The Hole (25 page)

“So, we wait,” Charlie said. “Ain’t not much else we can do.”

Fred saw Ellen Simmons flinch at that, and expected a retort. But none came. The woman left the stove and went round the room serving coffee.

“There’ll be corned-beef hash along in ten minutes or so,” she said. “It ain’t going to be much, but it’ll be hot.”

“Ellen, darling,” Charlie said with a smile, waving towards the iron door. “It’s as hot as hell in here already.”

The woman actually blushed as she returned to the stove. Big Bill joined Doc over in the alcove with the writing desk, and Charlie sat down beside Fred and Sarah.

“You got any smokes left, lad?” the older man asked. “I’m pegged out.”

“I’ll swap you,” Fred replied. “For a story. What happened after the rockslide? And don’t try to dodge it. I can see the way she looks at you now.”

Charlie looked grim.

“It ain’t anything that should be told here,” he said. “It should wait until we’re back up in daylight, with the sun on our faces and beer in our hands. But if it’ll pass the time…”

He took a cigarette from Fred, lit up, and started to speak, gazing off into a far distance, remembering.

* * *

“We didn’t fall too far,” he started, but we went sideways as well as down and when we came to rest, we had only rock above us and a wall of dirt at our backs we couldn’t dig through. Ellen was in a bit of a state. She didn’t even calm when I let her hold the flashlight. She was screaming fit to burst and I thought she’d bring more of those…things…down on us. So I shut her up.”

“You
hit
her?” Sarah said. The shock was clear in her voice.

Ellen Simmons laughed and turned back from where she was working at the stove.

“No, dear. He kissed me. And right properly at that. I’m staying kissed.”

Charlie looked sheepish.

“I didn’t have any other choice. It worked though. She got quiet right quick.”

He took a long drag from the cigarette, smiling to himself. Fred gave him a nudge.

“Okay, enough about your love life. How did you get out of there?”

“I’m an old hand in tunnels,” Charlie replied. “You know that. I kept going right and up, where we could, hoping to find a way to the surface. I was half expecting to find the same tracks you found. Instead, we found more death.”

He went quiet again, and when he spoke, it was in a whisper.

“Ain’t gonna be much of a rescue for us,” he said. “At least not for a while. We found what was left of the CDC folks in a new hole—a big hole. There were trucks and trailers piled over and into each other. And bodies. A lot of bodies.”

A thought suddenly struck Fred.

‘The injured? The ones that were with us last night?”

Charlie nodded, and a single tear ran from his left eye. He wiped it away angrily.

“Them too,” was all he said in reply before continuing.

“Ellen was a rock. She helped me search the wreckage. Ain’t no survivors. And there’s worse. Some of the bodies looked melted, as if something had been at them, eating them.”

Fred was remembering the burn Doc had taken outside the bar as Charlie went on.

“Anyway, to cut a long story short, I found the gun, the flares…and a radio. I hoped to get somebody up top, somebody to rescue us.”

“And you got us instead,” Fred finished. “Your run of good luck is holding.”

Charlie sucked the last smoke from the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Not for too long. If I know the military mind, they’ll be bombing the shit out of the town before too long. For all I know the order’s already given.”

“Surely that’s a good thing?” Sarah asked. “They’ll kill them all…all the bears.”

“You ain’t thought it through, girl. We’re sitting on the edge of the source of the problem. Where do you think them bombs will target?”

“And there’s something else we need to think about,” Doc said. She walked across the floor, skirting the edge of the pentagram, deliberately not stepping on the lines. She carried a battered leather journal.

“You need to hear this.”

* * *

“Food first,” Ellen Simmons said. “Ain’t no sense making decisions on an empty stomach.”

“I’m not sure I want to eat, after what I just read,” Doc whispered, but they all took a bowl of hash when offered, and there was silence as they ate.

“So, what’s so important, Doc?” Charlie asked as he put his bowl down. “I take it you’ve found something that explains the mumbo-jumbo?”

It was Big Bill who replied.

“Mumbo-jumbo is right. If I’d known what Hopman was up to, I’d have thrown him in jail years ago.”

“Charged with what?” Fred asked, pointing at the pentagram. “Being deluded ain’t a crime.”

“No,” Bill replied. “But murder is. And Charlie…you ain’t gonna like this. At least one of them skulls belongs to a man you knew.”

Fredisdead
.

It came as a whisper, from some corner of the cave they couldn’t identify, and it wasn’t repeated, but all six of them were on edge as Doc started.

* * *

“This is a record,” she said, holding up the journal. “A record of a family obsession that goes back nearly a hundred and fifty years.”

“Them grooves in the floor are older than that,” Charlie replied. “I know my rocks.”

“I’ll get to that,” Doc said. “But first, there’s this.”

She read from the start of the journal.

“Two hundred dollars the land cost me; everything I had and then some. But it will be worth it if the Old One is there, where the Cree say he is buried. Riches and power beyond the ken of man—that’s what they say he promises. We’ll see. But first, I need to find the Gateway. Myth and legend is all I have to go on. But if it’s there, I’ll find it.”

Doc looked up.

“It goes on in that vein for a long time. That first entry is dated in the 1870s, and signed, George Hopman, who I think must be the great-grandfather. And twenty years later, he was still searching. He’d started digging by then; the first of what would be many mineshafts. There’s a lot of frustration in his writings. Until we get to the nineties. That’s when things start to get
really
strange.”

“He has started to whisper to me, in the shadows, in the dark. He asks for rituals, for obedience, for sacrifice. And he is getting stronger. I have sent to Boston for advice. Maybe the Brethren can help.”

“The Brethren?” Fred said, interrupting. “What’s that all about?”

Doc shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m guessing at some kind of esoteric secret society…the late part of the nineteenth century was rife with them. But that’s not the important thing. Listen.”

“I still cannot find the Gateway, and fear I will be too infirm, and too short of sufficient funding, to complete the task. I leave this journal in the hands of my sons, to do with what they will, in the hope that they will complete the task and raise this family back up to where it once was.”

Doc looked up again.

“There’s a twenty-year gap. In the early twenties, it’s taken up again, in a different hand, signed James Hopman. I believe he might be the father of the one Charlie calls
Old
Hopman. And it’s with him that the
mumbo
-
jumbo
starts in earnest.

“The book is full of what I would have called nonsense before now; magical symbols, details of rituals performed and discarded as not working, recipes for potions and instructions for binding demons; the sort of thing I thought we’d left behind in the Dark Ages. And once again, the writer’s tone is one of frustration, over the course of many years. This is from the forties.”

Just as she bent her head to read again, Fred heard a whisper, from the alcove above the stove.

We are with Fred. Fred is dead.

None of the others showed any signs of hearing it, and once again it was not repeated, but he now only had half his attention on what Doc was saying, and he kept his gaze on the shadowy corners, ready to move at the merest hint of attack.

“Twenty years we’ve dug. He’s stronger than ever, and it takes the Saamara Ritual to keep him out of my head. But I ain’t been able to get him to do my bidding. Sacrifice is what he demands, and I’ve given him chickens, pigs, even cattle. But it ain’t enough. He wants more…more than I am prepared to give him. He says it will all be different when we find the Gateway.
”

Doc stopped.

“His father might have quailed at the
demands.
But
Old
Hopman wasn’t so squeamish. You might want to prepare yourself, Charlie. This will be rough on you. We arrive in the early seventies, and
Old
Hopman takes up the writing.”

“They found it last night. Fred made the breakthrough into the chamber, so it was only fitting that he was the first to be given enlightenment. Who knew a man had so much blood in him? The Old One was pleased though, and hungry. He took the other two, and then together we hid the way so that the morning shift would not find it. It’s mine now, and mine alone. He says it will not be long until he is strong enough to lift himself up, and that I will have to feed him. But I ain’t stupid. The Samaara Ritual keeps him down, and any food he gets will only be whatever I chose to dump down there. I aim to thrive, and I can only do that by using what he gives me, and keeping him in the pit. I ain’t about to go down in history as the man who brought hell on earth.”

Doc stopped.

“I think I know now what is going on here.”

“Auld Nick. That’s what’s going on here,” Bill said. “Demons and devils and bloody murder.”

“I’m not so sure,” Doc said. “Remember, I saw aliens, and Charlie saw VC. I
think
the Hopmans only saw demons and the devil because that’s what they wanted to see. And because they’ve been
communicating
with the thing for so long, it has become…
imprinted
, for want of a better word, with the pattern of their thoughts and desires.”

“Thing?” Charlie asked. “What kind of thing do you have in mind, Doc? I don’t remember seeing anything like this on the National Geographic channel. Do you?”

Doc smiled grimly.

“I believe it’s something new to science. Maybe something new in terms of the geological timeline. It’s an organism, of a kind, but it’ll take better minds than mine to fathom its secrets.”

“That’s all very well, Doc,” Fred said. “But what do we do about it? How do we get out of here?”

“I may have an idea about that,” Doc replied. At that precise instant, a voice spoke from the shadows.

Weemean.

* * *

Three figures stood in an alcove, wavering and flowing, the only steady facet of them being the red, staring eyes.

Charlie moved immediately; one second he was sitting next to Fred, the next he was on his feet, weapon pointed at the alcove, washing bands of light into the shadows. The demons melted back into the darkness.

“If you’ve got a plan, Doc, I suggest we get to it,” he said. “I’m getting proper squirrelly down here.”

Doc frowned.

“Loath as I am to say it, I think we should attempt a ritual.”

Big Bill was first to reply.

“I ain’t about to get involved in any of that satanic stuff, Janet. No way, no how. We’d be putting our souls at risk.”

“Then we die here,” Doc said quietly. “I don’t see another way.”

“We make a run for it,” Sarah replied. “We’ve got the guns and the light…and there’s all that gasoline outside. Surely we could do something with that?”

Charlie, who had started to pace the floor, went still, thinking.

Weemean.

This time the chant came from all around. Shadows crept in all the corners, danced in the alcoves. A dozen pairs of red eyes stared out of the dark.

“Get into the pentagram,” Doc shouted. “It’s our only hope.”

Charlie had other ideas. He grabbed Ellen Simmons’ hand and headed for the iron door. Fred looked at the diagram on the floor, and the shifting red figures that even now crept closer from the shadows. Doc had already stepped into the circle, and Fred saw that the sheriff was loath to leave.

“Come on, Bill. Charlie’s got a plan.”

The sheriff stood, halfway between the door and the pentagram, indecision freezing him to the spot. Fred was equally torn, between Bill, and Charlie, both of whom were the only two real friends he had in the world.

Sarah settled the matter for him. She tugged at his hand, dragging him towards the door.

“I ain’t staying here to be ate by no bears,” she said.

Fred gave in.