Where Darkness Dwells (41 page)

Earlier voices, ancestral voices, guttural and thickening with accents (their words morphing into languages he didn't know, didn't know until now) they coursed through him as well, and he understood. Every word, he understood.

"Oh, Mom," he said, crying from the burden. "Mom, why?" It was his voice subsuming hers, for a brief moment.

"People I love are going to suffer," he once again spoke his mom's words as if they were his own. "No, Momma. Please." He was pleading, alone in the dark, hoping she would hear him, and in the back of his mind, hoping she was safe.

"Good people will suffer, oh God in heaven, will they suffer. If I walked the streets of Coal Hollow, I could point to certain people, say, 'You will be dead by the first frost.'" His voice was regaining strength, fortified by the generations that had preceded him. His words filled the tunnel, guttered the lamp's flame as he grabbed it from a hasp embedded in the soft rock wall.

With his understanding, he learned the role he was destined to fulfill. Such a responsibility placed in his care after a lifetime of being treated like a child--he felt such a warmth of pride. He could do this.

"But it has to be. Has to be, or nothing will change." His mother's voice filled him. He no longer fought it; he embraced it, found comfort in the familiarity. He gathered the supplies he would need. Well, nearly all of the supplies. The rest he would have to get from the locked trunk in his canvas tent.

"Sometimes death leads to life. Sometimes there's a greater good." Arlen's shadow ebbed and flowed as he trudged up the incline to the entrance of his gopher hole. "I know Momma, and I know now… you're gone. I know they took you from me. You'll always be in my heart. Always."

He made his way into the encompassing night. Unlocking the trunk he kept hidden in the back of his tent, Arlen Polk smiled.

"Found it, Momma." He could feel her pride, as soothing a balm as ice cream in July, though she no longer lived on this plain. "But you always knew it was here, didn't you, Momma?"

He would need to be sly. Slyer than he had ever been. Fulfilling his destiny, he would honor his mother's memories and the memories of past generations.

Now, he just needed to find one wall, find and breach one wall.

5.

Dr. Thompson's lantern sputtered and exhausted itself minutes after Jacob and Ellie decided to follow him into the tunnel under his tool shed. The old man sighed, exasperated, swore an oath, but continued on in the dark.

Their need for secrecy as well as the pitch black of the tunnel kept the children quiet. Otherwise, Jacob would have laughed a good stretch over the doctor's vulgarity, repeating it to himself to hear it issued in his own voice. But nothing seemed funny right now.

With the sudden darkness, Ellie held fast to Jacob's shirtsleeve. He could feel her quavering as she fought the urge to call out. But they remained silent, confounded by circumstance to follow the doctor through the low-ceilinged, downward-twisting tunnel.

In the absence of light, sound guided their way. Keeping a safe distance, they listened for Thompson's shuffled, unsure strides, his occasional grunts when he bumped into a wall or low passage, his labored, throaty breathing. They also listened when he picked up his mumbled train of thought concerning Jasper Cartwright. The crazed, one-sided conversation he'd begun in his car started again and halted, running in fits and starts as he made his way deeper into the earth. The doctor chastised himself (ostensibly spoken to his dear friend) for decades of cowardice made immeasurably worse by its accompanying guilt and shame; he rambled (is he still drunk? Jacob wondered more than once) about his need to rectify the situation, at least make an effort, no matter how feeble, after all these years of silence. Sometimes he would ask Jasper questions directly, as if the doctor's oldest friend walked at his side, and after a momentary lapse, Thompson would grunt, as if hearing just the right answer.

Jacob could guess what Ellie was thinking as they walked through this narrow vein of emptiness into an ever cooler unknown, for they would be the same thoughts as his: Who is this man they're following? How could you
not
know someone could be so… so
strange
? How could you not know about a seemingly endless tunnel burrowing in to the ground of your own hometown? Who else knows about the existence of such a tunnel?

And then suddenly, Jacob realized, there was no sound ahead. No aural beacon to hone in on.

He must have tensed at Ellie's side, because she broke their silence: "Where is he, Jacob? It's so dark down here."

"Shh."

"We should turn back. I think I can find our way. It's not too difficult. Only that one place where the tunnel split, otherwise, it's a straight shot to the tool shed." She would've said more if Jacob hadn't squeezed her arm.

In a voice no louder than an exhaled breath, he spoke with his lips brushing her ear, "Just because we can't hear him, doesn't mean he's not ten feet from us. Keep your voice down."

"I think we lost him," Ellie said, ignoring him. "Besides, it's Dr. Thompson. He's the nicest man I've ever met. So what if he hears us? He's our friend."

"Besides talking crazy, why's he ducking into hidden tunnels in the middle of the night? Remember, he mentioned Jimmy to Magee."

"I don't know, but we can't see a thing." Her voice rose in pitch, verging on panic. "It's cold and I'm scared. So are you, Jacob Fowler."

"An even better reason for keeping your voice low. Wait--feel that?" Jacob held her left hand with his right, while extending his other hand to feel their way down the tunnel. He lifted her hand, tracing it along the wall.

"What? What is it?" she said, this time barely audible. "Oh, another split. Which way? Which way did the doctor take?"

"I don't know, just give me a second--" he looked in each direction, but didn't find a clue to make their decision any easier. Turn left, turn right, go back the way they had come, no direction felt like the correct answer.

"Let's go right."

"Why right?"

He didn't say anything for a while.

Ellie nudged him, "Jacob, did you see something, hear something?"

"No. Just a gut feeling is all. Let's go right."

"Okay."

"Let's just be quiet about it."

She didn't say anything, merely took up her latch on his shirtsleeve. They started down the tunnel, ears and eyes alert, fighting phantom light and the sound of dripping water.

They stayed in that formation for a long, straight stretch of tunnel, softly shifting their feet along the damp cold floor, fingers flailing ahead, touching the walls as if searching for directional signs written in Braille.

A groan came from somewhere ahead; a raspy sigh swimming with pain, abruptly stifled. Or it could have been from another direction--the cavern walls distorted and so recklessly tossed about sounds that a person familiar with the tunnels would have been left confused. They couldn't turn around, not now. They had come too far. What if that sound was coming from Jimmy? Could they turn their back on him when they were on the verge of reaching him?

They heard the groan again, and this time they were ready for it. Without a doubt the sound was coming from in front of them. "Let's check it out," Jacob said.

"I don't want to."

"Have a better suggestion?"

Though reluctant, Ellie went along as they inched forward. The groan became louder. It was a man; he could hear it in the muscular quality of the voice. It was deep-sounding, wounded, irrevocably broken. Not Jimmy. No, Jimmy didn't sound like that. Jacob hoped he didn't sound like that. If he did he was in a world of pain, and he didn't know if he could see his brother in such a state.

Around a zigzag in the tunnel, they came across an area where a wan light washed over the walls, defining the craggy surfaces, revealing bottlenecks and small cubbyhole rooms.

Another bend in the tunnel revealed the light's source. A dying torch hanging in an iron ring. The flame had marred the wall with a black halo, and on the yellowish floor, an expansive depression nearly filled the small room, appearing like an embedded, unblinking eye.

Ellie screamed, her fingers clawing Jacob's arm. A second later, when he saw what had frightened her, he hoped his eyes were deceiving him.

A Negro man writhed on the floor, or rather, a mere torso straining to pull himself toward the dilated emptiness in the floor. His insides were no longer inside; guts trailed behind him, shredded flaps of flesh slimed with blood and mucus. His face and neck were a mass of scabs, some old some fresh, while his grimace was a testament to his effort to simply move.

He groaned, pulled his arm forward, slapped his palm down, found purchase and pulled again. He gained an inch, maybe two along the floor. But still, he started again, this effort just as vigilant as the last, his motions the final struggles of a dying swimmer.

Jacob felt like screaming too, but wouldn't. He couldn't let himself lose it, no matter how he felt. Ellie was counting on him, Jimmy was counting on him. His mother would never recover if he didn't keep a level head and get out of this predicament unscathed.

Ellie couldn't take the sight. She released her grip on his arm, and not taking her eyes from the man struggling on the floor, bolted down the tunnel. She would have made a good clip, putting distance behind her, but she slammed into the twisting tunnel wall, stunning herself. She slumped to the floor, blinked a few times, but didn't lose consciousness.

Jacob approached the man, careful to avoid the puddle of blood flowing down a slight dip in the floor.

As he got closer, he could see the man was naked, and that below his ruined entrails, there was nothing. No hips, no legs or feet. Yet, he was alive.

"Hello?" Jacob said, not sure what to say.

The man kept at it, fighting to move, his eyes blinking through sweat cooling into a pasty sheen on his skin.

Jacob stepped closer and touched the man on his meaty shoulder. The man jerked his head aside, crying out. He radiated fear like a cookstove's heat.

"I, uh, my name's Jacob." The man looked at him, as if not comprehending. But Jacob could see his mind at work, trying to understand something. The man wouldn't stop blinking, his lids fluttering like a butterfly's wings, shedding tears or sweat or both to stream down his cheeks to meet at the point of his chin.

"I know you." The man reached for Jacob. "I know you."

Jacob ignored the man's ravings. There was no way he could know this Negro. He didn't know a single one, was proud of the fact he didn't. His kind didn't belong in a Fowler's life. He inched away from the Negro's grasping fingers. "What is this place?"

"Hell, boy. You're in hell. Help me up now. We gotta get to digging."

Jacob glanced at Ellie. She was staring at the last bit of the torch's flame as it struggled to stay alight. She seemed unaware of their exchange. For the first time since they found her brother's body, he saw her sucking her thumb.

The Negro caught Jacob's pant cuff, and he instinctively smacked him away. He felt bad as soon as he did. "Hey, what is this place, this room? That pit?"

The man groaned again, whirled his arm in front of him, pulled himself another meager inch. Toward the pit. Biting cold wind blew from the void. Jacob was shivering. Ellie's lips were turning blue. The man reached the lip of the precipice. "It's the end, boy. It better be. Better be." Exhausted, he rested his head against his forearm, his gaze longing for the black emptiness of the abyss.

Such a pathetic sight, Jacob had never seen.

The man twitched, then quite silently, began to cry. He couldn't do it, couldn't reach the pit in order to end his life. Couldn't just die. Some unnatural force kept him breathing and alert with full understanding of his awful predicament.

Jacob couldn't stand it any longer. Something inside him snapped. If the man had been an injured dog, he would have stomp his skull, but instead, he reached into the muck remaining at the man's waist, grabbed two fistfuls of something slithering and rope-like, then manhandled the Negro the final six inches. Instantly, the man was gone. His descent didn't make a sound. He never cried out. He was simply no longer there.

Jacob peered over the edge, and though he couldn't see into the pit, his stomach swirled with vertigo. The harsh wind stung his cheeks. When he stepped away, his feet slipped in the cold sludge of spilled blood.