by C. J. Sears
Images of the jukebox playing unidentified jazz music came to mind. Sitting in a stool across from it had been a skinny punk kid with earlobe discs and spiked hair. He fidgeted in his seat, cell phone clasped in his hands. His nervous eyes were glued to the screen as if expecting a call. One of the other waitresses came up to him, tried to take his order. He refused, waved her off. The waitress had stuck up her nose at him, went back to the kitchen counter to pick up food for one of the other tables.
Beside the youth had sat a trucker whose belt couldn’t contain the bulge of his stomach. He gorged himself on a pound of Salisbury steak. Finch had watched him jam his fork into three or four chunks at a time, chasing it down with a thermos chock-full of foul-smelling swill. He’d belched, disturbing the other patrons. The youth ignored him, still fixated on the phone in his hands.
None of these men seemed to fit what he was looking for in the culprit. Susan’s murderer had been self-centered, like the youth, but he’d also been lethal and cold in his assault. Empty rebellion couldn’t be at the heart of it. He’d gotten away on foot, which ruled out the heavyset trucker with the manners of a hog.
But Finch knew that somewhere, perhaps in a part of the room he’d not seen, lurked the man behind this crime. He’d been near enough to hear their conversation, had knowledge of a possible romantic encounter, and had inserted himself into their lives with purpose.
The supposed first clue could prove to jumpstart the truth, but Finch wasn’t banking on a man this sick in the head leaving him an easy trail. The better bet was to wait on the results for the bullet. One fingerprint and the man would be behind bars before any game had gone underway.
Finch saw neither hide nor hair of tumbleweeds, hayseeds, or hillbillies as he drove into the four-way stop he’d came through on his way into town. He looked to either side of him into the night. The sheriff did the same. Even with the high beams on, they couldn’t identify anything resembling a clue. Whatever it was, it had to be small and unassuming. Else it wouldn’t be any fun for the killer, he wagered.
“Come on, let’s get out of the car. It’s what he expects.”
They eased the doors of the Jeep shut. If the perpetrator was there, maybe they could get the drop on him this way. “How do you know it isn’t a woman?”
Fair point. He hadn’t considered that. “Okay, suppose it is. Do you remember anyone in the diner who looked like the type of person capable of this? The only women there yesterday were the waitresses and yourself. I doubt any of them were capable of murder. If you’d like to nominate yourself?”
She relented. “Alright, I’ll back off of it. Let’s just get this over with and get back to the station.”
The grass was tall and writhed in the night breeze. He waded through it, flashlight turned on intermittently to spot snakes and other pests in the grass. Frustrated that the clue hadn’t been more specific, he kicked at the stem of a dandelion. It exploded into a puff of golden flakes. Big accomplishment: destroying a flower. The men who’d trained him would be proud.
Sheriff Donahue picked through the weeds on the other side of the rightmost road. He glimpsed her hair, almost a fire in the darkness, sway back and forth as she hacked with her hands through the growth. He jumped when she yelped. He called out to her, concerned that she’d stepped on a cottonmouth or maybe a rattler.
“Stubbed my toe on this rock. Wait, no, it’s a tombstone of some kind. A memorial? And look, there’s a card on it.”
He raced to her side, careful not to disturb the yellow jacket hive nestled in the ground. The last thing he needed was a swarm of pissed off insects out for his blood. She shined her light to mark the trail she’d taken to get there. He arrived with his gun drawn, ready for any disruptions in case he’d misjudged the man behind this.
The type used was identical to the one that preceded it. Large-print magazine letters glued onto on an index card. This one read: You didn’t listen to my warning, did you? Good. Trust your instincts. You’ll need help to solve the case. It only gets more difficult from here. Your next clue is at your feet.
Cunning that he’d anticipated Finch bringing help. This puzzle was simpler than he anticipated. The next clue had to be buried beneath the memorial. He glanced at the stone: it was blank, yet it was in the shape of a tombstone. Had it been placed here for this moment? Or was it an unmarked grave? A part of him was eager to find out as if a childlike curiosity overtook him.
He grasped the stone, yanked it out of the ground with ease. Dirt and dust billowed out. It caught in his sinuses. He sneezed.
“Bless you,” said Donahue.
A loud series of clicks resonated in the darkness. It sounded like a key turning in a lock. Finch looked down at his feet.
They were standing on a wooden door. His eyes noticed the mechanism where the stone had been. He sighed.
The ground gave way, and they plummeted into the void.
THE TRIALS
“Are you okay?” Finch asked, pushing off of the floor of the chamber where they had landed. The room resembled a wine cellar. Cobwebbed shelves contained grubby bottles of liquor. A pair of tri-forked candlesticks lit the room on either side. At the far end, a massive steel door barred their exit.
Her words came in scattered breaths. “Had the wind knocked out of me,” she gasped, “but I’m okay.” She glanced up at the hole they had fallen through. Faint beams of moonlight filtered into the room from above, but the opening was too high to reach.
Dusting off his jacket, he felt around for his weapon. The Browning was intact, and Finch thanked God the safety had remained on. Getting shot in the rear during the tumble would’ve exacerbated the situation. A part of him wished he’d not left the Desert Eagle back at the station, but he had to keep focused on the task at hand.
Getting out of this room was top priority. He peered around for a ladder or rope they could use to escape. Nope. Presuming they hadn’t been duped into trapping themselves forward was their way out. He strode over to the door with purpose. With luck, the door might budge with their combined efforts.
His flashlight had broken in the fall but the sheriff’s was still intact. She shined her light on the door as he fed his hand around the edge, hoping to find enough wiggle room to pull the door loose. He found a hold at the bottom and beckoned the sheriff over.
“On the count of three,” he said. “One.” He gripped the underside of the door. She did the same. “Two.” He braced himself. “Three.”
They heaved. It didn’t budge. They pushed up, hoping it might slide with enough force. Immovable. The door was too heavy, too secure. Palms sweating, they let go. Finch and the sheriff stepped away and took another gander at the exterior of the door. There had to be a way to open it from this side. This wasn’t a prison cell; the designer had frequent visitors in mind.
Donahue sniffed the air and backtracked to the shelves of liquor. Finch ignored her, intent on figuring out the secret behind the door’s immobility. There were no knobs, no handles to grasp and turn. There were no card readers though the idea that this was some secret lab with coordinated key cards amused him. Ridiculous though the notion was, it would’ve been an improvement over their current circumstances.
“Agent Finch?” the sheriff said aloud, a bottle in her hand, “this is laced with the spores. Wherever we are, the bootleggers supplied it pretty heavily.”
So there was a link between the bootleggers and this murderer. Interesting, but not all that helpful in expediting their exit. He resumed examining the door, certain that the answer was carved into it or it would at least point him in the general direction of whatever opened it. There had to be a lever or a switch.
He heard a click, softer than the one that had sounded when the trap door opened but loud enough to echo in the room. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Donahue had her finger pressed against a small red button that had been hidden behind the bottle. The door rumbled as it lifted off of the ground.
“Some federal agent you are,” s
he teased. She pointed her flashlight at the button then trailed upward, following a thick black bundle of cables that converged at the top of the door. So it was electric. That meant there had to be a generator or a fuse box somewhere nearby.
“Everybody gets one,” he joked, feeling light-headed. He sobered in a hurry when he saw the narrow corridor ahead of them. The hall ended in another steel door though there were no cables leading to it he could see. If it was also electronically controlled, then the engineers had concealed the cables. He made out the shape of a circular mechanism adjacent to the door, though at this distance he was uncertain what it could be.
Signaling for her to follow, Finch walked down the path. The passage was so tight he was grateful that Mason hadn’t been part of their escapade. More than a few sections required him to suck in his stomach as he sidled through. If what the sheriff had told him held true, the deputy would’ve thrown up at the sight.
The mechanism he’d glimpsed turned out to be a rotatable dial embedded in the wall beside the door. Three insignias emblazoned the dial, including one that bore a likeness to the parasite creatures in the mine. The remaining two depicted more peculiar shapes. One was a snake intertwined with an olive branch. The final sigil reminded him of three crosses stitched together, the largest in the middle with the smaller ones distended from its flanks.
Another index card rested below the dial. This one had a not-so-cute rhyme: Eve is upon us, ready your peace. Progress is quick, don’t spend yourself too soon. Can’t dot your T’s until the murders cease. Solve this riddle or else you’re a buffoon.
“Seems simple enough,” said Donahue. She reached out to turn the dial in the order the note hinted at.
Finch grabbed her wrist. He shook his head, pointed to the note in his hand. Her eyes traced the lines again. “So?”
He let go of her wrist and turned the card over. The three symbols were drawn on the back, numbered in the opposite order that the riddle had indicated. He rotated the dial, ensuring that the arrow pointed first to the stitched crosses, then the parasite, and the snake on the olive branch last. There was another low rumble, and the door ascended into its alcove.
Confused, she said, “I don’t get it. What about those lines made you think the real code was written on the back?”
“There were a bunch of red flags on that one,” he said. She shot him a look of disbelief. Pressed, he explained, “First of all, that note wouldn’t shut up about speed and progress and things of that sort. It also recalls the story of Eve, who was led into temptation: in this case, the temptation of what was directly in front of us as the solution. I’m guessing something very bad would’ve happened had we entered the wrong answer.”
He pointed at an assortment of holes on the ground. The sheriff bent down, gazed into one of them. Inside was an iron spike, almost medieval in appearance. Odds were that it had been rigged to skewer them if they lacked the virtue necessary to solve the puzzle. “Plus,” Finch added, “double checking both sides had to pay off at some point.”
In what started to feel like an elaborate and unfunny joke, the width of the passageways persisted in being as narrow as the one they’d left. This one coiled in a snake-like pattern, curving for inexplicable reasons that made Finch curse in exasperation. The length of this corridor dragged for some time, causing him to question whether the partial darkness had played tricks and he’d somehow looped back.
When they at last reached the end of the passage, he suppressed a moan. Once more, a crude device blocked the way forward, yet another steel door barring their path. This one appeared to have a keyhole. Great. He hoped they didn’t have to go spelunking for keys.
Sheriff Donahue beat him to the card this time. He craned his neck to look over her shoulder at the clue which, he was pleased to notice, didn’t rhyme: Congratulations, you’re getting somewhere. Your patience must be more than fair to have made it this far. Now’s a test that will rack your brain, at least if you fail. Keep in mind only one thing. It takes a steady hand to rule from greatest to least. She spun the card around: Nice try, no gimmicks used twice.
Indented in the wall was a panel with a series of buttons, eight in all. The buttons were arranged in an alternating diagonal pattern. Below each button was a diminutive sketch of an animal with an arrow pointing upward. Atop the panel, a row of five taps sprouted from behind grates. An oily smell emanated from within. Finch surmised that pressing the buttons in the right sequence must light fires inside them. It was like a convoluted furnace.
Before they moved to try their hand at the puzzle, Finch squinted at the ceiling to see what would come down if they failed. The sight of a hefty anvil capable of crushing both of their skulls greeted him. That it was suspended by a rather flimsy rope didn’t quell his fear. He surmised that if the wrong taps were lit, it would burn through the wire. Splat! Dead Agent Finch and dead Sheriff Donahue.
There was no room to maneuver if they cut it themselves and he didn’t want to waste ammo shooting it down. The sheriff eyed it herself. “If we screw this up, be ready to move,” she said. Her voice cracked as she spoke.
They skimmed over the note again, checking to see where they should be putting emphasis. Finch looked at the animals, identifying them in turn. “Okay, we’ve got a raccoon, a fish, a wolf, a horse, a man, a snake, a lion, and an eagle. Eight animals. Five spouts.”
He deduced that the greater number of animals meant that not every one of them would be used in the solution. The problem then was twofold: other than man, who ruled the animal kingdom from top to bottom? And if only a select number of choices were useable, how was one supposed to determine which? Would a pack of wolves be rated higher than a single lion? Or did something like the venom of a snake make it higher on the food chain? The questions came faster than any answers.
As Donahue mouthed possible solutions in the corner, he cast his eyes back up at the anvil overhead. He didn’t trust that rope, could almost hear it snapping even as it held firm. All he could think was that if it broke, and the anvil plunged, they’d have no warning, only a sudden crash onto their heads.
He reiterated the riddle in his head. The line about a steady hand pointed to fighting through fear. That’s what he’d believed at first. But that wasn’t the MO for the previous puzzle. Every line had been significant. Perhaps it meant that the animals had to have hands or claws? If so that would shorten the list down to man, lion, eagle, wolf, and raccoon. Man would be at the top, inflated egos and all, followed by the lion which was a natural predator of birds. A wolf wouldn’t be prey to an eagle, but perhaps it being low to the ground lowered its status. The raccoon, of course, would be at the bottom as an unthreatening scavenger.
Flames flickered to life, startling Finch, who was lost in thought. Cogs moved behind the panel, operating the mechanism that had kept the door closed. They worked at a snail’s pace. The sheriff waited by the door, a conflicted smile forming on her face.
“Guess it was my turn to solve this one,” she said.
“You did that pretty quick. Are you sure you’re not a suspect?”
The door opened.
He started to ask her what the solution had been.
The anvil fell. He froze.
Donahue barreled into him, knocking him out of the way. A booming metallic clang pierced his ears as the anvil collided with the ground where he’d stood. He knew that rope had been ancient and too thin to boot.
Haggard breaths filled the corridor. Shaky but otherwise unharmed, the sheriff helped him to his feet. He checked the Browning again, found it to be in working order. Stepping over the anvil, he asked, “So, how did you solve that riddle? I wasn’t sure myself.”
She didn’t say anything but held up her hand and pointed to it with the other. Finch felt like a fool.
“You have got to be kidding me. All you had to do was spread your hand?”
She nodded. “Yep. Each finger lined up with one of the clawed animals. Man on top, followed by lion, wolf, eagle, and racco
on.” At least he’d gotten close on the corresponding order. “Though what happens if your index finger is longer than your ring finger is beyond me.”
Finch pointed to the death trap behind them. “I’m going to say he accounted for that one.”
The next room was wider than either of the previous two. Hung from hooks attached to wooden foundations, four electric lanterns distributed light throughout the room. Painted in black on the walls were the words “Purge” and “Rise” in the same calligraphic style of handwriting as in the religious text he’d read. In the center of the room a stone slab rose above the ground. Measuring six feet in length, the rock was solid and not eroded by the passage of time. Scorch marks streaked the surface. He hazarded a guess at its intended usage.
“This is where the cult sacrifices their victims.”
Donahue was upset. “All this time, you’ve been talking up this cult, and I didn’t want to believe you. I kept thinking there had to be some lone nutcase on the loose, that this town, my town, couldn’t be harboring anything as disturbing as all that.” She threw up her hands in submission. “But this place? Tucked away, protected by puzzles and traps? This is real, and it’s been under my nose, under my father’s nose, for years.”