by J. S. Volpe
“I hope Jones got what was coming to him,” Cynthia said.
“Indeed he did, but under quite unusual circumstances. Hamilton Crow’s pursuit of Luther Jones ended when Jones, apparently thinking himself unobserved, crossed the river beneath the falls, ducked into Spirit Cave, and slipped through the narrow fissure at the back and into the tunnels beyond. But Hamilton saw him enter and stood sentry at the mouth of the cave to make sure he didn’t leave. A crowd of townsmen soon joined him, and they fell to debating the best way to apprehend Jones. Should they go in en masse? Should only a few carefully selected men go in? No one had ventured very far into the tunnels before, so no one knew the exact layout or just how deep the tunnels went. And many of the older residents, remembering the Mima’s tales of spirits, were afraid to enter the tunnels at all. As they discussed these matters, Turner appeared, carrying two lanterns, two rifles, a knife, and a large spool of twine. His eyes blazed with bloodlust as he announced that only he and Hamilton Crow would enter the tunnels in search of Jones. Everyone understood that he meant to kill Jones and perhaps even torture him first, and no one voiced any disapproval. They just watched as Turner and Hamilton took up their rifles and lanterns and entered the cave.”
“What was the twine for?” Cynthia asked. “To tie him up or something?”
“No,” said Mr. May. “The twine was to find their way back. As they made their way through the tunnels, they sliced off lengths of twine and placed them at strategic points to mark the correct path back to the surface.”
“Like the trail of breadcrumbs in the fairy tale. Except no birds ate it, I hope.”
“No. No birds. They made it back to the surface safe and sound. Or, well, perhaps ‘safe and sound’ isn’t exactly accurate. When the two men emerged from the tunnels four hours later, they were dazed and weary and covered in grime. ‘He’s dead.’ Turner told the expectant crowd waiting outside the cave. And that was essentially the first and last public word on the subject. Hamilton never spoke about the incident at all as far as I can tell. No one really asked for further details anyway. They simply assumed the two men had found their quarry and given him his just desserts.
“But toward the end of his life, Turner kept a journal, and in it he wrote a strange, rambling account of that night. By then he was in terrible health and half insane. He was wracked with pain and hallucinations, so it’s hard to know how literally to take his tale. Still, however delirious he was when he wrote it, there must be a core of truth to the story. I have the journal in the library upstairs, but like I said, it’s quite strange and rambling, almost completely incoherent in places, and rather than read it to you, I will only summarize.”
“Aww,” Calvin said. “I’m kinda curious to hear what the rambling’s like.”
“I can remember some of it. For instance, his description of passing through the fissure at the back of the cave reads more or less as follows: ‘One by one through the nightslit, the evil eyeslit, lenticular black aperture and we with our firelanterns and fireguns and lights and knife, we entered one by one with eyes watching behind, those pairs of eyes, in a pair we went one by one into and through the hole, the one.’”
“It’s like bad poetry,” Cynthia said.
“The full account of their journey in the tunnels runs to over a hundred pages in Turner’s tiny, crabbed handwriting, all of it written in exactly that style. It’s entertaining to read at first, but trust me, it gets quite tiring after a dozen pages or so.
“Anyway, the gist of his story is this: For two hours they made their way through the branching, twisting tunnels in search of Luther Jones, the way sloping steadily downhill all the while. If we are to trust Turner’s account, he and Hamilton encountered huge colonies of phosphorescent fungi, caverns crowded with stalactites and stalagmites, and at one point (if I’m interpreting his words correctly) a vast underground river. Over time the composition of the tunnels changed from a mix of shale and sandstone to fine-grained limestone and then, near the end of their descent, to granite, which suggests they had penetrated quite far underground, possibly as far as the original Precambrian bedrock.
“Eventually they caught up with Jones, who Turner says was ‘squatting like a frog in the dark, talking and tittering loudly to himself or to unseen no ones.’ When Jones saw the men approaching, he sprang up and raced away. They chased him down a long, curving passage that ended in an archway that seemed too smooth and regular to have been formed by natural processes. Beyond the archway was a cavern so large its edges were lost in the shadows beyond the lanterns’ light. Jones fled straight across the cavern. In the dimness he collided with a wide, low object and tumbled to the ground, which allowed Hamilton and Turner the moment necessary to get within shooting range. By the time Jones had scrambled to his feet, Turner had raised his rifle and taken aim. He fired. Jones’s head snapped back and his brains splattered the cavern floor.”
“Good riddance,” Calvin said.
“Turner and Hamilton had little time to savor their victory, for no sooner had Jones collapsed to the stone floor than a gigantic dragon-like figure appeared out of nowhere right in front of them. The dragon—or whatever it was—sported scaly, gray-green skin, long leathery wings folded upon its back, and a pair of thick, curved black horns. Its eyes were blood red, the pupils vertical slits. Its huge coffin-shaped head loomed above the two men atop its sinuous neck, its horns nearly scraping the roof of the cavern. After regarding Turner and Hamilton with its red eyes for a long, silent moment, the creature vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.”
“Wakansa!” Calvin cried. “It’s Wakansa! A giant winged serpent! That’s how the Mima described it, isn’t it?”
“Oh, my God,” Cynthia said. “That’s right.”
Mr. May nodded. “Yes. Turner made the same connection in his journal. He seemed to be of the opinion, though, that this creature was not actually a god but was some strange life-form that the Mima had seen in the remote past and then woven myths and stories about. In fact, he even went so far as to suggest that this specific creature was the origin of all dragon myths the world over.”
“That seems a bit…excessive,” Cynthia said.
“That was my reaction, as well. In any case, whatever it was Turner and Hamilton saw down there, it wasn’t enough to scare them off. After the creature vanished they spent some time examining the cavern, and what they found was in some ways more mystifying that the supposed dragon.
“The object into which Luther Jones had stumbled turned out to be one of a pair of low stone altars about three feet high and eight feet long. A giant skeleton lay on each altar.”
“Giants?” Cynthia said.
“Indeed. About seven feet tall and very slender, with unusually long skulls, limbs, and fingers. Perhaps the strangest thing about the skeletons, however, was not their size, or their proportions, but their composition. The substance of which they were made was brown and dense and smooth, something halfway between polished stone and bone. Hamilton was convinced it was stone and the figures simply weird carvings. Turner, however, who knew far more of geology than his friend and had never seen a type of stone like that before, was convinced they were genuine skeletons, remnants of some fabulous prehistoric race of beings whose biology was totally unlike our own.
“The two altars were situated about six feet apart in the center of the chamber, and they rose seamlessly from the floor, having been carved from the living stone. What’s more, there were eight niches cut into the wall of the chamber at regular intervals. Each of these niches measured roughly eight feet tall, three wide, and three deep, just about the right size for a being of the dimensions of the two skeletons. All but one of the niches were bare. The one that wasn’t contained only a heap of ash at the bottom, as if a fire had once burned there.”
“What does it all mean?” Calvin asked.
“It’s hard to say. I’ve mulled it over many times, but can reach no definite conclusions. A dragon. Two altars. Two bizarre skeletons or
effigies of skeletons. Eight niches. A huge dome-shaped room so far underground it staggers the imagination. But we can discuss these matters later, once I’ve told you everything I have to tell you and the larger pattern of events has become clearer.
“A few days after the tragedy, Turner and Hamilton returned to the cave and detonated an entire crate of dynamite inside it. Not only did this seal up the entrance to that mysterious underworld, as intended, but it altered the acoustics of the cave, forever silencing the whispers of the ‘spirits’ who dwelt there.
“For the next year Turner and James May lived with the Crows while a new May house was built. Turner himself designed the house.” Mr. May waved his hand in a broad, sweeping arc. “You can see the result. Twenty-three rooms. Four wings. A porch on every side. A tower at the center. All of it for one man and a teenage boy. I’ve never been sure whether there was some cryptic meaning to his curious architectural decisions, or whether they simply reflected his growing derangement.
“At around this time he also began to study magic and spiritualism in hopes of finding a way to access other levels of reality and possibly contact his deceased family. He amassed a huge library of occult tomes, most of which are still here in the house. He experimented with many of the rituals found in the books, and as his familiarity with the subject grew, he rewrote many of the rituals and even created new ones.”
“Sort of like Firebird with his all-new ceremony for raising Wakansa,” Calvin said.
“In a way, yes. This history is full of odd echoes of that sort, as you shall see.
“Turner’s occult studies came to a head one night in the summer of 1872. Somehow he persuaded a very reluctant Hamilton Crow to assist him with a major ritual which he believed would finally provide him with all the answers he sought. Shortly before midnight the two men descended into the Crows’ basement, where Turner had been engaging in most of his occult practices.”
“Which room in the basement?” Cynthia said. “Do you know?”
“I’m not entirely certain. In any case, I know your house was extensively remodeled in the early 1900s, so the layout may have changed.”
“Oh. So what happened with the ritual? Anything? I hope they didn’t, like, raise the forces of darkness in my basement.”
“Apparently something did indeed happen, but like so much else in this history the precise details remain unknown. Hamilton never spoke about the events of that night, and Turner made only puzzlingly vague comments about it in his journal as if for some reason he was reluctant to say too much. He wrote that a hazy white glow suffused the room as the ritual progressed and that the ritual climaxed with ‘a visitation,’ though by whom or what he fails to specify, saying only that it constituted ‘proof of worlds beyond this one.’”
“Great, it probably was the forces of darkness,” Cynthia muttered.
“Turner and James moved into the new May house in the fall of 1872, and for the next eight years Turner rarely left it. He alternated between fits of manic energy and immobilizing depression, and he continued studying and practicing magic with unknown results—his journal entries on that subject are few and brief and often incoherent. He completely ignored the brewery and other business matters, forcing young James to handle them in his father’s stead. The townspeople were convinced that Turner’s losses had completely unhinged his mind, and while they sympathized, they shunned his house. His only regular visitor was Hamilton Crow, who for a while stopped by once a month to check on his old friend. Eventually, however, Turner’s deteriorating mental state became more than Hamilton could bear, and his visits grew more and more sporadic and virtually ceased altogether.
“In 1878 Turner’s health began to decline rapidly. Although no proper diagnosis was ever made—Turner refused to see a doctor—descriptions of his symptoms strongly suggest intestinal cancer. He lapsed into a coma and died on September 25, 1880. We can only hope he is with his family again.”
Chapter 11
Echoes (III)
“That’s pretty depressing,” Cynthia said.
“Alas, there’s more of the same to come,” Mr. May said.
“Oh, joy.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to take a break, if only to stretch your legs?”
“No, that’s okay. Let’s just keep going.”
“And you?” Mr. May asked Calvin.
“I’m good,” Calvin said.
“Very well. Next we need to backtrack slightly. While Turner lay on his deathbed, the Crow family suffered a loss of its own: Olive Crow, the daughter of Hamilton and Deborah.
“Born in 1859, Olive was a frail, sickly girl who seemed to fall ill every time someone sneezed. Too weak to travel far, she was schooled at home and rarely strayed from the grounds of the Crow estate. She spent most of her time in her room reading. When the weather was good, she would take a book to the riverbank and while away the afternoon there.
“No one could figure out what was wrong with her. Her parents took her to countless doctors, each of whom ascribed her sickly state to a different cause, and each of whom prescribed a different remedy, none of which worked. In the end her poor health was chalked up to ‘innate constitutional infirmities,’ whatever that means.
“After the May house burned down and Turner and James moved into the Crow house, Olive, then twelve, grew nervous and jumpy and began to suffer from nightmares that vanished from her mind the moment she woke up (or so she claimed). During these nightmares, she sometimes talked—or more accurately raved—in her sleep. Deborah kept a record of these ravings in hopes of making sense of them, but she never did and later destroyed the notes. I wish she hadn’t. I’d love to know what Olive said. At any rate, Olive’s nightmares and jumpiness vanished shortly after the Mays moved into their new house.”
“Maybe it was connected with Turner’s magical rituals,” Calvin said. “Maybe she was sensitive to the mystical energies or something.”
“Actually,” Cynthia said, “I was wondering if maybe Turner or his son was, you know, molesting her.”
Calvin sat forward excitedly. “Or maybe Turner was using her in the rituals! He could have been, like, drugging her and sneaking her downstairs every night.”
“What is this, Gothic melodrama now?”
“All are definite possibilities,” Mr. May said, looking amused. “But I think both of you are overlooking the simplest and most obvious explanation: that Olive was an incredibly introverted and reclusive person who felt threatened that virtual strangers were invading her house, her safe haven.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Calvin said. Then he frowned. “But it seems almost too coincidental that she was raving about weird stuff, just like Turner May wound up doing before he died.”
Mr. May nodded. “It does. That constitutes yet another of those odd echoes I mentioned earlier. But we can discuss such matters later. For now, let’s move on with the history.
“As she got older, Olive grew increasingly remote and disinterested in everyone and everything except her books and her occasional trips to the river. For the most part her family left her to her own devices. Everyone was happiest that way. Hamilton turned all his attention to his son Stephen, whom he was grooming for a career in the family business. As for Stephen himself, he harbored an inherent dislike of his sister and avoided her whenever he could, as if afraid her ‘constitutional infirmities’ were contagious.
“Deborah, however, refused to give up on her daughter so easily. She believed that Olive should get married and have children, sure that the assumption of these ‘womanly duties’ would infuse her daughter with purpose and health.”
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Oh, give me a break.”
“It was a different era,” Mr. May said.
“You can say that again.”
“Deborah was especially keen on making a match between Olive and James May. She constantly dropped hints about it to both James and Olive, and even contrived for the two of them to be alone together on numerous occasions. J
ames was not averse to the idea and made several advances over the years, but Olive always rebuffed him with as little emotion as if she were shooing away a fly. Eventually a frustrated Deborah gave up trying to play matchmaker.”
“In July, 1880, when she was twenty-one, Olive’s health abruptly worsened. She suffered from chills and headaches, she threw up most of her food, and she was so fatigued she could barely sit up in bed. By the end of the month she had a raging fever that left her delirious and unable to recognize those around her. In the depths of her delirium she insisted that she could hear music coming from somewhere in the woods. At times she hummed an unidentifiable tune over and over, presumably the music she claimed to be hearing, and then broke down giggling or weeping. Hamilton and Deborah called doctor after doctor, but none of them could help her. Most of them agreed that Olive was dying, but they couldn’t explain why.
“The end came on August 1, 1880. Olive slept almost all day, awakening only once to sip a bowl of broth her mother brought her. That night a violent storm broke. On their way to bed Hamilton and Deborah checked on Olive to make sure the storm wasn’t upsetting her as had happened in the past. She was sleeping peacefully. Or at least she seemed to be.
“Sometime around midnight Deborah was awakened by a repetitive banging sound. She went downstairs and found the front door swinging to and fro in the wind. Thinking it simply hadn’t been shut properly, she closed and locked it, then mopped up the rainwater in the hall. On her way back to bed, some parental instinct impelled her to look in Olive’s room. Olive wasn’t there. Fearing the worst, Deborah woke up Hamilton. He went to look for Olive outside and soon spotted the imprints of her bare feet in the mud. In the slashing rain, he followed the prints west to the river. They led straight into the water.