Eximere (The River Book 4) (13 page)

“If you don’t mind,” Steven said, “I’m going to count our
steps as we go. I’d like to use the count later to figure out how far the
tunnel went.”

“So what you’re saying,” Eliza said, “is don’t interrupt you
while you count?”

“Yes, please,” Steven said. They all began to walk down the
tunnel, Steven in the lead with the light, Eliza in the middle, and Roy
bringing up the rear.

The tunnel began to narrow a little, but Steven noticed it
was still big enough to drive a pickup truck through. After a hundred steps, it
turned slightly to the right and continued. They walked another two hundred
steps.

“This must have been a lot of blasting,” Roy said.

“Shh, he’s counting,” Eliza said.

“It stops up ahead,” Steven said, finishing his count as they
reached the end of the tunnel. “Four hundred and seventy.”

“This is obviously how they got the liquor in and out,” Roy
said, stepping up to two large steel doors on the left side of the tunnel. He
grabbed the handles, but they didn’t budge.

“Not another dead end,” Eliza said.

“Afraid so,” Steven said. “Those doors don’t look like
they’re going to move. I doubt they’ve been open in eighty years.” He ran the
flashlight over the doors, looking for anything they might take advantage of.
“No lock, nothing. Obviously access was granted from the inside. Smart.”

“Well, fuck,” Roy said. “Pardon my French.”

“I feel the same way, Roy,” Eliza said.

Roy pressed his head against the door, listening.

“Anything?” Steven asked.

Roy waved his hand at him to shut up. Steven and Eliza
watched Roy for facial expressions that might indicate if he was hearing
something. He’d pinch his eyes together as though there was something he was
trying to focus on, but then he’d release them. Then his eyes would dart from
side to side. It was driving Steven crazy.

“Well?” Steven asked again.

“Shh,” Roy said.

They paused for a while longer. Eventually Roy removed his
ear from the door, but his puzzled look remained.

“I’m not hearing anything,” Roy said. “But I am feeling
something.”

They looked at each other. “Trance?” Steven asked Roy.

“Yes,” Roy said, removing his blindfold from his pocket.

Steven and Eliza waited patiently why Roy remained in the
trance. Steven could tell that Eliza had entered the River, but Steven knew his
first priority was to watch Roy and keep him safe. After ten minutes, Roy
reached up and removed the blindfold.

“Well?” Steven asked.

“There are rooms on the other side of the door,” Roy said.
“There’s a passageway that leads up. I assume it goes up to the house, but I
couldn’t see that – there’s something that blocks everything at the ground
level.”

“But that’s not the real news, is it?” Eliza said.

“No,” Roy said. “The real news is what’s beyond these rooms.
Another secret passageway, but this one is going down.”

Steven smiled.
Bingo!
he thought.
We’ve found it.
“The device?”

“Maybe,” Roy said. “It’s protected in the same way the ground
floor is protected, but with something I’ve never seen before.”

“Me either,” said Eliza, “and I’ve spent a lot of time
working with protection.”

“But it’s more than that,” Roy said. “On the other side of
that protection, is something familiar. Family.”

“Family?” Steven asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean our own flesh and blood,” Roy said. “Someone from our
line.”

“How can that be?” Steven asked.

“I don’t know,” Roy said, “but it’s there. And it knows us.”

“Wow,” Eliza said, “this just keeps getting weirder and
weirder.”

“What is it?” Steven asked Roy. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “But I know it’s there, and I know
it’s family. And it wants to communicate with us.”

“Why didn’t you sense this before?” Steven asked. “When we
were in the house?”

“There’s something at the ground level that blocks
everything,” Eliza said. “We’re below that level.”

“You’re saying there’s someone under the house?” Steven
asked.

“Yes, I am,” Roy said. “Eliza, I’m thinking a séance. It’ll
make it easier for whoever it is to manifest.”

“Sure,” Eliza said. “Let’s sit.”

“Steven, keep the light on us,” Roy said. “We’re going to try
and contact whoever it is.”

Steven’s mind was whirling with this revelation. He stepped
back, keeping the light on Roy and Eliza, who sat cross-legged facing each
other, and then held each other’s hands.

Don’t break the circle
, Steven remembered his father telling him when he’d
participated in a séance with him in Oregon.
Whatever you do, don’t break
the circle
.

Steven watched as the two of them lowered their heads and they
dropped into a state somewhere in the River but not as deep as a trance.
Eventually Roy spoke.

“There is a presence here, that wants to speak to us,” Roy
said. “Who are you? What do you want?”

There was a long pause. Steven noticed Eliza’s hand begin to
move. It slid from Roy’s hand and landed in the dirt to her side. She began to
move her fingers through the dirt, back and forth, as though she was trying to
brush something away. Steven moved the light closer to her hand, so he could
see what she was doing.

“Who is there?” Roy asked. “Tell us who you are?”

Eliza’s hand kept moving rapidly, back and forth. Then there
was a break in the movement.  Eliza’s back straightened, and her fingers moved
in the dirt, this time with purpose. Steven moved even closer, to observe what
she had drawn. It was a cross.

Then Eliza’s fingers returned to their motion, and the cross
was obliterated by the dirt she was moving back and forth.

“What do you want us to do?” Roy asked.

Eliza’s arm continued to move, the dirt wiped this way and
that. Again her body stiffened, and her fingers moved rapidly.

“Come,” Steven said aloud, reading what Eliza had written.
Again her fingers moved, wiping away the message, and her body slumped.

“How?” Roy asked, still speaking in the séance. “How can we
reach you?”

Eliza sat upright again, her fingers drawing letters in the
dirt. Steven saw a couple of letters, but was surprised by a force of cold
slicing through him. Eliza’s finger stopped moving and she fell backwards, but
Roy tightened his grip on her hand, and kept her from falling.

Steven knew what the cold was – it was the dark lady. He felt
it sink into him and he thought he might drop to the floor. He reached out to
steady himself, but finding nothing nearby to grab, he slowly lowered himself
to the ground to avoid a fall.

Roy wrapped up the séance, keeping Eliza’s hands tightly in
his. Once he was done, he gently let go of her, and she opened her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. They turned to look at Steven. He was
curled up in a ball, shaking.

“It was her, wasn’t it?” Eliza said.

“Yes,” Roy answered, “but Steven didn’t have the protection
of the circle. Let’s get him out of here.”

◊

Steven regained consciousness as Roy and Eliza carried him
out of the tunnel. He slept in the back seat of the car as they drove back into
town.

“Turn up the heater, please,” he said.

“It’s on full blast, kid,” Roy said. “We’re both melting up
here.”

“So fucking cold,” Steven said, both uncomfortable and
irritated that he had gone through the ice-cold experience of a dark lady
attack for a second time.

“We should return to the house before it gets too late,”
Eliza said. “What do we tell the others?”

“We tell them we went into town,” said Roy, “and we tried to
dig up information, but we didn’t learn much.”

“What if they become suspicious?” Eliza said.

“Just ask them about what they discovered while we were
gone,” Roy said. “People love to talk about themselves, especially Russell.
They won’t care about where we’ve been.”

Roy parked the car just past the chain, before the main gate,
and the three of them walked the long route back into the house. They found the
other three in the dining room.

“Well, that was uneventful,” Roy said upon entering. “Did you
guys turn up anything?”

“No,” Russell said, “but we had a visitor. Percival.”

“Damn, sorry I missed that,” said Roy.

“What did he have to say?” Eliza asked.

“Nothing substantial that we didn’t already know,” said
Myrna. “He rambles like a lunatic. We told him we knew all about the door, but
he wouldn’t fess up to blocking it.”

“How about you?” Jonathan asked. “You uncover anything new?”

“Nada,” said Eliza. “Stuff we already knew.”

Jonathan watched Steven as he sat at the table. He was still
shivering.

“Steven?” Jonathan asked. “Everything OK?”

“I think he’s still recovering from the big chill this
morning,” Roy said. “Been off and on the whole time we were gone.”

“I’m going to try and warm up,” Steven said, rising and
walking toward the hallway.

“Take another hot bath,” Roy said.

◊

After Steven had soaked in a hot tub for another half an
hour, he dressed and Roy and Eliza joined him in his bedroom.

“Let’s all enter the River for this,” Roy said. “I don’t
trust these people.”

They all jumped in.

What happened in the séance?
Steven asked.

Nothing
, Roy thought.
It was a blank. I know someone was there, and I could
feel their desire to communicate, but nothing came through.

Eliza’s hand was writing in the dirt
, Steven thought. Eliza looked
surprised.

It did?
she thought.

You weren’t aware of it?
Steven asked.

No, I have no recollection of it at all,
she thought.
What did I write?

When Roy asked who it was, you made a cross
, Steven thought.

A cross?
Roy asked.
Unusual
.

And when you asked what it wanted us to do, Eliza wrote
‘come,’
Steven
thought.

I thought I heard that,
Roy thought.

That was me reading out loud what Eliza had written,
Steven thought.

And so I asked how we could reach it
, Roy thought.
Did Eliza write
anything after that?

Two letters, a D and an A,
Steven thought.
Her hand was moving erratically;
the dark lady’s attack had started.
Steven turned to Eliza.
By the time you
finished the A, you slumped back and Roy held you up by your arms.

I felt her attack,
Eliza thought.
But I don’t remember any of the writing.

Doesn’t matter,
Roy thought.
Whoever it was, they found a way to
communicate with us, through you.

Only Anita put a stop to it,
Steven thought.

What do you suppose “DA” meant?
Eliza thought.

It has to be short for something else,
Steven thought,
something you would
have finished writing had she not attacked us.

If we can figure that out,
Roy thought,
we’ll have our way down into that
room.

And to wherever that room leads
, Eliza thought.

I thought you said it goes down further
, Steven thought,
and that way is
protected, like ground level.

It is
, Eliza thought,
but not physically. We can’t explore it while in the
River or in a trance, but I suspect if we can physically get into that room,
we’ll be able to progress beyond it.

All right,
Roy thought,
then our goal must be to get into that room.
Back to the ‘DA.’ It’s short for something. What?

They wracked their brains, looking for something inside the
house that would start with the letters D and A, but came up with nothing.

What now?
Eliza thought.

We can go join the others for dinner,
Roy thought.
Let’s think on it.
Maybe something will come of it.

If the group wants to do another focus or trance or anything,
I’m not going to participate,
Steven thought.
I’ve had enough of the deep freeze for
today.