“Ben?” someone cried down the stairwell. Giving the mangled door one final tug, Ben wheeled and bolted up the steps. He couldn’t save Teddy, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Gabriel get away.
“Ben?” the voice came again.
Jessie.
Ben didn’t answer, instead barreled up the steps.
“Where’s Teddy?” she asked.
“The beast. It got him.”
“What do you—”
Ben hurried past her, moved through the door, which Christina Blackwood held open.
“Where are you going?” Jessie called after him.
“There’s an equipment shed around back. There was a chainsaw here last summer…”
“Chainsaw? Ben, what happened to Teddy?”
“He’s dead,” Ben said in a flat voice. “But Gabriel’s the one who has my baby.”
He dashed around the corner of the castle and found what he was looking for—the aged wooden sliding door set into the rear of the building. Ben spotted the chainsaw right away, stored on a sturdy metal hook on the wall over the workbench. He had no idea if it would run, but—
Ben stopped, his arm outstretched over the workbench.
Behind him, Jessie asked, “What is it?”
“Do you hear that?” he whispered.
He glanced back at her. She only frowned at him and said, “There’s nothing, Ben. Just the storm.”
“Underneath that,” Ben said, moving out of the enclosure. There was still rain, but it was light now, hardly a sprinkle. “Can you hear it?”
But she obviously couldn’t. Hell, Ben could scarcely hear it. But it was there, beneath the soft patter of the rain on the soil.
It was Julia’s voice.
“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” Jessie said. But Ben barely heard her.
You know where Gabriel is. Now go down to the pit and face him.
Julia’s not down there.
What if this is a ruse? What if the voice is meant to throw you off?
Ben knew that was possible, but as he considered it… No, he didn’t believe it was all some cruel and elaborate decoy. Gabriel was cunning, but to so precisely capture the shrill wail of his infant daughter…?
“What’s happening?” someone called.
Ben turned and glimpsed the others coming around the corner of the castle. But there wasn’t time to explain. He bolted for the woods.
Julia’s voice was raw and weak, but Ben pelted through the forest, letting his hearing guide him. He wondered if what Julia had endured would inflict permanent damage on her body, if not her psyche. They said that children couldn’t remember their births, nor could they recall their earliest childhoods. Never in Ben’s life had he more passionately hoped that were true.
Undergrowth lashed his face and striped his arms with angry red weals, yet Ben scarcely noticed. The cry, though faint, persisted. He followed it grimly, exploded through a snarl of wiry branches crisscrossing the path. Behind him he heard Jessie doing her best to keep pace, but Ben was possessed, the voice infinitely more spellbinding than a Siren’s call. He veered left and spied a large clearing. He realized he’d bypassed the graveyard because it reminded him of Claire, and in a strange way he felt guilty for his mental accusations toward her. But it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Believing the beast had somehow visited Claire in her dreams, believing Gabriel had rutted with Claire in the small hours of the night…believing Julia was Gabriel’s child…
Ben wended his way through the rocks and saplings that littered the verge of the forest. Then he was under the open sky, surrounded on all sides by decaying grave markers. He’d spent time with Claire here sitting on a blanket, and later, after the helicopter crash, he’d helped bury his ex-wife and the pilot here. With all its negative associations, was it any wonder he’d avoided the cemetery?
But he was here now, and the sound of Julia’s voice compelled him onward. She wasn’t in this part of the graveyard… No, he thought as his steps once again accelerated, Julia’s cry was coming from the far edge of the cemetery…back in a dreary section to which he and Claire had never ventured.
Jessie’s voice made him jump. “What is it? Did you see something come this way?”
Ben motioned for her to be silent, though her words did strike a blow to his confidence. So he was the only one who could hear Julia’s cry. Did that mean it was all in his head? That Gabriel was simply torturing him or throwing him off Julia’s scent?
No, Ben thought. It couldn’t be. To what end would the beast lead him away from the castle? And if Gabriel didn’t want to face Ben, why kidnap Julia and bring her all the way to the island?
Julia’s voice, reedy and strained to begin with, grew fainter.
Ben moved through the overgrown cemetery, his eyes roving the gravestones for some sign of Julia.
Maybe she’s already dead.
NO! Ben answered the voice. She’s alive, alive, and I’m going to save her…
But why a cemetery, Ben? Why would you be drawn to this place, and why can’t Jessie hear her?
Stop it.
Because she’s already dead, genius! You’re too late, you’ve failed.
He had nearly reached the border of the graveyard, and he’d seen nothing to imbue him with further hope. The rain drizzled down on him in mockery. His shoes were sodden from tramping through the wet grass. Julia’s voice had vanished altogether, the only sound the patter of droplets on the gravestones.
“Julia!” he shouted. “Daddy’s here, honey! Please let Daddy hear your voice!”
Nothing. Only the soft padding of Jessie’s shoes, and far behind them, the murmur of Christina’s and Elena’s voices.
Ben stood in the rain, a hopeless sob forming in his throat. The tears would start soon, he knew, yet he still clung to his guttering belief that she was somewhere near.
Jessie touched his elbow. “Ben, don’t…”
“Julia!” he yelled.
There came no answering cry.
Christina and Elena were arguing about something, but Ben hardly heard them. He searched the graves, the trees, the blackened soil for movement, for a glimpse of something stirring, for some sign of Julia. Yet the only thing—
Julia wailed.
Ben sprinted toward the sound.
He raced through the remainder of the graveyard and was almost to the forest when he spotted a small rectangular marker half buried in the grass, only sixteen inches long and lying on the ground with its inscription facing up.
BEN SHADELAND, it read.
Ben swallowed, closed his eyes. He listened for Julia.
The cry was weak, muffled, but it was coming from the marker. Ben grimaced. How could it be? Was this, after all, some infernal joke? But the cry…he could hear Julia even now, her voice becoming fainter…
Someone had buried her here.
“Oh my God,” Ben muttered and dropped to his knees. He began to claw at the ground, ripping tufts of grass and wet clumps of earth. He tossed them aside, his hands never ceasing.
“Ben…” Jessie began.
“You hear her,” Ben said, his hands assaulting the soil.
“I hear something,” she answered, “but how can it be your…” She left the thought unfinished.
“It’s my baby,” Ben said, redoubling his efforts. “It’s Julia. I know it is.”
Jessie stepped beside him. She said, “Do you know whose grave this is?”
“It’s mine,” he grunted.
“Look, Ben.”
Without stopping, he did.
GABRIEL BLACKWOOD, the stone read.
Ben didn’t answer, didn’t stop digging. He yanked away the dirt, his fingernails cracking and snapping off on the rocks he encountered, but the soil was still sodden enough to make progress rapid. He’d worry about the implic
ations of the gravestone later, because now he had to save Julia. Her cries grew more distinct the more he dug, and though he knew that wasn’t possible, it was true nonetheless. Jessie was saying something but her words didn’t register. Other voices had joined her, Elena and Christina, and he did hear one thing Elena said—that she believed there was something beneath the soil, which Ben could’ve already told her. One of the women gasped—She’d heard Julia too!—but Ben never paused. He kept digging, clawing, scratching at the moist soil, his hands bleeding now in a dozen places, his nails jagged. Ben dug, dug and then—
Then there was nothing. One moment he was tossing a handful of dirt behind him, the next he was plunging forward into the shallow hole he had dug. Just when he was sure he’d discovered some hidden sinkhole by tumbling bodily into it, his fingertips caressed something solid and large and much too smooth to be a rock. Frantically, he tore at the narrow funnel he had carved, and now the gap was wide enough for him to see the wood beneath, its dark polished surface reminding him of a violin’s base. But this—oh Jesus Christ—was no violin. This was…this was…
Ben let out a harsh sob.
This was a coffin.
But not an adult-sized coffin, he realized as he expanded the hole. No, this was smaller. Much smaller. Jessie had seen it and was helping him now, but if he was about to find what he thought he’d find…if the crying voice had merely been an obscene joke from Gabriel, yet another torture devised by the unholy ruler of this island…
All four of them were ranged around the hole now, Elena and Christina watching in dour silence. Working together with Jessie, Ben tore up the last muddy clumps of earth and saw the entire thing, about three feet by two in size, and without pausing Ben grasped the edge of the door and drew it open.
And beheld Julia. His baby girl.
She wore the same light blue pajama he’d put her in two nights ago, not knowing that the next time he’d behold her beautiful face, it would be moveless, the eyes closed, the mouth permanently fixed in that innocent, pursed-lipped expression she sometimes wore when in the thrall of a really peaceful sleep.
She wasn’t breathing, she wasn’t moving, she was—
Julia’s eyes fluttered open.
Sucking in breath, Ben reached for her, but at that moment the coffin slipped down, falling at least a foot. Ben groped for her pajamas but the coffin sank again, and Ben realized with new horror that the rain was loosening the soil around the wood, that the coffin had been placed atop an open tube of earth that went down and down. Ben had crawled into the hole to his waist, but Julia was still beyond his reach, and dammit she was sliding lower, lower, clumps of earth spattering into her coffin, and even as she fell she began to cry for Ben. She recognized him, he knew, and she was reaching for him now, groping for him even as the terrible wooden box slipped lower. The women were pawing at his legs in an attempt to keep him from falling on top of his daughter, but Ben clawed his way downward, nearly perpendicular to her, only his ankles above the rim of the narrow pit.
The pit.
With a jolt of revelation, Ben realized where Julia was heading. He could still see her, the earthen tube swallowing her like a monstrous gullet. She was four feet away from his seeking hands. Five. And it was growing darker. But because the opening was so narrow Ben was able to climb downward and stop him himself from simply crashing down upon her. If he did that he might well kill her himself, and wouldn’t that be the ultimate, ineffable conclusion to this sick nightmare? The copestone of Gabriel’s blasphemous tower of evil? Julia was sinking faster now, the corners of the coffin dipping and jouncing as she descended, but never flipping over, never ejecting her from the satiny white lining of the coffin. Ben could barely see her now, and taking no heed of the danger, he began to let gravity do its work. He plummeted three feet before throwing out his hands and legs to grind his body to a halt. Again he dropped, and as he did he realized the tunnel was curving back in the direction of the castle. Yet the drop was still a nearly vertical one, and Julia’s coffin continued to slip. Ben persisted, clawing down, tumbling, catching himself, and though it was now utterly dark down here he could still hear Julia’s frail whimpers, could vaguely make out the slither of the smooth wood down the earthen throat. He heard sounds behind him, and with something like astonishment he realized that Jessie and the other two had followed him, were even now navigating the same treacherous descent Ben was. Below him he heard a soft crack, like a snapping branch, and a muted thud. He winced, sure the sounds had been Julia’s coffin landing on whatever floor lay below them. Ben made his way lower, sometimes easing himself down with limbs splayed, at other times allowing himself to fall. There came a cry of surprise from above him, but Ben forced himself to maintain a methodical pace.
Then the bottom opened up beneath him.
It was a short tumble, perhaps four feet, and the surface on which he landed was a congealed pudding of mud. He landed over the coffin, his left hand actually coming down on the open lid. He realized he was draped over the coffin, and suddenly sure Gabriel had scooped Julia out of it before Ben landed, he reached into the murk for where he thought her little body would be.
He touched the soft material of her blue pajamas. Felt the feeble writhing of her weakened body within.
“Oh my baby,” Ben cried. He gathered her into his arms and pressed her to his chest. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my baby.” He kissed her downy hair, her soft cheeks. She was crying, but it was the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard, the most blessed sound. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Ben rocked his daughter and wept.
Above him there were several voices crying out, the squelch of skin against soil. With Julia clutched to his chest, Ben crouched, his head scraping the low ceiling, and yanked the coffin toward him. A moment later there came a loud, crunching thump and a sudden illumination. In the tangle before him Ben distinguished three writhing bodies. They were muddy, the voices either breathless or angry, but in seconds they were untangled and resting a few feet apart. One of the bodies, the one holding the flashlight, got to its feet and moved up beside him.
“Oh my God, Ben. She looks like you,” Jessie said.
“She looks like her mother,” he answered and shielded Julia’s eyes from the flashlight’s glare.
“Sorry,” Jessie said, lowering the light.
“It’s okay.” He put his lips on Julia’s cheek, kissed her again.
Hearing her pitiful whimper brought him back to his senses. “Do any of you have water?”
Elena made a pained face. “In my room.”
Christina shook her head.
“She’s dehydrated,” he said. “Half-starved. It’s a wonder she’s lasted this long.”
No one said anything, and in the silence Ben felt his alarm grow. “You three shouldn’t have followed me.”
Christina gave him a wry smile. “We didn’t. Well, Jessie did. She climbed down after you. I don’t know what we would’ve done, but the ground under Elena and I just sort of gave way.”
Jessie gave Julia’s hand a gentle squeeze. “We’re here now. Let’s figure out how to get out of this hole.”
For the first time Ben remembered he too had a flashlight. Feeling foolish, he fished it out of his pocket, clicked it on and inspected the area. The low-ceilinged room was about ten by ten feet, but ahead there was an archway leading into a tunnel.
“Will that take us back to the castle?” Elena asked.
Jessie shined her beam down the tunnel as well. “The castle’s in that direction. But there’s no way to know how direct the route is.”
“How far are we from the pit?” Ben asked.
Jessie frowned. “I don’t know. A couple hundred yards if it’s a straight shot, but we can’t—”
Ben started toward the archway.
“Shouldn’t we try to go back up?” Christina asked.
Ben
stopped. He massaged his daughter’s back as he spoke. “We fell about thirty feet. There’s no way we’ll be able to climb back up that hole, not with how muddy it is.” He nodded toward the tunnel. “This is the only way out.”
Jessie said, “Why do you think this leads to the pit?”
“It’s the only explanation,” Ben said. “The beast has supernatural powers, but he’s bound in some ways by the same natural laws we are. He can inhabit others’ flesh…bend them to his will…”
Jessie began to say something, but Ben overrode her. “But he can’t just appear in one place and teleport himself to the other side of the island by magic.”
Jessie said, “Last night when we were in the pit we couldn’t find a way through. You stayed and searched yourself.”
Ben turned and began shuffling toward the archway. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way. It just means I didn’t find it.”
“Peter did,” Elena said.
They all turned and regarded her.
“He’s down here,” she said. “I sense it.”
Ben set off again. “What else can you sense?”
Elena frowned, the skin furrowing between her eyebrows. “Darkness. Just…unspeakable hatred.”
“That’s about right,” Ben said. He moved forward, keeping Julia’s frail body nuzzled into his chest and shoulder. “And Jessie?”
“Yeah?”
“If something happens to me …”
“I’ll get Julia to the boat.”
Ben nodded. Ahead, the tunnel forked. Ben turned left, in what he hoped was the direction of the castle.
Chapter Three
Jessie’s fingers were slick with mud and perspiration, the Glock heavy in her grip. She could hear the others’ breathing in the dank tunnel, and occasionally baby Julia would utter a cry that sounded to Jessie like a frightened chipmunk. Her mud-caked tank top clung to her skin, the bra beneath it terribly uncomfortable. Her shorts and underwear were soaked through as well. It was her shoes and socks, however, which bothered her the most. They squelched with every step she took, not only making her feel even more miserable, but potentially alerting the beast to their presence.
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