by Mark Tufo
“You prepared to have your mind blown?” John asked me. He pulled on the small ring and the door opened.
I was completely unprepared for what I was looking at. It looked like a rabbit hole, albeit a little bigger, a child could scramble through comfortably enough, it looked just big enough for a male. I looked over to John who had a huge grin spread across his face. “No fucking way,” I told him. Now all I could picture was being stuck in a tube staring at John’s feet as we wasted away.
“I know, right?! Isn’t it awesome! We should grab some beer,” he said enthusiastically as he hustled over to the fridge and started shoving cans in his pockets.
“John, how deep is that thing?” I asked, taking a step back; fearful that it would suck me in and never let me go. “I have claustrophobia, John!” Fuck the near panic, I was in full blown hysteria mode, I would have willingly gone to the zombies at this point rather than deal with the wormhole.
“See you on the other side!” John said as he quite literally dove into the hole. I expected to hear him start screaming that he was stuck or that the giant worm from Tremors was chasing his ass.
“Great, Talbot, like you needed another fucking reason to not go into the hole,” I said aloud after thinking about the movie that had scared the crap out of me in my youth.
“You coming?” drifted up from the hole. I thought I was imagining it, but then I distinctly heard him tell me to bring more beer. The zombie falling through the window was the last bit of motivation I needed. I screwed up royally and got into the hole feet first. I was death-clinching the small lip of the trap door as I pulled the door shut just as the zombie inside crawled over to me, it’s mouth not more than a few inches from my fingers. I was plunged into a darkness a blind person would have sensed.
I could hear the zombie scrambling to its feet. I let go of the lip just as it stepped on the trap door. My fingers were pinched a little bit, but it was nothing compared to the slamming of my heart in my chest. I wasn’t moving, John had slithered down the hole like a snake, and I was stuck fast. I tried to wriggle along, but my arms were pinioned above my head, and I didn’t have the room to bring them by my sides and help me move.
I wanted to cry. I could feel the walls collapsing on me, breathing was getting difficult. My next option was to push the hatch open and kill the zombie in the cabin, but I knew I’d never get out of the hole quick enough. It would be gnawing on my face as I struggled to get free. Die in the dark or have my face eaten, those were the two choices I was weighing out when John spoke.
“You coming, man?”
“John, I’m stuck!” I screamed. The zombie above me stopped its shuffling. The cabin door finally gave way with a resounding splintering.
“Did you grab more beer?”
“Would you leave me here if I didn’t?” I asked, truly concerned.
The zombies above me were having a field day on the cabin; what little possessions were in there were being reduced to rubble. I could hear the planks on the trap door creak every time one or more of them stepped on them and I sincerely hoped they would hold up. I shrieked—yeah dammit, I shrieked—when I felt John’s hand wrap around my ankle.
“Did you hear that, man? Sounded like a banshee,” he said in all seriousness.
“That’s probably what it was then,” I said in a near falsetto voice, not yet getting my rampant emotions in check yet.
John was pulling me down the hole. I was trying my best to not eat dirt…I was not succeeding.
“Hi ho, hi ho it’s off to work I go!” John was singing at the top of his lungs.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked in response to his song choice. I was being dragged through a tunnel by a tripping madman singing Disney songs…with zombies above me. I couldn’t have made this shit up if I tried.
“You ready?” John asked me.
“For...?” I was beginning to ask as I felt myself falling. It seemed like I was suspended in space for hours, free falling through the cosmos, but now that I’m looking back on it, I’m pretty sure that was a side effect of the drugs I was on. The fall was no more than six feet, and I landed awkwardly but softly on some strewn hay.
The cavern—that was what it was—was lit up with some small lanterns that John must have placed here. “Where the...what the hell is this place?” I asked, standing up. I had a good inch or two from the top of my head to the ceiling. I tried my best to not think about it or my claustrophobia would begin to set in again.
“Chateau de Simms.” He smiled, his face caked with dirt, I rubbed absently on mine realizing I probably looked much the same. “Come on, come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me further away from the entry hole.
The cavern opened up, the ceiling now a good eight or nine feet from my head, the knot of claustrophobia around my heart began to loosen. The room stretched further out than side to side, maybe twenty-five feet by ten feet. I was having great difficulty with spatial relations and the echoing was completely throwing me off, threatening to give me one hell of a case of vertigo. I could smell a faint scent that harkened back to days of yore.
“Oh, my babies!” John wailed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking around wildly.
John sat down heavily by a row of huge potted plants. Correction, huge Pot plants. I had only seen plants this size on the news during drug busts.
“They’re dying,” he said sadly as he caressed some of the sticky buds.
“John the Tripper, I need to wrap my head around this can you start from the beginning?” I asked.
John looked up and over at me, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. “Well, scientists say that the universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly...”
“No, man, not that far back.”
“Mesozoic then?” he asked clearly confused with my request.
“This cavern, John the Tripper, let’s start with this cavern,” I clarified, or so I had thought.
“Cave formation begins when rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide as it falls through—”
“Oh fuck, man, you’re hurting my head.”
“Here smoke some of this,” John said, extending his arm, a fairly good sized joint in the palm of his hand. “This will help.”
“Like I need more drugs.” I said sarcastically rubbing my temples.
“Exactly,” John said as he looked in his hand and seemed surprised at what he found. “Did you give me this?” he asked. He sparked it up before I could respond, even if I wanted to.
I’ll admit the sweet smell of the smoke was enticing, but I needed to be closer to reality as opposed to the opposite.
“Man, this is some good shit,” John said as he took a sharp inhalation. “Where’d you get it?” he asked as he pulled the joint away and was looking at the burning end. “Colombia maybe?”
“I don’t really remember,” I told him; that seemed easier than trying to reason with him.
“You got anymore?” he asked, taking another toke.
I shook my head negatively as I began to explore our surroundings. Besides the landing hay and the potted pot plants, there were some tailgating fold-out chairs, a small collapsing table, a bunch of candles and some UV lighting that seemed to run on a cord that went back up the hole we had previously exited from.
At the far end of the cavern was another hole a little bigger than the other, this one looked like you could crawl on hands and knees, but I was in no rush, the mere thought of it got a quickening in my pulse.
“Did you make this place?” I asked John, hoping he would be on a cohesive thought upswing.
“It was here,” he said with abbreviation as he took another hit.
“The tunnel from the cabin was here also?”
“No, I did that. I was pretty sure an alien spacecraft had crash landed here in the ‘40s. So I rented a ground penetrating radar set-up. When it bounced this hole back up, I had to see what it was. Figured the ship would be down here too, it wasn’t.”<
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“The previous cabin motel owners—or Stephanie for that matter—didn’t care that you dug a hole in the middle of that room?” I asked, pointing back up.
“At first I snuck the dirt out in my pockets in the middle of the night.”
“Like The Great Escape?” I asked, remembering a World War Two movie my dad and I used to enjoy watching.
“Well I wasn’t really trying to escape, but sure,” he replied, looking at me like I was the crazy one; and maybe in his skewed reality, that was the truth. “Then, when I got to the cavern, I decided I liked it a lot and I bought the motel…or maybe Stephanie did.”
“This is all yours?”
He was smiling again, whether from the weed or being the proud owner I wasn’t sure.
“You’re fucking loaded aren’t you?” I asked. “Like one of those über-rich trust fund babies aren’t you!” I said, pointing and laughing at him.
“I had a friend stole two pounds of dope from me, when he sold it, he put all the money into eBay stocks. He felt so guilty he gave me thirty million.”
“Dollars? That’s unreal.”
“What?”
“Wow, you’d never know you were worth that much.”
“I’m not anymore.”
I figured he had smoked, snorted or swallowed the vast majority of his windfall.
“Stephanie took the profits and rolled it into Google. I think at one time she said two hundred and fifty million.”
“Holy shit, John!” I nearly fell on my ass just thinking about the staggering amount. “Why are you still living in that little house in backwoods North Carolina?”
“Where would I go?” he asked in all seriousness.
“Anywhere I suppose.”
“Why? It was home.”
“Yeah, John the Tripper, I guess you’re right. Home is home, that’s pretty deep.”
“Not really, we’re only about twenty feet down.”
“I meant the...forget it. Shit two hundred and fifty million, that’s pretty impressive.”
“It’s only money.”
“That’s what people who have a lot say. For those that are or were struggling, it takes on a different meaning.”
“Want some?”
“I don’t think it’s worth much anymore.”
“Right, the funky people. They’ve been kinda of fouling everything up.”
“Is this place safe?”
“It’s deep enough that we don’t need the tin foil hats. The funkies can’t get here, and the government already removed the spaceship, so they ain’t coming back. So yeah…safe as any place can be.”
“I need to come down, John. All I’m seeing is tracers, and the reverberation in here is throwing me off. “
“Then you’re gonna love this,” he said as he snapped some glow sticks.
He started to twirl his arms. The kaleidoscope of colors was mesmerizing. I don’t know how long I watched, but the chemical reaction was beginning to peter out when I finally pulled my gaze away.
“Come on sit down,” John told me. I had not even known he sat; the colors were still swirling vividly in front of me. “Smoke this.” He handed me a pipe that looked suspiciously like a peace pipe.
I took a long drag, the aromatic smoke filling my lungs, the smell of vanilla wafting around our enclosure. “What is this?” I asked, looking at the pipe, realizing that I should probably have asked before taking a hit. With John all bets were off.
“It’s a personal blend.”
“Your words are not as comforting as I would hope, John.”
“North Carolina tobacco, with a smattering of Turkish hashish,” he told me as he handed the pipe back.
The sweet-spiced tobacco melded nicely with the tangy tickle of the hash. The buzz was pleasant and rounded the edges of the harsh trip. I was feeling better—not normal, not by a long shot—but at least I didn’t feel like I was going to come out of my skin. Although I figured I had already done that once today and that should be enough.
We sat there for an indeterminable amount of time. I found great comfort in John, for a man so out of step with the ‘real’ world, he was the lord of this domain. I smoked until I couldn’t lift my arms any more. We talked some, for the life of me I can’t remember anything except the profoundness of it. And then John told me to go to sleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Eliza and Tomas
“They are gone or they are dead, Eliza, how much longer must we walk around this dead city?” Tomas asked.
Eliza was about to answer when a woman clutching a bottle of amber liquid stumbled out of her house. “Are you that bitch?” Mary yelled.
“Well, well what do we have here?” Eliza said bemused as she strode over the lawn towards Mary.
Mary’s booze-induced bravado barely held up as Eliza stood face-to-face with the woman. But she stood defiant in the face of death. “You are…aren’t you? I can smell the stench of death all around you.”
“What do you know of me?” Eliza asked Mary out of curiosity.
“You’re not smo bad!” Mary slurred, trying to stand up taller, hoping her slight height advantage would somehow intimidate the smaller woman. But what Eliza lacked in size she more than made up for in intimidation.
“Oh, I can assure you that I am,” Eliza said.
“That Talbot fellow…he was all petrified of you. I don’t see why,” Mary said, taking a huge swig of the bourbon she was clutching.
“Where is he?” Tomas asked, suddenly interested in the conversation.
“He’s dead!” she shouted, swinging the bottle, some of the fire water sloshing out.
“And you know this for a fact?” Eliza asked, a smirk on her face.
“The big black man and his own brother said so. They’re all dead!” she shrieked.
“BT is dead?” Tomas asked saddened.
“I’d imagine,” Mary answered.
“You don’t know?”
“How the fruck would I know, do I look like a psychic?” she said, taking another swig. “I’m just glad they took the old bat with them.”
“Deneaux was with them?” Tomas asked.
“Fucking witch. Now she was scary,” Mary replied.
“How long have they been gone?” Tomas asked.
“Who the hell are you?” Mary asked, taking another swig.
“I am her brother.”
“Lucky you,” Mary said sardonically.
“Did they say where they were going?” Eliza asked.
“Why?” Mary asked suspiciously.
“Why did you not leave with them?” Tomas asked.
“It’s not safe out here, not safe at all for my Joshie.”
Eliza looked past Mary. “A child perhaps?” Eliza asked.
“He’s not in there!” Mary said loudly when she realized she may have said more than she intended.
“So you who thought the world was too dangerous for your spawn, sent him away? Then opened your door to challenge me? How has your kind survived for so long?”
“My kind? What are you? I didn’t believe any of that horseshit about you being a vampire.”
“Well that was your second mistake,” Eliza said, effortlessly pushing Mary aside so she could enter the house.
***
Mary began to scream as Josh’s body flew down the stairs, to slam against the far wall, then crumple in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
“The whelp is dead!” Eliza said hotly as she came down the stairs.
Mary dropped her bottle and fell to the floor to wrap her arms around her son. “He was sleeping!” she screamed. “You’ll hurt him!”
Tomas stood in the doorway; he could smell the death on the child and madness upon the mother. Eliza had not done it, he was thankful for small favors.
Eliza stepped over the huddled family and walked past Tomas to get back outside.
Tomas thought there might yet be hope for his sister that she had not killed the mother then he realized quite the opposite was
true, she had left the mother alive to mourn over the loss of her son. Her cruelty was not bound by any depths.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Maine
Tracy awoke in her bed. No that’s not quite right, she thought. It was her bed she was using now, then the pain of loss and despair settled upon her like a cloak when she realized the other half of the mattress was cold and empty. But that wasn’t quite true either; she could feel the weight of something that was making her gravitate towards the middle. She slowly turned, fearful of what she might find. Henry was sitting up on the bed staring off into space, seeing things only dogs could.
“You miss him, too?” Tracy asked as she stroked the dog’s massive face and barrel-shaped chest.
Henry kept looking off into the distance, not acknowledging her ministrations.
“Listen, I know you were always Mike’s dog, and I’m so sorry that I yelled at him when he saved you. He loved you, Henry. I love you, too. It’s just that I guess he always thought you were our fourth kid, and I didn’t see it until recently.”
Henry cocked his head to the side like he could hear something very far away. He barked once, which in itself was unusual. His mouth opened wide in what Tracy could only describe as a grin, his heavy tongue lolling about, he finally pulled his gaze back in to register Tracy’s existence. He then contentedly lay down and, before finally settling in, let a blast of essence de’ Henry waft throughout.
“That’s my cue,” Tracy said as she threw the covers off and headed for the exit.
Tony was sitting in the living room chair. Ronnie and Tracy had not told him about their suspicions regarding Mike. No matter what she had felt in her heart, she had no proof and did not want to burden the man with it.
“Feeling better, honey?” Tony asked her.
“Surprisingly, I am,” she told him, heading over to give him a kiss on the cheek. “What is that smell?” Tracy asked brushing her hand past her nose.