Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 2
Page 2
A dim green light peeked through his eyelids, and upon opening one eye, Captain Noggin’s transparent frame bent over to place one hand on the floor as the other hand held the invitation to the revival. The ghostly apparition positioned the card on Crush’s chest, and then stood to his feet to hover over the sleeping field agent. Wordlessly, he walked through the closed door of the library as the green light faded from the room.
**********
The next morning, the library door opened with a creak of the hinges, and Pound stepped into the room with a fresh cup of coffee and four containers each of cream and sugar. Crush sat up from the long night’s sleep and rubbed his eyes to wipe the matter away. The invitation to the church slipped off of his chest and fell onto the carpet unnoticed.
“Quite a nap you took,” Pound said as he placed the steaming cup of coffee down on a coaster on the reading table. Crush sat on the floor with his legs crossed, blinking for a moment as his eyes slowly came into focus.
“I must have passed out reading,” he replied as he slowly rose from the extended nap.
“I’ll say. It’s Friday afternoon,” Pound commented. He then handed one of the small cream containers to his partner, and Crush opened it up to drink it on the spot. “It’s time to rise. The weekend is on us, and you don’t want to stay in this place all weekend when you could be out visiting Inner Harbor.”
“You’re right,” he said as he rose to his feet and stretched. “Thanks for the coffee.” Crush then poured the remaining containers of cream and sugar into the sweltering mug, and after stirring the concoction, he inhaled a sip of the scorching drink that was once coffee, but now only vaguely resembled its original form. “Pppttttooo!! Man! That’s hot!” he exclaimed as he blew out the first sip onto the floor, the table, and the air in general.
“What did you expect?” Pound replied as he laughed under his breath. “It is coffee, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Now my tongue’s burnt,” he said as he grabbed some paper towels from the cubicle area and brought them back into the library to clean up the spilt coffee. As he bent down to soak the hot liquid from the carpet, Crush noticed the invitation on the floor, and he was jolted back to the dream that had begun to fade from his memory from the night before. Distracted from his cleaning task, he picked the card up from the floor and opened it to look at the invitation once more. Among the many words that were listed inside, certain letters had been underlined, and Crush let the paper towels drop from his hand as he snatched a pen and began to write each letter down on a scrap piece of paper.
“Hey! I don’t remember those marks on the card,” said Pound. “What do you think it means?” he asked as Crush finished writing the last letter down.
“C-P-L-D-A-N,” was the message that was made when the letters were spelled out in order.
“Looks like a specialized license plate to me,” Pound noted as he sounded out each letter. “I don’t see anything recognizable to me.” Crush stared at the letters and after rearranging them in his mind several times, he gave up on making any sense out of the message.
“Are you finally awake?” Seth said as he stepped into the room. Noticing that Crush and Pound were leaned over a table and studying something, Seth’s interest was piqued. “What are you studying?”
“I don’t know, really,” Crush said as he scratched his head and stretched his arms again. He was still drowsy from his long catnap, and after working on the hint that the invitation had dredged up from somewhere back in his distant memories, he was ready for a change of pace from what had been puzzling him for so long. “I’ve been so engrossed in trying to figure out where I’ve heard that church name, I can’t even imagine what these letters mean.”
“Who’s Corporal Dan?” Seth asked as he propped one arm on the table and rested his head on his hand. Crush and Pound looked at Seth for a moment and then looked at each other as if they could not believe they had missed such an obvious interpretation of the letters.
“That’s it!” Crush exclaimed. “That’s where I’ve heard that name before.” Seth waited for Crush to spill out his findings to them, but after watching him pour over old reports for days on end, he could wait no longer.
“Are you going to share?” Seth probed again as he waited for a reply from his friend.
“Corporal Dan Chowder was an agent that went on assignment back in the 1960’s and never came back,” Crush explained.
“Now I remember reading about this several years back,” Pound jumped into the details and continued where Crush had left off. “His last assignment was in York, Pennsylvania.” Pound immediately shot to the last filing cabinet and opened the drawer labeled ‘X-Z’. Crush followed and looked over his shoulder as Pound rifled through the files in search of any document labeled with ‘York’. After a few minutes, he drew out a file and laid it out onto the table.
“Church on Wolf’s Mountain. There it is,” said Crush, and he pointed to the second paragraph in a report by a former field manager of the DAM. “October 21, 1963, is the date of the report. It says here that Dan Chowder had been sent to the Church on Wolf’s Mountain to observe and investigate the mysterious mental breakdown of a church elder and the disappearance of the church bell.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything that our organization would need to be involved with,” said Seth. “Mental illness was never our specialty, was it?”
“You wouldn’t think so, but there must have been something to the case that would have interested the field manager,” said Pound. “Maybe the orders came from higher up in the Department of the Treasury.” Crush hesitated for a moment before he added his opinion.
“You hit the nail on the head,” said Crush as he continued to refer back to the file. “Corporal Dan was given the task to sit in on the semi-centennial celebration, and now we’ve received another invitation to attend fifty years later.” Crush closed the file and placed it under his arm. “I’m going to the celebration this weekend, and I don’t want you guys to follow.” Seth and Pound appeared stunned by the announcement from their friend.
“Why would you want to go, Crush?” asked Pound. “If Dan Chowder hasn’t been seen in fifty years, it’s not likely that you would be able to save him now.”
“Maybe not,” said Crush. “It’s been a long time since this went down, and though the name of the church had slipped my mind, I haven’t forgotten Corporal Dan.”
“Bologna, Crush,” Seth said as he brushed aside the claim. “You couldn’t know that guy any more than I could.”
“Really?” asked Crush as he opened the file back up to the last page and pointed to the name of the field manager. Seth froze in his tracks, and Pound’s jaw dropped at the recognition of the name typed in beside the familiar signature.
“Shakespeare Crush, Field Manager”
I fly around your white nest
I pick and tease it like a pest
I buzz around your grey retreat
To wake you from your tireless rest.
You fail to come to your front door
I knock and knock and knock some more
Waiting patiently for a time to meet
Not knowing what you have in store.
As I circle the endless angle
And watch your last guest’s body dangle
I land upon your lonely street
And join in the endless tangle.
*
Let The Old Times Roll
*
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” Pound said to his partner as he shut the door to the library behind him, leaving Seth to pack up their tools for the inevitable journey they were going to make to the mysterious church. “The Department’s in a serious state of flux right now. Sherry’s gone, disappeared to God knows where. Phil gets sucked into Drakthos’ plot, and he ends up dead. Our own bosses hang us out to dry, and we’re all questioning whether this gig is worth continuing.” Pound’s blood pressure grew with
every statement, and Crush turned around to face him. “And now you’re making up stories about being with the Department for fifty years! What is this all about?!” Crush met his friend’s angered gaze, and he knew that he had to give something up to him. He owed him that much.
“There are some things that I don’t understand myself,” he began as he pulled up a chair for each of them. “And there are many things that I keep to myself and will never share with anyone. But I will offer this statement up to you, and you will have to accept it as the truth. I was here in 1963, and even before, and if no one else is willing to go on this trip, then I accept that I will have to do it alone.” Pound’s nerves had calmed noticeably with the admissions that were in Crush’s elusive comments, but he still was not satisfied with the course of the conversation.
“You’re not going alone,” Pound determined with resolve. “But you owe me some sort of details about what we’re getting into. I’m not fond of showing up on a missing person’s list.” Crush stood up and patted his partner on the shoulder, and it seemed that he had gotten enough information to trust his friend again.
“Missing is relative. On occasion I’ve been missing from the Department myself,” Crush countered. “In the end, I’ve always known where I was.” Then Crush lifted the backpack that leaned against the foot of the desk, threw it over his shoulder, and opened the door to leave.
“Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,” Pound answered as he picked the truck keys from the nail on the wall above the desk. “Just so that we don’t get lost, I’m driving.”
**********
Crush, Pound, and Seth piled into the extended cab truck, and by the time they had reached York, Pennsylvania, Seth had finally settled into a comfortable spot in the back seat. He was a much larger fellow than the other two, and the back seat was cramped. With a little time on the road, he was able to find creative ways to stretch out his limbs. The directions that they had downloaded sent them through the main part of the city and northward towards the capitol city of Harrisburg. After they reached the exit that the directions called out, Pound stopped at a gas station to fill up.
“I didn’t notice that the gauge was down at the empty mark, fellows. Who used the truck last?” Pound queried. Blank stares were returned from Crush and Seth, and as Pound waited patiently for the answer, Seth spoke up with a sigh.
“All right, all right. It was me,” said Seth as he rolled his eyes. “But I only drove it out to West Virginia and back. Not that far if you ask me.”
“Far enough to get near empty,” Crush added.
“It wasn’t empty in Baltimore,” Seth reminded him. “Besides, you’ve got the Department credit card for just such emergencies.” Seth reached into his pocket to retrieve his wallet, and when he opened it up, he found that the credit card was missing.
“Actually, I don’t think I do,” Pound replied as they sat by the gas pumps and restlessly watched all of the other customers casually fill up their tanks as if in mocking gestures to their hardship. “And I don’t have a credit card of my own since the fiasco with Senator Fromage went down. Did you know that the bank canceled my line of credit when Congress threw us on that watch list? And I still haven’t been able to clear up my credit enough to get it back.”
“Same here,” said Crush as he and Pound turned around to look at the last person in their group for his response. Seth’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Hey! Don’t look at me for money!” Seth answered as he shrugged his shoulders. “My cards were canceled, too!” Pound shook his head and turned the key to the ignition.
“There’s no use worrying about it now,” he said as he placed the transmission in drive and rolled across the parking lot at a creep. “We’ll have to rely on the kindness of strangers.” Then they drove out onto the winding highway toward the mountain in the distance.
“We’re going to a church, remember,” Crush prompted them as he tried to break the silence of his brooding teammates. “Maybe one of the elders will offer us some help.”
**********
As they approached the longstanding church building at the end of the driveway, Crush retrieved the special invitation for the fiftieth anniversary and placed it on his lap while the truck parked in the gravel lot that was located on the left side of the church. There were several empty vehicles already parked in the lot, but no one was out on the grounds. As Pound stopped the truck and shifted the transmission into park, the team waited for the dust to settle before opening the doors to get out.
“Ready?” Crush asked nonchalantly.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Pound answered rhetorically as he challenged his longtime partner.
“No reason,” Crush replied as he opened the passenger door to step out onto the white stone gravel. Lifting the seat back, Seth squeezed his tall bulky frame through the small opening provided and placed his hand over his eyes to block the sun from his vision.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a church bell hanging up there in the belfry?” Seth asked the others as he noted the empty steeple that was situated above the front of the church.
“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe it’s still missing. But you would think they would have replaced it by now,” Pound said as he came around to the passenger’s side of the truck. At that moment the clouds in the sky gathered over the top of the mountain that rose high in the background behind the church, and within a few short seconds, the weather had changed dramatically from the pleasant temperature that had encompassed the area to a chill and damp wintry atmosphere. “Let me get my jacket out of the truck,” Pound said as he turned to their vehicle, and to his surprise, the truck that he had just parked was gone. “What the . . . !”
“Where’s the truck,” Seth asked.
“Crap!” Crush exclaimed as he realized that the innocent invitation to a church meeting would now be more than just an investigation into a friend’s disappearance. “Stay together, guys,” he said as he turned back to flee to the church. But when he swiveled back around to face the building, the church was gone, and a cave had opened up in the ground where the foundation had been.
“Did you bring any relics or artifacts with you to handle this?” Pound quipped as he tried to mentally connect with the surrounding trees at the edge of the forest.
“Nope. I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Crush replied. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“If we had gas . . . and a truck,” Seth started, “we could go back to Baltimore.”
“Don’t blame me,” Pound answered. “I didn’t make the truck disappear.”
“Looks like there’s only one option open then. Are you guys up for spelunking today?” Crush asked as he crept up to the edge of the large hole that funneled through the ground. Drawing a flashlight from his backpack, he began to shine a light down the hole to see what lay beneath the ground, but all that he could see was a reflection of circular lights that appeared to mirror back through the darkness to where they stood on the outside.
“That’s a deep hole,” Pound said as he admired the cave from a distance. “I don’t think I care to know what’s in it.”
“You got any better ideas?” Crush asked as he backed away from the hole. He then held up the invitation in his fist. “We were called here twice. Once fifty years ago, and once this week. I think that’s reason enough to investigate what’s down there. You never know, we might not find anything at all.”
“That’s likely,” Seth agreed with a smirk. “I’ll watch as you go down.”
“All right, then,” Crush said to his partners as he looked from one to the other. “Someone has to be the man here.” He turned and walked over to the edge of the cavern, and as he spun back to get to his knees to lower himself over the edge, two giant, hairy insect legs poked out from below. The shaggy limbs thrust Crush forward, away from the hole and skidding along the ground as if he were a gnat, and a giant wolf spider crawled out from the grotto.
“It’s the biggest wolf spider I’ve ever seen,” Pound answered as he too stepped backward on impulse. The giant spider had eight legs, eight eyes, and an unfriendly appearance as it hovered over Crush who was struggling to get to his feet.
As quick as lightning, the spider opened its fangs and buried the hairy tusks in the ground where Crush had just rolled away. Quite fast on his feet, Crush found his chance to grab the nearest leg and thrust himself upward onto the back of the attacking arachnid. The spider reared its head backward, raising four limbs from the ground in an effort to throw the field agent from its back, but Crush swiftly grabbed onto a clump of hair on its back to ride out the rodeo move. The spider spun on its hind legs as its front legs remained lifted in the air, and that was when Pound and Seth caught a first glance at the wolfishly hairy people that were crawling all over the swollen abdomen of the eight-legged beast. The creepy sight only lasted for an instant as the spider spun back around revealing its fangs and the underside of its cephalothorax.
“Did you see those other people on its back?!” Pound asked Seth, though the outburst was more of an observation than a question that needed an answer. Both in shock at the attack of the strange creature, Seth and Pound hesitated for another second before either one made any moves to help Crush as he held onto the top side of the bewildered bug. Pound finally snapped out of his surprise, and he called out to the plants and trees at the distant edge of the mountainside. “Can you keep them away from me while I connect with the trees?” he asked Seth as he stood with his hands against both sides of his head in concentration.
“Sure, I’ll just step on it,” Seth said sarcastically as he searched in his pockets for a weapon. Pulling out a pocketknife, he shrugged in disgust at the miniature size of the weapon when compared to the immense size of the spider, and he locked the short blade in position as he gripped the wood and steel handle. Never one for backing down from a fight, Seth ran headlong into the fray with the stubby knife at his side. With a spring into the air toward the bottom side of the cephalothorax, he hoped to be able to pierce the tough exoskeleton and injure the creature before Crush was thrown from its back. As the blade passed by the hairs and fangs of the mandibles and into the exoskeleton, Seth realized that he may have acted rashly as the blade scratched across the fuzzy surface of the shiny brown skin but failed to penetrate through the tough outer hide of the beast’s armor. Had he known spider anatomy at the time, he would have realized that most of the vital organs were located in the abdomen, and that striking the cephalothorax was a hopeless maneuver unless the eyes or fangs were the targets. At any rate, the bottom row of eyes had caught a glance of Seth as he sprang forward, and without losing any time, the spider let its weight fall forward with perfect timing to collapse on Seth as he dropped powerlessly beneath the spider’s body. Smothered beneath the weight of the spider, Seth clenched his muscles in an effort to keep his lungs and chest from crumpling under the pressure of the spider’s bulk. The spider then crawled backward as it held Seth to the ground and then wrapped its mandibles around Seth’s head. Had it not been for the next exchange of blows, Seth would have been powerlessly poked with the fuzzy fangs and injected with the intoxicating venom of the monster.