Way Down There (An Allie Down Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by PJ Fernor

  But that’s when I saw something to my right.

  After a few deep breaths of running, I stopped.

  I saw the cabin.

  It looked like a tree fort on the ground. Definitely something built by hand. The wood didn’t match in color, shape, or size. It looked crooked, ready to call it a life during the next decent thunderstorm.

  I moved forward toward and cabin, closing in on what I knew was the end of this.

  I saw the black SUV parked behind the cabin.

  Everything Nelle had said was true.

  There was bumper sticker on the back, but it was dirty, old, and faded.

  I surveyed the area some more, formulating a plan in my head.

  Each step I took, another ten twigs snapped under my foot, making me feel like I was setting off firecrackers to announce my arrival.

  I paused and looked at the ground to come up with a path that wasn’t as noisy.

  Inside the cabin, I heard a scream.

  A scream that tore through me and made me run toward the cabin.

  She’s in there! She’s alive!

  I made it to the door and twisted the rusted knob, it was locked.

  That wasn’t going to stop me.

  Nothing was going to stop me from getting inside.

  I stepped back and readied my foot to kick the door down.

  I heard a noise behind me.

  The same noise I had made… twigs snapping.

  I turned around as a scream echoed from inside the cabin again.

  Standing a few feet away was a man with blue eyes and a tired face… holding a machete in the air.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  He was as surprised to see me as I was him.

  But it was definitely him… the man near my car that one morning…

  He was also wielding a deadly weapon. The machete was in the air at a perfect position and angle to swoop down and cut me in more places than I cared to stand there and count.

  In this moment, my heart became suddenly still.

  As much as I hated to admit it, there was a small sense of comfort as the man stood there, staring, knowing he had the capability of ending my life. And chances were, if he killed me, he would kill Jessie and then flee.

  The comfort inside me - as sick as it was - was because this kind of confrontation was what I was used to. Back in the city, this was the norm in a sense. Dealing with those charging at me with a knife or pulling a gun or finding anything and everything to use as a weapon.

  Here in Sandemor, I had to face my feelings.

  I thought about Lo.

  She drifted through my head like a memory but I realized it was my mind telling me everything I had to lose. And Lo was at the top of that list.

  It suddenly felt wrong.

  And I knew Ben was right.

  I should have waited.

  I should have stayed at the top of the ridge and waited.

  We could have done this differently.

  But it was too late now.

  My plan was the same.

  Take this guy down. Save Jessie. Get home to Lo. Hug her tight.

  The man brought the machete down, slowly, still pointing it at me.

  “It’s over,” I said. “I have no idea who you are, but it’s over now. You have no idea who’s coming next.”

  “Cindy?” the man asked. “Is she coming?”

  His eyes were blue and kind, but the corners of his eyes had long crow’s feet. The skin on his face looked worn, a little loose, showing age and a hell of a lot of stress. He wore a long-sleeve black shirt that had small rips at the armpit seams. His jeans were dirty with black stains up and down the legs. He stepped forward and his black boots hit the old wood of the porch with a thud.

  “Tell me where Daniel is,” I said. “And let me go get Jessie.”

  “Jessie?”

  “The girl you kidnapped,” I said. “Just like what you did to Lucy. You killed her. You’re not getting away with this.”

  I slowly side stepped.

  I needed to keep somewhat of a distance from the man.

  And I needed a chance to get my gun.

  “Show me your hands,” he said. “You know what this place is, right?”

  I showed my hands. “You tell me.”

  The man smiled. “I met him at the treatment center. We looked alike. He took to me. Everyone always said I had trusting eyes. I got them from Mama. Daniel told me about this place. He trusted me and wanted me to bring Cindy here. To escape what they were doing to her.”

  “What were they doing to her?” I asked.

  Each step he took, I took a step away.

  My eyes constantly moved, left to right, looking at the woods, looking at the cabin. Knowing time was not going to work for me anytime soon.

  “The cancer they gave her,” the man said. “Daniel told me they gave it to her. Just like him. He was hiding it from everyone though. He said they wanted him to talk about it because that’s how they spread it. But Cindy was too sick. He told me to bring her here. He built this place by hand. He dug the basement. He built the cabin. And he stocked it…”

  The man laughed.

  “Is Cindy here right now?” I asked.

  “Where?” the man asked.

  He turned his head with a youthful glow on his face.

  My hand touched my gun.

  He slashed the machete through the air.

  The blade missed me but I felt a small gush of wind.

  That was enough to get my heart thumping again.

  “You lied to me,” he said. “Where’s Cindy? That’s not Cindy in there. No matter what I do, I can’t fix it. I can’t fix her. That’s why I left the first time. I had no choice. I had to walk away from her. She wouldn’t listen to me.” The man tapped his forehead with his other hand. “And I didn’t even think about food. Cindy didn’t eat food at the end. But she needed food when she was young again. So she stopped breathing again…”

  “You kidnapped a girl and starved her to death,” I said. “That’s what you did. And then you kidnapped another girl.”

  “No, I didn’t,” the man said.

  He swung the machete again.

  Then he winced in pain and grabbed for his back.

  We were toward the back of the cabin.

  The sides and back were built without windows or doors.

  “Listen to me. I don’t even know your name. But that girl in there has a family. She has a mother and a father looking for her. So do the right thing here. Put down the machete. Put your hands behind your head. You can walk away from this alive. We all can.”

  “No, we can’t,” he said. He rubbed his back with his free hand. “Nobody can. I was supposed to fix it all. I was supposed to make her right. Make her good. So she wouldn’t push Milton off that cliff. So Mama wouldn’t have to cut her wrists. And she wouldn’t have made me help hold our father down while he choked on his own puke. Cindy wasn’t supposed to be evil…”

  The man’s chin quivered.

  His eyes filled with tears.

  He was now deadly and weeping.

  But the machete started to lower some more.

  My hand touched my gun, ready to end this once and for all.

  The man stopped moving.

  His eyes became dazed.

  He was totally lost in the moment.

  Inside the cabin I heard another bellowing scream.

  I grabbed for my gun.

  The man turned his head to the cabin and growled.

  He flicked his wrist and sent the machete in my direction.

  I turned and offered my shoulder to the blade, bracing for a skin slicing impact.

  The machete clipped the top of my shoulder with a stinging pain.

  It could have been a lot worse though.

  I reached for my gun again and the man hadn’t moved an inch.

  “It’s over now,” I said to him.

  “Yes, it is,” he said in a calm, almost soothing voice.

  He
reached behind his back and pulled out a gun.

  Without hesitation, he pointed it at me and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  The bullet hit me at the same spot where the machete did.

  As I turned I managed to lift my gun and got one shot off at the man.

  I stumbled back and saw him clutch his chest and jump off his feet before falling to the ground.

  He landed on his left side, gone.

  I looked at my right shoulder and saw blood.

  The pain pushed through my arm and across my chest and back, but I was lucky that the bullet had just clipped me.

  I heard another scream from inside the cabin and it sounded closer than the previous ones.

  I turned and ran around the back of the cabin, hoping for a lucky break.

  There was a small window at the bottom of the cabin.

  My best guess was that was where the sound had carried from.

  Meaning Jessie was in the basement of this place.

  This manmade bomb shelter turned cabin thing.

  All because Daniel Endlebrook was afraid of zombies or the government so he built this place in secrecy. Only to befriend the man who took Lucy and Jessie.

  What are the…

  My right foot caught on something and I stumbled forward, my gun in my hand, waving through the air.

  I twisted my left ankle but caught myself from falling.

  With my feet flat on the ground again, I turned and realized I had tripped over a mound of dirt.

  My stomach started to churn as I reached for a branch on the ground and started to poke at the mound. I dug and scooped until I hit something. Something buried. Not very well either. The smell hit me before I saw the side of a human face. Dirt in his ear, covering his nose and eyes, I stopped digging because I didn’t want to see any more of it.

  It was Daniel Endlebrook.

  I could tell from the side angle of his face. His jaw line. The scruff on his face.

  No doubt in my mind.

  So the man found out all about Daniel’s secret hiding place and then he killed him. And buried him out behind the cabin.

  I looked to the window near the ground again.

  I took the stick with me and slammed it against the glass to break it open.

  After I used the stick to clear as much of the glass away as I could, I fell to my hands and knees and looked into the mostly dark basement of the cabin.

  “Jessie!” I cried out.

  “I’m down here!” a weak voice yelled back. “Please save me. Please help me. Please. Before the man comes back. Please.”

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “I’m here to save you. You’re going to be okay, Jessie.”

  My heart jumped all over in my chest.

  I quickly realized the window was way too small for me to climb through.

  I would be lucky to get my legs through it and that’s it.

  With no time to curse my curves, I jumped back to my feet and hurried back around the cabin.

  My gun was steady in my hands as I saw the man still on the ground.

  I ran by him and to the front of the cabin.

  I kicked the door three times before it finally started to give way.

  The door itself splintered and with one more good kick, I was finally able to get inside.

  The smell was almost as bad as Daniel’s corpse buried in its shallow grave.

  The overwhelming smell of dust made it hard to breathe.

  Everything in the cabin was old, worn out, broken, uneven…

  As I ran through the cabin, I thought the floors were going to cave in. This place was a disaster waiting to happen. Illegally built and I had no idea if Daniel did it all himself or even how he did it.

  The main room gave way to a small kitchen.

  There were broken plates and glasses all over the floor.

  Jessie screamed from underneath my feet.

  I looked around and couldn’t find a door at first.

  Then I saw a small table with two chairs next to a counter.

  The counter looked very out of place.

  There were hinges on the back of the counter, almost at the wall.

  I jumped forward and lifted the counter.

  I let out a cry of relief when the counter opened, revealing itself as a secret door. To a secret set of steps.

  That went down.

  Way down there…

  The basement steps wiggled as I scrambled down them.

  I saw the silhouette of a light dangling and I reached to find the chain.

  There was no chain though. The place didn’t have actual electricity.

  I fumbled and found a button.

  When I clicked it to the right, a light came on.

  It was a battery powered flashlight hanging from a string.

  The floor was made of dirt.

  The walls were cinderblocks.

  And my memory started to rush back.

  There’s two girls! There’s still another one missing! You have to believe me…

  “Help! Help!”

  I turned my head and saw Jessie.

  Sitting on her butt with her knees pulled to her chest, staring at me with big, blue eyes that looked terrified. And rightfully so. She had gone through a version of hell that nobody deserved ever in life.

  Above her head I noticed letters.

  Wooden letters that were misshapen.

  CINDY

  The man really thought Lucy and Jessie were Cindy.

  I hurried toward Jessie and fell to my knees before her.

  I grabbed her shoulders and she wiggled to get away.

  I showed her my hands. “Jessie, I’m Detective Allie Down. I’m here to save you. It’s over. I… I shot him. I shot the man.”

  “You killed the man?” Jessie asked.

  “It’s over now, sweetie,” I said.

  Above Jessie were letters.

  CINDY was spelled out.

  I looked at her wrist and saw the chain attached to it.

  It reminded me of the marks on Lucy’s body that were listed in the report.

  Was this the same place where Lucy took her last breath too?

  My heart started to break.

  I still had to break Jessie free.

  “I’m going to find something to get these off of you,” I said to her.

  “Don’t leave me,” she cried out.

  Her hands grabbed my arms.

  “I’m not leaving you, Jessie. I’m going to break you free. I promise.”

  I stood and went to look for an axe or hammer, something I could use to free Jessie.

  I used my phone’s flashlight.

  There was a thick pipe against the wall where Jessie was.

  I had no idea where the pipe went since the cabin didn’t appear to have running water or electricity. The smell started to get to me. Knowing that both Jessie and the man had to have had to use the bathroom at some point. And it was just…

  The back wall of the basement was stacked floor to ceiling with shelves. And on those shelves was a variety of canned foods and weapons. Guns. Boxes of ammunition. A collection of batteries and flashlights.

  I turned a little and saw hooks on the next wall.

  There were more guns.

  Illegal firearms.

  Daniel Endlebrook was really prepared for the end of the world.

  Instead, what he built was a perfect place for a psycho, like the man who took Lucy and Jessie, to have fun in.

  I saw an old axe hanging on a hook and I grabbed it.

  I ran back to Jessie and told her to turn her head and keep her arm steady.

  I made sure to swing the axe far enough away from her wrist so there was no chance of hurting her.

  When help showed, they’d be able to get her out of the metal shackle around her wrist to free her for good.

  It took more than a few swings to finally pop the chain and break Jessie free.

  The sound of the chain breaking made me fall
to my knees.

  I dropped the axe and looked at Jessie.

  I was out of breath, sweaty, the dirt and dust from the cabin and basement clinging to my face.

  Jessie lunged at me, holding me tight, shaking.

  She started to cry.

  I held her close, one hand across her back, the other at the back of her head. I could feel her ribs poking through her skin. She was malnourished. Dehydrated.

  “I’ve got you,” I whispered. “Oh, Jessie, I’ve got you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I just kept screaming. I heard him leave and I started to scream. I always screamed when he left…”

  I pulled Jessie away and stared into her eyes.

  She was the same beautiful girl as in the pictures on her father’s fridge.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” I said.

  I stood up and picked her up with me.

  I turned and exhaled a breath.

  Jessie screamed again, right next to my ear.

  “The man!”

  When I saw it was the man again, gun in his hand, I turned and shielded Jessie.

  A gunshot echoed through the basement… and I wished I could have told Lo I loved her one last time.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  There was a silence around me as my ears buzzed and my brain and heart connected together, ready to beg, pray, and do anything needed to survive whatever the bullet was going to do to me. There was no way Lo could lose her mother and then me all in the same year. If the universe was that cruel…

  “Allie? Are you okay?”

  My eyes popped open and I looked down at Jessie.

  Her head rested against my chest, her hands wrapped around me again, her fingers clutched with a death grip on the back of my shirt.

  I turned my head and saw Ben standing over the body of… the man.

  That’s what I called him. That’s what Jessie called him.

  And now he was dead.

  And we still didn’t know who he was.

  “Ben,” I said. I turned, taking Jessie with me. “Look who I found.”

  Ben let out a sighing oohhh sound and stepped forward.

  He put his hands out and Jessie winced.

  Above our heads there were thuds as the cabin began to flood with people.

  Jessie gasped and held me tighter.

  I gently touched her arms and peeled her away.