“Fair enough,” Blake said.
“You’re still an odd man,” Johnny said, grinning.
21
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Blake said, passing out what looked like charms to them, on a necklace.
“What are these?” Jeremy asked.
“They’re LED lights, similar to the ones used in alarm clocks.
They’ll help us see what’s up ahead. Just flick the little switch at the
right and the light will come on.”
They entered one by one, crawling on hands and knees. Blake was in the lead. “Make sure you put the grate back in place, and cover it up if you can!” he shouted back to Myron, his voice booming and echoing inside the tube.
“Okay,” Myron said, and did so, making sure to leave it loose enough should they need a quick escape.
“Shouldn’t we be talking quietly?” Johnny whispered.
“We don’t need to quite yet,” Blake said. “They’re much farther down; and they sleep like the dead.” They weren’t sure if this was a joke or not. “Perhaps we should start now so we become accustomed.”
“I can barely squeeze this crossbow through here,” Staci said quietly.
“Yes, well, it was the most compact I could find,” Blake told her.
“Are we going to die?” Staci asked.
“What?” Myron squeaked. “Why would you even say that?”
“No, of course not,” Blake brushed them off. His tone wasn’t exactly reassuring.
The tunnel was dirty and wet, but none of them complained, at least not until five fat rats scurried past them. They screamed. Staci squealed. Tony let out a loud, “AH!” Johnny said, “Fuck!” Blake said, “Nasty little buggers,” smiling in the dark at their alarm. The culvert, made of mostly plastic with steel rings for reinforcement, went on for about a quarter mile, and then opened up an extra foot at its termination, into a tunnel made of stone. Crawling on hands and knees hurt much more here. They were glad they’d all worn jeans, though they wished Blake had thought of kneepads.
“Welcome to the turn your knees to hamburger part of our tour,” Johnny said. “This is the first step in tenderizing the human in preparation for the vampire feast at the tour’s conclusion.”
“Shut up Johnny,” Tony said.
Myron giggled nervously.
“Yes, do shut up,” Blake said. “Let’s not make this anymore difficult.”
“When will we be able to stand up?” Jeremy asked.
“Not for some time now,” Blake responded. “A few miles up ahead.”
That caused them all to groan.
“What are we going to tell our parents if we’re not back in time?” Jeremy said.
“It’s not too late to turn back you know?” Blake said.
“Forget it,” Tony said, “We’ve got this far.”
“Yeah, well,” Jeremy said, “You haven’t dealt with my parents.” He sighed. “Let’s go.”
22
“Careful,” Blake said, “The tunnel dips down over here.” It did not only dip down, but became a diagonal slope where the rock face turned into dirt. There was some slipping and sliding, but the dirt was hard packed much of the way through. The occasional cascade of dirt over their heads from the others above them was a minor inconvenience to the welcome relief on their knees. The slope was steep for a while, and then it evened out enough to where they were no longer perching for a handhold.
“Did you bring a flashlight last time?” Johnny asked.
“Yes,” Blake said.
“You didn’t happen to bring one this time, did you?”
“No, no I didn’t.”
The LED lights around their necks only illuminated approximately two feet ahead of them.
“Wonderful,” Johnny said, “Hopefully nothing sneaks up on us.”
“It is a shame the tunnel does not go straight all the way,” Myron said.
“It would go clear across town if it did,” Blake replied.
“How far did you make it last time?” Jeremy asked.
“Oh, to the first series of iron rungs,” Blake said.
“How far is that?”
“Couple of miles.”
“Is there anything not in miles? Is there anything in feet?” Johnny asked.
“No, dear boy. I’m afraid not. It’s a long way down.”
“But you didn’t make it all the way,” Staci said. “You mean you actually turned back, after what…?”
“At least three miles,” Blake shrugged, though no one could see him. “I lost my nerve.”
“What made you go back?” Tony said.
“I heard voices, talking, down below. I’m not sure why they were up. It was still daylight out, but I was alone, in a pit with God knew how many vamps. And if I could hear them…”
“They could hear you,” Staci said.
“What would you have done?” Blake said, suddenly feeling as if he needed to defend himself.
“Not gone down in the first place,” Johnny said.
“No one forced your hand,” Blake said.
“Or my knees,” Johnny said. “Yeah, I got it pops, we came along willingly.”
“What if we do make it all the way down,” Myron said. “What if they are all asleep and we kill some; maybe even get Betty away from them. How do we get back out?”
“Same way we came in,” Blake said.
“Shit,” both Tony and Johnny exclaimed.
“Okay, it straightens out here up ahead for a little while,” Blake said. The tunnel straightened for perhaps a hundred feet or so, and then canted downward again, although it was not so severe an incline as before. It was clear their progress was going steadily downward.
“Lord, kill me now,” Johnny said.
23
“It’s getting cold,” Staci said, shivering.
“Yes, we are quite far from the sun’s rays,” Blake responded. “Ah, here we are. Watch your step, it’s the first ladder. The passage opens up ahead and you have to step down onto the first rung. There’s no warning, so watch for the opening.” His boot clanged on the steel rung. He had to consciously make his step lighter, while they unconsciously listened for voices. This was where Blake had first heard them. There were no sounds this time. As they descended further, however, there appeared to be something else.
“Is that…?” Jeremy began.
“Light,” Blake said. “It certainly appears to be.” Although they were still speaking in a whisper, Blake said, “Enough talk. We need to be perfectly quiet now.”
As they descended further down and closer to the source of the light they noticed the quality of it kept changing. It was pulsating or flickering, which suggested either candlelight or some sort of lantern. Blake hadn’t made it this far last time.
“I think I see ground,” Tony whispered.
Blake put his finger to his mouth and irritably shushed him. Tony nodded, holding his hands up in surrender.
Indeed, they could all see ground ahead, or down below, as the case might be. A stone floor, lighted a warm orange-red. Blake dropped from the final rung, about ten feet from the ground, failing to make his landing as quietly as he would have liked. The rest followed suit.
They were in a large cavern, and the light they’d seen was coming from strategically placed torches along the rock face, every hundred to hundred and fifty feet, on either side of them.
“Wow,” Myron said, so low it was barely audible. The place was immense. And they were here, at the bottom of the pit, perhaps the first time a human being had set foot here willingly, and not been brought here as food, or fallen to their deaths. To their right the cavern went on, to their left a wall of stone. They followed the opening until the cavern narrowed and became a small walled in room. There were three openings in the rock face leading to other passageways.
“Beyond door number one is a tiger, one door is freedom,” Johnny began, “and the third…”
“Shush!” Blake said, “You imbecile!”
> “All right, calm down pops.”
“Which one?” Staci whispered.
Blake shrugged, gestured toward the middle. They followed, entering the dark passage. Their lights revealed more red hued rock to either side of them, and nothing lay beyond but darkness. No other sound but the soft crunch of their feet on the occasional pebble, and the shift of rock under their hands as they steadied themselves against the walls.
Jeremy watched Staci who walked ahead of him uncertainly. She must have sensed that he was looking at her as she turned and looked into his face.
“What is it?” she said very quietly.
“I was thinking…” Jeremy paused.
“Yeahhh?” She twirled her hand for him to continue.
“If we, um…” Jeremy cleared his throat. “If we make it out of this, would you like to go out again?”
Staci tittered. “Are you serious? This is the time you pick to ask me out?”
Jeremy shrugged, “Yeah?”
“Let’s make it out alive. If we do, ask me again.”
“’Kay,” Jeremy said, smiling.
She turned back, and kept walking, pretending to be annoyed; in actuality she was smiling too.
24
The passage eventually led them to several cavernous rooms,
all lit by torch, all empty, until they entered the fifth.
“Do you hear that?” Myron whispered.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Sounds like talking.”
“Vampires?” Tony looked at Blake.
“Most likely,” Blake said. “Be ready.”
“Are we going through with this?” Jeremy said. “We don’t know how many of them there are.”
“Aren’t they supposed to be asleep?” Johnny asked.
“Maybe they’re having a late morning snack,” Tony said.
“Good one,” Johnny said, “Not making me feel any better.”
“Shut it you two,” Blake said. “We’re going through. Get your weapons ready.”
25
What they found in the next room was not so much talking, but whispering, as they had been doing. The whispering stopped the moment they entered the room. The small cave was dimly lit on the left wall by two torches spaced far apart. Barely visible on the right was a series of steel bars running end to end, protruding from floor to ceiling into the rock; a cell. Inside it there arose a vague sound, like the shuffling of bodies.
“Who’s in there?” Blake demanded.
A teenage boy’s face pressed up between two bars, and directly after him, a girl of perhaps nine or ten years of age. They looked out curiously.
“We thought you were them,” the teen said.
“Them?” Blake said.
“The vampires.”
“You’re human,” Blake said
“Oh God,” Staci said, understanding.
“They are keeping you here as food,” Myron said.
“Yes, we’re human,” the boy said. “They must be planning to
kill us, because they haven’t turned any of us into… them.”
“How many of you are there?” Blake asked.
Some of the others came to the front of the gate, revealing themselves: a woman in her 30s, a man in his 40s, a teenage girl, no one over the age of fifty.
“Twelve or so, I think,” the boy said. He had close cropped black spiky hair and a lean muscular physique. He looked like the kind of kid that would be on the high school wrestling team.
“What’s your name son?” Blake said.
“Paul, Paul Schroeder.”
“Is there a key somewhere near Paul?”
He shook his head. “They keep it with them. The only time I’ve seen them use it is when they locked me in here. I tried to fight them, but they were too strong.”
“It’s okay son. How long have you been here?”
“Me? A week. Some of these people have been here for months. According to a few of them they pull someone out each week. Guess it’s about that time soon.”
“Monsters,” Blake said, with unconcealed disgust.
“What are we going to do?” Jeremy asked.
“For now, nothing. We have to move on. See if we can find any of these vampires. Kill as many as we can, and see if we come up with any keys.”
“Don’t leave us here mister,” the 30ish woman said.
“We’ll be back this way. We’ll come back for you.”
“If you make it back,” the woman said.
Blake said nothing. The woman hung her head, resigned. Blake looked at the others. “All right, let’s move on.”
“We’re really going to leave them here?” Staci said.
“There’s nothing more we can do.”
Staci shook her head. “It just seems… wrong.”
“It is,” Blake said sadly, “But it’s the only choice we have.”
They heard the sound of quiet prayer coming from a few of the prisoners as they left.
26
“I’m exhausted,” Jeremy said.
“The journey is long,” Blake said cryptically.
“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “I don’t think I have much fight in me. Can we stop to rest?”
“Yes, I do see the merits of rest,” Blake said. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes; any less will be insufficient, any more we’ll lose our nerve.” They sat against the wall.
“I think I have lost all my nerve already,” Myron said.
“Fear not,” Blake said. “When it comes down to do or die, you forget your fear altogether.”
“That’s comforting,” Staci said.
“It was meant to be,” Fulton Blake responded, failing to catch the sarcasm.
27
Coming to a stone room, which did not match the stone face of the rest of the caverns, they stopped. The floors were smoothed into an ornate green and white marble pattern that appeared to be true marble. The walls were black polished stone (possibly onyx) with recessed sconces in which flickered large blood red pillar candles. At the center of the room stood a throne made out of the cavern’s own rock, a rusty red like dried blood, chiseled down in areas, specifically the three steps leading up to the seat itself.
“Marcus,” Blake said.
“Who?” Johnny asked.
“Marcus Brindisi. I’ve heard the other vampires talk of him. He’s there master. This must be where he holds court.”
“The master,” Jeremy said, “As in creator of all the vampires in the pit?”
“Precisely,” Blake said, “Or at least originator. He created the
first ones here, and they created more. He still has subjects brought
to him for turning, but sometimes has his underlings do it. Doesn’t
exactly trust their judgment so often has them bring him victims for approval. ”
“Is it like in the movies?” Myron said. “If we kill the master, will all the other ones under him revert back to human?”
“I certainly hope so,” Blake said. “I don’t believe that’s the case, and I don’t believe killing him will be that easy.”
“But Betty wasn’t turned by him,” Staci said.
“Or any of the other vampires in the pit,” Tony added.
“No,” Blake said, “I don’t believe so. And the way I understand things, once they’ve fed off a human, they can no longer revert back to their former selves.” They left this room to enter an antechamber with six doorways cut into the wall. They looked at each other, silently agreeing, and entered the first room.
It was nothing more than that, not much more than a storage space, roughly twenty feet square on all sides with only one distinguishing feature, a black chrome coffin smack in the center.
“Search the other rooms,” Blake said softly, “See if there are other coffins as well.” All the rooms were the same size, all of them contained coffins.
“Okay,” Blake said. “There’s six of us, six rooms, six coffins. I want each of you to take a room. Now this is very important: All of y
ou keep a stake at the ready, in one hand, crucifix in the other. We’re all going to open each coffin simultaneously, so that no vampire alerts the other, and bring the stake down swiftly, into the heart. If you miss, or it doesn’t go deep enough, they’ll be pissed, and ready for blood. Hold them back with the cross. Bring the stake down again. My guess is these are newly formed vampires, just learning. I’m sure Marcus keeps them close. They shouldn’t be too difficult to kill if you’re prepared.”
“Where is Marcus?” Jeremy asked.
“He’s probably got his own separate sleeping quarters, hidden away where they can’t get at him. He’s on his throne at night, what would be their day.”
“What if one of them is Betty?” Tony said.
“Cross only then,” Blake said, “Stake at the ready. Do nothing until my word.”
Staci sighed. None of them liked this, but there was officially no turning back now.
“All right,” Blake said. “Are we ready?”
“No,” Myron pouted.
“Good, let’s go.”
28
None of the coffins held Betty, or any other child. They were all young adults in their twenties and thirties.
“Oh God,” Staci said, stake held high. The coffin she looked down on held a tall lanky man, no more than twenty-two. Myron’s was a young woman, in her late twenties. “No, no,” he said. Johnny’s was another male, about thirty-five. Jeremy’s was a male about twenty-nine or thirty. Tony’s was another woman in her early twenties. Blake’s was a man in his mid-twenties. He had no problem killing this one. He’d killed many like him before.
“GO!!” Blake cried.
They brought their stakes down. Blake’s went down hard and fast, catching the vampire in the heart and killing him before he barely had a chance to wake and voice an objection; a simple opening of the eyes and the mouth, and a split second realization that this was indeed his demise. Blood spattered Blake’s face and coat, not for the first time, or the last.
29
The others didn’t fair so lucky. Myron’s female vampire woke up screaming. The stake was in her chest, and Myron was fairly sure he’d struck her heart, but maybe not. It was between her breasts, possibly not far enough to one side or the other. Of course, now, for the life of him he couldn’t remember which side the heart was closest to. She sat up partway, attempting to claw at him, when he remembered to raise his cross. It burned as it met her forehead, sizzling and smoking, leaving behind a deep black cross indent, and the smell of burning meat. She hissed, backing off, her hands holding the sides of the coffin for support. Her eyes were bloodshot and teary. Myron yanked the stake out in a rushed panic, blood streaming behind the hole it made on exit; plunged it down again, further to her left, slightly above her breast. She glared at him with contempt as it sunk in, this time blood striking him, and she gasped once before she died.
The Pit in the Woods: A Mercy Falls Mythos Page 32