This Deep Panic

by Lisa Stowe

  “Anya’s pretty tough,” he finally said.

  “But she’ll be alone.

  Curtis thought a moment. “Well, traps don’t sound like they’re going to work. Guns didn’t do much good. The Hole is blocked now, so no radiation.”

  “What about fire?” Ethan asked. “That’s one thing we’ve got.”

  “If that worked, it would have to be a big fire,” Curtis said. “And long-burning. To make sure, you know? Plus, you’d have to pack in an accelerant, a way to get a big fire going fast. I mean, the Windigo won’t just stand there and watch while you add moss to sparks.”

  Ethan laughed. “No, I suppose you’re right. A two-gallon gas can might be enough. That won’t be heavy to pack. If I can find some gas.”

  “Hey!” Curtis caught Ethan’s arm. “My Bug, my car, is sitting down at the edge of town. There’s still some gas in it. Unless someone has siphoned it.”

  Ethan nodded once. “So. You want to come along?”

  Curtis’s insides turned to water and his knees suddenly felt as if they’d been sucked into one of Henry’s parallel universes. No he most certainly did not want to go along. But…he didn’t want a friend going alone, either.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  ~Day 7~

  1

  It was so early the sun wasn’t up yet. The air was chilly and damp, but the rain continued to hold off. Curtis stood next to his car, facing it so the headlamp he’d borrowed from Samuel would light up the gas cap. Ethan twisted the cap off and inserted a piece of garden hose.

  They both wore backpacks loaded with enough food and gear for a few days. It hadn’t taken much to find what they’d needed. Old Ben had let them raid his camper.

  The others wanted to go with them. Casey and Max had been the most insistent. And Anya, of course. But Bird couldn’t travel yet and she wouldn’t leave him behind. And besides, Ethan seemed stuck on the idea it had to be just Curtis and him. Brains and Brawn, he called them. Curtis had been flattered. And so they’d sneaked away in the early dawn.

  Curtis wasn’t feeling so flattered now.

  “There’s a lot of mountains out there,” he said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “How are we going to find it?”

  “Maybe it will find us at night when we set up camp. Then we’ll be able to come back sooner.” Ethan sucked on the end of the hose, got gas flowing, and spit off to the side. “But I have a general idea where it might be. Didn’t you say these things took victims to their lairs?”

  Curtis nodded, then realized that made the headlamp light bounce. “Oh, sorry. Yes, they have lairs. Typically caves. Well, according to the old stories anyway.”

  “One of my kids, Paul, was killed when we were crossing a slide.” Ethan pulled the hose out of the full can. “He got trapped by a falling boulder and then that thing got him. It took…it took Paul’s head.”

  “I’m sorry,” Curtis said, his stomach doing a little roll of nausea.

  “It went uphill from the slide. Later, Anya saw it at her cabin, and it left Paul’s head there. Our bus driver, Val, also disappeared in the same area, where our bus went off the road. So I’m thinking this thing’s lair is somewhere in the area of Silver Creek.”

  “It’s going to take a couple days to get there.”

  “We made it here from Anya’s cabin in one day of pushing hard,” Ethan said. “Maybe another day from her cabin to where our bus is. And then we still have a lot of area to search.”

  Curtis was quiet while Ethan capped the little gas can and straightened. His thoughts whirled around fear and monsters, myths that came up from the same earth that had swallowed them when people quit believing in them.

  “We might be able to narrow the search area some,” he finally said. “But it means letting me run back to town for a couple minutes.”

  “Can you do it without bringing a horde back with you?”

  “Sure,” Curtis said absently, his thoughts flying. He dropped his pack. “Don’t leave without me.”

  Back on Avenue A, he jogged through the gray light, passing people sleeping under tarps and in tents. He went straight to the fire department, and inside, walked swiftly between cots until he reached Henry. He gently touched the old man’s shoulder, waking him. When Henry’s eyes opened, Curtis touched his lips with a finger and knelt beside the cot.

  “You’re familiar with Silver Creek, right?” Curtis whispered.

  “Of course.” Henry propped himself up on one elbow. “There is a rare lichen up there, Niebla cephalota, that I’ve been monitoring. Why haven’t you been to see me?”

  Curtis flashed on their last conversation when Henry said the earthquake was his fault. He wanted to tell Henry how much those words had hurt but then he remembered his mother and her admonitions to be polite to elders.

  “Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

  “Well, since you’re here now, I will explain to you what makes that lichen so rare-”

  “Maybe another time,” Curtis said quickly. “What I need to know now is, are there any fault lines in that area? Any caves?”

  “Fault lines?” Henry’s eyes sharpened. “So you finally admit to the parallel universes. Well, of course there are fault lines all over these mountains. Some caves, lots of old mining tunnels.”

  “Mining tunnels.” Curtis sagged back to sit on the concrete floor, weighed down by sudden discouragement. “I didn’t think about all the mining that used to go on here.”

  “Copper, silver, garnets,” Henry said. “There are old mines all over. There was a famous mining town up in that area back in the 1800s. It is all reclaimed by the forest now, of course.”

  “But fault lines that maybe the quake opened?”

  Henry closed his eyes as he thought, then opened them and nodded as if agreeing with himself. “No. Well, yes, technically. But they are small and you would need to know what you are looking for to find them. They would be like fine filaments, or hairline cracks in an eggshell. If you are hoping to find an opening to a parallel universe, I would suggest the mines. Look for one that has been widened by the quake. Opened.”

  Curtis thought about myths. About stories that stayed with the land, that became tales told around campfires.

  “Henry, are there any…I don’t know…ghost stories about that area?”

  “Ghosts do not exist.” Henry waved a hand dismissively.

  This, from a guy who believed in parallel universes. Curtis grinned. “Well, old stories then. People disappearing, that kind of stuff.”

  “Well, there are stories about Bigfoot sightings in that area, and it’s where I would expect to find the creature. But I do not see what folklore has to do with the reality that we are threatened by the very science you studied.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. No ghosts. No local folklore.”

  Curtis balled his fists in frustration. And then jumped at a low voice behind him.

  “No ghosts,” Samuel said, bending down to speak quietly and not wake others. “But we get more calls up there than anywhere else. It’s always been weird how many hikers get lost there.”

  “A lot?” Curtis stood, his legs tingling as circulation came back.

  “No.” Samuel straightened. He glanced around the room, but people still slept. “But steady, you know? Over many years. I’ve heard the stories. And do you know Bert and Ernie?”

  “The town drunks? The two homeless guys?”

  Samuel nodded. “Ever wonder why homeless guys would choose to come to a tiny town in the mountains instead of someplace with fast food and dumpsters?”

  Curtis shook his head.

  “Because Bert’s from here. His family was here for generations, so he says.”

  “Bert is mentally unstable,” Henry said. “He believes he is one of the last remaining descendants of the Skykomish tribe. When he got tangled up in Fred’s electric fences running from the police, and fell in the goat’s water tank, he thought those electric shocks were Martians zapping him with ray gu
ns. His brain is pickled.”

  Samuel gestured for Curtis to follow him and led the way back to the door. Outside, he spoke in a normal tone of voice.

  “Bert says the Skykomish avoided Silver Creek. They had stories, going back generations.”

  “Of a monster.” Curtis shivered.

  “Of a being that came out of the earth.”

  Curtis caught Samuel’s arm. “I’m willing to bet that if we found elders who knew the old oral stories we’d find correlations with that thing showing up only after the earth moved. And I’m willing to bet we’d find tales that said the thing terrorized the area over a span of time and then eventually left.”

  “I don’t follow,” Samuel said.

  “That’s okay.” Curtis waved his hand, thoughts flying. “Ethan doesn’t want anyone following anyway.”

  He left Samuel standing there looking confused, and ran down the street. It all made sense. The creature would break free after an earthquake. Obviously not one as devastating as this one. Maybe even just tremors that shifted old faults. But it would come to light, it would feed, probably over weeks or months, or maybe even years, and then it would go into hibernation, or something similar. People would stop disappearing, fear would ease, and loss would become just another story.

  Back at his car, Curtis found Ethan sitting on a downed Cedar, finishing a granola bar. He told Ethan quickly what he’d learned and then held out his hands.

  “But that doesn’t narrow the search at all,” Ethan said. “If anything, it adds to it as we now have to look for mines. Now we’re going to be out there longer.”

  Curtis deflated. He looked around at the woods, at the dawn light lifting the darkness. The old familiar fear settled across his shoulders, as heavy as the weight of the pack he picked up.

  “Guess we better start walking.”

  ~Day 9~

  1

  It took them two days just to reach the totaled bus. They stood at the edge of the slide looking down at it in bright spring sunlight. A cool breeze moved through what remained of the forest, bringing scents of rich loamy earth, waking after the winter. Stellar’s Jays and Varied Thrush sang in the woods. Near Curtis’s boot, a small trillium, or Wake-Robin, was beginning to open. One of the earliest native flowers, it bloomed here as if nothing had happened. It came back just like it always did, in spite of the destroyed landscape.

  “Amy’s still in there.” Ethan wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “She died when the bus crashed. I thought I’d get the kids out, be back in a day or two with search and rescue. To recover her body. But she’s still there. So is John. He died from injuries the day after the quake.”

  Unless they’ve been eaten, Curtis thought, but knew better than to say. Instead he shook his head. “I can’t believe any of you survived that crash.”

  Ethan just shrugged. Or maybe he was shaking off the thought of his students. Curtis didn’t know.

  “Where to now?” Ethan asked.

  “I have no idea,” Curtis answered. It seemed hopeless now that they were here, surrounded by nothing but wilderness.

  Ethan studied the terrain. “This whole Silver Creek area was mined for copper, silver, garnets. Silver would have been the most common because of these mountains. Granite, veins of quartz.”

  “You have an idea?”

  “I’m an Environmental Science teacher, for fuck’s sake!” Ethan spun in a circle. “I should be able to figure this out.”

  Curtis waited silently, recognizing the signs of a brain also spinning, racing into familiar ground, pulling out premise, possibility, known facts, breadcrumbs.

  “Henry said there weren’t any major faults around here. So it’s got to be an old mine and it’s got to be close because that thing showed up almost immediately. Plus, the lair can’t be too high up the mountainsides. Old time miners wouldn’t have gone rock climbing. Well, they would have if the possibility was strong enough. But they had to have a way to get the ore out. So there’d be old donkey trails or horse and cart paths, overgrown now but still visible if you know what to look for.”

  Curtis didn’t interrupt, knowing the flow of words was Ethan thinking, processing, out loud. He’d done this himself, many times, and he knew an interruption could derail thoughts with as much finality as a quake derailed trains.

  “One thing,” Ethan said, gesturing. “The quake has actually helped. Yeah, it caused this whole shit-storm, but it’s also helping. Because of the slides, the downed trees, we can see the bones of the land. You see, there, and there?”

  Curtis looked where Ethan pointed, simply nodding and not speaking.

  “If it wasn’t for the quake, this would all still be deep forest. We’d have to take educated guesses about what was underneath the forest canopy. But see those knobs of granite? And those small ravines?”

  His hand dropped to his side and Curtis heard discouragement creep into his voice.

  “The lair could be any of those. If it’s even in this spot.”

  “Where did you first see the thing?” Curtis kept his voice low, a nudge to get back on track rather than an interruption.

  “That first night. We were all still in the bus…we were looking for a way out, looking for Val, the driver. Zack…” Ethan’s words faltered to a stop.

  “Zack?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Zack. The boy Jennifer led to his death. He was headed out through the hole where the front windshield had been. I went to him to see if it was a safe evacuation spot. I saw our lights reflecting off eyes. I thought it was Val, ejected from the bus.”

  Ethan paused again and Curtis knew it was time for another soft nudge. “But it wasn’t.”

  “But it wasn’t. So…the first time we saw it was there, near the front of the bus. The quake had just happened. It didn’t have time to travel far.”

  “So if it came from that direction, what looks promising out there?”

  “There’s a creek.” Ethan pointed. “The old miners used water for sluicing or panning. If we follow the creek upstream, if it goes roughly southwest there, where it starts to climb? Maybe there.”

  Curtis felt airless suddenly, feather-light, shivery with a wash of fear-fueled adrenaline. He swallowed against the coppery taste and tugged up the straps to his pack. “What does it mean when terror becomes so familiar you just kind of shrug and go, ‘okay’?”

  “That’s courage,” Ethan said. “Being terrified but at the same time thinking, ‘let’s get this shit over with’.”

  Curtis’s voice shook as much as his hands. “Then let’s get this shit over with.”

  2

  The spot was easier to find than they expected; a short hike upstream following the small creek that tumbled green and white over rocks, Ethan spotting a small, overgrown trail, and then Curtis seeing the sign.

  An actual sign, with an arrow pointing the direction to go. The board was half rotted, with moss trailing from it. But when Curtis pushed the damp moss away the words some hopeful miner had burned into the wood were still legible. Copper Chief Mine.

  “We’ve guessed right so far,” Curtis said, following Ethan. “But there’s still nothing to prove the thing is here.”

  It was strange, he thought, how time affected fear. After a while it faded, even though the circumstances were still the same. Was it just adrenaline wearing off? Was he, maybe, becoming braver?

  Ethan pushed through salmonberries just beginning to leaf out, took a couple steps, and then stopped. “I think we found your proof.”

  Curtis looked over Ethan’s shoulder. A hole in the rocky side of the hill, thick timbers visible just inside, dripped with moisture. Maybe at some point in the past it had been a natural crack in the granite, but it had clearly been blasted into an opening large enough for men to pass through.

  And in front of the opening, lying bedded softly on moss and fir needles as if put to rest, were bones. Some white and new, some stained and old. Fragments and whole pieces. Not enough to make a pile as if it were
a dumping ground, but enough to create an image in Curtis’s mind of the thing going in and out over many generations, dropping bits as it went.

  A few of the bones still had pieces of tendon or muscle attached. One of the longer bones had deep gouges. Claws or teeth, Curtis didn’t know and didn’t want to. He stood, frozen, as Ethan put the gas can down and bent to pick something up. He fingered it and Curtis saw orange material before Ethan carefully put it back, almost reverently, on the moss-covered stone.

  “Time to build a fire?” Curtis asked, hating the hopeful tone in his voice. He wanted very much to go home.

  “Focus, evaluate, act,” Ethan said, almost as if talking to himself. “We need to make sure it’s in there.”

  “Oh, no, we don’t.” Curtis moved closer. “They always do that in horror movies. Go in when everyone in the audience is screaming ‘don’t go!’ or ‘it’s behind the door!’”

  “There’s no door.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, but think, Curtis. We set the fire and it’s not in there. Maybe it comes back while we’re still here. Maybe it tracks us back to town. Finds us one night out there alone in the woods. Sure, we have materials to build campfires, but we won’t have gas for an inferno to kill that thing. We’ll have used it all up here, building a fire for nothing. We’ll have wasted the gas, and it’s not like we can just trot down below to the nearest town with a gas station.”

  Curtis swallowed. “You convinced me at ‘finds us one night’ but all your points are valid.”

  “Sorry, buddy.” Ethan put a hand on his shoulder. “You stay out here. I’ll go in.”

  Curtis straightened. “Look, yes, I’m scared. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Listen. I’m not going in any further than I have to, and then getting the hell out of there. But you need to be here as back up. I grew up always having to plan for worst-case scenarios, and this is it. If that thing isn’t in there and shows up here, you have to warn me. If that thing is in there and I can’t get out, you have to burn us. You understand?”