Shit.
One more place.
We tiptoe to the back corner of the cemetery to a small broken down Savannah brick crypt. The door is shut but not locked. This is an access point to the tunnel system, usually used by Scarlet and her tour company. The squeal of the ancient door’s hinges pierces my skull and I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping no one hears the metallic wail. Avery and I slip inside the dusty little building, ignoring the moldy smell and the moss covered wooden boxes that line the walls. I slink down the narrow concrete staircase at the back of the crypt. I hold my cigarette lighter out in front of me until the little wheel gets hot and scorches my thumb. I feel my way along the damp stone wall in total darkness, hoping to bump into a cold half-dead version of my ideal mate.
Avery stayed up in the crypt. Bastard, I think he has a flashlight.
I slide along the wall feeling only the slippery stone beneath my long fingers. Pale light ahead guides me into another of the city’s Dead Houses, with the same misshapen eye of a skylight overhead. I can make out the outline of a stone slab in the middle of the room, what must be a sink against the left-hand wall.
And, on the other side of the room, in the shadows of the continuation of the tunnel, a familiar womanly shape.
At the sight of me, she utters a guttural ‘aahuugh’ and skitters off down the tunnel.
“Wait! Scarlet, please, it’s only me,” I yell after her, my voice bouncing off the walls. I stumble into the corner of the slab, bruising my hip bone, running to catch up. I run down the tunnel, following the echoing slap of her footsteps.
And, in the pitch black, I run into a wall.
It’s a T-shaped junction and I’ve lost her.
Hot copper runs onto my lips from my yet-again broken nose and I’m left in the damp darkness.
Chapter 43 – Four
“Glad to meet ya,” the dude from American Ghost Hunters grips my hand and pumps it, squeezing, showing me who’s boss. “Hey, I love your Silver Surfer T— where’d you get it?”
“I—” He looks away from me.
“Hey, Rob, get the lights from the van, okay?” Boo Larsen says, totally cutting off my Silver Surfer answer. “Maya, sweetie, find me an Evian, would you?” He tips the cute young blonde production assistant a lascivious wink that makes even me blush. I stand scratching my head, waiting for him to turn his attention back to me and the Collins kid.
“Wow, this park never fails to totally enchant me, you know?” Boo says in a heavy Yankee accent that I can’t place. “The last time we were here, I knew there had to be something going on in the tunnels. They weren’t open yet, though, and the city wouldn’t let us go down there.” He snorts. “Something about insurance or some lame-ass thing.” I think he actually flexes his arms and back. For whose benefit, I don’t know, since his little sugar-pie has gone off in search of Precious’s imported water.
I hate this guy. He smells like cologne and sweat.
“So,” Boo turns to the Collins kid, “tell me again what happened and where you were, all that stuff.” He pretends to listen. For a second. “Rob, get a camera rolling on this, okay, dude?” Collins gets two words out when Boo steps in front of the kid. “Okay, wait,” he says to Rob as much as to us, “I’m gonna do my piece first, okay? This humidity...” He waves his hands around his head and face. He taps the top of his head to make sure his hair is still spiked in a ridiculous faux-hawk. Rob rolls his eyes and heads to the van for his equipment.
We wait, basking in the glow of Boo’s orange make-up and professionally whitened, and possibly filed, teeth. Rotund Rob stumbles over, huffing and coughing, carrying a tripod and a heavy-looking silver case. There’s another guy in the van, lounging in the passenger seat with his feet up on the dash, but he doesn’t do anything to help Rob. I learn that he is the second camera operator. I wonder why he’s not helping, but, what do I care? Blondie comes back with Boo’s bottle of water, gazing up at him as if he’s Apollo or some shit. I study my grubby nails, feel the hole in the pocket of my shorts, gaze down at my red Chucks. After much cussing and adjusting, Rob declares he’s ready to shoot.
“Okay, get out of my shot,” Boo tells Blondie. Nice guy. “Take one,” he says into the camera. “We’re going to film all my questions and reaction shots first, you know, before I melt,” he says to Collins and me, “and then you’ll get to talk about what happened. Got it?” He nods his head, Collins and I do the same. I don’t know why they don’t just use two cameras, one pointed at Boo, the other at Collins and me. But, I’m not a television professional, so I just stand there watching Boo. That other camera guy, Tom, sits in the van, smoking a fatty, singing along to some song I don’t recognize.
“Rob, how do I look, man?” Boo touches the spikes of his hair, smoothes the sleeves of his black T-shirt, winks again at the blonde.
Rob grunts. “Great, dude, you look awesome.” Rob yells to the guy in the van. “Hey, Tom.” Tom can’t hear him over the radio. “Asswipe! Cut the radio, man.” Tom turns his head toward Rob, shouting that he can’t hear him. Rob gives him the cut signal, drawing an index finger across his throat. The music stops as does the off-key singing. “Okay, go for it, man,” Rob says to Boo.
“Okay, we’re here in Savannah, Georgia, investigating the darker side of this beautiful picture postcard town. If you remember, we were here once before, and we found some righteous evidence of paranormal activity. Savannah, the most haunted city in America, has recently reopened its subterranean tunnel system, and some strange stuff has been happening. This promises to be one wild ride, guys. This is Brett Collins and Four Mercer. Four runs a ghost tour here in Savannah. His tours explore the, um, the um, what? I just said it, but it’s gone.” Boo touches his forehead and flips his hand away into the air. Rob pops up behind the camera and rolls his eyes.
“The tunnels underneath the city,” Blondie says over her paperless clipboard.
“Savannah take two,” Boo says into the camera. “This is Brett Collins and this is Four, um, Merchant.”
“It’s Mercer,” Rob shouts. “Take three, dude.”
And so it goes until take six, when Boo finally gets everything right, from our names to the concerned and unbelieving looks straight into the camera’s eye. Then it’s Brett Collins’s turn.
“Well, I was, like, on this dude’s tour, you know,” Brett says to Boo, who’s not even listening, “when someone or something scratched my arm?” He holds him arm up to an electronic audience of one, showing the pink faded lines of a mostly-healed injury. “After I got scratched, me and the whole tour group got the hell out of the tunnel, you know? Dude here, like, ran ahead, trying to see whatever got me.”
Then it was my turn. I told the same story as Collins, only, way better.
“We went down to the old morgue which is located in the tunnel, between Forsyth Park and the spooky old Candler Hospital. Everything was cold and dark, everyone was a little creeped out. I was telling my group about the history of the morgue— known as the Dead House— when we heard this, this yelp come from the back of the pack, you know, kind of in the mouth of the tunnel, farthest from where I was standing.” I continue talking to the production assistant, who remains off-camera and just stands there, looking up at the trees, so I have something to look at while I’m talking. I have to imagine that Boo is there, nodding his head at me, concentrating on what I’m saying like it’s the most important thing since people discovered Area 51 exists or something. Oh, well. I try to be dramatic anyway— I’ve always wanted to be on TV.
“I lunged through the crowd, shining my flashlight toward the source of the sound. That’s when I saw Brett standing there, holding his wrist.” I look over at Brett. He’s picking his teeth with a fingernail, staring off into space, so not interested. “Anyway, I saw this, this kind of lumpy human figure that kind of looked like a chubby woman wearing a sheet. It was kind of trundling away from us, going pretty fast, though, back toward the entrance we used at the visitors’ center. I took off after her,
ran up the steps and out the door, but I slipped a couple of times going up the stairs, which are always kind of wet, and I lost sight of her in the park. It was creepy, man.” I shuddered for affect.
Boo added some more bullshit on camera, and that was pretty much it as far as the interview part went.
After viewing the footage an hour later via computer, the show’s exec producer wanted Boo to scrap the tape and do a live show. Some kind of prima donna argument ensued— we only heard Boo’s side of the conversation as he screamed into his cell, face purple, foot stomping. Boo said no to going live because he would not be able to control how his hair or make-up would look on camera traipsing through the tunnels. The producer caved and the show would be taped, as planned.
I would lead Boo Larsen and his crew of two through the tunnels at midnight that night.
Chapter 44 – Avery
I don’t know for certain what he expects to find. Once your soul is gone, there’s no one in there. You’re like an empty plane running on autopilot. You’re one of those peanut shells you open up and find nothing inside. We hijacked her body, abducted her pilot, and flushed her peanut right out of her shell. What happens now? I haven’t a clue. The dogs we studied at the Safar Center died again after three hours of shaking, whining, and foaming at the mouth. It was a sad state of affairs, I tell you. Good thing I’m not an animal person. Or a people person. Scarlet’s probably curled up in the fetal position somewhere, convulsing and spewing foamy bile all over whatever floor she’s laying on. He’s going to be so disappointed when we find her. Dissecting her brain, however, will give us some valuable information.
He wanted her dead in the first place, you know. He’ll never admit it, but her accusing him of being gay just pushed him right over the edge. I mean, of course, I helped by showing up and conducting my experiments, putting ideas in his head, but she was the catalyst. She was the fuse that I lit. She was the flashpoint, the explosion, the mushroom cloud.
She really helped me out. I needed that.
I did not love her, but I needed her.
Gotta use what you’ve got, right?
Chapter 45 – Four
I shush them over my shoulder, Boo, Rob, and Tom. We extinguish the flashlights and let Tom, with the night-vision camera, lead the way. A bundle of dirty rags lies crumpled next to the tunnel’s wet stone wall about ten yards in front of us. We all jump when we first see it as our flashlight beams just touch its uneven edge. Boo turns to go back the way we came, but Rob grabs his arm and drags him behind us, toward the lump.
As we get closer, I see through Tom’s camera that the lump resembles a person swaddled in something like a dirty white sheet, just like the thing I chased the other night. We tiptoe five yards closer. I look over my shoulder and see Boo’s silhouette cowering behind Rob, being towed along like he’s going to his first day of kindergarten or something.
We’re close enough to touch it now.
Tom and I crouch down, inches from the white blob.
I stretch out my hand to shake the bundle, to wake it or something.
I’m practically pissing in my pants, I’m so scared, but this is the price of fame (I hope).
As my fingers hover just above the shapeless heap, Boo sneezes.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh,” the thing bolts upright and shrieks, its head whirring side-to-side, a dark blur inside a cage.
I jump back, knocking the camera out of Tom’s hands.
“Fuck,” he says.
I fall on my ass and push myself backward, my sneakers slipping on the stone floor.
I hear Boo scream and take off in the opposite direction.
I hear him curse.
I hear him fall.
Rob snaps on a flashlight and the scary thing is on its feet, scurrying down the tunnel, about twenty yards ahead of us. Tom picks up his ruined camera and it slides out of his hands and crashes to the floor again.
“Go after it, dudes,” Rob says, still shining the light on the thing’s back.
I can’t get up off the floor. Adrenaline slaps my feet against the slippery floor, but the soles of my shoes don’t gain any traction.
My pants are wet.
“Dude,” Rob says, trying to step over or around me. He stomps on my hand and it hurts like hell. Then he trips over Tom who’s trying to pick up his camera. Rob’s flashlight goes skittering down the tunnel and we lose sight of the thing in the shroud.
But I know who it is.
Holy shit!
Chapter 46 – Scarlet
Light.
Dark want.
Fall.
No.
Mmmmaahharrr.
Sick.
Friend no.
Caleb only.
Caleb.
Caleb.
No!
Chapter 47 – Caleb
I listen to the woman’s meaningless words filter through the telephone. She sounds like the grown-ups on those Peanuts cartoons.
“Uh-huh,” I say through the towel I’m using to hold a handful of crushed ice on my ruined nose. The only words I just barely recognize are my own name. I confirm my identity. The voice continues mumbling words at me in a slow rhythm.
“Huh?”
Aunt Billie has been taken to the hospital a bit early. Seems she’s got pneumonia now as well as something with her heart. They don’t know if they can do the surgery until she recovers from the pneumonia and by then it may be too late. They want me to make payment arrangements for hospital services. “Uh-huh.”
I hang up in a fog.
I don’t know where Avery is.
Chapter 48 – Four
“Yes, sir, we meet at the fountain in the middle of Forsyth at 7:00. Fountain’s big, you can’t miss it,” I bare my plastic fangs at the fat Yankee, and he smiles and walks away. “Next, please. Hello, how can I help you?” For the first time a line of tourists stretches from the end of the Market all the way to my sad little platform. I’m booking tours three days in advance and charging five bucks more per ticket. Thanks to Boo Larsen, who pushed to get us on ‘Great American Ghost Hunters’ the night after our tour. Our tunnel expedition aired last night, word got around town, and, bam, I’m king of Tour Town.
And I know that bitch can’t compete with me now.
I hope we find her on one of my tours.
Someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. I turn my head to see a familiar beat-up face. I tell the next customer in line that I’ll be with her in a minute.
“Caleb, what are you doing here, man? It’s good to see you,” I say. I pull out my plastic fangs and wipe my mouth on my wool sleeve. “Whatever have you been up to?” I say, trying to put a teasing tone in my voice.
Caleb looks like a tall pile of shit. Gray roots show underneath his black dyed hair. Long gray stubble clings to his sunken cheeks and scrawny neck. His dull gray eyes look like they’re covered with contacts made from wax paper. His normally immaculate suit is rumpled and dirty, the sleeves stained with crusty transparent smears.
“Four, I, um,” Caleb sighs. “I need some money. It’s Billie. She, uh, she needs surgery and the Home is looking for money, you know?”
I look at the line of tourists now rounding the far corner of the Market.
“Um, sure, whatever you need, Dude,” I say. I pull him a few steps away from the platform, out of earshot of my customers. “I saw her.”
His eyes widen, his mouth works but he doesn’t say anything.
“What did you do, Dude? I want to know, but I don’t want to know, you know?”
He stares at me, mouth hanging open. He looks like a corpse.
“It wasn’t me,” he whispers. “It was him.”
“Him who?”
“Avery.”
That egghead? Yeah, I don’t think so. I’ll have to deal with this shit later. I’ve got a whole line of people waiting to buy tickets.
Chapter 49 – Caleb
“Where did you see her?”
Four sits on my kitchen counter,
scarfing down chicken salad sandwiches some neighbor brought this afternoon. “In the tunnel, Dude,” he says, churning a white glob in his mouth. He swallows. “You know, between the Dead House and old Candler. Scared the shit out of that TV crew.”
“TV crew?”
“Yeah, Dude,” he says, beaming at me before tearing another bite from his sandwich. “You didn’t see it? So cool, they rushed it through editing and put it on in place of some other lame-ass Learning Network show. The news has been running stories about it and everything.”
“Oh.” This information causes a geyser of acid to shoot up my esophagus and a vise to squeeze the top of my head.
“My business is skyrocketing. You ought to come work for me, Dude. You saw that line in the Market.” He laughs.
Work. I hadn’t thought about work in two weeks. Maybe more.
“You know, Dude,” Four continues, licking his fingers, “I don’t know what happened to her, but you want to tell me anything? Why is she all, like, freaked out and hiding in the tunnels and shit?”
I don’t want to tell him.
No, I do want to tell him, I just don’t know how.
I’m afraid. But not afraid like before, like when I was telling him about my multi-media ideas and the Weekend at Bernie’s photo shoot plans.
“Listen. There’s, um, there’s been an accident, Four.” I squint at him, gauging his reaction. “Avery... A horrible accident.”
He looks confused.
“Scarlet died, Four.”
Chapter 50 – Avery
I love River Street. It’s so full of life. It’s also full of the possibility of death. Or near-death. Since Subject A, or Scarlet if you must, has gone missing, I’m thinking it just might be time to find another guinea pig. If my good friend wants to save his business, we’ve got the perfect gimmick, wouldn’t you say?
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