Devil's Throat (The River Book 6)

by Michael Richan

  “So what do you want to do?” Deem asked.

  “We go get Jason at Devil’s Throat,” Steven said. “If he’ll join us, fine, if not…”

  Steven paused, realizing he really didn’t have a very compelling plan to present to the others.

  “…if not,” he continued, “at least we can find out why he took Michael there. It might lead us to our next step.”

  “He took Michael there to feed his blood to the creature in the cave!” Winn said. “That seems clear!”

  “Why do the Callers feed the creature?” Roy asked Winn. “Why bother? There’s some connection we haven’t figured out. What do they get out of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Winn said. “That’s a good question I don’t have the answer to.”

  “You might get your answer in Devil’s Throat,” Deem said.

  Winn closed his eyes. “I suppose,” he said with resignation in his voice, “now that they’re on to me, I’m going to have to take a different approach.”

  “Answers!” she said, coaxing him. “You’ve been fighting St. Thomas for years. Think of it. And this guy over here,” she pointed to Steven, “he wants to take them down completely! When’s the last time you had these kinds of allies? You should be thanking him, signing up for this shit right now!”

  “You know how I get in confined spaces,” Winn said. “It’s not pretty.”

  “Devil’s Throat isn’t as bad as mines,” Deem said. “There’s one or two narrow parts but most of it is open rooms.”

  “We’re going to go,” Steven said. “If you come, there’ll be four of us against them if they come after you. If you stay, you’re on your own.”

  “So strong-arming’s what I get for helping you?” Winn asked.

  “He’s my son, Winn,” Steven said, taking a step towards him. “I have to go to him, to try and help him. I don’t expect you to understand that.”

  Winn looked down at the ground and then over at Deem. “Nah,” he said, “I get it, I understand. OK, I’ll come.”

  “Good, let’s head out now,” Steven said, checking the room one last time before they left.

  “But don’t give me any shit if I wig out in there,” Winn said. “I warned you.”

  They filed out of the motel room and Steven closed the door, pulling it tight. He flipped the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle to read “Service Please.”

  Chapter Ten

  Deem was directing Winn down a small dirt road that ran east of St. Thomas and south of Mesquite into a small mountain range. The sky was still dark, but Deem seemed to know her way around without the use of a map.

  They pulled off road and Deem instructed Winn to drive about a quarter mile north from where they’d left the dirt road. The ground was rocky, and Winn took it slowly to avoid blowing a tire. Deem had him stop about a hundred feet from a scree that rose quickly to become the side of the mountain.

  “We’re here,” Deem said, getting out of the Jeep.

  After unloading the lanterns Deem transferred from her pickup before they left Overton, they began walking around the scree. Steven kept his feet to the ground, watching his step. They walked for a short distance, then turned and passed along a dry streambed.

  “Look!” Deem said, pointing her flashlight to an object in the distance.

  “That’s Michael’s car,” Roy said. “Jason must have driven it here.”

  They walked toward the car. It had two flat tires.

  “He went too fast,” Winn said. “You can’t bring a car like that out over these rocks.”

  Deem looked into the back seat. “Blood back here,” she said.

  “If he was carrying a body,” Steven said, “he probably wanted to get as close to the cave as he could.”

  “He’ll hate that decision when the sun comes up,” Deem said. “No water, a hundred and ten degrees, thirty miles from anything – not a situation you want to be in.”

  “He must have felt strongly about bringing Michael out here,” Winn said, “to have risked the car and his life.”

  Steven shook his head. What is going on with Jason? he wondered. Why is he so enamored with this guy, this monster?

  Deem led them another hundred yards to the cave’s entrance – a small hole near the ground, about three feet in diameter.

  “Uh oh,” Winn said. “See, now, that’s a pretty small hole.”

  “It widens up after a couple feet,” Deem said. “Come on.”

  Deem got down on her knees and was through the opening before Winn could say anything else. Roy followed, then Steven. He crawled for three feet, then was able to stand. Deem asked Roy to turn on his lantern. They were inside a large cavern.

  “Winn!” Deem yelled back through the hole. “We haven’t got all night! Come on.”

  “Fuck it,” they heard Winn say, then his head emerged from the hole and he stood up inside the cavern with the rest of them.

  “Fuck, I hate this!” Winn said, turning on his lantern.

  Deem led them up a small rise in the floor of the room, and then they saw it – The Devil’s Throat. It started off thirty feet wide, and looked like it swirled downward, gradually becoming more and more narrow. The sides of the throat were rough, with jagged rocks sticking out. At the furthest point they could see into it, it was still ten feet wide. No one spoke – they were all staring at the opening in amazement.

  Deem took a rock and tossed it into the center of the throat. They watched it fall as far as the light from their lanterns would allow, then they listened for it to hit bottom. No sound ever came.

  “Tell me we’re not going down that,” Winn said.

  “We’re not,” Deem said. “The only people who’ve ever attempted to go down that are dead at the bottom. There are caves that surround it. That’s where we’re going.”

  She led them around the right edge of the throat and to an opening that led to a thin passageway just wide enough to pass through without the need to turn sideways. Steven pointed his light straight up, and he saw the edges of the rock passageway come together about twenty feet above them. They followed the opening for fifty feet when they came to another large cavern. This one was filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and a path wove between them. It was large enough that Steven’s light didn’t reach the other end of the room.

  Deem continued down the path, maneuvering through the rock formations. They walked for another couple of minutes before coming to the end of the room. Deem was starting to lead them through another passageway when Steven stopped her.

  “Jump in,” Steven said, “and look around.”

  They all entered the River, and immediately saw what Steven had noticed – a small opening in the back of the room, dimly glowing.

  It’s a false front, Roy thought. Made to look like rock outside of the River.

  They dropped out of the River and backtracked through the cavern. They walked toward the spot in the wall where they’d seen the glowing entrance. When they reached it, Roy pressed his hand against the rock. It gave way immediately, his hand passing through to somewhere else.

  “This is it,” Roy said. “The rocks are an illusion.” He stepped forward and walked through the rock. He passed through it like a ghost passing through a wall.

  “Someone must have placed it here to hide an opening,” Deem said.

  “Come through,” they heard Roy say from the other side of the wall. “You need to see this.”

  One by one the rest of them walked through the false front, emerging into another large cavern.

  As soon as he entered the hidden cavern, Steven held his nose. The stink was strong. Twenty feet ahead were five large wooden poles arranged into a tripod shape, attached tightly at the top, their legs spreading out to the ground, each leg tied to the next with a two foot piece of rope. Inside the tripod, strung up by the feet, hung the naked corpse of a young woman, her throat slit and a puddle of blood below on the ground. Her face was covered with dried blood and her hair matted with it, as the bloo
d had run from the wound on her neck, over her head, and to the ground.

  “You were right,” Winn said to Deem. “That’s exactly what they’ve been doing.”

  “Stinks so bad it could knock a buzzard off a gut wagon,” Roy said, and he walked past the tripod and swung his light to the right. At first he thought he was seeing a large, discolored rock formation, rising from the ground like a huge stalagmite.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, and quickly turned his flashlight away. He began to wretch, stepping away from the path.

  “What is it?” Steven said, following him and shining his light at what Roy had discovered. The others were right behind him.

  The stalagmite wasn’t made of rock, it was made of bodies. A pile of human bodies, tossed on top of each other. There were hundreds in the pile.

  “Oh god!” Deem said.

  “Bled out and then tossed aside like empty beer cans,” Winn said. “I wished you hadn’t been right, Deem, but you certainly were.”

  “All these people!” Deem said, her light stopping occasionally on a body in the pile. Bodies at the base had decomposed and were mainly bones, but the ones in the middle were a mass of gore. The ones at the top still had skin and faces, the flesh and hair on their heads matted with their own blood that had been slowly drained from them.

  “Shh,” Roy said. “Listen!”

  They all held their breath. In the distance they could hear a rhythmic pulse. It stopped, then started again.

  “Is that a shovel?” Winn whispered. “Digging?”

  “Could be,” Roy said, turning to walk in the direction of the sound. The cavern slowly tapered back to an opening the size of a small car. The sound of the shoveling was coming from beyond.

  Steven walked through the opening, lowering his head to crouch slightly. He saw the lantern in the distance, and the lone figure of Jason, stabbing his shovel into a pile of dirt, and lifting it before dropping the dirt a few feet away. He repeated the movement while Steven watched.

  Steven began walking towards Jason, not waiting for the others to reach him, not caring if they were behind him or not. When he was about twenty feet from him, he stopped.

  “Jason!” he said.

  Jason stopped, his shovel stuck in the pile of dirt. His back to Steven, he rested his arm on the shovel handle and rested his head on his arm. “Can’t you let me do this in peace?”

  “What are you doing?” Steven asked, taking a few more steps toward Jason. As he approached, the ground surrounding Jason became visible to him. Jason was filling in a grave. There were six or seven other graves nearby.

  “I’m doing what he asked me to do,” Jason said, resuming shoveling. “Fulfilling his dream.”

  “Michael’s dream?” Steven asked, aware that the others had come up behind him. “This was something he wanted you to do?”

  “It was all he ever wanted,” Jason said, still facing away from them. “He made me promise I’d do it.” He lifted another shovelful of dirt from the pile and placed it on the grave. “I told him I would, if things went wrong.”

  “I killed him, Jason,” Roy said.

  “Yes, I know that,” Jason said.

  “Why did you turn us over to the Callers in St. Thomas?” Steven asked. “Why did you go back on the plan?”

  “Michael knew you’d try something,” Jason said, continuing to shovel. “He told me to go along with whatever you proposed, and then tell him about it. To be honest with you, I was kinda shocked that you showed up at all. I just went along with what Michael said to do, since he was calling the shots.”

  Jason moved two move shovelfuls of dirt, then turned the shovel over and patted the earth down over the grave. He turned to face the others, his arm resting on the top of the shovel. He was dirty and sweating, and his shirt was covered with Michael’s blood.

  “He cared about me,” Jason said, looking at Steven. “He taught me, he showed me how to do things. He answered my questions. He said I was a brilliant student. He told me we’d do great things together after I graduated.”

  “He was a manipulator, Jason,” Steven said. “You are smart, brilliant, gifted. You will do great things. But his goal was to use you to hurt me and your grandpa, not to help you. I presume you saw the bodies in the other room? That’s what Michael’s world is, Jason. Death. Gore. Evil.”

  “I saw them,” Jason said. “He told me it was a ritual area.”

  “Why did he want to be buried here?” Deem asked. “He must have given you pretty detailed instructions.”

  “He did,” Jason said, turning back away from them to stare down at Michael’s grave. “It was the most important thing to him.”

  “Do you know why?” Deem asked.

  “He wanted, more than anything else,” Jason said, “to be a Caller. Now he is.”

  “Burying him here made him a Caller?” Winn asked. “He told you that?”

  “That’s what he said,” Jason said. “It’s a privilege reserved for the best graduates, when they die. Emmett said Michael had earned it. He didn’t plan to be here for many more years, of course, but he did make me promise to do it. I said I would.”

  “A final stab at us,” Steven said to Roy.

  “Not everything is about you, Dad,” Jason said.

  “This was,” Steven said. “This definitely was. It was his way of showing Roy and me that he’d achieved complete control over you.”

  Jason threw the shovel down. “And why would he give a fuck about you?” He walked over to Steven and stood right next to him, his face inches from Steven’s. “He cared about me. Why would he give a fuck about you?”

  “Because we killed his mentor!” Steven yelled back. “Weren’t you listening back in the motel room? We killed his mentor because he tormented an innocent old man to death, the grandfather of one of the children he devoured! Are you hearing me? He and his mentor killed and ate children, trying to become immortal! We should have killed Michael, too!”

  Jason pulled his arm back and swung at Steven. Steven ducked just in time, and Roy pulled them apart.

  “What is wrong with you?!” Steven yelled at Jason. “You’re defending a murderer! Didn’t you see those bodies out there? These people are as bad as it gets, Jason! They’re evil, pure evil! They’ve sold you a pack of lies and you’ve swallowed the whole thing!”

  “You’re always right, aren’t you?” Jason said. “Right about Mom, right about me, right about this. You didn’t know him! You only see what you want to see.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Steven said. “You think I’m blind? Open your eyes! There’s a pile of dead bodies out there, caused by the Callers. Caused by Michael.”

  Jason swung again, and Roy grabbed his arm. He twisted himself behind Jason, grabbing him with a bear hug that held Jason’s arms to his side. Jason was trembling with anger.

  Steven walked up to Jason and placed his hands on Jason’s cheeks, cradling his face.

  “I know he said those things to you,” Steven said. “But come back to me, Jason! Come back. Roy and I have wonderful things to show you. Not evil. Not bodies strung up to bleed out. Not a pile of rotting corpses. The opposite of all that. Give me a chance. What you believed about Michael, believe about me. I love you. I care about you, far more than he ever did. These people at St. Thomas, they just want to use you. Me and Roy, we love you. We miss you. We want you back.”

  Jason was trembling.

  “We love you,” Steven said, this time softly.

  Jason began to cry and his head fell to his chest. Roy loosened his grip and Jason bolted from Roy towards Steven. At first Roy was concerned he was going to throw another punch, but Jason threw his around Steven and began to sob.

  Steven wrapped his arms around Jason, holding him tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said, crying into Steven’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Steven said. “I should have listened to you, back in Seattle. I could have warned you. It’s not your fault. It’
s mine. All my fault.”

  Jason cried in Steven’s arms, his feet giving out from under him from exhaustion. Steven eased Jason down to the ground, still holding him. He held him until he regained his composure and strength.

  Jason looked up from Steven and saw the others. “I guess I owe you all an apology.”

  “Seeing you reconcile with your father was apology enough,” Deem said, smiling.

  “I always wanted to believe you over him,” Jason said, “but you don’t know what it was like, being in there, with everything they said about outsiders.”

  “I believe you,” Winn said. “I heard the same thing from the others I pulled out. But now we need to get out of here. We’ll be trapped if the Callers come looking for us.”

  Steven left Jason’s side and walked over to Michael’s grave. The dirt Jason had piled on top of it was still fresh, but the surface of the other graves looked smoother. Roy joined him as Steven walked over to one of the older graves and touched it with his shoe.

  “Doesn’t look like dirt,” Steven said.

  “Maybe it’s something like the graves on the peninsula,” Roy said, referring to Eximere.

  Steven picked up the shovel Jason had been using and took it to one of the older graves. He stabbed it into the dirt, but it bounced off the surface with a clang.

  “If it ever was dirt,” Steven said, “it’s not anymore. It’s become rock.”

  “I would guess it’s part of the deal,” Winn said. “Whatever being exists in this cave seals over the grave as it grants them the abilities that make them a Caller. As long as they keep feeding the ground here, they keep their abilities.”

  “Do we know exactly what their abilities are?” Steven said. “How much of what we see down in St. Thomas is them?”

  “A friend of mine dealt with Callers outside of Ely,” Winn said. “They didn’t have a town, no conscripted ghosts doing their bidding. Just a colony of enterprising ghosts helping some human drug runners.”

  “So you don’t get your own town when you become a Caller,” Steven said. “St. Thomas exists on its own somehow, not because there are Callers there.”