The Crymost

by Dean H Wild

  Kippy gulped at his beer. “You Adelmeyers are all a bunch of hardheads. Something in your genes, I ‘spect. But I ain’t on crack—for cripes sake my blood pressure meds make me woozy some days—and I ain’t demented, either. I saw demented today at the funeral. Poor Irma Casper is hardly the bubbly bride that Orlin took home after the war. And see? I’m already off m’ rails. Let me get back on ‘em or we’ll be here ‘til sunrise.

  “Us younger men started asking around about the die-off, asking anybody who might know something, and when we pooled our findings, we were able to piece together an account that scared the shit out of us.

  “Did something swallow up Knoll citizens back in ‘39? In a way, I’d say yes. But it was smart in going about it. It took each person a little at a time over a period of days, hollowing them out until they fell. Looked like a sickness, but that was just the ongoing effect. This thing, whatever it was, wanted life. Just life. And it knew how to draw it off. We got wind of older accounts, like a die-off when Mellar’s Knoll was just a trader’s post along the Wistweaw, and one before that wiping out a village of Ho-Chunk just across the river, and it’s like there’s a pattern to it. Four generations give or take. If it comes back again, you can bet it’s going to want more lives. Just drink ‘em up. I have no doubt the same idea is what got our daddies rolling out some bleak ideas in the 60s about what could be done. The government had the commies to worry about back then. Knoll had something else. So our dads and grandads cooked up something they called the double barrel.”

  Mick drained his glass. After the last few days, a story such as this left him teetering on another fulcrum of belief. It was becoming unbearable.

  “Okay,” Will finally said. “This is Knoll, home of The Crymost. I can see where some folks might believe in some kind of once-a-century boogeyman. But breaking their backs and the backs of their sons digging up the town to put up some secret defense against it? Nobody’s going to go to those lengths.”

  Kippy lowered his brow. “Young man, I spent better than three months under this town digging ‘til my hands bled and my shoulders felt like sprung rubber bands.”

  Will filled the old man’s beer again. “Hard to buy the reasoning. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Granddad wasn’t good enough.” Roger Copeland’s voice rang out once again. “Did’ja know that, Kippy? Yer old man and his ‘lil group wouldn’t let him in on the big plan, juss gave him grunt work. Twenny-five years with the Soo Line and all they gave him to do was chuck dirt from under the old mercantile, sum bitches. Rotten, rotten sum bitches.”

  Roger stood and his chair tipped over. He stumbled but caught himself, dipping at the knees like a tightrope walker in slow motion. Mick was on him before he could fall and bark his head on something.

  “Easy there, Roger. Easy.”

  Will was at Mick’s side in an instant. “It’s all right. I got him.”

  “Sum bitches!” Roger cried out.

  “Yes.” Will took him from Mick with the aplomb of a parent transferring an exceptionally large baby and lowered him into a new chair. “We’re all just sons of bitches, right? The whole darn world.”

  Kippy went on. “Us grunt diggers did the secondary work where the machines couldn’t get. The backhoe men, paid on the side from working the sewer lines, did the main digging at night. They also laid in the slab concrete. There was the mechanics. Orlin ended up there after a while. He was a smart one, that boy. And there was the record keepers. Must have been twenty of us working the project, all told. All dead now, ‘cept me.”

  “Mechanics?” Mick asked and went back to his beer.

  “The double barrel boys,” Kippy said with importance. “The engineers.”

  “And what was their deal, Kippy? What were they building?”

  “Don’t know, exactly. I took a job in Royal Center and moved out of Knoll before it was done. But the old town, she beckons like a forlorn lover. By the time I moved back, Ed Sullivan was showing the Beatles and this country’s young Catholic president was cold in his grave. And all the work was done, the double barrel, whatever it was, the sewer and the secret tunnel too, complete and covered up, and not spoken of.”

  Will clapped his hands together as if dusting off the chore of planting Roger, agape and unconscious, back into his chair. “Okay, Roger here corroborates there was some digging, but a tunnel? What would be the point of tunneling under Mellar’s Mercantile?”

  “Don’t know that, either. My digging was done somewhere else. Right under our feet, in fact. My end of the tunnel, which I expect comes out at the mercantile, runs out of the basement of this bar.”

  “Sorry old man.” Will’s face contorted like he’d bitten into something sour. Yes, Mick thought, perhaps the Adelmeyers were a bit hardheaded. “There is no tunnel in my basement.”

  Kippy climbed off his stool, weary but determined. “Come on. This won’t take but a few minutes. Downstairs. Now.”

  The basement was damp and as openly huge as the upstairs. It was also very clean. Orderly stacks of liquor cartons and beer kegs were placed around with plenty of room to walk between.

  Kippy shuffled around, his head swiveling like the needle of some anatomical compass. Then he pointed at a spot near the stairs where the stone wall was lighter in color, the mortar smoother in texture. “Sealed up now,” he said.

  “That?” Will said. “I see it so often I forget it’s there. But if you’re talking about a passageway across town to the mercantile, I’m afraid you guys screwed up your directions. This is the wrong side of the basement.”

  “There’s a tunnel behind that seal, but not my tunnel. That’s the moonshine tunnel. Goes straight out to the Wistweaw. In prohibition days, ’shiners would bring their goods down the river at night and drop it off at the church. Some folks came here to pray. Some had needs other than spiritual, but nearly everybody stopped at the old river church in those days. So my daddy said.”

  Will gaped, dumbfounded. “Nobody ever told me—”

  “Funny thing about hist’ry. If it dies off with its keepers, it dies altogether.”

  Mick spoke up. “Where is your tunnel, Kippy?”

  The old man ambled over to where a massive wooden shelving unit stood lined with boxes of receipts and invoices. It was reminiscent of the filing system at the village hall.

  “The mouth should be just behind here.”

  “This, I’ve got to see.” Will tapped Mick’s arm on his way by. “Do you mind?”

  “To adventures with new friends,” he said.

  The two of them moved the boxes to the floor in no time. With a little grappling they dragged the shelving structure away from the wall, arms straining, teeth gritted.

  Kippy motioned toward what they revealed: a crude wooden door set in the wall. “And there you are.”

  It was adorned with veils of dusty webs. Looking at it sent a shiver down Mick’s spine. Not a playful haunted house shiver, but something visceral like the sounding of a deep, elemental chime.

  “And it goes all the way to the mercantile?” Will worked the rusted latch.

  It opened freely. Air rushed out, musty and damp, with a slight mineral essence. Not the dry moldering smell Mick expected. The light leaked in only far enough to reveal the first few feet of smooth concrete flooring and walls.

  Mick spoke almost involuntarily. “Complete and covered up.”

  Will grinned at them. “Is it crazy that I want to grab a flashlight and take a stroll down there right now?”

  “Be a good walk,” Kippy said peering into the blackness. “Maybe dangerous too, depending on how the frost and spring thaws have had their way, throwing things around like a bratty kid. And I ’spect somewhere along the way we’ll find the double barrel, whatever it is. But it’s late and this old geezer’s been to a burial today. Thoughts of underground places don’t sit well with m’ peace of mind just now. It happens when you get to the age where you know your name’s on the Reaper’s calendar, most likely on the top
page, circled in red.”

  “I’m pretty curious, too,” Mick said. “But Kippy’s got a point. Let’s pick a day soon when the three of us can go at it fresh.”

  Will conceded and closed the door. The sound of it echoed in the tunnel behind. “I should get back upstairs, anyway. If Roger comes around, I hate to think of the mess he’d make helping himself to my back bar.” He took the lead and they ascended the steps. “I will admit I’m wild to see what they concocted to hold back whatever kind of scourge they thought was coming, whether it was germs or soul-suckers from the deep.”

  “You can make light,” Kippy said, grunting with each upward step, “but the facts remain.”

  “Are they facts?” Will asked as they gained the main floor. “Yes, people died here. But aside from that we’ve got a bunch of suspicions and hearsay. Stories.”

  Kippy shuffled back to the bar. “Damned, hardheaded Adelmeyers.”

  Will ignored the remark and patted a sleeping Roger Copeland on the shoulder. “Like a rock. I suppose I can do the right thing and take him home, if you gents don’t mind watching the shop until I get back.”

  Mick moved on a surfacing idea. “How long will you be?”

  “Ten minutes to run him home, plunk him on his living room couch and come back here. Is there a problem?”

  “No, but I might duck out for a short trip, too. I came across something at the village hall that might be related to tonight’s disclosures, now that I think about it. It’s an old journal that tracks the deaths in this town at about the same time the town name was changed. It won’t take long for me to get it, that is, if you gents are up for a gander at some old town records before we call it a night.”

  Kippy nodded. “That I can do.”

  “I say what the hell.” Will slung Roger’s arm around his neck and hoisted him to his feet.

  Mick walked over. “I’ll help you out with him before I go.”

  “And I,” Kippy Evert said and shuffled behind the bar to fill his own beer glass, “will be right here waiting.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The knock on Chastity Mellar Borth’s front door came late. She put aside her reading, went to the front window and nudged the heavy lace curtains aside. Her heart pounded. The man on her porch was standing close up to the door which made only a hint of his shoulders and the curve of his back visible from her viewpoint. Deep inside of her, anticipation entwined with excitement.

  “I’ve come for my room.” The voice smote her with its directness and its familiarity. “If you’ll still have me.”

  Her hands trembled as she unlocked the door and opened up for him. “Of course, Judge. You’re welcome.” Light from inside washed over him. She blinked hard because she was staring at his hands—those thin-boned wonders able to draw pain as easily as an autumn reed draws pond water—the way a famished woman might fixate on an imminent meal. “Please come in.”

  Thekan stepped in, his cloak draped over one arm, and swept the derby from his head. The breeze of his passing made her shiver.

  “I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble.” He said and turned around in the middle of the room. It was a grand move, almost theatrical. “My needs are simple. Just a soft bed.”

  “No trouble,” she said. In truth, her efforts took up most of the morning, refreshing the room at the top of the stairs while her muscles and bones cried out with each move.

  Thekan eyed her with chiding calm. “I won’t have you exerting yourself,” he said and inched closer to her. “At least, not unnecessarily.”

  He laughed, and she followed it with her own. The girlish sound of it revolted her on some deep level, but on the surface, it was pure release. As a counterpoint, her pain paced in its den and pawed disdainfully at the walls. Might you touch me, she nearly blurted, just a tap?

  His brows raised. “Upstairs?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My room. I assume it is on the upper floor?”

  “Yes. Of course. Yes.”

  “And have you told anyone I will be staying here?”

  “No.” She hadn’t seen anyone to tell.

  He closed in, a breath-stealing type of nearness.

  “You should.” He tapped a white index finger in the air as if dotting an I. “The town might receive me better if I have the endorsement of someone significant. Someone who cares about Mel—about Knoll so deeply. It is, after all, a wary place.”

  Oh, how she wished the inches between them were even fewer, so his miraculous flesh might dimple her skin. She shivered from her shoulders to her shoes. The imagined touch of his flesh flared to a heated memory of husbandly contact, of her Gregor’s dark-haired bulk writhing against her, pressing, prodding. She looked at Thekan with a sense of guilt and yet wondered what other miracles his hands might deliver. “The town has needs.”

  “Towns, like people, are miraculous things. Each one with a place and a purpose.” He leaned further toward her. His eyes were lighted eldritch lamps, eerie to behold, but acceptable, too. Miraculous. His hand cupped her cheek, and his fingers crawled to where her hair tensed into the braid at the back of her neck. “When their calling comes, it is only proper to resign to it.”

  Breath left her in a massive shudder that delivered strange, pleasurable constrictions to her breast, her loins. “The town has a calling.” She agreed, the certainty of it secondary to the waves of insinuating warmth radiating through her, tingling at her extremities. Discreet sensations slipped into play, as astounding as old music squeezed note by note from a sheltered organ, pleasant yet nerve-tightening. “It always has.”

  His hand clenched at the back of her neck, rough but forgiving. A vise in velvet. His other hand settled on her hip, as if to initiate a dance. “And together we will lead this town to its ultimate destiny.”

  He massaged her hip, sent small electrical impulses through her skin to a deeper awakening part that caught fire like a long-damped fuse. A cool draft touched her back. The door was still open to the night. Someone on Tier Street might see them in this uncouth embrace, but the concern dulled, faded, died. Another wave of warmth rolled deep in her belly, drew her toward Thekan and the faint underlying foulness wafting from his mouth.

  “Yes, I want that,” she said and it was more breath than voice. “I want everything you said. Everything.”

  “Good.” Thekan took a series of graceful backward steps up the staircase, pulling her along. With each footfall she felt a fragment of her pain drop away until, at the top of the stairs, she was a weightless and brightly washed vessel. Her nerve endings burned with only one true and clear heat now. A ravenous heat.

  Thekan flung open the door to his room and swept her inside. “All I need is a soft bed, after all. It’s been so long.”

  She climbed onto the freshly laundered spread and lay back for him.

  His hands tensed into greedy claws as he lowered himself over her. Drops of dark red flooded the corners of his eyes and dripped down. Within seconds his cheeks were striped with crimson. A droplet pattered onto her chin and she flinched at it, certain of its make up by its weight and the light sanguine odor, but disregarded it the same way she disregarded his cold hands tearing open her blouse and plucking away her bra with a gentle mastery of finesse.

  “We get what we want then, both of us.”

  He ground his hips against her thighs. The hot rigidity thrust against her caused her to gulp at the air. She meant to draw it all inward like a mighty storm to consecrate the moment. Pull in the room, the house, the whole town with her wanting breaths. “Yes. Oh yes. Yes.”

  “Onto our purpose, then.”

  She clamped her trembling hands on the sides of his face. Where his eyes once gleamed there were now only dark pits. Streams of red flowed from them. Another miracle from his well of dark secrets. She kissed his scarlet cheeks furiously, tongued the ragged rims of his eye holes, lapped the slick depths of his leaking sockets.

  His breath washed over her in a dark wave. It blended with the
rustle of cloth and the tearing of her skirt. A groan welled out of her, long and ripe with fulfillment.

  One floor below, the front door wavered on its hinges and closed quietly against the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “There was something about this the minute I saw it,” Mick said and set the LINR box on the bar.

  Will and Kippy perched on neighboring stools with enough space for Mick to stand between them. They glanced from him to the box with a quiet type of curiosity.

  “In my day we used to keep all the town records in those kinds of lockups,” Kippy said. “At some point, some smarty decided to get rid of them and use regular file cab’nets.”

  “Well, this one stayed behind,” Mick said.

  Will squinted at the box lid. “L-I-N-R. What does it mean?”

  They both deferred to Kippy who replied with a shrug. Then Mick tipped back the box lid.

  An idea blew by him: Harley should be in on this. Not many others, aside from Cy Vandergalien, possessed the same deep commitment to the perpetual clockwork of this town. But the hour was late, the clock next to Will’s LED strip sign—which now declared $1 shooters Fridays 6-8 with scrolling dot-to-dot importance—read a quarter of ten. Harley would no doubt be fast asleep.

  “This was filed away at the village hall?” Kippy hooked his finger into the open box and dragged it closer.

  “Buried is more like it. And this is why I thought we’d all find it so interesting.”

  He pulled the book out right under Kippy’s nose and set it on the bar. He tapped the tape label that read “Deaths”.

  “Mortician’s records?” Will asked and lifted the cover fussily between two fingers.