Gone Black

The small child stood still and looked around his family's safe room. It was really a grotto dug out of volcanic rock and located way down in the ancient Roman sewer tunnels, deep under the old stone Saracen Tower in which they now lived. There was a huge opening in the rocks right in front of him, one that showed the sky and jutted out a good ways over the water below. He could see the waves moving in to the shore, just like marching soldiers all in a line, right under where he stood near the drop-off. He could hear the waves hitting, crashing, and smashing upon the rocky shore when they reached the base of the cliff somewhere far beneath the safe room. It was a long way down to the water so he took care not to stand very close to the edge. The sea winds hit him in the face and blew back his dark hair while he gazed out over the shiny, sunlit sea with all the seagulls wheeling and diving into the water.

Smiling, he was very happy that his mama and daddy had moved them to the seashore. He was born in California, but his daddy's family came from southern Italy and that's why they had chosen their new home in the ancient fortress on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. They had moved into the big stone structure a few months ago, and he and his daddy had been exploring the subterranean tunnels. His daddy said Roman engineers built them. They had found all sorts of caves and grottoes, too, where they had been dug into the cliffs by centuries of storms and weather and pounding waves. He loved to explore down there in the cool, dark underground place with his daddy. His daddy was a real good archaeologist, kinda like Indiana Jones, and his mother was a geologist and really liked all the rocks and stuff around the fortress.

After the whole family had pulled up stakes and moved away from Sacramento, California, and to this wonderful place, they had told him all kinds of tales about how the fortress was used as a Roman lookout a long time ago for searching the sea for the Saracen and Barbary pirates, and even earlier than that as a fort kind of thing for the Phoenicians and then much later as a hideout for French and Spanish pirates and privateers. His daddy told him that those pirates probably hid their gold coins and other booty down inside the Roman system of troughs and cisterns and grottoes where he was right now, and he always looked for treasure when he was exploring. But he never had found any. Not yet. Maybe they had taken it away when they left.

His parents called their new home a fortress, but he thought it looked more like the castles in his picture books, the ones with knights and ladies and kings and queens. They lived all by themselves, and it was kind of scary, really, with the high dark mountains rising up in the distance at the middle of the island. He could see other islands outside the opening, too, rising up from the sea on the horizon, almost like it had looked when they had visited Hawaii. All he knew was that he liked this new place a whole, whole lot. He missed his friends, though, way back in California. They had all lived in his old neighborhood, and his mama used to give them cherry Kool-Aid and Skittles and M&Ms. Once his mama and daddy had even taken him and his friends to a real fun bounce house and petting zoo. They even took them to Disneyland once, too, and that was the most fun place he'd ever been.

But this new home was super awesome, too, kinda like he had his own big special hideout, where he could play down in the dark, narrow tunnels any time he wanted. The grottoes had peepholes in the walls and inside the fortress were big modern heat vents and bookcases that were really hidden doors that opened out into the rooms because not so long ago it had been an inn. He loved all of that. It was real secret and fun to peek in at his parents when they didn't know it. But down here in the safe room, he had made a special hideout just for himself, and it was up pretty high in the cliff where some of the tunnels emptied rainwater into the sea. There was a lower opening in the cliff, too, one that overlooked the water, but it was far below them.

He liked this one better because that's where his daddy stacked boxes of food and bottled water and medicines and clothes and ammunition for his guns in case something terrible happened, like a big storm or like when those bad people came to kill his mom someday. He had some bedding down there, too, sleeping bags and blankets and pillows and lots of his
Star Wars
toys. It was a real good place for a kid like him to play. But he hadn't spent the night alone down there yet. He was kinda scared to and his mother wouldn't let him, anyway. She said he was a big boy, but still too little for some things.

Today it was real pretty and sunny outside, real hot, too, and bright light sparkled across the water and gave off a terrible glare, one that almost blinded him and made him shield his eyes when he looked out at it. He should've worn his sunglasses. Directly in front of him was the big hole in the rocks where one of the shallow troughs poured water over the ledge after rainstorms when the big cisterns along the shafts overflowed. It poured off from very high and into the deep blue water below.

Somewhere under his feet the wild waves were still crashing into the bottom of the cliff, and he could hear the loud roiling and teeming and smashing turmoil against the cliff. It sounded as if an angry beast was trying to tear down the mountain right under his feet. Behind him lay one of the deepest cisterns. There was a small opening above it that revealed the blue sky with lots of white clouds that looked like popcorn. Freshwater poured through that hole and made a terrible racket during the big rainstorms that rolled in off the sea. It had only happened once since they'd moved there, but it had been pretty scary with all the lightning and thunder and howling winds.

“Don't get too close to the ledge,” his daddy warned sternly from behind him. “That's a long way down, son, and the undertow down there is awfully powerful.”

The child glanced back at his daddy, who was working behind him taking out cans of food and new bottles of his mama's medicines and boxes of flashlight batteries from the wheelbarrow and storing it in some big metal lockers that they had pushed down through the dark tunnels the week before. They had most of their extra supplies in the safe room now, but they had some stored in a few of the smaller grottoes up the tunnel closer to the house, too. It sure was a lot of hard work, but Daddy did it for Mama because she was always so afraid that somebody was gonna come and kill her with guns and stuff. Sometimes, the little boy got real scared and wondered who these bad folks were, why she was always so worried about them, why she always carried that little silver gun in her coat pocket, and why she locked all the doors so tight at night and in the day, too, no matter where they were or where they went. Even when they left and went out to have a picnic on the cliffs, she locked up everything. She locked it tight and took the key and wore her binoculars around her neck to watch for the bad people.

“Son, you ready to go back up?”

The little boy turned around and smiled at his daddy. “Yes, sir. Can I push the wheelbarrow?”

“We'll go get one more load of supplies and bring it down, and then maybe we'll go down to that little beach we found the other day and look for shells. What'd you say?”

“I wanna find some conch shells and that kind that curls all around like a horn.”

“Okay, let's get going then. Mama can fix us a snack to take along. Maybe she'll come this time with us.”

So they walked back up the tunnels together, with the boy pushing the big wheelbarrow. The main shaft was fairly high but pretty skinny, but his daddy could stand up, and he was pretty tall. It was wide enough for the wheelbarrow but not too much wider than that. Some of the side tunnels were really low, and they had to get down on their knees and crawl when they went inside them, but that was fun. There were all kinds of secret passages and hidden places, all along the sides of the main trough. It was almost like being in his favorite movie,
Star Wars
. Sometimes he pretended he was Luke Skywalker and he lived inside the fortress, but it wasn't Earth anymore. It was on a Jedi planet far, far away, and he could land the
Millennium Falcon
up in the big paved courtyard. He smiled to himself, pretending that Princess Leia and Han Solo and Yoda all lived there with him, too.

“Now remember, Mama's birthday is tomorrow. We're gonna surprise her with that pearl necklace we bought. We'll fix her favorite breakfast and give it to her in bed, and then we'll do anything she wants to do, all day long. It's her special day.”

“Okay,” the boy said. He loved surprises, especially ones for his mama. She was so little and sweet and good to him. He was almost as tall as her already, and he wasn't even very old yet. She read to him from his
Star Wars
books every night when he went to bed, and she took long walks with him along the cliffs when his daddy was searching for artifacts in some of the other Roman ruins, the ones that lay just down the beach. She loved that, taking walks and having picnics, so he bet she'd want to do that on her birthday and maybe swim some, too, out in the gentle part of the beach.

It took them quite a while to get up through the tunnels because they twisted and turned all around through the rock cliff. It was really awesome. Daddy's flashlight illuminated the floor of the troughs, and in time they reached one of the hidden bookcases that Daddy said the Barbary pirates had built to hide the tunnels from anybody looking for their booty. There was a fancy brass grille with a steel latch that opened into the boy's bedroom, and he liked to use it. But this time, they had the wheelbarrow so they went through the bookcase in his parents' bedroom. They locked it back into place and then moved out into the long stone corridor on the second floor of the fortress. Even though it was boiling hot outside, it was really cool everywhere inside the house, because the stone walls were so thick and chiseled right out of the cliff. They hardly ever used the air conditioning. They left the wheelbarrow upstairs and walked down to the main staircase, which was really wide and had neat stone bannisters, and then they passed by all the buckets of paint and decorating supplies that his mama had ordered so they could redecorate the rooms the way they wanted and make their home look real pretty.

Walking down the steps to the great hall, his daddy called out his mama's name, because he never liked to walk up and surprise her. That always just scared the life out of her, so they were very careful to call out her name first. Every time, too. She didn't answer yet, so they headed to the kitchen where she was probably getting ready to cook dinner. He hoped they were having cheeseburgers. They turned the corner, and that's when they saw her.

His mama was standing behind their new black granite counter, but this time, there was a great big man right behind her, holding his arm around her neck. He had a gun pointed at her head! The little boy stopped in his tracks, shocked to a standstill, and then the man just pulled the trigger and part of his mama's head flew right off, and she just crumpled down in a heap on the floor. Then a woman with long red braids suddenly appeared out of the big pantry and aimed her gun at his daddy.

“Run, Rico, run and hide!” Daddy yelled, shoving the child behind him.

Rico was so shocked for a second that he couldn't even move, but then he took off as fast as he could, back the way they'd come, heading for the safety of the Roman tunnels, just the way his parents had always told him to do. He ran hard, but before he could reach the wide stone stairs again, another shot rang out from the kitchen. He skidded to a stop and looked back, afraid they had shot his daddy, too. That's when the woman with long red braids came out of nowhere and grabbed him up off his feet. He kicked at her and fought as hard as he could, but she was way too strong. When she hit him in the head with something hard, Rico fell down on his back, real dizzy, and she got down and straddled his waist with her legs.

“Hello there, little lost boy. You're an orphan now, you know that? But no worries, I'm going to take very good care of you. You can be my precious little pet boy. Okay?”

Still groggy, and not really understanding what she meant, Rico just stared up at her, so terrified in that moment that he almost wet his pants, but the redheaded lady only laughed at the scared look on his face. Then she jerked him up onto his feet and dragged him back to the kitchen. He was shaking all over then, so terrified he could barely breathe. His mama and daddy were both laying on the floor now, big puddles of red stuff all around them. He knew that was blood, and he just froze in his tracks and stared at them in total shock, until the redheaded woman picked him up and swung him down hard on top of the kitchen counter.

There were two men in the kitchen now, an old one, who was not real big and who had a bald head and a long bushy white beard but no mustache. He was standing by the refrigerator and smoking a cigar that smelled really bad. The other man was big, bigger than Rico's daddy, and he had the same kind of dark red hair that the woman did, but his was long, too, and hung to his shoulders like pictures of Vikings that Rico had seen in his books. He had kind of a real short half beard kinda thing on his chin that went around his mouth and under his nose. He was the one who had his arm around Rico's mama's neck and who had shot her down dead. That one was just leaning his back against the counter and frowning, as if he were really, really mad at somebody. All three of the bad people just ignored Rico then, but the little boy sat frozen with dread, so shocked by what he'd seen, by the sight of his parents down on the floor right beside him, dead and bloody, that he could not speak or even move a muscle.

“Just kill the kid, Jaxy, and quit being stupid.” That came from the big frowning one.

Rico began to shake then, scared to death. They were going to kill him, too. They were going to make his head explode, too. He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that it hurt, but he didn't want to have to see the guns when they pointed them at him.