Where Darkness Dwells (13 page)

17.

Sitting in front of her vanity mirror, Thea Calder ran a soft-bristled brush through her brown locks. As a child she would count the strokes, reaching one hundred on each side as well as the back. While still fretful over her hair's luster, something else concerned her more, something that would lead to her inevitable ruin. She placed the brush next to its matching comb and leaned closer to her reflection. She opened her eyes wide then scrunched them almost closed. It wasn't her eyes themselves that worried her, but the slight lines at the corners. Wrinkles. They would be her death. Wrinkles spelled out demise in the hardest irrevocable lines across a woman's face. As indelible as Hester Prin's adulterous letter A.

Yes, the crease was more distinct today. Would be more so tomorrow. She could tear the ears from that new boarder's head for making her so angry. Wandering around their living quarters as if he were a member of their family--

How could this happen to her? She was only twenty-six. With the precautions she took, she could often pass for a schoolgirl around people who didn't know her. She was reeling on the edge of some precarious cliff. Every day sent her leaning farther; soon her momentum would be too great, and she would tumble down, tumble to her ruin. Someday she would be old.

She pulled back from her reflection, knowing that fretting made it worse. Instead, she focused on her best qualities. Her flowing chocolate curls always brought her attention and praise. She pursed her full lips into a bow as if ready to kiss the mirror, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a hanky. Perhaps it wasn't so bad. Perhaps no one had noticed the new wrinkle.

If not, then they will someday
, she thought unavoidably.
Someday soon.

That was the real reason she had only two speaking parts during her time in California. Directors would say her face was fine, but her voice was fit for silent film. She could see through their lies. They watched her aging before their eyes. She could no longer pass for demure and innocent. Her appearance was heading straight for matronly.

Looking at the mirror, just over her reflection's shoulder, she sensed movement. Startled, she turned around, modestly holding a hand across her bosom as if she weren't dressed. The window was growing pale as the sun lost its strength. But she saw nothing unusual.

But it felt like eyes were on her. Somewhere out of sight, lurking in the shadows. Still there.

She knew this feeling well. Ever since her body had started to change at the age of twelve. The lecherous glare of a man. Any man. Married or not, young or old. Eyes on her, kneading her flesh with their lustful stares.

She wouldn't stand for this indiscretion. She stood quickly, toppling the stool. The narrow ledge outside her second floor window would be just wide enough for a particularly vulgar man to clamor along to gaze through her bedroom window.

A name popped into her head, and she felt right away she'd hit the nail squarely on its proverbial head.

Bo Tingsley. That lecherous bastard. First, lusting after her mother. Hoping to pry her away from her family to make her his own. People had always said Thea bore a striking resemblance to her mother. She wouldn't put it past the little bastard to redirect his lust toward her.

Without a lick of fear in her heart, she peered out the window, her nose an inch from the glass, checking at the widest possible angles for any sign of movement. She caught sight of someone's leg as he scurried along the narrow ledge and around the corner and out of sight. Full of rage, Thea Calder headed for her bedroom door. But before she could leave the room she obeyed a compulsion that had guided her life for as long as she could remember. She hastened back to the vanity mirror, checked her face, pushed an errant curl from her eyes. Then and only then could she leave her room.

That Bo Tingsley. How long has he been spying on me?

She fumed as she stormed down the hall, down the stairway and to the backdoor leading to the alley. She clenched her fingers into coiled-rope fists. This wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all. Once she told Bo a thing or two, she would need to relax. Relax the stress from her face.

"Dear?" her father called out as she rushed by.

She heard him perfectly, but wasn't about to foist this trouble on him. She could take care of herself. He sighed at her brusqueness--such a familiar response, she noted. Indignant, he would withdraw to his dimly lit den, smoke his noxious-smelling pipe, and disappear into the memories of when their family was whole.

Thea put her father out of mind, reaching the backdoor and throwing it open. The outside stairwell angled over the doorway, leaving her standing in shadow.

The stench of rotting flesh nearly overpowered her. How wrong could she have been? She gasped as a cold hand grasped her wrist. It forced her to turn aside, her eyes taking in the horrible sight. Slick and wretched flesh falling in clumps from rotting bones. Gray lips forming a morbid sneer. Flies buzzing in frenzied feeding. And recognizing the man's eyes. Glints of starlight hovering near the pupils. Intelligent and intense. Green irises still swimming with life. So unlike the rest of his body.

She wanted to scream, but could only close her eyes as the man pulled her close. Her stomach pitched and rolled, but she willed herself to steady. The man's decayed lips brushed against hers before she could shy away, taking a step back.

"I couldn't wait to see you." The thing's voice grumbled unnervingly from around his decomposing vocal cords.

Taking in the sight of his rotting carcass and his vile odor--a mad shiver swept through Thea's limbs. She wanted to run away, flee his touch.

But they
did
have an arrangement. Even if he wasn't supposed to come to her, they still had an arrangement.

"Let's get out of here before you're seen. You damn fool."

Thea continued to scold Ethan Cartwright long after they found sanctuary within the bowels of the earth.

Part II

1.

They threw Gerald Harris into the high-walled pit for refusing sex with the colored woman. The Collectors had taken him as far as a well-lit opening in the tunnel. With tired grunts, they issued him forth, jabbing him with their shovels. At that point, the strange happenings of the last few hours took a decidedly stranger turn.

His night-blind eyes took in a vast nexus-like chamber. Tunnels led away from a central axis point like spokes on a wheel. Hands clamped onto his upper arms from either side.

One of his captors began to chuckle. Another tugged at his twisted waxed mustache, and it came away in one sticky clump, leaving an adhesive residue on his lip. The others followed suit, removing their mining gear and wiping away the coal black staining their skin with equally well-stained rags.

"Who… who are you?" Torches lined the chamber walls between each tunnel spoke. He looked back to the tunnel from which he entered. These men weren't The Collectors. All he saw were filthy men identical in appearance, with once grievous wounds now healing by the second.

"We need your expertise."

He couldn't believe he'd trusted these men to be the mythical Collectors. "Expertise?"

"You're a miner, right? Your name's Harris?"

Gerald looked at the man, found it odd hearing a voice so far below the sun's reach after spending silent hours crawling through the dark.

"Yeah. Gerald Harris. Aren't you… who
are
you?"

While two of the men started laughing, the other yanked Gerald around until their noses nearly touched. There was no trace of humor in this man's eyes. His spittle sprayed Gerald's face as he spoke. "What years?" The grip on his arm tightened.

Gerald looked around, confused, taking in the broader details of each man. Only then, with the greasy coal dust smeared halfway clean of their skin, did he see they were brothers, and triplets at that. Husky men with shit-brown tobacco juice staining their chins. Their breath smelled sickly sweet with tooth rot.

The man shook him. "What years? You deaf?"

"Years, what years?"

One of the laughers regained his composer. "My dumbass brother wants to know when you worked the mines."

"Oh gosh, '91 until closing. Thirty-six years."

"Eww boy, that's a long'un." The man spat juice to the floor, catching a dangling ribbon of saliva with the back of his hand. One of his brothers echoed him with his own spit glob a second later.

They loosened their grip. Gerald's arms tingled as the blood rushed back.

"Let's go. Time's wasting," one triplet said, laughing as if he'd just made a joke.

After traveling through a series of tunnels winding through ever-smaller chambers, they entered an unlit nook off a narrow tunnel. The triplets stopped.

The room was rank, saturated with the co-mingling scents of sweat, shit and sex.

"That's 'Wina over on that slab. You fuck her first before you join the rest."

Gerald didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't see anyone in the small chamber, and even so, he'd never do that with anyone but his wife.

He stepped back and bumped into a wall of farm-strong muscle. A hand shoved him forward.

Adjusting to the weak light, he saw the Negro girl's eyes. Then he noticed her pointed, sleek chin. Her shaved bald head. Her nude body. His confusion multiplied by the second. The Underground was supposed to be a holding ground for worthy whites, a gathering spot for those miners deserving salvation. Yet here was a Negro woman, nude, and they were expecting him to…

She didn't attempt to cover herself. Instead, she locked eyes with him, not afraid or ashamed or showing any trace of humility. Leaning back on her elbows, she spread her long legs. She seemed indifferent.

"Gotta take that girl. Go on." Another shove to his back.

A length of chain held her to the wall, the final hasp binding her neck. "No… I can't, I didn't know anything like this. No one ever told me--"

A punch to his shoulder blade both silenced him and threw him off balance. He fell to the ground in front of the girl. Piles of shit littered the floor all around her, morbid offerings laid at the feet of a perverse goddess.

Up close, a gray river trickled from between her legs. It seeped from the slab chaise to puddle on the floor. His hands were in it, cold and sticky between his fingers. He felt sick and ashamed.

"You fuck her, I don't care how or where or if you like it one iota. You fuck her."

"No. No, nonono…" Gerald pushed to his feet. The girl laughed at him contemptuously. He should have stayed with his family. He should have let his diseased lungs worsen, let the racking coughing fits tear him to pieces until he couldn't breath, until he drowned on his own coal-stained blood. But no. He had chosen the path of cowardice.

One of the triplets hunkered in a squat, placing a hand on Gerald's shoulder. "You ain't gonna do her?" He sounded like a father imploring a child to eat his vegetables. "You gonna have to. You can't join the others if you don't. You want to go on living don'tcha? It's the only way."

The man increased the pressure on his shoulder. Gerald tensed, but didn't move. He felt immobilized, sitting on the soiled ground, staring at the colored thighs, then higher, at the fleshy breasts. "I… I can't."

There was a momentary quiet, heavy with dread. He looked still higher, over the girl's pointed chin, to her eyes. They gleamed with glints of distant torchlight. She had been watching Gerald flounder at her feet, but now her gaze lifted over his shoulder.

One of the brothers stepped forward, grinding loose pebbles underfoot. Then a boot crashed against the back of Gerald's skull. In the blink before unconsciousness, the cavern flashed with unearthly blue light. The light touched everything, and everything it touched looked like a dead thing.

Face down, eyes closed, he knew he was alive when he woke to the lump at the base of his skull throbbing like a second heartbeat. When he moved to massage the wound, he heard an ear-piercing scream. It took him a second to realize it wasn't his own. Opening his eyes, he blinked; a solid stone wall was six inches from his nose.

The screaming intensified, multiplied. It was cheering. A crazed crowd. Elated fans? He couldn't imaging what could be so thrilling. He placed his hands palm-down on the stone floor, then worked himself up to his knees. Ten feet away, another wall. He looked in every direction. The wall enclosed him. He was in some kind of pit.