Pay Dirt (Lost Falls Book 2)

by Chris Underwood

  Worst of all, this rain was going to screw with any attempts to track her again. The connection I’d used to find her here was a tenuous thing. Rain would wash it away as easily as it did her footprints.

  Just as I was slipping the map into my pocket along with the rest of the pages, I heard a snort from behind me. Daud’s eyelids flickered, his chest moving with shallow breaths.

  He was in a bad way. The rats had done more damage to him than I would’ve thought possible. Flesh hung off his face in strips. He made another snorting, choking sound. The bastard was going to choke on his own blood.

  I crawled over to the ghoul and rolled him onto his side. His breathing grew a little easier. His eyelids flickered open briefly. Unfocused eyes stared out into the woods. He groaned in pain.

  Daud had seen the journal pages when they were still intact. Hell, maybe he even had some context to go with them. I wanted to know what he’d seen. I wanted to know why he’d ripped out the pages and kept them for himself. But one look at the pitiful bastard told me he wouldn’t be doing any talking tonight.

  If I didn’t get him out of this forest, he wouldn’t be doing any talking ever again.

  “How’s this for a joke, huh?” I grabbed hold of Daud and hauled him over my shoulder. “You try to cave my skull in, and in return I drag you out of here before you die of hypothermia. Real funny. I’m sure we’ll laugh about this one day. Son of a bitch.”

  Groaning, I pushed myself to my feet. It felt like someone was wiggling a hot knife around my ribs. Sweat beaded on my forehead and got washed away by the rain dripping through the canopy. He wasn’t that heavy, but he was heavy enough.

  “Mush, doggy,” I muttered to myself as I started to stagger back toward my van. “Mush! Mush!”

  13

  “Here,” Sal said, tugging open one of the sliding doors of the abandoned sleeping train car. I went into the compartment and dumped Daud on the narrow cot. He groaned in pain. I didn’t have much sympathy for him.

  Groaning a little myself, I stretched my aching arms. My spine popped. I was feeling very old.

  Sal came into the compartment behind me and knelt beside Daud. Exhausted, I sat down heavily on the cot opposite.

  “You’re getting mud everywhere,” Sal said.

  “I am?” I looked down. “Shit. Sorry.”

  I glanced around the sleeping compartment. It had weathered the years pretty well. There was a sheet of black plastic taped over the window, but an electric light was dangling from a hook overhead, the power cable running out into the corridor through a hole in the wall. A sad looking potted cactus sat on a shelf over the bed Daud was lying on, and next to it were a few dog-eared paperbacks.

  “This is your place?”

  “Uh-huh,” Sal muttered.

  “It’s nice.” I rooted around my bag for a few seconds, pulling out a few of Early’s unguents and tinctures. “You got anything I can make bandages out of? This here should keep his wounds from getting infected, as long as those rats weren’t carrying anything unnatural.”

  She held out her hand. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “But—”

  “You need to go, Ozzy. I don’t think anyone saw you come in, but if the other ghouls find you here…”

  I rubbed my beard. “I guess I’m not well-liked around here at the moment, huh?”

  “And they’re not going to like you any more when they see what’s happened to Daud.”

  She had a point. Daud’s injuries weren’t my fault, but tempers were running awfully high at the moment. I might not get a chance to state my case before we had a repeat of my last encounter with a pack of angry ghouls. It had been a risk bringing Daud back here to the train graveyard, but I didn’t see what other options I had. I couldn’t exactly take him to a hospital. Early still wasn’t picking up his phone, either. Besides, Daud needed to be among his own people. If only so I didn’t get accused of killing him as well.

  “All right,” I said, putting the medicine vials in Sal’s outstretched hand. “If you’re sure you can manage.”

  “Ghouls are tough. He’ll survive.”

  “Thanks, Sal. I owe you another one. Apply the unguent to the bandages before you put them on. And give him a few drops of that tincture every five hours until he’s conscious. Early swears by it.”

  “Okay.” She paused, raising her eyebrows. “Are you going or what?”

  “Give me a second, already. Hell. I just got the shit kicked out of me.” Stifling a moan, I pushed myself back to my feet. I chose not to mention the mud stain I’d left on the cot.

  “Ozzy,” she said. “There’s going to be more trouble when he wakes up. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I’m counting on it.”

  I nearly fell asleep twice while driving home. The second time I started veering across the center line, and it was only the flash of oncoming headlights and the blare of a horn that woke me up enough to jerk the wheel to the side and bring the van screeching back into my own lane.

  It was a miracle I made it back to my cabin without ending up in a ditch. I staggered out of the van and traipsed muddy shoe prints all over my floor. I laid out the damp, torn journal pages on a towel in my living room in the hope they’d be dry by morning. With the last of my energy I tended briefly to my injuries and downed some painkillers—both store-bought and home-brewed.

  Then I collapsed on the couch and let sleep take me.

  About five minutes later I woke up to find sunlight streaming through the window. I ached all over, but I managed to stand without keeling over. Nothing was broken, at least, not even my hip. I was in pretty good shape, considering.

  I took a step and sudden dizziness overwhelmed me, all my muscles quivering. My stomach twisted. My head felt light. I sat back down quickly and bent over, my head between my legs.

  I could feel them on my skin. Tiny paws scrabbling up my arms. Tails whipping across my face. I could taste fur in my mouth. I could smell the stink of rats filling my nostrils.

  I tightened my hands into fists as the full horror of last night came flooding back to me. In the immediate aftermath the adrenaline had kept me moving, kept me distracted. Not anymore.

  “Just some rats,” I told myself. “Deep breaths, come on.”

  After a few minutes the nausea faded. But the sensation of a thousand rodents crawling over me didn’t go away so easily.

  I had a shower and scrubbed myself raw. That helped. When I was done I looked at myself in the mirror. I was so bruised I looked like a Dalmatian. In several places the bruises were so dark they blotted out my protective tattoos. At least I’d got the mud out of my beard.

  Now that my stomach had settled down, I realized how hungry I was. I got dressed and poured myself some cornflakes, then sat down and pulled Habi’s journal pages over to me. While I shoveled cereal into my mouth, I tried to make out the scrawled, smudged writing.

  The pages had dried, but they still felt fragile as I handled them. It was impossible to read the pages through and come out with any sort of coherent narrative. Too much had been lost. But words and phrases jumped out at me from the pages.

  …urned around in the shafts…

  …had caved in, but…

  …kind of tomb?…

  …agically protected. Need he…

  …to Holden. Said t…

  …together a team…

  …verified the authenticity. Gotta be something valuab…

  …not the first artifacts to be found in those tunn…

  …et to plan tonight at the muse…

  …ey says the coins will…

  …on’t trust her, but Hol…

  …no sign of Stuckey. Have to go ahe…

  I turned over the last page and found nothing more that was legible. My jaw ached—I realized I’d been chewing on my spoon in frustration. I was so tantalizingly close. The information I needed was here. Only most of it was so badly damaged I couldn’t read it—or else it was on the other halves
of the pages, the halves that Isidora now held.

  I could only hope that right this instant she was also staring at a bunch of torn, damp journal pages, grinding her teeth as the answers continued to elude her.

  Still, the pages I held weren’t totally useless. By piecing together the few legible phrases and reading between the lines, I could almost get the shape of what had happened.

  A week ago, maybe two, Habi had been out scavenging somewhere. That much I’d already guessed. The pages mentioned a shaft—maybe he was talking about a mine shaft. There were plenty of those around here. The goblins that lived beneath the mountain had claimed most of the abandoned mine networks across the river, but there were other tunnels scattered about the hills. Some were small and simple, others labyrinthine. Once every couple of years a dumb kid or some foolhardy tourist would venture into an old mine shaft and never emerge. Habi could’ve been following one of those rumors, hoping to find a body that still had meat on its bones.

  In any case, while he’d been scavenging, Habi had found something. A tomb, he seemed to think. The page had been badly damaged where he mentioned it, so I couldn’t be sure what I was reading. It seemed a little odd. A tomb in a mine shaft?

  He also mentioned coins. The same gold coins I’d recovered, maybe. The hag had suggested the coins had something to do with someone named Morley the Profane. Could it be this Morley’s tomb Habi had found?

  I remembered what Sal had said. About Habi finding a way out. She thought he’d figured out a way to make a whole load of money. Judging from this, he seemed to believe there was something valuable in the tomb. Maybe he was right.

  Habi’s journal also mentioned something about magical protections. If the tomb contained something valuable, it was possible that steps had been taken to ensure it couldn’t be swiped by grave robbers. And if those protections were magical in nature, Habi alone wouldn’t be able to crack them. He’d need to get others involved.

  Like Holden. And Ursula. And whoever else Holden had conned into this thing. Isidora had said it was Holden who’d put the team together, and I was starting to believe her. It looked like they’d found someone who could verify what Habi had found. Maybe someone who knew the area Habi had been scavenging.

  Beyond that, the picture got murky. I had to assume they’d made an attempt to retrieve the treasure. But something had gone wrong. Something that’d led Habi to come to me, terror in his eyes, desperate for my help.

  Something had made him believe he was cursed. Maybe he thought he’d triggered whatever magical wards protected the place. Maybe he figured it was like those old legends about Egyptian mummies, where a curse would destroy anyone who dared disturb the dead’s final resting place.

  It could be he wasn’t far wrong.

  I turned my attention back to the pages, picking out one of the passages that’d caught my eye before. By the look of things, one member of the team—Stuckey—had gone missing shortly before they’d gone after the tomb. Maybe this Stuckey had got cold feet. Or maybe something else had happened to him. If he’d been harmed before Habi and the rest of the team even went after the tomb, that meant it wasn’t an avenging curse that’d got him. But there were other explanations. More mundane explanations, maybe, but no less dangerous.

  Maybe Habi and company weren’t the only ones searching for the tomb.

  Secrets were hard to keep, even in a town built on them. If Habi and Holden had been asking around and putting together a team, it was possible that others had cottoned on to what they’d found. And maybe some of those people weren’t shy about hurting others to indulge their greed. Some other party could’ve killed Habi in the quest to get closer to the tomb. Maybe they’d done something to this Stuckey character as well.

  I paused, thinking. There was something I was missing. That name, maybe. Stuckey. I felt like I’d heard it once, a long time ago. But I just couldn’t place it.

  I filed the niggling thought away for later. The journal had done nothing to quiet my fears. Hell, it’d only inflamed them. Whoever or whatever Holden really was, I knew him well enough to know that he could never resist a good old fashioned treasure hunt. No matter how much trouble it got him in.

  But I had more than just Holden to worry about. The whole mess with the ghouls last night was going to come back to bite me. The various supernatural factions within Lost Falls made for a fractured community at the best of times. The situation needed to be dealt with before it boiled over. I just didn’t know how to do that without making things worse.

  What I really needed was a little sage advice from a wise old man. Luckily, I happened to know one.

  I checked my phone, but Early still hadn’t replied to any of the messages I’d left for him. Lousy bastard.

  I collected together the journal pages, slipped them into a zip-lock bag I had lying around, and tucked them into my bag. Then I pulled on my coat and stepped out of my cabin.

  The rain last night had left the ground outside damp and spongy. I crossed the yard and unlocked the back door of Early’s house.

  “Early?” I called out. “You home?”

  My voice echoed through the old Victorian and then faded away. I waited a few seconds. No answer came.

  I grunted, closed the door behind me, and moved deeper into the house. The cluttered, dusty shelves and soft furniture showed no sign that Early had been up and about this morning. I stopped in the kitchen. No Early. No dishes in the sink. I went upstairs. The door to Early’s bedroom was ajar. I knocked and stuck my head in.

  “Early?”

  The bed was made. It didn’t look like it’d been slept in. I went to the window and looked into the driveway. Early’s pickup wasn’t there.

  I looked around the empty bedroom. A prickling sensation began to creep down my spine. Something was very wrong.

  I chewed my lip. “Where the hell are you, old man?”

  14

  This was just what I needed. Relations with the ghouls were rapidly going down the toilet, a rogue witch and her pet rats were running wild, and my childhood friend—who might or might not be human—was God-knows-where, hiding from whatever monster had killed Habi.

  And now Early was missing as well. I called his phone another half dozen times while I drove across town, but each time it went straight to voicemail. In between those calls I’d tried the local hospitals and put out feelers to a few of our other contacts and acquaintances. The bartender at Ollie’s Diner—the local haunt for all sorts of Lost Falls’ freaks and weirdos—was now on alert, asking those who came in if they’d seen Early. But so far my inquiries had yielded nothing.

  In my questioning I heard a couple of rumors surrounding some newcomers hanging around on the edge of town—presumably the same newcomers Early had mentioned he was going to investigate. Details were sparse, though. I couldn’t find anyone who actually knew where these guys were, or even where the rumors had started.

  If Early was any other man, I’d use magical means to track him down. It was kind of my specialty, after all. Trouble was, like me, Early had taken steps to prevent himself being tracked by magic. I had my tattoos, and Early had his own methods. Nine times out of ten it was a sensible precaution to take. The kinds of people and creatures that might come looking for folks like us tended not to be very friendly.

  But this was the one in ten time, the time when it would be really damn helpful if I could just scoop up some of Early’s nose hairs from the bathroom sink and brew a tracking potion that would lead me right to him.

  After grumbling about it to myself for a few minutes, I decided that complaining wasn’t getting me anywhere. I’d done what I could for Early. As soon as any new information came in, I’d know about it.

  But for the moment I had other things to worry about. Early wouldn’t want me sitting at home worrying about him while everything else spiraled out of control.

  That name, Stuckey, had been fixed in my head ever since I read it amongst Habi’s scrawlings. Every time I thought about it I
’d get flashes of memories: me and Holden as teenagers in high school, goofing off on a bus together. Sneaking sips of bottom shelf whiskey from the hip flask Holden had smuggled in his backpack.

  But the memories were spotty, incomplete. I had the feeling we’d been on some kind of school trip. But between the whiskey and the intervening years I couldn’t remember anything else about it.

  I could only think of one person who might be able to jog my memory. It was a long shot, but it was all I had.

  My sister’s house was surprisingly silent as I made my way up the path and knocked on the door. Usually the twins were sprinting about the place at Mach 3, squealing and giggling loud enough for me to hear them half a block away.

  Alice opened the door with Michael in her arms. The toddler gave me a suspicious stare, then buried his face in Alice’s shoulder.

  “Jesus, Ozzy,” Alice said, eyes widening as she looked me over. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Oh, you know. Rough day at the office.” I glanced at Michael. “Is this a bad time?”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right. The twins are staying with a friend. Michael’s been having nightmares and waking up all night, which wakes the twins up, which makes them even more hyper, and… Anyway, it’s been this whole thing. Come in. You can watch him while I make some coffee. By the look of you, you could use some too.”

  I followed her inside. As usual, the place looked like a tornado had just swept through. Not that I was judging. My place was no better, and I didn’t have the excuse of three kids running amok.

  I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but it felt good for my aching bones to have a hot mug in my hands. The smell of the stuff was almost enough to make me forget the stink of mud and ghouls and rats.