Ian held firmly to the ladder with his left hand. He then took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he began to push upwards on the heavy-hinged 3x3 foot wooden door. To his near amazement, Ian felt the door lift. It wasn’t nearly as heavy as he’d expected it to be. He winced at the noise that he’d instantly created. It was as if the trap door had been suddenly awakened from a deep slumber as its rusty hinges squelched upon their awakening. The hinges gave off a duality of high and low pitched noises, which reminded Ian of the piercingly vile sounds created by cats in the thralls of coitus.
Ian immediately surmised due to the ease that the door lifted that it must be assisted by some form of counterweight system. He only lifted the trap door up a few inches before he reversed his actions and closed the hatch as he listened for an alarm to go off. He heard nothing. It didn’t occur to Ian that the place might be armed with a silent alarm.
Zoey was standing on the platform directly beneath Ian. Both of her hands held almost painfully tight to the cold, steel ladder. The tide had begun coming in, and the wind had picked up, creating waves that had begun sloshing and pounding the pylons all around below her. What had been only moments before little more than atomized river mist on their faces had quickly turned into white-cap kicked-up heavy spray that was rapidly getting Zoey soaked.
Ian knew that if the wind was to get much stronger along with the rapidly incoming tide, they could easily be stranded, unable to walk on submerged planks, the very ones that they’d just used. Under the best of conditions, getting back to shore from where they were was going to be challenging to the extreme.
But even with the very real hazards that loomed heavily on both of their minds, when Ian looked downwards, he couldn’t help but smile. Zoey was already grinning. She’d witnessed Ian lift the trap door even though it had been just a few inches. They both, without uttering a single word to each other, understood well that this hatchway would indeed get them inside. But with that, if they chose to proceed any further, things were about to get very serious.
Ian looked directly into Zoey’s bright eyes. “Well, wadda-ya say? Shall we do this?”
Zoey, with an excitedly confident look on her face, nodded her head as she said emphatically, “Yes!”
CHAPTER 15
Hide
Ian and Zoey both breached the hatchway. They stood for a moment silent and still just inside what was effectively the skylight basement of the warehouse.
Ian looked around to see if he could spot some sort of counterweight pulley system, one that allowed the hatch-door to open with such relative ease. He could see none.
That’s bizarre. That hatchway door’s gotta weigh at least … Ian’s train of thought was interrupted as Zoey spoke just above a whisper, “Ian, how come even as dark as it is in here, everything looks shiny. Like, brand new. And do you smell that strong chlorine smell …?”
Ian’s eyes almost instantly begun to burn and sting. “Bleach. The place has been totally scrubbed down with bleach,” Ian said as he thought, The place is clean, all right. Too clean. Like they knew we were coming, and … Nothing cleans up blood and guts better than bleach. Just splash it around all over. It renders any DNA that might have been missed in the cleanup totally unviable for testing. Smart ... no loose ends.
The lighting was dim but not too bad. The few windows that there were on the dock-floor level of the warehouse had long ago been soaped out, but they did afford some light from the outside world, and Ian was thankful for it. He’d brought a flashlight for just such an occasion but had forgotten it back in his Jeep.
Zoey spoke up again. “Look at all this equipment. It all looks like it was just installed. I guess for kitchen use. The place must serve food. But this looks way beyond what you’d typically see in the back of any restaurant I’ve ever been in. Looks more like stuff you’d see in a cannery or …”
Ian interjected, “Meat packing plant.”
Zoey nodded as she replied, “Yeah. Weird.”
Ian began looking closely around the room. He spotted a stainless steel walk-in freezer and opened it up, but it was totally empty other than a dozen meat hooks that hung from long, steel, clothesline-like poles.
Ian closed the door to the freezer and panned his eyes across the large area. All of the countertops and huge deep sinks were made of stainless steel. There were no ovens or stovetops of any kind. No microwaves or heating methods that he could see, but there were plenty of stainless steel knives, meat cleavers, and various other blades or saw-toothed paraphernalia all devised to chop, saw, or cut through meat or bone.
Ian thought about what Zoey had said. Maybe it’s all for food preparation. But then he noticed, strangely enough, there was no food stored anywhere. No restaurant-sized cans of anything. Just then, all the pieces came together and hit Ian right between the eyes as he stared intently about while Zoey was looking closely at all the knives and meat-cleavers.
Ian suddenly exclaimed, a bit louder than he’d intended, “This is no restaurant preparatory kitchen ... or storage facility. Well, not for any restaurant.”
Zoey frowned as she raised her right index finger and placed it to her lips, signaling Ian to quiet down. Ian nodded, then continued but in a much softer voice, “This is the old fish cannery room. That’s true. But that’s not what it’s used for now.”
Ian thought, This room’s for food preparation all right. Food preparation of the ghoulish kind.
Suddenly, they both heard the sound of an opening door, and then someone’s footsteps down the staircase from above. Both Ian and Zoey had seen the stairs when they’d first climbed up through the floor-hatch doorway, but they had appeared to lead to nowhere.
Zoey quickly motioned for Ian to follow her as she pointed towards the walk-in freezer. Without hesitation and as quietly as they could, they made their way to the freezer, opened it, and went inside, closing its door behind them. Ian was glad the freezer was a brand new model. The door opened and closed silently, and he knew that since it was a very new model, with safety laws being what they were, it would not lock them inside.
Inside the sub-zero freezer, it was intolerably cold. Zoey, whose clothes were already wet, began shivering almost instantly. The freezer’s door had a small glass window designed to afford easy viewing for any person of average height.
Ian motioned to Zoey that they should both crouch down on opposite sides of the doorway so as not to be readily spotted by anyone looking through the freezer’s window.
Suddenly, light shone into the freezer. Someone had switched on the overhead neon lights to the room. Even inside the freezer, they could both hear the buzzing sound made from the neon light ballasts warming up. The light flickered a bit and became brighter by the second. Ian could almost hear his heart pounding and definitely felt his stomach turning as he heard someone walking around in the room. Zoey stared at him in wide-eyed dismay. After a few moments which seemed like forever had passed, the lights went out, and they heard heavy steps ascending the stairway and fading away.
With no intentions of doing any further investigation, Ian opened the freezer door and they both hurried over to the floor hatchway. Ian reached down and took hold of the handle. He quickly and silently began lifting the hatchway until it was completely open. But Ian was confused, because this time when he tried to open the trap door, it was at least as difficult to lift open as he’d initially assumed it would be.
Ian felt a cold shiver run up his neck and spine as he thought, Oh shit. Lifting is much easier than pushing from beneath. There’s no way I pushed it open that easily on my own. Someone must have helped me open the hatch.”
Ian signaled for Zoey to go first and get out of there as quickly as possible. She began her egress from the warehouse via floor-way. Once she reached the catwalk planks, she looked up at Ian who was still climbing down the ladder from the trap door. “Ian, you forgot to close the hatch.”
Ian looked down at Zoey as he continued his descent. “Trust me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll exp
lain once we’ve gotten the hell out of here.”
The tide had continued coming in while they’d been inside the warehouse. The water’s surface was now only two feet beneath the wooden planks. Due to the rising tide and the increasing strength of the wind, waves were starting to breach the surface of the planks. Green seaweed slime and barnacle-covered planks were slippery enough when dry, and they were now drenched – which made them now slippery to the extreme. The going was treacherous and seemed to be getting worse by the minute. So much so that both Ian and Zoey each kept their horrified thoughts to themselves – that it was a very real possibility that they’d never make it back to land again.
Ian had Zoey go ahead of him so he would at least have a chance to save her if she began to fall. As Ian slowly made his way forward as best he could, he began thinking about the very real prospect of their possible demise, a prospect that by percentage, like the tide, wind, and weather, was increasing exponentially by the moment.
Due to Ian’s education and training, he began nearly instinctually intellectualizing how if they did fall and sink to the depths of the dark, icy-cold waters of the Columbia, in mere minutes they would be overwhelmed by the effects of hypothermia followed by near certain drowning regardless of swimming ability, or in his case lack thereof. That hours later, the gases would begin their process of expanding their guts, effectively bloating and inflating them to the point of sufficient buoyancy to resurface unless their bodies became caught on some submerged snag. But with any luck their former selves would eventually float up to the river’s surface and ride the tides and currents into shore like flesh and bone boogie boards.
CHAPTER 16
Recuperation
Fortune smiled on Ian and Zoey. Against all odds, they both made it back to land after the longest short walk of their lives.
They climbed up the ladder that led to the dock level, and hurried back to the Jeep, dripping wet and cold to the bones. Once there, Ian and Zoey were greeted by a very excited guard dog. Scout had been a good boy while they were gone. Ian petted his dog and even kissed him on his head, as he thanked Scout for being so good for so long. Ian started up his Jeep and cranked the heater on full; he continued for a moment petting his best buddy. Then all at once, Ian was hit square between the eyes by another epiphany. If they hadn’t made it back, what would have become of Scout? Ian suddenly felt terrible about that previously unconsidered possibility.
During their drive back from Astoria to Long Beach, the weather rapidly turned from bad to full-on coastal storm, about the time they were nearly halfway across the Astoria-Megler Bridge which spanned across the Columbia River connecting Oregon and Washington. They were traveling on the area of the bridge that was as straight as an arrow. Typically, its road surface was suspended around thirty feet above the river, but due to the high tide, torrential rain, and approaching gale-force winds, occasional waves were breaching the sides of the bridge’s sea-wall railing, making driving precarious at best.
Ian was getting a little nervous regarding the intensity of the wind; it had begun gusting so hard it was nearly pushing his Jeep into the oncoming traffic lane seemingly at its whim. That, compiled with his windshield wipers near-failing efforts to keep up with the pounding, torrential rain, and a heavy fog that seemed to have come from nowhere, made seeing where he was driving extremely difficult.
By the time they’d made their way into Long Beach, the wind had died down a little. It was still blowing in gusts that Ian estimated had to have been in excess of fifty miles an hour. Zoey, after having not spoken for nearly twenty minutes, decided to break the ice.
“So Ian, are you hungry? I’ll bet Scout is.” Ian hadn’t thought about it in light of what he’d just driven through, but upon hearing Zoey’s question, he realized that he was starving.
“Yeah, I could eat,” Ian said casually, not wanting to sound desperate as he glanced over at Zoey. He spoke again, this time smiling, “You got a place in mind? Somewhere that allows filthy, soaking wet people I hope.”
Zoey looked like she was concentrating for a moment. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I know someplace that would be perfect on such a gloomy, stormy night. That is, if they’re still open.”
“You mean if they haven’t closed due to the storm? You sure you don’t want to change into dry clothes first?”
Zoey fired back, “No. Are you kidding? Nobody around here closes due to a little weather. And we’re all dirty and wet most of the time. Ha! God, really. Inlanders!” She laughed.
The truth was they were dirty, but their clothing had dried to the point of not looking as wet as they felt.
Zoey spoke. “If we did go and change into dry clothes, by that time, every place will be closed.” Ian looked at the time on his cell phone. He realized she probably was right as he mused, After what we’ve survived today, how ironic would it be if we end up dying from pneumonia.
As they approached the downtown area, Zoey quickly pointed towards a side street in the direction of the ocean. “There, Ian. Take that street. It will take you to the beach access drive. Near the end is the tallest building in town – the Seabreeze Motel. Yeah, it’s a real skyscraper. Three stories. At the top is a good lounge and restaurant that looks over the ocean. Even in this fog and rain, with the flood lights shining out at the dunes, you’ll be able to see the waves hit the shoreline. It’s really beautiful! Don’t worry about the way we look. This is the beach. Nobody cares. But if it makes you feel better, we can eat in the lounge.”
Ian smiled as he replied, “Sounds good to me. We can get something to go for Scout. Until then, I’ve got a bag of doggy snacks in the glove box. I’ll give him some when we park. That will tide him over. That is, after I’ve taken him for a quick walk to stretch his legs and relieve himself.”
As he drove, Ian thought about how very attractive Zoey was, even with her still nearly-soaked stringy hair and wet, dirty clothes. But also how very young she was and how it was becoming more than obvious that she liked him, as he did her.
Just then Ian remembered that he had a semi-clean dry towel in the very back of his Jeep; as they pulled into the parking lot of the motel he glanced at Zoey. “Hey, I’ve got a dry towel in the back of my rig. We can use it to dry off.” Zoey began squinting her eyes and puckering her lips in such a way that it reminded Ian of someone who had just sucked on an under-ripened persimmon.
“Um, not to be rude, but that would have been really useful information about forty minutes ago.” Zoey said with an intentionally cocky tone to her voice.
Ian smiled and shrugged his shoulders as he replied, “Sorry ‘bout that.”
The intensity of the storm had lessened considerably. It was still raining steadily, but not all that hard. It was now only a bit more than typically breezy. Ian silently marveled at how quickly and extremely the weather changed at the coast.
Ian quickly exited the Jeep, ran to the back and opened the tailgate door. He grabbed the towel, then rapidly rejoined Zoey in the front of the Jeep. They dried themselves off and wiped away dirt smudges on their faces with the towel as best they could. Then Ian gave Scout a handful of doggie snacks and cracked his driver’s side window.
“Okay, fella. I hate to leave you again. But I promise, I’ll bring you back something special to eat.” He and Zoey exited the Jeep and proceeded with haste across the parking lot into the motel.
Once inside the lower lobby, Ian pressed the button for the elevator and they both stepped in. Zoey immediately punched the button for the third floor. The door closed, and they were on their way up. It was a relatively slow, jerky ride.
On their way up, Zoey said, “Ian. After thinking it over, I think we probably should eat in the lounge. You know, with the way we look.”
Ian smiled and laughed just a bit as he replied, “Yeah, I think you’re probably right.”
The elevator door opened, and they both stepped out. Ian noticed immediately that there were only three directions that a person could take. Straight ahead
led to the third floor rooms of the motel. To the right was the entrance to the restaurant, and to the left was the Sand Bar.
Once inside the cocktail lounge, it was obvious that it was a seat-yourself establishment. Zoey took the lead. Holding Ian’s left hand, she led him across the lounge to the ocean view tables. The place was decorated to the nines with Halloween lights and decorations. There were small, colorful pumpkins and gourds placed at each table.
There was only one other person in the lounge. He looked to Ian to be in his mid-to-late seventies. He had white hair that semi-circled his pattern baldness, and an equally white though shortly-cropped beard. He wore weathered, khaki dungarees that were supported by a set of wide, careworn, orange suspenders and a black and grey plaid flannel shirt.
Ian immediately surmised that the man was most likely a local. A commercial fisherman would be a better than fair money bet. Ian further deduced he was likely the captain of his own vessel. That hypothesis was based on the fact that the man’s hat bore some nautical-looking embroidered insignia. That, and Ian was pretty certain that it said ‘Captain’ just under the insignia.
Ian caught the man looking him over. He figured it was because he was wet and dirty, and especially because of his spiky, jet-black hair, so Ian wasn’t all that surprised. But on closer examination, Ian realized the man’s attention was not so much on him. He was more focused on Zoey.
The man spoke in a loud voice. “Zoey, girl, watch-ya doing out-en-bout. Ain’t a fit night fer man ner beast.”
Zoey instantly tore her eyes from gazing out the window at the ocean and looked towards the man. Zoey smiled as she spoke. “Oh, hi Ray. Better question, what are you doing out so late? Where’s Molly?”
Ray spoke, “My Molly, she’s up river …” The man let out a throaty couple of coughs indicative of a smoker of long standing. He then continued, “She be up river in Longview, visit’n er sister fer a few days. At dat home fer’ old folks. We moved her into er when her husband passed on a couple month back.”
Red Tide: The Flavel House Horror / Vampires of the Morgue (The Ian McDermott, Ph.D., Paranormal Investigator Series Book 2) Page 16