Cracked Lenses

by L J McIntyre

  Chapter Thirty Four

  We follow the mineshaft for what seems like an eternity. The tunnel is so quiet that our words are no more than whispers masquerading as normal volume conversation.

  “Why did they kill the girl in the lake if she was one of them?” I ask.

  “Maybe they didn’t, you know. Maybe she killed herself but it could be made to look like murder.”

  “Good point. Jesus, this is all so screwed up.”

  “You’ve had a shitty few days, Jack.”

  “Yours haven’t been particularly great either. Not exactly the backpacking adventure you were hoping for, I’ll bet.”

  “Not really.”

  “Annie, sorry if this is insensitive, but how did your friend kill herself?”

  “Overdose in the bath.”

  “I’m sorry. Did she leave a note?”

  “Yeah, she did. But she didn’t need to. I was her best friend, knew almost everything about her. She sometimes had bouts of darkness, as she called it. Really depressed.”

  “Man, that’s rough.”

  “Yeah, you know, for a while there I thought she’d gotten past that shit. She seemed happy. We’d made new friends, become part of a close group. It was something totally different, and it made us feel like different people. She finally felt like she belonged somewhere. We both did. But things like depression don’t go away easily. It must have been a bad one this time because she actually fucking did it.”

  “That’s terrible. For her and you. I suppose, at the very least, it brought us together, for what it’s worth.”

  “Silver linings and all that.” Annie points her torch up ahead. “I think we’re coming to the end of the road.”

  The tunnel ends abruptly with a solid wall of rock. But before that is a set of ladders exactly as the hooded man said with a white cloth tied to one step.

  I volunteer to go first and place the torch in my mouth, put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. I look down, slide my foot back and forth to make sure it has enough purchase, and notice on the ground below my foot a small pink book with ‘Diary’ written on the front. I bend down and pocket it before I start my ascent to higher ground.

  The ladders seem to stretch upward forever. I place each step carefully on the damp rungs. At one point I look down and apart from Annie, there’s nothing below me. The ladders fall into an empty chasm. I take the torch out of my mouth and shine it upwards. There’s a metal hatch not far away. I start climbing again.

  Across the hatch is a metal bar which I assume is the handle. I grip the ladders as tightly as possible with my left hand, hunker my feet firmly against the rungs, and heave the hatch upwards with my right hand. It raises on one side, and the hinges grind and screech, and light from above bleeds onto us. I give the hatch one almighty shove and send it backwards, crashing against the hard floor.

  My eyes take a few seconds to adjust before I climb out of the hole. Another few seconds pass before the disappointment hits. We’re back in the factory. All the lights are on but no one is here.

  I help Annie out of the hole.

  “Frig me,” she says, “back here again.”

  Betsy sits lonely in the large space.

  Just as I open my mouth to speak, Tamati, dressed in full black ninja uniform, comes bounding out of one of the small rooms off the main space.

  “Tamati, holy hell, you trying to give us a heart attack?” Annie says.

  “Shhh,” Tamati replies with his finger to his lips. “Too many ears in this place. Good to see you though.” He smiles at us while eyeing the factory. “We got to go elsewhere, somewhere the locals don’t go. Follow me. Ninja steps, you get?”

  “Wait,” I say. “They’re tracking me with this GPS thing.” I show him the little black sticker.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Needed to give you this.” He hands me a small square of folded tin foil. “Wrap it around. It’ll block the signal.”

  We’ve finally arrived at conspiracy theory and lunatic level nine. That’s one step down from wearing tin foil hats. I take the foil anyway and do as he suggests without the faintest clue If it’ll work.

  “Okay, remember: ninja steps,” he whispers.

  We creep to the back door which Annie and I used last night to gain access to the factory. Tamati pushes it open and sneaks out. He drops to the floor and starts crawling on his belly, military-style. We both lower to the ground and do the same. The grass is wet, and sharp stones dig into my knees and hands.

  Tamati signals with his hand. It looks like something he’s probably seen in a war movie, but I can’t figure out what he’s trying to say.

  “What should we do?” I say quietly.

  “Straight ahead,” he says while repeating the signal.

  “But you’re pointing left,” I respond.

  “Yeah, left.”

  Bloody hell.

  We learn quickly to ignore Tamati’s signals. We do what he does and go where he goes. We arrive at a metal chicken-wire fence with a large hole in it. Beyond the fence is the border of town. We rise to a squatting position but remain hidden by high grass.

  Tamati points. “Okay, see that house over there? We’re going to climb through the hole in the fence and run like the clappers until the front door, which should be unlocked. We just go right inside the house, okay? Wait for my signal.”

  “What’s the signal?” Annie asks.

  “I’ll say run.”

  The house Tamati pointed to is nothing short of derelict. It’s two-storeys of rotten wood and windows that are either broken or boarded up. The porch has been stripped bare of paint and is now a dark and festering brown. The rest of the house, once white, is now being claimed by nature. Vines and moss grasp much of the upper floor. Graffiti is sprayed along the side of the house. “Where are you now?” it says, just like the graffiti in the mine.

  Tamati is craning his neck over the grass. He’s holding his open hand in the air in what I assume is a wait signal.

  “Hold on,” I whisper to him. I point to a man walking along the pavement outside the house.

  “What is it?” Annie asks.

  “The man, he’ll see us.”

  “What man?”

  “Him.” I point

  Tamati and Annie exchange looks.

  “Don’t you see him? He’s there, with the rope in his hands.” I feel desperation wash over me.

  “Rope?” asks Tamati. “What’s the guy wearing?”

  “What do you mean? You can see him right there.”

  “Is he wearing a white shirt, like an old school shirt, and brown pants? And does he have red hair.”

  “Yes.”

  “Arthur Dunlovin,” Tamati says.

  “The man who hung himself on that tree?” I ask.

  “Yup, that’s the one.”

  My head starts spinning as if I’ve just been told that Darth Vader is my mother.

  “Please tell me this is one of your jokes, Tamati, and that you can actually see him.”

  “Jack.” Annie touches my arm. “There’s no one there. I don’t see what you see.”

  “This is fucking ridiculous. And I don’t care what you say, Tamati, that isn’t Arthur Dunlovin.” I point to the man again but he’s no longer there, must have disappeared around the corner just a short walk from the derelict house.

  “Okay, mate. Let’s just get to the house.”

  “Fine.” I say.

  Annie is eyeing at me with a worried expression.

  Tamati has one last scan of the surrounding area. “Okay, run,” he says out the side of his mouth.

  The task of running is made extremely difficult by the fact that only one person can squeeze through the fence at a time. As Tamati pulls himself through, Annie and I are standing in plain sight. Once we’re all through, we pump our legs as fast as we can.

  Annie gets to the porch first, barges the door open, and I follow shortly after. Tamati, blowing great big gasps of air out of his mouth, has slowed to a stroll w
ith his hands on his hips.

  “Come on,” Annie encourages him.

  He waves his hand in the air as if to say, ‘Go on without me. Save yourselves.’

  Eventually, he plods up the porch steps and into the house, leaning heavily against the door once it’s closed.

  “Okay,” he says between breaths. “We should be safe here.”

  “Why should we be safe here?” I ask.

  “The locals, they don’t come in this house. Too much bad energy.”

  “But why?”

  Tamati points to something on the wall by the door, another plaque.

  I read it:

  This is ‘Tragedy House’, as it’s known locally. On the evening of August 19th, 1963, Joseph Craven returned home from work earlier than usual. He walked to the shed in the backyard. He took out his shotgun and turned it on his family, killing his wife, three daughters and two sons, before shooting himself in the face. It took a week for him to die from his injuries. During that time he was conscious on numerous occasions, but refused to give a reason for his actions.

  Over and over again, until his final moments, he did little more than repeat the words, “Where are you now?”

  I turn to Tamati. “So, we’re in the house where this all happened?”

  Tamati nods. “Yup.”

  “Why have they put up plaques like this? I’ve seen similar ones elsewhere in the town.”

  “So that future generations know how long the town has suffered for.”

  Chapter Thirty Five

  We’re standing in the kitchen of Tragedy House. Even decades of decay can’t remove the feeling that the previous occupants simply stopped existing in one moment of brutality. It’s a mess in here, dusty and stale, but there’s ancient cutlery in the sink, a rusty toaster next to an even rustier bread bin, cracked mugs hanging from handily placed hooks under a kitchen cupboard: everything seems suspended in time and seeped in a heavy, earthy aroma.

  “I guess we should get started then, guys,” Tamati says.

  “What happens next?” I ask.

  “Well, let me think. I’m guessing you took the red pill.” He pats his stomach as he giggles to himself. “That was a Matrix joke, you know. Keanu Reevers and the computer world. He takes the—”

  “Yeah, we get the joke, Tamati,” Annie interrupts.

  “Okay, well...” He squints his eyes as he thinks.

  I decide to take control of the situation which is going nowhere at an incredibly slow speed. “Mate, what role are you playing in all of this?”

  “One of the good guys, obviously.”

  “Who are the good guys?”

  “The ones helping to save your butts.”

  “Let me start again. Why has the town trapped us here?”

  “Don’t know why one hundred percent. I’m guessing it’s to destroy the curse.”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “Dudes, I’m not part of the town.” He shrugs. “My mate Ken just asked me to come here and help him out because his other mates were busy. I owed him a favour for fixing my wheelies.”

  “What do you know about the curse?”

  “The curse, yeah, I know a few things about that. That’s why I moved here. I heard there was a curse and thought I could sell my carvings and skills to the locals, help them out. And the rent’s cheap.”

  I can’t believe I’m entertaining this. “How did the curse come about?”

  “There’s a few different theories about where the curse came from, but if you ask me, that mine brought it here.”

  “The mine? How?” I lean against the kitchen counter with my arms folded.

  Tamati’s becoming more animated, flipping into story mode, eyes wide, hands telling a story of their own. He leans in and lowers his voice. “They dug too deep. That’s what people say. So deep it released a demon who is tethered, for some reason, to the cabin by the lake. He’s cursed the town, maybe until they set him free.

  “I saw something online a while ago, this black and white photo, right, but really old and grainy, and in it there were some suited up manager guys, some worker guys with shovels or something, and listen to this; right in the middle was a priest.”

  “Why is that so important?”

  “Well.” He leans back and starts nonchalantly picking at his nails as if he’s privy to some exclusive information. “Get this: he was the first priest to come to Nesgrove. Came right after Arthur Dunlovin’s old man hung himself off that tree. A few months earlier some miners were working in a new mineshaft and the next thing you knew, they were dead on the floor. No gas leak or nothing. That’s when the town started experiencing bad shit.

  “It was the mining company, Your Coal, who paid for the church to be built and even organised to get the priest up here to cleanse the town. They knew something had happened down in the mine, something freaky.”

  Annie, sitting against a cast iron radiator, asks, “How do you know all this?”

  “Ken told me some of it. And there used to be a Nesgrove forum online with theories. But the website got spambotted too many times, I guess, so they deleted it.”

  “Right,” I say, “let’s pretend I’m going to suspend my better judgement here and accept that there is some sort of curse on the town. What the hell can a lonely travel photographer do against a demon, as you call it?”

  “Beats me.” He leans a hand on the kitchen counter, realises it’s filthy, stands up straight and wipes the dust on his ninja pants.

  “Tamati, I thought you were here to help. And also, how come you’re so calm? Aren’t you afraid of the curse?”

  “Nah,” he says while pointing to a necklace around his neck, hidden under his T-shirt. “One of my carvings, like the one I gave you. It keeps away bad spirits. You should wear it.”

  “You seemed scared in your house when I told you I’d seen a woman in that cabin.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d be a little scared too if your neighbour was a freaky demon.”

  “What about the people in town? We just ran from the factory to here. Aren’t you scared of them?”

  “That was for you. No one in the town has a problem with me, and they need me for my carvings. But I suppose if they saw me helping you guys, they’d be pretty pissed off.”

  “Okay,” Annie steps in. “This is driving me crazy. Tamati, you are here to help us. How? And please get to the point.”

  “I’ve got to tell you where the car wheels are hidden. Once you get them back on, you’re almost free.”

  “Almost?” I ask.

  “Well, what if they put up some sort of roadblock or some shit? Wouldn’t put it past them, especially recently.”

  I stand up and walk over to where Annie is sitting. She moves over and makes space on the radiator for me to sit down. I look at Tamati. “What’s been happening recently?”

  “Well, you may not know this, but I have a sister. She used to be a good laugh, but now she’s got two kids to some loser guy. Whenever I see her and talk to her, she’s always watching out for the kids, right, always making sure they’re not dying or anything, not really paying attention to anything else.”

  Annie exhales loudly. “What on earth does this have to do with the people in Nesgrove?”

  “Sometimes,” Tamati continues, “when the kids aren’t even there, I’ll be talking to her and she’ll have this empty look in her eyes because she’ll be thinking about the kids or stressing about something else. She’s never really present anymore. The townsfolk; they’re like that too now.”

  “Always distracted?” I ask.

  “Just not there, not present, like they’re thinking of something more important than daily life.”

  “When did this start?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe six months ago, maybe less.”

  I look at Annie. “Remember the phrase written on the tree and in the mine?”

  She nods. “They came in spring. Their gift was Rebirth in autumn.”

  “It’s autumn now,” I s
ay. “Tamati, were there any visitors here six months ago, around the time the townsfolk started acting strangely?”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it. There was like a carnival or something. I didn’t see them but I heard people nattering about it. It was some freaky shit, I think, people dressed funny, speaking weird.”

  “Okay, another question—”

  “Geez, guys.” he holds his hands in the air. “This is like being interrogated. I’m one of the good guys.”

  “Okay,” I say, “but this is important: are Annie and I in danger if we stay in Nesgrove?”

  He places the palms of his hands hard against his cheeks, breathes in deeply, and exhales slowly, all while looking down at the ground. “Yes.” He raises his eyes and drops his hands to his side. “I don’t know what’s happening but I’ve heard people call you a sacrifice. And, honestly, some people in this town are just batshit crazy. Ken must agree because he said you needed to leave before midnight.”

  “So how do we get the wheels to the car?” Annie asks.

  “Okay, let me get this right.” He closes his eyes tightly and opens them again. “You have to remember all this. There are a set of keys hanging up in the red shed behind the hunting shop. A crowbar or something like that should be enough to get into that shed so you can get the keys. These will open the locked room closest to your car in the factory. That’s where your wheels are stored. Your car jack and wrench and all that should still be in the car. You need to leave the room at exactly 6:30 pm and go to the factory. That’s it, I think.”

  “That’s it?” I ask. “You can’t help in any other way?”

  “Nah, that’s everything Ken asked me to say.”

  “Screw what Ken said. Surely you can help us more, or give us more information, help us a find a car that actually has wheels.”

  “I live here, Jack. It’s my home. I can’t take a big risk and mess that up.” He walks toward the door. “Sorry dudes. You be careful,” is all he says as he opens the door and leaves, closing it gently on his way out.