Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (32 page)

“Slow down.” I tugged her hand. We shuffled through the jagged slate for a few more yards.

She finished her song, “
I run out of luck and my Bible ain’t on the shelf. Yeah, I run out of luck, and my Bible ain’t on the shelf. Feeling so scared, can only get help from the devil herself.
”

We stopped walking altogether. I strained to listen, but it was my own heavy breathing that prevented me from hearing anything. I sat, and fell back onto the ground. I tried to calm myself. “The singing ain’t helping.”

She didn’t say anything.

I said, “We’re going to get out of here and things will get better. Ben will be waiting for us. Okay? We’re real. And there’s nothing down here besides the two of us.”

It was tiring, the mental collapses and tricks. Thinking we were being followed. My mind had worked me over. I’d let it. This wasn’t the first time in my life that I couldn’t separate reality from illusion.

Maybe it was the lack of food. Maybe I had an overactive imagination. I felt like a twelve-year-old, stupid, embarrassed that I wasn’t a kid anymore. Like I got caught playing in a tree when I should’ve been cutting grass. Like I got scolded for expecting more toys than clothes on Christmas morning. I couldn’t admit that I felt like we were being followed, too.

She let go of my hand. “I can’t believe you. At least play along.” She began to walk ahead.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. It’s silly to think that way.”

“No, it’s not. You’re what’s keeping me going. As long as we have each other I don’t care what we do. I mean it.”

“I love you, too.” She kissed me. “Now lead us out of here.”

The monotony of stooped walking lulled us back into a routine. But the air felt different. Either I wasn’t noticing the sulfur, or the smell was diminishing. We were able to talk, to hope, and very quickly figured out the pattern. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Beam. Repeat.

We covered miles this way. I could feel it. All we had to keep doing was step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Shapes began to appear in front of me. My eyes didn’t know what to do with them. Like, I could see the beams instead of just counting. I could see Alex. Her form, but not her face. I pulled her along a little faster.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

She asked, “What is it?”

I watched the roof but I didn’t tell her what I was looking for. I didn’t want to get our hopes up.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Finally, I saw it. “There.”

Together we looked up at a tiny circle of sky. Gray, pre-sunrise clouds moved slowly above the trees. I said, “A ventilation bore.”

“A way out?” she asked.

“No.” I hated to say it. “But we’re close. Listen.”

On the ground above I heard something. Voices. “Maybe that’s what we thought we heard this morning.”

“So they’re looking for us?”

“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out as we go.” The bore hole was really just rain while you’re adrift at sea. A sip of fresh water in an ocean of salt.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

Step step step step step beam.

That six inches of sky brought us just enough hope to kill our conversation. The idea that the Lewises were still out there made my head hurt.

After another forty minutes or so the rhythm finally broke. I hit my toe. White light flashed past my eyes. I let go of Alex’s hand and grabbed my foot. “Found the main fucking shaft.”

“You okay? How do you know?”

I found her hand and guided it down to the ground, helping her to see the rails and ties, the spikes that held it together. She helped me up and we changed course for the first time in a day. Suddenly everything changed. A stiff breeze at our backs practically led us to the entrance. The rails were like a red carpet.

“We’re not out yet,” I said. “We still may have a ways to go, or another cave-in.”

“I know, Henry. But right now we have more hope than we’ve had in days. So let’s not be a party pooper, okay?”

“You’d better be smiling when you say that.”

The hill continued to grow as we walked, never steeper than fifteen degrees, but steep enough to make walking quickly difficult. My legs quivered like sewing machines needles, my chest groaned like the overburdened slats of a mine car.

Then up ahead we saw light. A beacon in this black sea. At once everything changed. Somehow we picked up our pace. We tried jogging, a shuffle through the darkness that should’ve been a run. But we didn’t dare pick our feet off the ground.

A shaft of light stood before us like a Christmas tree. Narrow at the top, wide at the bottom, like a bore hole that had crumbled. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. Wind blew through the trees above. Rain fell through the hole.

Alex stepped into the beam and bathed in it. She held her palms up and let those platinum rays wash away the coal dust that coated her skin, matted her hair, turned her white dress black as night. Her legs and boots were covered, her hands and the sleeves of her jacket drenched in black. She squinted into the gray sky. She shivered in the rain.

“You’re a ghost,” I said with a laugh.

“Can we climb out?” She marveled at the hole, and threw her head back to let her eyes bathe in the radiance while they blinked away water. Blue sapphires in a matrix of stone.

“The ceiling’s too high. But it means we’re getting close.” I stared into her eyes to make sure I hadn’t missed something.
Chicory blue.

The air vent had been punched right through the stratigraphy. The layers that kept us buried down here. But it was hope.

While the rain washed coal from our skin, we drank. And I listened for Charlie’s guys. I couldn’t hear anything except for the wind and rain. Finally I pulled her away. The mine shaft past the vent was straight, the walls smoothly carved. The floor was flat. We were no longer bisecting stratigraphy, climbing out of the past. We were moving along on a plane of sandstone, the same sandstone that peeked out all along Blackwater Canyon.

We’d arrived back in the present.

Alex kept turning around to look at the light, like a moth to a candle. “C’mon, Alex,” I’d say.

Even after a few hundred yards it was still visible behind us. A tiny pyramid of light in a black vein that led straight from the heart of the earth. A single point of light that faded like a votive on an altar. Then it was gone.

Up ahead there was another. This pyramid was wider at the base, perhaps an indication that the surface was much closer. I pretended I could smell wildflowers. I pretended I could smell warmth and dryness. Clothes left on the line. Those were what I pretended I could smell. Instead I heard dogs.

Alex protested as I dragged her away from the light. “Please,” she begged.

“We can’t stop.”

She repeated her old routine, always stopping, always turning to look. Like it was some kind of game.

“I know, Alex,” I’d say.

But we came upon another—this one was wider than the last two combined. I could hear birds and the wind. And I could see treetops. Rain fell in rivulets down from the surface. All around our feet were old leaves and branches blown in from above. A billowing cumulonimbus crackled with lightning.

Small tears pushed the coal dust from the corners of her eyes and I could see her skin again. The little streams carried the filth away.

“Let’s stop, please.”

It was my turn to give her strength. “Outside we’ll find a stream.” I gently pulled her along. “We’ll take off our clothes and swim and eat berries. Then we’ll build a fire and I’ll add wood all night so it’ll burn until morning.”

No matter how much she protested I pulled her on. And no matter how fast we moved, it was never fast enough. The airshafts grew shallower and more frequent. I focused on the day ahead, the afternoon that waited for us.

We gained speed with the breeze, our confidence grew in the light. Like wind into a sail it fueled our escape. “Look!” Alex said.

I strained to see. “We have to be quiet.”

It was an aperture. An opening. Rotted soft planks covering a portal that led back to our world. A world where reason was worth its weight in sunlight. A world I understood. A whole world filled with birds and rabbits and mosses and ferns and sun-baked rocks and copperheads and spruces and oaks and huckleberries and laurel. All I had to do to taste it was inhale. All I had to do was breathe.

The wind brought thunder, the beautiful crack of thunder echoing through the canyon. The sound was like a tree falling, an explosion, the creation of a world. Music to my poor ears. My music. The soundtrack to my world.

I could see Alex in the light now. Pulling me along with her whole body. Arms pumping. Legs reaching, hungry for their next step.

“You have to slow down.” I kept my voice low. “They could be waiting.”

She slowed down, but kept walking. “There’s nobody out there. Listen.”

The boarded entrance was only ten or so yards away. I stepped carefully while watching for movement on the other side. I put my finger up to my lips and waited for a long time.

“Hold your breath and listen,” I whispered.

A voice came on the wind, a squeal that arrived from behind us. Low pressure grew. My ears popped. I heard a building whoosh that I thought was rain. A nondescript wall of static, like an ongoing wave at the ocean. Like a spring wind whipping through the attic. Squeaks punctuated the wind. A chatter beneath the low roar. I knew what was coming. I turned and pushed Alex flat to the ground.

The farthest visible shaft of light decomposed in a cluster of indistinguishable pixels. Black specks appeared and suddenly were gone.

“Henry—”

“Shhh. Stay down.” I whispered.

The next shaft of light turned dark the same way, almost like the earth itself was falling back into darkness. The squeal grew louder. A fecal scent blew through the mine shaft.

The shaft of light closest to us had been swallowed up by the colony. They came right at us. I covered Alex’s head. They were on us, like a fog, their black wings bearing a very clear message. The squeal of their echolocation had the same effect on me as fingernails on a blackboard. Alex tried to squirm out of my grasp. “Get me out. Please get me out.”

The bats swooped and swerved around us, always waiting until the last possible second to veer away. They created their own wind. I could smell the must that clung to their fur as they buzzed my head.

“Henry!” She wriggled free and got to her knees.

I grabbed her ankle with my good hand and she pulled away, spinning me toward the entrance. “Alex, don’t!”

She ripped the old boards away from the wooden frame that held the rock ceiling up. Splinters clung to the nails that still hung firm to the frame.

I stood and tried to pull her back. “They’re going to be waiting. Stop it.”

Yellow smoke filled the mine shaft entrance. A pair of hands broke through the barrier from the other side. I lifted my arm to defend myself, sending a shout of pain through my ribs and shoulder. They grabbed me by the hair and throat and pulled me to the ground. Another set of hands grabbed my wrist, and I screamed in pain.

The first thing I saw was Lucinda Tasso jamming something into Alex’s mouth.

Instead of running toward daylight and freedom we’d run right into a trap. The snake’s nest. In the moment it took to register, Odelia Lewis, pushed a dirty, fetid ball of hair into my mouth.

The smell, like spoiled milk and road-killed groundhog made me vomit. An image of the dead animal came to me while I fell to my knees. I couldn’t shake it. It lay there, bloating in the sun, inviting scavengers and decomposers to feast. The taste was in my mouth. I had to spit out greasy fur and black bits of meat.

Poison. She’s poisoned me.

A pain in my gut. Cramping. I dry heaved, but the only thing that came out was that smell, almost a liquid. I couldn’t get my breath. My stomach and intestines knotted, rotted like I was dying on the inside first. I held my breath thinking it was the smoke doing it to me. The pain, like the biting of a thousand spiders expanded throughout my midsection. Convulsions wracked me, twisting my tender ribs. Every time I exhaled that smell came from my mouth.

It’s not magic.
I tried to say the words but couldn’t.

“Henry!” Alex yelled a muffled yell. I looked, but couldn’t see her. Lucinda’s fingers were bleeding like Alex had bitten her. One of Charlie’s guys moved in with a length of rope. He made like he was going to tie Alex up.

Air filled my stomach, and I tried coughing to free myself from it. The swelling pain grew. I wanted to cut it from my body. I pounded my guts with my fist to release it.

From the ground I took a piece of wood ash from an old fire. Thinking the charcoal would neutralize the poison, I chewed on it.