by A. Sparrow
Someone had come by while I was in Root. I panicked a little bit. What if it had been Joshua come to turn me loose? What if my unconsciousness had deterred him and I had missed my opportunity for freedom?
But then again, what if Edmund and Mark had come by to interrogate and beat me. Maybe my unresponsiveness had protected me.
I don’t know how they could believe I had anything else to tell them. I was already at the point of garnishing the truth with the lies I thought they wanted to hear, lies more believable than the truth. If they squeezed this stone any more, they would extract only more lies.
What if they had no intention of freeing me? Ever. That was hard to think about. But it made sense. Keeping me locked up, kept me silent. I might only incriminate them if they turned me loose. They had every reason to worry. I had every attention of exposing their crimes to the authorities.
Maybe they wanted me dead, but no one wanted to do the dirty work. Gutless bastards. Maybe they were hoping for divine intervention, praying that God would erase me from this basement, and out of their consciences.
There were some odd sounds overhead—someone running back and forth. Quick, little steps. Children.
A door squealed. Feet pattered down the stairs. The door at the end of the hall pushed open.
“Down here!” It was the voice of a small boy. “Sarah’ll never find us in here. She’s a scaredy cat.”
“But my dad says we’re not allowed in the basement.”
“Oh, come on, Nate! It looks like Hogwarts.”
Hard soles clapped the slate flooring and echoed as they ran down to my end of the hall.
I pressed my face against the gap in the door and there they were—two boys who looked to be about seven or eight years old, wearing dress shirts, clip-on bow ties and matching blue blazers. Their hair was buzzed to their skin above their ears with just a tuft on top.
“Blimey, it’s an actual dungeon!” said the taller of the two boys. He wiggled the door that had confined Linval, finding it locked.
“It’s creepy down here, Joe. Let’s go back up.”
“Hi there,” I said through the crack, my voice all raspy and quavering.
The boys shrieked and leaped back, grabbing onto each other. I was afraid they would run away, but they stayed put.
“We’re very sorry, sir! Didn’t mean to disturb you. We were just playing some hide and seek.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“He sounds American,” said the smaller boy.
“Are you? An American?”
“Sure am. My name’s James. I’m from Florida.”
“What are you doing in that … that dungeon?”
“Well you see, some bad people locked me inside here for no good reason.”
“Bad people? Here?”
“Yes. He’s a man who should never be allowed inside a church. Can you help me? Can you unlock this door?”
The boys looked at each other. The smaller boy shook his head.
“We shouldn’t.”
“But I saw you trying to open that other door. Why not mine?”
“I don’t know,” said the taller boy. “What if … you’re a monster? Trying to trick us?”
“Monster? No way! I’m just a kid. A big kid from America.”
“Do you think really think he’s a monster, Joe?”
“Or worse, maybe he’s … a hun!”
“A what?” I said, perplexed.
“A Rangers supporter!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can go fetch my Dad,” said the smaller of the two boys.
“No!” said the other boy. “Do you want to get us both in trouble? We’re not supposed to be down here. Mum said to never go down those stairs! Remember?”
“Listen guys. I know this is a scary place. If I were you, even I would be afraid to open this door. But I’m hurt really bad. I need a doctor. Can you please find a phone and call the police for me? There’s probably some special number like … 911?”
“Do you mean 999?”
“Sure. I mean if that’s the number here. Can you call it? Please? Just tell them there’s somebody hurt in the basement of this church?”
The boys looked at each other. “Mum says, I’m not allowed to play with the phone.”
“This isn’t playing. This is real. Like … what if your house was burning down? What would you do?”
“Then I would just tell my Mum. She would know what to do.”
“But what if the house is filling with smoke? You’re trapped in your room. And your mom’s at the store.”
“Let’s get out of here, Nate. This guy’s making me scared.”
“Wait! I’m sorry. I’m just saying, sometimes calling the police is the right thing to do. Even for a little kid. This is one of those times. You don’t have to tell them your name. Just call and say there’s a guy in the basement of this church and he’s hurt.”
“Mum says 999 is only for emergencies. She would tan my bottom if I—.”
“But this is an emergency! Please! There are bad people here. They’ve been hurting me. Just call and tell them to come look for me.”
“Let’s get out of here, Nate. Let’s go back upstairs.”
“You won’t get in trouble. I promise. Once they get here and let me out, they’ll see and you’ll be heroes. Please! Call 999 for me?”
“Let’s go, Nate!”
The smaller boy hesitated. “But Joe, this man needs help. He says he’s hurt.” He reached up and slid one of the bolts free on the door.
“Nate, no! Don’t touch that!” The other boy slid it back into place.
Nate, defiant, reached up and wiggled the door knob. “No, Nate! I said don’t!” The taller boy shrieked and slapped his hand away. He yanked him away from the door and shoved him down the hall.
“We’re going! Now! Upstairs. Don’t you dare say anything to anybody. Especially not Sarah. She’ll tattle. I just know it.”
I pressed my forehead against the door, grimacing as waves of pain rolled up from the ocean of agony at my core.
“Nate, Joe! Please call them. Call the police. Please! You don’t have to give them your name. Just tell them I’m here.”
Their voices retreated. The door at the end of the passageway slammed shut.
Chapter 16: Dragons
After milking and after breakfast, Isobel joined Karla and together they handled all of James’ regular Monday chores. They scrubbed cheese rinds to rid them of mold, bleached and hosed out the curdling tanks, swept out the barns, rounded up strays.
James’ absence cast a pall over every task. Karla went through the motions in silence. Every attempted conversation was torture. She just wanted to curl up somewhere alone and think.
At lunch, the others tried reassuring her with various, innocuous explanations for his tardiness, the most popular theory being that the old motorcycle had broken down.
“I wouldn’t have ridden that whiny piece of junk as far as Abergavenny, never mind Glasgow,” said Harry.
“I’d a done it, in my day,” said Renfrew. “For these fine ladies.” He raised his voice and sang: “I would walk a thousand miles and I would walk a thousand more—.”
“Ren, please!” said Helen. “Anything, but that bloody song!”
“If only he wasn’t such a Luddite and gotten himself a mobile phone,” said Jessica. “All of this would be put to rest.”
“Why couldn’t the boy spare 50p for a payphone?” said Renfrew. “He could have called and reversed the charges.”
“Because you pay him a pittance,” said Jessica. “He’s probably saving it for the petrol to get home.”
Afterwards, washing dishes, Izzie sidled up to her and whispered. “It’s obvious, La. He’s in Root. He went up there to find us but we’re down here. So, he’s sad. He’ll come back, soon as he fades, you’ll see.”
Slogging through afternoon chores, the ordeal continued. Between the endless banter among the staff, Ren
frew’s tale-spinning and Izzie’s mindless jibber-jabber, she had been unable to string two coherent thoughts together all day. She was desperate for a few moments of peace, a place where she could be alone with her thoughts.
That evening, while Isobel was in her glory, guiding goats in and out of their stanchions, Karla excused herself and slipped out of the barn. She bumped into Helen outside and told her she wasn’t feeling well and would be skipping dinner. Before Isobel even noticed she was gone, she had rounded the barn and was hiking up into the hills.
She found a place far off the path, behind a hedgerow, where neither Isobel nor Jessica would be able to find her. She lay down on a patch of moss tucked between some stony outcrops and stared up at the rose-blushed wisps of cloud lacing the sky.
Karla watched the colors change until the sun had set and only a soft glow persisted in the west. The first stars were starting to pop and a chill descended. It was going to be another frosty night.
She ran her options through her head and found only two, only one of which was tenable. The safest and most sensible choice would be to take Isobel and escape to Rome. James would either find his own way, or she would have to learn how to forget him. Alternatively, she could take a bus back up to Glasgow and find him.
Staying put was not an option. If Papa had gotten to James it was only a matter of time before he learned of Sturgie and Brynmawr and traced their path down to Cwm Gwyrdd Farm.
As much as she missed Rome, she didn’t miss it half as much as James. It was clear that her heart could not handle abandoning him. It would cause her to give up on life again, she could see it coming. There was only one path ahead, and it led to Glasgow. There was no other way around it.
But what to do with Isobel? She would probably insist on tagging along, but that would be much too dangerous. But then again, Karla couldn’t just take off and leave her behind in Brynmawr. Even if Renfrew and the staff would put up with her, what if Papa came by looking for them?
Karla wondered if she could come to an arrangement with Helen’s lady friends—the Wiccans. Isobel seemed to like them and they were the type of folks who might be receptive to a less than orthodox guardianship arrangement, considering the stories they had shared of their own tumultuous adolescences. Still, it seemed a heavy imposition.
But leaving Isobel with anyone was a risk. What if she spilled the sordid details of life under Edmund Raeth? Someone might be tempted to bring the police into the situation and then almost anything could happen, not much of it good. If past experience was any guide, Papa’s public reputation easily trumped the word of a pre-pubescent girl.
She felt boxed into a corner, trapped in a lose-lose situation. Every choice presented problems.
Impossibly, the moss surrounding her began to lengthen. Inch-high, a foot high, it enveloped her and blocked her view of the horizon. A flash of hope illuminated a third, unexpected option.
She kept the implications locked in the back of her mind, refusing to let them into the forefront of her consciousness. Despite her efforts to stay neutral, an involuntary smile crept into her lips.
It required no effort whatsoever to sustain the transition. She just kept her mind blank and let it sweep over her. The wave would take her where she needed to go. It was just like surfing.
It had been so long since she had been visited. It was like welcoming a long lost lover. She closed her eyes and tried to stifle her excitement.
***
When Root finally wrapped itself around her soul and consumed her, Karla was appalled to find herself enmeshed inside a tight pod, deep in a smelly tunnel with Reapers grumbling about. The gall of it! How could she backslide after all she had been through? She had paid her dues. She would not stand for such an insult.
As her rage mounted, the strands confining her sensed her aggravation. They swelled and stiffened to counter her. But that only infuriated Karla more. Spread eagle, she pushed her hands and feet against the sides of the pod with all her might and screamed.
The pod alternately contracted and stretched and then exploded into bits. She tumbled onto the tunnel floor, bounced and rolled against the wall.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she snarled at a curious patch of roots that had already uncoiled and begun to probe at her skin. Her words were enough to make them flinch and retract.
Karla got up and looked at the shriveled remnants of her former cage strewn about. She scraped together a small pile of stunned fragments and stared at them until they started to organize and transform themselves. Slowly, under her guidance, they became a calf-length, slitted poplin skirt—sturdy and practical. Another handful, she took and reshaped into a long-sleeved chambray blouse.
She didn’t bother with bra or undies. To her chagrin, her little sister already possessed a larger bosom for Heaven’s sake.
This particular stretch of tunnel was devoid of pods. In fact, it seemed a dead end. Up slope, the tunnel pinched off and the threads comprising the walls had turned dark and shaggy. It had obviously been some time since a Reaper had passed this way.
That seemed initially like a stroke of luck, but she realized that she was standing below the place where she and James had battled the old Reaper, where he had squeezed the tunnel closed to ensnare it before conjuring a maelstrom of shredded roots that send it tumbling into an abyss of his creation.
In the intervening weeks, the roots had been busy healing the gaping wound he had left behind. The result was a mass of fibrous scar tissue much like that which would form in a person after a shotgun blast.
She walked to the blunt end and tried pushing through the clot. The roots here were woody and inert, having sacrificed their flexibility and mutability for structure. It would take her forever to ram through, and if this was the bottom of the rebuilt area, there was likely hundreds of meters of scarred root to negotiate before she reached the undamaged section.
She doubled back a ways and pushed through a more pliant wall below, hoping to traverse the interstitial spaces to an undamaged tunnel system that might lead her back to the surface.
As she popped out, into the next lumen, she could hear a Reaper scraping and moaning down the passage. She didn’t linger, wanting nothing to do with the creature. She crossed the tunnel and pushed through the next wall, threading through the tangles until she found another tunnel.
This one proved more pleasant. There were pods overhead, but it was quiet and she could smell no Reapers. She descended to a branching just below to see which tunnel looked more promising.
It felt good to again feel the springy cords of the tunnel floor beneath the pads of her bare feet. How many miles of tunnels had she explored in the years she had been visited by Root? And yet it had never occurred to her that there would be more to this place than the subterranean.
She passed through a dark stretch, crowded overhead with pods occupied by simpering souls. She had no qualms about passing souls by without lending a hand. In her experience, few if any desired escape. They had come here to meet Reapers and Reapers they would meet. It was the rare soul who sought freedom and she knew one when she saw one.
Still, it was hard not to feel guilty, knowing that a Reaper would be here before the day was through. The lucky ones would fade before any Reaper reached them. Some would return to find their luck had come due. But the luckiest would never come back, one whiff of Root enough to render them forever grateful for the gift of life.
She reached the junction to find that it connected to a branch that wound down and around to the core where the Reapers made their lairs. She was better off staying in the present tunnel, so she sighed and turned around, going back the way she had come, grimacing at the sound of the sobs and whimpers overhead.
As she left the dark section, she spotted something sparkly in a crevice on the floor. She stooped to pick it up, and it was a diamond earring—a stud mounted on silver, complete with backing.
It had been almost two months since she had worn any jewelry. She couldn’t resist. Ou
t of habit, she flicked her head to flip back hair no longer there. As she reached up to find the piercing, a small Reaper slithered out of the gloom from the tunnel ahead, its modest size facilitating its stealth. It hesitated several paces away, as surprised to smell her as she was to see it.
Karla let the earring drop and dove against the tunnel wall, digging and swimming in between strands that, sensing her desperation, tightened. The Reaper belched and launched itself forward. Feelers tickled her bare feet. A tentacle slapped against her calf.
Her frustration surged into fury and the wall invaginated. She fell into the pocket and ripped through the side, scrambling through tangles of strands, working her away up in a direction she hoped would lead to yet another tunnel.
The Reaper took advantage of the tear she had made in the wall and inserted its muzzle, elongating its foreparts into a snout that slithered after her, again taking advantage of the path she was blazing.
Karla sensed the next wall in the dimness just before she butted into it. It curved like the outside of a culvert, surrounding the next passage. As she hacked her way through with the flatted blade of her hand, the Reaper’s mouthparts caught up with her. Horny teeth like hatchet blades clamped around her knees.
“Let me go, you mangy thing!”
She dug her nails into its flesh. Her fingers twitched and trembled. Anger, converted to raw energy, flowed from her fingertips and into the Reaper’s hide. Its surface sizzled as if scalded by acid. It squealed. Its jaws went flabby and released her knee.
Karla pulled herself the rest of the way through the wall into the adjacent tunnel and rolled to her feet. She ran until she could run no more.
***
The next tunnel system was a confusing mess. Its passages were twisted and tangled, with loops that circled back on themselves, dead ends that forced her to retrace her steps and collapsed ceilings that forced her to lie on her back to wriggle past the obstructions like a spelunker.
There were Reapers about, but she managed to locate a branching that led consistently upward and away from the core. The sweet breezes and the severe narrowing confirmed that she was approaching the surface.
Her knee still ached from the crushing pressure of the Reaper’s jaws, but she refused to limp, gritting her teeth with each step.