Red Tide: The Flavel House Horror / Vampires of the Morgue (The Ian McDermott, Ph.D., Paranormal Investigator Series Book 2) (14 page)

CHAPTER 14

Seek

Ian began to privately rethink his initial approach to the nightclub. Any attempt of a hopefully clandestine investigation of the place might be in vain, especially this late in the day.
In vain.
Ian shuddered slightly at the irony of his word choice as he thought of its homophone.
Yeah, this could end up in ‘vein’
all right.

He decided it was time to let Zoey in on what he was contemplating. Ian began speaking just above a whisper. “Okay, the way I see it is, there’s probably no way to get inside the place without getting confronted by someone or tripping an alarm. That is, unless …” Zoey looked at Ian with a confused expression on her face.

“Unless, what?” she prompted before Ian could collect his thoughts and elaborate.

Ian continued, “That is, unless there’s some kind of doorway, like a trap door that gains access to the place from the river below. You know, between the pylons. Hopefully not too far from shore at low tide anyway. Trap doors like those are usually pretty common in dock warehouses. You know, so they can lower goods onto skiffs for transport out to tugs and ships. Warehouses and waterfront bars sometimes used trap doors many years ago even for unsavory things like shanghaiing.”

It seemed to make sense to Zoey, as she nodded her head in agreement.

Ian glanced at Zoey as he spoke. “Okay then. Follow me.” He began walking across the suspended parking lot towards the street. Towards land. He headed to the very edge of the dock, which he guessed would be the nearest point that might afford any chance for them to make their way beneath the dock. That would put them around a hundred yards from the warehouse, hopefully not too far for them to work their way over into position directly under the nightclub.

It seemed to be a good idea, and there was almost no pedestrian or vehicular traffic around. As they arrived at their intended destination, Ian was pleased to see that the tide was indeed low enough and far enough out to allow them to get under the docks. There was a small gate in the dock railing, one that, if opened, afforded access to what appeared to be a galvanized steel dock ladder that was permanently affixed onto the side of the dock for access beneath it.

But it was obvious from the warning sign attached to the small gate that it was for maintenance personnel only, and access by anyone else was strictly prohibited. Any trespassing violation would subject the perpetrator to arrest and at the very least a hefty fine.

Ian thought about the warning for a moment, then looked around and saw nobody in sight. He opened the gate and climbed down just far enough to see beneath the dock and ahead to what they might be facing. What Ian saw immediately put a frown on his face. It wouldn’t be easy going at all. There were planks attached to pylons that appeared to serve as a series of catwalks that led off in several directions.

One of the catwalks looked like it would at least get them under the warehouse, but the going looked tricky to say the least. Ian also noted that all around, bolted to pylons, were numerous
KEEP OFF
warning signs, which underscored the foolishness of them proceeding any further with his idea. He continued down the ladder until he was standing on a small platform. From there, he had access to the catwalk planks. Zoey had also climbed down and stood beside him to see for herself all that Ian had been checking out.

“Well, we didn’t come all this way for nothing, did we?” Zoey nudged Ian gently.

Ian grinned slightly, then took a deep breath. “No. No, I don’t guess we did. And what the hell ... what could possibly go wrong. Besides falling off the catwalk down onto the muddy river bottom, which will probably act much like quicksand, trapping us until the tide comes in and drowns us. Or if we make it a bit farther out, then fall, we could easily be impaled by one of those many broken planks and poles that you see protruding from the river bottom. Or if we make it further out yet, you know, where the water is, that sorta speaks for itself. Other than all that, like I said ... what could possibly go wrong?”

Zoey gently placed her right hand on Ian’s mouth, stopping him from continuing with any more morbid potentialities. She then smiled brightly as she spoke. “Or … or we could be just fine.”

Somehow, Zoey’s reassurance was all of the encouragement that Ian needed to muster up some confidence.

Ian took a deep breath, than spoke. “Okay, I’ll go first. Keep your hands … hold firmly onto something at all times. If we go slowly, you’re right. We should be fine.”

Ian paused for a moment and pointed ahead of them. “You see those planks way ahead of us? They’re so barnacle-encrusted, it tells me that sometimes the tide’s so high they are occasionally, at least partially, underwater. Let’s hope that’s not gonna be the case today. Either way, they’re gonna be slippery as all …”

Zoey interjected before Ian could complete his phrase. “Slippery as slimy snot on a door-handle.” Ian thought,
Not how I would have described it, but yeah. Slippery as that.

Without any further thought of the danger or the possibility of being discovered and arrested, Ian and Zoey proceeded, with Ian leading the way.

Ian turned his head to glance behind him. Zoey was no more than three feet back. They were walking on planks that were little wider than a balance beam, all the while trying to hold onto, when possible, the intermittent support pylons and sparsely affixed 4x6 inch makeshift hand-rails. Ian whispered, “Zoey, be especially careful. It looks like just ahead it gets even more sketchy.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Zoey replied in a low voice but loud enough for Ian to notice that her stress and apprehension was beginning to elevate.

Just when Ian began strongly considering that the risk was getting too great to proceed any further, he spotted it. There was indeed a trap door devised to enter into the warehouse from beneath the docks, as well as a galvanized steel access ladder that went from the catwalk all the way up to the hatchway.

There was a second ladder that went in the opposite direction from the ramp down to just a few feet above the river’s surface at what would be nearly low tide. The trap door and ladders were obviously devised for loading small boats directly from the warehouse and to facilitate human transit between warehouse to tugboats or ships by way of ‘river taxi’ motorized skiffs.

In his excitement, Ian unintentionally left Zoey behind in his hurried efforts to reach and check out the trap door. Once he reached the trap door’s metal ladder, he began to climb up the approximately ten foot distance until he was able to reach the hatchway.

Ian held firmly to the ladder with his left hand. He then took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he began to push upwards on the heavy-hinged 3x3 foot wooden door. To his near amazement, Ian felt the door lift. It wasn’t nearly as heavy as he’d expected it to be. He winced at the noise that he’d instantly created. It was as if the trap door had been suddenly awakened from a deep slumber as its rusty hinges squelched upon their awakening. The hinges gave off a duality of high and low pitched noises, which reminded Ian of the piercingly vile sounds created by cats in the thralls of coitus.

Ian immediately surmised due to the ease that the door lifted that it must be assisted by some form of counterweight system. He only lifted the trap door up a few inches before he reversed his actions and closed the hatch as he listened for an alarm to go off. He heard nothing. It didn’t occur to Ian that the place might be armed with a silent alarm.

Zoey was standing on the platform directly beneath Ian. Both of her hands held almost painfully tight to the cold, steel ladder. The tide had begun coming in, and the wind had picked up, creating waves that had begun sloshing and pounding the pylons all around below her. What had been only moments before little more than atomized river mist on their faces had quickly turned into white-cap kicked-up heavy spray that was rapidly getting Zoey soaked.

Ian knew that if the wind was to get much stronger along with the rapidly incoming tide, they could easily be stranded, unable to walk on submerged planks, the very ones that they’d just used. Under the best of conditions, getting back to shore from where they were was going to be challenging to the extreme.

But even with the very real hazards that loomed heavily on both of their minds, when Ian looked downwards, he couldn’t help but smile. Zoey was already grinning. She’d witnessed Ian lift the trap door even though it had been just a few inches. They both, without uttering a single word to each other, understood well that this hatchway would indeed get them inside. But with that, if they chose to proceed any further, things were about to get very serious.

Ian looked directly into Zoey’s bright eyes. “Well, wadda-ya say? Shall we do this?”

Zoey, with an excitedly confident look on her face, nodded her head as she said emphatically, “Yes!”

CHAPTER 15

Hide

Ian and Zoey both breached the hatchway. They stood for a moment silent and still just inside what was effectively the skylight basement of the warehouse.

Ian looked around to see if he could spot some sort of counterweight pulley system, one that allowed the hatch-door to open with such relative ease. He could see none.

That’s bizarre. That hatchway door’s gotta weigh at least …
Ian’s train of thought was interrupted as Zoey spoke just above a whisper, “Ian, how come even as dark as it is in here, everything looks shiny. Like, brand new. And do you smell that strong chlorine smell …?”

Ian’s eyes almost instantly begun to burn and sting. “Bleach. The place has been totally scrubbed down with bleach,” Ian said as he thought,
The place is clean, all right. Too clean. Like they knew we were coming, and … Nothing cleans up blood and guts better than bleach. Just splash it around all over. It renders any DNA that might have been missed in the cleanup totally unviable for testing. Smart ... no loose ends.

The lighting was dim but not too bad. The few windows that there were on the dock-floor level of the warehouse had long ago been soaped out, but they did afford some light from the outside world, and Ian was thankful for it. He’d brought a flashlight for just such an occasion but had forgotten it back in his Jeep.

Zoey spoke up again. “Look at all this equipment. It all looks like it was just installed. I guess for kitchen use. The place must serve food. But this looks way beyond what you’d typically see in the back of any restaurant I’ve ever been in. Looks more like stuff you’d see in a cannery or …”

Ian interjected, “Meat packing plant.”

Zoey nodded as she replied, “Yeah. Weird.”

Ian began looking closely around the room. He spotted a stainless steel walk-in freezer and opened it up, but it was totally empty other than a dozen meat hooks that hung from long, steel, clothesline-like poles.

Ian closed the door to the freezer and panned his eyes across the large area. All of the countertops and huge deep sinks were made of stainless steel. There were no ovens or stovetops of any kind. No microwaves or heating methods that he could see, but there were plenty of stainless steel knives, meat cleavers, and various other blades or saw-toothed paraphernalia all devised to chop, saw, or cut through meat or bone.

Ian thought about what Zoey had said. Maybe it’s all for food preparation. But then he noticed, strangely enough, there was no food stored anywhere. No restaurant-sized cans of anything. Just then, all the pieces came together and hit Ian right between the eyes as he stared intently about while Zoey was looking closely at all the knives and meat-cleavers.

Ian suddenly exclaimed, a bit louder than he’d intended, “This is no restaurant preparatory kitchen ... or storage facility. Well, not for any restaurant.”

Zoey frowned as she raised her right index finger and placed it to her lips, signaling Ian to quiet down. Ian nodded, then continued but in a much softer voice, “This is the old fish cannery room. That’s true. But that’s not what it’s used for now.”

Ian thought
, This room’s for food preparation all right. Food preparation of the ghoulish kind.

Suddenly, they both heard the sound of an opening door, and then someone’s footsteps down the staircase from above. Both Ian and Zoey had seen the stairs when they’d first climbed up through the floor-hatch doorway, but they had appeared to lead to nowhere.

Zoey quickly motioned for Ian to follow her as she pointed towards the walk-in freezer. Without hesitation and as quietly as they could, they made their way to the freezer, opened it, and went inside, closing its door behind them. Ian was glad the freezer was a brand new model. The door opened and closed silently, and he knew that since it was a very new model, with safety laws being what they were, it would not lock them inside.

Inside the sub-zero freezer, it was intolerably cold. Zoey, whose clothes were already wet, began shivering almost instantly. The freezer’s door had a small glass window designed to afford easy viewing for any person of average height.

Ian motioned to Zoey that they should both crouch down on opposite sides of the doorway so as not to be readily spotted by anyone looking through the freezer’s window.

Suddenly, light shone into the freezer. Someone had switched on the overhead neon lights to the room. Even inside the freezer, they could both hear the buzzing sound made from the neon light ballasts warming up. The light flickered a bit and became brighter by the second. Ian could almost hear his heart pounding and definitely felt his stomach turning as he heard someone walking around in the room. Zoey stared at him in wide-eyed dismay. After a few moments which seemed like forever had passed, the lights went out, and they heard heavy steps ascending the stairway and fading away.

With no intentions of doing any further investigation, Ian opened the freezer door and they both hurried over to the floor hatchway. Ian reached down and took hold of the handle. He quickly and silently began lifting the hatchway until it was completely open. But Ian was confused, because this time when he tried to open the trap door, it was at least as difficult to lift open as he’d initially assumed it would be.

Ian felt a cold shiver run up his neck and spine as he thought,
Oh shit. Lifting is much easier than pushing from beneath. There’s no way I pushed it open that easily on my own. Someone must have helped me open the hatch.”

Ian signaled for Zoey to go first and get out of there as quickly as possible. She began her egress from the warehouse via floor-way. Once she reached the catwalk planks, she looked up at Ian who was still climbing down the ladder from the trap door. “Ian, you forgot to close the hatch.”

Ian looked down at Zoey as he continued his descent. “Trust me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll explain once we’ve gotten the hell out of here.”

The tide had continued coming in while they’d been inside the warehouse. The water’s surface was now only two feet beneath the wooden planks. Due to the rising tide and the increasing strength of the wind, waves were starting to breach the surface of the planks. Green seaweed slime and barnacle-covered planks were slippery enough when dry, and they were now drenched – which made them now slippery to the extreme. The going was treacherous and seemed to be getting worse by the minute. So much so that both Ian and Zoey each kept their horrified thoughts to themselves – that it was a very real possibility that they’d never make it back to land again.

Ian had Zoey go ahead of him so he would at least have a chance to save her if she began to fall. As Ian slowly made his way forward as best he could, he began thinking about the very real prospect of their possible demise, a prospect that by percentage, like the tide, wind, and weather, was increasing exponentially by the moment.

Due to Ian’s education and training, he began nearly instinctually intellectualizing how if they did fall and sink to the depths of the dark, icy-cold waters of the Columbia, in mere minutes they would be overwhelmed by the effects of hypothermia followed by near certain drowning regardless of swimming ability, or in his case lack thereof. That hours later, the gases would begin their process of expanding their guts, effectively bloating and inflating them to the point of sufficient buoyancy to resurface unless their bodies became caught on some submerged snag. But with any luck their former selves would eventually float up to the river’s surface and ride the tides and currents into shore like flesh and bone boogie boards.