Riverwatch

by Joseph Nassise

  Jake was beginning to regret that decision.

  He hated these meetings with Blake. Held once a week, they were ostensibly to check the progress the crew was making on the renovations. Blake’s nature had always made Jake feel inferior. The man was a pompous, condescending ass who wanted everything done yesterday, and got verbally vicious when it wasn’t.

  No, this was not going to be a fun meeting.

  Jake pulled into the cul-de-sac at the end of the drive, and parked beside a sleek, silver Rolls Royce, circa 1937. A wide brick walkway curved across the lawn to the main door of the mansion.

  He picked up the door’s knocker, a heavy piece of brass molded into the shape of a lion’s head, and rapped it sharply three times.

  A moment passed before the butler, Charles, opened the door. He glanced at Jake’s attire with clear disapproval. Jake was still wearing the jeans and work-shirt he’d had on at the site. Coming across the threshold, Jake returned his best Up Yours stare, with a certain sense of satisfaction.

  It was bad enough that he had to take such flack from Blake. Taking it from the man’s servant was just too much.

  Without a word, Charles turned and led the way through the first floor until they reached a set of broad oak doors near the back of the house. Having been there before, Jake knew it was the library.

  "Wait here a moment," Charles said, in that toneless servant voice he had cultivated and turned away without waiting for an acknowledgment. He knocked softly on the door in front of him before noiselessly sliding into the room. When he returned, he indicated Jake was to be admitted.

  Jake stepped inside and heard the doors close firmly behind him.

  Blake was seated at a desk formed from a massive piece of black stone that squatted in the middle of the room’s hardwood floor like an altar erected to some particularly vile god. He didn’t look up or acknowledge Jake’s presence in any way. He merely continued to read through the papers held up before him.

  Instead of standing there and growing uncomfortable, which Jake knew was the purpose of this little ‘exercise’, he used the time to study his employer.

  As always, whenever a few days had passed without seeing Blake, Jake was repulsed anew by the sight of his client. It wasn’t that he was physically disgusting; he didn’t have grotesquely scarred features, no loathsome birth defects that made looking at him a trial in itself. Nothing one could point to and say, "There’s the problem." Nothing like that. Instead, it was an odd sense of discomfort that crept into his bones, an unsettling feeling that slowly came over him. A feeling that said the heart at the center of this fruit was shrunken and black with rot. Add to that Blake’s long bony frame and small evil looking eyes set in a ferret-sharp face, and Jake figured it was pretty understandable that he felt the way that he did.

  Blake continued the charade for several long moments, letting the silence stretch.

  Finally, "You’re late," he said, in a tone that showed his own disgust, never once looking up at his visitor.

  "I know," Jake replied calmly.

  Blake suddenly threw the papers onto the surface of the desk and Jake found himself staring into the man’s beady little eyes. "I suppose you have some kind of excuse?"

  Jake still hadn’t been offered a seat. He knew he wouldn’t be. He chose to ignore the verbal jibe as well. "I’m afraid I have some bad news," he answered instead. "I was forced to stop work in the cellar this afternoon because of something my workmen uncovered."

  The look changed in the man’s eyes as his words registered, and for just a moment Jake thought he saw a gleam of excitement there before his employer’s expression went carefully neutral.

  "What do you mean?" Blake asked, his tone now as flat as his expression.

  "We finished pumping out the river when we uncovered the entrance to a set of stairs leading deeper underground. I went down with my foreman and followed the tunnel to a point some two hundred yards later, where it has been bricked shut. I thought it was best if we waited to see what you wanted us to do before going any further."

  "I see…." Blake replied, and then swung his chair around so he was facing the window, his back to Jake, so that the younger man wouldn’t see wide smile of surprise that spread slowly across his face. "And what did you do then?"

  "Nothing. I sent the boys home, locked up, and came on over here."

  "I see," Blake responded again.

  The silence stretched for an unusually long time, with Blake staring out the window lost in thought, and Jake reluctant to disturb him and break the man’s good mood, but finally, Jake felt that if he didn’t interrupt, they’d be here until Tuesday.

  "Mr. Blake? What do you want me to do about it?"

  "Hhmm? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all."

  The chair swung back around. Jake was unable to read anything behind the man’s carefully blank expression. "I’m afraid I’m going to have to think about this for awhile before I come to any decisions. Why don’t you and your men take the next few days off?"

  Then came the clincher.

  "With pay, of course," Blake said.

  Jake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Days off? With pay? Had somebody turned the world upside-down and not told him? But Jake was nobody’s fool. Whether he believed that Blake was really being a nice guy or if he had ulterior motives, Jake knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He quickly agreed with the idea, left off the paperwork he’d been requested to bring, and made plans to get back in contact with the man before the end of the week. Then he got the hell out of there before Blake could change his mind.

  A few days off?

  Hell, yes. Sounded good to him.

  Climbing into his Jeep, Jake finally allowed himself to grin at his good fortune.

  *** ***

  Once the fool had gone, Blake let a triumphant smile emerge as he pondered the implications of the news. His ancestor’s journal had long hinted at a secret vault upon one of the family estates, but after spending thousands of dollars and months of effort searching for it, he’d finally dismissed it several years ago as foolish nonsense.

  Today’s news changed everything.

  There was no sense putting himself at risk to be certain, however. He’d pretend to give the situation some thought and then call that young fool back later tonight. He’d tell him he’d changed his mind and give him permission to investigate further.

  His smile grew wider as he realized what he had hunted for for so long might now be close to his grasp.

  Which wasn’t really all that surprising, by any means.

  He was, after all, a Blake.

  Chapter Four: Game Night

  Sam made a covert roll of his eight-sided die. Noting the result, he made an announcement to the players in front of him. "Five of the eight warriors you just killed sit suddenly back up and start rising to their feet."

  "I think we’re in trouble," Jake said to Katelynn, who nodded her agreement. Turning to Sam, Jake said, "Chelmar steps back and prepares to cast a sleep spell."

  "Okay. And what about Alganea?"

  "She stands a few feet in front of him, out of his line of sight but close enough to defend him if the things attack again."

  More dice tumble, and another grave pronouncement is made: "The first ghoul reaches his feet and turns his head in your direction. His eyes seem to glow when they see you, and he slowly begins lumbering toward you, the sword in his right hand raised overhead threateningly."

  "Hurry up, Jake!" Katelynn said excitedly.

  "Okay, okay. Chelmar steps up next to Alganea and casts the spell, making sure before he does so that she is behind him and therefore out of the area of the spell’s effect." Jake smiled at Katelynn winningly, as if to say that he had everything under control.

  "Chelmar, you realize that you cast the spell properly, but it doesn’t seem to have any affect on the ghouls, who are in fact undead, and therefore are not affected by mortal requirements like sleep. The first ghoul is almost close enough to strike, and lo
oking past his shoulder both of you can see that now the other four have also climbed to their feet and are starting to move in your direction."

  Both of the players knew that their characters were in real trouble now. If they didn’t think of something soon, they would probably die here in the dark caverns beneath Zolthane Mountain.

  It was just after 10:00 pm and the three friends were deep in the midst of a session of Swords and Sorcerers, testing Sam’s latest creation for playability. They were seated around the table in the kitchen of Jake’s apartment, with Sam on one side and Jake and Katelynn on the other, their books, papers, and charts spread out before them. The lights in the room were off, the only illumination coming from half a dozen candles that cast a reddish glow across their faces, adding to the atmosphere of the game.

  Loki, Jake’s Akita, slept contentedly at his feet, head resting lightly in his paws, lost in his own fantasy world of dreams.

  The game went on. "I reach out and yank Chelmar out of the range of the ghoul’s sword," Katelynn said quickly in response to Sam as soon as she heard the magic had failed to work as they’d planned.

  Another roll of the dice. "You manage to pull him back just in time, Alganea. But the ghouls close in."

  The game continued in that vein for another hour or so, with Katelynn and Jake managing to have their characters escape from the clutches of the ghouls, only to find themselves lost in the labyrinthine maze of passages that led them deeper beneath the earth, setting the stage for next week’s adventure.

  Jake had seem distracted for most of the evening and as they were cleaning up, Sam decided to broach the subject. Jake was staring off into space, absently stroking his dog’s head, when Sam said, "What’s up, Jake? You usually enjoy poking holes in all my hard work. Sometimes I feel that the only reason you play anymore is to make certain I don’t pull a fast one on the unsuspecting public. You’re letting Katelynn do all the work tonight."

  Jake laughed. "Sorry, Sam. Just distracted I guess. We had an incident at the site today and I guess it’s been on my mind all night."

  He had both Sam and Katelynn’s attention now. "Somebody get hurt?" Katelynn asked, her face showing concern, the adventure module in her hand forgotten now.

  "Nah, nothing like that." Remembering his first reaction to Rick’s appearance in his trailer, Jake almost smiled. "My men have been working in the cellar all week, pumping out the river so we can lay the wood floor, you know?"

  Sam and Katelynn nodded. Spending as much time together as they did, they’d become almost as familiar with Blake’s renovation plans as Jake.

  "Once Rick’s team pumped out the water, they found this shallow trench bisecting the entire basement. And there, at the bottom of the trench, is a set of stairs leading down into the earth." Jake looked up from where he was staring at the floor, to see if his friends were following his explanation.

  They were, so he told them the rest.

  About his gut reaction to the stone. About the tunnel he and Rick uncovered, and of the journey the two of them made into the darkness beneath. He told them of a phone call he had earlier that afternoon from Blake, and of the man’s request that he and his crew break through the barrier that blocked off the end of the tunnel in order to discover what lay beyond.

  "What are you going to do?" Sam asked.

  "Just what I was told to do. Break down that wall in the morning to see what’s on the other side."

  "Want some company?" Sam asked.

  "Sure. Just come ready to work. Taking down a brick wall in open air in the light of day is one thing. Having to do the same while underground in a dimly lit and ventilated tunnel is another. It isn’t going to be easy."

  Throughout the conversation, Katelynn sat quietly, doing her best to cope with the flood of feelings at Jake’s revelation. A strange sense of unease uncoiled like a snake in her belly, all cold and hungry, telling her to leave things well enough alone, not to disturb whatever it was that had lain to rest in the dark depths of that tunnel for so long. She was suddenly certain that it would do them no good to intrude.

  At last she spoke up. "Do you really think it’s a good idea to go down there, Jake?" she asked tentatively, not trusting her own feelings to protest any harder.

  "We checked it out pretty thoroughly this afternoon. That tunnel is hewn from solid rock. There’s no danger of it collapsing on us," he replied, misunderstanding her reason for caution.

  Katelynn couldn’t find a way to voice her concern without looking silly and superstitious, so she let the matter drop. Mentally, she sought some rational explanation for the fear that was rapidly spreading through her, but found that none existed. Something was going to happen when they went down there, something awful. She knew it; could feel it in her bones.

  While Katelynn struggled to identify her feelings, Jake and Sam quickly agreed to meet the next morning just before seven. After that, the gathering broke up quickly.

  The ride home with Sam passed in silence. When they pulled into her drive and he walked her to her door, she tried once more. "You guys really ought to just leave things alone and let Blake hire some professionals to investigate that tunnel. What if it’s unsafe and the two of you get trapped down there?"

  Sam sighed. "We’re not going to get trapped, Katelynn. You heard Jake. That tunnel has been standing for a long time. One more day isn’t going to make a difference; it’s not going to suddenly come tumbling down around our ears. You’re just jealous that you can’t go with us because you have class in the morning." He chuckled, not recognizing the depths of her fear. "Go on, get inside," he said. "We’ll tell you all about it at lunch tomorrow. We’ll be fine. You’ll see." With a wave he turned away down the steps.

  Katelynn was still standing there, watching, as the taillights of his car disappeared around the curve at the end of her street.

  In the darkness, she shivered.

  Chapter Five: Halloran

  As Jake was telling his friends about that afternoon’s discovery, across town another type of celebration was going on.

  Kyle Halloran was getting drunk. He sat at the bar in Mikey’s Place, his oversized frame dwarfing the padded stool, his thick, meaty hands wrapped around a frosted mug of beer, his ninth of the night.

  His craggy, square-jawed face reflected the emotions roiling there just beneath the surface. He sat there, dressed in the same sweat-stained T-shirt and jeans he’d been wearing all day while working under the hot sun, and let the anger swell inside him like gas in an overripe corpse.

  Fuck Jake! he thought savagely. Bust my ass all day long for the guy and does he show any gratitude? Hell, no!

  He slammed the mug up to his lips, drunkenly unaware that the glass cracked against his teeth. He took a long swallow, finishing off the drink.

  The first time I ask for a raise and what do I get? "Sorry, Halloran, you’re just not working hard enough for me to give you one yet," he mimicked in a high squeaky voice.

  Halloran slapped several bills down on the counter and stumbled out into the night air. The cool crispness cut through the beer-induced haze, sharpening his anger. Insisting on a raise earlier in the day had gotten him fired. Now, as Halloran stumbled off down the street, barely conscious of where he was going, his thoughts turned to how he could pay Jake back for his prejudice against him.

  After considering several plans, each of which involved physical damage to Jake himself, Kyle stopped for a moment under a streetlamp, trying to discern just where he was. The sign before him read "Lamplighter Lane", and it took him several moments to realize that he had wandered in the opposite direction of his apartment.

  "Shit!" he swore into the darkness, turning to go back.

  As he turned, the peak of a house caught his eye as it rose over the tree line to his left.

  It was the Blake estate once known as Stonemoor, the very place he’d been working for the last several weeks. Seeing it brought his thoughts of revenge back into focus, and a plan began to form. He’d heard some
thing that afternoon that he could use against Caruso.

  Something about the cellar…

  Then he had it. A secret passage! Cantellis’ crew had found a secret passage down in the cellar. Joey Henderson had told him about it at lunch that afternoon. He’d barely heard him at the time and now he wished he had listened more closely. Hadn’t he said something about it leading to some kind of secret room, a storage room, or a …

  A treasure vault.

  The idea took sudden hold. Why else would somebody build a room underground that nobody could get to? That had to be it!

  It took only a moment for him to make up his mind about what to do with the information. When opportunity knocks, only a fool doesn’t answer, he thought, and I am no fool. Right here in front of me is a way to screw Caruso over and get rich at the same time.

  He glanced around, satisfying himself that no one was watching, and then set off through the woods in the direction of the estate.

  Ten minutes later he was crouched by the corner of the supply shed by the side of the house. A quick survey of the area assured him that that idiot, Caruso, hadn’t hired a night watchman. Just shows how stupid he really is, Kyle thought wryly. He stepped out of hiding and over to the shed. Reaching out, he tried the door.

  Locked.

  No matter. He knew how to deal with the situation. Kyle wandered around to the back of the mansion to where the construction crews had been discarding the wood and metal pieces they’d been replacing inside the house. From the pile he selected a piece of iron about the length of his forearm.

  Halloran returned to the shed and forced the point of the pole into the opening between the doorjamb and the hasp of the lock. One strong heave and the door swung open with a muffled crack. Kyle stepped inside. It took only a few moments to gather the supplies he needed: a couple of heavy-duty flashlights, a pickaxe, and a shovel.