by Hamill, Ike
“Here,” George said, handing him a mirror.
“We came for these?”
“Yeah. They worked once.”
“Weren’t there mirrors at Amber’s place?”
“Only one old one. These are all old. Silver, you know?”
Ricky shook his head. George gathered two other mirrors and came back to the stairs. It was easier to breathe when they were back outside. The cellar had a weight to it that Ricky was glad to be free from. They packed the mirrors in the trunk next to Amber’s other supplies. In a few minutes, they were back on course, passing by the house just as Mary was loading Tucker into her car, getting ready to leave.
Twenty-Six: Amber
Amber waved at Mary and they drove north.
The bickering didn’t begin until they were well underway. George wanted to turn off on one of the side roads because he thought he knew a faster way. Amber ignored him. She had her GPS loaded in with a spot she had marked on her last trip. Every time the little voice gave her a command, she followed it.
“I’ve done this trip a thousand times in the past week, George,” she said. “I’m not taking any chances on your side roads.”
“Algorithms don’t understand how to get around up here,” George said. He could affect a decent Downeast accent when he tried.
“Please don’t start with that again,” Ricky said, turning in his seat to give his brother a stern look.
“Start with what?” Amber asked.
Ricky sighed and flopped back into his seat.
“This is a boring trip and it’s early in the morning,” Amber said. “The driver says that one of you needs to start talking.”
George leaned forward so he was almost between their seats.
“Ricky hates when I talk about it, but I’m working on a theory that knowledge is conditional. At first, I thought this mechanism worked everywhere, but I’m revising that down to just this local area until I can prove that it has a broader application.”
“Knowledge is conditional,” Amber said.
“Yes,” George said.
“It’s not worth the effort to listen to,” Ricky said in a low voice. They ignored him.
“Not facts or wisdom, mind you, just knowledge.”
“Isn’t knowledge made up of facts?” Amber asked.
Ricky groaned.
“Great question,” George said. “You’re close. There are facts in the world. Knowledge is what happens when someone takes facts and collects them inside their experience. As you grow and learn, you build a body of knowledge.”
“So it’s facts.”
“You might think so, but I believe you would be wrong.”
Ricky slumped, letting his head rest against his window.
“Knowledge is a fact that’s ingested and interpreted and then it becomes completely relative to the host. It’s an evolving organism, conditional to the host. Your GPS has a list of facts about our position, the destination, and the road network that connects us to where we want to be.”
“Okay?”
“It calculates the route based on what? Maybe it starts with the speed limits of the roads and then that information is improved by using the actual speeds that people drive on the roads. Maybe it gets that data back from the GPS, or maybe it collects it from peoples’ phones. Regardless, it takes all that as fact and it comes up with a time for each route. When everything is calculated, it tells you the best route.”
“Perfect,” Amber said. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
“But what about you?”
“Sorry?”
“Is that data based on you or based on other people?”
“I’m the one driving,” Amber said. She glanced at George’s eyes in the mirror. He was completely engaged and excited. Amber almost laughed.
“Yes, but have you taken any of the side roads we passed?”
“Nope. I just told you that. I’ve done this trip—or trips to this area, at least—a dozen times and I always follow the directions. Gets me there right when it says it will.”
“We just crossed Cottle Hill Road. The GPS, based on everyone else’s journey down that road, thinks it would take longer, but those people weren’t you. Their facts aren’t your knowledge. For you, that road might have cut ten minutes off of the total time. You could save ten minutes here and five there. If you really knew every single possibility, you might get to the destination an hour earlier than the way the GPS told you to go.”
“It’s a certain number of miles, George,” Amber said. “As long as we’re driving in a car on a road, there’s a limit to how fast we’re going to get there.”
“Is that a fact, or your knowledge? Do you know how many miles it is because you’ve measured it with a straight line?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it’s not knowledge. And knowledge is conditional.”
Amber leaned over to Ricky. “Does he have an off switch?”
“I tried to warn you. You were the one who thought that talking to him would make the trip less boring. Have you changed your mind yet?”
# # #
“This is it,” Amber said as she slowed down.
They hadn’t reached the point on the GPS yet—that marked the location of Jan’s house. She stopped the car near the overgrown road that led out towards the hills where the graves were located. The snow had melted even more and the road almost looked passable. Amber remembered how soft the dirt was though. She wasn’t going to risk it.
The brothers were both half asleep from the ride. George got out first and walked around the car to investigate the path.
“Should we announce ourselves to the owner?” Ricky asked.
Amber shook her head. “She gave us permission. No need to involve her at this point.”
He nodded.
Around the back, everything was divided into packs except for the mirrors. Those would have to be carried by hand. Amber tucked hers under her arm at first but it was too big to carry comfortably that way. George had two of them. He stacked them and mostly carried them over his head.
They stayed quiet as they walked up the dirt road along the stream.
Amber kept her voice low and said, “They can’t cross running water, according to Jan.”
“Yeah,” George said. “Most lore says that, but it’s not to be taken as a hard and fast rule. There are circumstances where they can get across. If we’re on the run, don’t slow down just because you cross a stream.”
Ricky was looking off to their right. He spotted one of the remaining apple trees.
“That’s where it happened?” Ricky asked. “That’s where Prescott found his dog after it came back to life?”
“I think so,” Amber said. “It’s also where the townspeople found a gruesome graveyard of all their livestock and pets. It sounds like a lot of those poor animals suffered the same fate.”
“Might be a chicken and egg type thing,” George said. “He found the salamanders and maybe that’s where this all came from, right?”
“Okay?” Amber said.
“But what if his direct actions—basically, like ritual sacrifice in the name of science—was the thing that brought about his own demise. He thought he was experimenting, but he was really amplifying the underlying evil.”
“Where did that evil start though?” Ricky asked.
“The mill,” George said. “They brought something unnatural to that river and it spawned more mutations.”
“For someone who is on his phone or laptop all the time, you certainly have a chip on your shoulder against technology,” Ricky said.
“Can you blame me?” George asked.
Amber didn’t understand the look that passed between the brothers. She decided the question could wait. Their path led them away from the river, through a stand of dark pines, and then out into a patch of woods where more light made it through the trees. George and Ricky fell silent and walked fast to keep up with Amber. She shifted the mirror over to her
other hand and slowed when she finally saw the headstone.
George came up on one side and Ricky on the other.
“So many,” George whispered.
Amber had been focused only on the larger headstones. The one that blended into the tree belonged to the “Devoted Wife and Mother,” if she remembered correctly. The ones around her stone were for the kids. George pointed out other little rocks that were standing up out of the leaves. They didn’t look like headstones to her until she followed George’s finger to see that they were arranged in a giant circle. They were right at the near edge. Ricky moved to one of them and lifted it in a hand after he set down the mirror. He ran a finger over it and then said, “Judy.”
“Scout’s sister,” George said.
Ricky put the stone back where he had found it.
“Where’s Prescott?” George asked.
Amber pointed and led the way. Now that she saw the circle of rocks, she skirted around the circumference until she could see the place where the ground was disturbed. It looked like someone had made an effort to push leaves back over the fresh dirt. It was still pretty obvious that something had been dug up, or maybe dug itself out of the spot.
George stepped over one of the smaller graves and inched closer to the dark soil. He pointed his brother at another spot and then leaned mirrors up against trees so they faced the grave. Amber figured out the pattern and added her mirror to complete the diamond.
A cloud passed over the sun and crows called to each other.
It felt like they were trespassing. Amber stood back and watched the brothers as they cleared the leaves away. George found a stick and began digging into the loose soil.
Ricky pushed up from the dirt and watched George for a moment before he came and stood by Amber.
“Do you think he’s down there? Under the ground?” Amber asked.
Ricky shook his head. “You?”
“I did two days ago, but not anymore. It feels empty here now. Creepy, but empty.”
“Yeah,” Ricky said. He looked up towards the sky.”
The butt of George’s stick thumped against something under the soil.
He tapped it twice more and then started pushing dirt away from the hard surface. Ricky went to join him. Amber held her ground.
“This is a pretty shallow grave,” George said, pushing dirt away from the surface.
From where she was standing, Amber could see that it was a big wooden surface, made of planks. That’s what they were unearthing. It looked like a coffin was buried only a foot or so under the loose soil.
“It’s not a coffin,” Ricky said. “It’s too big.”
George pushed up to his knees and glanced around himself. Amber figured it out the same time as George.
“You’re on it,” she said.
He nodded at her and crawled backwards, expanding the area where he was digging. He went back to the stick to chop at the dirt. Ricky got up to his knees and then squatted with his hands down in the soil.
“Help me,” he said.
The tendons stood out on Ricky’s neck as he strained and pulled upwards. George circled and joined his brother.
Amber took a step back.
Everything shifted. The wood groaned and the dirt and leaves began to rise.
The brothers were lifting an enormous door that was submerged in dirt. It creaked and cracked as they lifted.
Amber stepped to the side as the brothers flipped the big hatch open and it flopped back down, leaning on one of the trees.
Under the hatch, they had found a burrow that was at least a few feet in diameter. The sides of the hole were smooth and it descended straight down, disappearing in blackness.
“That’s where he hibernates,” George said.
George leaned forward to get a better look down into the abyss. Ricky grabbed his shoulder and steadied him.
# # #
They convened a dozen paces away. The three of them stood in a tight circle and talked quietly about the hole like it might overhear them. Amber glanced over at it and saw the reflection of the three of them in one of the mirrors.
“He’s not down there now,” George said. “Right?”
“I don’t think so,” Ricky said. “I think he’s still down south, near our house. I don’t think he would have come back here yet.”
George chewed on his thumbnail and looked off at nothing as he considered that idea.
“The door,” Amber said. “How old would you say that thing is?”
“The hatch? It looked like was made from oak plants. Not very rotted. With that wet soil, in the dirt, couldn’t be more than a few years old or it would have rotted and the nails would have rusted away.”
“So who’s maintaining it?” Amber asked.
Ricky frowned and shrugged. He looked back towards the hatch.
“I don’t know.”
“It couldn’t be them, right? They were like clever animals—barely human. I don’t think they’re undertaking many construction projects,” Amber said.
“They have a helper,” George said, “a Renfield.”
Amber recognized the name. Ricky looked confused by the reference, so she began to explain.
“Renfield was the servant of…”
“I’ve read Dracula,” Ricky said.
“You listened to it,” George said.
“Same thing. So you think they have a human who is helping them?”
Amber turned back in the direction of the car. She was thinking about the house and the woman, Jan, who lived there. She was certainly close enough, but without Jan’s information they never would have found Prescott’s graveyard. If Jan was on the side of the creatures, she wouldn’t have helped at all.
“It’s probable,” George said. “That the cover was made by human hands with human tools. Maybe the monsters stole it and brought it here, but I think it’s more likely that they have a caretaker.”
George walked back towards the hole and circled it twice. When he came back to them, he led Ricky and Amber a few more paces away from the hole.
“I have an idea of what we can do. But first we have to know that Alan and his family are still okay. When’s the last time anyone talked to him?”
“I spoke with him yesterday afternoon,” Amber said. “He wanted to make sure we were safe. I told him that we postponed the trip and that we were staying at my uncle’s. I can send him a message on the satellite device.”
“Good,” George said. “Ricky—did you bring rope?”
Amber turned away from the brothers and got the satellite messenger from her bag. She tapped out a message and sent it off to Alan. He responded right away.
George was tying the rope around a sturdy tree.
“They’re fine. Nothing at all happened last night.”
“Good,” George said. “We’re going to have to get just as far away tonight.”
“What’s your idea?” Ricky asked.
George led them away from the hole again.
“I think it works either way,” George said. “I’m going to go down into the hole and set up the mirrors down there. If they mirrors are up here in the woods, it’s too easy to spot them and then find a way to avoid them. Down in the hole, I think they won’t be ready. We get out of town, the monsters retreat to this den, and then they get mesmerized by the mirrors.”
“You’re going in the hole?” Amber asked. “That’s ridiculous.”
Even as she said it, she realized that she wanted to know what was down there.
“Wait,” Ricky said. “What did you mean about it working either way?”
“Well, I figure that they’re not even here. They tried to get the Harpers the night before last, and then last night they probably returned to look for them again or maybe try to find us. I don’t imagine that they had enough time to get back here.”
“It doesn’t seem like they’re here,” Amber said.
“So, worst case scenario I figure they left behind a sentry or something. If I get d
own there and it’s empty then I set up the mirrors. If there’s a sentry, then I kill it and poison this location. It works either way.”
“Works to do what? Get yourself killed?” Ricky asked.
“No, works to put them on their heels. Or just him, maybe. I’m guessing this all stems from SE Prescott. We get him on his heels and we’re in the driver’s seat.”
“You jump to the conclusion that everything revolves around a creature that has survived for a hundred and forty years, and then you think it will be easy to put him on his heels? Don’t you think something that old is pretty crafty about survival?” Ricky asked.
“I can’t imagine that many people have come after him,” George said. “It requires too many logical leaps that most people are unwilling or unable to achieve.”
“For good reason,” Ricky said. “Right?”
“Like I said,” Amber said, “it’s ridiculous. I don’t mean that going in the hole is a bad idea—it’s just ridiculous that we would send one person in alone. Two of us are going and one is staying up here with the satellite messenger in case something goes wrong.”
“Okay,” George said.
“Yeah,” Ricky said with a sigh, “but it only makes sense that the two people with experience are going in. George, you’re staying up here.”
“No,” George said. “It was my idea.”
“You’re outvoted,” Amber said. She put the satellite messenger in his hands.
George looked at it for a couple of seconds before he accepted his fate. Amber picked up the rope and tested her weight against it. From her bag, she produced a headlamp. It didn’t penetrate very far into the hole before the light was swallowed by the shadows. She could only hope that once her eyes adjusted it would be enough.
“Wait,” George said. He found another coil of rope and tied it around the mounting wire of one of the mirrors. He lowered it carefully into the hole. Ricky pulled out a flashlight and watched its descent. Amber turned on one of her small lights and stuck it in her front pocket for easy access.
She took a deep breath and looked back at the hole.
Rick picked up the rope between Amber and the hole. He lifted it and then let it go slack again.