by Brian Hodge
Janie stayed where she was, close to the fire as she watched Mark's frantic activity. As obvious as it was that the problem was in his excavation trench, she couldn't stop thinking this had something to do with the murderer the policemen were looking for.
"Oh, Jesus! Oh shit!" Mark shouted when he saw the dirt walls of his trench crumbling inward. He clenched his fists and shook them in anger. Almost two month's worth of painstaking, intensive work had been lost in the few seconds it took the dirt walls to collapse and fill the trench.
But when Mark looked more closely, though, he realized that the trench wasn't filling up with dirt. The thick dust rolling upward was as thick as smoke, making it difficult for him to see what was going on, but he had the impression all the sand and rocks were funneling down through a hole in the bottom of the trench.
"Oh, boy. This is fucking weird," he muttered as he crouched on the edge of the trench, trying to figure out what was going on. The ground he had been standing on all day had suddenly opened up, exposing an underground tunnel or subterranean stream. It made him think of a huge ant lion trap—those little funnels of sand where the insect in the bottom pulls the sand inward so fast any crawling insects—their food—can't escape, no matter how hard they try.
The flashlight beam projected a thick, yellow cone that swung back and forth along the length of the dust-filled trench. Choking and waving his hand in front of his face, Mark leaned closer, trying to see exactly what was happening to his excavation. He didn't notice the pair of thin, brown, clawed hands reaching up out of the loose earth until it was too late. Before he could scream, the fingers encircled his throat, and needle-sharp talons sank into his flesh with a wet, tearing sound. Hot blood spurted out with a whistling hiss as the claws ripped open his windpipe. Thin, strong arms, scaly and brown, jerked him down into the hole at the bottom of the trench floor where, an instant later, dozens of arms reached up out of the subterranean darkness and sank claws into his warm, quivering flesh. Mark's lifeless body twitched violently as it was dragged down.
"Mark...?" Janie called out, her voice rising to the threshold of a scream. She had seen him fall—or jump—headfirst into the trench, and she wanted desperately to believe that it hadn't looked as though he had been pulled in by...something. Every muscle in her body was wire-tense as she eased herself up from the ground. The night closed in around her with a dead, muffling effect as she stared, horrified, at the dust-filled trench.
"That's not very funny, Mark," she called out, trying hard to find courage in the sound of her own voice. In the feeble light of the campfire, the dust was silently settling to the ground like a dusting of yellow pollen.
"Come on, Mark," she said, glancing quickly behind her, as she looked for the nearest escape route. "If this is one of your half-assed jokes..."
She crouched beside the fire, not knowing what to do next. Something told her this wasn't one of Mark's lame jokes.
Something bad had happened.
What if he had fallen into the trench and had hurt himself? He might be unconscious underneath the pile of dirt and debris that had caved in on him.
Moving slowly, her joints aching, Janie eased into a full standing position. Her lungs burned as she tried to take a deep, calming breath. What finally forced her to breathe, at least enough to fill her lungs and try to scream, was the sudden burst of noise that issued from inside the trench. The chittering sound reminded her of the sound insects made—hundreds of insects, beating their wings futilely against a window screen, only louder. It rose until it filled the night. As she stood rooted to the spot, Janie watched in numbed amazement as a seething, tangled, dark mass erupted over the edge of the trench.
It sure as hell wasn't Mark!
The blur of motion resolved into a snarling pack of small, clawed creatures, but it was already too late. With a final, wavering scream, Janie was pushed backwards and fell beneath the tearing claws and fangs of the creatures.
7
"Jesus Christ! I told them to get out of here!"
Officer Parkman was standing beside the shredded tent, his lower lip trembling as he shook his head and stared at the mutilated remains of Jane Crawford.
Parkman's partner, Fielding, stood several paces behind Parkman. His face was sheet white, and he was wiping his chin with the flat of his hand after losing his breakfast. What was left of Janie was barely identifiable as human. It looked as though someone had taken a chain saw to her. Splintered bones, tangled chunks of red meat, and purple-veined internal organs were scattered all around the campsite. Some looked as though huge bites had been taken out of them.
Holding his breath so he wouldn't have to smell the stench of blood and excrement, Parkman walked over to the excavation site where a flashlight was lying on the ground near the edge of the trench. As soon as he looked down into the trench, his stomach gave a violent squeeze, and a horrible taste filled his mouth. Sticking up into the air from the rubble on the trench floor was a single boot. Parkman slowly lowered himself into he trench and bent to pick up the boot to inspect it. When he saw that the foot was still inside it, chewed off at the ankle, he screamed and dropped it to the ground. The boot landed sole down. A glistening knob of broken leg bone stuck up out of the torn flesh, pointed skyward. The policeman started to back slowly away from the trench.
"Jesus Christ! How could he do something like this?" Fielding said, still standing next to the now extinguished campfire. After glancing skyward, he dropped to his knees and, with a loud retch, threw up again, this time onto the cold ashes.
Parkman moved quickly away from the trench. Every muscle in his body felt unstrung and ready to unravel. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking as he took the walkie-talkie from his utility belt, snapped it on, and spoke into the microphone.
"Unit four to base. Unit four to base. Come in please. Over."
"Unit four. This is base. We copy. Over."
"Base, we're out at the campsite where those two college kids were digging. We have—" Parkman's throat closed off with a strangling gag. For a moment, he thought he was going to join his partner on his hands and knees, barfing, but he squared his shoulders.
"You won't believe it," he said into the walkie-talkie. "Get someone out here, pronto." He took a deep breath. "You should see what that madman LeFevbre's done!"
DEAL WITH THE DEVILS
Summer, 1982
1
"Hey! You don't be doin' that!"
The gruff voice of Tyler Clay's grandfather, coming so suddenly and so loud from behind him in the dark barn, made both Tyler and Chuckie Harper, his best friend, nearly jump out of their skins.
What made Tyler's grandfather yell at them wasn't so much what they were doing, but what they were planning to do. It wasn't hard for Old Man Clay, as everyone in the town of Thornton called him, to figure out what these two boys were up to. After all, he had been a self-described "rambunctious" kid himself, long ago, and on a hot summer afternoon, what is any ten-year-old boy up to after his chores are done if it isn't a bit of trouble? If Old Man Clay had been ten years old right now, he probably would have been there with them, trying to lift the iron grate from the barn floor and see how far under the barn that tunnel led.
"Geeze, grampa." Tyler looked at his grandfather with fear-widened eyes. "You scared the sh—You scared the heck out of us."
"Meant ta. Old Man Clay's scowl deepened as he hobbled across the barn floor to where the two boys were standing. His gimp left foot dragged behind him, leaving scalloped curlicues on the hard-packed dirt floor.
"Let's get outta here," Chuckie whispered to Tyler. Twin lines of sweat ran from his armpits and down his sides, tickling his ribs. As much as Chuckie liked Tyler, he disliked Tyler's grandfather. The old man gave him a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Besides that horrible limp of his, which reminded Chuckie of Long John Silver, the old man's left hand was missing two fingers at the knuckle joints. His pinkie and ring fingers ended in little white knobs of scar tissue that made his hand
look more like a claw than a real hand. If he had lost much more of it, he might have needed a hook, like Captain Hook.
"We was just... checking this out," Tyler said, trying his best to sound all innocence. He slipped his hands into his jeans pockets and bounced up and down on his sneakered toes.
"I don't know how many times I have to tell yah. I want you to stay away from there," Old Man Clay said. He gave a quick nod toward the grate that covered the three-foot square hole in the far corner of the barn behind the cow stalls. Thick iron bars were set in a heavy metal frame that was held in place by a large, rusted padlock and hasp on one side, and twin, heavy-duty hinges on the other.
Tyler had discovered this curiosity while playing in his grandfather's cow barn not long after he and his folks moved to the old family homestead, about four years ago, when Tyler's father lost his job at the National Paper Products mill in Hilton. Tyler remembered asking back then what the iron grate was for and where the stone-lined tunnel led. The answer his grandfather had given him then hadn't satisfied him and—like all childhood questions that go unanswered—this one festered in his mind until it was close to the most pressing question he had. So now, after weeks of talking and planning, he and Chuckie had decided today to try to get the iron grate up so they could shine their flashlights inside the tunnel and see exactly what was down there. Maybe they'd even get brave enough to climb in and see how far they dared to go.
"We were just checking it out. What is this thing, anyway?" Tyler stared at his grandfather, who was still scowling as he eyed the heavy, barred grill.
"If I tole yah once, I tole you a dozen times. That there's the poop chute. Used to be used for muckin' out the stalls. Easier to shovel cow shit down there n' clean it out from the bottom."
"It doesn't really look like it would drain all that good," Tyler said, staring at the grate with narrow-eyed suspicion. He and Chuckie had also checked out where the tunnel came out behind the barn. It, too, was closed off with a similar iron grate.
"If this tunnel goes straight down from here, how would it—"
"What d'yah need that length of rope for?" Tyler's grandfather asked as if he hadn't even been listening to him. "I hope to Key-rist you wasn't thinkin' 'bout goin' down there!" He squinted as he looked from one boy to the other, withering them with his stare. Chuckie didn't like the way the old man's gaze lingered on him. It was almost as though he were sizing him up or something.
"Do you remember that ring with the red stone I used to have?" Tyler said with sudden inspiration. "I—uh, I dropped it down in there just now when me and Chuckie were looking in."
"Consider it gone, then," Old Man Clay snapped.
"Com'on," Chuckie said, taking a pinch of Tyler's shirtsleeve and jiggling it. "Let's get outta here."
"And you, boy," Old Man Clay said, pointing a shaky finger at Chuckie. The white nubs of his amputated fingers curled up into the palm of his hand. "You don't be egging my grandson on to do nothin' stupid, unnerstand?"
"I... I didn't," was all Chuckie could say before sputtering into silence.
"You boys didn't know it, but I was out here the whole time, 'n I heard everythin' you said," Old Man Clay growled.
Flustered and unable to recall exactly what either of them might have said, Chuckie took a few quick steps backward. He stumbled and almost fell when the back of his foot caught on the edge of the iron grate. The dirt he kicked up rained down into the dark hole with a soft, hissing sound. It might have been his imagination, but Tyler thought he heard a long, rasping echo from deep inside the tunnel.
"You're so damned curious to go down inta that tunnel there, huh?" Old Man Clay's scowl deepened, his brows folding like dirty puffs of cotton over his eyes. "I've got a good mind to open 'er up and lower you in. Would'cha like that?"
"No... No, honestly, Mr. Clay," Chuckie stammered. "We didn't mean nothing by it. Honest! I'm sorry if I—"
"Well, then, you just stay away from my barn, you hear? Both of yah! Stay the hell out of my barn!"
With that, Old Man Clay turned and started toward the barn door, dragging his bum leg behind him. The boys waited until he was gone before they dared to move.
2
"When we eatin'?" John Clay Jr., Tyler's father, asked. It was late in the afternoon when he got home from Hanson's Lumberyard. He entered the house and dropped his battered lunch pail onto the counter.
Katie Clay looked up from the vegetables she was peeling, her gaze shifting past her husband. She knew from long experience not to expect a welcome home kiss. Sighing, she looked back to her work, sadden by the way her husband had come to treat her, as if she were nothing more than another fixture in the kitchen, like the stove or refrigerator.
"You hear what happened?" she asked, fighting a tight tremor in her voice. Using her paring knife as a pointer, she indicated the copy of the Portland Evening Express on the kitchen table.
"'Nother kid's gone missing" Junior said after scanning the headline. He hooked the rung of a chair with his foot, pulled the chair out, and sat down heavily. "They was talking about it at the yard."
"This one disappeared outside of town, somewhere's up near Highland Pond," Katie said as she wiped her hands on a dishtowel, turned, and leaned back against the edge of the counter. She fought back the impulse to go straight to the refrigerator and get her husband a beer. Let him fend for himself once in a while, she thought bitterly.
"Don't see where that's any concern of ours," Junior said.
"That's three children so far—" Katie said, holding up three parboiled fingers. "All boys between the ages of nine and twelve from 'round here. All gone missing within the space of a few weeks! I'd say it's our concern, 'specially considering what happened just north of here in Holland a few years back."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Junior snapped. He was starting to feel edgy, wondering where his beer was. Maybe Katie had forgotten to buy some the last time she was at the store. He sure didn't feel like hauling his ass down to Nicely's just to get a cold one. A woman was supposed to take care of those things.
"Well, there was that fella—what's his name? I can't recall. Anyway, he was pickin' up kids from around town and killing them, sinkin' their bodies into the Bog up there." Katie's worried eyes shifted past her husband when she saw John's father limping up the walkway. "If there's some maniac on the loose, you'd better have a talk with Tyler and make damned sure he doesn't talk to any strangers 'round town."
"All right. Fine," Junior said.
He finally realized that Katie wasn't going to get him his beer, so he heaved himself up from the table and went to the refrigerator himself. He grabbed a bottle of Budweiser and popped the top on the counter edge. "Tyler's smart enough to take care of hisself."
"What's this 'bout Tyler?" Old Man Clay asked as he shouldered the door open. His foot scuffed on the worn linoleum as he walked over to the kitchen table and sat down heavily. Sweat-streaked dirt and hay chaff covered his face, hands, and clothes.
"Oh, nothin' … nothin' a'tall," Junior replied. He grabbed another beer without asking if his father wanted it and handed it to him. Old Man Clay opened it with his pocketknife and took a long, noisy gulp. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he glanced at the headline in front of him. Dropping his fist down hard on the table, he flattened the folded newspaper.
"Kids!" he snarled, his voice a low rumble. "Goddamned! Gotta be careful as hell 'round about this time o'year!"
3
"He means it. We're not supposed to go into the barn," Tyler whispered, leaning close to Chuckie's ear. They were both crouching on the ground out behind the barn where the backside bordered on the woods.
"Yeah," Chuckie said, "but he never said nothing about staying out of the tunnel."
Built into the side of a steeply sloping hill, the foundation of Old Man Clay's barn was constructed of huge blocks of lichen-covered granite. Out back, from ground level, it was nearly ten feet up to the ground floor. Several tall oak trees cast thick gr
een shadows over the boys. Sunlight flickered through the leaves, making the foundation look like it was alive with energy.
Tyler shivered as he studied the iron grating that blocked the dark tunnel entrance at ground level on the back corner of the foundation. It was almost identical to the one on the barn floor, but the heavy iron bars of this one were several inches apart and embedded in a thick layer of cement that collared the top of tunnel's mouth. The bottom half of the bars were sunk deeply into the ground. How deeply, no one knew; but Tyler and Chuckie were digging, trying to find out. They had dug down more than two feet and still not found the bottom.
"Come on, Chuckie," Tyler said, frowning seriously. "You know he doesn't want us snooping around out there." He indicated the tunnel mouth with a sharp nod of his head.
"Yeah," Chuckie said, laughing softly, "but you've gotta find that precious little ring of yours, remember?"
"You know I was lying about that."
"Yeah, and were you lying about wanting to see where this tunnel goes?" Chuckie's voice was sharp and taunting as he sat back on his heels and smugly placed his hands on his hips. His face and clothes were caked with streaks of wet dirt and mulch.
"Well," Tyler said, looking from his friend to the dark tunnel mouth.
"And as far as you 'n me know, this opening here and the opening in the floor up in the barn are the only two ways to get in, right?"
Tyler gnawed at his lower lip and nodded. "Yeah...unless they ain't even connected."
"So who knows what might be in there? I mean, what if there's a whole 'nother room inside there just around where the tunnel curves out of sight? What if there's a whole cellar under the barn, 'n it's filled with all sorts of neat stuff?" Chuckie lowered his voice with mock awe and added, "This is a wicked old barn. What if there's, like, treasure buried in here?"
"My grandpa told me. The foundation is filled up solid with dirt and rocks," Tyler said. He snorted with laughter. "'Sides, why would anyone want to bury treasure under some old barn?"