Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  Mesmerized, Mills can’t imagine who conceived this underground and why. Certainly, he’ll find out soon, but right now in this dead silence he can sense the tremors of discord. Suddenly he’s Gus Parker. He’s feeling the feeling of things. He’s picking up vibes. He’s not Gus Parker, but in this amber light, in this forsaken tunnel, he believes that Gus has been here. Not physically, of course, but Gus has been here in his visions.

  Officer Steph Pullman arrives. Two more to go.

  “What the f is this place?” she asks Mills.

  “Hell if I know,” he says. “Or maybe just hell.”

  The others, Officer Ron Robbins and the photographer Hailey Gibson, arrive next. They ask essentially the same question, to which Mills offers essentially the same answer. “Hell if anyone knows.”

  They gather around him.

  “Look,” he says. “I don’t have a map to this place.” He points to both ends of the hallway. “I don’t know what’s down either end. Flashlights please.”

  Then, somewhere along the hallway to the right, a door opens and slams shut with a thick metal echo.

  Gleason Norwood emerges from the shadows. “We also have a thing called stairs,” he says with a gleaming smile.

  Mills ignores him, pushes past him with the others. Their flashlights illuminate a dead end. There is nothing here but a wall. They back up to the metal door. It’s locked.

  “Open it, Gleason,” Mills says.

  The preacher does a bit of a sashay and says, “Certainly you don’t think you can order me around, do you?”

  “Did you read the warrant?” Mills asks him. “You are working my last nerve, sir. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  “It’s just a stairwell, but if you insist . . .”

  Gleason inserts a key into the lock and swings the thick door open. Indeed it is nothing but a stairwell, amber and empty. “C’mon, everyone,” Mills says. “Other end.”

  Mills can feel the fire in his bones as he backtracks down the hallway, a kind of angry resolve to, once and for all, close this fucking case. He knows he’s closing in. Sometimes the anger helps. Orbs of lights bounce off the walls as the team heads down the long hallway, much longer to this end. The tunnel turns a corner and they follow. Another corner. Another hallway. A maze. Mills could not have pictured this. The flashlights continue to lead, to scope out the turns, to crisscross the walls, the ceiling, the floor. They might as well be excavating.

  “This is it,” Pullman says. “The end.”

  The orbs meet on a massive wooden door, detailed in bronze, a barred window at its center. Mills can’t see through. The flashlights don’t help.

  “Gleason, what is this place?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Gleason, do I have to warn you again? If you refuse to answer you are impeding the search.”

  “Storage,” the preacher says.

  “Seems like a long way to go for storage,” Mills says.

  “Unfortunately, for you and your search crew, the door is locked and I don’t have the key.”

  Mills grabs a flashlight from Pullman’s hands and points it at the preacher’s face. Gleason balks at the sudden light, his face squirming. “We can knock the damn door down,” Mills says. “We’re equipped.”

  “You had better not destroy our property.”

  “Or,” Mills says, pulling the skeleton key from his pocket. “We could try this . . .”

  Gleason lunges for the key. “Where in hell did you get that?”

  Robbins blocks him. “No sir,” the officer says. “You don’t touch a thing down here. And you don’t touch one of us.”

  Mills slides the key into the lock. He lets it sit there for a moment. He lets it sink in. He wants this moment to echo forever in the chambers of Gleason Norwood’s soul, assuming he has one. Mills rattles the key just for dramatic effect. Then he turns it just slightly to the right and the door pops open. The pop sends Gleason over the edge. He jumps forward and slams the door shut. Mills grabs the man by the shiny silk shirt and pushes him against the wall. “One more move like that, Norwood, and you’re in handcuffs. Just like your son. Pullman, the door.”

  The officer complies and swings the door outward.

  Beyond the threshold, blackness. A hazy, static darkness, like night.

  The orbs can’t penetrate.

  “Norwood, the lights,” Mills orders.

  The preacher steps forward, enters the space, resigned, it seems, to the exposure. He reaches to the left, and as Mills hears the plunk of a lever, the lights come up.

  Well. This is not what Mills had expected.

  He had not expected to see a modern day catacomb. The sight takes his breath away. Pullman, to his right, gasps as well. Robbins mutters, “What the actual fuck?”

  Before them are stone cases, the size of people, stacked four high, six across on metal racks. Racks that reach far back into the darkness of the chamber. Like an archive of death. Each case on each rack has a name crudely scrawled across the side. Thompkins 2017. Walton 2013. Bayer 2001. Bayer, R. 2001. Lippinpool 2002. Hart 2018. Marx 2007. And on and on down the line. Rows and rows.

  Hailey immediately snaps pictures.

  “What is this place?” Mills asks Norwood.

  “I don’t have to say anything.”

  “Fine,” Mills tells him. “Pullman, would you please go grab the sledgehammer from the service van and bring it down here so we can crack a few of these open . . .”

  “You can’t do that!” the preacher cries.

  “We certainly can,” Mills says. “If I have to ask you to read the warrant one more time . . .”

  Then, with a flourish, the man with the diamond-encrusted cufflinks says, “They are exactly what they look like.”

  “Burial vaults?” Mills asks.

  “Yes. A sacred burial ground for our church members.”

  “Do you have a license for this, Norwood?”

  “We don’t need a license,” he replies defiantly. “We’re a church. This is no different than a church cemetery.”

  “A church cemetery needs a license to handle bodies, to operate in general. And you need to notify authorities about the deaths. Always. Who’s buried here?”

  Norwood hesitates, stutters, and says, “High-ranking members who wanted to stay close to the church. Former members of the board.” “So, if I were to match the names I see down here with church records in your office, I would be able to verify the high rankers and the board members?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because we’re searching your office right now,” Mills tells him.

  “I demand an attorney!” the man cries.

  “Call one,” Mills tells him. “We’ve never stopped you from calling your attorney. Take your time. We’ll be here a while.”

  Norwood puffs out his chest. “You can’t do this to me. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “You are so full of shit, there’s not enough Charmin in the world to wipe you up. That’s who you are, Gleason Norwood. Call your lawyer. You’re going to need one.”

  With a huff, Norwood backs away, and as Mills listens to him make a call to his lawyer, he understands just how a life of fraud defines a man. The conversation is ardent and imploring. It is also fake. No one has a cell signal down here in this dungeon.

  “You have a signal, Pullman?”

  “Nope.”

  “You, Hailey?”

  “Nah. I lost it when I came down the elevator.”

  “Thought so.”

  Robbins calls to them from the back corner of the room. Mills can’t make out exactly what he’s saying. Something about a hallway.

  “You’ve found another hallway?”

  “It’s like another tunnel, I think,” the officer says. “I think we should check it out.”

  The rest of them follow the sound of Robbins’s voice. “Mr. Norwood, you’ll need to come with us,” Mills tells him.

  “My attorney will be here any minute.”
>
  “I’m sure he can find you down here.”

  “There’s nothing else to see back there. More storage.”

  “Of bodies?”

  Mills insists that Norwood move in front of him as they make their way to the rear of the catacomb. “The tunnel’s not that deep,” Robbins says when they get there.

  Mills tilts his head and nods in that direction. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m going no further without my attorney,” Norwood insists.

  Mills turns to him, nearly unhinged with impatience. “As you wish. But this place is crawling with cops, so don’t do anything stupid.”

  Norwood huffs but says nothing.

  Mills joins the rest of his team and they enter the tunnel, Robbins in the lead, his voice and the orbs of light blazing their trail. In less than two minutes they reach a stone archway that surrounds another wooden door, the same design, the same thickness, it seems, as the door that led to the catacomb. Mills assumes the same key will fit the lock. He hands it to Robbins and his assumption is affirmed when the key slides in and the door creaks open.

  The opening yields a sucking sound and a putrid smell.

  Please, no more dead bodies.

  Just urine. Maybe feces. Hard to tell.

  Mills sweeps the walls of the dark space with his hands, feeling for a switch or a lever. He finds nothing on the right hand side, but knocks against a lever on the left. He pulls. Overhead lights come on. Discs of light hang from the ceiling in rounded cages; they resemble old-style catcher’s masks, and they emit a feeble glow. That’s it. The rest is murk and shadows. But the design of the room is clear enough. It’s an open space of tables and benches, surrounded by a horseshoe of walls. Lining each wall, three or four doors to smaller rooms or closets. Mills waves them all to the center of the room. Hailey starts snapping pictures.

  The place looks like a cellblock out of the county jail.

  Crash.

  “What the fuck was that?” Robbins asks.

  Thud.

  “Hello? Anybody in here?” Mills asks.

  Then another thud, and it sounds like it left a dent. That makes Mills jump back, and it startles the others as well. The doors surrounding them have come alive, pounding like kettledrums, a whole percussion of desperation.

  “Who’s in here?” Mills shouts. “We need a key. We need a fucking key.”

  Robbins, examining the doors with a flashlight, says, “There are no locks. So there can’t be a key.”

  “Jesus,” Mills snaps. “What the fucking fuck . . .?”

  He turns to the lever for the lights and sees a smaller switch protected by a plastic cover. He tells Robbins to smash through the cover with his flashlight. The assault takes maybe thirty seconds, and the busted cover falls to the floor. Mills pulls the small lever and then turns his head when he hears the sound of the doors cranking open. They open in unison. Behind two of the doors, a woman and a man on their knees. Behind another, a man sitting against the wall; he’s beaten and filthy. At another door, a man stands, his fists clenched. He’s cleaner than the other three, a more recent arrival, perhaps. Behind still one more door is a tall, skinny man, revenge in his eyes.

  “Who are you?” Mills asks them.

  The woman begins to bawl. The man on his knees crawls out to comfort her.

  The filthy one says, “We’re dissenters . . . among many.”

  “We’re the ones who’ve threatened to go to the cops,” the man with the fists says. “Finally, the cops have come to us.”

  “But I thought if you were banished, they just make your family erase you and send you on your way,” Mills says. “What’s this about?” “Banished,” the woman says between sobs, “is for those who are no longer compatible with the teachings of the church. They go away peacefully and their family erases them.” She gasps for air. “But a dissenter is someone who starts trouble from the inside. Or threatens to start trouble on the outside.” She gasps again.

  “OK,” Mills tells her. “That’s enough for now. Catch your breath. We’ll get you to safety and get your full statements.”

  Some of the “dissenters”—well, fuck, they’re prisoners—look too weak to move on their own. He tells Robbins to call for ambulances. “Go on out to the front. Meet the EMTs there.”

  Then he turns to the prisoners. “We can’t risk any of you trying to walk out without supervision, whether you feel up to it or not. You’ll be transported to an area hospital where you’ll be checked out and questioned.”

  The man with the fists pounds the door. “It’s not like we have anywhere to go,” he says. “Our families disowned us. Just like Gleason preaches.”

  Mills is flooded with disbelief or, rather, too much all at once to believe. “How long have you all been down here?”

  The man who’s cradling the woman on the floor says, “I’m not really sure. Eight or nine months . . .”

  The filthy one says, “I’ve been here almost three years.”

  The woman sighs and says, “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It’s so confusing. They feed us twice a day. That’s all we have to count the time.”

  The filthy one bends to the woman. “You’ve been here almost three years too. We came about the same time.”

  “Right,” she says. “Your time’s up after three years . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Mills asks.

  “I mean that they put you down here for three years to see if you’ll overcome your dissent. You know, they try to program you back to the cult,” she says. “They beat us. They terrorize us. They want us back as angels rising, not dissenters. But if you don’t concede within three years you go next door . . .”

  “Next door?” Mills asks.

  “The fucking funeral parlor,” the skinny one says. “Didn’t you see it on the way in? It’s our own private graveyard.”

  “Yeah. We saw it. It wasn’t exactly described that way to us,” Mills says with a heavy sigh. He tells Pullman to stay with Norwood’s prisoners. “I have an arrest to make.”

  The chamber goes silent as he turns to leave. And in this silence, Mills detects a whimpering from one of the open cells. At first, he wonders if the prisoners had been allowed to keep a kitten down here, a gesture of normalcy or comfort; the whimper is that subtle, that weak. Yes, almost a purr. But then, the skinny guy says, “there’s one more with us . . .”

  And Mills realizes there’s a cell from which no one has emerged.

  He asks Pullman to shine her flashlight into the dark shoebox. In it, Mills can see the light reflecting off amber eyes. He can see the scared whites, the desperate, dark ovals, and he can see the copper skin glowing. He recognizes the face, but he has to move closer to the edge of the doorway, where the thin line separates bondage from freedom. It’s her. It’s Aaliyah Jones.

  40

  He wants to reach for Aaliyah, hold her, but all he can do right now is say, “Aaliyah, you’re safe. We’re going to get you out of here. But you’re safe.” And then he has to dash back down the hallway into the adjacent room.

  “Gleason, has your lawyer showed?” Mills asks, entering the tomb. “He’ll be here shortly,” Norwood shouts from a distance.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t wait,” he says, unlatching the handcuffs from his belt. “You’re under arrest for the—”

  “Glory God will never!” the preacher cries. That’s when the room goes black.

  Mills hadn’t realized that Norwood was loitering close to the lever that controls the catacomb lighting. It’s like a fucking maze in here, and Mills can already hear the dash of feet, like the scurry of a rat, bolting from the room. Mills hears a gunshot. A warning? Who the fuck can tell in the dark? The sound of the gunfire has prompted more footsteps, more confusion. He hears Pullman’s voice as the officer rushes toward him. “Just hang back, Steph,” he instructs her. “Stay with them. I’m on the preacher.”

  His flashlight illuminates a pathway, around one stack of burial vaults, then another, around a corn
er, then another row of vaults, then two more after that. He smells rubbing alcohol, or formaldehyde, or maybe that’s his imagination. “Mills to everyone on scene,” he says into the radio, unsure if the thing will even work down here, “we got shots fired by suspect, suspect running . . . block exits if possible.” “Received,” Preston says. “You still underground?”

  “Yeah, he’s either coming up the elevator on the stage or a stairwell behind the auditorium,” Mills says, racing.

  “OK, man. We’re on it.”

  Mills flies into a wall, hears his nose crunch. “Fuck!”

  In the rush of it all, he’s disoriented. Norwood must have cut all the hallway lights leading back to the elevator. And Jesus Christ, the corners! Mills’s flashlight gives him a decent field of vision, but not wide-angled enough to avoid the switchbacks of this maze. He runs a hand between his lip and his nose. He’s bleeding. “Norwood!” he shouts. “Norwood!” Then, another “Fuck.”

  Mills dashes as fast as his feet will move and the light will guide, as careful as he can be not to smash his face into another wall. A door slams with a thunk. The stairwell. “Suspect is coming up stairwell behind stadium,” he says into the radio. The responses pop into his radio as if he’s taking attendance from the others on the scene. He reaches the steel door to the stairwell and, to no surprise, finds it locked. He backtracks for the elevator, finds the controls, and enters. It lifts him with a shudder to the stage. Once on the stage he leaps off the edge and races up the stadium stairs. Near the exit he runs into one of the officers he assigned to Preston.