by Hunter Shea
Angus grunted as the chest clipped the walls of the tunnel.
I said to Matthias, “How do you keep a spirit that isn’t physical locked up in a box like that? Can’t they just pass through the wood and be on their way?”
“The chest is almost symbolic. Angus binds them within it.”
“Binds them? You mean he locks them inside?”
“Precisely.”
“How does he do that?”
Matthias smiled. “I’m glad to see you’re asking the right questions. Maybe there’s hope for all of us.” His torch scraped against one of the support beams along the ceiling and orange embers flittered down onto my hat. We stopped to make sure the rest of the beam didn’t ignite. When we resumed, he continued. “Angus was born with an ability to communicate with the spirits around us.”
“You mean his deadspeak?”
“You’ve spoken to him about it?”
“Heard him speak it, back on the east side of the hills. He used it to talk to those children spirits. I couldn’t understand a word of it.”
“No one can, at least no one who lives and breathes, with the exception of Angus, of course. I once asked him to teach it to me and he simply couldn’t recall it. The words come to him when they need to, and leave no impression on his mind in their wake. I believe that the divine truly works through him, which is why I left my ministry to travel with him these many years.”
We came to the fork in the tunnel and I hissed a string of cusses that made Matthias shrink.
Teta said, “Weren’t there two tunnels when we came here?”
“Yes.”
Only now there were three.
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was obvious where the third tunnel had sprouted. It branched off at our extreme right, a good distance from the two that we had explored days ago.
“Shafts don’t just make themselves,” Teta said.
“I guess in Hecla they do,” I replied. “Maybe that’s what happened when we first came here. It wasn’t a cave-in. The Djinn, the devil or whatever else is in here made a nice little corral for us to follow.”
“That’s muy polite of them. I don’t like to have to think about where to go when I’m being led to the slaughter.”
Matthias turned to him and propped a hand on his shoulder. “If it will make you feel better, think of it as we’re already dead. At worst, we’ll be brought back to the pain and suffering of life on earth. At best, we’ll join our Heavenly Father, where we rightly belong, and enjoy a richness of the soul that could never be matched by the vainglorious wealth of the physical world.”
Teta’s eyes bored a hole through Matthias’s hand, but the reverend didn’t take notice. He replied, “That doesn’t help at all.”
Matthias gave his shoulder a final squeeze. “Have faith and it will.”
It was easy to believe that I had been hit in the head back when we first rode into Hecla and had fallen into a deep dementia. The Deep Rock Hills were the bowels of a dank asylum, and I had three inmates to keep me company.
Just keep your mind on Selma. Stay angry. I am not afraid of the mines.
“Faith or not, let’s go,” I said. I pulled the hammer back on the rifle and kept my finger on the trigger guard. I could pull it in less time than it would take to blink.
The unrelenting stream of ice water didn’t meander into the new tunnel, which was also absent of tracks or timber support. It was as if a giant, rock-eating mole had carved its way through, chomping stone in a desperate bid to find the center of the earth. We hadn’t gone far before our balance wobbled. The tunnel, though high enough to stand upright, took a sharp decline.
I had to reach a hand out and dig my fingers into the sharp corners and niches in the uneven wall to steady myself. I thought of Angus and his chest and how he’d roll over us if his feet went out from under him. Hopefully his own massive gravity kept him sure-footed.
When I looked back, I saw that he had to step sideways down the tunnel so the chest could go through.
We had to walk slowly. The tunnel reverberated with the sound of our footsteps, heavy breathing and the fluttering of the torch flames. I shivered. It was starting to feel like winter in the mountains.
* * *
Something else was with us.
The sound came as quickly as it went. I whispered, “Whoa, stay still a moment.” Angus stumbled and the chest dinged me in the back.
Teta asked, “What did you—”
“Shhh!”
There it was again – so soft you could easily miss it or mistake it for the passing of air through the shaft that shouldn’t be here.
There was a staggered breath, then a quiet, muffled cry. Someone was sobbing.
We listened some more. It was definitely a woman crying, but in a way that sounded as if she was trying to hold it back in case someone heard her, someone who would give her an even better reason to weep.
It had to be Selma. I wanted to shout for her, but if she was being cautious, there had to be a good reason.
The tunnel was dark as a root cellar and seemed to go on forever. There was no telling how far she was from us.
If her sobbing was being used as a way to draw us in, so be it. Almost more than seeing Selma again, I wanted to face the bastard that had turned Hecla into a chasm of no return. I nudged Matthias to resume walking.
“Would you like me to absolve you of your sins before we go much farther?” he asked. I didn’t answer.
Instead, I squeezed by him, my back raking across the jagged wall, opening up a new set of welts. I wanted to be the first. I had to be the first. Even with his torch behind me, it gave off enough light to see by.
Selma’s quiet weeping came and went as we descended. She sounded hurt, scared, lost and, worst of all, alone. With every step, I hoped she would hear us coming.
“This has to end somewhere,” Teta grumbled from the back. He was anxious. We all were. Selma’s crying suddenly cut off in midsob. If I didn’t know better, I would swear someone had clamped their hand over her mouth and whisked her away.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I rasped, grinding my back teeth so hard pain radiated from my jaw to the top of my skull.
The tunnel curved ahead, and in the bend I saw flickering light.
I wanted to run, but I slowed instead. We were close. I had to be smart about this. “Teta, switch places with Matthias.”
There was a lot of huffing and grunting as Teta wormed his way past Angus and the oversized chest. We inched our way to the bend. When we got there, I poked my head around, had a quick look and pulled back.
“There’s an opening on the left. Looks like it leads to either another tunnel or a chamber. That’s where the light’s coming from.”
Matthias said, “Here, take the amulet. It will protect you if there are any Djinn waiting for you.”
I waved his offer off. “You keep it. If those wild men-Djinn decide to clog the tunnel, you can drive them back with it and get us out of here.”
To Teta, I said, “I’m going to scoot past the opening. You pull up on this side and we’ll go in together, barrels first.”
“Comprendo, jefe.”
I patted him on the chest, took a deep breath and ran around the bend. I glanced into the opening and saw that it was, indeed, a chamber, and a large one at that. I slammed my back against the wall and watched Teta do the same on the opposite side of the opening.
My head was spinning. Wavering tongues of light danced along the rock face. I imagined fireflies swarming around me like they would during hot nights on a cattle drive. My legs were rubber and my teeth chattered so hard my jaw hurt.
In the instant I had been able to see inside the chamber, my world, which had been turned upside down, was thrown spinning.
It can’t be!
I tried to settle down
, but my body betrayed me. My mind wasn’t far behind. Death no longer had meaning.
* * *
“Are you all right?” Teta whispered.
I wasn’t. At all. My nerves tingled and my skin felt like it was on fire. It was hard to draw a breath. An invisible hand had reached inside my chest and was slowly crushing my heart, making black spots float around the edges of my vision. I couldn’t seem to keep my head up and the thought of moving was as unwelcome as having a tooth pulled.
“Nat,” he said, his voice rising.
I ground the inside of my lip to give my system a jolt. The taste of copper flooded my mouth.
I didn’t want to look inside that chamber again. And yet more than anything in the world, I did.
For the first time in my life, I was paralyzed with indecision. I wasn’t doing anyone, including myself, any good leaning against the wall, wondering if I was going to pass out or not. I collected myself as best I could and looked at Teta, nodding.
Before I could second-guess myself, I pivoted around the entrance and entered the chamber.
It was roughly the shape of an oval, with a ceiling that must have been at least ten feet high. A half-dozen torches burned along its curved walls, their handles jammed into fissures in the rock. Two tunnels branched off at the end of the chamber, dark voids to deeper recesses under the hills.
But it wasn’t the chamber that shook me.
A lone, pale stalagmite rose from the center of the chamber floor. A woman was lashed to the stalagmite with long leather straps. Her head rested on her shoulders and her eyes were closed. Someone, or something, had knocked her out cold.
It wasn’t Selma.
Her curly, blonde hair obscured half of her face, but I’d seen enough to know exactly who it was, and it was impossible.
My Lucille, as young and beautiful as she’d been the day she died almost thirty years before, lay at my feet, her dress in tatters, exposing her pale, tender flesh. Red welts and bruises blossomed across her arms, back and neck.
You can’t be here, Lucille. I watched you die. After I buried you, I spent five years doing my damnedest to get killed so I could be with you again.
I put you in the ground myself. I buried everything I ever wanted to be or hoped to have with you that day. I still see your face every night before I fall asleep, clear as if we’d just said good night.
Why are you here?
I didn’t notice Teta come in behind me. He ran to the back of the stalagmite and had his knife in his hand. He was going to cut the straps that bound Lucille’s wrists.
I shouted, “Wait!”
Teta paused, the sharp blade resting against the leather. “Matthias, come here now!”
Angus and Matthias entered the chamber. Angus placed the chest on the ground. I held out my hand.
“Give me the amulet.”
He pressed it into my palm. Teta stared at me, questioning, but trusting enough to back away from Lucille. There was no way he could know who the woman was, but he must have seen the choked panic in my eyes.
“You said this thing repels the Djinn?” I asked, turning to Matthias.
“Most certainly.”
All eyes were on Lucille. Her skin was almost translucent. If I hadn’t seen her breathe, I would have sworn she was dead.
But she is dead!
My boots scraped across the floor as I got closer. I pushed her hair back behind her ear. There was her face. The delicate jawline I’d traced my fingers along, the line of sun freckles that marched over the bridge of her nose and eyelashes so long they could almost touch her eyebrows.
It couldn’t be Lucille. I knew that. The dead don’t rise from the grave.
My hand shook as I brought the amulet closer, waiting for her eyes to flutter open, waiting for her to turn to smoke like the other Djinn. Their image of her was so heartbreakingly perfect it would be like watching her die again.
I held the amulet to her cheek. Her flesh was warm and supple. Alive. Nothing happened.
I turned to Matthias. “If she was a Djinn, she would have reacted, right?”
He came over and looked Lucille over. He took the amulet from me and laid it on her forehead. Her brow twitched, but that was all.
“This woman is no Djinn, Nat.”
“Teta, cut her free.”
I pulled her into my arms, burying my face in her hair. She smelled like sun and crisp spring air and the homemade soap she always used, made from wild flowers and honey. I could feel the bones beneath her flesh, savor the rise and fall of her chest against mine.
I kissed her lips, tasted her breath.
“Nat, what’s going on? Do you know her?” Teta said. He’d rolled the straps around his hands and was crouched down next to me.
“It’s…it’s Lucille,” I said, my voice trembling. He shuffled back.
“You said she died when you were a kid.”
“She did.”
I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream at a God that could take her from me, only to deliver her when I was in the bowels of hell on earth.
“How long ago did she die?” I heard Matthias say. My eyes were closed, lost in the tangle of her hair, in the rush of having her in my arms.
“Twenty-five years, maybe more,” Teta replied.
Something heavy scraped across the floor. When I looked up, Angus stood over us, the chest open and by my outstretched feet.
“Please,” he said, “let me talk to her.”
He flinched at the sound of my pistol’s hammer being drawn back. “You stay away from her!” I snarled.
I didn’t want Angus or his damn spirit chest to come anywhere near Lucille. And despite the situation we were all in, I was ready to make things much worse.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Nat, don’t be crazy,” Teta urged. He motioned for Angus to step back. “That can’t be Lucille. You know it can’t.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me it can’t!” I shouted, pulling her closer to me. Any harder and I’d crush her. “You saw it with your own eyes! The amulet didn’t do a thing to her. I don’t know how this is happening, but she’s real. For Christ’s sake, look at her. She’s breathing.”
As I smoothed her silky hair with my rough hand, I detected a large knot on the back of her head. Someone had hit her pretty hard.
“But you said you saw her die.”
“I did. Or, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I buried the wrong woman. I don’t know.” And I didn’t care. All that mattered was that Lucille was alive.
Matthias eased closer. “I can only imagine the emotions that are running through you right now, Mr. Blackburn. In light of everything you’ve experienced, I think it would be prudent if Angus took a moment to examine her.”
“He a doctor?”
“No, he’s not.”
“Then fuck off.”
“Does any of this seem natural to you? If the devil is truly here, he’s using her to play with your mind.”
I didn’t allow his words to sink in. “Jefe, what about Selma?”
A dull pressure built behind my eyes. Selma.
Finding Lucille, I had completely forgotten about Selma, the reason we were here in the first place. Gazing at Lucille’s fair skin and golden hair, I was finding it hard to recall what Selma even looked like. Searing pain knifed through my skull. Every thought felt fuzzy around the edges.
Teta said something to Matthias but I couldn’t make out the words. I kept my eyes on Angus.
The ground began to vibrate and the walls sang a hideous chorus of stone being compressed to the breaking point.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Teta yelled.
The hills above us grumbled and shook. A cascade of loose rocks and dirt rained from the ceiling. Something roared in the tunnel where we had come from. We jumped when a boulder the
height and width of the chamber entrance rolled into sight, wedging itself into our only means of escape.
Angus picked up his chest, looking to Matthias for a course of action.
Holding Lucille to my chest, I shouted above the din of the quake, “We have to make for those tunnels!”
I had to shift Lucille so she was over my shoulder. I grabbed one of the torches from the wall and ran for the tunnel on the left. “Come on!”
No sooner had I stepped inside than the entire façade came crumbling down. I turned to sprint, my instinct to take my chances and try for the other tunnel where everyone else had gone. But I was too late. The way out was blocked by a mound of heavy rocks.
I’d been separated from the others. But I still had Lucille.
* * *
When everything settled down and the Hecla mine was satisfied that it had sequestered our little rescue party, I hammered the butt of the rifle on the wall.
“Can you guys hear me?”
If they said something, I couldn’t hear it, but I did hear three sharp raps against the wall. At least I knew they’d made it. Hefting Lucille into a better position across my shoulder, I started walking. My choices were limited at this point. I was truly at sea, mentally, physically and emotionally. The only thing to do was see where the tide took me.
After every few feet, I tapped on the wall to show them I was advancing down the tunnel. I was met with responding knocks as they kept pace. The farther I walked, the lower the ceiling became. It would be hard if I had to crouch with Lucille on my shoulder, one hand on my rifle and the other on the torch.
I kept walking and listening to the steady rhythm of Lucille’s breathing. Words were too inadequate to describe how I felt, holding her once again. No matter how high my joy, there was a sinister low lurking around the corner.
The tunnels must have diverged, because the taps began to grow weaker as the wall between us grew thicker. Pretty soon, I didn’t hear any at all. I had to bend my knees to keep from hitting my head. Lucille’s dead weight was almost too much for me to handle. I had to set her down and see if I could wake her up.
I laid her across my lap, cradling her head in the crook of my arm. The lump on her head hadn’t gotten any bigger, which was a good sign.
