The Devil's Cauldron

by Michael Wallace

  “That makes two of us.” She shrugged. “Anyway, so Davis gets a threatening email and figures out that hey, this woman is in IT and she lives in Vermont. And she just sent him a threatening email. What did she say? That she’s watching? I’ll bet he was worried she’d hacked our network. We don’t exactly keep it secure.”

  “No, we don’t. The LIS interpretation software is open source. Same with the video chat. Opening up is what we’re all about.” He sighed. “Might be time to rethink that policy.”

  “So he ordered us home,” Becca said. “That was the only thing he could do under the circumstances. Otherwise, he puts his own life at risk, our lives, and Meggie Kerr’s, too.”

  “He had to know we’d disobey. We find them, we rescue them. We weren’t going to come home, not when we’re so close.”

  “Which is why he never asked why we weren’t showing up at the house. He knew we were still in Costa Rica, that we never flew home. And he never wanted us to.”

  Wes shook his head. “And here was I getting frustrated with Eric. We need just as much handholding. Can’t believe it took so long.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” she said.

  The rain picked up again, but Wes’s mood was much brighter than it had been moments earlier. They were so close now—close to getting Eric out, close to helping Meggie. And close to exposing Kaitlyn Potterman. Justice.

  A hint of sulfur cut the air. Then the wind shifted, and it came on stronger, like rotting eggs, waves of the stuff, coating Wes’s tongue and filling his nostrils. They rounded the corner and the flashlights cut through a clearing up the hillside. Steam drifted from the pools and hot pots, and a larger cloud billowed down the hillside from the Devil’s Cauldron itself. The hot springs were deserted.

  “What time is it?” Becca said in a low voice.

  Wes strained to hear over the rain and the bubbling pots. “Eight-forty,” he answered after a glance at his watch.

  “That took longer than I thought. Maybe he’s come and gone.”

  “He also has to fight the rain. There’s time.”

  And if he’d already left, at least they’d have the phone.

  The moonlight that had earlier filtered through gaps in the clouds disappeared as the sky closed in and began dumping rain again. They made their way carefully up the hillside. Some of the upper springs were hot enough to scald, and they slowed down even more when they approached the Devil’s Cauldron itself. Wes took Becca’s wrist to hold her when they reached it, stopping to listen. No sound but the boiling water and the splatter of rain in the leaves and on the bare ground. Carefully, they picked their way around the cauldron and listened. They heard nothing.

  They turned the flashlights toward the woods to look for Diego’s tree. There it was, directly behind the cauldron, where the forest encroached to lean its branches over the hillside. The main trunk was at least a dozen feet across, with so many thick, twisting branches, starting close to the ground and climbing into the canopy that it was like a kid’s dream of the perfect climbing tree. Large buttress roots formed walls at its base.

  The tree was an ecosystem in and of itself. Vines as thick as pythons choked the lower trunk, while ferns, mosses, orchids, and even miniature trees hung or sprouted from branches. A pair of frog eyes reflected back at Wes from the flashlight, then blinked out.

  “It must be this branch,” she said.

  Becca stood in front of a low, thick branch that dipped in a u-shape. At its lowest, it came within two feet of the ground. Roots dropped from the branch to anchor it to the soil.

  It did appear to be the most likely candidate on the most likely tree. But there was nothing unusual pinned in the hollow between branch and tree. Certainly not a plastic bag holding Wes’s cell phone and its video evidence. They checked out a couple of other branches, then dismissed the other trees one by one.

  “No, it’s got to be this one,” Wes said, returning to the original tree. “Diego hasn’t made it yet.”

  They snugged in against the buttress roots, in what looked like the driest spot beneath the canopy, turned off the flashlights, and settled down to wait.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”

  Eric stood on the porch, gripping the railing, while water hit his clenched knuckles and splashed his face. He couldn’t stop saying it.

  “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”

  They killed Diego! Eric saw it with his own eyes.

  “He’s dead!”

  Moments earlier, his new friend had been alive. Now he was gone. A man and a woman had him wrapped in a sheet. The witch and her friend. They lifted him to the railing. Diego’s arm flopped out and his green scrub top lay exposed, together with a bit of the man’s dark hair, poking out the top. If there was any doubt, that had settled it.

  And here Eric had gaped like an idiot while Diego stumbled into Meggie’s room. He couldn’t see all of the room, but he could see people moving around. Struggling.

  Could he have saved Diego if he’d run into the hall screaming bloody murder until someone came to help? Or if he had tried to find Meggie’s room in time to help his friend? He didn’t know. But it didn’t help that he’d stood here watching until the struggle stopped. It hadn’t lasted long.

  The man and woman pushed the body and it fell over the railing and dropped into the darkness and disappeared. It was twenty or thirty feet down onto a steep slope that led into the trees. Why did they do that? Soon as it was day someone would see it. Something flashed in the woman’s hand. A knife. She stuck her arm into the rain and turned the blade over to wash it off.

  Washing away blood. And Eric knew what that meant. Diego didn’t fall and hit his head. It was MURDER.

  “You knew that already. Pay attention.”

  The man and woman went back inside. They stood arguing next to the bed for two or three minutes, then the woman left Meggie’s room and disappeared into the hall. The man stayed behind. Eric’s hands hurt from clenching the railing. He wanted to run to the door and block it with his nightstand, then drag his bed and wardrobe into place as well. In case the witch and her friend came looking for him.

  “Keep watching.”

  The man opened Meggie’s closet, her nightstand, and her dresser. Looking through someone else’s belongings. That was AGAINST THE RULES.

  “Murderers don’t follow the rules.”

  A flashlight moved on the ground below the habitat, where the woods met the hillside. A tight blue light.

  At first Eric was excited, remembering Diego’s blue penlight, but then he remembered. That wasn’t him. They’d thrown his body over the edge. The witch must have taken his light. And now she was using it, mucking around down in the trees. It flashed back and forth, then stopped. Eric couldn’t see what she’d found. Something lumpy.

  “It’s your friend. The one they killed.”

  Oh, that was it. They’d thrown Diego over the edge, and now they were going to drag away the body. That was how they were going to hide their crimes.

  “Too bad someone saw you do it,” he said with grim determination. “And that someone is me. I’m the judge, jury and executioner. No, wait. The judge and jury. Wait, I’m just the judge.” Only that wasn’t right either. “The police—I’m the cops. You’ll never get away with this.”

  Eric looked back to the bedroom in the opposite habitat. The man stood over the bed, looking down. Eric remembered Meggie. He’d forgotten all about her.

  She must still be alive in there. Because the other two had gone back inside and stood arguing near the bed. Eric couldn’t see her, but she must be there. Because if she were dead, they would have tossed her over the edge, too. He was pleased to have figured this out. But what next? What should he do?

  “Go get help. Go help the pretty lady.”

  His hands released their grip at last. His fingers ached, and there was a deep groove on his palm where the edge had pressed into his flesh
. It distracted him for a moment. When he looked back at the room, the man was leaning over the bed. His arms were out, like he was pressing on something to hold it in place.

  That didn’t make sense. Meggie couldn’t move. Why did he have to hold her down?

  A vague feeling of alarm spread through him. He was looking at something going wrong. Whatever the man was doing, he was UP TO NO GOOD. If only Wesley were here to explain what. Eric would have to use deductive reasoning. Like Sherlock Holmes.

  Then suddenly, he understood. The man was pushing down on Meggie’s face. He must be covering her mouth and nose. Keeping her from breathing. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t fighting back, because she couldn’t.

  Eric flew into action.

  #

  He burst from his room and raced down the hallway to the first of the covered walkways that connected his habitat to the others. His bare feet thumped on the wood, so loud that he was sure someone would hear. He didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  What if everyone at Foggy Mountain was UP TO NO GOOD? The bad man and woman were walking around and nobody told them they didn’t belong. Nobody told them they were not nurses or aides or janitors or kitchen staff or administrators. Nobody told them to go away. Instead, they could come and go and murder people. What if everyone knew already?

  And so Eric didn’t yell for help. He didn’t know who he could trust.

  He reached Meggie’s habitat, and then he got confused. There were five doors in the hallway. Which one was hers? He stood puzzling it over and trying to think which side it would be on to face his own balcony. But as soon as he tried to picture the building in his head it was like one of those impossible jigsaw puzzles with a thousand pieces, all confusing shapes and colors.

  “Stop wasting time.”

  He threw open the first door and flipped on the light. It was an old lady. She opened her eyes and glared at him. The next one had a girl named Angela—pronounced An-hela. She was from Argentina, they said. They spoke Spanish there, too. Angela or An-hela wasn’t who he was looking for. At least she didn’t wake up.

  When he threw open the next door he knew it was the right one. There was already light in the room, coming from the single bulb on the covered porch on the far side. It reached inside and left the bed and its linens in a soft white glow like from the light of the moon. It was what he’d seen from his balcony.

  Meggie lay on her back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn’t moving. Her eyes didn’t turn to look at him.

  That was called being TOO LATE, he realized sadly. Too late was when they didn’t push the button in time and the bomb went off. Too late was when they pulled the kid out of the frozen lake and the ambulance came and they breathed in his mouth and pushed on his chest. Then they stopped and shook their heads. Too late.

  A deep sadness sank into his belly. He didn’t want her to die. The poor woman, trapped inside a prison in her own mind. She wanted so badly to get out and if he had come faster maybe he could have helped before that bad man killed her.

  “He suffocated you to death because I was too slow.”

  Her eyes moved toward him. He jumped back with a little cry of horror, then let out another cry, this one of joy. The pretty lady was still alive!

  “I couldn’t do it,” a man’s voice said.

  Eric turned so fast he almost fell. A man stood in one corner, his arms folded and one hand rubbing at his chin. He looked troubled. Guilty.

  “You’re a bad man.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have it so easy here. Everything taken care of. Never have to pay a bill or learn how to run a business. Or know anything about dealing with brothers riding your case.”

  “Leave my brother out of this!”

  “I’m not talking about your brother, I’m talking about mine. They think I’m running the company into the ground. They want Kaitlyn out. Idiots. You can’t get her out.”

  “Who is Kaitlyn, the witch?”

  “Witch?” He let out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Or a devil. Once she gets inside you, you can’t get rid of her. You don’t understand, do you?”

  Eric shook his head. He kept himself between Meggie and the man in the corner.

  “I didn’t mean to turn out like this, you’ve got to believe me. I’m a good person who sometimes does stupid things. Like that time in college. I never would have slept with her if I’d been sober. And then there were those government contracts in Guatemala. I wasn’t going to pay the bribe. Somehow I did. And this poor idiot who stumbled in here tonight. She knifed him and made me help her throw the body down.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat, like he had something stuck in it. “Then there was Meggie and the cave.”

  “What cave?”

  “The thing is,” the man went on, sounding shaky, “every single time I get in trouble Kaitlyn has something to do with it. If she hadn’t been there, it never would have happened.”

  “So why don’t you go somewhere else?”

  “How do I do that? She knows everything I’ve done. One word and I’m ruined. Prison, or worse. That’s why I have to do what she tells me.”

  “Did she tell you to kill the pretty lady?”

  The man frowned. “What do you know about that? Yeah, that’s what she wants. And she’ll be back in a few minutes. She’ll want to know what happened, why I didn’t do it. What do I tell her? I have to do it or she’ll destroy me. But I can’t.” He cocked his head. “Maybe you could help me.”

  “I’m not going to help you. I’m going to rescue her!”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said hurriedly. “You came in and stopped me. I couldn’t do it. Then she’ll have to do it herself.”

  Eric stared. This man was even stupider than he was. And what would the witch do to Eric when she found out that he’d got in the way? Kill him, too, that’s what. Stab him dead like she did to Diego. That’s what they called MEDDLING. And bad people took care of meddlers.

  “Hey!” a woman’s voice called from below, like someone trying to be loud and quiet at the same time. It was her. It was the bad lady.

  The man froze and his eyes widened.

  “Benjamin!”

  He inched to the open doorway and poked his head out.

  “Where the hell is she?” A blue light flashed up from the ground, cutting through the rain and flashing on the ceiling of Meggie’s room. “Throw her down, quick!”

  It made Eric furious. That was Diego’s flashlight. They killed him. That woman took a knife and stabbed Eric’s friend dead. Then they stole his light.

  Kaitlyn. That was her name. And his was Benjamin. Stabbers and murderers. He looked at the back of the man’s head with rage building inside. His hands formed fists.

  “There’s someone here,” Benjamin called down.

  “Who?”

  “A resident. I think he heard the noise and came to investigate.”

  “What?” Kaitlyn said. She sounded outraged.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just some retarded guy. But he interrupted me. You’ll have to come up and help me deal with it.”

  Some retarded guy. Some retarded guy.

  Eric snapped.

  He bellowed in rage and charged. Head lowered, he slammed into Benjamin’s back. The man flew forward. The two of them staggered onto the porch and slipped on something wet.

  Eric wasn’t a good puncher. Wesley told him to never get in fights, to control his temper. So he didn’t hit people. But he couldn’t control anything now and when he came up he found that he was sitting on the man’s chest. His fists were like hammers and he slammed blows down on the man’s face.

  “Get off of me. Kait!”

  He was crying for help and Eric remembered the nasty woman down below. She would be coming up. And she had a knife, which she’d already used to murder one person. Eric had to get out of here or he would be the second person.

  He climbed to his feet and staggered backward. Blood streamed from Benjamin’s nose, w
hich looked funny, like a Mr. Potato Head with the wrong body part stuck into the middle of his face. It dawned on Eric that he’d been the one to do that. He didn’t feel bad. His hands hurt from punching. He didn’t feel bad about that, either.

  Eric ran for the door, then stopped. Meggie lay on her back, still facing toward the ceiling. But her eyes rolled as far to the side in their sockets as they could move, watching him.

  “I need to help you,” he said. “But she’s coming. What do I do?”

  Benjamin struggled to his knees on the porch. Blood streamed down his face and then Eric saw there was already blood all over the decking. Diego’s blood. It must have run out when they were throwing his body over the edge. That made him angry all over again.

  “No,” he told himself, only just stopping himself from attacking the man again. “Help the pretty lady.”

  Eric grabbed Meggie under the armpits. He heaved, struggled to get her up over the bed railing, then slung her over his shoulder. He thought she would be heavier. Maybe it was like in the movies, where people got agitated and then lifted up cars and pried open elevator doors. They called that adrenaline.

  Whatever it was, Eric had plenty of it. He burst into the darkened hallway and let Meggie’s door swing closed behind him. He turned right. No, that was wrong. Left was back toward his room—that’s where he wanted to go.

  He stopped again. “That’s the first place they’ll look.”

  But if he ran toward the main building, the nurses station and all the rest, he’d see Kaitlyn, coming back from outside. And that was very bad.

  A door slammed down the hall. Eric stood frozen, Meggie over his shoulder. She wasn’t moving. Why not? Was she . . . no, she couldn’t move. Duh!

  And then, because Eric couldn’t think of anything, and because he certainly wasn’t going to wait for Kaitlyn to catch him and stab him to death, he did the first thing that popped into his mind.

  He stepped across the hall to the opposite room, opened the door, and slipped inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Eric found himself back in An-hela’s room. What a funny name.