“Ghosts are supposed to haunt the places where bad things happened to them when they were alive…” he said.
“Don’t forget. They might be spirits, but they used to be just animals. The good news is that when the residents are in their animal modes, they behave like animals, and they’ll avoid something they’re afraid of instead of confronting it, if they have the option.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Well, they’re just like animals, and they tend to follow the pack. I’m not sure how long being scared of these tunnels will keep them from coming after us if the pack leader can get just one or two of them to cross the line.”
“Great,” he said. “So, what do we do?”
She took in his bloody, naked form.
“We keep moving.”
The pain in Trent’s body was starting to rush in as his endorphins drained away, leaving him cramped and sore. Even the slightest movement of his left arm caused excruciating pain that made it difficult for him to breath. And the memories of what he had done tonight were rematerializing again as well.
“How many hours of night do we have left? Almost two and a half? I’m not sure I can keep going for that long with my arm like this.”
Christina motioned for him to help her up. As he did so with his right hand, she came in close to his naked form and cupped him with her surprisingly warm palm. It was the safest he had felt in the last couple of hours.
“I can rig up a sling for your arm real quick, and then we’ll get moving. I’m pretty fucking tired too, ya know? Especially considering as how someone left me hanging out a twelfth-story window naked as a Jay Bird a little bit ago.”
She emphasized her sentiment by squeezing him a little harder than was comfortable.
“But hey, we can talk about that later, right?” she said. “I just don’t wanna be here when they finally get their nerve up and barrel through what’s left of that wall.”
Chapter 11
DESPITE THE PAIN Trent was in, he couldn’t help but admire the natural curves of Christina’s breasts that were barely contained by her bra as she removed her fleece jacket and slipped out of her flannel shirt.
Christina ripped her shirt lengthways, turning it into a long piece of soft, red-checkered cloth. A minute later, she tied a crude sling around Trent’s neck and secured his left arm tightly against his chest.
Satisfied with her work, she took his right hand and walked him into the darkness. Once they were in complete blackness, they stopped, and his eyes tried desperately to adjust to the absence of light. After almost a full minute, his vision adapted to his surroundings as much as it was going to, allowing him to see just the faintest of basic shapes in front of him.
As Trent started to move forward one short step at a time into the darkness, Christina surged ahead, pulling him along as easily as if she were walking in the brightness of day. He tried to keep his footing as she increased their pace. Meanwhile, he thought about what Christina had said about the head of the pack. He knew she wouldn’t want to hear about Alice being the one who was leading the hunt for them, but he had to tell her.
“I’m pretty sure Alice is the one who let everyone out of their cages and started this whole thing tonight,” he said as he tried to keep up with her without tripping. “I think she took just enough of your Xanax tonight to act like an animal but to still think like a human being.”
Through the darkness, he heard Christina’s sharp reply.
“Alice may be a lot of things—including extremely jealous. But she would never hunt you down and try to kill both of us just because you and I were together for one night. That’s just not her.”
“Not in her normal state maybe, but people in Whittier seem to be anything but normal tonight,” he said, bumping his arm into the side of the tunnel wall, sending waves of nausea coursing through his body. “I saw her upstairs, Christina. She was definitely the one in charge.”
“When we change, we become more like who we really are beneath all of this…this humanity. Maybe she was just being her normal alpha self, but I’m sure hunting you down wasn’t her idea. Sounds more like something the Elder would do,” Christina said as she suddenly came to a stop.
Even though Trent couldn’t see it, he could feel a cross breeze as if they had arrived at a crossroads in the tunnel. He could hear Christina sniffing the air.
“I can smell him,” she said. “The Elder’s been down here. I think he’s angry with me for bringing you into all of this.”
“You think this Elder guy sent a bunch of maniacs to hunt us down because I saw what was going on back there at The Towers?”
“He doesn’t want anyone knowing about us,” Christina said. “He takes care of all of us and protects the tourists at the Inn. I hadn’t moved here yet, but before he started organizing the residents of Whittier, at least one of us and sometimes a random tourist would die every couple of months.”
“Jesus. And no one did anything about this? Why don’t you just leave, Christina?” he said.
“Who’s going to do anything about it? The cops? Everyone here has the same problem. We stick together and deal with this as a group the best we can. I know this seems like a far away, insignificant place to you, but it’s all any of us have. And I can’t leave anyway. None of us can. We can’t let this spread outside of Whittier.”
“There’s nothing to spread! This is all in your heads. And I bet that Elder guy is the one who put it there. No matter what you think, you don’t actually turn into animals. I’m sure you have to deal with some serious cabin fever living here all year around. I know it’d drive me fucking crazy. But you do not turn into animals!”
Silence.
“I’m not crazy,” she finally said, pulling him along again even faster. “Can you see this well in the dark?”
Trent knew he had just been harsh with her, but there it was. If he was honest with himself, he had already concluded that Christina and the rest of the town were just plain bat shit crazy. But Christina was a little less bat shit crazy than the rest of them at least, and he knew he could save her if she would just let him.
Through the snaking tunnels they sped. Trent didn’t even try to keep his sense of direction. Other than their footsteps, everything was dead silent in the tunnels, so he would have been able to hear if any of the townspeople were following them. The further they moved from The Towers, the safer he felt.
After about twenty or so minutes, he spotted a very faint patch of light ahead. As they approached it, he smelled a familiar chemical scent. He was still trying to place it when they came to an opening in a brick wall that he recognized.
They were at the tunnel entrance in the old barracks, where he had stood only seventeen and a half hours or so before.
Christina put her ear close to the opening in the wall and listened. Satisfied that it was safe to exit, she motioned for him to follow her as she climbed out of the tunnel. He clumsily made his way through the opening, trying to push back the pain that shot through his broken arm every time it grazed a piece of the wall.
Finally, they both stood in the barracks. It was dark in the basement, but not as pitch black as it had been in the tunnels. Enough light from the full moon outside somehow seeped through from the floor above to let Trent maneuver carefully as he followed behind Christina.
Being able to see himself once again made him acutely aware that he was still naked, but the fact that he was in familiar territory sparked in him the slightest shard of optimism for their situation. He knew from his previous exploration of the barracks that other than the standing water and the infections he was probably going to catch from wading around barefoot, there were no obstacles between where they stood and the freedom of the outdoors. Funny, he thought, how he would feel safer outside naked at night in Alaska than locked inside the town’s only apartment building from which they had just escaped.
As they started to make their way down the long hallway that he knew led to the theater and then to the
stairwell up to the ground floor, he heard a fierce roar.
Unlike the unnatural noises he had been hearing all night from the residents of Whittier, there was no mistaking the sound from a real wild animal—in this case, some type of bear. He couldn’t tell whether the bear was above them on the first floor or if it was outside the building. Either way, it was too close for his liking. Whether the animal was searching for scraps to eat or looking for shelter from the cold, its presence effectively cut off their primary means of escape.
All night he had been running from people who believed that they turned into bears, and now he was trapped by a real one.
As he stood in the cold, ankle-deep water, he started to shiver and was unable to stop his logical mind from thinking about hypothermia. Christina didn’t seem that uncomfortable at all, but she suggested that, given the bear waiting outside, they find somewhere without standing water or at least a dry place where they could sit and maybe hole up in the barracks for the couple of hours until sunrise. If they heard the residents charging toward them through the tunnel, they could run upstairs and take their chances.
Once the sun came up, the bear would probably leave as people started waking up and walking about. Of course, even though the residents of Whittier would supposedly be feeling human once again by then as well, they would have to contend with the dead and the wounded bodies that Trent had left behind in The Towers. Whittier might be isolated, but the town still had cops, and Trent had no illusions about them treating him with the same kindness that they extended to the townspeople.
He tried to push his anxiety-ridden speculations from his mind and to calm himself as Christina and he sloshed their way down the hall until they entered the same darkened theater he had visited earlier that day. Despite its dreary atmosphere, the theater was somehow comforting in its familiarity.
Next to Trent was the stage, a simple raised wooden platform that had been long ago stripped of any fancy adornment. He and Christina raised themselves up onto the stage and sat next to each other in silence. He was shivering and cold, but he was thankful there was no standing water on the stage floor. The clothed Christina moved in closer to him and tried to provide him with some warmth.
“I think I could survive here for a couple more hours, or at least until our friendly neighborhood bear decides to move along,” he said. “Since we have a little time, do you mind telling me how all this got started? I think it goes without saying, but I’ve never even heard or read about anything like this before. Why don’t you start with the Elder?”
“He’s not the reason we change every month into…animals. But he knows about the spirits, and he’s the one who explained to the people of Whittier what was happening to them each month. I think his father was a shaman and he was one too, for the native Dena’ina people. He’s the one we all listen to—the one who taught us how to live with our curse every month—how to keep each other, the tourists, and the rest of the world safe from us and from the animal spirits that haunt this town. You’ve seen what our people turn into. You’ve seen what I can become, for Christ’s sake. What happens to us every month is not just a bunch of crazy people getting together and thinking they turn into animals.”
“I’m not saying that you’re crazy,” he said. “I’m sure it gets pretty bad living here during the winters, and that without this Elder guy, people probably get in fights, and maybe every once in a while, even kill each other. This Elder sounds like he literally gives everyone permission to act like animals and to let out steam, but in a confined and usually controlled environment once a month. People get to hoop and holler and believe they really change into bears and wolves, and they get it all out of their system for another thirty days or so. And no one dies or gets hurt…usually. I think what’s going on here is closer to institutionalized primal scream group therapy than it is to animal possessions. The only thing I still don’t get is why this Elder guy goes to such extremes.”
“Nice theory,” she said, “but I’m telling you, I do change every month. And when I turn, there is no way that I’m just falling prey to some kind of mass hypnosis or just getting some stress off my shoulders. What happens to us is real. How much more do you have to see with your eyes to believe?”
“I see plenty with my eyes all the time, Christina. I make other people see things with their eyes that they swear can’t be real. But that’s what they see. And I know. I can’t tell them, but I know. I know it’s all fake. A sham. Just like this has to be. I’m sorry.”
He lay back on the dirty wooden floor and covered his eyes with his forearm. It was just barely light enough for him to see in the theater, but his eyes were killing him and a minor headache was beginning to emerge again.
“I’m just going to go over here and pee, if that’s okay with you,” she said. “I don’t mean to act like an animal or anything…”
He barely heard her as he started to fade into sleep.
Just as he was close to unconsciousness, he heard a familiar voice.
He jolted upright and looked around. In the front row, the old man he had taken to be the town drunk earlier in the day stood naked with his arm hooked around Christina’s neck. What Trent had taken to be frailty back at the cafe had instead been lean muscle hidden beneath bulky clothing. As the old man so easily held Christina in his grip, Trent had no doubt in his mind that this was the man known simply as the Elder.
“I told you before to get outta here,” the old man yelled. “Now you’ve messed things up for us. Things I gotta take care of. We always take care of our own here, ever since I was a little boy. Don’t know what to do with little Christina here cause she’s one of us. But you, the decision ain’t too hard. You gotta die. Now, get thereof that stage, and get over here. I got you a date with a real animal upstairs.”
Chapter 12
“YOU MOVE the wrong way, and I snap her neck. Then I snap yours. You go upstairs, and I let her live. Your choice, boy.”
Trent knew how strong Christina was from personal experience, but she looked powerless compared to the old man holding her with little apparent effort. He wondered how the Elder could be so powerful. If the old man had been a kid before the land was cleared for the military base, he had to be at least in his eighties.
Trent wanted nothing more than to walk over to the old man and to beat him senseless. However, the look of fear on Christina’s face, the fact that the man was abnormally strong, and the pain from Trent’s broken arm convinced him that a less direct approach might be more successful.
Trent shuffled down the two or three stairs that led down to the theater floor and continued on through the water until he was standing only a few feet from the Elder and the captive Christina. Now that he was close enough, Trent recognized the smell he had first noticed when they had exited the underground tunnel a few minutes ago. It was the same chemical smell he remembered from the old man’s pipe earlier that day. He didn’t know what the man was smoking, but he was certain that it wasn’t just tobacco. Trent paused long enough to look into the Elder’s eyes. He couldn’t quite tell, but he imagined that with just a little more light, he might be able to see the glassy stare of addiction.
Before Trent could say anything, the old man waved him along.
Trent sloshed away, making his way to the stairwell, counting each step as he went. Twenty-four steps from where the old man and Christina stood to the stairwell. As he stopped in front of the heavy stairwell doors, he could more clearly hear growling and pawing coming from above. He had no idea what a grizzly sounded like versus any other kind of bear, but if he were a betting man, he would have wagered that was the animal waiting for him above. His chances against such a formidable wild creature would be close to nothing.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned around. The old man had followed him, dragging Christina along for approximately fourteen of the old man’s steps—equal to about ten of Trent’s own. The Elder and Christina were only fourteen steps away from him now.
; “Want to tell me what all this is really about,” Trent said, hoping to delay going up the stairs for as long as possible.
“I’m sure this young lady’s already told you this,” the old man said. “But my people, the people, we used to live here with the animals. We killed them when we needed their flesh for food or their skins to stay warm. Sometimes, they’d kill one of us. But we always respected each other. When you and your kind came here, you killed them all. The bears, the wolves, the moose.
The bears though…they were very old. Lived many times before this one. Their spirits got trapped in this place. Now they can’t move on without revenge. My father kept the peace between the ghost world and the waking world. And that’s what I do now.”
Trent laughed.
“You call locking an entire town full of naked people in cages, keeping the peace?”
“It worked until you showed up,” the old man said. “Every month, the spirits possess these people. Trying to get their revenge. But I lock ‘em up. I take care of them, so no one gets hurt. Now get upstairs!”
“Bullshit,” Trent said. “If what you say is true, then why don’t the spirits possess the guests staying in the hotels, or the tourists on the cruise ships?”
“Those buildings are new,” said the old man, still holding on tight to Christina. “They’re not haunted like The Towers and these barracks where the soldiers used to live. Now get upstairs and say hi to that spirit waiting for you, or she’s gonna suffer right now.”
Trent was getting nowhere. He still didn’t believe anything the old man had said, but one thing he had learned in his profession was that sometimes you just had to change tactics and play along with situations to see what happened. Sometimes it was enough that everyone except you believed.
He turned the doorknob and opened the door just six inches.
“Before I go, just tell me why the animals don’t possess you,” he said, trying to fish for any weakness he could find in the old man. “Why are you the only one who never gets locked up in a cage when there’s a full moon?”
The Whittier Trilogy Page 10