The Rented Mule (41 page)

When the light came on, Cooper immediately spotted the snake. It was less than an arm’s length away. The timber rattler, one of the largest species of rattlesnakes in the world, appeared to be as big around as his upper arm. Cooper wanted no part of it or its potent hemotoxin venom that would likely kill him before he could get out of the cave. Cooper headshot the snake. He briefly watched it twist in erratic spasms on the cave floor and then fall off a ledge. He clicked off his light.
One down.

This cavern was Mark Wright’s ancestral dark secret. Each generation worked diligently to keep it off the official known list of over four thousand Alabama caves. Doing so guaranteed privacy. Anyone exploring the cave would be horrified at what they would discover.

Mark’s great-great-grandfather had been part of the Underground Railroad that helped funnel escaped slaves north. The truth, however, was that his great-great-grandfather was an opportunistic, malignant sadist. He helped many make the journey but solely as a front to ensure a fresh flow of victims coming through, from which he could carefully select the right specimens for his torturous pleasure. If a large group came to him, he would help most move to the next stop. A weak male or a single female would be culled. Allowing the vast majority of travelers to pass eliminated most suspicion, and since it was a dangerous trip that many didn’t survive without the predilections of a demented old man, he enjoyed impunity.

Sickened by what her husband was doing, Mark’s great-great-grandmother slipped away one night with most of the family cash, never to return. A month after she was safely several states away, she sent a man to stop her husband, but he never returned. Two months later, she was found at the bottom of a well. The old man continued his evil ways until his natural death many years later.

Mark’s thermal goggles had been a present to himself last year. He dreamed of stalking one of his brunette victims through the cave. He had been working himself up to human prey. Experimenting with a few stray dogs and one cat, the
clarity of the heat signatures were unbelievable. He could tell specifics about each animal before killing it.

Mark affixed his goggles and then checked his pockets for his old .38 caliber blued steel revolver and the two remaining sticks of dynamite. He looked at Grayson’s white form and touched the shock collar remote. Grayson screamed in pain and pleaded for his dad to stop.

“Do you hear that, Cooper? He wants you to come help him! And by the way, you can turn around. We’re back in the main cavern now.”

Mark listened but couldn’t hear anything other than Grayson’s whimpering and sniffling. He knew that Cooper could hear his voice, but he was not close enough for Mark to see his heat signature. Mark would sit and wait. Over the years of stalking his rape victims, he had developed patience. Mark dangled his legs off the table’s edge.

“So, Cooper, how do you like complete darkness? Can’t see shit, can ya? I find it… invigorating. You gotta imagine everything. How do
you
imagine things? What do you want it to be like?”

Over! I want this to be over… and you dead at my feet, you son of a bitch,
Cooper thought but held back from screaming it.

Cooper was slowly inching his way through the cave toward Mark’s voice, making steady progress. He knew that he would eventually have to turn on his flashlight but was trying to cover as much ground as possible by touch, fearing snakebites with each step and movement of his hands along the rock wall.

After several minutes of silence, only periodically broken by the echoing drip of water, Mark stated loudly, “Oh, Coooooooper, I’m guessin’ you killed one of my snakes. Seen any of the others?” Then he laughed sadistically. “You might as well talk to me. So how
are
you and Brooke doing these
days? Better than you and Kelly? You don’t know Brooke like I do. Has she put the moves on you yet? Answer me! You know, I can’t believe you trusted your wife with that nut job Brooke. Now,
that
was a mistake you’re gonna regret, my friend.”

The constricted passage was obvious. Cooper had to turn sideways to fit through. When he reached the opposite end, he focused on blindly setting the traps in the center of the narrow trail. His hands were shaking as he realized he could easily be wearing one of these traps if he wasn’t careful. Setting traps in broad daylight was difficult enough; doing it from memory, blind, with the fear of being bitten by a rattler at any moment or attacked by a psychopath was almost too much.

“Another thing… if you happen to find some funky sticks while you’re fumbling around in the dark, they aren’t sticks. They’re bones!” Mark let out another disturbing laugh. “Nobody other than family’s made it outta here alive in decades. I just thought you might benefit from that little piece of knowledge. And… in the spirit of being a good host, I’ve decided to share a few tidbits of family history with you and Grayson… and since you’ll never have the opportunity to divulge any of it, I thought why the hell not?”

Mark continued as if in a casual conversation, “So anyway, this is family property—been in my family for generations. Before the War of Northern Aggression it was a big-ass plantation called Live Oaks. Do you see? Live spelled backward is evil. Live Oaks… Evil Oaks. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Cooper didn’t respond but continued setting the traps. As long as Mark kept talking, Cooper had a good idea where Mark was and how much time he had.

“Unfortunately, for me, they had to sell a chunk of the property to keep the family afloat. That still pisses me off.
During prohibition, they were gonna make this cave into a gambling hall like Bangor Cave in Blount County. Those owners made millions back in the early 1900s… but the family worried somebody would find out what all had gone on down here—just another missed chance at gettin’ rich. Well, I decided to keep up the family tradition. Not much left of the family but me, Uncle Don—who, by the way most likely died yesterday—and a crazy uncle who lives up the road a little ways. Now that dude’s pretty interestin’. The old bastard had a stroke and can’t talk… and he thinks he’s livin’ at the turn of the century. He just roams the hills around here, scaring the shit outta everybody. Locals won’t even come near this place or him because he’s bat-shit crazy. You never know where he’s at. Hell, he could be in here with us, right now. He could grab you by the throat and gut ya at any second. Everybody needs a crazy uncle, and mine sure has come in handy.”

Mark continued with an eerie ease, “Maybe I’ll get him to help with my little project. He’ll do whatever I ask. All he’s ever wanted was to see the Mississippi River—since he saw it in a
National Geographic
when he was a kid. Just wants to look at a muddy river. Not very ambitious, is it? You know, I could tell him where your family lives, and for the price of a bus ticket they’d disappear down here one night. So here’s my proposal. How ’bout you come to me, and I won’t tell him where you live? That’s fair. Come on, Cooper, be a hero for your family.”

Cooper listened to every word as he carefully finished locating and setting the traps where Mark would surely step on one. Taking a deep breath and saying a quick, silent prayer of thanks that he still had all his fingers, he momentarily clicked on his flashlight to find a place to hide. He quickly
spotted a giant limestone formation that offered decent concealment, and it would help him steady his aim. He grabbed his pack and began feeling his way into position when he realized that he didn’t have his rifle with him.
Damn it! It’s leanin’ against a tree.

Mark taunted, dragging out each word, “Oh, Cooper? Where. Are. You? If you don’t say somethin’, I’m gonna shock the shit outta little Grayson here, and it’ll be all your fault.”

Cooper turned away from Mark’s voice, cupped his hands, and yelled, “I can’t walk. I think my leg’s broke. For God’s sake, don’t shock the boy. You can have me.”

Mark laughed out loud. He knew well how easy it would be to fall. The cave was full of holes, ledges, and loose rock, plus no small amount of slippery bat guano.

“Fine!” Mark yelled, jumping down. He turned around to look at the table to see his butt print. He could even see the heat signature from where his hands had gripped the table’s edge.

He squatted down to whisper to Grayson, “I expect you to be right here, in this spot, when I get back. Don’t move! If you do, the rattlesnakes will bite you and you’ll die… a very slow and painful death. Ya hear me? You little pansy.”

Grayson’s only response was to curl into a tight ball under the table, whimpering. Mark knew he had broken him. Not that it mattered anymore. Without Brooke, Grayson was a burden.
Unless I could sell the little wuss.

Mark stood up and yelled in Cooper’s direction, “Hey, Coop, I got an idea. Let’s play Marco Polo! I’ll be Marco, obviously. You’re Polo… since you wear those preppy shirts all the time… you faggot!”

“Whatever you want. Just leave Grayson alone!”

“Quit trying to be such a damn hero for Brooke. You won’t even come out of hidin’ to save your own family, and you’re worried about
her
. What’s up with that?”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Cooper asked, trying to keep him talking.

After a few steps, Mark stopped stalking Cooper, took off his night-vision goggles, and sat down on a ledge. He pulled a small glass pipe from his shirt pocket for a hit. With the last draw, he said, “Yeah, baby, that’s what’s been missin’ from this party.” After replacing the pipe and pulling on his night-vision gear, he continued talking conversationally as he eased toward Cooper’s voice.

“Now, where were we? Oh yeah. This ain’t about me and
you
, dumbass. Don’t you get it? It’s about me and Brooke. She’s been workin’ on you, seducing you, trying to get you to leave your wife. And she usually gets what she wants. Did you ever get a little taste of that? Doesn’t really matter to me. Just makin’ conversation. At any rate, if that didn’t work, then she was goin’ to make it so that Kelly would dump you, so then you’d come runnin’ to her. The only thing wrong with her plan was that she wasn’t countin’ on me. I couldn’t let you have her. If I can’t have her, then nobody can. I swear, you’ve been so distracted by her for so long, you couldn’t see that there’s been a whole bunch a folks plottin’ to take you down… and not just me and Brooke. The sweet thing is that I get to write the final chapter.”

Cooper heard every word but didn’t know what to make of it. He began worrying about Kelly.
Should I’ve trusted Brooke to take care of her? Is Mark makin’ this up to distract me?

Cooper quickly tried to remember everything he did and said with Brooke.
She never asked who was buying the business. That’s strange, but it doesn’t mean anything—maybe she was just being respectful of my privacy.

The cave was closing in on Cooper. He could feel the crushing pressure of billions of tons of earth and hundreds of bad decisions.

Cooper’s best guess was that Mark had to walk about forty yards before he got to the traps. The cave narrowed before that point and had a few twists, so Cooper couldn’t be certain of the distance. The acoustics in the cave couldn’t be relied upon to determine either the direction or distance of sounds. Every noise had a hollow echo. Kneeling behind a rock, with his pistol aimed toward the traps, Cooper waited.

Mark silently navigated the cave from memory, enjoying the hunt. After rounding a huge limestone outcropping nicknamed Devil’s Forehead, he thought he detected movement. A white sliver of something vanished. He couldn’t see or determine the object. Carefully, he surveyed the cave but did not see any heat signatures. Mark was confident that Cooper could not hide from technology, even though there were hundreds of cracks, crevices, and places that Cooper would believe provided adequate cover. Mark hoped that Cooper would seek out such a hiding spot because he’d be trapped like a rat before he knew it.
I love this. It’s the ultimate game.

Continuing several more yards, Mark spotted what appeared to be glowing handprints.
What the hell!
He quivered with excitement. Studying the slowly vanishing handprints, Mark bent down. “Cooper, I think you dropped something? What is this?”