by John Everson
When he reached the turnoff for Highway 31 he made a left without even thinking. The lights of Main Street disappeared almost immediately as the trees grew thick and still around him. The shelter of the forest was the quiet embrace of night’s tomb. He was heading toward the cliff.
Where else would they go?
PART III
Captured
CHAPTER ONE
Ken Brownsell was a cautious caver.
Normally.
He’d been fascinated with the underground since he was a kid. If he’d bothered to trace his obsession with tunnels carefully, he would have admitted that it all began with volcanoes. When he was five years old, WBNX-TV used to play old episodes of the Japanese live-action kids show The Space Giants in the afternoons. Goldar and his family, the original Transformers, lived in a volcano, and turned into rocket ships when the need arose to fight evil. When the call came, they became metallic, majestic superheroes and shot out of the depths of that volcano, human jets of power and might. Ken hadn’t cared as much about what they did aboveground. When he had watched The Space Giants, he had wanted to escape down into the caverns with them. Live near the glowing fires of liquid rock. Magma. He’d been so proud to learn that word as a kid. Rock turned to boiling magma deep in the earth, where diamonds were forged and strange-colored creatures without eyes crawled. There was mystery there, and Ken wanted to be the one to solve it.
Now Ken rarely thought of Goldar, or even of venturing into the depths of an active volcano. But he still got a rush of excitement every time he pushed through a tiny, grimy opening in the earth to discover another hidden chamber on the other side. The dreams of lava and diamonds had turned to ones of mud and basalt. But the childlike thrill was the same.
Ken had joined the Spelunkers of America Club in high school, and during college had taken trips to Kentucky and California and Arizona to burrow underground with others who shared his interest. But his main object of exploration had always been closest to home. The cliffs of Terrel offered hundreds of entryways into the earth. The carvings of salt and spume from a millennium ago. Most proved to be dead ends in short order. But Ken had spent months of weekly expeditions charting some caverns before they petered out into blank, rocky walls.
He’d almost always used the buddy system. You never knew when an apparently solid floor would give way under your weight and cast you into a pit. Dying alone underground wasn’t one of his preferred caving fantasies. He did, however, often fantasize about the “big find.” Emerging from a slick narrow shaft into a cavern of Mammoth Cave proportions. Of blundering into a hall of natural splendor as beautiful and breathtaking as leading an expedition into the heart of a cathedral-size geode.
And when the masses streamed in to pay their ten dollars in order to walk the path he had forged, it would bear his name.
COME TO TERREL’S PEAK AND SEE THE WONDER OF BROWNSELL CAVERN, the billboards along Highway 31 would read.
The thought always made him glow.
Today he was hoping to make that dream come true.
The entry point he’d been mapping with the help of the Cliff Combers these past weeks was perfectly positioned for tourists. Relatively easy access. And so far the interior hadn’t been rough going. Oh, there were points that would have to be blasted wider if a public walking tour was ever to be inaugurated, but that was easily doable. But the best part was, it was still active. They had found the access path of the river. The cave was alive. Water was still carving its bowels clean. Somewhere, in a sheltered burrow, Brownsell Cavern might exist. Just before that freak show had taken a dive into the river on the last Comber outing, Ken had seen a likely entryway into a side room. He’d heard the call of the cave too. And it kept him awake at night with visions of stalagmites and stalactites.
Ken was in love with the earth, and it was doing a striptease for him that he couldn’t ignore.
Come on in, the water’s fine, it said. Want to see my ’tites?
He almost called Jeff Avery to partner him, but then the cave showed him another vision:
COME TO TERREL’S PEAK AND SEE THE WONDER OF AVERY-BROWNSELL CAVERN, the billboard said.
“Uh-uh,” he murmured to himself. Ken packed the VW bug for a party of one.
He was sharing this discovery with no one.
The day was bright with hope as Ken unloaded the trunk in front of the cave mouth. The sun beat hot on his shoulders, and sweat ran rivers down his armpits before he was ready to go below. He was dressed for the damp, fifty-degree chill of the underground, not the sunbathing eighties of the beach-front. Shrugging the pack onto his shoulders and strapping on his Nevada miner’s helmet (one of his souvenirs from spelunking in the Rockies), he strode confidently toward the dark, weed-covered mouth in the hillside. He could smell the earthy breath of the underground as soon as he ducked his head to step inside its shade. The fetid aroma of mold and worms was sweet musk to him. With a smile, he flicked on his lamp, and began the now-familiar path toward the heart of Terrel’s Peak.
Through the narrow passage that he’d had to coax the freak show through—Joe, his name had been.
“Won’t be seeing him again anytime soon,” Ken laughed out loud.
“Don’t be too sure,” a voice in his head answered.
Ken stopped suddenly. Had he just thought that? Or had somebody spoken to him? He shone his light around to the gray lime walls. Shook his head. The underground did strange things to you sometimes. Especially when you went in alone.
“A stupid thing to be doing,” he mumbled to himself, but instead of turning back and calling for a partner, he pulled a strong, thin nylon rope from his belt dispenser and attached its anchor clip to a pinion the Combers had hammered into the rock face nearby. He was entering the last stretch of familiar territory, and it was time to assure some guidance for his return. Ahead he could hear the soft murmur of the underground river. He could only hope that the walkway he’d been treading continued to parallel the water, instead of being absorbed in its path.
Now he was next to the point where Joe had tumbled down, and knew the water was only yards away. The sweat had dried to his flesh, and Ken shivered slightly as he peered over the embankment. The cone of light from his helmet disappeared into the inky blackness below without revealing a thing. The crack in the rock face seemed to continue downward forever, a fissure into hell. The narrow tunnel’s far wall remained blank, offering no clues as to the geography below or ahead. Ken stepped back from the edge, then began to move forward again into the black mystery of the mountain.
CHAPTER TWO
Something had to be done about the reporter.
Chief Harry Swartzky sucked in an angry breath and closed his teeth on the well-weathered stem of his pipe as he listened to the woman in front of his desk.
“He’s been by to see me and Rhonda,” Karen was complaining. “And he has been out to Angelica’s a couple times that I know of. He won’t let this go,” she complained. Her eyes beseeched him to put a stop to the Terrel Daily Times investigation. And why shouldn’t he? This was a suicide, clear and obvious.
“He made us feel like we were responsible for Jim and Bill’s deaths. It was awful; he was awful. What if he goes to Monica’s? She’ll lose it. You’ve got to do something about him, Dad. Make him stop.”
“I’ll do what I can,” the chief promised his eldest daughter. She’d once been Daddy’s little girl. And then that business with Bernadette had happened. Something had changed in his little girl that day; she hadn’t been the same since. Oh, after the stories died down and time moved on, she’d gotten on with her life, gotten married for a while, had a child. But she never had quite the same open exuberance about life again. She had remained always a little distant. Removed. A wall had gone up between him and his baby that horrible day and he’d never managed to bring it down. It had only gotten taller when the water claimed her only son. But he still tried. And when she needed something, really needed it…he was there.
>
“I can’t promise anything,” he told her, keeping his tone low and gentle. Fatherly. “He’s not doing anything illegal. You know, you don’t have to let him in when he drops by. Just call me—I’ll send Rod or Billy over. And if he won’t leave you alone, we can issue a restraining order on him. But one or two visits isn’t really enough for that.”
The chief fingered the warm bowl of his pipe for a moment. Karen recognized the signs that her father’s wheels were turning and remained silent. Finally, he looked up at her again and nodded.
“I’ll give Randy over at the Times a call to see if he won’t rein in his dog. He owes me a bark or two.”
She smiled then, one of the few rays of happiness Harry had seen on his eldest daughter’s face since Bill had jumped from that cursed cliff four years before. Karen gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and then was gone.
Fragrant fumes of blue-white vanilla-spiced tobacco drifted upward to the ceiling as he considered her complaint some more. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out an old Matchbox car. A yellow ’Vette. Its paint was pocked and the front windshield was missing. As Swartzky nudged it along the top of his desk, it wobbled to the left.
Anyone entering the police chief’s office at that moment would have thought the head of Terrel’s law and order had gone daft. Smoke trickled lazily from his nose to the ceiling and his eyes stared far away, hands resting idly on a broken kid’s toy. The chief was lost in a long-gone world. A world where William (never Billy) Sander was still alive and eight years old. A world where a sandbox waited in Grandpa’s back yard for that charged-up ’Vette. Roads aplenty.
“Grandpa, wanna drive to London?” William would ask, and imitating the sound of a racing engine, he’d disappear with a squeal around the corner of the kitchen, through the living room and out into the yard. He’d need to be hosed down tonight or sand would be everywhere.
Harry picked up the phone to dial the Times. He cursed the paper under his breath. Why couldn’t those damn reporters stick to informing people about the dates of the church socials and the plans for construction of a new civic center? There was enough heartache in the world without grave robbing to find old pain, picking at the gristle clinging to its bones to make it worse.
The night editor of the Times picked up the phone.
“Hello, Randy,” the chief began. “How’s the wife? Yeah? Those peaches were fine. Please give her my thanks again. Listen, Randy, I need to talk to you about one of your reporters….”
CHAPTER THREE
“I need your help, Cindy. Will you help me?”
Cindy raised her hand from between her legs. She’d been lying on the edge of the cliff, swimming in the languorous pleasure of His touches for what seemed like hours. It was funny how good He was to her, and she couldn’t even see Him. But every night He made love to her now, here on the edge of the world. An invisible boyfriend. Not exactly the kind you could take home to meet mom and dad. She had to laugh at the thought of that.
“Mom, I really love Him,” she’d say.
“Has he touched you?” Dad would growl, interrupting their mother-daughter chat from the other room.
“Yes,” she’d answer. “Every night since I’ve been home from school. He takes me passionately right on the cliff.”
The newspaper would hit the floor and heavy steps would pound into the kitchen.
“Where is this asshole?” Dad would bark, his face turning a beefy shade of crimson. “I have a few things I’d like to say to him.”
“Why, He’s right here,” Cindy would answer, and point at the air beside her. “And there,” she’d counter, pointing at Dad’s recently abandoned chair. “Say whatever you want; He’s everywhere.”
Cindy grinned openly at the vision, and pushed the damp hair from her eyes. The stars winked brightly above like glittering shells on a dark beach. The moon was rising like a wounded orange to the southeast. It was a beautiful night.
“What did you have in mind?” she whispered to the empty air. In her mind, He began to explain.
The Hyundai spun rocks into the night air as it slid around a graveled corner and began the ascent to Terrel’s Peak. Joe knew they were up there somewhere. They had to be. Where else would a meeting about Bernadette take place? The trees slipped by in a shadowy blur and soon the sound of surf rushed through his window. Normally he found its rhythmic noise soothing, but not tonight. Now it sounded like the siren song of death. A song of swan dives from sixteen stories high.
The car’s headlights picked out weeds and boulders on the side of the road, and a faded, single yellow line cracked down its middle. The darkness was fading as Joe left the forest behind and climbed to the peak he’d grown to know so well over the past few weeks. He could almost taste the scent of death in the air. It stank of the bloody tang of brine and betrayal. He didn’t feel right about this at all. His inner ear was tremulous, listening for a voice to come out of the darkness and speak inside his soul. Praying the surf would remain the sole sound he heard from the cliff, Joe pulled over to the side and switched off the ignition. Then he stepped out of the car and into the sighing wind and gentle refrain of crickets.
It was a short walk up the rocky rise. The stars and moon gave Joe plenty of light to walk by as he made his way to the only place he could think to go to look for Angelica. But even as he moved toward the edge of the cliff, he knew that it wasn’t right. There had been no van, no other cars alongside the road near here. And there was no place for them to have ditched the vehicle. What purpose could they have for bringing her here anyway? Unless they planned to push her off the edge. And his sense wasn’t that Angelica’s death was the aim of their meeting. No. The summit of Terrel’s Peak wasn’t the right place.
His feet faltered and he considered turning back to the car. This involved the cliff, and the devil inside it. Somehow, somewhere…
“Joe?” a familiar voice called. He started, then peered ahead. A figure stepped around a stony outcrop. A figure in a sun yellow tank top and faded jean shorts.
“Cindy?” he answered, and smiled. It had been days since he’d heard from her, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed her until now. “What are you doing up here?”
Her face grew clearer as she moved close, and he could see that she’d been crying. Wet streaks marred her brown cheeks, and her lips looked heavy and sad.
She didn’t answer, and he hurried his steps, wrapping his arms around her slim form when he finally reached her.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he whispered, pushing her face into his chest as he said it. His heart ached for her.
Cindy looked up at him then, eyes wide with a mixture of pain and relief.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, and he felt his chest flutter.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been working overtime this week. This cliff thing has—” He stopped short, realizing that the reason for her tears was likely part of his “cliff thing.”
“It’s okay,” she said, shaking her head. Then she strained upward and kissed him softly on the lips.
“Just hold me, okay?”
He did, and felt her body cave into his own. Her hair smelled of surf and flowers, and her warmth made him tingle with feeling.
“Why are you up here?” she asked after a moment. “Were you looking for me?”
“No,” he answered. “Actually, I was—” He stopped, realizing how what he was about to say would sound to the girl.
“What?” she persisted, and then took his hand and led him up to the edge. They sat there on the roof of the world, the waves breaking frothy white in the darkness so far below them. The light from the moon lit an eerie trail from the horizon to the inky line of the shore.
“Tell me,” she pressed and he found he couldn’t lie.
“I was at Angelica Napalona’s tonight,” he said. “The fortune-teller?”
Cindy nodded.
“She believes all the local legends about a demon living in this
cliff.”
Cindy looked nonplussed.
“She says that it has some kind of hold over her and the women who have lost their children here, like Mrs. Sander and Mrs. Canady. She said that it can possess people, and that it has taken the children of her friends.”
Again, Cindy nodded. She didn’t seem to find his brief sketch at all preposterous.
“The really weird thing about it is that when Angelica and Mrs. Sander and Mrs. Canady and a couple other girls were kids, they used to swim down here, probably right where you and I were that day. One day when they were out there, a girl named Bernadette drowned. The rest of them were okay, but now, each one of those women who survived has lost a child. Except for Angelica, because she doesn’t have any kids. Anyway, the point is, tonight I was at her house, asking her about some of this stuff, when the other women showed up. She hid me in her bedroom, and went to meet them. While I was waiting, I found a note from someone that said tonight was a meeting about Bernadette, the girl who drowned all those years ago. And then I heard Angelica scream. I didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want the other women to know I was there, so I looked out the window, and saw them all getting into a van. I came out of the bedroom then, and Angelica was gone. They kidnapped her. But why, I have no idea. I came up here, thinking that this might have been where they took her. Crazy, huh?”
Cindy shook her head. Then her face went slack. Joe waited for her to say something, but she seemed a million miles away, her gaze locked on the empty sky over his shoulder. Puzzled, he looked behind him and then leaned forward to pass a hand in front of her eyes.