A Game of Greed and Deception: A Mystery Drama (18 page)

“Well
of course I do, sweetie. I miss the close times that we’ve shared as a family.
In the year that Stephen and I have been married, the three of us have only sat
down to share a tea together once. We really should have done this more often.”

“So
then why are we doing this now without dad even being here? If we only did this
one time in a year, how did it suddenly become so important?”

“Because,
sweetie, I want you and I to patch up our differences and do what’s best for
Stephen and the family. I’m pleading for your forgiveness and this is the best
way that I know to talk, relax, and become close again.”

Maria
nodded. “I need some sugar in my tea. I like it really sweet. Can you get me
some? Then I can drink it.”

Tammy
rolled her eyes. “But why don’t you try it the way it is? It tastes so good
naturally. Rooibos doesn’t need to be sweetened.”

“Because
I always sweeten anything hot with sugar or honey. Please go get me some sugar
from the kitchen. I saw some in the tea cabinet.”

“Fine…I’ll
be back in just a moment.” Tammy set her tea cup down and stood up abruptly. She
went into the kitchen for a few moments and then came back out with a small cup
of sugar.

Maria
took her tea cup while trying not to let Tammy see that she was shaking, and
put a teaspoon of sugar in it. She stirred it and watched as the sugar
dissolved. Then she held the cup up to her lips. She blew on the tea a bit and
then took a small sip. “Mmm, that’s good.” She added a bit more sugar and
stirred it again. Then Maria started drinking more of the tea.

Tammy
smiled warmly as she sat down, picked up a ginger cookie, and her tea cup. Her
eyes were back to normal. “There you go, now isn’t that delicious? It’s nice
for us girls to share some tea together. I really wish your father was here to
join us.” She took a bite of the cookie and a gulp of her tea.

Maria
smiled. “Why yes it is, thank you, Tammy. I think I will accept your apology.”
Maria took a ginger cookie and had a bite. She licked her lips to catch some of
the sugar crystals from the cookie. Then she finished the rest of her tea and
set the cup down on the table. She poured some more tea from the pot into her
cup and had another bite of the cookie.

Tammy
had a bit of a dry feeling in her mouth and took another mouthful of the tea.
It tasted a little funny and after hesitating she spit it out onto the floor.
Maria jumped up and backed away from Tammy.

“You
little bitch! Get the hell over here!” Tammy screamed at Maria and jumped up
off the sofa. Maria wanted desperately to get back into her room, but Tammy was
too close to the door. Maria grabbed the knife and kept her eyes focused on
Tammy.

Tammy
grabbed her flail. She bent her knees, started to swing the weapon, and inched
closer to Maria. Maria knew that Tammy would act impulsively and was thankful
that she had years of gymnastics training. Tammy looked at Maria squarely in
the eyes. “You think you can outsmart me? That will be the fucking day.” Then
she swung the flail violently at Maria’s head. Maria leapt backwards, dodging
the attack, and scurried across the room, using the sofa as a barrier.

Tammy
turned again towards Maria. Her eyes looked like dark blue caverns in the night
waiting for a weary traveler. “You ain’t going nowhere, bitch.”

Maria
stayed behind the sofa, holding on tightly to the knife, and waiting for Tammy
to make a move. She smirked and responded with levity. “You think so? I don’t
see how you can catch me, with that broken hand and all. You’re too slow to get
me, Tammy. Come on – try it.”

Tammy
suddenly lunged across the sofa at Maria, swinging the flail at her once more.
It narrowly missed Maria’s head, and Tammy fought hard to keep her balance
while controlling the awkward weapon. Maria slipped around the edge of the sofa
and shoved the coffee table at Tammy’s legs, making her trip and fall to the
floor.

Maria
darted back behind the corner of the sofa. She saw that the trap door in the
center of the floor was uncovered, and wanted to get past Tammy to go down the
narrow ladder, knowing that nowhere else inside the cabin would be safe. She
waited anxiously, holding the knife tightly in her hand.

Tammy
got back up on her feet, and swung the flail over her head. It whooshed around
in circles. She wanted to trick Maria into moving the wrong direction. She
lunged across the sofa as if to strike, but as Maria jumped out from behind the
corner of the sofa, Tammy flung the weapon right where Maria was scurrying to.

Maria’s
reflexes were cat-like. She held the knife out and the nails in the flail
ricocheted off of the blade. The force with which Tammy had swung the flail
caused her to fall right on top of the sofa. Maria made a bolt past Tammy towards
the trap door and opened it with the metal loop. Surprisingly, there was a
flickering light coming up from down below. Tammy leaned over and lunged at
Maria, grabbing her by the leg. Maria kicked wildly until she broke Tammy’s
grip. Tammy hurled the flail at Maria one more time. Not able to get up in time
to move, Maria tried to block the attack with the knife. Although the brunt of
the blow was softened considerably, the sharp nails in the flail deflected off
the knife and struck Maria on the shoulder.

Howling
with pain, Maria hurled the knife at Tammy’s head. Although it missed her,
Tammy staggered back, and Maria was able to launch herself down into the
tunnel. In an instant, Maria disappeared down into the unknown of the basement
with the trap door slamming closed behind her, and left Tammy wheezing and
panting for air.

EIGHTEEN

Tammy sat still on the
hardwood floor for a moment. She heaved in shallow breaths of air through her
mouth which was dry as cotton. Her stomach swelled from the sheer terror in
knowing that she had ingested some of the poison and thinking about what
effects it might have on her system. Trying not to panic, she jumped up, ran
into the kitchen, and bent over the sink. She stuck two fingers deep into her
throat and gagged herself until she started to dry heave. After a couple of
minutes she was finally able to vomit. Then she swallowed a few swigs of water
from one of the bottles.

Back
in the living room, Tammy sat on the floor to catch her breath and keep from
hyperventilating. She reminded herself that the little bit of poison she had
swallowed would not be fatal and could take days to even begin to affect her.
So it all comes down to this – they must
both be down there waiting for me. They think they’ve done got me trapped and
there’s nothing else that I can do. Well, I sure as hell don’t want to
disappoint them.
She took the flail and draped it over her shoulder by the
rope. Then she stuck the jade dagger in her back pocket.

Tammy
opened the trap door and peered at the ladder that led down into the tunnel
with a dim light coming upwards. Being careful not to bump her injured hand,
she descended into the tunnel backwards. She stepped slowly not knowing how far
down the metal ladder went. A bit of light kept flickering up near the ladder
helping Tammy to keep from bumping into the hard, clay walls around her in the
narrow space. After more than twenty steps, she reached the bottom of the
ladder. Looking up, the entrance to the living room was now just a small hole.
Tammy turned around and saw that ahead of her was a narrow tunnel. The walls
were made of the same dark brown clay and there was barely enough room in
between them to pass through. She started carefully through the tunnel, looking
up and down before each step to be sure that it was safe to move forward. She
soon passed by the source of light – two iron torches, one on either side of
the wall, burning a bright flickering yellow flame.

A few
more paces ahead Tammy reached a three-way fork in the tunnel. Pathways went
straight ahead, to the left, and to the right, with more light coming from
inside them.
Shit, I don’t know where
these tunnels lead to. I can’t get myself lost in here. I need to be able to
remember how to get back exactly to this damn spot.
She turned and started
down the tunnel to her left.

It
wound along a slight curve. The air was cool but not cold and bone dry. Tammy
looked up and noticed that the ceiling was simply dirt that had been burrowed
into. She went further along the narrow tunnel, keeping her bandaged hand in
front of her so as not to bump it against the wall. A little further on the
tunnel ended at what appeared to be an ancient prison cell door. It was made of
wrought iron and dark wood paneling, with a latch that was kept locked with an
old padlock. Tammy took the skeleton key and tried it in the lock, but it was
too big. She yanked on the padlock hoping that it might open. Then she took the
jade dagger out of her back pocket and hit the padlock several times as hard as
she could. The lock was made of solid brass and would not break.

Wait a minute – the key that I took from
Maria!
Tammy reached into her pocket and took out the small
brass key. It fit perfectly into the tiny keyhole and the padlock opened. She
grunted as she opened the big, heavy wrought iron door.

She
stepped through the doorway into a space where the tunnel suddenly widened
dramatically. Against the walls just inside where it expanded were two more lit
torches. Tammy stepped slowly past the torches into the more spacious area.

As
she looked to her left and right in the now nine-foot wide walkway, she also
saw in front of her that the floor suddenly dropped. A trench had been dug down
below the surface level of the tunnel, several feet deep and around seven feet
across. The right side of the trench stopped at a narrow walkway that was at
surface level and ran along a concrete slab wall. On the left side, the trench
ran all the way against a second concrete wall. Two surface-level openings in
this wall led to small rooms with light coming out from inside. Looking
straight ahead the trench went on for a long while ending at a clay wall well
off in the distance with two more flickering flames.

Tammy
could feel her pulse pounding in her already knotted stomach as she inhaled
deeply to take it all in. At the bottom of the trench, the clay was cracked and
full of fissures, indicating that at some time it was filled with water.
Leaning against the concrete wall on the right side walkway were a couple of
old boards.
Holy shit, I’ve read about
somethin’ like this before. They did this in
Africa
.
It looks like a damn place to hold prisoners. They would be kept in those rooms
and not allowed to leave. Then that trench is filled up with water and
electricity is run through it. If they try and get out, they have to go into
the water and die. Those boards are set down as bridges to move people in and
out of those rooms.

She
stepped down carefully onto the hard, cracked ground in the trench. Small
pieces of dirt crunched under her boots. Then she walked along around twenty
feet until she got to the opening to the first room. Tammy peered up trying to
see better inside, but it was difficult as the intense light from another
well-lit torch was blinding. She crawled out from the trench onto the floor of
the room and went inside. Tammy stood in the center of the room and slowly
turned around in circles. She gasped and her mouth hung open as she was
mesmerized by the macabre setting.

There
was a pile of old bones in one corner of the room. Four old rusty metal chairs
were bolted to the walls. Above each chair were two chains at the end of which
was a shackle. But the most stunning thing was the handprints all over the
walls and ceiling. There were literally thousands of them made from bleeding
hands that had left dried red marks. Most of them were overlapping each other
and covered almost every inch of wall and ceiling space.

Geezus Christ, that Oliver musta been
some crazy bastard to dig out these tunnels. So what, he just kept people
trapped in these rooms and they died trying to get out? Those chairs musta been
used to torture some of them or just keep them locked up with those chains. I
bet he starved them and got off on some of them jumping into the water and
getting electrocuted. And from the look of those old bones he wasn’t exactly
the best housekeeper.

Tammy
got out of what she had recognized as a torture cell and let herself back down
into the trench. She looked back to her right again before continuing on to the
left. The dead silence and still air were numbing. She moved along a little bit
further until she was in front of the second small room on her left. She again
climbed out of the trench and inside this other torture cell illuminated by a
burning torch.

Against
the right wall she noticed a type of bed made from a concrete slab that looked
like something inside a prison. The bed had cut marks on it and was stained
with red and brown smears, the color of blood and feces. Attached to the bed
were two old leather straps that had cracked from decay. One end of the bed
butted up to the corner of the wall where there were two chains with shackles
on the end. On the other end, there was a wooden wheel attached to some kind of
pulley system. The pulley had long rusty chains wound tightly around it.

Tammy
shuddered, shaking her head in disbelief, literally paralyzed with fear for a
moment.
So he done made a torture
dungeon. He musta tied people up on the bed and pulled on their limbs with
these chains until they bled and shit themselves. I guess I’m even more damn
normal than I thought I was. Hell, I didn’t even want to kill Stephen myself.
What a sadistic fuck.

She
turned around and examined the rest of the room, which was empty except for a
medieval-looking broad axe mounted to the wall. The large weapon had a long,
curved steel blade on one end, and a pointed pick-like spear on the other. Tammy
grabbed the axe and yanked it until it came free from the mounting device. She
ran her hand over the steel blade and found it dull from wear. The weapon was
far too heavy and cumbersome for her to use so she dropped it to the ground. Imagining
this blade making the cuts in the concrete bed was overwhelming for her and she
quickly exited the room back into the trench.

She
had to sit down for a moment on the wrinkled clay ground. She was still holding
the flail tightly in her sweaty palm. She checked to be sure that the jade
dagger was still in her pocket, knowing that she might have to defend herself
from whoever lurked in these tunnels. Her mind was racing and she felt utterly
nauseous from the sight of the instruments of torture in the small chambers.
Tammy was sleep-deprived and frustrated, but all she could think about was
finding Stephen and Maria somewhere together and killing both of them.

She returned
to the narrow path that she was on before. Tammy moved carefully, always
looking ahead and behind her to be sure that nobody else was there. In a few
moments she was back to the three-way fork.
One
down and two to go.
She turned to her left and started down another narrow
walkway.