by catt dahman
“We’ll get a team together at once, but….” Sheriff Thomas hesitated, “How do we get down there?”
Virgil tilted his head, “We break open the wall, secure ropes, and cover that little opening so it’s dark again. This trap would work on rainy nights, but it was all about the timing, with someone actually standing there in that area. We can repel down there on ropes and get them out….block that opening so it can’t close…we just go get them.”
Sheriff Thomas blinked, “Okay. We have a plan. Let’s get busy, men. Call in the fire team, a doctor who is physically fit and brave, and a few more deputies. Do it fast. I want to do this immediately.”
Fairalee patted Virgil’s arm, “Remember, Ed Ripley is FBI and tough. Tina is the toughest, strongest woman I know. Vivian…she’s fighter, Virg. We’ll get them out and the worst of it may be a few broken bones; you know Vivian breaks a bone on almost every case,” She smiled gently.
Virgil nodded, “It may be a long drop. What were the chances they would be standing there when the night was dark enough to trigger the trap? I always tell you, coincidences are all over. It’s just normal for my cases, it seems. I need to stop my work.”
“That’s ridiculous. Vivian would be livid. You have done a lot of good in this world for people. Now buck up and be the Virgil McLendon I know and get ready to go get Vivian.”
Sheriff Thomas shook his head, “We have this. Sheriff McLendon can wait here….”
“The hell I am! I’m going.”
Fin Carter shrugged, “I am as well. FBI as you know.”
“I’m going. That’s Gina down there,” George announced.
Thomas just stared at the floor, “Holy shit, we’re gonna have a mess now with you all in my way.” He scowled, but no one backed down. He turned, “I want us down in five so get that freakin’ wall cut out for ropes.”
Josie, who had been called to supervise, didn’t say a word as the fireman cut away the wallpaper and plaster from the wall next to where everyone vanished. Preservation Society be damned.
The men tied ropes and devices as one fireman explained that there was rubber tubing and each would sit on the edge of the floor; they were to put a foot in each sling, like stirrups on a horse, grab the higher hand-hold rope, and kick off. The other men would lower each person with the ropes safely tied to strong beams of the house.
One of the firemen slammed his axe into a board but it was like iron.
“We have to open it by covering that opening over there. Once it opens. You’ll need to block it when it begins to close, and I suggest an iron pipe or something along that line.”
“You heard Sheriff McLendon, Get me a couple of…where the hell would we find them?”
Rick motioned a few men to follow him. “Down, next to the wine cellar are storage rooms and in one are some wooden beams. Sturdy as hell and about ten feet long. Will that work?”
“Sounds perfect. Go,” Virgil said. Some of the men handed them all vests that held water bottles, matches, compasses, small first aid kits and extra flashlights. Virgil felt the weight as he added more.
“Virgil…take this.” Fairalee held out her side arm.
“I have mine.”
“Good. Now you have a second.” She put her gun back, unstrapped her belt and helped Virgil strap it on. It barely fit. But she had bought it too large in case she gained weight eating donuts, like she heard cops did. ”I am calling Special Agent Lord as well; he needs to know this and maybe he can come in….” she whispered, “And take jurisdiction if needed. Just a precaution.”
“You’re a good deputy, Fairalee. If anything goes south or this takes more than a few hours, will you call Viv’s brothers?”
“I’m on it. Be safe.”
One of the firemen stood on a ladder and began to stuff wet paper into the hole. While everyone believed Virgil, they still gasped when a large section of the floor slid back, leaving an empty hole. As the rest brought back two wooden beams, they slid one square end against the opening’s side, and set the other against the beams of the walls. The firefighter had to remove a little of the wet paper so the mechanism tried to close the trap door, but he got it perfect so the beam was tightly fit to hold the area open.
Sheriff Thomas used his light to look down into the hole, “Ten feet. Piece of cake. Looks like some old furniture cushions, moss, junk…that’s bizarre…it looks as if someone piled things under the hole so that anyone falling in would survive.”
“What does that mean?” Fairalee asked.
“I guess it wasn’t enough to drop people down here, but they wanted them alive. That’s pure torture. Sick bastards.”
Sheriff Thomas, the fireman, Ben Johansson, Deputy Arnett, and Deputy Holt made up the first two teams down.
“Clear.” Thomas called, but he cursed as well.
“What is it?”
“For one thing, it stinks like rot down here and it’s …it’s weird as hell. Come on down. I don’t see your people anywhere around me.”
At least Vivian wasn’t lying at the bottom, dead. Virgil felt renewed, and he and George went next, followed by Terry Cromer and Deputy Connors, and then Fin Carter and the Medic, Doctor Joe Everett, who waited as heavy, huge backpacks were lowered down for the Doctor and Fireman to wear.
Virgil was already working with the rest, searching over the area where they landed and found old mattresses, ancient hay, cloth, moss, and other soft junk that mouldered in a deep pile that was about three feet thick.
“It’s been building up for years,” Fin whispered, “Where are they? Wouldn’t they stay here and wait for a rescue? Anita had a broken leg…this makes no damned sense.”
“Why are we whispering and not yelling for them? Why are we standing around like this? And why did we bring ten men down when four would have been fine?” Deputy Arnett asked quietly.
“Same reason you’re whispering, Arnett. It feels…wrong down here. I can admit it’s hinky and I have chills running down my back,” Thomas said.
To the left, rocks and pieces of bricks lay around a bare spot; blood was splattered around the rocks and some of them were tacky with dark red blood. From the looks of it, Fin and Thomas suggested that someone had thrown rocks at someone or at an animal, wounding it.
“They weren’t afraid enough to fire a gun because that would ruin their hearing for a few minutes, but it was something they wanted to scare away. A gunshot could also cause a partial collapse.” Virgil knelt, “Look at this blood print. This looks like a small human foot, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it was Shari and she scared them,” Terry Cromer said. He wanted to find her so badly.
“Was she really small…as in the size of a twelve year old?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t Shari.”
“Hey,” Thomas called, “I’ve got Gina’s tour badge lying over in the right tunnel. I’m guessing they were moving away from whatever scared them and she dropped it here for us to find.”
Above, several of the firemen started yelling. The sliding floor was iron beneath the wooden floor and it was straining to slide closed. They said it was strong and they’d open it again as soon as they could get the light right. There was a cacophony of noise as firemen and deputies scattered and both wooden beam bent and exploded as they broke away.
Virgil decided that the panel was not made to do that; therefore, it had to be designed so it wouldn’t be forced open and was acting on a long-ago plan.
The trapdoor slid closed.
As it closed completely, a series of bells tinkled and bonged. Virgil looked up, using his light and saw the door had a section that jutted out and set rows of bells ringing. He thought Vivian, stunned at landing, maybe injured, heard that as the panel closed. Why were there bells?
“Guys….” Cromer could hardly get the word out. Just as he had heard a month before, there was a sliding, slippery, slobbering noise with groans, jabbering, and clicking. The sound that haunted him for weeks was back, and it was coming
from a much closer place.
He felt sick.
Virgil, Fin, and Sheriff Thomas knew this was the same noise Cromer had heard, and they felt the same sense of dread.
“Arnett and Hoyt, draw your side arms. The rest please stand back and keep your pieces holstered unless danger is immediate. Arnett and Hoyt, do not fire your weapons unless I give the command. Would the rest of you please slowly raise your lights so they’re about four to five feet off the ground and down the tunnel?”
“Hold steady,” Hoyt added.
As the shuffling increased, so did the noise.
The lawmen and firefighters thought they had seen everything: they had seen death, blood, mangled, burned and murdered people. They had seen children suffer, been around the most evil offenders, seen selfishness, cruelty, and misery, but nothing they had ever seen prepared them for the horror that moved into the lights.
“Uhuhuhuh,” Terry Cromer breathed, willing himself to not scream.
Virgil now knew the secret of the Kingsborough House.
Monsters lived here.
Chapter Eleven:
Vivian tried to shake off confusion as she struggled to make sense of what was happening in the flickering flashlight beams that left too much shrouded in inky darkness. One second she was looking at her husband and concerned with the worry she saw on his face, and the next she was falling.
Luckily she landed on a spongy area and was unharmed, but Anita’s screams intensified, echoing throughout the dark chambers. Above, Vivian saw Ed Ripley kicking and struggling to hold on, but the faint glow from above grew smaller and he was knocked down as well. Bells bonged and tittered.
“A trap door. Makes sense,” Tina said. She frowned.
“And unlike the other times, someone was watching. Virgil saw it, so he’ll get us out of here. All we have to do is wait a while and he’ll find a way to get us out,” Vivian said. Relief filled her. In no time, her husband would get them out and then, they could explore this place and solve the rest of the mysteries. She had accidently helped solve the case.
“I betcha all those missing people, over the years, fell down here. No one saw them fall and they never got out. At least we know the answer to the riddle now.” Tina watched as Gina and Howard tried to sooth Anita. She was moaning, and not still screaming, but was clearly in a great deal of pain.
“Do you think they’ll come soon?” Howard asked.
“No way to know for sure. Virgil will have to come up with a way to get down here, and he’ll have called for help by now. I’m sure everyone is working as fast as they can but it will feel like it takes a long time, anyway. Let’s keep Anita warm and as comfortable as possible,” Tina said. Her voice stayed calm and cool. She was great in emergency situations.
“And we can look around and figure out about all those missing…at least get an idea of how it was down here,” Ed said.
Gina spun, “What was that?”
“Hmmm?”
“My imagination, I think. It’s disturbing down here,” Gina said, “I swear I heard….”
Tina held up a hand. She heard it too. There was a sneaky sliding noise and a slight gibbering, moaning noise in the shadows. She thought of the missing girl Shari, who had vanished a month before. It might be her and she would be half crazy from fear and loneliness by now, “Shari?”
“Let’s move to the side, over there. I hate to move Anita, but I would feel a little better with a wall to our backs,” Ed said. He wasn’t sure why he felt so nervous, but this place smelled like rot, feces, and urine and the noises were beyond frightening. Of course, people who fell in this basement would die, after a while, and he didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something very bad about this place.
Anita whined and moaned, but they soon had her moved and stood close to a wall.
Tina reached and grabbed for a rock, “When I was young, I didn’t have a gun, and guns are not what we want to use down here anyway, but if a really mean dog threatened us, we kids would get rocks and usually a few throws were enough to make all but the meanest dogs back away.”
“You think there are dogs down here?”
“No. But I think there could be something mean.”
Vivian nodded and grabbed two stones.
The noises came again and were closer.
Ed Ripley took a breath and slowly edged his light where he heard the sounds. At first, Gina shown her light, as well, to try to understand what it was they saw.
One figure was small and one was larger, with a distended belly. Both had greyish-yellow skin and hissed, shielding their eyes as the light was far too bright for those used to inky darkness. Both had long, wild tangles of hair, were horribly thin, were filthy and scratched, and were barefoot. A few bits of rags covered their nudity.
“Foooood,” The larger, pregnant one said in a ragged voice that sounded guttural.
“’Ooood.” The other creature agreed, fearful of the lights.
“Hello?” Tina called, “Can you tell us your names?”
Both creatures drooled.
“They aren’t asking for food. I have a bad feeling, Tina.” Vivian said. She saw nothing human in the feral eyes and ideas began to click into place as she looked at them. They sniffed and gibbered, clearly aroused by the scent of blood from Anita’s cuts and scrapes and from interest in someone wounded. Vivian thought of the bells ringing.
From far away, there were more sounds. It sounded as if there were more coming this way. When the smaller creature darted closer, Tina lobbed a rock, nicking its shoulder making it bleed and hiss angrily.
Ed whispered, “There’s blood everywhere. I’d say some is really old…decades old…some newer…but I don’t like this. If we fire a gun, we could cause a cave-in. Look at what the big one has,” he said.
What they took as a stick was a spear of several human thighbones tied together so it was tall. The end that was pointing upwards was sharpened to a wickedly sharp point.
From a side tunnel, three more creatures appeared, but these were slightly different. Their skin was whiter, eyes more focused, teeth more sharp and crooked, and they didn’t attempt words but made clicking sounds as some sort of communication.
When Ed shined his light on them, they didn’t react to it.
The trio hissed at the pair. The pair hooted and made distinct sounds back.
From the other tunnel, a flash of movement caused Vivian to jump, but she saw it was a filthy woman who threw several rocks, injuring all of the creatures, making them began to stalk one another, hissing and howling. The one with a spear drew blood and more creatures appeared on either side, gathering for a fight.
“You’d better hurry. Come on.” The dirty woman motioned to them.
“Anita doesn’t need to be moved….”
“Then Anita will be dinner. Do something and fast but I am getting out of here. You can follow or stay and be food. Whatever you do…keep her quiet.”
Horrified by the fight going on in the shadows, Howard told Anita to stay quiet no matter what and he lifted her in his arms. Luckily he was big enough to carry her and she was fortunate to pass out and stay quiet. Gina threw her badge down as a sign for a rescue team and they all walked quickly, having to jog at times to keep pace. At each turn, someone tossed something down to use a marker.
“If one side wins, they’ll be there a while and leave us alone. If they break up the fight, then they’ll be coming for us, but from different ways, so we have to hurry.”
“Are you Shari?”
“Yeah. I heard you say my name. I was hoping Terry wouldn’t give up, but…it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? You didn’t give up on finding me?”
“It’s been a month. Have you seen Lisa?”
Shari paused, “That long? It feels longer in some ways. Where is Terry?”
“Up top, with my husband and an FBI agent and by now…maybe half the county. They’re coming for us. He knows where we are. Is Lisa here?”
“Through here,” Sh
ari said. She slid through a small break in the wall, around a corner, down a few yards, and through another tight space. The room was about a hundred feet square with a stream that went from one side to the next. Piles of fabric, utensils, and tools stood along one wall. Shari pushed a rock against the entrance and leaned rotted boards in place.
Gina and Howard tried to make Anita comfortable.
“The light is too bright,” Shari said.
When only one flash light remained on, she nodded that it was okay now, as she rubbed her head; she was used to the dark.
“What are they? What is…this?” Vivian couldn’t even begin to form all of her questions.
“I guess you now know the mystery…the answer anyway. There must be scored of traps and from what I learned, right from second one, this became a place to dispose of unwanted people. The Kingsboroughs and their builder used this to dump bodies or live people. I don’t know why, unless they were all just that crazy or evil or if the land is really cursed or what…but after their time, others vanished and it became random, but this has gone on for a hundred years.”
Of the Kingsborough children, some were mentally problematic, some had behavior issues, but all were of genetics that should have never combined. The first victims were workmen, then children and hapless visitors, transients tossed down, and Constance Moreau as well. Thrown into a basement with no light, no food, and only water, the people down here did what they could to survive.
“Cannibalism?” Tina asked.
“Defiantly. Anyone injured was food. The stronger ones found fungus and moss to eat as well, and there’s a little pond with some fish and toads, so they didn’t quite starve. They began to breed down here, as animals and humans will, and remember, some were Kingsborough children, so it was interbreeding.” Shari explained.
They bred quickly, ate other humans, and quickly became mentally deficient as a group. They were often mal-formed, lost most speech except got clicking noises, used tools less, and devolved. “Those are the white skinned one. Whites. They’re fairly stupid, but survive on instincts and brutality. There’s no real society, and if one is injured or gets sick, they are eaten. I don’t think they have long life spans, but they breed rapidly.”