Hallowed (49 page)

Graham rose awkwardly to his feet, a wide-eyed look of wonder on the bruised flesh of his face.  He made a sound of excitement from behind the rag in his mouth.

In the midst of the swarm, Dad lost his grip, and I slid through his arms.  We reached for each other simultaneously grabbing each other’s hands like a couple of acrobats.

Dad dug the toes of his boots into the craggy floor behind him and meticulously began to haul himself slowly away from the edge of the hole.  I tossed one leg over the side and rolled away from the edge, lying on my back and sucking in breath after breath, not quite fully believing that I hadn’t fallen.

Eying Graham, Dad backpedaled away from the open pit, reaching instinctively for the gun that was no longer there.  “Paul, take Claudia and get back,” Dad barked.

Finding motor control again, I grabbed her by the arm, tugging her out of the way of the furry flood of bats.  I glanced at my father.  He was clutching his arm, his eyes squeezed shut in pain, yet there was no blood.

“Dad?”

He gave a single stern shake of his head.  It knew then what it was.  The infamously unreliable Graves’ ticker had decided to test its faithful owner at the most inopportune time.

Graham simply stood at the edge of the pit, watching us with a glassy-eyed fascination from bleary yellow eyes as if curious what we would do next.

“Gun,” Dad whispered, holding out a single wavering hand to me.  Suddenly, my father was no longer the pillar of strength that I had always known.  He looked fragile and old.

Holding Claudia securely in my lap, I drew my father’s gun from its holster but made no move to hand it over as the reality of the situation struck me then.  The responsibility had fallen to me to protect us all.

“
What are you going to do with that, Graves?
” the thin wispy sound emerged from Claudia’s throat.  I gurgled in horror and nearly kicked her out of my lap.  Though her eyes remained closed, a low chuckle rolled from deep within her. 
“Are you going to shoot me?  Do you have it in you to kill another human being?”

“Paul. The gun,” my father hissed.  “Give me the gun, son.”

I looked down and saw Uncle Hank’s Bible between me and Dad, lying beside my jacket, but I held firm to the gun.  I chambered a round and swallowed awkwardly.

“I know you’ve been struggling with a decision,” I heard my father say to me.  “You don’t have to be a carbon copy of me or your uncle, son.  You’re your own man.”

Keeping the gun trained on Graham, I reached out and picked up the Bible in my other hand.  The sneer disappeared from Graham’s face, and he fixed his yellow eyes on the hand holding the Bible.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“
I was told to lead you to the home of my fathers to die
,” Claudia announced in a tone which was nothing in the neighborhood of her natural one. 
“And here you are.”

“Who are you and who are the fathers?”

“
Tracy, daughter of Gerard, spoke true.  I was once of the Nephilim.  The Old Ones are my fathers, held captive in Gehenna until the Day of Judgment
.”

“For what purpose have you brought us here?”

At this, Nathan Graham’s eyes seem to widen gleefully. 
“They knew you would not come willingly.”

“What do you want from us?”

“They demand the sacrifice of your father and his children in tribute to them.”

“Why Claudia?”

The yellow orbs in his head rolled around to target Claudia. 
“As you, Paul, are son of John, so is Claudia, daughter of John.”

There was a rumble somewhere in the distance of the great cavern, but I heard only the amused tittering coming from the throat of the girl I held in my arms.

“What?” my father snapped, rolling to his knees.  “What the hell did that thing just say?”

“Speak only truth, worm!” I shouted, thrusting the Bible out before me.

Graham seemed to cringe and his eyes found my father.  “
Do you deny then that you took for yourself Patricia daughter of Esther?
”

“Before I met Kathy, we were… friends.”

“You knew her, John, son of Franklin!  That is no lie.” 
Graham turned and locked his eyes on me. 
“Your son knows this betrayal to be true.”

Feeling the warmth of Claudia’s body next to me, I stared at my father, waiting for a response.  The single word seemed to fall from his mouth like some distasteful piece of refuse: “Once.”  He looked at me then and instantly looked away again.

Graham’s head turned and stared straight at Dad.

“
Did you kiss her goodbye
?” Claudia asked.  “
Did you kiss Kathy one last time
?”

Dad bared his teeth, rose, and lunged toward Graham.

“Dad!  No!”

For one brief instant his body dangling over the open pit between them, then just as he was about to plunge into darkness, he jerked himself backwards.  Again I watched in quiet fascination as a cloud flickered electric-blue somewhere in the black gulf below.

PAUL
, I heard from somewhere deep below. 
We will let them go.  We just want you.  Just you.

“Enough!” I snapped, rising to my feet and advancing on Graham.  Dropping the gun to my side and wielding the Bible before me, the words bubbling up from the core of my body from a source I’ve never tapped before, I commanded: “I order you out!  Now! Leave us alone in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!”

Claudia threw back her head and made a sound that I would have thought a girl her size incapable of making, the sound of an injured animal cornered. Her chest convulsed, her eyes bulged, and she leaned forward, her gut rolling.  A thick, black ooze sprayed from her mouth, and instead of splattering across the stone floor, it turned to smoke and fled into the open pit before Graham.

While the three of us watched in frozen amazement, Graham rose and, defying his own injuries, scurried across the chamber into the shadows, knocking over a large industrial camera tri-pod in his path.

Without thinking, I rushed after him, skidding to a halt only after I realized that complete darkness lay ahead.  For a moment, I considered pursuing the mass murderer, my need for revenge momentarily overpowering my sense of reason, then I felt a firm hand on my shoulder, restraining me.  “No, Paul.  Let him go.”

I held my position until he physically forced my chin around to face him.  The childish gesture of discipline only enraged me further.  What right did this man have to call himself my father after betraying my mother?

“As far as Claudia goes,” my father told me, shaking his head emphatically, “What that thing implied couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Did it happen after you met Mom?” I asked, knowing the truth.

He nodded slowly.  “Your mother and I had just started dating.  What happened between Pat and I was a mistake,” he told me.  “That’s all you need to know.”

“No, I want to know the truth now,” I shouted at him.  “Stop hiding secrets from me like I’m still a child you can protect!”

The glare he wore began to dissolve.  Finally he gave a nod, and in his eyes, I saw a mixture of anger and pain of such a complex nature that I couldn’t tell if he would cry or strike out at me.  “Your mother went off with an old boyfriend, planned to leave town with him.  We were both so mad at Kathy.  It was more out of anger than anything else.”

I felt blood rush through every vessel in my face.

He looked me in the eye.  “We dealt with it a long, long time ago, Paul.  Your mother forgave us, just as we forgave her.”

I shook my head in disbelief.  How could they all remain friends after something like that?  How could they forgive such betrayals?

In my mind I heard Tracy asking that question in the confessional: 
“Every man is capable of the act of betrayal.  I just wanted to know if you’d ever suspected it in your father.”

My reaction had been one of offended belligerence.  After all, my parents were incapable of such indiscretions, such mistakes.  In my eyes, the two of them had been above reproach, beyond the taint of selfishness and evil of this life.

Grabbing my shoulders, a man named Jack Graves looked me in the eye and said:  “Paul, Kathy and I aren’t incapable of mistakes.  I’m just a man and she’s just a woman. We’re as flawed as any other person in this world.”

Paul.

I turned back and looked into the darkness, believing for a brief moment that I was back in Comeaux’s Grocery.  It was still early October.  Claudia had not yet been taken.  Mrs. Wicke and Bridgette had not yet been murdered.  All the childlike blinders to which I’d grown accustomed had not yet been lifted.  This nightmare night had yet to begin.

Come to us and everything will be just as it was before.

Lies, I thought.  There had been nothing but lies since I’d entered the House.  The real truth was the love of the family and friends that surrounded me.

“Go to your girlfriend now, Paul,” Dad said to me.  “She needs you.”

The tension eased out of me.  His role reaffirmed, my father gave his son a firm push toward Claudia.  She lay on the cold stone floor in disoriented confusion, blinking around at the dim lantern-lit cavern, until her eyes found mine.

I went to her then.  She collapsed against me, sobbing plaintively, abandoning all her strength to me.  I pressed her face against my chest, feeling her tears sink through the fabric of my shirt and into my skin.

“You’re safe,” I reassured her.  “It’s okay now.”

It was then that I heard the cavern rumble, though it had been happening for some time.  In the distance, I heard the crack and collapse of a wall.

“Paul,” my father said, hefting the backpack onto his shoulders and sparing a glance at Claudia.  “We need a direction.”

After I struggled back into my jacket, I took her chin gently in both my hands and got her full attention.  “Do you remember how he brought you down here?”

She shook her head.  “He drugged me.”

“In the absence of any other ideas, we’re going back up the shaft,” Dad snapped.

Gathering Claudia between us, I watched as a rock the size of a bass drum rolled down a nearby wall. “We’ve got to go!  Now!” my father shouted, pressing his lantern into my hands and pulling us firmly toward the exit from the chamber.

Dad dug a bottle of water from his pack and handed it back to Claudia, as we rushed down the passage.  A few screeching bats darted around us back toward the cavern. The rumbling of the cave collapse was just an echo in the distance behind us now.

“Dad, wait!” I called, slowing to a stop.  Claudia leaned her weight against me as she began to gulp the water down.  She was, of course, dehydrated.  I cursed myself for not having the presence of mind to save one apple from the supply that had been depleted along the cavern path.

“Okay, I think we’ll be okay here for a while,” my father replied, going to one knee and rummaging through the backpack.  He retrieved a small zip-lock baggie filled with trail mix and handed it to me, along with the flashlight Uncle Hank had put away.

A look passed between me and my father.  Would he always be one step ahead of me, I wondered?

He looked away from me, attempting to hide the expression on his face.  The pain in his chest hadn’t gone away.  Now that we had Claudia back, I focused my concern on my father.

“You okay?” I asked him.

He gave me one of the disarming Graves’ smiles that had won the woman that had become my mother so many years ago.  “I’m thinking I should go on ahead to the main chamber and get Hank and Tracy.  Okay?”

When I hesitated in my response, he rose, swung the pack over one shoulder, and started down the chamber, not awaiting an answer.  I started to call after him but thought twice about it.  To forestall the moment afforded it too much gravity.  My father had always been a man of action.  Anything less and I would have been concerned.

Turning back to Claudia, I handed her the open baggie.  “How are you doing?”

“Better,” she answered, through a mouthful of trail mix.  She looked back down the stairwell toward the amphitheater.

“What is it?”

She simply stared at me without response.  “I hear a voice.”

I shuddered involuntarily.  “You should ignore it,” I replied.

Behind us, the squeaks and chirps of the bats had grown increasingly louder until it was a virtual symphony of noise, only amplified by the shape of the tunnel.

“You don’t understand.  I’ve been hearing this voice calling out since I’ve been down here.  I thought it must surely be my imagination, but now I’m not so sure.”

Claudia turned to me and I realized that for the first time since that tragic day in her mother’s kitchen, we were alone.  She reached out and touched my face with trembling fingers.  “Is all this
real
?  Was I kidnapped?  Did you come after me?”

I smiled uncertainly, a bit too much concern in my eyes.  “Yeah.  We all did.”

“It’s just that I’ve been hallucinating…”  Her eyes went hazy, and she shook her head.  “I guess it’s hard for me to accept anything at face value just now.”

She went on touching my face with a wonderstruck expression until I couldn’t bare the distance between us any longer.  I pulled her against me.  We kissed there in that dark, hope-deprived place, and for an instant, the world around us seemed to grow reverently silent and bright with the warmth that passed between us.

Suddenly, as if a gate had opened, a flood of winged vermin filled the passage around us.  Claudia screamed and ducked against me.  I fell over her, covering her with my body.  I attempted to see my father through the mass of flying creatures but it was impossible.  I could no longer even see the lantern’s light.

“C’mon, we have to go,” I bellowed at the top of my lungs, above the horrible high frequency screeching, like a hundred rusty crypt doors opening and closing.  I turned my back to the bats and began to tug her after me, feeling every little thump and flutter of each tiny winged body.

And then as if a faucet suddenly tightened, the flow of bats just stopped.

“Dad!” I yelled, shining my light up the empty passage.

No answer.

I glanced at my watch in disbelief.

“Paul?  What is it?”

“C’mon, I’ll explain on the way,” I told her as I rushed up the passage, her hand in mine.  “Dad!”

“Mr. Graves,” Claudia attempted.

The only answer was the echo of our own voices.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“If you had to guess, how long would you say you’ve been down here?”

She shook her head as she struggled to keep pace with me.  “You’ve got to understand, I’ve been in and out of consciousness.  I’ve been off my meds for a while now and… well, I just don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore.  Are you trying to tell me that it’s been longer than a day?”

“For you, yes, but shorter for the rest of us,” I tried to explain.  “Time has been playing games with us.”

She gave a long hitching sigh, searched my face beside her, and gave a nod of complete recognition.  “So, it wasn’t just me?”

“It’s been an extended psychotic episode for all of us.”

Suddenly, the passage came to an end at a stone wall.  Claudia watched in confusion as I slapped my palm against the cold stone in front of us.  “I distinctly remember an opening here before.”

Both of us cast a glance around us, Claudia to her left and I to my right, then at the same moment, we looked directly above us and spotted what any high school student would have immediately recognized as a fixture from the world of a teenager.  Set into the ceiling above was a simple scuffed-up grey locker door not more than five feet high and a foot and a half wide, two little squares of vent set at the top and bottom of it.

Written on the door in bright red lipstick was the word: “Hallow.”

“Paul, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Claudia murmured under her breath.

“Well, I see your locker door from school,” I said dryly, passing her my flashlight.  “If you see more than that, we might have a problem.”

As I reached for the metal lever set in the center, Claudia placed a restraining hand over mine.  “There’s going to be something really bad on the other side of this, isn’t there?”

No chance I could sell her a strategically placed lie at this point.

“I would almost guarantee,” I answered her.

As I stretched forward--unwilling to stand directly beneath the phantom door--and craned my neck, the crucifix around my neck drifted out from inside my shirt and hung there exposed between me and Claudia.

“Believe it or not, I’ve been praying every conscious moment I’ve been down here,” I heard Claudia say beside me.  I took a quick glance at her.  She stared down at the crucifix with a serious look on her face.  “If we get out of here alive, I just might have to rethink my stance on monotheism.”

My hand closed around the latch and I pulled.  The door drifted open a crack with the disgruntled creek of world-weary hinges yet didn’t drop outward as gravity might have suggested it should.  Floating impossibly above me on the other side of the doorway was the waxy glow of a hallway floor lit by dim morning sunlight.

Retrieving the flashlight from Claudia, I set it gingerly lens-side down along what for me looked like the wall of the next room.  I let go of it and watched in amusement as the flashlight remained standing above me at a ninety degree angle to my position.

“No way,” I heard Claudia mutter below me.

I reached through, grabbed the outside edge of the doorway and pulled myself through, instantly feeling gravity grip me around the shoulders like a vise and pull me toward the floor which, I dutifully accepted on faith, was “down.”