Hallowed (48 page)

“No, Paul, wait!  Something’s wrong here,” my father said, placing his open palm against my chest.

A wall of smoke hit us and the passage suddenly filled with coughing, panicking bodies, all of them headed down.  They stared at Dad and me with wide-eyed wonder, bustling past us with the single-minded determination of human survival instinct.  One young woman made eye contact with me and screamed, “Don’t go up! It’s Hell itself!”

There was an impossibly loud explosion and the entire stairwell rocked from side to side like a ride at an amusement park.  My uncle’s Bible tumbled from my hand, and I dropped my knees waiting to be trampled by another oncoming herd of humanity as my fingers enclosed around its spine.

Dad grabbed me and set me back on my feet.  He noticed the backpack for the first time and relieved me of it.

“What the hell is going on,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, barely able to make myself heard.  My father gave a shake of his head and urged me forward.

The mass around me screamed in unison as another blast ripped through the walls around us.  I heard an authoritative voice rise above the others: “Continue down the stairwell!  There is medical attention below!  Please continue down the stairwell!”

A man dressed in a fireman gear, axe in hand pressed through the clogged stairwell.  He made eye-contact with my father and seized his shoulder.  “Please make your way down!”  His tone of voice left no room for debate as he shoved Dad firmly with a single gloved hand in the direction of the retreating tide.  My father began to struggle and I watched as the fireman brought the handle of his axe up beneath my father’s chin, pinning his body against the wall.

Acting from instinct, I grabbed the arm of the fireman, his arm like an iron bar.  His helmeted head turned and stared at me with crazed shadowy eyes, foam leaking from one corner of his mouth.  My grip loosened unconsciously.

“You’ll only die up there, Paul!”
the fireman hissed.

“Go!” my father shouted at me.  “This isn’t real!  It’s pulling all this out of our goddamned heads!  All those documentaries!  All the news footage!  None of this is real!”  When I hesitated, he said: “Go! Go get Claudia!”

I turned my back to my father, and the light of his lantern, and started into the darkness alone.

Distant flames bathed the path ahead in orange.  The sea of flesh pushed against me until it seemed they were making an effort to bar my way.  A burly man in a three-piece suit seized my arm and railed at me with blood-shot eyes: “Goddamit boy, do you want to die!”  Coughing uncontrollably, I still managed to twist out of his grasp and shove through the tightening vise of the crowd with all my strength.

This is all in my head, I told myself as I flattened myself against the wall and screamed for Claudia.  As I squeezed my back around another corner, I could hear clearly now the steady ticking of burning metal and the death-throes of hope-deprived people.  In my mind, I could clearly see them wailing like caged animals, flinging themselves out of windows to meet death rather than face the inferno around them.  There was a whooshing sound, like the ignition of the burner of a gas stove only a hundred-thousand times louder.  Heat blasted one side of my body, and I imagined that I could smell the grisly smell of burning flesh.

I knew then what I faced.  Damnation was around this corner.

Smoke filled my lungs as I pressed my hands together above my crucifix and touched my nose to my knuckles.  “Please help me,” I begged over and over.  “Please help me.”

The noise level suddenly dropped to near silence.

When I opened my eyes again, I stood on stone steps again.  Taking a deep breath, I started forward again following the only dim source of light I could locate, black candles set into the wall fonts every few yards.

The steps had been cut shallower and steeper here.  I had to take them one at a time again in order to keep from falling.  The walls around me grew cold and moist, and as my breathing increased, I began to see each puff of my breath out before me.

Now, I could hear footfalls—more than a single pair--echoing in the distance above me.  From the sound quality, I could tell there was a large open area up ahead.

I heard a child’s scream and another voice yelled: “Let her go!”

Tucking my uncle’s Bible against my ribs and placing my hand on the grip of my father’s gun, I started forward.

Rushing up the final set of steps, I emerged from the passage and gasped aloud.  Surely, I must be outside, I thought.  I looked up in an attempt to see the moon or the stars but instead saw more darkness.  From the rush of wind and the echoes of minute sounds, the cavern must be gargantuan.  Limitless darkness surrounded me.  The animal part of me began to panic, and I instinctively edged for the nearest wall.  Dim light flickered around a distant corner.  I slid along the wall toward it.

There were four flaming torches set in alcoves in the walls, casting an artificial flickering glow to the large open area that appeared to be some sort of large auditorium, or possibly the amphitheater I recalled Mr. Wicke speaking about with Tracy’s voice.  A man I didn’t recognize in a dirty, wrinkled suit stood at the top of a series of steps carved in a semi-circle –an altar of some sort--with a child beneath his arm, a knife held at her throat.  A teenager that looked to be my age faced him, a crowbar in his hand.  “I ain’t kidding! You drop her right now or God help me, I’ll…”

I realized with amazement that I was witnessing a 1969 version of Ronnie Wicke facing off against a man I only knew from Claudia’s research to be an LSU physics professor named Dr. Wenton Joyner.

The girl in his arms was a five year old Tracy Tatum.

But was I simply viewing this or somehow physically present at this event?

Glancing down at Ronnie’s feet, I saw for the first time that he was standing on a gigantic circle of black obsidian glass, unrecognizable symbols etched around the edge.  An irrational fear gripped me at the sight of the circle.  I didn’t know its purpose or what the symbols meant, but my soul cried out that it was unnatural.  Wrong.

“
This doesn’t concern you, boy
,” the familiar voice hissed.  “
Only the daughter of Gerard will be taken as a tribute for her father’s obligation to us
.”

“No,” Ronnie simply stated.  “If you don’t let her go right now, a friend of mine, a kid who was named the junior regional sharp-shooting champion two years running, is going to put a hole the size of a Buick into your fat smug face.”

Suddenly, I knew that he was talking about Hank.  That’s when I realized that Ronnie was waiting in vain for two brothers that I knew were fighting at this very moment about which direction they should go.

“
Leave now, Ronald, son of Vincent, and we will allow you to survive this day.”

I watched as the seventeen year old boy swallowed back his fear and uttered the words: “I guess I never should have been here today, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you to kill that little girl!”

Before I could measure the consequences of my actions, I drew my father’s gun from the shoulder holster and fired once into the air.

When Dr. Joyner flinched, Ronnie swung the crowbar, catching him on the side of the head and driving him to his knees.  Young Tracy dropped awkwardly to the floor, tumbling across the cavern a safe distance away.  She opened her eyes and blinked in disbelief, the look on her face clearly reading, I’m alive!

I jumped at the loud voice that came from behind me and stepped to one side defensively, feeling a brief tingling sensation as someone brushed past me.  I glanced up to see two teenagers-- one heavy-set holding a gun out before him and another lanky but muscular in a baseball cap wielding a bat--stepped out onto the top rows of what appeared to be where an audience might have been seated.

“
You have all sealed your fates
,” the monster, which had once been a man named Dr. Wenton Joyner, screeched as he rose slowly from his crouch.

Suddenly, my vision got hazy, my stomach gave a lurch and I thought I might puke my guts up right there in the cavern.  I fell to my knees, my hands slapping to the stone floor.  I found the face of my watch and before my eyes, the minute hand began to move forward in a steady fluid motion.  I turned my head and could see the transparent figures before me rush and jerk from place to place like an old home movie.  My mind spun and the floor seemed to rush up at me like an attacking predator.  The torchlight from the walls faded, and finally, all light disappeared but a single lantern.

Suddenly, when I thought I could take it no longer, I heard two voices.

“You move and I will slice straight through her throat with this knife!”  The voice came from just beside me, not more than a yard or two away.  I recognized the muffled voice as belonging to Graham and knew that he must still be wearing the night-vision goggles.

Then from behind me from the entrance to the amphitheater, I heard my father’s voice.  “Claudia, call out!  Let me hear you!”

There was a weak and distant sound from the darkness beside me.  The world around me came into sharp focus, and I felt the gun still gripped tightly in my hand.  I realized then that Graham had yet to see me.  Somehow, I had snuck in here under his radar and now I lay here in the darkness like a coiled snake at his heel.

You entered the cavern in 1969
, a voice told me.

As confused as I felt, I realized something with crystal clarity: Someone or something was helping me.  It had been no coincidence that I had found myself in the right place at the right time, both now and thirty-five years ago.

In the darkness where I laid, I heard a foot shuffle forward a step and that was all I needed to pinpoint his location.  In one quick movement, I stretched out my arm until it met resistance.  It was a boot.  I knew that Claudia didn’t wear boots.

I pulled the trigger.  A blast of sound exploded through the cavern.

Nathan Graham howled in pain and dropped like dead weight onto the stone floor, releasing the figure in his arms.  The knife he had held to her throat clattered loudly to the ground along with some other small object.

The next moment, I felt Claudia’s body in my arms and heard a flurry of footsteps rushing inside that could only have been my father.  In the seconds that followed, John Simon Graves swooped down on Graham like the wrath of God itself, ripping the goggles off and delivering blow after blow to his face.  I heard shouts of anger and cries of pain.

Ignoring the sounds of violence only a few feet away, I held Claudia quietly against me in the darkness, absorbing the warmth of her, feeling the steady beat of her heart beneath her clothing, thanking God over and over again.  There in the dim light of Dad’s lantern sitting on the cavern floor, I found myself looking down at a sight I feared that I would never see again, Claudia Wicke’s face.

Disoriented, Claudia stared glassily up at me, blinking in the light but never quite focusing.  I gazed down at her dirty, but otherwise untouched, face and grinned like an idiot.  “Hi,” I managed.

“Paul, you okay?” my father called.  “There was a gunshot.”

“It was me,” I told him.  “Uncle Hank gave me your gun.”

Dad rose, dropping Graham roughly to the floor and kicking the knife that he’d held at Claudia’s throat across the cave floor into the impenetrable darkness.  He scooped up the cell phone that he had dropped.  Even from a distance, I could tell from the multitude of obnoxious stickers that it was Claudia’s.  Retrieving two broad yellow zip ties from his belt, he knelt behind the teenager and forced Graham’s wrists behind him.

“Nathan Graham, you are under arrest for the murders of Grace Fischer, Sadie Newhart, Kalim Al-Sahim…”

A whimpering sort of chuckle started low in Graham’s chest.  Blood had begun to soak through the entire lower leg of his pants and pool around him where I’d shot him.

Dad tightened the zip ties around his wrists with a single brutal tug, jerking him physically off the ground.  “…Bridgette Sullivan, Patricia Wicke, and your own god-forsaken father.”

“What punishment will you inflict upon us that we haven’t already endured?  Where will you put us that could be darker than where we’ve been?” Graham growled, stretching his neck to lean closer to my father as if he were about to steal a kiss.

“Save it for your lawyer,” Dad snapped, tossing him roughly onto the floor, which for the first time I noticed was that same circle of black obsidian glass I’d seen before.

Suddenly, Claudia’s hand clamped down on mine.  Fear flooded my heart as her eyes rolled back into her head and her body began to spasm.

“Something’s wrong!”

My father appeared beside me, slipped a hand beneath the back of her head.  “Give me your jacket.”

I stripped my jacket off, the holster swinging out and revealing itself to my father.  His face darkened briefly, and he seemed to bite back a comment.  Snatching the jacket out of my hand, Dad rolled it into a ball, and set it on the floor behind Claudia.  He lowered her gently to the stone floor.  Her lips were blue.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“She’s having a seizure.”

“She is becoming one with the Body,” Graham croaked.  “Soon she will lie in eternal wait along with my brothers.”

My father shot a glare in Graham’s direction.  He reached over, ripped something from my back pocket and slapped it into my hand.  It was an oily red rag, the one that I had taken from the trunk of my car.  “Shut him up,” he growled at me.

Remembering that I had not only put the rag in my pocket at the car but the roll of electrical tape as well, I dug it from my pocket and swept across the room.  Graham twisted his head around and stared at me with enraged eyes, his lips rolling back to reveal his teeth.  “Try it, Graves,” he spat, snapping them together threateningly in my direction a couple of times.

Graham seemed covered in blood.  Some ran from his nose where my father had struck him and his legs lay in a slowly spreading dark pool, a gaping hole in his left boot where his toes should rightfully have been.

That’s where I got him, I thought, feeling an unsettling moment of what could only be called pride.

Grabbing his broken nose in one hand, I gave it a sharp yank up.  He loosened his jaw and screamed.  I seized his chin, pulled down and jammed the rag roughly down into his mouth with my thumbs as he bellowed in frustration, then wrapped a couple of loops of tape around his mouth and back of the head.

Beyond him, I became aware for the first time that recording and lighting equipment had been stockpiled all around the chamber, more than we had seen in the study below.  Folliott must have had big plans for this room, more than simple research.  Perhaps a feature documentary.  Possibly an entire series for the Discovery channel, I thought sardonically.

As I turned away, I remembered Claudia and rushed to my father.  He looked up at me and gave a strained smile.  “She’s fine.”

Dad rose and peered around the cavern.  “We need to get her out of here and to an ER as soon as possible.  You take her.”  He looked over at Graham watching us with calculating eyes.  “I’ll deal with him.”

Setting the Bible down next to my jacket, I knelt beside Claudia, flipping her dangling arm over my shoulder and slowly rose from my crouch.  She wasn’t as light as she looked.

“Can you handle her?” I heard my father ask, and felt an instant of resentment.  After everything we’d been through, he was still treating me like a child.

“I got it,” I snapped, a little too forcefully, just before the screaming began.  The first burst of sound caught me directly in my left ear--where Claudia lay across my shoulder--and I went deaf on one side, my equilibrium suddenly off.  I lost my balance and tried to compensate by scrambling forward in order to regain control of her weight, but Claudia had begun to kick and scratch at my back as if trying to break free of an assault.

I heard my father yell a warning a scant moment before something struck me against the backs of my legs.  We went down in a pile several yards from where we had started.

I sat up on one elbow and looked around, disoriented.  On one side of us, smiling grimly, Graham lie in a ready crouch, like a wild animal assuming a position of defense; Dad stood on the opposite side, his eyes wide.

Claudia and I lay on the circle of obsidian glass.  Tiny lines zipped and zagged through the glass all around us, a queer sizzling sound rising from it.

“The glass,” I heard Dad yell.

I grabbed Claudia and shoved her as hard as I could toward my father, but the force of the push sent the equal amount in the opposite direction.  Claudia collapsed into my father’s arms just before the glass shattered beneath me.  There was a loud screech like the sound of a car braking just before an inevitable crash, and the next moment my legs were falling through a jagged hole, slicing through my jeans and the skin beneath.

Dad moved with practiced precision.  He released Claudia and dropped down at the edge of the circle, grabbing frantically for a handhold on any part of me and finding the collar of my shirt.  The shirt began to rip open in the center of my back.  His hands found a firmer grip underneath my arms.

For an instant, I believed I saw a flickering blue light deep down in the pit, like an electrical storm passing across cloud formations.  Then a black geyser burst from the hole, obscuring my father for a moment, and I felt a hailstorm of tiny, furry bodies strike me in a thousand places across my body. When I saw black wings and light reflecting off tiny eyes, I realized then that they were bats, hundreds of them, pouring out of the pit below me and flying straight up into the unfathomable vastness of the cavern ceiling above our heads.