Ghost Hunters (4 page)

D
ick pointed the gun at Nancy. “Nancy, climb on down. You’re the first contestant on
Get
in
the
Fucking
Hole
.”

She stared at Dick, her eyes narrowed to mean slits. “I’m not going down there.”

He sighed and swung the pistol at Liz. “Then I guess your sister gets a new belly button.”

Nancy stared at Dick long enough for him to worry that she’d called his bluff and he really was going to have shoot her sister. His finger tightened on the trigger. Nancy ducked her head and headed to the hole. “I hope they kill you first,” she whispered to Dick.

As she perched on the edge of the hole and got her feet on the ladder’s rope rungs, Dick thought about giving Nancy a shove. If he turned his back on her, she’d try to kill him. He wasn’t even sure his crew would back him up if shit really got messy. He’d convinced them to do the job, but it wouldn’t take much to knock them off the fence again. Then he’d be staring down six angry assholes instead of just the sisters. Dick let her go, deciding the danger she posed was offset by the freak out killing her right now would cause. “Throw a couple of those glow sticks down the hole, Troy.”

The gadget wrangler dug around in his pack and came up with with a pair of plastic straws. He cracked them over his knuckles and shook them until they glowed with an electric green fluorescence. He tossed them over the edge and the lights dwindled as they fell past Nancy.

Dick counted as the lights fell.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.

Troy must have been counting, as well, because he piped up before Dick could do the math in his head. “A buck fifty. That’s a deep hole, man.”

It took them most of the next hour to navigate the rope ladder and get their equipment to the bottom of the hole. Dick knew he had to be the last to go down, because someone had to keep folks from losing their nerve. By the time everyone got to the bottom of the pit, they were covered in sweat and grime. Dick stared around at his team, their faces lit by Randall’s camera light, and had to stifle a laugh. “We look like we’re filming a coal mining documentary.”

Randall, invisible behind the glowing white eye of the camera’s light, whistled, “It’ll look badass. When we do the wrap-up topside, you’ll like you crawled through hell. And what is that smell?”

Dick looked at the floor, which was covered in a thick layer of greasy black that reeked of ammonia and something earthy and foul. “No idea. Stinks like shit.”

Liz smirked at him. “Because it is shit.
Bat
shit. They crap on their way out to hunt.”

Dick nodded. “That was very informative, Ms. ‘National Geographic.’”

Amy threw an arm over Dick’s shoulder. “What are we gonna do with the locals?”

Nancy and Liz watched the ghost hunters, anger replaced by a weary resignation.

Dick waved the gun in their direction. “You two are going to mind your manners, right? Once we get our footage, we’ll cut you loose.”

Nancy rolled her eyes. “Neither of us wants to get shot. Let’s just get this shit over with.”

Dick nodded. “Stay with Troy. Troy, either of these two gets squirrelly, just give a shout. I don’t care if we’re in the middle of a shot, you let me know.”

Troy threw a mock salute at Dick, and forked his fingers at Nancy and Liz. “I’m watching, ladies.”

Dick shoved the pistol into the back of his waistband and covered it with the long tail of his flannel shirt. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”

Randall turned the camera away from the crew, rotating in a slow circle. They were standing at the bottom of a deep pit with a single tunnel leading away from it. But the tunnel wasn’t what snatched the breath from everyone at the bottom of the pit.

The stone walls were crosshatched by a storm of words, some scrawled with markers, others smeared in the colors of blood and shit. Still others were crudely hacked into the wall, chipping their way across the words that had come before. The words Dick could read were a wild melange of nonsense. He saw
help
smeared across what appeared to be a snatch of “Jabberwocky” written in tiny, cramped letters. There were other words in languages he didn’t recognize, and looking at those filled his head with an arrhythmic pounding. “What the fuck is this?” he asked Nancy.

She huddled next to her sister and stared at the floor. “I told you there were bad things down here. We need to leave.”

He shook his head. “Randy, get a lot of footage of all this shit, okay?”

Nancy glanced at Dick then back at the floor. “You shouldn’t film it. No one needs to see this crazy shit.”

“People may not need to see this crazy shit, but they sure want to.”

Nancy did have a point though. The longer Dick looked at the words on the wall, the more he felt a calling. Something in the darkest parts of his lizard brain responded to what he saw there and wanted him to add his own scrawled curses to the mass.

Randy lowered the camera. “Got it. We heading into the tunnel?”

Dick nodded and whistled to the get the attention of his crew. He took the lead, lighting the way into the tunnel with a compact LED headlamp strapped across his forehead. “Just keep the camera on me and Amy. You reading us, Mickey?”

From the back of the group, Mickey piped up. “Loud and clear. Don’t get too far ahead, not sure what being underground’ll do to the wireless signal.”

The tunnel was wider than Dick expected. After a few steps, he and Amy were able to walk side by side, adopting their habitual posture. The audience wanted to see them both and their different reactions. Amy tended to go pale and shaky when things got weird, Dick became animated and flushed with excitement. “This place looks almost man-made,” Dick noted. The walls of the tunnel were smooth and straight, but he could make out the scalloped impressions of tools in places. He played his light over the wall as he walked. Amy walked alongside him, her breath coming in short little gasps as adrenaline dumped into her system. There was something about this place, a fearsome pressure.

Amy’s hand clenched on Dick’s arm. She jabbed the index finger of her free hand into the darkness ahead of them. “What was that?”

Dick swung his light in the direction she was pointing and picked up some sort of jumbled pile. They advanced on it, with Dick pulling against Amy who dragged her feet. “Let’s find out.”

The tunnel widened into a low-ceilinged oval chamber, twenty feet end to end and ten feet across the middle. In the center of the crude room, someone had stacked twenty or thirty big round stones. Dick walked up to it, his light flashing over the pile. It reached almost to his waist; as he approached it, he could see thin sticks jutting from its sides.

Amy pulled on his arm. Her voice was high pitched and tight with fear. “Leave it alone. Let’s just go.”

Dick motioned for Randall to get the camera in closer to the pile. Under the brighter light, the stone’s dark colors resolved into a patchwork pattern of deep-red splotches and pale-white stone beneath. There were faint carvings visible in the rocks, a repeating pattern of three divots in the center of a circle. Dick could feel his breath hitching in his chest, rebelling against the stench rising from the pile of stones. The stink of rot clawed at his nostrils and had his stomach rolling before he could back away. He remembered he was on camera and did his best to compose himself. “These stones are amazing. They’re covered with carvings, and these stains, I think they’re blood.”

Randall moved in close to the stones, and Dick knew he was zooming in tight to pick up the details. He didn’t know who’d put them there, but they were creepy as fuck. Lonny was going to eat this up with a spoon. “And there’s a smell,” Dick waited for the camera to turn back to him before he continued. “Something rotten, like roadkill in the summer.”

Amy squeezed into the shot, turning to the camera for comfort. “I think it’s safe to say there are no roads down here, so it’s just ‘kill,’ I think.”

Dick pointed to the tunnel across from where they’d entered. “Let’s keep on moving. I get a feeling there’s a lot to see.”

There was a faint clicking noise, a choppy, insectile rhythm. Dick held up his hand for the rest of the crew to hold up, and everyone stopped. He waited, listening for the click, but it didn’t come again. “Must be my nerves,” he muttered, and they continued walking.

The tunnel sloped down and widened as they advanced. The pattern from the stones repeated at irregular intervals on the tunnel walls, but there were no more words. Dick swept his eyes across the path ahead of him, looking for signs of paranormal activity. Something glinted in the light from his headlamp, and he knelt down to examine it. A squashed cylinder of metal had stuck in the soft limestone. Dick took out a little pocket knife and dug it out of the stone. “A bullet,” he said, turning back to show the smashed lump to the camera. “Something happened down here—”

Dust rained into the tunnel, covering the trailing half of the crew and their hostages in a fine layer of powdered stone. Troy shouted with surprise and tried to clear the grit from his eyes. Nancy and Liz were cowering against one side of the tunnel while Mickey sputtered and gasped on a mouthful of dust.

Dick looked up and saw a narrow slot in the side of the tunnel, an opening they hadn’t noticed before. There was a flash in the slot, a dark shadow against the paler limestone, and Mickey screamed.

Randall aimed the camera at the commotion, throwing a spear of light at Mickey.

Filthy arms snaked through the opening and hooked around Mickey’s head and neck. Dick could see one of her eyes gaping through the space between those arms, wide and blue and so terrified it stunned him.
Shoot the fucker,
he thought, but he was frozen with terror. The arms jerked on Mickey, yanking her toward the slot. She kicked and struggled, tried to fight free while the rest of the crew stood and watched, too horrified to react.

Mickey twisted against her attacker’s grip, thrusting her own arms up and through the hold. For one moment, she was free. She screamed in surprise and triumph then bolted toward Dick and the rest of the frozen crew.

Filth-crusted fingers stretched out and tangled in Mickey’s ponytail. The sudden tension ripped her head back and sent her feet skidding out from under her; for one breath, Mickey hung in the air.

The hand disappeared into the slot in the wall, hauling Mickey in like a fisherman landing a bass. Her wailing scream was cut short when her head cracked against the edge of the slot with a meaty thunk that made Dick’s stomach roll. She flopped away from the wall, only to be wrenched back into the slot. Her face smeared against the stone and then she was gone, leaving nothing to mark her passing except a bloody scrap of her cheek clinging to the wall of the tunnel.

D
ick’s heart pounded with such ferocity he thought he might be dying.

The rest of the crew was shouting, screaming really, their mouths wide and gaping at him, but he couldn’t hear them. Everything was falling apart, and all he could hear was the beating of his heart, a rapid tattoo that scrambled Dick’s thoughts with every pounding pulse.

Mickey was gone.
Yanked right into the wall, so quickly none of them had time to react. He’d drawn the gun, but hadn’t had time to squeeze off a shot. The weapon no longer held the heavy weight of power. It seemed insubstantial, ephemeral. He couldn’t shoot what he couldn’t see. Dick slumped against the wall and cradled his head in his hands, the pistol pressed against his cheek.
Mickey was gone
.

He stared at the bloody tissue stuck to the wall, a blazing white light made it stand out from the darkness. Dick followed the light up to Randall’s camera. His world snapped into focus, its soundtrack blaring to life. His crew’s frantic cries for attention battered his ears, but there was only one person Dick wanted to hear. He staggered over to Randall and gripped the big man’s shoulders with both hands. “Tell me you fucking got that.”

The cameraman pulled his head back from the camera’s viewfinder. He stared at Dick like he’d never seen him before. “She’s gone.”

Dick chewed on the inside of his cheek. He was the only person who understood what what had to be done. Mickey was gone, but if they had her being taken on camera, then it wasn’t for
nothing
. They could turn that into the break of their careers. “Randy. Did you get it?”

Randall nodded, but looked shell-shocked and wobbly on his feet. “We have to leave.”

Troy jumped on that idea with both feet. “Randall’s right. We have to get the hell out of here before more of those things pop out of the walls and snatch someone else.”

Liz was crouched down against the wall, hands pressed over her mouth. “It’s them. I saw its face. It’s one of them.”

Nancy kneed Liz in the shoulder. “Knock it off. They’re all gone. After what Joe did, weren’t none of ‘em left.”

Liz rocked on her heels, lightly banging her head against the stone wall as if trying to shake off a bad thought. “No one knows that. They could’ve hidden down here in the tunnels. We have to get out of here.”

Amy rubbed the chill off her arms. “I’m behind you on this, Dick, I am. But we need to reevaluate our plan.”

Dick turned away from the rest of the crew, pistol clenched tight in his fist.
Why hadn’t he shot the damned thing?
But that water was under the bridge and gone. He hadn’t shot whatever it was, and now Mickey was gone, and the rest of the crew was freaking out. He had to come up with something to keep them on task. “We can’t just leave her down here,” he whispered into the darkness.

Amy threw her support behind him. “He has a point, you guys. Mickey’s as good as dead if we leave her down here.”

Troy’s words gushed out of him like a nasal whine. “Did you see how hard her head hit that wall? No way she’s still alive. That thing is probably eating her
right goddamned now
.”

Liz lit a cigarette, and the ruddy glow of its tip cast her face in harsh shadows. Suddenly, she looked ancient, a crone squatting over a fire to read portents in the entrails of the dead. “Your team’s right. That girl is gone. We’ll be gone if we don’t head out, right now.”

Dick decided to push the moral high ground, see if he could shake some people over to his side. “You don’t know that. If we get after her right now, we might be able to save Mickey. I don’t want her blood on my hands.”

Randall snapped back at Dick’s words. “It already is on your hands.
None
of us would be in danger if it weren’t for you and your big plan.”

Nancy laughed, a crow’s caw that spooked them all. “He’s got you there. Maybe this is what you get for threatening folks what are minding their own business. You shoulda gone home when I toldja to get gone. You still gotta chance though. Let’s get the fuck out of here before anyone else gets hauled off into the dark.”

Dick paced the cavern floor, clenched fists knuckling the back of his head. He was losing them, losing all of them. He didn’t have the words or the charisma to get them back. They were too scared of what was going on down here. He’d have to give them something else to be scared of, something that would terrify them, make them do what he wanted.

Dick knew he was going to have to tell the truth.

“We can’t leave.” He chewed at his thumb, spit out a hunk of hangnail. “We need the money.”

Randall lowered the camera to his waist, but shone the light straight into Dick’s face. “Maybe you do, asshole, but I can get by. I’ve got some savings, I can scrounge up freelance gigs. Losing this shot with Lonny isn’t the end of the world.”

Dick drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah, yeah it is. For all of us.”

He had their attention now. Every eye was turned on him. He swallowed hard and dove into the story. He spewed out every little detail, the balance that each of his crew now owed on the credit lines he’d taken out in their names. He told them about the deck of little plastic cards, how they’d stacked up while he did everything he could to keep them afloat. Told them where the gear came from, where the
van
came from, how much interest they owed on the cash advances he took to keep the money rolling. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. All the details that weighed him down like a stack of bricks seemed to drift away as he revealed them. The more he talked, the more he had to say, and the crew just stared at him, eyes wide with horror as they realized they were hearing the story of the ends of their financial lives. He’d buried them up to their necks in debt while they’d chased a dream, and now the tide was about to roll in and drown them all.

When the last of the words were gone, Dick sagged against the wall of the tunnel and held his hands out, palms up. His left hand was empty, fingers curled like a crab. His right held the gun, black and heavy and silent. “We can dig out of this, but we have to do it together.”

Nancy spat on the stone between her feet. “He’s full of shit. He’s just blowing smoke up your asses to get you to do something you know goddamn well is a stupid idea.”

Amy watched Dick, her eyes wide and clear. He could feel her digging at him, trying to determine just how much of his story was bullshit. For the first time in his life, Dick didn’t have any trouble meeting her eyes. He was free and clear, all the deception had washed out of him along with his confession.

Amy spat her gum out and unwrapped a fresh piece. “He’s not lying. We really are over a barrel here, folks.”

Dick rested the gun in the small of his back and held out his empty left hand to his team. “We can do this. We’ll get Mickey out of here, I swear. And the footage we get along the way will make us fucking rich. No one’s ever seen anything like this. We just have to stick it out a little longer.”

He knew he never could have swayed them without Amy throwing in on his side. He could see the venom in her glare, but he also knew she was smart enough to see the pot of the gold at the end of this rainbow of shit.

Troy wiped the sweat from his lip and nodded. “For Mickey.”

Randall, always in shadow behind the camera’s light, cleared his throat before speaking up. “Yeah, all right. But we’re done after this, Dick. You pay me out, and we’re through.”

“All right then.” Dick pointed at the black slot in the wall. “Let’s get Mickey back.”