The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

  It wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t a bird-beast or a man-bat or an escaped extra from the set of Hellraiser. It was a hallucination, clear as day.

  If Samford were still around- if it was a hallucination, how do you explain what happened to your partner? — he would undoubtedly have attributed Castle’s delusion to exhaustion, stress, and the trauma of having nearly been blown to bits or buried alive. That’s exactly how Samford would size it up, including the tricky little part where Samford himself was dangled in the air like frankfurters on a string. The Rook was a behavioral psychologist-or had been-and could make sense of such perverted stimuli. Castle, though, could only pretend it hadn’t happened.

  While knowing it had.

  And the rustling in the treetops can’t be just the wind.

  The sound seemed to follow him, though he was constantly changing pace, one moment dragging his feet, the next breaking into a half jog, hoping to put more distance between himself and the hole in the ground, where the mountain had given way and opened onto a dark, cold space that might have been sealed off for aeons. He thought of his feet dangling in that emptiness, of the soft scratching against his boots. Maybe the thing that took The Rook had been released from some primal prison by the bomb blast.

  A species that was probably blind and at home in the eternal dark. But that made no sense, either. Nature wouldn’t have given such a creature wings, and what kind of food would it have found?

  A hallucination was much more comforting than its possible reality. Castle could accept a crack-up. Like taking a bullet for the team, it was an occupational hazard. More than one agent had been released from active duty and turned out to pasture at the funny farm after a harrowing hostage situation or a shoot-out. All the training in the world couldn’t totally remove the vulnerability that was hidden inside all humans.

  A branch broke overhead. Here the trail was narrower, the canopy nearly unbroken, and in the quiet of the night, the sound was like a pistol shot.

  Castle paused, ears filled with the roar of blood and his own breathing. One of the things was up there- yes, THINGS, plural, because one was trying to tug him down into the hole while the other had flown away with The Rook. No telling how many of them had crawled from that nightmare orifice — and even though he was positive they didn’t exist, he was equally sure that a wizened, leathery, gray-skinned creature was hovering in the treetops, marking him, drooling and hungry.

  The handle of the Glock was slick with his sweat. In these conditions, with poor light and close quarters, the stalker had the advantage. But. 40-caliber bullets had a way of equalizing affairs in a hurry. Assuming the creature was made of flesh and blood and not fairy dust.

  You’re over the edge, Castle. You don’t know what happened back there, but you figure a bullet’s going to solve the problem. Three bullets. One for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who hides under sheets.

  He wasn’t going to let any creature rip him from this world before he found the Bama Bomber. He’d made this vow to The Rook’s soul, though he believed in souls about as much as he believed in the Great Pumpkin. Or, for that matter, flying, man-eating backwoods birds.

  “Come out with your hands up,” Castle said, the words sounding foolish even as they left his lips.

  The only answer was the fluttering, dying leaves of the hardwoods. Castle scanned the trees, eyes straining to penetrate the deep shadows. No doubt the Appalachians were home to nocturnal birds such as owls, and other occasionally airborne mammals such as bats and flying squirrels. The Rook would know. He’d become an armchair expert on the region during their week of preparation. But maybe you never knew everything. Remote places, lost, harsh corners of the world, wild lands like the Appalachians, maybe they kept a few secrets.

  After a couple of minutes, Castle’s heartbeat slowed. His mind was playing tricks, and was still the same mind that harbored little Jimmy’s dark bedroom fantasies. The mind was more cluttered with trivia and memories now, shaped by training and experience, but it, too, still kept a few secrets. The monsters were no longer under the bed. They were here, around him, scuttling in the dark.

  He wanted to laugh. No monster could be as bad as Ace Goodall, a man who would probably kill again and again until he was caught. Capturing Goodall was the only mission here, the only mystery. He could sort out the rest later, after The Rook’s body was found and the forensics people went to work.

  Sure, he was lost, but dawn was only about four hours away. Tomorrow, he’d be able to figure out where he was. He began walking again, and a hundred yards later, he came to a break in the trees. He walked out onto a granite shelf that was spotted with lichen. The gorge opened before him, and the moon was at its apex, limning the chalky cliff walls and throwing a gentle blue light over the wilderness.

  Against the sky were the silhouettes of three flying creatures. Castle couldn’t gauge their size because he had no point of reference, but if he had to guess, they were about the size of the thing that had carried away The Rook.

  The creatures rode the high wind, frayed wings unsteady, as if they were just learning to fly. They drifted aimlessly, their flights uncoordinated. Two of them nearly collided. They made no sound, though Castle imagined the rush of the water below might be their voices.

  He didn’t believe in them, but that didn’t stop him from easing back into the cover of the forest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Derek Samford hadn’t died instantly, as his partner believed.

  He’d been keeping an eye out for Ace Goodall, tightening the rope as Castle climbed out of the hole. He wasn’t sure what type of explosion had triggered the landslide, because earthquakes were rare in the Appalachians. The mountain range was so ancient that some believed it had existed before the continental drift and ran beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The far end of the chain wasn’t in Maine, but Scotland. Those rounded hills amid the misty lochs shared a lot of geologic characteristics with these rocky, worn ridges. That much was in the research Samford had absorbed when he’d first gotten the assignment.

  He had a week’s notice, and he’d met Castle only three days before they were dropped off at the border of the wilderness area. He’d heard of Special Agent Jim Castle, of course. Castle was the kind that fellow agents admired but the brass tried to bury. Funny that it turned out the Earth itself had tried to bury Castle.

  And the sky had yanked Samford away.

  Samford blinked against the darkness. It was complete, as solid against his skin as water. He was lying on a cool, hard surface that wasn’t quite flat. The air was stale and held a faint stench of fur and decay, like the den of a hibernating animal.

  He couldn’t remember what had happened after the vicious jerk to his shoulder. His first thought had been that Goodall had crept up on him and grazed him with a bullet. Though Samford had never been shot before, he knew a bullet would have delivered a more powerful punch, shredding meat and bone. This wound had been cleaner, colder.

  He reached to touch it now, his arm heavy and slow, and felt the soggy fabric of his insulated vest. He eased a pinkie tip into the gash. It didn’t hurt. Not much, anyway. He wondered if shock were setting in, or something worse.

  He couldn’t trust his senses, and the total blackness disoriented him. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard his cheeks quivered, and then flicked his eyelids wide open. Still dark. He tried to rise, but his chest and head were sandbags. Sleep tugged at him from somewhere in the base of his skull and he found himself smiling.

  Death in the line of duty. That wasn’t so bad.

  Except Goodall had nothing to do with his current situation. Samford had been plucked from the ground like a trout on the hook end of a fishing line. Fighting the drowsiness, he searched the muddy avenues of his memory. Images fell against each other like a domino game played with funhouse mirrors:

  The spurt of blood arcing from his shoulder.

  The rush of air up his windpipe, his own scream taking forever to reach his ears.<
br />
  Scabbed, gnarled fingers making a noose around his ankle.

  The world going upside down.

  The rake of branches across his face as he was lifted.

  Down in the hole, the pale and confused oval of Castle’s upturned face.

  The sweep of wind as he rose higher.

  The river far below, cutting a silver thread between the rocky cliffs.

  Then, his vision clotting to gray.

  Waking up here.

  Or maybe not awake.

  Maybe he was dead. That would explain some things. But his chest rose and fell, his fingers moved, his eyes opened and closed. The numbness of the wound had worn off, and though the pain still wasn’t great, it was enough to remind him that his nerves still functioned. And, apparently, his blood still flowed.

  Something clicked to his right, a distance of maybe ten feet away, maybe twenty. The acoustics were strange, the sound eliciting a single muffled echo, suggesting he was in an enclosed space. He held his breath for a few seconds, listening. When the sound wasn’t repeated, he exhaled though his nostrils. He was in a cave. That explained the stale air.

  But he would have to be deep in the Earth to be without light. Even the gloomiest, most overcast night held the faint gray of obscured stars. Maybe he’d fallen into the hole while helping Castle and had been hit on the head, and a landslide had sealed him up like a pharaoh tucked under a pyramid. Goodall could have rigged some type of follow-up bomb. That would explain Samford’s lack of consciousness, but it didn’t explain those disturbing memories. He reached for his face, felt the smile still frozen on his lips, and ran his fingers over his scalp and around his skull. No lumps, no other wounds.

  Besides the gouge in his shoulder and a little exhaustion, he was fine. Nothing to do but wait it out and recover his strength, then get up and explore. In the meantime, he could play over Goodall’s assessment and guess the bomber’s next move, because Castle would want to resume the hunt once they were both The clicking sound came again, closer. Five feet, maybe. He thought again of hibernating animals. Animals didn’t hibernate in the fall. This was the season they spent growing fat, packing on pounds for the long winter ahead.

  Samford willed his lungs to work steadily, though his heart banged against his rib cage like a meth junkie in a jail cell. Quantico didn’t train for sensory deprivation. Being held captive in a mountain cave wasn’t one of the scenarios designed by the FBI theorists. But was he really captive?

  If he weren’t so tired, he would find out.

  The click again, and behind it, a sinister rasp.

  A click to his left, above him. The cave must be larger than he’d first thought. Enough headroom to stand.

  Another click, and farther away, another. A soft flutter, then another, erupting into flapping.

  Wings.

  Bats.

  Samford relaxed a little. Of course there would be bats in a cave. The winged mammals were as ubiquitous as mice, and, unless they were infected with rabies, were utterly harmless. Their sonar would detect Samford’s movements and inform the creatures that Samford was much too large to serve as prey.

  The flapping grew more agitated, and was strong enough to stir the fetid air of the chamber. Perhaps full dark was coming on outside and the brood of bats was preparing to alight as one, to sweep out of the cave’s opening in that iconic and primordial image that launched a hundred spooky movies. But those images had always been accompanied by frantic squeaking. Why were these so silent?

  The next click, like fingernail on bone, was so close to his wounded shoulder that he felt its vibration.

  The flapping became frenetic, and a leathery wing brushed his face. The fluttering hovered nearer, and there must have been dozens of them. He tried to picture their faces, those wrinkled slits where eyes should be, their moist gray noses, tiny teeth behind black lips. The image didn’t comfort him.

  It was touching his shoulder now, not with a finger, but with something softer. Even with the numbness, he could feel its velvety texture, with just enough abrasion to tickle him. It was the moist, sandpapery flesh of a tongue, one much too large to belong to a bat.

  The tongue played around his wound as if wielded by a lover in the early stages of oral sex. Samford, despite the horrifyingly pleasant sensation, would have slapped it away, but his arms had become as heavy as his head. The drowsiness returned, and his groin flooded with warmth. He had an erection.

  The tongue teased, and there was something doubly disturbing about it. There was no breath behind it. Whether a bear, a fox, or an oversize bat, it should be panting as it licked.

  A memory rushed up, the image of the thing that had borne him aloft and carried him to this chamber that would serve as his sepulchre.

  The tongue found the heart of the wound and entered. It grew more vigorous, wiggling as it found the nourishment it sought. Lips smacked with sticky residue. Another tongue joined the first, the flapping became a percussive rattling, the air of the chamber buzzed with clicking, slithery movement.

  Through it all, Samford kept smiling, even as he screamed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bowie had slept maybe three hours total, but he’d only dreamt of Connie once. In the rest of his dreams, he’d been running a kayak down the Unegama in a Class III stretch popularly known as “Beaver’s Lick.” Class III waters were challenging for a beginner, and even carried a slight risk of injury or death, but such a run was nothing to an experienced paddler. In the dream, however, everything went wrong. Bowie’s paddle acted as if it were stirring molasses, the kayak took on water, and he found himself broadsiding boulders and getting caught in ripples. Worse, it had begun to rain, and Bowie couldn’t seem to make shore.

  He awoke before dark, more tired than rested, his legs and lower back sore from the hike. The best way to get loose was to get moving, so he rolled up his sleeping bag and carried his clothes into the woods. The first birds were mouthing off about the start of another great day in the wonderful world, and nocturnal animals scuffed leaves as they returned to their daytime hiding holes. Bowie stripped nude and was about to wriggle into his water-resistant SealSkinz when a twig snapped behind him.

  He turned, squinting into the underbrush, instinctively dropping the loose clothing in front of his crotch. “Hello?”

  Dove Krueger laughed. “Your ass is so white, I thought it was a full moon.”

  “Very funny. What are you doing out here?”

  “When nature calls, there’s only one answer.”

  “It’s a half hour before sunup. Why don’t you get some more sleep?”

  “I’m not sleepy,” she said, her voice closer now. The forest was expectant with the coming day, right on the threshold of full life, but for the moment, the world hung in that eerie half light between night and morning.

  She stepped out of the shadows into the lesser gray, moved his hands away, and felt for him. Her breath was warm on his cheek, and though he couldn’t quite make out her face, he could picture it as plainly as a photograph. She had washed, and smelled earthy, like chamomile and mint.

  “An early riser, like always,” she murmured with approval.

  “Dove. We’re done with that, remember?”

  “Feels like we’re just starting.” She grabbed his right wrist and guided his hand to the front of her sheer cotton gown. Her nipples were bare and hard beneath the fabric.

  “We’re done with that,” he said, though the words almost stuck in his throat.

  She didn’t slow her stroking, and he didn’t pull his hand away, though he kept it still. Her lips touched his neck and her hair fell soft against the skin of his shoulder. The contrast of her heat against the morning chill raised gooseflesh along his back.

  “Dove,” he whispered, and it took all of his willpower to step away. The first hint of red painted the sky in the east, and he thought of that old nautical saying, “Red sky at morning, sailors taking warning.” The birds were louder now, and the muted music of the falls prov
ided a peaceful backdrop. This, the moment before true dawn, was one of the points where the fabric of reality was the thinnest, when order was at its most vulnerable, when reason fled.

  He could see the outline of her body now. The cotton, damp from the night river air, clung to her form, her black hair loose and tangled around her face. “You’d better get back to camp before the others wake up,” he said.

  “Because they’ll talk, and maybe lose respect for you, and the test run will be compromised,” she said. “The mission comes first. Duty calls, and all that other macho horseshit.”

  “It’s not that. It’s-”

  “She’s dead. You told me that yourself, even if you don’t believe it yet. I can’t make you believe it, either. That’s something inside you. But you don’t have to suffer forever because of it.”

  “You promised never to bring that up.”

  “I’m a woman. What’s a promise when it stands between me and what I want?”

  She was right. He knew, once he’d told her about his loss, she’d eventually find a way to use it against him. He’d suffered a moment of weakness, and any outdoor adventurer knew it was those moments of weakness that killed. He feared another such moment now.

  “I don’t regret what we did in the Adirondacks,” he said, speaking faster now, fearing the yawning power of the timeless and frozen dawn. “But it’s done. We met at a bad time for both of us and-”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It was only the right time.”

  She was on him again, and this time he didn’t fight it. His body was taking over, tricking him, and his hands roamed over her curves, then lifted the gown up and over her head. It fell to the ground, and she lowered herself, kneeling on the fabric. The distant, gentle throb of the falls provided a primitive sound track to her action as she took him in her mouth. Unbidden, Farrengalli’s bellow entered his head: It’s only fuckin’ naturalllll…