“Nope. This is it. If you need a hand or start to slip, yell out. I’ll only be a couple steps away.”
That’s comforting. She said, “Thanks. Let’s get to work.”
“Sure.”
They waded across the chamber, and he illuminated the blackened section of Seminole history — at least, how it related to the monster. Jilly silently studied all the drawings for ten minutes before speaking.
“Looks like your people were afraid of some powerful magic,” she noted, pointing at a twelve-foot section of drawings. “And there, just as their story gets interesting, someone obliterated it.”
“What about this part with the mosasaur?”
“Can’t really tell until we recover the missing section. It would be akin to using someone’s quote out of context today.”
He nodded.
She pursed her lips and tapped her quivering chin with her forefinger. “It certainly appears as if the mosasaur destroyed the village, but we can’t make assumptions. You of all people should know that.”
“I haven’t actually practiced my paleontology degree yet.”
“And you won’t until you travel beyond the casino parking lot,” she mildly scolded him.
He grinned sheepishly. She had him there. Now, try explaining that to his father and uncle, who operated the casino.
“I’ll need the sprayer and canisters three and five,” she instructed him.
He unzipped his floating backpack again and pulled out a battery-powered apparatus resembling a small paint sprayer. Next, he fished around inside for the canisters she specified.
Jilly plugged canister three into the bottom of the sprayer and coated the blackened area. John grimaced. The stuff in that canister smelled like turpentine.
“Get out the two masks.”
He rummaged around inside the backpack, but he couldn’t locate them.
“They’re in the blue plastic box.”
“Got it.”
They donned the masks, and he relaxed. The malodor disappeared.
Fifteen very long minutes later, the black coating dissolved to gray and ran down the wall into the water. Jilly switched canisters and sprayed another chemical over the first. They waited. It was like watching a Polaroid picture progressively develop. The drawings beneath the coatings slowly appeared. Most of the color was faded or absent, but the outlines were recovered intact.
“That stuff’s amazing,” John exclaimed.
“I was worried that it wouldn’t work in this damp atmosphere,” she explained, handing him the sprayer and canisters. “If we had more time, I could work on that color a bit.”
They shed their masks, and John returned the items to the backpack. He leaned forward and examined his people’s newfound history. Jilly edged closer, too, partially because the water was shallower along the wall.
“Oh my goodness!” she gasped. “Do you see that, John?”
“Wow! It’s the grotto temple . . . and it’s exactly like Dex described it.”
She pointed to a monstrous figure. “But he didn’t describe that!” she exclaimed.
“Shit the bed!”
Jilly’s head turned sharply toward him.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“And don’t call me ma’am! Jilly’s the name.”
“Yes, ma’a . . . Jilly.”
She studied the horrible drawings again. “This is what killed your people.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s definitely an ancient demon of some kind.”
“We’ve got to get back to town and warn the others! They need to know what they’re up against.”
A muffled thump echoed along the tunnel behind them.
“What was that?” she asked uneasily
“Wait here. I’ll check.”
“Not on your life! I’m going with you.”
“Suit yourself, but it’s probably nothing.” John projected poise, but he was a little edgy himself. It didn’t sound like thunder. It sounded more like . . . he’d wait till he climbed up the ladder before hitting the panic button.
They retreated through the tunnel as quickly as the slippery floor would allow. When they reached the ladder, John aimed the beam upward. The trapdoor was shut!
He scaled the ladder and pushed up on the old wooden planks, but the trapdoor only opened an inch. Someone had obviously chained and locked the steel ring to the catch.
“We’re locked in, Jilly,” John called down.
“Shit!”
Chapter 75
The wall behind Jackson’s recliner slid aside, exposing a single row of color television monitors. Rooftop surveillance cameras continually scanned the house grounds 360 degrees, while two others panned the riverbank and dock. They were all set to infrared in the falling gloom.
Twilight succumbed to night as Jackson checked the screens. He spotted three men scrambling from a speedboat beached around a river bend. They hugged the jungle cover as they headed toward his section of riverbank. Zeus’s ears popped erect as he paced the kitchen, sensing danger.
With a sardonic grin, Jackson snatched Bo Swinson’s flute-whistle off the kitchen bulletin board and marched to the back door.
“You’re not leaving without us,” Teddi stated, pulling her Beretta Centurion.
Jackson gestured toward the monitors. “Just watch. I’ll be fine.” With that, he opened the door and blended into the black foliage.
Dex painfully got to his feet and joined Teddi in front of the monitors. They watched the three men approach the ruined doghouse, and seconds later, an eerie three-note melody punctured the bayou cacophony. Suddenly, all hell broke loose on the river.
Teddi and Dex stared in awe as the river burst to life with a knotted mass of alligators thrashing and bellowing in the black water. The three intruders turned and faced the spectacle, uncertain about how to proceed. Teddi pointed at one of the green images on monitor three.
“That’s Ryan! What the hell’s he doing here?” she cried out.
“Maybe he caught wind of the doghouse attack and has come to protect us,” Dex speculated, although he didn’t believe a word of that bullshit.
She wasn’t convinced, either. “Maybe.”
They saw Jackson appear on the opposite side of the doghouse ruins. The three men detected him in the brightening moonlight, raised their guns, and fired.
“Jesus! Ryan’s trying to kill Jackson! There must be some mistake. I’ve got to stop them!” Teddi dashed out the front door before Dex could stop her.
“Ryan, stop!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “It’s Jackson!” She sprinted down the path leading to the doghouse and broke out of the tangled undergrowth behind the three men. “Ryan, quit shooting!” she yelled breathlessly. “It’s Jackson.”
One of the shooters pivoted and zeroed in on her with his automatic rifle. It was Ryan! She ducked just as a fusillade of bullets shredded the neighboring saplings and trimmed the vines and brush overhead.
Why was Ryan doing this?
Jackson blew the strange flute-whistle again, and Teddi nervously peered over a ragtop bush. Why wasn’t Jackson returning their gunfire? What did he hope to accomplish by blowing that stupid flute-thing?
An enormous shadow erupted between the agitated alligators close to Ryan and the other two hit men, and it landed with a tremendous thud on the riverbank. Two of the men kicked and screamed in its massive jaws, while the third lay crushed beneath its monstrous frame.
The mosasaur! It wasn’t dead after all!
Teddi stood and cautiously advanced toward the prehistoric reptile, at once fascinated and petrified. A huge eye followed her approach, but the mosasaur didn’t attack her as she knelt beside the bleeding corpse. It was Ryan.
The mosasaur remained still, its paddle feet splayed on each side, and its eel-like tail moving slowly back and forth in the suddenly quiet river like a watery metronome. The mosasaur masticated its prey like a cow lazily chewing its cud. The screams had long
ceased, and the men — or what was left of them — were no longer visible in its mouth.
Jackson strode up to the mosasaur and placed a hand on its flipper-foot; Teddi gawked in horror. That man’s got a death wish! He’s finally flipped out — no pun intended!
The mosasaur merely snorted a greeting, and then all of a sudden, Teddi got it! The owner of that flute was the mosasaur’s master. Its food provider. She glanced down at her body. Thankfully, she was too thin for mosasaur food.
Jackson glanced at her. Or was she?
She planned to keep a close eye on Jackson from now on — in case he got any ideas about kidnapping her.
The mosasaur wriggled backward into the river with the aid of its paddle feet and sank beneath the surface. Jackson strode toward her, and she raised her gun.
“Whoa, what’s this all about?” he exclaimed, his hands raised.
“You’re the mosasaur’s new keeper. Its master,” she sputtered.
“Unfortunately, you’re right.”
“So you’re also the thing’s food provider, and I don’t plan on becoming your first kidnap victim.”
Jackson threw his head back and laughed. “So that’s what you think, huh?”
“Yeah, I do,” she huffed. Her anxiety was displaced by anger at his laughter.
“Look, Teddi, cool it. I’m not like Swinson. I don’t live on Demon Key, and I don’t subscribe to the rite of feeding perfectly lovely ladies to predators.”
“How about fat ones?”
“You mean weight-challenged, don’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“I’m excluding every man, woman, and child as mosasaur food, okay?”
Teddi relaxed, lowered her Beretta, and broke down into tears. She hated herself for the emotional outburst, but she couldn’t hold it back. “I can’t believe Ryan was in on this,” she wept, looking down at his crushed corpse one last time. “He tried to kill me!”
Jackson swept her into his arms and hugged her tightly. After finally shedding enough tears for the bastard who’d made her life miserable and attempted to kill her, Teddi backed away from Jackson’s comforting embrace, sniffed a few times, and patted her damp cheeks dry with his proffered handkerchief.
“Thanks,” she said softly.
Dex suddenly stepped onto the path behind them, holding his gun. “You didn’t need to worry about Ryan, Teddi. I had your back the whole way.”
She turned and gave him a peck on the lips. “Thanks.”
Dex stared at the ominous river as the mosasaur’s ripples settled. “I bet that’s what happened to poor Carlos Fuentes that night at my place. Swinson probably used that little flute of yours to lure it out to the dock where it partook of a little Spanish cuisine.”
“It must’ve come into your yard earlier, searching for you,” Jackson surmised. “That’s most likely how your wooden walkway got trashed.”
“And when it didn’t find me, Swinson and the mosasaur waited by the dock.”
“In the dark, the killer must’ve thought Carlos was you and sicced the mosasaur on him,” Teddi surmised.
Dex sighed and slowly retreated from the dark river. “Poor Carlos.”
Teddi squeezed his good arm. “Try not to think about it.”
Dex nodded glumly.
Jackson stepped past them. “I’m sorry about Carlos, Dex, I really am, but we’ve got to get cracking. There’s a lot of groundwork to lay before tomorrow night.”
“What’s happening tomorrow night?” Teddi queried.
“The grotto temple’s going to rock and roll.”
Chapter 76
Jilly shivered in the waist-deep water at the foot of the ladder. She removed her cell from its hip pouch and raised it to John in her trembling hand.
“Here, try my cell,” she proposed.
John climbed down the ladder and took her phone. “I don’t think there are any cell towers around here. We’d have to be closer to I-75.”
“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport. At least give it a try,” she urged.
“Sure.” He ascended the ladder and poked the cell’s blunt antenna through the narrow opening between the trapdoor and the frame. No signal. He tried the other three sides, but the results were identical. “No go,” he shouted down.
“Now what?” she asked warily.
“We spend the night.”
“Down here in all this water? We’ll die of hypothermia,” she complained.
“Do you have a better idea?”
Her eyes glazed with tears. “No,” she whimpered.
“Then the first thing we should do is turn off our flashlights to conserve the batteries.”
The idea repulsed her, but it was logical. It was just that the mere thought of spending the night standing in deep water in complete darkness was akin to torture. Would she still be rational if she survived the night? Would they be rescued, or would they die in this hellhole?
Jilly flicked off her flashlight, gritted her chattering teeth, and attempted to ward off the mental demons that threatened to devour her sanity. She peered up at John and the halo of moonlight illuminating the trapdoor. At the moment, she didn’t want to hear anymore of John’s ideas.
Then his flashlight went off, and they were cloaked in a dank blackness. Unseen water droplets plunked into the flooded tunnel from the root-bound ceiling. The gusty wind whistled through the sliver of an opening around the trapdoor, and rain pounded the planks like scores of tiny hammers. A scream welled in her throat, but she quickly dammed it.
No sense losing her dignity, too.
“Why are you so blamed positive that the temple hoedown’s tomorrow night,” Dex asked, after they were safely inside Jackson’s house.
Jackson lit another cigar and settled into his recliner. He looked shaken from the experience.
“Because the mosasaur kinda told me so.”
Teddi replaced her Beretta in its holster. “Really! Now I’ve heard everything. A talking reptile.”
“It didn’t tell me in so many words, but I sensed an urgency to return to the grotto by tomorrow night,” he explained, glowering at her. “And if you don’t believe me, you can join the crowd of skeptics who seem to surround me wherever I go.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It’s just that this is all so . . . incredible.”
“Amen,” Dex added, downing the last of his warm grape juice and vodka.
“It is for me, too. This is the strangest case I’ve ever worked,” Jackson said, puffing smoke rings toward the air handler. He faced Dex. “So let’s hear your theory about the orange-eyed killer.”
Dex cleared the muggy night air from his throat. “The only clue we have left is that demon statue at the back of the altar. If a mosasaur didn’t kill the Indian tribes and destroy their villages, the only murderous-looking monster in the area is that ugly thing.”
“But it’s made of solid stone,” Teddi objected.
“And those altar urns were made of some kinda clay, too, but that didn’t stop them from sucking blood outta my hands.”
“Point taken,” she said, backing off her criticism.
Dex looked at Jackson. “So, what do you think?”
The psychic stifled a yawn. “I think it’s time to call it night.”
“That’s a cop-out if I’ve ever heard one,” Teddi stated harshly. “I thought you said we had a lot of work to do for tomorrow night.”
“We do, but we can take care of business in the morning. I’m bushed.”
He started to rise from the recliner, but Teddi pushed him back down. “Did you know that Ryan was going to be one of those shooters tonight?” she demanded.
He crushed his cigar tip in the ashtray. “I’m afraid I did.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me!”
“Because I didn’t want you to do something dangerously foolish like you did.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known . . .”
“But I did, and . . . and I saw Ryan kill you in
my Brazil vision, too. Thankfully, I delayed your appearance at the scene, and that changed fate, so to speak. Now if you don’t mind . . .” He got up and walked to the short hallway off the dining room. “Dex, you take my bed. It’s the room on the right. Teddi, you take the guest room.”
“I thought you said this house was built for one.”
“Sometimes Charlie spends the night on his fishing trips. Satisfied?”
“I suppose.”
“Where are you bunkin’, Jackson?” Dex asked.
“On the couch where I can keep one eye on the monitors.”
“I thought this was over,” Teddi said.
“I don’t always see everything, Teddi. Sometimes the psychic world holds back a few surprises.”
“He’s right, Teddi. We’d better catch some shut-eye. It could be a long night tomorrow,” Dex predicted.
“Count on it,” Jackson concurred. “Good night.”
Chapter 77
Teddi’s eyelids shot up like runaway shades. She heard an unfamiliar noise, but in her sleepy state, she thought it was a dream at first. There it was again! Goosebumps prickled her skin. A muffled moan. Like a distant wolf howl.
She kicked off the sheet, dropped her legs over the side of the bed, and crept to the bedroom door. She pulled it open a crack and put her ear to the narrow space. The howling moan came again. It was inside! Was it Zeus?
Teddi pulled the door open wide, and despite being naked, she crept into the dimly lit living room. A night-light glowed in the kitchen and faintly lighted her way.
Jackson lay curled on the couch, facedown in his pillow. His leg muscles repeatedly clenched and shivered, and then he groaned.
Jackson was responsible for those awful sounds! He seemed to be in distress. Without considering her nakedness, Teddi rushed to his side and shook him awake. His face jerked up, lathered in sweat, and his eyelids blinked alert. His shivering increased, and she tossed the blanket that he’d kicked to the floor over his body.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered urgently.
“You’re the matter,” she replied. “You were having a bad dream. Your moaning woke me up.”
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