by James Cole
But could he really accept the idea that his Jinni could be jealous enough to kill June in the first place? Jeremy simply could not imagine her playing the murderer’s role but neither could he discount the facts. Jinni had motive and she was the only one who had access to his key and the time to perform the mutilation. And what of the mutilation itself? Why would either of them, Jinni or Tavalin, go to the trouble and the risk of carving the insignia of the band Cocytus into the body? Of the two, Tavalin was the more knowledgeable of the band and its genre of music known as deathcore. Jinni hated the band. Jinni would never choose to inscribe that particular symbol, would she?
Unless, reckoned Jeremy, the representation was put there as a diversion to throw off the would-be investigators.
*****
About two hours later, Jeremy arrived back at the King’s Pinnacle. He stopped at the point where the stream ran underground.
“Okay, Grady. I followed the stream, just like you said. Now what am I supposed to do?”
Jeremy asked the question aloud but never expected an answer.
“Maybe you should keep following it,” suggested a voice from the darkness.
Jeremy’s head snapped violently around. “Who’s there?” he demanded. His hand found the handle of the machete hanging from his belt.
Low and behold, Jinni stepped out.
Jeremy managed only one flabbergasted word as he watched her deliberate approach. “You?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s me.”
Jeremy tried not to take Jinni’s choice of words as a verification of his new suspicions of her but he wasn’t about to let loose his grip on the machete handle.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Grady meant for me to come,” she replied. “I’m supposed to help.”
“I gotta say, Jinni, your showing up way out here is freaking me out a little.” Jeremy didn’t mention the reason behind his skittishness.
“I know how to get inside,” she announced, “but we are going to have put on our spelunker hats.”
“Our what?” asked Jeremy.
“I’m pretty sure we need to go underground.” She indicated the place where the stream disappeared into the fissure in the rock.
Keeping one, still-suspicious eye on Jinni, Jeremy got down on his hands and knees and shined his flashlight beam into the dark space within. He could not see much except that the water ran into the ground at a steep angle. “It looks a bit like a water slide,” he said, “except skinnier.”
“You’re pretty skinny,” remarked Jinni.
“Yeah, but I would really, really hate to get lodged inside.”
“We can use the rope you brought. If it gets too tight, I’ll just pull you out,” said Jinni. “No worries.”
“Easy for you to say,” muttered Jeremy.
Jeremy stood at the crossroads. He wanted to do right by Grady – God rest his soul – and destroy the Source and he couldn’t do that without getting inside. The map he lifted from Monika’s boat seemed to show that the stream traversed the wall but that did not necessarily mean that a person could also enter that way. And what about Jinni? She seemed nothing but friendly and helpful but what if that were all an act? If he did get wedged in the hole, did he fully trust her to assist him? If she murdered June, wouldn’t it be in her best interest to walk away? He was the only one who had a vested interest in discovering the true identity of June’s murderer. Stuck, he would be unable to lobby his case and the real killer – Jinni in the present scenario – would go free and he would be doomed to die a slow, miserable death in the hole.
“Well?” asked Jinni. “Are you going to try or not?”
“Why are you so eager?” he asked. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Jeremy,” she stated plainly. “Why would you say such a thing?”
He shrugged.
Jinni pressed her position. “Grady didn’t say to follow the stream and stop at the point where it goes underground. He said to follow it – simple as that. The stream leads underground.”
“If you’re so sure, maybe you should go first,” suggested Jeremy.
“That might not be a bad idea. I am smaller than you.” Jinni answered quickly, so much so that Jeremy dropped his guard.
“No, no,” he protested. “I’ll do it. I can’t stand here and watch my girlfriend crawl down a dark hole.” Realizing his errant choice of words, Jeremy added, “Sorry. For a second I forgot that you aren’t my, you know…”
As his words tapered to silence, Jeremy felt, but could not banish the self-conscious expression stamped on his face. Jinni seemed confidently amused at his discomfort.
“Alright,” Jeremy finally said. “Let’s get this over with.”
When it occurred to Jeremy that he would have to leave behind not only his machete but also his backpack, he almost backed out. Jinni would have at her disposal not one, but two, murder weapons. If she were so inclined, she could render death by the machete shish-ka-bob method or, if she were in the mood for fireworks, the hole would be especially conducive to a water-triggered rubidium explosion.
In the end he went forward with the original plan, convincing himself, as best he could, that Jinni was not the enemy. He eased his bottom into the icy stream and slid in feet first, holding his arms above his head like a teenager on a roller coaster ride. The last image his uplifted gaze recorded was Jinni’s stoic face. She kept the rope taunt at first, but suddenly the rope went slack and he slid uncontrollably down into the hole. Had Jinni dropped him on purpose? Jeremy had little time to ponder the possibility as, perhaps a dozen feet down, his boots impacted a hard flat surface and his body crumpled into a heap on the rock floor of the cave.
“Jeremy!” cried the voice from above. “Are you okay?” At least Jinni sounded distraught.
“I think so.” Jeremy felt for his coat pocket, unzipped it and pulled out the flashlight.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I lost my grip. Are you stuck?”
“No,” he replied. “It’s actually fairly roomy down here. Hang on while I look around.”
The cave was tall enough to stand up in and deep enough that Jeremy could not tell if it was a dead end or if it continued farther into the rock. He followed the stream to the point where it gurgled down another hole that no human could squeeze through. The cave was a dead end.
As Jeremy continued his visual exploration of the space, the flashlight beam swept past a face in the darkness. Jeremy jumped back even as he realized that the uplifted eyes belonged, not to a living person, but to a different kind of creature. With a broad sweeping motion of the flashlight, Jeremy revealed the scope of an elaborate scene painted on the cave wall. Backed by a sky of deep blue and overhanging limbs were two angelic beings of intricate detail. In the very center of the depiction, between the angels, was a sword, erect and wrapped in believable flames. Jeremy wondered if Grady could have painted something as magnificent as this.
Just beneath the hilt of the sword Jeremy noticed the indentation, black and round, from which the fire seemed to emerge. The indentation, as it turned out, was actually a circular opening, about thigh-high and big enough to accommodate a full-sized man. Jeremy crawled inside and followed the upward-tilted shaft. After 20 feet or so, it opened up enough so that Jeremy could stand, albeit in a stooped posture. About 50 feet in, he paused. The rope, still tied around his wrist, had run out of slack. Realizing that the cord was probably unnecessary at this point, he untied it and as he did, he became aware of the draft. A shot of cool air moved past in the direction he had been traveling. That, Jeremy deduced, could mean only one thing: There must be an outlet up ahead. How far ahead he did not know, but knowing that the tunnel did indeed lead somewhere, he turned back. Jinni still had his backpack and if he really were going to blow up something, Jeremy would need the rubidium it held.
*****
As Jeremy neared the entrance to the outside, he heard
Jinni’s voice.
“Jeremy?” she was saying. “Are you there? Answer me if you can hear me.”
He listened for a bit before he answered. His distrustful mind pictured Jinni standing above the hole, waiting for him to answer, waiting to throw the jar of rubidium down the hole to detonate it and him. When he finally answered, “I’m here,” no such explosion occurred.
“Thank God,” she said. “It took you long enough.”
“You were right,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I can get in this way.”
Jinni corrected him. “You mean we can get in this way,” she said. “I’m coming too.”
Each time Jinni passed up a chance to take him out, Jeremy’s suspicions lessened a bit. “Can you pass my stuff down?” he asked.
“Is it okay that the backpack gets wet?” she asked.
“As long as the jar doesn’t break, it should be fine.”
Carefully, using the rope, Jinni lowered the backpack down to him, then the machete. “Me next,” she warned.
Jeremy arrested Jinni’s slide as best he could. Once safely at the bottom, they made their way to the hole in the rock wall and crawled inside.
“What do you think it is?” asked Jinni. “What is the Source?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jeremy, “but I can’t wait to find out.”
With Jeremy leading the way, they crawled or, more accurately, climbed toward their goal. Besides the tunnel’s decidedly upward tilt, its girth shrank as they moved along, so much so that Jeremy worried that they might not be able to squeeze through. At last, he caught sight of a small opening above him.
“Up there,” he whispered excitedly. “I see it.”
A certain, indescribable feeling came over him as he moved closer to the threshold of the inner courts of the King’s Pinnacle. It was as if each step was measured, not in inches and feet, but rather in millions of light years, and the narrow passage was a wormhole that linked two worlds a universe apart.
They emerged in a small boulder field on the edge of what could best be described as a small valley, or a gorge, encompassing an area of perhaps two acres with walls rising to a height of about fifty feet. A subtle, whitish glow seemed to emanate not from the overcast sky but, inexplicitly, from within the gorge itself. The magnificence of the landscape glossed over Jeremy’s worries, suspicions and regrets. For a moment he even forgot that he and Jinni were no longer an item. His hand found hers and they walked, hand-in-hand, beneath towering evergreen firs and Ginkgo trees that split their bounty of golden-yellow leaves between their limbs and the ground. The ground-level growth included a multitude of ferns and unfamiliar flowering plants and a carpet of green, spongy moss. The whole of the place reminded Jeremy of a plush rain forest or, more aptly, a hidden garden.
As they approached the geometric center of the gorge, the atmosphere became thicker and damp; foggier. It was there that they came upon the steaming pool of water, no more than ten feet in diameter. From the pool flowed a stream of crystal-clear water that ran step-wise down the slope through a series of several smaller pools before vanishing into the ground. When Jeremy knelt down to caress the surface of the pool, he found that the water was exceptionally warm, bordering on hot.
Smiling, he looked up at Jinni who, like himself, appeared awestruck by the whole experience.
“Feel it,” he said. “It’s a hot spring.”
From the steaming waters grew a tree. It stood about 30 feet high. Its trunk, eight or ten inches in diameter, emerged from the pool next to the bank and possessed an odd lumpy quality. Closer inspection revealed it to be a braid of three separate plants that over time had fused together as one. Vine-like streamers like those of a weeping willow hung from the limbs, low enough to touch the ground and the waters of the pool. Those that drooped into the pool had grown thicker, more like saplings than vines. Jeremy tugged at one of these and found the base to be sturdy, presumably rooted to the bottom of the pool. Scads of purple flowers and purple fruit adorned the limbs like decorations on a Christmas tree.
As implausible as it seemed, the blooms on this tree were identical to those of the lotus plants that grew perennially in the swamps outside, the same lotus discovered by Claire and from which the Unreal originated. So, too, were the leaves similar, except these were folded in half in the shape of a half-moon. The most noticeable difference between this plant and the common purple lotus plants on the outside was its size. Though its roots and base originated from the hot spring pool, its woody trunk enabled it to grow like a tree, while its smaller cousins on the outside did not have the capacity to grow above the surface of the water.
Jinni was the first to voice their shared sentiments. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Is this the Source?”
“It must be.”
Another major difference between this specimen and the others was the fruit. This, the giant purple lotus of the King’s Pinnacle, bore fruit that was large and meaty, completely dissimilar to the cone-shaped seed pods common to Claire’s regular purple lotus plants. Here, the fruit came in a full range of sizes, from pea-sized all the way up to the mature fruit, which were about the same size as a large orange but of a more oval shape. Though most other plants only produced flowers and fruit during the spring and summer, this tree possessed flowers and fruit at every stage of development, even now at the tail end of December. Jeremy wondered if it were possible that the tree bore fruit year-round. He was no expert in the fruiting cycles of plants but he did not know of any other plant that produced fruit in perpetuity.
Jeremy picked one and cut into it with his knife. The consistency of the meat was similar to that of a plum, while the liquid that ran out was of a deep purple hue, like concentrated grape juice. Jeremy thought of the very purple stain that he wore on his shirt like a coat of arms, remnants of the spilt Source from the chalice at Monika’s ceremony.
“What do you think made this one grow differently from the rest?” asked Jinni.
“I suspect this is the product of the very specific conditions of this hot-spring-fed pool,” replied Jeremy. “A specimen like this would take years to get this big. The lotus plants on the outside get killed off every year at the first hard freeze whereas the steam and hot water protect this one.” Jeremy thought for a moment before adding, “Also, it might be that the percolating action of the springs brings up dissolved nutrients and minerals that act as a kind of supercharged fertilizer. And,” he continued, “it boggles the mind, but this might very well be the only one in existence.”
“How do you figure?” asked Jinni.
“Presumably, these conditions – the heat and the fertilizer – are unique to this hot spring, and since Claire’s lotus only grows in Reefers Woods, it stands to reason that this plant is one-of-a-kind.”
“And if it is unique and its fruit – the Source – conveys some great benefit as Monika contends…?” Jinni’s question was open-ended.
Jeremy filled in the blank: “Then, by destroying it, the world might forever be without that benefit, whatever it may be.”
“Can you really go though with it?” she asked.
“Seeing how it’s probably my fault Monika found the Source in the first place, I don’t really have a choice. I don’t want to, but I believe it is the right thing to do. I went against Grady too many times; I won’t do it again.”
Chapter 49
Tuesday, December 23
At Jeremy’s bidding, Jinni moved a safe distance away while he readied the explosive rubidium. He planned to remove the lid and set the jar afloat in the pool or, if that did not work, prop the open jar up beside the water. The jar could then be submerged or knocked into the pool by throwing something – a rock or a stick, say – to cause the water to come into contact with the rubidium, thus setting off the explosion. At least that was the plan.
Jeremy removed the jar’s lid and, ever so carefully, eased the jar into the water.
“Good evening, Jeremy.”
So utterly unexpected was the
greeting that Jeremy fumbled the jar at the most crucial of moments. The jar, minus its lid, got away from him and bobbed on the surface of the pool, so low in the water that Jeremy thought the water would certainly cascade over the lip, causing an instantaneous and substantial detonation. Fearing for his life, Jeremy vaulted up and away from the pool, startling Tavalin in the process.
“Watch out!” exclaimed Tavalin. “Stay where you are!”
Jeremy kept his eyes peeled on the pool, but all remained quiet and still. It was only after the rubidium did not explode that Jeremy attempted to process Tavalin’s presence and his strange choice of words.
“Stay where I am?” asked Jeremy. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You scared me, that’s all,” replied Tavalin. “What were you doing down there anyway?”
Jeremy ignored his friend’s question. “How did you get in here?” asked Jeremy.
“The same way you did,” Tavalin replied. “I thought you might need my help so I followed you in.”
Jeremy studied his friend’s anxious body language and said, disingenuously, “Oh, okay. That explains everything.”
First Jinni, and now Tavalin, claimed to have followed Jeremy here to help. One of them was most certainly lying, coinciding with the one who killed June. But which one? More and more, the signs pointed to Tavalin.