I felt around inside the door and flicked on the lights. Old brown bloodstains were everywhere. Bones were stacked against the walls, and a barrel of decomposing flesh and discarded organs sat in the far corner. In the center of the small floor space lay the bodies of the Bobbies’ Welsh Corgis amidst puddles of day old blood.
It was an abattoir like the one Hatton kept—not as elaborate, and not as well concealed, but a slaughterhouse nonetheless. I felt sure they had been slaughtering people and animals here for years. I wondered if they were a part of Hatton’s circle at the time of the investigation or if they were somehow converted to the cult of human meat in the time since.
I looked at the two Corgi corpses. The two little dogs that had earned Bobbie the nickname “Crazy Dog Lady” were dead, but at least they didn’t look like they’d been used as meat for dinner. She’d always treated those dogs like her children, and the fact that they would kill them for Hatton and Tutor spoke to the depth of their loyalty. Or lunacy.
I backed out of the room and slowly closed the door with relief sweeping through me. Jane and Sig weren’t in there, and they were the only people I cared about at that moment.
I went back to examine the makeshift cells. They were about three feet deep and six or seven feet long. Each cell had its own small four-feet by four-feet gate. The ceiling of each cell was made from rusting sheet metal. Old blankets and burlap sacks lay on the floors.
I stopped in front of one of the cells, my heart breaking. Inside, a set of vampire teeth lay on a piece of thick cream-colored vellum paper spotted with red drops. I flung the gate open so hard its hinges bent. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into that little space, wincing every time I put my weight down.
I shoved Sig’s teeth into my pocket. I put the pistol on the ground beside me and scrabbled at the piece of vellum until I could peel it off the floor.
The red spots were too bright to be dried blood—they were the color of maraschino cherries. I sniffed them, and a grim smile surfaced on my face. Those spots were drops of the cherry syrup that made Sig’s vampire teeth look bloody. I could imagine Siggy getting tired of keeping the teeth in his mouth but not wanting to put them on the skeezy floor. Finding something to set them on was just something he would do. I let the paper drop.
As I turned to crawl back out of the cell, something about the paper caught my eye. It had fallen with the spotted side down. On the back was a message. It was written in a script that resembled Peter Jackson’s vision of Tolkien’s elvish, but I could make out the letters of the English alphabet. It said, “Chase me, Hank. I can show you so much.”
I thought of the character Roland Deschain in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Specifically, I thought of the opening line of the series: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Then I thought about how the series ended and a cold sort of dread settled over me like mist.
I looked down at my hand, now a ball of shrieking pain. I had squeezed it into a shaking fist so tight my knuckles were white. Hatton’s note was crushed inside that fist, crumpled into a ball. I wondered what was in store for me. I wondered if I was destined to follow my own man in black for the rest of eternity, never being able to savor the victory, winning every time, but losing everything in the process.
I opened my hand, letting the crumpled ball of vellum fall to the dirty floor. I no longer cared about questions of eternity. There wasn’t anything to consider. I’d made my decision when I asked Jane to marry me.
I hoped Hatton was a man of his word because I intended to follow him forever if that’s what it took to find Jane and Siggy. And if he wasn’t, it was my sincere intention to give him a true test of his supposed godhood.
I left the Timmens’ house for the last time. I left the front door swinging in the harsh November wind and strode across the circle—no longer allowing myself the luxury of limping. As I walked, I looked around, seeing all the Halloween decorations in the golden light of dawn. They all seemed defeated and dead and gray. They were insignificant, wretched things really, devoid of substance, devoid of meaning—like so much of the produce of a culture in which everything of unique significance was bleached into sempiternal inconsequence in the name of profit margins. Everything seemed different—achromatic, tattered and bedraggled, as if the part of me that saw beauty in sunrises and nature had been dimmed by what I’d found in the Timmens’ basement. Maybe it was because I’d decided to follow Jane and Sig to wherever they were, even if that place was the land of the dead.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for Jane or Sig. Nothing. Without them, nothing really mattered.
Standing in my kitchen, I scribbled a hasty note addressed to my old boss in the state police, Lieutenant Gruber. It read:
Lt. Gruber,
Don’t worry about me. I’m sane and healthy. I didn’t do anything to Jane or Sig. I’m going to save them.
I’m going after Chris Hatton and Elizabeth Tutor. They convinced my neighbors, Robert and Roberta Timmens, to kidnap Jane and Sig. I know this because Bobbie Timmens called me early this morning—you should be able to pull the number from my LUDs. Locate her cell if you can. She told me she was in that cave—the dump site for Hatton’s victims.
I know this sounds crazy, and I know I shouldn’t be going there alone, but if what she says is true, I really have no choice. I do believe her, just like I believe what I said about Hatton after the safe house fiasco. I know you don’t believe my version of that night, but it is what it is. Not everything in this world can be explained or codified.
I hope you never read this—I hope I destroy this note later this morning when I come back home with my family. I don’t have much conviction in that hope, however. I think the two most likely possibilities are that either I disappear like Jane and Siggy have, or you will find our bodies deep in the cave at the dump site.
I don’t know if you read Stephen King or not, so I don’t know if you will understand this. In one series of his books, there is this thing, this Dark Tower, that stands in the center of the multiverse and acts as the lynchpin for reality. I doubt that it really exists (but who’s to say? It’s no more fanciful than any of the world’s religions to me), but I do know that Jane and Sig are the lynchpins of my universe. I’m going to get them back or die trying. You have kids, so I know you understand that part.
I don’t think I can justify what I’m going to do if they are dead. I know it sounds insane to go chasing after four psychotic fucks by myself, but it isn’t. Not really, given what I know Hatton can do and given the atrocities we all know Hatton is capable of. I can’t prove to you that I am sane, but I promise you that I am. I saw what I saw that night. I hope you can believe me this time.
Yours, Hank
P.S. Bobbie Timmens said Hatton’s real name is Luka. That’s all she said—no last name. Maybe it will help. I don’t think it’s a common name in the States.
I packed in a rush, stuffing an old hiking backpack with a few changes of clothes and some basic foodstuffs. I filled two canteens with water. Then I tucked Bobby’s Heckler and Koch pistol and its magazines into the outside pocket and added my backup weapon—a Kimber Tactical Ultra II in .45 ACP—and one hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition. I planned on stopping on the way to Honeoye Lake to buy more ammunition and a cleaning kit for the HK.
I stood in front of the kitchen cabinet we’d converted into my medicine cabinet, staring at the cornucopia of drugs I consumed to treat my RA on a daily basis. I took antihistamines, blood-pressure medicine, anti-inflammatory drugs, chemotherapy drugs, biologically derived drugs, pain meds, and several minerals and vitamins. It was a ludicrous number of pills. Some were supposed to work together to suppress my immune system, and some were just supposed to stop the others from killing me.
I didn’t want to carry them all so I separated them into groups of what I had to take with me, what I should take with me, and what I thought I could leave behind. Only a few medications did much to allevia
te my symptoms—a chemotherapy drug called methotrexate, pain medicine (which I hated to take), and prednisone. Of these, the methotrexate was most critical. It was like a magic potion. The problem with it was that it either inflamed my liver or irritated my kidneys, and it required regular blood tests to determine if the dosage needed to be manipulated to keep it from killing me.
Methotrexate was a “black box” drug— strictest label warning the FDA used, the one reserved for drugs that could kill you, break something irreplaceable (like a kidney or two), cause birth defects, or burn the lungs right out of your body. I took it as a subcutaneous injection once a week. I’d have to take syringes and alcohol swabs in addition to the vials. I only had five syringes left. Then again, that was enough to last more than a month.
What would happen when I ran out of methotrexate was a problem for later. There was no way I could get more for another month because insurance companies ruled the world. Hopefully, I could get Jane and Sig back before that.
I tried to think of everything I would need to survive in the wilderness. Like most modern men, I really had no idea of what was important and what was a mere luxury, but I did the best I could. I was armed, of course, and took my cell phone, a flashlight, some batteries, a few cans of Sterno, clothes for all seasons, gloves, extra socks, and anything else that looked remotely useful.
When I finally arrived at the cave several hours later, that backpack felt like it weighed eighty pounds. Pushing it in front of me, I crawled into the tiny foyer-like space where the most recent victims of the Butchers had been found. It had lost the smell of forensic testing and had gone back to smelling like an animal den, but the trestles to support the earth making up the roof were still there.
With my flashlight, I followed the marks that my partner, Jax, had spray-painted on the walls when we explored the labyrinth-like cave. We’d left marks at intersections and branches, going as deep into the earth as he and I had ever been. When I reached the last mark, at a four-way intersection of tunnels, I was at a loss of how to move forward. I peered down the dark tunnel leading to my left but couldn’t see anything. The tunnel across from me was also as dark as a tomb, but I thought I could see a faint glimmer down the tunnel leading to my right.
It was then that it dawned on me: I hadn’t brought any paint to mark my passage into the maze of natural caves and carved tunnels that Hatton and Tutor had adopted for their abattoir. At the same time, the idea that this was some elaborate hoax to get me lost deep in this cave flashed through my mind.
I shrugged. I’d either find the end of that cave or I’d be lost until someone found me—or, I supposed, until Hatton, Tutor, or one of the Timmens murdered me. I walked toward the light glimmering far down the tunnel. When I finally reached it, I saw that it was a glow stick, like you give kids on Halloween—one that had almost consumed its chemical charge. It was lying in the middle of a three-way intersection. I peered around until I saw another glimmer and then walked toward it.
I went on that way, stumbling through the inky darkness of that underground warren, straining my eyes to see half-dead glow sticks, for I don’t know how long. My thighs were burning when I finally came to the end. My stomach was in my throat, and my gun was locked and loaded in my hand as I approached the little room at the end of the tunnel.
The chamber was roughly circular and thirty yards or so in diameter. Across from the entrance was a bubbling body of water—a natural spring—and on its stony banks lay an abandoned cell phone. Other than that, there wasn’t a single thing in the chamber. No doorway. No bodies. No psychotic neighbors, no raving lunatic vampire-wolfman thing.
I let the pack slide to the ground with a jingle and a thump. I felt deflated. Lost. I was where Bobbie Timmens had wanted to lead me. Why else would her cell be lying here next to the spring?
I walked over to look more closely at the cell phone. I hoped she’d left a message on it, but if she had, the phone’s dead battery robbed me of any insight. Despair oozed from my glands and pores like a vile sweat.
My legs were shaking and burning with fatigue. I doubted I could walk all the way back to the entrance of the cave. I leaned against the chamber wall and left myself sink to the ground with a rattle and a bump. I closed my eyes and turned off the flashlight.
When I opened my eyes, I saw it. The walls of the chamber were lit with a strange, dim fluidic pattern—too dim to see with the flashlight turned on. The spring glowed with a silvery, multicolored light.
I crawled to the edge of the pool and looked down. About three feet below the surface was a submerged tunnel. I glanced at the pack and then pulled it over. I set my phone, the flashlight, and my pistol on top of the backpack and, leaving it on dry land, rolled into the water to investigate.
The water was frigid. I gasped in the silence of the cave, the sound echoing away into the darkness. Then I took a deep breath and dove underwater. The submerged passage was ovoid with loose sand covering the floor. It opened into another chamber a short distance ahead; the light was coming from that chamber. The tunnel was wide enough for me, but I’d have to push the pack ahead of me.
I resurfaced and stuffed everything inside the pack, putting the pistols, ammunition, my electronic doodads, and my drugs in the waterproof pocket in the front. I pulled the pack into the water with me. I was starting to shiver. I had to make this swim in a hurry or hypothermia would pay a call.
I went under and pushed the pack ahead of me into the submerged tunnel. Halfway through, I realized it was longer than it looked. Maybe it was some trick of the water, or maybe it just seemed longer because of the temperature and the unwieldy weight of the pack. At the same time, it felt like something was pulling me forward—like some weird kind of magnetism that worked on crippled flesh instead of iron.
By the time I reached the lit chamber, my lungs burned like I’d breathed in fire. I shot up to the surface and gasped, slinging the pack onto the floor of the small, irregularly shaped room. I rolled over the edge of the pool, eyes closed and tried to breathe in slow, steady pulls.
The tugging sensation I had felt in the tunnel was much stronger in that second room. I opened my eyes and looked around. The light was coming from one of the strangest things I’d ever seen—and that’s counting Hatton’s metamorphosis at the safehouse. It looked like an oval standing mirror except there was no frame or legs. It just hung there in midair, shimmering with soft, silvery light. Taking a longer, closer look, what I had taken to be a mirror-like silver was, in fact, thousands of rainbow colors, swirling and intertwining about each other, reflecting various frequencies of light. It was mesmerizing; it made me want to get closer and take a better look.
The rainbow-filled oval was about seven feet tall and three and a half feet wide at its widest point. It was big enough to walk through without stooping or slouching. It looked like a movie special effect for a science-fiction epic. The more I looked at it, the more it drew me forward.
I fought my way to my feet, feeling the fatigue in every fiber of my being. I had to get closer to the oval, whatever it was. I took two steps forward before I remembered my pack. I took two steps back to retrieve it, and those two steps felt like I was walking against an outgoing tide. I bent with a groan and grabbed the pack, slinging it on my back through sheer force of will. I stepped closer to the shimmer and could see my own reflection in its rainbow-colored surface. Standing that close, the pull coming off those gleaming colors was beyond my capacity to resist.
“Jane, I’m coming,” I croaked. I didn’t want to think anymore; I didn’t want to resist. I did what it wanted me to do—no, what it demanded of me.
I stepped into the shimmer, feeling terrific heat and terrible cold wash over me as I touched its surface. The faint sensation of being pulled swelled into something that felt more powerful than gravity, and I lurched forward. I was submerged like I had been in the frigid water—and then I was out and into thin air, far above the ground and falling.
Five
For a spli
t second, I was in midair, arms pinwheeling as if that could somehow stop me from falling. I sprawled on my face on a wide sheet of ice. With a terrible cracking sound, the ice shifted beneath me. The wind was howling and hurling snow around me in enraged eddies and sulky swirls. The temperature was arctic and biting, stiffening my water-soaked clothes.
The ice continued its relentless popping and cracking as my weight settled onto it. White lines shot away from me like lightning bolts trapped in the ice. The water beneath the gelid surface was black, making the lake look like it was covered in black marble shot through with white veins. I lifted my head, and the ice made a sound like a gunshot.
Ahead of me, a barren rock island jutted toward the sky like the dorsal fin of a gargantuan, hunting shark. Sharp, ragged chunks of ice surrounded the little island like fangs, cutting me off with nature’s savage efficiency from the only land I could see. Not that I had any interest in being trapped on a barren island in the middle of an icy lake during a monstrous blizzard.
My pack was on my back, and if I were going to survive this without drowning in the freezing water below me, then I would have to roll toward shore because if I stood, I would plunge through the cracking ice. I tried to wiggle out of the shoulder straps of the pack and the ice crackled and snapped with every little move I made. My hands hurt like someone had dislocated all the joints of my fingers and then lit them on fire. Another gift from my personal monster.
I snaked my right arm through the shoulder strap of the pack—grunting at the pain that moving that way caused. I didn’t want to lose it—never mind that the pack had dry, warm clothes and food, both of which were necessary for my immediate survival, it held all my medicine and all my weapons. I tried to sinuate my left arm through the strap, but my wrist locked as I tried to force my hand through. Intense burning pain shot up my arm, and I started trying to yank my hand out of the strap without conscious thought. The symphony of pops from the ice below me sent rimy fear shivering through my mind.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 5