Devil's Throat (The River Book 6) (14 page)

“What, the motel?” Winn asked.

“No,” Steven said. “St. Thomas. I’m going to destroy it so it
can’t keep producing people like Michael. I’m going to empty it of ghosts and
Callers. And I could use your help.”

Winn looked at Deem. Deem looked at Roy.

“I think he means it,” Roy said.

“That’s a tall order,” Winn said. “I don’t know how you’d go
about it. I don’t know how you’d even
start
going about it.”

“We made the mistake of leaving Michael out there,” Steven
said. “We didn’t know how to take him out, either, but we should have put in
the effort and figured it out. Same here. As long as St. Thomas is still alive
and crawling with those Callers, there’ll be more Michaels. I can’t have that.
I’ll be the last father that’s lost a son to them.”

“So what do you want to do?” Deem asked.

“We go get Jason at Devil’s Throat,” Steven said. “If he’ll
join us, fine, if not…”

Steven paused, realizing he really didn’t have a very
compelling plan to present to the others.

“…if not,” he continued, “at least we can find out why he
took Michael there. It might lead us to our next step.”

“He took Michael there to feed his blood to the creature in
the cave!” Winn said. “That seems clear!”

“Why do the Callers feed the creature?” Roy asked Winn. “Why
bother? There’s some connection we haven’t figured out. What do they get out of
it?”

“I don’t know,” Winn said. “That’s a good question I don’t
have the answer to.”

“You might get your answer in Devil’s Throat,” Deem said.

Winn closed his eyes. “I suppose,” he said with resignation
in his voice, “now that they’re on to me, I’m going to have to take a different
approach.”

“Answers!” she said, coaxing him. “You’ve been fighting St.
Thomas for years. Think of it. And this guy over here,” she pointed to Steven,
“he wants to take them down completely! When’s the last time you had these kinds
of allies? You should be thanking him, signing up for this shit
right now!
”

“You know how I get in confined spaces,” Winn said. “It’s not
pretty.”

“Devil’s Throat isn’t as bad as mines,” Deem said. “There’s
one or two narrow parts but most of it is open rooms.”

“We’re going to go,” Steven said. “If you come, there’ll be
four of us against them if they come after you. If you stay, you’re on your
own.”

“So strong-arming’s what I get for helping you?” Winn asked.

“He’s my son, Winn,” Steven said, taking a step towards him.
“I have to go to him, to try and help him. I don’t expect you to understand
that.”

Winn looked down at the ground and then over at Deem. “Nah,”
he said, “I get it, I understand. OK, I’ll come.”

“Good, let’s head out now,” Steven said, checking the room
one last time before they left.

“But don’t give me any shit if I wig out in there,” Winn
said. “I warned you.”

They filed out of the motel room and Steven closed the door,
pulling it tight. He flipped the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle to read
“Service Please.”

Deem was directing Winn down a small dirt road that ran east
of St. Thomas and south of Mesquite into a small mountain range. The sky was
still dark, but Deem seemed to know her way around without the use of a map. 

They pulled off road and Deem instructed Winn to drive about a
quarter mile north from where they’d left the dirt road. The ground was rocky,
and Winn took it slowly to avoid blowing a tire. Deem had him stop about a
hundred feet from a scree that rose quickly to become the side of the mountain.

“We’re here,” Deem said, getting out of the Jeep.

After unloading the lanterns Deem transferred from her pickup
before they left Overton, they began walking around the scree. Steven kept his
feet to the ground, watching his step. They walked for a short distance, then
turned and passed along a dry streambed.

“Look!” Deem said, pointing her flashlight to an object in
the distance.

“That’s Michael’s car,” Roy said. “Jason must have driven it
here.”

They walked toward the car. It had two flat tires.

“He went too fast,” Winn said. “You can’t bring a car like
that out over these rocks.”

Deem looked into the back seat. “Blood back here,” she said.

“If he was carrying a body,” Steven said, “he probably wanted
to get as close to the cave as he could.”

“He’ll hate that decision when the sun comes up,” Deem said.
“No water, a hundred and ten degrees, thirty miles from anything – not a situation
you want to be in.”

“He must have felt strongly about bringing Michael out here,”
Winn said, “to have risked the car and his life.”

Steven shook his head.
What is going on with Jason?
he
wondered.
Why is he so enamored with this guy, this monster?

Deem led them another hundred yards to the cave’s entrance – a
small hole near the ground, about three feet in diameter.

“Uh oh,” Winn said. “See, now, that’s a pretty small hole.”

“It widens up after a couple feet,” Deem said. “Come on.”

Deem got down on her knees and was through the opening before
Winn could say anything else. Roy followed, then Steven. He crawled for three
feet, then was able to stand. Deem asked Roy to turn on his lantern. They were
inside a large cavern.

“Winn!” Deem yelled back through the hole. “We haven’t got
all night! Come on.”

“Fuck it,” they heard Winn say, then his head emerged from
the hole and he stood up inside the cavern with the rest of them.

“Fuck, I hate this!” Winn said, turning on his lantern.

Deem led them up a small rise in the floor of the room, and
then they saw it – The Devil’s Throat. It started off thirty feet wide, and
looked like it swirled downward, gradually becoming more and more narrow. The
sides of the throat were rough, with jagged rocks sticking out. At the furthest
point they could see into it, it was still ten feet wide. No one spoke – they
were all staring at the opening in amazement.

Deem took a rock and tossed it into the center of the throat.
They watched it fall as far as the light from their lanterns would allow, then
they listened for it to hit bottom. No sound ever came.

“Tell me we’re not going down that,” Winn said.

“We’re not,” Deem said. “The only people who’ve ever
attempted to go down that are dead at the bottom. There are caves that surround
it. That’s where we’re going.”

She led them around the right edge of the throat and to an
opening that led to a thin passageway just wide enough to pass through without
the need to turn sideways. Steven pointed his light straight up, and he saw the
edges of the rock passageway come together about twenty feet above them. They
followed the opening for fifty feet when they came to another large cavern.
This one was filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and a path wove between
them. It was large enough that Steven’s light didn’t reach the other end of the
room.

Deem continued down the path, maneuvering through the rock
formations. They walked for another couple of minutes before coming to the end
of the room. Deem was starting to lead them through another passageway when
Steven stopped her.

“Jump in,” Steven said, “and look around.”

They all entered the River, and immediately saw what Steven
had noticed – a small opening in the back of the room, dimly glowing.

It’s a false front,
Roy thought.
Made to look like rock outside of the River.

They dropped out of the River and backtracked through the
cavern. They walked toward the spot in the wall where they’d seen the glowing
entrance. When they reached it, Roy pressed his hand against the rock. It gave
way immediately, his hand passing through to somewhere else.

 “This is it,” Roy said. “The rocks are an illusion.” He
stepped forward and walked through the rock. He passed through it like a ghost
passing through a wall.

“Someone must have placed it here to hide an opening,” Deem
said.

“Come through,” they heard Roy say from the other side of the
wall. “You need to see this.”

One by one the rest of them walked through the false front,
emerging into another large cavern.

As soon as he entered the hidden cavern, Steven held his
nose. The stink was strong. Twenty feet ahead were five large wooden poles
arranged into a tripod shape, attached tightly at the top, their legs spreading
out to the ground, each leg tied to the next with a two foot piece of rope.
Inside the tripod, strung up by the feet, hung the naked corpse of a young
woman, her throat slit and a puddle of blood below on the ground. Her face was
covered with dried blood and her hair matted with it, as the blood had run from
the wound on her neck, over her head, and to the ground.

“You were right,” Winn said to Deem. “That’s exactly what
they’ve been doing.”

“Stinks so bad it could knock a buzzard off a gut wagon,” Roy
said, and he walked past the tripod and swung his light to the right. At first
he thought he was seeing a large, discolored rock formation, rising from the
ground like a huge stalagmite.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, and quickly turned his
flashlight away. He began to wretch, stepping away from the path.

“What is it?” Steven said, following him and shining his
light at what Roy had discovered. The others were right behind him.

The stalagmite wasn’t made of rock, it was made of bodies. A
pile of human bodies, tossed on top of each other. There were hundreds in the
pile.

“Oh god!” Deem said.

“Bled out and then tossed aside like empty beer cans,” Winn
said. “I wished you hadn’t been right, Deem, but you certainly were.”

“All these people!” Deem said, her light stopping
occasionally on a body in the pile. Bodies at the base had decomposed and were mainly
bones, but the ones in the middle were a mass of gore. The ones at the top
still had skin and faces, the flesh and hair on their heads matted with their
own blood that had been slowly drained from them.

“Shh,” Roy said. “Listen!”

They all held their breath. In the distance they could hear a
rhythmic pulse. It stopped, then started again.

“Is that a shovel?” Winn whispered. “Digging?”

“Could be,” Roy said, turning to walk in the direction of the
sound. The cavern slowly tapered back to an opening the size of a small car.
The sound of the shoveling was coming from beyond.

Steven walked through the opening, lowering his head to crouch
slightly. He saw the lantern in the distance, and the lone figure of Jason,
stabbing his shovel into a pile of dirt, and lifting it before dropping the dirt
a few feet away. He repeated the movement while Steven watched.

Steven began walking towards Jason, not waiting for the
others to reach him, not caring if they were behind him or not. When he was
about twenty feet from him, he stopped.

“Jason!” he said.

Jason stopped, his shovel stuck in the pile of dirt. His back
to Steven, he rested his arm on the shovel handle and rested his head on his
arm. “Can’t you let me do this in peace?”

“What are you doing?” Steven asked, taking a few more steps
toward Jason. As he approached, the ground surrounding Jason became visible to
him. Jason was filling in a grave. There were six or seven other graves nearby.

“I’m doing what he asked me to do,” Jason said, resuming shoveling.
“Fulfilling his dream.”

“Michael’s dream?” Steven asked, aware that the others had
come up behind him. “This was something he wanted you to do?”

“It was all he ever wanted,” Jason said, still facing away
from them. “He made me promise I’d do it.” He lifted another shovelful of dirt
from the pile and placed it on the grave. “I told him I would, if things went
wrong.”

“I killed him, Jason,” Roy said.

“Yes, I know that,” Jason said.

“Why did you turn us over to the Callers in St. Thomas?”
Steven asked. “Why did you go back on the plan?”

“Michael knew you’d try something,” Jason said, continuing to
shovel. “He told me to go along with whatever you proposed, and then tell him
about it. To be honest with you, I was kinda shocked that you showed up at all.
I just went along with what Michael said to do, since he was calling the
shots.”

Jason moved two move shovelfuls of dirt, then turned the
shovel over and patted the earth down over the grave. He turned to face the
others, his arm resting on the top of the shovel. He was dirty and sweating,
and his shirt was covered with Michael’s blood.

“He cared about me,” Jason said, looking at Steven. “He
taught me, he showed me how to do things. He answered my questions. He said I
was a brilliant student. He told me we’d do great things together after I
graduated.”

“He was a manipulator, Jason,” Steven said. “You are smart,
brilliant, gifted. You
will
do great things. But his goal was to use you
to hurt me and your grandpa, not to help you. I presume you saw the bodies in
the other room? That’s what Michael’s world is, Jason. Death. Gore. Evil.”

“I saw them,” Jason said. “He told me it was a ritual area.”

“Why did he want to be buried here?” Deem asked. “He must
have given you pretty detailed instructions.”

“He did,” Jason said, turning back away from them to stare
down at Michael’s grave. “It was the most important thing to him.”

“Do you know why?” Deem asked.

“He wanted, more than anything else,” Jason said, “to be a
Caller. Now he is.”

“Burying him here made him a Caller?” Winn asked. “He told
you that?”

“That’s what he said,” Jason said. “It’s a privilege reserved
for the best graduates, when they die. Emmett said Michael had earned it. He
didn’t plan to be here for many more years, of course, but he did make me promise
to do it. I said I would.”

“A final stab at us,” Steven said to Roy.

“Not everything is about you, Dad,” Jason said.

“This was,” Steven said. “This definitely was. It was his way
of showing Roy and me that he’d achieved complete control over you.”

Jason threw the shovel down. “And why would he give a fuck
about you?” He walked over to Steven and stood right next to him, his face
inches from Steven’s. “He cared about
me.
Why would he give a fuck about
you
?”

“Because we killed his mentor!” Steven yelled back. “Weren’t
you listening back in the motel room? We killed his mentor because he tormented
an innocent old man to death, the grandfather of one of the children he
devoured!
Are you hearing me? He and his mentor killed and ate children, trying to
become immortal! We should have killed Michael, too!”

Jason pulled his arm back and swung at Steven. Steven ducked
just in time, and Roy pulled them apart.

“What is wrong with you?!” Steven yelled at Jason. “You’re
defending a murderer! Didn’t you see those bodies out there? These people are as
bad as it gets, Jason! They’re evil, pure evil! They’ve sold you a pack of lies
and you’ve swallowed the whole thing!”

“You’re always right, aren’t you?” Jason said. “Right about
Mom, right about me, right about this. You didn’t know him! You only see what
you want to see.”

“Listen to yourself,” Steven said. “You think
I’m
blind? Open your eyes! There’s a pile of dead bodies out there, caused by the
Callers. Caused by Michael.”

Jason swung again, and Roy grabbed his arm. He twisted
himself behind Jason, grabbing him with a bear hug that held Jason’s arms to
his side. Jason was trembling with anger.

Steven walked up to Jason and placed his hands on Jason’s
cheeks, cradling his face.

“I know he said those things to you,” Steven said. “But come
back to me, Jason! Come back. Roy and I have wonderful things to show you. Not
evil. Not bodies strung up to bleed out. Not a pile of rotting corpses. The
opposite of all that. Give me a chance. What you believed about Michael, believe
about me. I love you. I care about you, far more than he ever did. These people
at St. Thomas, they just want to use you. Me and Roy, we love you. We miss you.
We want you back.”