I tried seeing things from his perspective. He’d been kept in captivity for centuries. He’d become institutionalized and most likely from the length of his incarceration, he’d never recover. Even so, I had no time to pull therapy out of my ass before a bunch of merciless executioners dragged us away.
“Move it, you scurvy dog!” I shouted in pirate lingo. I didn’t know what else to do. Shouting at him was the first thing that came to mind. “The enemy is upon us! Get moving or we’re all dead!”
I didn’t wait to see if my tactic worked. I shoved him into the crawl space and ordered him to go, go, go! He went in. I was ready to follow when someone grabbed me and pulled me back.
“Release Killian, you sod!”
I recognized Frankie’s voice and remembered that he had my gun. I snapped my body around, throwing my fist back. Gun or no gun, I wasn’t going to let them lock me up again. My knuckles struck his hard white cheekbone, knocking him sideways. Immediately, I saw a fleet of ghostly faces behind him.
Grabbing Frankie, I whipped him around and held him against me as a human shield. The others came at us and I waved the torch vigorously at them, ready to burn the face of anyone who got too close. Since the firelight was bright, it hurt their eyes. They screamed and hid their faces. That was when I pushed my hostage into the nearest ones and bolted into the crawl space.
“Heath, quit fooling around in there!” Starr yelled.
The moment my head poked out the other side, someone grabbed my ankle. I tried kicking with my free foot but my other ankle was seized too.
“They got me!” I cried.
Someone yanked me backward, forcing me onto my stomach. The impact hurt like hell. The floor was rough stone, as were the walls, cutting into my skin.
Both Starr and Jack snatched my wrists and pulled in the opposite direction. Having double the strength worked in my favor, though being tugged back and forth over jagged rocks made me feel like I was being gutted. Finally, with one solid heave, Starr and Jack yanked me out of the crawl space, back onto soft sand again.
“Ignite your flare!” I hollered.
I had no idea if Starr had any more flares after his life-threatening water slide adventure, but, to my relief, a blaze of red and white exploded to illuminate our surroundings. I shot to my feet, snatched the flare from him, and threw it into the crawl space. “Run! Run!”
Everyone ran like marathon competitors down the beach. Although we booked it, Ruby was already a mile ahead.
“Wait up!” I called after her.
She didn’t seem to hear me and was soon out of sight. We kept going at full speed, not because of our pursuers, but because the stingrays came after us in a horde of tail-cracking fury. We leapt over them and ran until everyone followed me into the forest.
“We shouldn’t stop,” Starr said as we caught our breath. “Those people could come out of anywhere.”
“They want me back,” Killian bellowed. “Let me go and they’ll leave the rest of you be!”
I grabbed him by his robe and yanked his face to mine. “Stop fucking yelling. If you draw them to us, I’ll slit you from forehead to foreskin.”
I really wouldn’t, but it sounded good.
“Where should we go?” Clint asked.
“Let’s stick to the forest’s edge,” Starr suggested. “Till we reach a village.”
None of us spoke during the pitch-black trek. We needed to stay as quiet as possible. Walking through a blanket of black, bumping into trees and nearly falling over everything in my path, I started to miss the full moon. I missed countless things I’d taken for granted only months ago. At the moment, it was the metallic glow of the moonlight.
We didn’t know exactly where we were going or which village we’d end up at first. We just went in the direction Ruby headed. After a long hike through the wild, we finally saw a light ahead. The sight of the fiery orange glow excited us, yet we approached with caution.
“It’sss saaafe,” Ruby called out. “There’sss nothing here excccept a dead hummman.”
Right then I knew where we were. We’d reached the abandoned village of the Obsoletes.
Like damned souls, we headed for the fire. When we stepped onto a wooden walkway, I let out a sigh of relief. Relief that was sweet and bitter.
“Who the hell are you?” Jack asked, looking at nothing beside him.
“What?” a woman said, turning to him. “Who are you talking to?”
“He’s got himself a soul to deal with,” Gavin said beside me.
I craned my neck around. Gavin was casually leaning against a walkway railing.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked before stopping myself. Everyone’s attention then turned to me.
“It’s that guy who fell into the hole,” Gavin explained. “What’s his name?”
“Phil,” I said. “Jack, it’s okay. His name is Phil. He was a soldier like you.”
“He says hi,” Jack said, turning back to the ghost. “This chum says he’s sorry for what happened to you.” There was a pause before Jack said, “He says he knows. He heard you while we were underground.”
“He’s been with you this whole time and you haven’t seen him?” Clint asked.
“It wasss the fragggment’s high quantity of enerrrgy,” Ruby put in. “Thaaat wasss why we felt so alive in the caaavesss. Lower quantities of enerrrgy, such asss spiritsss, are absorbed by it.”
“Then how did Gavin come back?” I asked, imagining how we looked to the ones listening to this.
“Enerrrgy can never truly die. We maaay not haaave ssseen or heard them, but thaaat didn’t mean they weren’t there with us.”
I turned to Gavin, who only shrugged.
“He’s really messed up,” Jack said shakily. “Like he went through a meat grinder.”
“Let’s get inside,” I suggested. “We need to get our heads straight to figure out our next move.”
“I beg you,” Killian pleaded, “let me go back to my people.”
To tell the truth, I wanted to let him go. The last thing I’d wanted to do was kidnap somebody. Unfortunately, cutting him loose wasn’t an option. No doubt, he’d go back to send his people after us.
Starr was thinking along those same lines. “Don’t think we’re stupid enough to believe you’ll just go home and not send the cavalry. Now get inside.”
Jeff took the torch and led everyone into the nearest house. I heard a harsh rasping that didn’t come from Killian.
“Ruby,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder, “is everything all right?”
“You haaave to find a waaay to destroooy the fragggment.”
Then she insisted on staying outside, which I knew she would, being the outdoor type. Besides, we could use a lookout.
When I went back in, Starr approached me. “I know you don’t have a weak stomach, but I don’t recommend going into the bedroom.”
I’d already heard the story about Doctor Chancier’s gruesome attack on the people in the village. And since I’d come to the island, I’d seen plenty of carnage. The dots of blood on the floor leading from the door to the bedroom’s threshold, along with the dead man in the bed with a bullet hole in his head, didn’t affect me much. No doubt it was Chancier. Blood and chunks of flesh from his last victim slathered the pillow and sheets.
Not surprisingly, no one wanted to stay the night there. I took it upon myself to search for a house without too much gore in it, and Starr went with me.
“Where did you and Ruby end up after you fell through the floor?” I asked.
“Our little trip didn’t last long before the water calmed enough for us to grab hold of something and pull our way out. Did you know she can see in the dark?”
“She can? Right about now I wish I could.”
“Do you have any ideas how to bring this place down?” Starr asked as we went inside the house next door.
“No clue. Whatever we do, we need to consider the people living underground.”
His
hand gripped my shoulder, stopping me dead in my tracks. “Are you out of your mind? Those freaks locked you up and almost killed us.”
“They’re still people, with families—children. They might be aggressive but that doesn’t mean we should commit mass murder.”
Starr said nothing as we investigated the house. It seemed vacant enough. I found no bodies in the bedroom and Starr announced that the other two rooms were clear, as well. It wasn’t until I came across a desk near the bedroom door that I realized whose house we’d stumbled onto. On the desk was a journal. I read the page the book was opened to.
I would write a date if I only knew what it was. It’s been countless years since I’ve written in this book. I like to believe it’s 1864 and the world outside is as it was when we first arrived. However, too many lost souls who have become trapped here have given testimony otherwise. Alas, as the years stretch like a monotonous nightmare, my hope of escaping has dwindled to nothing. The world, my world, has changed. This I have finally come to realize, much to my displeasure. Nothing, however, has pained me more than losing my Eleanor. I held out hope that she would come to her senses and return to my side where she belongs. Today, a rude young man strangely came to inform me that she has taken another suitor and possesses passionate feelings for him that I daresay she should have for me. I am at my wits end. If Eleanor cannot see that she is mine and mine alone, then I must go on the morrow and show her. It’s now time for her to fulfill her destiny to be with me for all time.
Darwin Bradford
Bastard.
There was nothing more written after that. It was the last thing he’d written before he’d left the village to destroy her. It would’ve been worth having his soul attached to me forever just to have killed him before he’d acted. So far, keeping myself occupied had kept me from breaking down whenever I thought about her. Then came those pockets of dead time when thoughts of her resurfaced in my mind.
I closed the journal as Starr entered the room.
“All clear,” he reported. “Think we found a winner.”
“Cool,” I replied weakly. “Let’s get everyone inside.”
I turned, only to have Starr slap his hand against my chest. “I want you to know, I thought about what you said.”
I was relieved, which was stupid, since there were two ways to interpret that. The good way being, I thought about what you said and I agree. Or the bad, I thought about what you said and I don’t give a shit.
“You oughta know that I have no intention of staying here forever, especially if there’s a way out,” he said.
“I agree,” I replied, removing his hand. “I’m just saying we need to do so without hurting others.”
I headed for the door, but then stopped when he said, “Would you rather stay trapped on this depressing spit of land?”
“In war, if you were given an order to complete a mission and the only way to do it was to blow up an entire village filled with innocent civilians, would you do it?”
He didn’t answer. In truth, I didn’t give him time to offer one. I left. I was afraid of what he might say.
Once everyone moved from the crime scene to the clear house, I went out back to take a breath.
“What a quandary, huh?” Gavin said.
I jumped a bit.
“Stay here forever or risk killing a bunch of people.”
My blood turned from ice cold to boiling. “Goddamn it, I just want some peace,” I said indignantly.
“Sorry, I’ll keep outta sight and shut my trap,” Gavin said.
The instant after my outburst, I regretted my words. “No, wait. Stay. It’s been an ass of a day.”
“Yeah, I’ve had those. Like one day, this guy blew up my dead body and the next thing I know, I became a walking, talking stick of beef jerky.”
I glared at him but he didn’t seem to notice. “Where were you today, anyway?”
“With you.”
“The entire time?”
“Every step, dude. Guess down there, we disembodied souls become like we do on the outside. Invisible.” He started making scary ghost sounds.
“Funny,” I said.
“I screamed my lungs out, trying to warn you about those sneaky people while they were creepin’ up on you.”
“I bet you did,” I said sincerely. “You’re a good friend to have around.”
“You’re a good egg too. Can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have my crispy spirit stuck to.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Except my old high school math teacher,” he added bitterly. “I’d love to make every second of his life painful. I’d tell him I was a demon waiting for him to take his final breath so I could pull him into the darkest pit of Hell for flunking a wonderful young man like Gavin Cole.”
“Wow,” I said mildly.
“Talking to your mate?” someone said behind me. It was Captain McCarran. “I have thirteen it turns out.”
“Thirteen? How . . . ?”
“My shipmates,” he explained. “Whenever those underground dwellers killed one or found their bodies, they got me to dispose of them. In those days, they were afraid to touch us.”
“Why?”
“Superstitious, I suppose. As a sailor, I can relate. They eventually realized touching us wouldn’t hurt them, but they made us move the bodies, anyway.”
“You witnessed many generations come and go down there, huh?”
“I have.”
“Do you hate them for what they did to you and your crew?”
“I used to. But over the years, I reckoned they hadn’t done any worse than the rest of the human race has done to each other. They’re a lot like us.”
I gave what he said some serious thought. Although none of us had any real plan of how to kill the island, this obstacle still remained. Any one of us could argue that we hadn’t asked to be on the island, and neither had they. They were human beings like the rest of us and we had no right to take their lives, no more than they had the right to take ours.
* * *
The night stayed calm. In the morning, I went outside to where Starr knelt beside Ruby.
“Jesus!” I cried, falling to my knees beside her. “Ruby?”
“I think she’s dead,” he said, quickly grabbing my hand and yanking it back before I touched her. “Look.”
She lay on her belly. Deep gashes on her back and arms spilled glassy blood on the walkway.
“It looks like she passed away not long ago,” he observed. “Just settled down, closed her eyes, and let herself bleed to death. No one heard her fall.”
Ruby’s death devastated me. I remembered the things she’d said about how she’d used to travel among the stars, only to end up marooned on an alien planet. She’d wanted her freedom and I believe that was the reason why she’d never asked for help. I asked Gavin if he could see her brother.
He shook his head. “Guess he left too. It seems when us ghosts have no one to latch onto, we’re free.”
“There’s a woman over there,” Starr said, pointing.
I followed his finger to the back of a house, where a woman hung from a tree.
“Don’t worry about her. Let’s get ready and go.”
Both Killian’s and McCarran’s eyes were too sensitive for the light, though the day was more overcast and foggy than usual. We blindfolded them and led them over the beach. On the way, I spotted Dominic’s freighter, The Anita. She was the closest ship to the shore.
The walk to North Village was a long one, yet no one complained. I was sure each of us had different things going through our heads. I’d been worried McCarran would freak out over his long dead crew mates now around him, but he neither said nor did anything erratic.
When we reached the village, the soldiers joined their compatriots, while the others scattered about. I got one of them to take McCarran to Miller’s Tavern for a drink before I hurried Killian to my hut, while Starr fetched Carlton.
“What are you planning to do
with me?” Killian asked as I removed his blindfold.
“We’re not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Stop acting so dramatic.”
“That monster said you know how to destroy the fragment. What fragment? What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know. Whatever we decide, it could endanger your people. They might have to evacuate from the underground.”
“Evacuate? To where? The light hurts our eyes too much.”
“We’ll think of something. You have to understand, there are hundreds of people who want to go home. Now that the secret is out, there won’t be anything to stop them from finding a way to destroy this place. I’ll do what I can to make sure your people aren’t hurt, but you’re going to have to help.”
“It’ll be war,” he said. “My people will stand against yours.”
“And you’ll lose,” I said harshly. “Think about it. We outnumber you. Most of the people we have are actual soldiers with real combat experience. If you so much as try anything, they’ll go underground and smoke each of you out like rodents. Is that what you want?”
He kept his focus on me for a moment, then bowed his head. I was glad he understood. I didn’t want to deal with his obstinacy when I was trying to save his people.
“People have always adjusted to their surroundings,” I said in a more sensitive tone. “Maybe your people can adapt to sunlight.”
“I know we can.”
What he said surprised the hell out of me. “You . . . what?”
Starr stepped inside with Carlton.
“Hey, Carlton,” I said. “I didn’t know who else to tell about this.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving me a nod. “Mr. Starr told me everything.” He approached Killian with his chubby hands on his waist. “Well, cat’s outta the bag. Things are going to change, my brother.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Some surprises can be fun. Others, not so much. And some are just bizarre. Finding out Carlton was Killian’s brother turned my brain inside out.
“You’re brothers?” I gasped. “I thought you were a chief of police from Texas.”
Atlantic Pyramid Page 30
