The Quarry

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  “Well, maybe if you didn’t wait until the very last minute to finish up your papers.”

  “What are you, my surrogate mother? Lecture me later, come to the library with me now.”

  Connie glanced at the clock, her face pinched. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “I know, which means the library will be closing up shop soon. We need to haul ass.”

  “Let’s call security. Deanna said they’re supposed to escort us around campus, remember?”

  “Fine, I’ll call security.”

  Kasey grabbed the phone, dialed the extension for the security office, asked for an escort, listened for a moment, sighed then said, “Never mind,” and hung up.

  “What was that about?” Connie asked.

  “The guy said someone would be here in about fifteen minutes. The library will be closed by then.”

  When Kasey started for the door, Connie jumped up and grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to the library. For Christ’s sake, it’s just right across the quad, there are plenty of lights between here and there. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.”

  “Still, you shouldn’t go alone.”

  “I’d rather not, but apparently my roommate is a chicken-shit.”

  Connie thought it over for a moment. She certainly didn’t want to go, especially not this late when the campus was likely to be mostly deserted, but she also didn’t want Kasey out there alone. And she knew Kasey well enough to know once the girl had made up her mind, there was no talking her out of it. Besides, Kasey was right. It wasn’t far, and the campus was well lit. Connie was just being silly.

  “Okay, but we’re going straight to the library and back.”

  “You betcha. Quick as a bunny.”

  Connie’s stomach was in knots as she walked with Kasey out of Ebert and started toward the library. As they passed the security office, Connie glanced through the window and saw the elderly Hispanic guard from second shift sitting at the monitors. The cart was not parked out front, meaning the extra guard had to be tooling around on it somewhere.

  As if in contradiction to her earlier bravado, Kasey moved at a brisk pace and Connie matched her stride. Despite the lights that pushed the shadows back to the edge of the quadrangle, the main campus at night was a creepy place. The buildings loomed large and silent, like hibernating beasts from some prehistoric age.

  Connie felt a shiver work its way down her spine like a drop of ice water as they approached Winnie Davis Hall.

  With its gothic architecture and octagonal tower that thrust up toward the dark sky, it looked like something straight out of a horror movie.

  In Freshman Seminar last semester, she’d heard a ghost story about the building: some female student decades ago had fallen to her death from the tower and supposedly still haunted the place. Connie didn’t believe it, of course…at least not when the sun was shining bright and rational upon the world.

  The library straight ahead: a blazing beacon of light and safety. Both girls sped up as they neared their destination. They were almost to the stone steps that led up to the building’s glass doors…

  A dark shape bolted from thick foliage.

  Connie let out a startled scream that sounded more like a cross between a gasp and a hiccup and recognized…

  Dale!

  She saw the softball-sized rock in his hand only an instant before he smashed it into the side of Kasey’s face.

  Kasey, who didn’t even have time to utter a sound, fell to the ground then tumbled down the hill toward the auditorium, limbs flailing.

  For a brief moment, but it felt longer, Connie stood frozen, wrestling with what had just happened.

  Dale watched Kasey until she came to rest at the bottom of the hill, then he turned his eyes to Connie; eyes that were blank yet burning with inner fire.

  His lips, cracked and bleeding, spread in a grotesque smile, at least two of his teeth missing.

  “Connie,” he said.

  And hearing him speak her name broke her paralysis.

  She turned and bolted back toward the dorm, toward the security office. She took a deep breath to scream for help…

  Dale tackled her from behind, knocking the air from her lungs as she fell onto the pavement, skinning her palms and knocking her head hard against the concrete.

  Dazed but not unconscious, she threw her elbows back, trying to knock Dale off of her, but he held her in place with his weight.

  She let out a single scream, but then he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked hard enough that she thought he might tear it out by the root.

  He roughly rolled her onto her back and straddled her, the rock, now crusted with Kasey’s blood, held above his head as he smiled down at her with maniacal glee.

  “What is the human expression?” he said, his voice guttural and hoarse. “Two birds, one stone.”

  Connie squeezed her eyes shut and threw her arms up over her head to shield herself…

  But instead of the impact she expected, she felt Dale’s body jerk, heard him grunt, then his weight was off of her.

  She pushed up on her elbows and opened her eyes to find Steve standing over her, clutching a lacrosse stick in his hands.

  Dale was nearby, struggling back to his knees.

  Steve stepped forward and swung the stick again, connecting with Dale under the chin and knocking him onto his back. Before Dale had time to get back up, Steve swung once more in a wide arch, the netted end of the stick striking Dale right in the stomach.

  “Bastard!” Steve yelled, using the stick again, this time catching Dale right in the groin. He raised the stick for another go, but moving quicker than a man who’d just been nailed in the balls should have been able to, Dale kicked out, tripping Steve and sending him onto his ass.

  Dale jumped to his feet and shot off into the dark between Winnie Davis and Granberry.

  Steve leaped up and gave chase. Connie tried to stand but was too woozy and hunkered back to the ground. She saw a few people coming out of the library, apparently drawn by the shouts, making their way toward her.

  No one seemed to notice Kasey down the hill, and she tried to call to them but was too weak.

  Somewhere behind her she heard a motor humming and assumed one of the guards was headed her way on the cart.

  When a hand fell on her shoulder, she screamed and lashed out, but Steve caught her hand before it connected with his face.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  Connie collapsed into his arms and wept on his shoulder.

  “Sonofabitch is fast,” Steve said. He held her and caressed her back. “Couldn’t keep up, lost the bastard somewhere around McMillian Hall.”

  Connie pulled back, wiping her eyes. “Kasey, he hit Kasey with a rock. She’s unconscious…down by Fullerton.”

  “Okay, I’ll go check on her,” Steve said, but seemed reluctant to leave her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Just lucky you happened to be around.”

  “I’ve been wandering around campus ever since the sun went down, just hoping I’d catch the sonofabitch. I shouldn’t have let him get away from me like that.”

  “You saved my life,” Connie said, and now that the adrenaline rush was starting to wear off, it hit her just how close she’d come to death.

  “I’m going to go check on Kasey,” Steve said, putting his face very close to hers, as if he wanted to make sure she heard him. “But I’ll be back, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you, not like I did with Leslie.”

  One of the guards was suddenly next to her, taking her hand and asking her if she was hurt. She didn’t answer right away, just watched Steve run off toward the auditorium.

  It wasn’t just a theory anymore. Dale was alive, he was a killer, and he wanted her dead.

  Part Three

  What Lies Beneath

  April 2010

  Chapter Sixteen

  EMILIO SKIPPED HIS Monday morning classes and wal
ked down to the public library instead.

  He did an internet search on the Quarry, hoping to find information that would actually be useful. He found some articles about local sites and buildings that had been designated as historical landmarks and learned that Limestone had 9 campus buildings as well as the Quarry itself on the register of historical places.

  But no history of the Quarry.

  Nothing specific about its transition from mining operation to Lake Limestone.

  Just like everything else he’d found, nothing useful.

  In an age when just about anything could be found online, Emilio was coming up empty-handed. And it scared him.

  Deciding to do some research the old fashioned way, he trudged to the genealogy room.

  A bored-looking attendant sat at a scuffed wooden desk playing computer solitaire while Emilio flipped through books and scanned papers on microfilm. He concentrated on the years 1950 through 1952, the time the mine ceased operation. But he discovered nothing new. The same vague references and notations swam in his desperate eyes.

  He turned to the attendant, who seemed thoroughly engrossed in her electronic card game, and said, “Do you know anything about the Quarry?”

  The woman reacted slowly. As if moving underwater, she turned her head toward him and stared blankly for a moment.

  He sheepishly repeated the question.

  “What?” she asked.

  “The Quarry, do you know much about it?”

  “You mean…down by the college?”

  He nodded.

  She shrugged. “Just what I been told.”

  Emilio tried to hide his frustration and impatience as she rattled off the same set of erroneous facts: underground spring, accident, flooding, fleeing, equipment abandoned and covered by water…

  Like a script. One that everyone had memorized.

  “That what you researching, the Quarry?” the woman asked.

  “Trying to. Not having very much luck.”

  “For a school project or something?”

  “No, just personal interest.”

  The attendant started fidgeting in her seat, looking at Emilio with what he thought were suspicious eyes.

  “Ain’t gonna go crazy, are you?” she asked, real fear in her voice.

  “What?”

  “That boy was in here a month or two ago looking up stuff on the Quarry, then a couple weeks later I saw his picture in the paper. Done gone and killed some girls.”

  “Dale?” Emilio said softly. “You saw him, spoke to him?”

  “Sure, he came in here several days in a row, doing pretty much the same stuff you are, rummaging through old papers and books, asking questions. I finally told him to call the local Historical Society.”

  “Historical Society?”

  “Yeah, they keep records on all kinds of local history. Figured that’d be the best bet for him.”

  “Makes sense. Do you know if he called?”

  The attendant shrugged again. “Gotta say, he didn’t seem like a killer. He was real polite, kind of funny. A little hyper maybe, but I didn’t get no wacko vibe from him or nothing. Guess it just goes to show you can’t never tell about people.”

  Emilio grunted, already turned away from the woman. He uncoiled the film from the machine, letting it go too fast so that it flapped around the spool with a sound like playing cards in bicycle spokes.

  Mumbling an apology, he replaced the film in its box and placed it on top of a filing cabinet.

  As he started to leave the room, the attendant asked, “Did you know that crazy boy?”

  Emilio paused a moment then said, “No.”

  And it didn’t feel like a lie.

  On his way out of the library, he stopped by the computers, looked up the website for the Cherokee County Historical Society, and punched their number into his cell phone. Outside, walking back toward campus, he pressed SEND.

  “Hello,” said a deep male voice. “Cherokee County Historical Society.”

  “Um, hi, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Well, the history of the Limestone Quarry.”

  A beat of silence then, “Is this the fellow that called me last month?”

  Dale.

  “No sir, this is the first time I’ve ever called.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Someone else inquired about the Quarry not long ago. What is it you would like to know?”

  “I know that before it was Lake Limestone, the Quarry was a working mine.”

  “Yes, operated by the Limestone Campbell Corporation; it was once one of the biggest industries in the area. Ran from the late eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen fifties. It was a blow to Gaffney’s economy when the operation moved to a site in nearby Blacksburg.”

  “Why did it close?”

  “The site wasn’t producing anymore. They’d mined it so much that it just didn’t have much more to give.”

  “So that’s it? They didn’t accidentally hit an underground spring?”

  The man laughed, the sound deep and rich. “I don’t know how that story became so prevalent, but no. There was an underground spring, and the Quarry had to be pumped to keep it from flooding, but a decision was reached to shut down the operation, cease pumping, and to let the site fill in gradually and naturally. It was not an accident, and there is no underwater world of trucks and equipment beneath Lake Limestone.”

  “How come everyone believes something that never happened?”

  “Who knows how these things start and spread? The truth is certainly less dramatic, that’s for sure.”

  “Are there any records from that time? Anything that details the decision to close the mine and let it flood?”

  “Not really, at least not that I’m aware of. I guess that’s one reason why the rumors and myths about the Quarry have run so rampant. There’s not much documentation to contradict any of it.”

  “So if there’s no documentation about what happened, how do you really know what’s real and what isn’t?”

  “I’ll make the same suggestion to you that I made to the other fellow. Contact Curt Felder.”

  “Who?”

  “Curt Felder. Used to be the sheriff around these parts about twenty years ago, but he was also a foreman at the mine before it closed. Probably in his eighties by now, but from what I hear his mind is still sharp. He may be able to give you some more in-depth information.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  “No, but it’s probably in the book.”

  Emilio thanked the man then hung up. He stopped and leaned against one of the rough stone columns that flanked the entrance of Oakland Cemetery, an excitement bubbling in his gut like the carbonation of a shaken soda.

  He was finally on the right track, following Dale’s footsteps. He wasn’t sure where it would lead—to enlightenment or a dead-end—but he felt he was close to something.

  He just had to push a little further.

  * * *

  Making her way back to the dorm after Figure Drawing, Connie studied the oppressive atmosphere of dread that had settled over the campus.

  A real police presence; uniformed officers patrolling at all hours, even inside buildings. And the curfew was back in effect.

  The place was emptier too. Following the attack, several students had left or been pulled out by their parents. Including Kasey. Having suffered a mild concussion and a cracked cheekbone, she’d no longer felt safe on campus, and her parents had pleaded for her to return to Vermont. But Kasey hadn’t required pleas; without hesitation, she’d packed her things and left.

  Connie didn’t blame her friend. Her own family was worried and had cried for her to come home. But she refused to let fear control her. For whatever reason, Dale wanted to terrorize her, but he would only win if she allowed herself to be terrorized. He would not drive her out of school; she would not play the part of helpless damsel in distress. She assured her folks that with all the added securi
ty precautions on campus she was perfectly safe, and they let the matter drop, though she could tell that they weren’t convinced.

  She wasn’t entirely convinced herself.

  She approached Ebert, pulling out her keycard, and heard her name called behind her.

  Turning, she saw Steve trotting down the walkway from Hamrick. “Hi Steve. What’s up?”

  “Just getting out of Statistics, so my brain is a little fried.”

  “Poor baby,” Connie said with an affected pout.

  “I’m on my way down to the dining hall for lunch. Care to join me?”

  “You know, I’m not very hungry. I think I’m just going to head up to my room.”

  “Oh.” Steve stood there for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Want some company?”

  Connie opened her mouth to say no but then thought of the empty room waiting for her and changed her mind. “That’d be great.”

  The smile that lit Steve’s face triggered a smile of her own. He’d been hanging around her a lot since coming to her rescue last Wednesday, and gone was the arrogance and crudeness that had always annoyed her before, replaced by an unexpected sweetness and chivalry she hadn’t known he possessed. Maybe she’d misjudged him. She’d certainly misjudged Dale.

  She led Steve to her room, hoping as she opened the door that she hadn’t left any of her bras or panties strewn about. She stepped in first, quickly scanning the room but finding nothing offending. Except for the open sketchpad on her unmade bed. She snatched it up and flipped it closed, but not fast enough.

  “Was that a picture of who I think it was?” Steve asked.

  “Just something I was doodling. Nothing really.”

  “Can I see?”

  Connie hesitated.

  “Please, I’d like to see it.”

  She handed the sketchpad to Steve and watched as he flipped through the pages until he found the drawing in question. It was unfinished, done in pencil, but it was clearly of Dale. Just his face, partially hidden in shadow, his lips twisted in a nasty sneer, his one clear eye twinkling with maniacal glee. It was the way he’d looked to her when he’d had her on the ground, straddling her and brandishing the rock.