in and shutting the door behind me. “I was actually wondering if it would be too much trouble to use your computer? I need to use the Internet, and the library will be closed before I can—”

  Mrs. Brower waved her hand at me. “It’s all yours. It’s in the spare room, down the hall. There’s no password, just hop on. Can I get you something?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

  She smiled at me and went into the kitchen. I heard Jeopardy! playing on her TV and Mrs. Brower shouting answers at it as I went into her spare room.

  The computer predated me, I think, but functioned. I set the book down on the desk and Googled “Charlie Prinn.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t know where he was or what he’d been up to. When taking breaks from homework on the library computers, I’d kept tabs on Charlie. He seemed to have done well for himself. A documentary he’d made won first place at a film festival in Phoenix, making him the youngest person to have done so. He had an IMDB page, most of which consisted of films he’d worked on, with job titles that struck me as behind behind behind the scenes. At least he’d made it into the industry.

  It’s safe to say Charlie was the first crush I’d ever had. He was eleven then, and I immediately wanted to kiss him. Mostly on the cheek. We met when Dad and I went with Mom to Los Angeles to meet with the executive producer of The Spectre Spectrum, a woman named Marcia Trinity. I remembered Charlie being quiet and serious, taking photos of absolutely everything around him with a digital camera. Even back then he’d had thick, dark hair that I wanted to wind around my fingers.

  I was the only human being he took a picture of that day. Everything else was “still-life”artsy shots of doorknobs and things like that. I took it as a compliment.

  After that first LA trip, we’d see each other every so often, like when his family came over for dinner, or when Dad and I visited the studio where they shot interviews and host segments. He always liked my tree house, and by the time Mom was shooting season three, I’d started imagining that’s where we would have our first kiss.

  Then the disappearance happened, and I got busy fast with keeping Dad upright and semi-mobile. I’d kept up with Charlie online after randomly searching his name in Google when I was thirteen, but hadn’t reached out. What would’ve been the point? It had been too long by then, and he appeared to have moved on. No reason to drag him into my personal hell. Which sounds almost funny to say now.

  It took a few minutes of digging around, but I finally found a phone number. I entered it into my phone, and shut the computer down.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Brower,”I said as I passed her kitchen doorway.

  “Oh, you’re welcome, Abby,”she said, standing at the counter mixing dough. “Did you find what you needed?”

  “I did, thanks.”I started to go, then stopped. “Do you remember my mom very much?”

  Mrs. Brower stopped mixing, sending me a surprised glance, which she hurried to soften. “Oh, my,”she said, as if needing to say something and unsure what. “Yes. Yes, I do. She was lovely. Do you mind if I inquire what makes you ask?”

  “Just been thinking about her lately. And what to do about . . . you know. Dad.”

  She nodded, giving me an understanding smile. “I do know how much she cared about you and your father. And you know what I remember most? That Jeep of hers. That bright yellow thing. You used to love it. I always worried about you sitting in the back there, even in your car seat. It always looked like the two of you were going on an adventure somewhere, but I tell you, she drove that car like a presidential limousine when you were inside.”

  A hole opened up in my sternum at the thought of the Jeep. I’d gotten Dad to sell it last year, after it’d sat in the driveway gathering dirt and rain and our loathing. The Jeep somehow embodied everything we missed most about Mom, and I wanted it gone. After I’d nagged Dad into submission—we’d needed the money—he’d said, “We’ll get her a new one.”

  As if she’d be home any minute.

  “Thank you,”I said again, as I always did to Mrs. Brower.

  “Abigail . . . if there’s ever anything else you need . . .”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “Of course, dear. Come back anytime.”

  I said good-bye and went home. Dad still lay on the couch. I found myself veering outside and climbing into my tree house again. With fall starting, the air had already begun to cool, and it helped clear my head. But maybe not enough, because I was still going to make this call and suggest something absurd.

  Which made me stop and stare at my phone, where Charlie’s phone number glared up at me, waiting.

  “What are you doing?”I whispered, and my tree whispe
red nothing in return.

  My plan, if it could rightly be called that, made no sense whatsoever. I knew that. Yet in the end, I think, I just needed to see Charlie. Even if my plans came to nothing, which was more likely than not, maybe seeing him . . . God, talking to him might be enough to get me through this next bout of Dad’s depression. I had to try something.

  My pulse throbbed high in my throat as I hit send. Then, a bit anticlimactically, I got his voice mail. I licked my lips and left a message.

  “Hey, Charlie . . . it’s um, it’s Abby Booth. Hi. So, long time no see, huh? Um . . . so, listen, I found something today that belonged to my mom . . . or maybe your dad. . . . Anyway, it’s a copy of his book. Only, he wrote notes in it. And he crossed out the title and wrote the word ‘wrong’ underneath it. And it got me thinking about them, about the whole disappearance, you know . . . and, um . . . I think I want to go look for them. . . .

  “Do you want to help?”

  7

  Now

  * * *

  “Do you guys smell that?”I say to Charlie and Selby.

  “Fire,”Charlie says. “Hold up.”

  We stop, and he presses the phone to his stomach to douse the flashlight. We plunge into darkness to look for evidence of flames.

  “I don’t see anything,”I say. “What could be on fire in here, anyway? There’s nothing to burn.”

  “Dunno,”Charlie says. He brings the phone back up and we keep walking. “Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it’s outside, and we’re closer than we thought. That’s why we can smell it.”

  “Perfect,”Selby says. Her voice sounds weak. “We get out of this fucking cave and into an inferno. Hallelujah.”

  The odor gets stronger as we move forward. There’s no question something is on fire, but what? And where?

  About an hour later, Charlie checks the book against a symbol on the cave wall.

  “That’s it,”he says, like he’s trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “That’s twelve, that’s the last one.”

  “So we’re almost there,”Selby says. “Let’s have that water.”

  Charlie holds our last bottle, and weighs it in his hand for a second. “We don’t know what’s out there. This might be the last water for a while.”

  “The RV,”I say.

  “If the RV is in one piece, sure. We don’t know. We just don’t. Maybe that’s what’s on fire.”

  “Damn,”Selby whispers.

  “Only one way to find out,”I say.

  Charlie nods, and we continue our hike. We do not take a drink.

  After another hour passes, my throat dry, my legs weak, my eyes bleary . . . we see it. The entrance to the cave. Or rather, what’s left of it.

  “Holy shit,”Selby says.

  Despite untold hours in the dark and a day’s worth of rock climbing and hiking, not to mention the horrors we’d faced at the pit, we don’t rush to the mouth of the cave. Instead, we stop cold and try to comprehend the scene before us.

  When we’d first come in, the cave entrance hadn’t been more than a long crevice cut into a sheer cliff face, reminding me of a cracked ice cube. We’d had to come in one at a time, and sideways at that, following the crevice along for about ten yards before it opened up into the first chamber.

  Now that crevice is gone. Utterly demolished. Standing at the far end of the first chamber, we’re looking out a massive hole where the crevice once existed, like being in a miniature stadium. Boulders and smaller rocks are strewn across the ground, as if the entrance had been dynamited. It’s nighttime, and I can see stars glimmering faintly outside . . . but only through smoke.

  The desert is aflame. Immediately outside the hole, the ground has been scorched, and charred ruins of bushes and cacti dot the landscape. But farther out, beyond our sight, it’s obvious fires are raging, an orange glow on the horizon lighting the sky.

  “The RV,”Selby says. Her voice is stoic.

  Our big van is still there, and apparently in one piece. The driver’s side of the vehicle is blackened, as if attacked by a dragon’s breath. The surrounding area, for as far as I can see, is as if a wildfire has swept through desert, burning everything to cinders. My nose wrinkles at the scent of smoke and burnt rubber. A greasy taste bathes my tongue, and I close my mouth.

  “Take it slow,”Charlie says. “Just in case there’s . . . if they’re out there.”

  Together, we pick through fallen and broken rocks, scanning in every direction, waiting to be ambushed by any of the things that have flown from the pit. But the desert is silent. We walk around crumbled earth and deep footprints the diameter of truck tires, stamped into the sandy and brittle earth.

  “They knew which way to go,”I say. “To get out of the cave, I mean. They knew this was the exit.”

  “Maybe,”Charlie says.

  We reach the RV’s passenger door, which is oddly pristine and unblemished compared to the burnt driver’s side.

  “If they’d gone down the side tunnels, I think we would have heard them,”I say.

  Charlie grits his teeth and says nothing. He opens the door carefully, and for one horrible moment, I’m sure some gruesome hand will reach out and grab his entire skull, dragging him screaming into the RV. But no. Still quiet.

  Charlie goes inside, and Selby and I follow. I close the door behind us, and lock it, then almost laugh. Really? Locking it will help?

  Charlie goes to the fridge as Selby and I collapse on the long white couch in the front half of the RV. He pulls out water bottles and deli meats.

  “Still cold,”he says, and hands us the water bottles. Selby and I tear the caps off and drink, then the three of us shove the food down, trying to go slow but not succeeding. I never knew honey ham and string cheese could taste so good.

  As we lean back and breathe, grateful to be out of the cave, hydrated and fed, Selby gets to her feet.

  “Think I’m gonna lie down,”she says, and totters to the queen-size bed in the back.

  “I should check your bandage,”I say, except I can’t make myself get up. It doesn’t matter; Selby waves halfheartedly and flops face-first onto the mattress, her boots sticking past the edge.

  I don’t remember anything until sunlight shining on my face wakes me up.

  Sunrise.

  8

  Then

  * * *

  Charlie called me back later that night.

  “Abby Booth,”he said, and I could hear him smiling. The thought of him smiling at me made my internal organs tickle.

  “Hey, hi,”I said, quick-stepping outside and climbing into the tree house. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good. You?”

  “Well. You know.”

  “Nope, I don’t. Hence the asking.”

  He’s still smiling, I thought. Teasing. That was great. Sadly, it was the most fun I’d had in a very long time.

  Then the reason for my call smacked me back to reality. “So, I found this copy of your dad’s book.”

  The smile went away from Charlie’s voice. “Yeah, tell me about that.”

  “It’s a copy of Myth of Gods. But your dad, or someone . . . I assume it was him . . . someone wrote all over it. Notes and drawings and stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s his handwriting. I know it’s not my mom’s.”

  “Huh,”Charlie said.

  It wasn’t the burst of excitement I’d hoped for.

  “It just gave me this idea today that . . . I mean, I haven’t really thought it through or anything, but what if . . . just, like, what if we went and looked for ourselves? You know? Went to the cave and just looked around, tried to find something everyone else missed?”

  Charlie took his time responding. “Everyone, meaning all the dozens of cops and cavers and rescue teams?”

  “Yeah.”

  Even before I said it, I heard his point, loud and clear. What could I possibly find that all those professionals had missed? And after five years?

  “It’s an interesting thought,”Char
lie said, surprising me. “It’s crossed my mind before.”

  “It has? For real?”

  “Totally. Maybe not to the point of actually going out there, but yeah. I’ve always wondered. But what did you see in the book? We don’t talk for five years, and out of nowhere you want to go all Indiana Jones? What’s going on?”

  His tone was serious. Concerned, even. For a second, I wrestled with the guilt of having not tried to contact him before now. I was eleven when Mom disappeared, and Dad and I had our hands full, first with the search, then with each other. Of course I’d thought about Charlie, wanted to talk to him, wanted to hang on to him. But one day led to another, which led to weeks then months, and suddenly trying to talk to him felt stupid. But I never forgot him. Never. Guys at school before I had to switch to online; guys at work, who were way too old and way too absolutely never; guys I happened to see when grocery shopping—all of them had to pass the Charlie Test, and none of them came close.

  Now, hearing the worry in his voice, everything I’d had to keep to myself over the years came tumbling out before I could stop it.

  “It’s Dad. He’s depressed. I mean, like, clinically. He keeps losing jobs, and I can barely get him off the couch anymore. He’s just not doing well at all, and it’s because he thinks she’s coming home. And she’s not, Charlie. You know that, right? You know they’re not coming back.”

  “Yeah,”Charlie said softly.

  “But your dad changed his mind about something. I’ve been going through these notes tonight and most of it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s like everything he wrote in the book, he went back and changed his mind. And, I don’t know, it just struck me as weird, and I started wondering if maybe there was more to the story than anything we’ve been told.”

  Charlie’s concerned tone switched suddenly to something sharper. “You think my dad had something to do with them going missing?”

  “No, not necessarily,”I said quickly. “Just that there was something going on at that cave that we don’t know about.”