The Eaton

by John K. Addis

  The men shook hands.

  “I must ask,” Jon inquired cautiously, “how you've managed to keep this so secret. My assistant explained about the tunnelers working in the dark, so to speak, but what about the hotel? Surely you haven't built this all yourself.”

  “Well almost everything was designed to be modular, built in pieces above ground, by companies that had no idea what it was all for. So the construction team who worked down here was a skeleton crew whose job was to follow plans and assemble everything to my specifications. But yes, certainly my workers would have loved to share information with their friends and family, which could have been a problem.” Oliver motioned for the two to join him down the platform. “So I offered them all a rather substantial bonus if the secret remained until today. Double their wages if nothing gets out. They protect the secret, and watch over each other too, to make sure no one's caught writing anything they shouldn't, or taking plans with them to the surface. Even their families aren't being told, under our contract. But I’m paying them well enough that the wives don’t ask.”

  Oliver led Jon and Clem to a short staircase where they could descend safely onto the track itself.

  “The thing is,” Oliver continued, “there's a huge financial incentive for me as well, keeping this a secret I mean. It's not just about the marketing prospects. The way the county's outdated building codes are set up, I can avoid all taxes, regulations, and bribes if the city doesn't know about a project until it's complete. It's like building a barn on your own property. If they catch you building it, you have to follow the laws and pay fines and inspectors and Lord knows what else. But once it's complete, they can't do anything. It's part of your property now.”

  “But Michigan Central Railroad owns the depot above us,” Clem protested. “You must have gotten permission from them, and the village.”

  They were walking together down a dimly-lit, half-finished tunnel, but Jonathan could see Oliver grinning like a Cheshire cat. “My dear boy, did you not know that the M.C. Rail is now owned by New York Central?”

  Clem did not.

  “And did you know, as part of the acquisition deal, ownership rights of individual stations were won by high bidders, in exchange for offering guaranteed 99-year lease agreements to New York Central, so that New York doesn't own a single depot in the state of Michigan, despite now running all Michigan Central lines?”

  Jonathan got it. “So no Michigan taxes for New York Rail.”

  Oliver nodded in triumph. “Exactly. They own all of M.C. Rail, but not a single piece of property in Michigan. New York Central leases the depot above us, from me. Or, I should say, a small corporation I control. But they only lease the depot itself. The building. Not the land. And clearly not any of this.”

  “Was this your plan, then?” inquired Jon. “From the beginning, when you purchased the depot?”

  Oliver smiled. “Sometimes you don't know what you have until you start digging.”

  He stopped walking, and gestured to a small, natural tunnel which shot off the main path. An electric work light was pointed toward the cave, but Oliver leaned down to light two oil lanterns for Jon and Clem as well.

  “There, you see?”

  They did see. The carvings were deep, detailed, and numerous, and seemed to continue deep into the tunnel.

  Jon and Clem said nothing as they examined, touched, and admired the carvings before them. Jonathan took out his journal and began sketching some of the shapes. Clem observed and offered commentary as his mentor sketched, occasionally pointing out when his sketches deviated from the image, allowing Jon considerable accuracy.

  “These are like Greenleaf,” Clem commented.

  “That's Sanilac, right?” Oliver knew enough about the petroglyphs to know to call on Jonathan, which means he knew about the Sanilac carvings uncovered a generation prior. It could be assumed that he also knew that Jonathan had been the one to research and publish the anthropological papers on those carvings.

  Jonathan nodded. “Yeah, this is a lot like Greenleaf. But a later period, I think. The detail is better. Though the shapes, the language of the art, is similar. Especially here.” Jonathan pointed with the tip of his fountain pen to several swirl shapes carved in succession. “This is practically a quotation from the Greenleaf sandstone.”

  Clem and Jon exchanged a knowing smile. This was the part of the job they loved.

  “There are more of those shapes deeper into the tunnel,” Oliver advised, leading them further into the tight cavern.

  As Jonathan examined the artwork, a slow feeling of dread crept across his back, arms, and neck, causing an involuntary shudder which Oliver must have noticed.

  “Jonathan?”

  Jon nodded but said nothing, and continued his examination of the pictures. What were these images trying to convey? Some sort of shape-shifter, Jon supposed, but did American Indians in Michigan even have a shape-shifter legend? The East Indians did, with the Rakshasas, the carnivorous demon man-eaters of the Hindu epics. Many other civilizations had similar lore, from Ancient Greece to Norse mythology to the Far East. But he had never heard of such legends coming out of this region. The closest would be the skinwalker myths of the Navajo out West, but skinwalkers were human beings who could assume the form of an animal, not a creature which could assume the form of a human, as these drawings described.

  More worrisome than the depiction of a shape-shifting creature was the fact that the artists seemed to make very, very clear that one should not move the boulder before them. And it had indeed been moved, revealing another cave behind it. Jonathan peered into this new darkness with his lantern, and could only see a small, empty rock room with a slow stream of water running in a natural trench, maybe two inches wide. As far as he could tell, there were no petroglyphs inside the space.

  Jonathan stepped back into the preceding cavern. He turned to Clem, who shrugged, and then to Oliver.

  “Was something in here?” Jon asked.

  “No,” said Oliver. “Nothing. It was empty.”

  “But it wasn't open when you found it.”

  “No.”

  “So your men moved the boulder, despite the warnings?”

  “Well, I'm not sure we interpreted them as warnings, really. My thought was that a lot of effort seemed to have gone into detailing something important behind the boulder. When we forced it open—which took a great deal of manpower, by the way—we were pretty disappointed. One guy thought maybe it was the small stream of water that was being protected, some sort of fountain of youth perhaps, but we tested it and it's the same mineral composition as any Eaton Rapids spring.”

  “So then you wrote me,” Jon continued, “to see if I could help you figure out why the cave was empty?”

  “Not quite,” Oliver admitted. “We wrote you to see if you could tell us what we had found before we attempted to gain entry, to see if it was worth the effort. But we couldn't wait. I couldn't wait, anyway. In fact, we just moved the rock two days ago.”

  seventeen

  “Come on,” urged Sam. “We're almost there.”

  Though the work lights had shut themselves off, plunging the four into complete darkness, they had managed to make their way back to the tunnel proper, where they could see the faint light of the station off in the distance. Guided by this dim illumination, they sprinted toward it, being careful not to stumble on the track beneath their feet.

  As their eyes adjusted to the station light, Sam called out for Vaughn, who he did not see. There was no response.

  “What the hell,” cried Sarah. She, too, shouted his name, to no avail.

  Sam looked around on the floor a bit, peeking again in the unfinished train car and the empty ticket booth. Nothing.

  Janet was shaking. “Something took him,” she muttered to herself. “Something's going to take us.”

  “Now, hang on,” cautioned Al. “We don't know that.” He padded the journal he had retrieved from the sui
te. “We need to read this.”

  “We don't have time to read a damned book,” Janet snapped.

  “This journal,” Al explained, “was written by the only other people who stayed at this place. Aren't you a little curious? Maybe we'll discover how to get out.”

  “If the author of that journal knew how to get out, they would have done so, and taken their book,” Sarah remarked dryly. “They wouldn't have hung themselves from the ceiling.”

  “We don't know for sure that the writer is the one who killed herself,” Sam offered.

  “Sam's right,” said Al, who had turned to the first page. “The writer was male.” Then, after a moment of skimming the content of the first entry, added: “He was with his wife. That must be who we saw.”

  Janet seemed comforted at this thought. Perhaps the writer of the journal did make it out, and left his journal behind due to the stress of finding his wife's suicide. She turned to Al.

  “Alright, read the thing.”

  “Well hang on,” protested Sam. “We have to find Vaughn.”

  “Says who,” Sarah deadpanned.

  Sam ignored the sarcasm, but turned to her. “Sarah, what was it back there? What did you see?”

  Sarah hesitated. If what she suspected was true, she couldn't trust that Al or Janet were who they said they were. She would have to talk to Sam alone.

  “This is interesting,” said Al, who was now several pages into the manuscript. “This guy, Jonathan, was hired by the hotel management to examine the carvings we just saw.”

  Sarah bristled. “What does he say about them?”

  Al didn't respond at first. His brow furrowed as he read with increased concentration.

  Sam studied Sarah's concerned expression, then turned back to Al.

  “Al?”

  “I'm not sure, Sam,” he responded. “He wasn't sure what they meant either. Native American, yes. But, there's something else.” Al's eyes traveled up from the page, finding Sarah, and repeated Sam's question. “What did you see back there, Sarah? You figured something out, didn't you.”

  Sarah nodded, but cast uneasy glances at Janet and Sam, uncertain whether to share her suspicions in public. Finally, she said, “it's Kedzie. It…wasn't Kedzie.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam didn't understand.

  Sarah shifted on her feet, more nervous than she had ever remembered being in her life. In a small voice, she continued. “Kedzie had a tattoo, around her navel. It was new. But it was pretty big. You couldn't forget it.”

  “No she didn't,” Sam protested. “We just saw her.”

  “Actually,” Sarah said, “I don't think we did.”

  At last, it dawned on Sam what she was getting at. His mouth dropped open, but no words escaped.

  “So,” hoped Janet, “it wasn't her body on the stairs? It was an illusion? Some sort of trick, like the dead baby, and she’s still down here somewhere?”

  Sam turned to Sarah, and they shared a knowing look. “She's saying,” Sam said, “that Kedzie was never here. The girl in the laundry room didn't have a tattoo, either.”

  Janet scoffed at this. Despite being able to accept an illusion of a dead girl, the thought of a living, talking, touchable ghost was too much. “That's ridiculous.” She turned to Al for support, but Al, who was once again buried in the journal, said nothing.

  Sam thought for a moment, replaying his conversations with Kedzie in the past few hours. It was inconceivable that the person he had been talking to, even touching, hadn’t been the real Kedzie. He had known her for years. She even smelled like Kedzie. Uncertain, he turned back to Sarah, and said what he knew was required. “I believe you.”

  The group continued to be silent as the implications sank in, but Janet was shaking her head in defiance. “No, no, no that's bullshit. That's bullshit!” She began gesturing with her hands in a manic, unfocused fashion, mentally at her breaking point. “We just have to get out of here,” she shouted. “Now!”

  Janet made a break for the door to the stairwell, moving as fast as her short legs and tight skirt would allow. But when she arrived at the entry, Vaughn blocked her path.

  “And where the hell have you been,” Janet spat.

  “Hey, sorry, I was trying to find…” Vaughn trailed off as he read the situation. Something had happened. Everyone was panicked.

  “What, are you a ghost, too?” Janet barked. Vaughn's eyes widened.

  “What are you talking about?” he stammered in response.

  Janet turned and gestured savagely to the rest of the group. “They say Kedzie wasn't real. They say we're seeing imaginary people. So for all I know, you're not real either, Blacula.”

  Something had caught Janet's eye. She pivoted toward Sam, Al, and Sarah, and realized that behind them, the elevator had returned.

  “Free at last!” Janet shouted, and pushed past Al on her way across the platform. Al lost his balance in response, and dropped the journal as he used a hand to steady himself against the wall. As he turned toward the elevator, he saw a strange shimmer across his vision, as if the elevator car was in place, and then wasn’t, and then it was back again.

  “Thank God,” Sam had exclaimed, and was also making his way toward the elevator, watching Janet as she yanked the protective gate open allowing access.

  Al knew something was wrong. “Wait,” he said sharply.

  But it was too late. Janet had stepped over the threshold, tripped, and fell down the shaft where the elevator had never been. There was a thud, and Sarah screamed.

  They had all seen the elevator through the gate. And then it had vanished before their eyes.

  Yet the thud had come quickly. She couldn't have fallen far. Sam continued racing to the elevator.

  “Be careful,” Sarah cried after him.

  Sam heard a moan, and it sounded close. He peered down the shaft and saw Janet's body, lit from one side, on the roof of the elevator car.

  “She's alive,” he called back to the others. “The car must be right below us!” Janet had fallen about six feet, and now lay on her back, dazed but conscious. “Are you okay?” Sam asked.

  “I don't know,” she croaked. “I think…I may have broken something. And my head…”

  Sam instinctively grabbed his cell phone to dial 911, but there was still no service. He turned back to the others. “Al, Vaughn, can you help? We need to get her out.”

  Vaughn hurried over, but Al was hesitant, eyeing Vaughn with suspicion, then Sarah, then the elevator. He seemed to have lost his trust for everything and everyone. Rather than help, he picked up the journal where he had dropped it, and backed toward the door to the stairs.

  Sarah's attention had been toward the shaft, but now she watched Al with amazement. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  He turned to her, offered an apologetic smile, and then sprinted for the stairway door.

  “Al, get back here!” Sarah raced after him, but by the time she passed through the door herself, Al was several flights below and continuing to descend. She heard Sam calling her name from the transit platform and so returned, raising both arms in exasperation. “He just took off!”

  “Where did he go?” Sam asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “Down. Where else could he go?”

  “Maybe he went to see if he could fix the elevator on level nine,” Sam guessed.

  Sarah shook her head. “No, he went further than that. I could still hear his steps when you called me back.”

  “Hey, you're supposed to be getting me out of here,” Janet protested, sounding a little stronger than she had before.

  Sam decided to jump down to Janet, where he planned on helping lift her up to Vaughn's stronger arms above. When he was standing beside her on the roof of the car, it was clear that they were trapped between levels, as there was about a four-foot opening into the hallway of the ninth floor. Sam realized it'd be safer to help her out horizontally, into the hallway, rather than try and lift her vert
ically back to the transit level.

  “Vaughn,” Sam called up, “I need you to go down a floor and help me get her out that way.”

  Vaughn didn't move at first. “Are you sure? I think I can lift her.”

  “No, this way is better,” Sam insisted. “The elevator car seems to be stuck between the ninth and the top of the eighth floor. I can get her into the hallway this way and she can go down rather than up.” He turned to Janet. “It will be better for you if your leg is hurt.” She nodded in agreement.

  “Alright,” said Vaughn, masking his reluctance. He ran to the stairwell. A few seconds later, Sam saw him racing toward him in the hallway.

  Sam helped Janet position her body to be carried from the top of the car to Vaughn's waiting arms below. She cried out in pain a few times, but insisted they continue, and once Vaughn had her in safety, Sam leapt down to the hallway as well. Sarah had joined them all on the ninth floor, and helped Vaughn lower Janet to the hall carpet.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked her.

  Janet managed to laugh. “No, I can't say that I am. But I'll live.” She looked around. “Did Al leave?”

  Sarah nodded.

  Janet's face fell, and a blend of pain and fury swept over her. “Is it really so hard for us all to stay together? We wasted time searching for Kedzie, and Vaughn, and now Al? That's time we should have spent getting the fuck out of here!” Janet seemed once again on the edge of panic, her muscles tight and trembling, and her eyes snapping back and forth across the hall.

  Something clicked with Sarah, and her eyes went wide. “It was S'mores, wasn't it,” she asked.

  Janet looked confused, and then her attitude softened as a chuckle escaped her lips. “Yes, honey.”

  Sam cocked his head to one side. “Sarah?”

  “The stick,” Sarah smiled. “That she had in the kitchen. The branches, and the gas stove. She was roasting marshmallows over the flame.”

  Sam had almost forgotten Janet's anecdote from earlier. “How the hell did you figure that out?”

  “I don't know,” Sarah admitted. “It just came to me.” She did not add that she had been desperate to come up with something to say that would break the tension and pull Janet back from the cliff.