by R. L. Nolen
He held himself against a wall, trying to decide. Two dark, rough-hewn holes gaped before him. Ip dip, sky blue! Who’s it? Not you! What a stupid thing to have flash across his mind. In this horrifying chase to save Ruth, he found his mind wandering. There must be bad air. He heard a cry. He pitched forward as he tripped over a wide board. It had been covering a hole. The fresh breeze blowing from the hole cleared his head. He got up and kept going. From somewhere before him came the sickly smell of rotting flesh. There was a pair of women’s shoes, laying as if tossed aside. The floor rose steadily. The walls gleamed with streaming water.
Passing a ridge of dark granite, he saw from the corner of his eye a reflected flash from his light. He played the beam into the deep shadows and saw three small legs, severed and neatly lined in a row. He came to a full stop.
A pretty bracelet on an out-flung arm led his eye to Liz Malone, who lay toes up, as if peacefully asleep. Her dress, blue like her eyes, was one Jon had noticed before. Her head was turned slightly. As he stared at her, her eyes opened.
He gasped, heart thudded to his throat. “My God!”
Liz moved a hand and then tried to sit up. Jon rushed to her. Her head was bleeding. She said, “He wants to kill me. My husband wants to kill me.”
“Can you stand?”
“I need air. What smells so bad? Where am I? What has he done?”
Jon didn’t want her so shocked she couldn’t move. He needed her help. “Tell me what you know.”
“It was after breakfast. He told me he wanted me to see something at his office. I followed him into the wall. I thought … it was amazing, but then I don’t remember anything else. Except once we were here, he said …” She cried out, “He said he wants to kill me. Why?”
“You’ve got to get back down this tunnel. Here’s my penlight. There’s a hole in the floor you’ve got to miss. Do you think you can do it? Can you walk?”
“Where will you be?”
“I’ve got to keep going. He’s got Ruth Butler.”
“Oh my, no!”
“Can you get back? They are trying to break open the wall. There is no way to contact them this far underground. You can tell them where we are.”
“I know how to open it. He showed me because I wouldn’t follow him unless he showed me.”
“Please, go help them.”
Liz stumbled back the way they had come, leaving Jon in the dark.
52
Jon turned his mobile on and pressed the flashlight app. It was brighter than the penlight. He clambered farther into the tunnel until he found himself at a dead end. Somehow he had taken a wrong turn, except there had been no turns. An enormous wall of smooth rock blocked his path.
His light revealed an amphitheater of rock that could fit his entire London flat. Water dripped and gurgled with a hollow sound but he couldn't see any water. There were moaning sounds nearby, but he couldn't see anything. The ground was knobby rock like the rest of the tunnel, but there was mud and leaves and twigs. Large boulders sat around the edges of the area. There must be an opening to the outside that he couldn't see. He would look behind the boulders.
An old-fashioned oil-rag torch had been jammed into a crevice on the floor. It had been recently extinguished because one end still glowed in places. He was glad he still had a matchbook he'd picked up at the Spider’s Web. Kneeling, he balanced the mobile, lit a match, and stuck it to the dark mass on the end of the stick. It didn’t ignite. He hit the torch against a rock to knock off mud.
He struck another match. The torch flared. An inverted, funnel-shaped black hole in the ceiling intrigued him. He held the flame higher. It was a shaft filled with cobwebs. He stuck the torch in and air currents flirted with the flame. They were close to the surface. This was where the leaves came from.
He punched Trewe’s number into his mobile. Bloody unlikely any signal could be picked up at this point, but nothing wrong with trying. He saw it did connect and was about to exclaim to Trewe that he was not far underground when he felt a sharp pain, heard something crack and saw the ground rushing at his face.
Ruth gasped as Jon’s body crumpled to the floor. She had tried to scream as Malone snuck up to Jon as he was lighting the torch and hit him with a rock. Nothing came out but a high moaning sound from around the gag Malone had stuffed in her mouth. Her feet and hands were trussed roughly with a piece of rope behind her so she couldn’t even squirm. When Jon arrived, she had tried to make some sound, but Malone’s thin bony fingers pressed against her throat. Oh Lord Jesus, help us!
On the ground near Jon’s out-flung hand, the mobile phone squawked.
“Wakie, wakie, Jonnie boy!” A maniacal giggle came from Malone. He picked up the mobile.
“All will be well in the end, you know,” Malone said into the mobile. “You think you’re so very important, policeman Trewe. How do you feel now?”
Malone hummed a senseless tune and danced around the rock room in the flickering torchlight. As he swung around near Ruth with his hand arched toward her face, she ducked instinctively.
As Malone hummed and danced in his own, sick little world, she worked her way to her knees and began her own little dance. If he were to look her way, she thought, perhaps he would think she was on the same mental wave length or something crazy. Soon her arms were raw. Warm blood dripped between her fingers.
Her fevered maneuvers had her arms finally free. She crawled to Jon. Dear God! She threw herself across his chest.
His heart thumped in her ear. Alive? He was alive!
The flame from the lit torch danced across the walls joined by Malone’s gyrating shadow. He danced closer and with a swift step lifted her away from Jon. He leered at her and pawed at her breasts. She rolled away from him. He was working himself into a frenzy. Shuffling in a wide circle again, he sang out, “Oh! Your lover’s dead.” The sweat rolled off his face. Saliva dripped from his mouth onto his dirty shirt.
“He isn’t my lover.”
“Mother, we both know what sort of company you keep. No use pretending.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“I recognized you. Aren’t you glad I did? Time is. Time was. Time’s past. That’s us. Mother, I’ve always loved you!” He had to pull his hair out of his mouth. He stood very still, staring at her, his eyes dark empty pits. “Mother, no one can compare to you. The circle is never broken is it? You always said you would come back to haunt me.”
His voice cracked, becoming high-pitched again. “I say what I mean and mean what I say.”
He suddenly focused his attention on Ruth. The stare he gave her was lit with its own cold fury. In his own tone, Malone said, “But you see, I have figured this through. You want to die. You want it.”
Her thoughts came slow but she scrambled for words. “Why did you kill those others? That girl?”
“I didn’t kill anyone. They died.”
“Why did you keep her?”
“I … I wanted her … youth. All of them. They tried to give it to me. I can’t find Cecil. She’s missing. I want her back. I can’t have her back unless I’m young again like she is.”
“Why Tavy?”
He appeared confused. “You told me to rid myself of hindrances.” He whispered, “The old man knew my name. He tried to convert me. What would I do with a god? That hypocrite the postmistress—she figured it out.” He paused, and then said, “And that German whore wanted what I couldn’t give her, didn’t she? She wouldn’t let up with her insistent demands—sex, sex, sex. That’s all she ever wanted. I told her when I was young again … but then … then she laughed!”
“Liz? You killed your wife?” Dear God! That dear woman who made her good soup.
With a sneer, Malone bent toward Ruth. Then he jerked away, chanting, “Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.” He took off his jacket and climbed atop a boulder, teetered, then balanced. He slumped down and stared at her. He looked like a vulture.
“Why did you take my daughter?” Ruth said.
; He seemed puzzled.
“Take your daughter?” He sat down on the boulder.
“She’s a little girl.”
“Young girl. Yes. Her blood is good.”
“No!”
His voice rose to a higher pitch. “I followed you, Mother. That girl was going to tell her mum. I tried to stop her to explain. You saw it, Mother. She fell. Knocked herself out. Her fault.” He held his arms out to Ruth and whined, “Tell me you love me.”
His red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes protruded from his oily, swollen face. He was more than mad—he was desperate. In an anguished voice, he cried, “Just this once. Tell me you love me.”
He leapt off the boulder and loomed over her. “Tell me!” Malone’s shirt, drenched with sweat, clung to his shrunken chest and bulging stomach. The animal smell of him was overpowering. His wild eyes went unfocused and he turned away from her and spun in a circle around her. He moved his hands above his head as if flapping wings as he bobbed and swayed to unheard music.
She looked at Jon. Lord, please. If only he would wake up. If only she could find Annie. But if she couldn’t, if she had to die, she would take Malone with her.
Malone’s scraggly head appeared from the shadows like a death skull. The whites of his eyes showing, he stared in her direction but didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything, but seemed to be looking at something just above her head. He scooted forward and caught her up before she could brace herself. Her feet slammed against the floor as he dragged her towards the wall. He pressed a spot on the rock.
The wall’s mechanics figured out by wily smugglers a century before worked as well as it must have always. It slid aside with hardly a whisper. He held her against his foul shirt, his face next to hers. She turned away. He shoved her through the doorway into a pocket of fresher air. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light glaring from a diamond-shaped hole in front of her. She heard the wash of surf. Her heart leaped. The sea was near.
The stone door in the wall closed behind them. Jon Graham! He was still in there.
Jon swam up through layers of gray. Something near his ear hissed. Something tickled his cheek. His head throbbed. He cracked open one eye. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. The torch was still stuck in the crevice in the floor. It hissed. He remembered Trewe on the mobile. Where was it? Funny, he didn’t remember leaving it over there. He didn’t recall that piece of cloth on the floor, either. Squeezing his eyes shut, he huddled into a tight fetal position, wondering what part of him hurt the most.
As he struggled into an upright position, his mobile yelled. He grabbed it.
He held it to his ear. “Hallo? Hallo?”
“Jon! Is Malone still there?”
Ruth looked frantically around the place they were in now. Green, brown, and yellow lichen spotted the walls. Striations of white streaked the black rock. Water shimmered in a small pool at the center of this grotto. Red and white rags lay everywhere. To one side was a wall studded with trinkets and swatches of what looked disgustingly like human hair. There were signs of human habitation—mucky dishes, rotting pieces of fruit, metal buckets, and a feral smell.
A pile of filthy rags moved and Ruth’s mouth went dry. The rags heaved. Dirty streamers of hair appeared. Behind the straggles Ruth saw the eyes. Human? It couldn’t be.
“Mummy?”
53
Jon used fingers to force his other eyelid open. It was caked with dust and blood. He scrutinized the cavern. “I don’t see Malone. Or Ruth. He spoke to you?”
“Yes. What happened to them?”
“There are drag marks on the ground leading to the wall.”
“Liz Malone showed us how to operate the wall. We’ve got men coming your way.”
“Doesn’t matter if he has another way out.”
“We wanted to use infrared cameras to find them from the cliffs, but two storm fronts are colliding out there. It’s bad. We can’t use the helicopter.”
“I’ll keep trying on this end to get through.” Inch by filthy inch, Jon continued his slow and methodical pushing against the wall. He worked at his third strategy. The first and second had resulted in nothing. He began at the top, as high as he could reach standing, slowly nudging inward each inch of the flat rock, working his way horizontally across, then back again.
“Annie!” Ruth cried. She glanced at Malone framed by light in the cave’s doorway, muttering to himself. Wind howled across the entrance. There was a storm out there. She leapt over the cans and piles to get to Annie. She grabbed and held on to her.
“He’s mad,” Annie whispered. “You’ve got to get away. He means to kill you.”
Her daughter’s wonderful face was dirty and streaked, her lips cracked and swollen. She had purple bruises around one eye. Her hair was dark and matted, and she was chained.
Ruth’s heart soared. My daughter. “What has he done to you?”
“He leaves me alone in the dark. I hate him. But I tried to warn you not to come.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“But you’ve got to get away. I’m almost loose. I’m going to get away. You need to push him into the waves. He’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Ruth glanced around. Malone was watching them, his brows knit in a scowl. She held her girl. She whispered in her ear, “We’re going together.”
“Now is your chance. He doesn’t care about me.”
Malone would more likely kill them both. Ruth shook her head. “I’ll distract him. Get away as soon as you’re free.”
Malone’s eyes took on a strange cast. He rushed over and grabbed Ruth. She knocked his hands away, but he pulled her roughly up, his grip like a vice around her middle. She swung her arms and kicked.
“No!” Ruth despaired. “Let me take her. I’ll do whatever you want.”
His lips brushed her ear. His voice like a hissing snake, he said, “She’s nothing but bag and baggage.”
He pulled her through the doorway. As they emerged from the cave there was a clap of explosive thunder. Stinging rain drenched her. They teetered on a precarious ledge. Thirty feet below, waves crashed on the rocks. She reeled, gasping, against the side of the cliff. Malone held her hair twisted in his fist at the nape of her neck. She yelled above the growling waves and storm. “You have me. Let my daughter free.”
“I want you to tell me you love me, Mother.” He leaned toward her, pulling her face towards his. The wind whipped his stench-breath across her face. “I’ve waited all these years. You’ll tell me. Or we die together on the rocks.”
Blinding rain hammered upon her face. Ruth shouted, “Whatever you say, son!”
“That’s not good enough!” He tilted her face to his. “Say it.”
Sea spray stung her nose. Sky and churning water were the same shade of gray. Rain poured.
Malone pulled her farther up the ledge. She placed her feet for an evasive side kick. Her dripping socks hindered her. He bundled her closer, foiling any movement. His grasp on her tightened.
Rivulets of water snaked across the ledge’s pathway. She pulled one sock off with the other foot and stumbled. Malone’s grip never let up for an instant. She slipped and ended up hanging midway between the edge of eternity and the end of his arm.
Jon watched, amazed, as the block of stone moved aside. Squeezing through the space, he found himself in a grotto. He stumbled to the opening to the outside and shouted into his mobile, “We’re on the cliffs!”
He looked around the rock room—definitely a crime scene. Blood was spattered up one wall, there were blood-soaked rags everywhere, and one wall had chunks chiseled out where tiny vials and jars sat. Beyond that were a pile of rags and a mattress dotted with brown stains in the pattern of a body. There was a strong odor of urine. Water dripped from the ceiling into a tiny, clear pond in the middle of the floor. For one impossible moment, he imagined hiccups coming from the rags.
He pushed aside a rain-sogged mat that covered the cave’s entrance and reeled back fro
m the stinging rain. The narrow ledge dropped off abruptly to the surf.
Wind moaned across the entrance. The rain brought a respite from the reptilian, mud scent of the cave. Leaning out, he was just in time to observe two sets of feet slipping and stumbling up the path that curved around and up the side of the cliff.
Behind him, a low sound became an insistent wail.
“I said I want my mum!”
54
Jon turned at the sound of the girl's voice.
“Help me get the pipe loose, Mister,” she said.
His eyes adjusted to the light. The pile of rags had eyes. The cloth shifted. Annie Butler’s face looked older than ten.
“My God! Annie Butler!” Jon rushed to help her to her feet. She swayed. A thin chain went from her wrist to the wall. He took the metal clasp at her wrist and twisted it, worming fingers from both hands beneath. He’d seen this type of manacle before. It was cheaply made and could be pried apart. “Annie, this may hurt a little.” He squeezed his fingers around the clasp and pulled. The metal clinked apart.
He held her steady. “Are you able to walk?”
She wiped her eyes and took an unsteady step, reeling sideways. “Hurry. My mother. He plans to kill her.”
He caught her. “I’ll carry you.”
“No! I can do it.” She managed to get to the doorway and pull aside the mat.
“I’ll lead,” Jon said. “Don’t argue! The ledge is too narrow.”
Storm and surf roared in concert. Waves rolled closer. Sea spray splattered across the path now. Jon took a firm grip of Annie’s bone-thin wrist and helped her out. Cold rain soaked them.