by J K Ellem
Shaw stood back a distance cautiously. The beam of his flashlight settled on a pile of grain sacks stacked high against the wall of the tunnel. Dust and fibers hovered in the narrow beam around the sacks.
He approached the sacks, but with each step he could feel his skin crawl. Then he realized what he was looking at.
Two bodies sat side by side, backs against the wall, huddled in death. The mummified bodies were dressed in conventional clothing, heads and faces buried in the dusty folds of the hoods of their sweatshirts, like monks bowed in silent prayer. Shrunken limbs poked out from the tattered jeans, sneakers on the feet. Shaw squatted down and shone the beam into the faces.
A single shot to the head, both of them. Killed somewhere else in the mine then placed here, a warning to unwelcome visitors.
Boys, teenagers both of them. Their skin dry and leathery, partially decomposed. Swathes of skin had been eaten away from hands, ankles, and cheeks. The rats had been busy.
One body had a wristwatch on. Shaw carefully undid the strap, not wanting to unsettle the bodies, and slid the watch into his pocket. The light caught something shiny on the other body, a thin ribbon of silver around the neck. Shaw eased down the collar to reveal a necklace with a silver oval pendant, dull and tarnished. The chain broke away easily in Shaw’s hand. In the beam of the light he examined the pendant, rubbing grime and dirt away with his thumb. Engraved on one side was an image of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
Shaw sat on his haunches, contemplating the two bodies in front of him. He guessed from their state they had been there for a few years at least. It was hard to tell given the air and exposure down here in the mine. The cold temperatures and still air would have slowed down the rate of decay compared to being on the surface with flies, other insects and microbes. No one else probably knew they were here except for Tanner and his men. Still, they were someone’s sons.
Gently, Shaw searched the clothing as best he could without feeling like a grave robber. His fingers touched something cold and metallic in the front pocket of the jeans of one of the bodies. He eased it out and examined it. It was a pocket knife, black, the type typically sold in any sporting goods store for ten bucks or less. Shaw flipped it open. The blade was sharp, beveled to a razor finish. He closed it and slid the knife into his own pocket.
At least he had a weapon now.
He stood and took one last look at the slumped shapes before setting off again into the darkness, leaving them behind. Whoever they were, their travels had come to a grisly end.
Five minutes later the tunnel abruptly ended and Shaw found himself standing on the edge of a long vertical funnel of rock. It ran straight up into the darkness above and Shaw couldn’t see the bottom. The faint sound of water dripping drifted up from the blackness below. Shaw picked up a rock, held it over the edge, then let go. Three seconds passed before the sound of the rock hitting water echoed back up to where he stood.
He had to go back. It was a dead end.
But as he turned to leave, he noticed a small glimmer of light seeping down from above. Shaw craned his head and looked up. On the inside of the funnel, maybe a hundred feet farther up, he could just make out a dim aperture of light. Grabbing the edge of the wall he leaned farther out to see better.
56
It was so tempting to slit her throat there and then. But that would mean all his plans would have been for nothing. Her impertinence and his stupidity weren’t going to ruin what he had prepared for her. So he carried her limp body back along the small side tunnel to the chamber, but he refrained from chaining her to the wall this time.
He bound her hands, gagged and hooded her before throwing dirty cold water on her until she awoke. Then he took her from the room for her final walk.
The beam of light bobbed and weaved around the inside of the tunnel, shadows shifting, dissolving then appearing again as they moved.
It was a path he had taken many times during his preparations. It led to a special place he had discovered quite by accident during his first forays into the mine.
He had already tested it with another woman, but she was already dead so the thrill wasn’t as pronounced as he initially thought. This time he wanted it to be different. He wanted Jessie fully conscious so she could see the special place. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes when she realized where she was and what horrible fate lay just inches from her feet.
From the moment Pritchard had first set eyes on Jessie in the diner at the truck stop, he knew he was going to bring her here, to this place, to show her, to watch her cry and beg for her life. That was where the real ecstasy was for him. He had grown bored of the others, of working on them in his shed. He needed something new, a new thrill, a new horror, and now he believed he had found it.
Pritchard pushed Jessie forward, forcing her to follow a map he’d memorized.
Tears streamed down her cheeks; the hood clung to her face like a mask. The gag was tight, cutting into the corners of her mouth. She coughed and chewed at it, fighting against the urge to vomit.
They reached a fork where the tunnel split. The main tunnel curved to the right and a smaller side tunnel ran into the darkness beyond on the left. Pulling her shoulder savagely, Pritchard twisted Jessie to the left and pushed her into the smaller tunnel.
At the end of the tunnel was her final destination. He could feel his arousal growing. This was going to be much better that what he had done to the others in his shed.
Jessie gave a muffled cry but kept going. The walls pressed in a little closer as the tunnel narrowed.
They were nearly there.
Pritchard lit the walls and ground in front of her with the flashlight, cautious, making sure they didn’t go too far otherwise they would both suffer the same fate.
Another hundred feet and they reached the end.
Pritchard grabbed Jessie’s shoulder and pulled her to a stop. In front of them a wall of black yawed wide, a void of nothingness, the tunnel ceiling and walls abruptly vanished.
On the ground next to the edge sat a battery-powered lantern. Pritchard lifted it and switched it on. Clear white light balled around them. The walls shone, slick with a constant dribble of grainy water.
Out in the black void the sound of dripping water could be heard, landing into an unseen pool hundreds of feet below.
Pritchard pulled Jessie back and thrust her to the ground so she sat with her back against the wall.
Then he walked to the edge of the high stone ledge, at the lip of where the solidness ended and blackness started, the lantern held high in his hand.
He was standing high up, on the inside edge of a long vertical rock funnel, like a chimney. The rock funnel was an old ventilation shaft, cored out by a boring drill through solid rock, at a diameter of twenty feet. It rose up many hundreds of feet to the top of the mountain and the outside air.
Pritchard looked down, the light casting off the inner walls, bands of strata ringing the funnel in hues of brown and gold.
The rock funnel continued on below until it met the darkness creeping up to where the light could no longer penetrate. The bottom of the tube-like shape was there somewhere in the darkness, at an unimaginable depth. He had never explored the lower levels, nor did he want to. He wasn’t stupid, only his victims were. Much of this place was uncharted, and he only allowed himself to discover the parts of the mine that he needed.
The rock funnel had flooded many years back. There was a pool of water somewhere below. The last body he had thrown over the edge had tested that theory. It had fallen for what seemed like an eternity before he had heard a distant splash.
Stepping back from the edge, he placed the lantern next to a dark, solid object, its surface dull in the light. He had welded a handle to the top of the solid block of metal to make it easier to lift. He had practiced lifting it with one hand, from a squat position, using his legs to draw it up like a kettle bell.
He took a length of thick rope that was next to the object, tie
d one end securely to the handle then pulled Jessie to her feet.
“I want you to wait here,” he lied to her. “I’m going to tie your feet together so you don’t run, but I’m going to remove the hood and the gag. If you try to resist, I will put them back on you again. Do you understand?”
Jessie nodded. She could hardly breathe; the gag and hood were stifling.
He walked her toward the edge slowly and carefully, holding her firmly with one hand, to where the lantern sat on the very lip of the ledge. He stopped her then told her not to move. He tied the other end of the rope tight around her ankles and knotted it off then stood behind her.
He removed the hood and gag.
Jessie flinched, her eyes adjusted, and she looked around. She was in a cavern she thought, high up, standing on the very edge of a side tunnel, her toes just past the edge. Below a bottomless hollow of rock, like a hole in the ground with no end in sight.
She screamed and Pritchard smiled.
She tried to step back, get away from the edge but Pritchard held her firm.
“Scream you bitch, scream so the whole world can hear you.” He could feel fear grip her body and not let go. Jessie’s eyes filled with terror. There was no escape, this was it.
Pritchard held her there until her screams reduced to a sobbing whimper. He hoisted the block of metal over the edge with one hand and released it while at the same time he shoved her forward with his other hand.
Jessie floated in mid-air for a millisecond. The rope went taught before yanking her down into the black void below.
Ryder stopped dead. “What the hell was that?”
Beth drew her gun. It was an automatic response. The screams came from somewhere ahead, in the distance, almost through the rock, on the other side of where they were.
Ryder drew her gun as well, held the flashlight with her other hand, and rested her gun hand over it so where the beam went, a bullet would follow.
They both edged forward, slow deliberate steps, guns held in front, pointing down the length of the tunnel as far as the light could reach.
It was definitely a woman’s screams, not a high-pitched shriek of fright, but something more guttural, more primal.
It was the screams of a woman who was staring death right in the face.
57
It was a blur, a distortion in the vertical background above, an object screaming downward, transitioning between the muted light above into the infinite blackness below.
Shaw looked up the funnel of rock just as the scream plummeted toward him, then past him, and on below. It was a woman, tethered to a large object, the scream unfurling behind her as she fell, the sound bouncing off the rocky fascia before slowly receding into the depths of the earth below. Then a heavy splash so distant it could have been a pin prick at the core of the planet.
It was her. He didn't know how or why, it just was.
There was no time to think, to reason.
It was an instant reaction, the right side of his brain dominating the left. Intuition, emotion, and stupidity overruling logic and reasoning resulting in the total disregard for one’s own safety. She was going to die and so mostly likely was he. But he didn't care.
Shaw toppled forward into the funnel of blackness, head first, arms outstretched, elongating himself as best he could as he fell, trying to keep his body from hitting the sharp jagged sides that flew past him. He was falling through a narrow tube, the darkness complete, the wind rushing past his ears, pulling at his hair, his eyes, his clothes. He could sense the circular walls just inches from his head as he fell.
Seconds past, still no end.
Shaw emptied his lungs.
More seconds.
Then he hit the water and smashed through it, the surface hard as earth. Freezing cold, the impact jarring, like diving head first into a frozen lake, cracking the icy surface before plummeting into the frigid beyond.
Shaw kicked hard and flipped on the switch of the rubber encased flashlight he still held tightly in his hand. The dark funnel of rock was now a watery tube of cold hard grey walls. A stream of air bubbles rose up to him from far below. He kicked harder, one hand cupped, pulling him deeper, the other holding the flashlight, a dull cone of yellow light embroiled in its own fight against the inky blackness.
Downward he pushed, the pressure on his ears building, his head throbbing, his muscles, bones, and joints starting to ache from the impact and the numbing cold. The left side of his brain screamed for him to stop, to turn around, to head back to the surface.
Let her die; you must live.
No, keep going, reach her, save her, you can, fate can be fucked with.
He pulled himself deeper, farther, beyond all limits.
He was coming apart, tearing, as he strained every muscle, every fiber.
Then her saw her.
She came to him in a vertical tangle of hair, rising up in his vision, dark strands gently swaying in a watery breeze in the beam of the light. He grabbed a fistful and held on. A sudden gush of bubbles, big and translucent brushed past his face as she let out a scream underwater.
She was upright near the bottom, her feet and wrists bound, her ankles tethered to a lump of iron by a length of rope. Shaw clawed past her, using her torso, then her thighs and finally her ankles like a ladder. He grabbed the rope around her ankles and pivoted until he was upright under her, his feet buried in the soft silty bottom. He wrapped his legs around the rope so he could remain upright, fighting his natural buoyancy, and used both his hands now.
Placing the flashlight in his mouth he pulled out his knife. The blade glinted in the beam as he began to saw through the rope, his fingers numb, his lungs burning, his brain stubbornly refusing to relent.
Strands of rope began to peel away and float in the beam of light. He sawed faster. Nearly there. Then finally the blade severed the rope, and Jessie came away.
He grabbed the rope tied to her ankles as she began to slowly rise. He dropped the knife; he had no choice or he would lose her in the darkness.
He pulled her down, he had to.
Shaw then crouched and pushed off the bottom with all the strength his dying body could muster, launching himself past her in a cloud of silt, grabbing the scruff of her clothing as he swam upward past her, pulling the flashlight out of his mouth with his other hand and pointing it up, guiding the way toward the surface.
There was a small ledge of rock no more than a few feet wide at water level on the side of the tunnel. Shaw pulled Jessie toward it, keeping her face up. Her body was limp and heavy. Icy water was sloshing around them. He clawed at the edge of the ledge, pulling himself up with one hand, cold blue fingers digging into the crumbling rocky outcrop. Still clinging to her, he swung a knee up and levered himself out of the frigid water and onto his stomach, the flashlight glowed off the circular wall. He knelt and pulled her out of her watery grave and laid her on her back.
Her skin was deathly pale, eyes closed, lips thin and colorless. Keeping the beam of the flashlight low and against the wall, he worked on her. Her pulse was shallow, breathing almost non-existent, her heart a tiny bird fluttering behind her rib cage. He rubbed her arms and legs, trying desperately to warm her. The surrounding air was distinctly warmer than the water had been. Quickly he stripped her clothing and wrung out each garment as tightly as he could, squeezing out each cold drop. Shaw stripped his sodden shirt off. Bare-chested, he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, sharing as much skin contact as possible.
As he held her in his arms, he rocked her gently, whispered into her ear, stroked her hair, squeezing the water out of each strand. She had fallen into a deep dark place in her mind and for the second time he had to dive down and reach her, to pull her back from the depths of wherever she was now.
Jessie stirred against his chest, a flutter of hope.
He held her tighter, and rubbed her arms and shoulders more vigorously with his own numb hands. He touched her face, brushed aside cold matted hair, and spoke some
more to her, willing her back, pleading with her to swim toward the surface to him—he was there, within reach, she just needed to fight, take his hand, he would never let her die.
Shaw’s eyes blurred. He squeezed her harder. She stirred again.
He took her chin in his hand, tilted her head, and pressed his lips—warm and red—against hers—cold and blue—for no other reason than to breathe life into her and bring her back.
Jessie’s eyes fluttered open and she looked deep into his eyes. Shaw pulled back as she coughed and spluttered out water. He watched as she took a deep breath before her chest settled into a regular pattern. Jessie knew it was a dream. She closed her eyes, reached up with one arm, found the back of his head, and pulled Shaw to her.
Her lips felt warmer as her mouth opened for him, and Shaw willingly let her drink what life she could out of him.
58
Jessie told Shaw everything. They sat on the ledge in the small glow of the flashlight, his arms wrapped around her, her face burrowed under Shaw’s chin, clinging to him, not wanting to ever let go.
Shaw could feel the warmth returning to both their bodies. He reached for Jessie’s clothing but she grabbed his arm and pulled it around her again, unconcerned she was just in her bra and panties. As he held her and rubbed her arms and shoulders to keep her warm, he told her about Adam Tanner. Then he told her how he had tried to come after her in the parking lot but Hoost had taken him.
“I’m sorry, Jessie,” he said, thinking back.
Jessie looked up into his eyes and placed her finger on his lips. “You didn’t know. You tried, you came after me,” she uttered, tears in her eyes. “That’s all I need to know.”
Shaw started to feel uncomfortable. He didn’t like praise, had never been one to go looking for it either. He just did what he had to do.
Jessie shifted. “You found me now. That’s all that counts.”
