by Dave Norem
John charged right at the guard and flattened him with the bag of money. John’s partner, a slender black man named Amos, ‘Fig’ Newton, kicked him in the jaw as he went down, knocking him senseless.
John stuffed the moneybag into his gray jacket before they reached the produce aisle, and was at a normal pace. He and Newton split and went up different aisles. While others were screaming and running from the back of the store drawing all of the attention, they went on past the registers and through the doors, reaching the waiting Ford in the parking lot within moments of each other.
Lonnie said he hadn’t heard a thing and they drove sedately away. Later, they heard on the radio that the woman was dead, and the security guard had a broken jaw.
“That stupid fuck,” Newton commented.
That night John awoke experiencing the waves of pain. The recurring nightmare was back!
Slowly I become aware of another sensation, a vibration of the earth around me. This is unidentifiable at first, but as time passes I am aware that there is a cadence to it. And now I know what is to be my fate! What I am feeling is the marching cadence of Army Ants! All plant and animal matter in their path is consumed. I attempt to break free again, but it is hopeless.
Rousing, he found himself with his head pushed against the headboard and his arms numb. One was from lying on it and the other from the sheet wrapped around it. Untangling himself, He recalled that he hadn’t told Julie of the robbery.
It was time to leave Virginia. The area was too hot from the Giant Store robbery and John had opportunities in two other locations. He had to choose between Altoona, Pennsylvania and Knoxville, Tennessee. There was a third, and crucial, option too: one that should have had precedence: give up his life of crime. Choosing to ignore it, he put it to the back of his mind.
It was the middle of October and since he was currently at the southern border of Virginia, the Knoxville job seemed more appealing. Winter came early in Pennsylvania and could be ferocious. Favorable road and travel conditions in the mountains that far north, were unlikely.
He decided to travel to the Tennessee site before deciding about the job. If he took it, he would be giving up his life with Julie. The alternative was to return to their home in Indiana, where he would have to look for permanent legitimate employment, as she demanded.
Julie had gone home after reading about the woman’s death in the Giant store, and hearing John’s confession. It was a serious rift. They had always agreed that she would never be directly involved and that both would claim she had no knowledge. Now she felt involved, if only by default.
The job in Knoxville was to clean out business office cash in a hospital. He had never heard of this before, but his contact had good information that there was a large amount of cash in the many business offices of a large hospital.
He was assured that in spite of all the insurance and personal checks, there was still a large cash flow. A good many people still did not have insurance, did not trust banks or did not want to leave a trail. John understood that part very well. There was also stored cash for contracted services, emergency supplies, and maintenance needs.
CHAPTER 21
He found the book while packing for the trip to Tennessee. Shrugging, he threw it into the small duffel bag that would go in the front of the car he was taking. There were drinks, snacks, and always one or more books. He was Spartan while working but succumbed to creature comforts while traveling.
His plan was to spend the first night in Covington, Virginia. He began reading the book again at his first lunch stop, again drawn to the tale of the Union soldier who had caused the death of his Confederate-Officer father.
After resuming his journey, he contemplated the meaning of the story and the possible fate of the author. It was a beautiful fall day and the mountains of Central Virginia were in full color. He spoke aloud, “How could someone conceive of such tragedy and gloom in a place like this?”
By early afternoon he had passed Lynchburg and reverted to secondary roads. After a few more miles, he came to a ‘Detour Bridge Out’ sign. The detour pointed toward a southern route, but he wanted to go north. He traveled north, going well up into the mountains to Buena Vista: then turned back in a southerly direction on secondary roads. The roads zigzagged back and forth, some without markers, crossing above and below unidentified main roads. At one point, he saw a weathered hand-lettered sign reading ‘Robinson’s Gap’, with no approximation to the present location.
John really liked this kind of adventure. He was traveling with his maps locked in the trunk of the car and no real concern about where the roads may lead him. Driving on, he reached a washout where part of his lane was missing, forcing him to drive around a blind curve in the oncoming lane. After he was clear of it, he continued for a few more minutes; then pulled over at a wide spot to have a better look at his surroundings. He was in truly rugged terrain, and in an area of exceptional natural beauty.
When he stepped from the car, he could see blue sky through the trees to the south and decided to carry a snack and a drink to the highest point. When he reached his goal, he found himself on a precipice overlooking a deep gorge. On the other side was an almost parallel matching precipice. At the bottom of the gorge was the trace of a narrow, winding, unpaved road—or trail. He glimpsed occasional bright flashes from flowing water somewhere to one side of it.
His gaze traveled back up to the opposite peak and again he was jolted with a powerful sense of deja vu.
He sat down with his refreshments and began eating. As he ate, he studied the opposing face and its surroundings. He could see that the road where he left his car would wind down to, and cross the floor below. His gaze returned to the opposite side and he felt the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck begin to rise. It was the same feeling as before, when he first saw the book.
With a pulsing in his temples, flashes of the recurring nightmare washed over him in bright sunlight. The scene was different from the nightmare, but the point he was on was almost identical to the imagined scene in the fictional Ambrose Bierce story, A Horseman in the Sky.
Again, he knew that somehow, he had lived a part of, or all of the life of this man. He lay back from his vantage point and closed his eyes absorbing both sunlight and sensation. In mulling over the sequence of the dream and the biography of the man, he reached a certainty in his mind that Ambrose Bierce had been on a search mission, and that the search mission was for a drug—or drugs. Not for the fulfillment of temporary euphoria, but for longevity, a chemical Fountain of Youth. Undoubtedly, he had heard one or more of the many tales of native potions and cures for nearly everything.
After almost an hour of contemplation, John arose and returned to his car, determined to follow the road down to the floor of the valley below... Follow it to the possible landing point of the fictional character: The Confederate officer who may have ended his horse-borne flight from the facing peak. From above one could only see the tops of pines and a few colors of the changing hardwoods.
Within a few minutes he was on the valley floor, parked near a small stream that crossed under a stone-covered culvert. From this location, the view was much different, and he had to walk a short distance along both sides of the road before finding the long-unused way. Another few minutes, with a couple of stops to gaze above, brought him to the point he thought to be his objective.
There were trees and brush between the trail and the bluff, but he could still see the solid vertical stone wall through them. He made his way right up to the wall and looked around for anything of note. There was nothing there. The angle of the gorge was such that the sun was still shining into it, although it was now later in the afternoon. Huge shadows were cast parallel to the stone face and the trail.
John walked along the wall toward the sun and examined it as he walked. After several yards, he found it to be jutting out from the main face of the bluff by twenty feet,
but solid against it for a height of at least fifty feet. He retraced his steps and went beyond his entrance point for another forty yards. This was just beyond where the trail curved away from the bluff. He found the end of the wall he was following and rounded it; only to find that it was six or seven feet thick and separated from the main bluff by at least twelve feet. Here was a place out of sight of the old road or trail, into which something from above might have fallen between mountain and wall. Now he felt certain that he would find confirmation of the deaths of the horseman and his horse.
His entrance into the cleft was with impaired vision from the sun shining into his eyes while the ground was in shadow. He advanced to a point where eye-level was below the sun, and waited for his eyes to adjust. When his vision stabilized, he saw that there was nothing but sparse weeds and brush on the ground in front of him. He continued along, searching the ground the full length of the closet like feature.
It amazed him that this space was invisible from both road and trail and from the opposing crest. Except for the one entrance the only way out would be up. Nothing was to be found. He considered returning the next day when the sun would be at its zenith. After over one hundred years, he did not expect to find anything in plain sight.
Retracing his steps, he glanced up at a darker spot in his peripheral vision. There, in a depression in the main face of the rock wall was a reverse ‘D’ shaped opening about three feet wide and four feet high. The bottom of the opening was almost six feet above the ground.
Because of the foliage and angle, it was not easy to see. If not for the time of year and the angle of the sun, he would not have seen it at all. The finding was a riveting experience. The sense of being a part of something larger-than-life drew him like a magnet. He could not leave this unexplored until tomorrow.
Checking his watch, John realized that even if he could see into this orifice, he would barely have time to explore and return to his car before dark. He turned and hiked the ten minutes back to the car where he had a large, gray, plastic Radio-Shack five-cell flashlight. On the way there and back, he wondered at the chain of events that had led him to something different from what he expected. This did not fit into the story that brought on the phenomena he was experiencing.
When he returned to the hidden cleft and the site of the opening he saw there were sufficient loose rocks in a close radius to pile up below the opening, enabling him to reach the entrance. While doing this, he speculated that someone in the distant past had done the same.
When the pile was high enough, he poked a stick into the hole and thrashed it around in case there might be snakes or animals of some kind inside. If there were, he didn’t want them staring him in the face when he had his first look. He climbed on up to where he could look into the hole with his flashlight.
What he saw was a continuation of the same approximate size and shape, with a turn to the left about twenty feet in. He could not see beyond this without crawling in.
He piled on the last of the remaining rocks, gaining just enough height to get his head, arms and shoulders into the opening. There were sufficient projections to grasp so that he could pull himself on up and in. He would have to leave by backing out, the opposite of how he’d crawled in.
Once in, he was forced to stay on his hands and knees in order to continue. He shined the light all around looking for anything of note, including eyes. There was nothing to see, so he continued his crawl, following his light through the opening to the left. Still lighting his way, he saw that the hole ahead was slightly higher, and that it turned back to the right at a shallow angle. He crawled on and again played his light around the bend as he approached.
From the second turn, it went deeper into the mountain another twenty or thirty feet. The first things he noticed were that the ceiling ascended rapidly, and the walls widened out, mostly on the right side. A few more feet of crawling finally allowed him to stand erect and stretch the kinks out of his back and neck.
He played the light over the walls and ceiling with one hand while brushing rock chips and sand from his pained knees. Disappointingly, the small cavern ended abruptly with the chamber he was in. He saw that the size of this area was roughly seven and a half feet at its highest and fourteen feet at its widest. The back wall tapered down and in toward the corner on the left. The entire area was bare and dry with only a slight musty smell to it. The only thing of significance was a mound of stones at the far end.
Approaching this and still wary of snakes even though he knew that there wouldn’t be any, he kicked out idly at the nearest of these rocks. From closer up, he noticed darkened areas on the ceiling as if at some time in the distant past there had been at least one fire.
He played his light back over the ceiling, walls and floor, but there was nothing else to see. The rocks drew his attention again, as they seemed out of place. Now he noticed that they didn’t match the walls around them and couldn’t have fallen from above. There were no others around the perimeter or in the open, and there were no cavities above. They had been placed here deliberately, and this meant by a man—or men.
He looked back toward his entryway and noted that although there was some sand at the outer entrance, there was none here. There were no tracks or footprints of either man or animal, not even his own. Looking at the rocks again, he determined that they had been brought in from outside at great effort; then thrown, pushed or dragged to these depths. There had to be a reason, and the reason had to be under or behind the rocks. Perhaps they were covering a continuation of the cave. If so, the opening would have to be as low as his entry point.
He laid his light aside but shining at the pile, and began to move and drag rocks from the top and front of the mound. After moving twenty or so rocks and some smaller stones, he saw a glint of light reflected from the pile. He picked up his flashlight and aimed it directly into the opening he had created, hoping to verify that something had caused a reflection and that it was not his imagination.
After moving one more rock, he saw that there was indeed a reflection, and that it was from the one thing that would still shine after more than one hundred and twenty years. What he saw was—Gold. The gold was in the form of a ring and the ring was on the finger bone of a human hand. The other bones of the hand were there as well.
John Luther was astonished. He sat back and switched off the light as if darkness would blot out what he had seen.
After a few seconds his eyes adjusted, and he saw that light from outside was reflecting inward from the walls of the two bends he had passed through; a periscopic effect. It had been like entering a darkened theatre from bright sunlight and then later turning to see the faces of those behind you illuminated. There was no sound other than the faint rushing sound heard from being in a cavern, or from placing your ear against the opening in a seashell.
His thoughts returned to the bones below the rocks in front of him, certain that the rest of the man was there too. Who he had been or why he was there John didn’t know, but he was convinced that it was a man and not a woman.
After switching the light back on, he resumed his removal of the rocks wondering what else he might find. He uncovered the skeleton from head to foot and judged it to be well over five-and-a-half-feet tall and even more likely a man—not a boy or woman.
The corpse had been covered with a canvas of some type and some of this was still in place. He gently pulled at it, but it tore easily with slight tension. It had rotted away in spots where rocks had settled against bone. There were only faint traces of clothing. Rotted remains of his boots lay beyond the corpse.
John peeled strips of the canvas away from the body and saw a plain, but rusted, belt buckle. To both sides were more metal items, a heavily rusted long-barreled revolver and a sheath knife in similar condition.
The face of the skull was covered with some type of oiled leather or canvas, with a cap laid over it. Only a small portion of the cap rema
ined, and the bill tore apart when he tried to lift it.
The attraction to the one prostrate before him was so strong that he could not give up. He continued to work at the cap and the covering under it, determined to do as little damage as possible. He was even more determined to gaze at the face beneath it, even though he knew that it was only a skull.
Being careful, he was successful in uncovering the grinning death’s head. A fleeting thought was that a front tooth was chipped in a manner similar to one he was accustomed to seeing in a mirror. He laughed aloud at the morbidity of the thought.
All flesh had long ago departed the corpse, so he turned his attention to the covering he had removed from the face. This was dried leather and canvas, with paper between the layers. He gently peeled it apart and found both paper and ink to be intact, but the paper was dry and brittle, so he had to handle it carefully. He moved to the wall on his left and sat back against it, using his flashlight to help decipher the words before him. The script was both legible and intelligible, as if from a formally educated person, but from a different era. What he read was like nothing on earth he had ever seen or heard of. Something that he was far from prepared for!
To: Whomever may find this man.
In the month of October 1861, while returning from a scouting foray to determine strength and positions of Confederate infantry, I happened to be at this place. Spying what I thought was a bear emerging from a cave, and with the sun in my eyes; I shot this man by mistake. The bear would have been much-needed meat for my fellow men at bivouac. We have been many days with meager provisions and I am nearly delirious from hunger myself. This poor fellow was of the opposing side, with conscription papers, which would have been a feather in my cap under different circumstances. One can hardly claim any kind of victory for such a horrible mistake.