The Stone of Blood (19 page)

Colby took off runnin’ down a darkened corridor then! And I kept step and followed!

We walked along naturally formed crevasses; some channels leadin’ nowhere, while others dropped off into great depths. We sat and rested. Gainin’ strength, and again we returned to our gait.

Along one path we stopped and drank from the water of an underground spring, but it was not good to the taste; warm and salty as minerals from a mine.

Petrified stone protruded in places throughout the ceilin’ above us, and from within these natural alcoves where they bore their marks deeply, grounded into the caverns basin.

Petrified wood, this was petrified wood! Where was it that I had I seen this before?

“Colby.” I said as I ran my hand over the rock. “I think I know where we are.”

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“I know where we are! We’re under Mr. Roberts’ field!” I said ecstatically! “This is the underground spring that I’ve heard tale about!”

“Look at this rock!” I reached down and picked up a piece of stone from the caverns floor and handed it to him. It looked like wood, preserved in its original shape but over many years the plant materials had been replaced by minerals that had formed the rock!

“This is petrified wood. It’s literally wood turned into stone.” I said. “It takes about a hundred years to do it and there’s a bunch of it just over the hill from my house!”

“I’ll bet that’s where we are!” I said as I picked up another piece and examined it for myself. “We’re under the woods behind my house! I know we are!” I continued.

“Then I wonder if there is another way out of here!” Colby said as he began to get as excited as I was!

We scoured the walls with our flashlights, lookin’ for passageways, runnin’ our hands across the smooth cavern walls. For thirty minutes or more we searched for an opening, findin’ ourselves disoriented in the darkness. There were no man-made doors within this part of the cavern; at least none that we had seen for an hour or more. And as the minutes quickly passed, we found ourselves becomin’ more and more familiar with many of its uncharted dead ends!

“We’ve been walkin’ around in circles Toby.” Colby said agitatedly. “I can’t find a way out! Plus, I think we might be lost!”

It was dark within this hidden cave, that without light we could not see; but from deep within its confines, distant sounds echoed softly by way of the earth and granite walls; faint but hallowed sounds of a small dogs bark!

“Wait a minute, listen!” I whispered. “Do you hear that?”

We rose to our feet!

“It’s a dog!” I said excitedly. “I hear a dog barkin’! I think it’s Candy!”

We hastened our footsteps and ran in search of a way back home! Deep into a murky gloom, through collapsed and abandoned passages, with rocks and wooden beams piled upon the floor; we moved in the direction of the sound of the dogs bark! Crawlin’ over heaps of broken timbers, discoverin’, uncoverin’ and unblockin’ passages that had long since been closed off!

Through dirt and rock and with heated effort we broke through the piles of rubble and stood before an unlocked wooden and metal door! It hung loosely upon its hinges, we opened it with extreme caution but little effort, as spiders, dust and loosened earth fell out into the spillway!

The dog barked loudest here, the other side of this gate!

We pulled open the rustic wood and metal door to find a cobblestone stairway behind it, much neglected with broken rock. It led us upwards as we climbed through a secret passageway that seemed to transcend space and time and then out again into the darkened night! Where the air was sweet and smelled of great freedom!

Candy barked as we stood there now beside her just inside my family’s barn! And I knelt down and petted and hugged her a great deal! She licked my face and I didn’t even mind!

We swore each other to secrecy Colby and me, right there in the darkness of the barn as we cut our fingers and mixed our blood: an oath that could not be broken, lest God smite us and we both be dead! And we covered the entranceway to the tunnel with loose tarp found lyin’ in disarray. And laid old boards across it to ensure it would remain hidden.

It was good to be alive in that moment! As we stepped outside to breathe in the pureness of the night’s air! And it was so good to be home again!

“
The cavern had led us here from their citadel …but
for what reason was there passage?”
I wondered. “
Perhaps there was somethin’ to Colby’s ghostly analogy after all; a confederate soldier, ‘werewolves’ and all! And what of the images of children runnin’ back into the mountain? Were they merely shadows of terrors past, or the foreshadowing’s of a future yet to come?”

I hadn’t spoken to Colby of it! Too much to relate and take in all at one time! He would probably laugh at me again anyways. He always did!

The back porch light was on. That was my signal that it was time for me to come in. It was most likely past that time already I reckoned but I didn’t have a watch to tell. We went up to the back porch; my dog Candy followed with a wagging tail. Mama greeted us and shook her head at us too, ushering us all three inside! Mama closed the back door then. And she turned the porch light off.

Twelve

A Thirst for Knowledge

“W
hat are we gonna do Toby?” Colby asked from across the room in the dark.

I couldn’t sleep either, but I didn’t know that he’d been lyin’ there just as wide awake as I was. The clock by my bed showed it to be
3:15 A.M.
I knew then that it was gonna be a long day tomorrow, cause it would be time for us to be gettin’ up in just a little while. But thank God it was still summertime! Otherwise it would have been a school day and that would’ve just added to, and compounded a whole other dimension and level of misery in our lives!

“I don’t know.” I yawned and whispered in answer. “But we need to do somethin’. We may need to go to town …to find out some stuff, like up at the Library.”

“What do you mean?” Colby asked. “What kinda stuff do we need to find out?”

“Well …somebody has to know somethin’ right? I mean how did a place like that get there? It didn’t just magically appear! Who owns the land …and that kind of stuff?” I said. “Why did the Quarry stop production? And why did it even start for that matter?” I stated excitedly. And then rememberin’ the late hour I lowered my volume back down to that of a whisper.

“I saw things in there Colby.” I whispered in the darkness. “I saw images of children runnin’ from men with guns! I heard a church bell ringin’ and I saw fires! I saw em’ just like they were as real as you and me!”

I paused for a moment in the darkness, waitin’ for him to say I was a liar or to hear him make a joke and laugh at me. But the laughter never came.

“Somethin’ happened here Colby, in this place and on this land, and maybe it’s up to us to find out what.” I continued.

“What was the name that was written on the ceiling?” Colby asked. “Do you remember?”

“It said Lystre, whatever that means. Maybe it’s in an old form of English? I don’t know. But you know …most of those writings weren’t in English at all!” I stated matter of factly. “Maybe if we can find out some of the history of this town, maybe it can point us in the right direction.”

“Toby.” Colby whispered. “I saw this show one time where this boy lived in a house and it had a second floor bedroom with a window just like this one. And this vampire looked like a little boy and he was floating right outside the window!”

“Colby, don’t go scarin’ me now!” I said.

“And the vampire smiled at him through the window and tapped on the window glass!”

“Colby! You’d better stop it right now!”

“And the vampire said, ‘
Toby …open up the window and let me in!
” Colby said as he tapped his finger against the window glass.

I threw a pillow at him then and he laughed at me for a minute. But then he got real serious.

“We can’t be the only people who know about em’.” Colby said. “Cause if they let us come into their lair, I guess they’re not too worried about what people know.”

“Well, like you said, maybe they don’t see us as bein’ a threat to em’ cause we’re just kids.” I reminded him. “But regardless of it, we’d probably better get some sleep. It’ll be light soon and we have alot to do tomorrow.”

Colby silently agreed and we lay there in the darkness of my room, thinkin’ and starin’ aimlessly up at the ceilin’.

The next mornin’ came way too early for both of us even though Mama let us sleep in til’
10 A.M.
But we made it up and got to breakfast alright. And then we had to figure on how in the world we could go about gettin’ ourselves up to the Library in town! It was at least five miles away!

“Why don’t you boys look in the encyclopedias first?” Mama suggested.

We hadn’t even thought of that!

“Good thinking Mom! Thanks!” I replied.

We both excused ourselves from the table and hurried to the livin’ room where Mama kept a whole complete set of encyclopedias under two of her coffee tables. They were small with green covers on em’ and I grabbed a bunch of em’ out and started lookin’ through em’ as I sat right there on the floor! Colby grabbed a bunch too! I never would have thought I’d be lookin’ through some old books tryin’ to figure out history stuff on summer vacation!

“What do we look for?” Colby asked.

“Well.” I replied. “I guess we should start by lookin’ for stuff that would pertain to things that happened around here? There’s alot of history surroundin’ Bardstown, like the old tavern up there and St. Joe. So maybe if we start lookin’ through the history that we know of, we can find our way to other things that would lead us to what we need to find.” I continued. “Does that make sense?”