“Look what we found,” Amos announced loudly.
Everyone within earshot stopped what they were doing and turned to us. A cold shudder vibrated through my bones when their eyes fell upon me. They started muttering to each other as we walked to the staircase, then climbed it.
My guess that the hollow spaces were homes was right. Every so often, I looked into a window or open doorway to get a quick peek inside. They had furniture, hanging ornaments, and wall paintings. They even had pets. Blue lizards the size of small dogs sat on everything, mostly clinging to the walls. They perched on people’s shoulders, while smaller ones encircled their owner’s arms like bracelets. More glowing bats hung upside down in cages.
We kept climbing. People asked me why I was here or why we—meaning us aboveground people—couldn’t stay in our own territory. I gave no reply.
I could only imagine what they’d do to me if I answered honestly. Each spoke with a British accent like Amos and Frankie. I was dying to know who they were and why they lived underground. They couldn’t be from England or anywhere else from the outside world. Like the Shark Hunters and man-eating stingrays, these people had to be native to the island. If I ever saw Calla again, I’d throw that in her face.
We reached a cave at the top of the staircase. The door was half open and Amos knocked on it. “Killian, are you in there?”
“Aye,” came a voice. “Come in.”
Frankie shoved me into the room. Many candles set the room aglow in a range of sapphire and jade. The cave had many creatures inside. More lizards rested on furniture and walls, while shiny silver fish glided along in a large crystal bowl in the center of the room. Moss and short vines hung from the ceiling with small hairless rodents crawling through them. I became so engrossed in the décor that I failed to notice a pale man lying on a bed in the far corner of the room.
“What is it?” Killian asked in a raspy tone.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Amos said, stopping at the foot of the bed. “We captured another intruder.”
Killian lay on his side, reading a book, oblivious to me until Amos spoke. He was the palest one I’d seen yet, with gray hair thinning around the bald area on his bumpy head. What little hair he had was knotted and shoulder-length.
He craned his neck to look at me and his electric blue eyes glowed in the dark. “What’s your name?”
“Heath Sharp.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“Just exploring. I found a hole and—”
“I don’t need a full explanation!” he cut in.
His sharp tone agitated his throat and he coughed into a cloth. It got to the point where it sounded like he was choking. When the attack subsided, he wiped tears from his bony cheeks and sat up. Beside him was a table with a jar of leaves and a bowl of syrup. I recognized it as the same kind of medicine West had brought me that morning.
“Come closer,” he ordered, dipping a leaf into the bowl.
I stepped to the foot of the bed where he sat Indian-style. He shoved the leaf between his teeth and chewed it with an open mouth. We made eye contact for a long moment; or, at least, what I took was a long moment. I wanted answers, but these people had a low tolerance for disobedience and I’d been told not to speak.
“You look strong,” he said with a mouth full of chewed leaf. “You’ll become very useful around here.”
The hell with that. “Who are you people?”
“Don’t bloody speak unless you’re spoken to, worm!” Frankie shouted.
“And why the hell do you speak with a British accent?”
Amos grabbed my arm, about to pull me away, when I snatched it back. His hold was weak compared to mine.
“I want some goddamn answers!” I exclaimed angrily. I’d tried going with the flow but I couldn’t take it anymore. I was ready to fight off both Amos and Frankie. Frankie still had my gun but he seemed to have forgotten about it. Instead, they pointed their swords at me.
I thought to grab Amos’ weapon and use it to fight my way out, but that wasn’t such a sound plan. Even if I seized the weapon and got out of Killian’s home, I still had a horde of others to deal with.
In any case, I never got a chance to make a daring escape. I was struck in the back of the head with something hard enough to bring me to my knees. When I was down, I saw that Killian had a small stone statue in his hand.
“Next time you bring me these things, make sure they’re bound.”
“Yes, sir,” Frankie said. He brought out my pistol and whacked me across the head with it.
* * *
I woke in another low-light cave and found I wasn’t alone.
“Are you all right, lad?” a man asked.
I rolled my head over to find him sitting beside me.
“You people are assholes,” I grumbled, slowly sitting up.
“No, lad, we’re not them folk.”
I studied him in confusion. His complexion wasn’t as pale as the others and his dull eyes spoke of a long hardship. “Who are you?”
“I’m Captain James McCarran. I’ve been trapped in this Godforsaken place since 1688.”
“You’ve been down here all that time?”
“Mostly. Me and the crew explored the island and came across a cave on the side of the mountain, near the shore. We got lost in its maze of endless tunnels. Eventually, these demons found us and brought us here.”
I scanned the cave we were in. It was relatively large, set on the ground level of the village, segregated by bars. I counted thirty people, if not more, locked in with us, some women, but mostly men. They sat around in a circle, staring at me.
“Are you all from the same ship?” I asked.
“No, only myself is left,” the captain said soberly. “The rest of my men died throughout the years, either by their own hand or killed trying to escape.”
“Sixteen eighty-eight?” I said, rubbing the knot on my head. “I don’t remember any record of a ship gone missing that far back.”
“Probably wouldn’t, since we were pirates. I doubt there’s a record out there that even says we existed.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve been here since 1940,” another man said, pointing to six other men.
“You were with Calla Newbury?”
“That’s right, sport,” another one in the group said. “Did she talk you into coming here?”
“No. Actually, she didn’t want me to come at all.”
“Really? She was all gung-ho about sending us down here. She was too afraid to come herself but wanted us to return and report what we found. You should’ve listened to her and stayed out.”
“I’m starting to see that now,” I said grimly.
“The rest of us,” someone else spoke, “come from other times. Some of us have been here since the eighteen hundreds, the latest, since the eighties.”
“What’s your name, son?” a man with sandy blond hair asked.
“Heath.”
“I’m Jack.” He pointed to another young man with a scar on his chin. “That’s Ernest.”
“How’s it going?” Ernest said with a New York accent.
“I’m Clint,” a young man said in a deep voice.
“David.”
“And I’m Jeff.”
Everyone went through roll call, though I only remembered the first five names because my mind wandered to something I wanted to know. “What are these people doing underground?”
“They’ve always been living under the earth, I suppose,” Clint said. “The captain told us they’ve lived in this village since he was caught.”
I turned my attention to McCarran. “Really?”
“Aye. When they captured me and my crew, they were fascinated by us, but also afraid. They kept us locked up like livestock for weeks. Eventually, we began talking to them, and they listened. We taught them to speak English.”
“Do they live forever too?” I asked, noting the children I’d seen when they’d brought me through the vil
lage. I wondered if they’d all been born here.
“No, they are as mortal as we once were,” McCarran said. “I’ve seen many generations come and go in the course of my long imprisonment.”
“They took my Brothers Grimm storybook,” complained a young man. “I should like to have it returned someday.”
“They once spoke their own language,” McCarran went on. “But, in time, they converted to English, even adopted our inflections. We tried befriending them but they never allowed us to leave. Once in a while, one of my crew managed to slip away, only to be killed by their hunters.”
I remembered Ruby and Calla telling me how the organisms on the island were altered by the island’s own DNA, creating weird and aggressive versions of the original. It seemed the same thing had happened to these people. They were like us, but because they’d evolved within the island’s boundaries, they’d somehow become underground dwellers. I doubted any of them, especially the kids, had ever seen sunlight.
“What do they make you do?”
“Cleanup, mostly,” Jack replied. “Repair work or anything else they don’t want to do themselves. The other day, a hunter found a body and took me and Clint to the spot where it was. They made us drag it off and bury it. Y’know, get it out of sight.”
Phil, I thought.
“They made you disturb the body? Who touched it first?”
Jack and Clint looked at me in confusion.
“I did,” Jack said.
“Can you relay a message for me?”
“Relay a message to who?”
“To the dead man. I want to tell him I’m sorry for what happened to him.”
I could hear the footsteps of an insect scampering by, it was so quiet. Eventually, Jack spoke. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh!” a woman pounced in, “he’s talking about that thing with the dead.”
Jack turned back to me. “That shit doesn’t happen down here.”
“Really? Why not?”
He shrugged. “Got me. I have to say I’m grateful for it. When we lived on the surface, we had a few fellas claiming the souls of their dead chums followed them around even after they’d buried them. It wasn’t a pretty sight watching them go through that.”
“Have you guys seen that strange pond below us?”
“Yeah,” Ernest said. “What about it?”
“I think it’s what keeps this island alive.”
“You mean the fragment,” Clint cut in. “Calla said its part of some other second moon that once orbited our planet.”
“That’s why I’m here, to see if it’s true. If it’s destroyed, the island might die.”
“What would happen then?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know.”
For some reason, I turned to McCarran, who’d seldom spoken. He looked at me with those broken eyes of his and gave a slow shrug. “Can’t do anything about it now. Once they have you, there’s no getting out. They don’t fancy intruders. They’ve even killed the ones they’ve caught when their leader decided there was no use for them. I think they’re scared. They’re curious but too damn afraid to coexist with those living aboveground. I suppose they view us as dangerous invaders, untrustworthy foreigners. Long ago, their ancestors asked me if my crew and I came from the ships with lights that used to fly around the island.”
I thought about the other aliens Ruby and Calla had mentioned. Had the ancestors of these underground dwellers once seen them hovering in the sky?
“I’ve been imprisoned for four centuries and their arrogance hasn’t changed. We’re trapped here forever and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
* * *
A couple of hours went by. I stood by the bars, watching the villagers. A guard stood off to the side of the cell, armed with a sword. Once in a while, a villager glanced at me as they passed, saying nothing.
I watched the stage play. This time, they performed a scene from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. A woman wearing a goat mask pretended to cut open the stomach of a man in a wolf outfit in order to free the children he’d eaten. Kids in goat masks crawled out one by one from the oversized costume. The woman then filled the belly with stones.
I was sick of stumbling into unsolved mysteries. Ever since I’d come to the island, I’d been trying to escape, only to end up digging myself in deeper. When I finally found a possible way out, I got locked in a cage. This sucked.
“You’re a real dolt for coming down this way,” the guard whispered to me.
“What?”
He looked over his shoulder. I recognized him. “Dustan?”
“Aye, you remembered. See your wits returned, eh?”
Dustan hadn’t been a part of my hallucinations after all. He was just a curious youth who’d had the courage to speak to an outsider. Now he was my prison guard.
“Dustan, get me outta here,” I pleaded.
“I can’t do that. I’d be killed if I let you escape, and I don’t know you well enough to sacrifice so much. Sorry, chap.”
A gunshot exploded. People screamed. Everyone in the cell raced to the bars.
“Where’s my friend!” Starr hollered. “I know you have him!”
Starr stood at the main entrance to the village and he wasn’t alone. Amos was in front of him, his hand slightly in the air.
“Starr!” I shouted as loud as I could.
He turned in my direction. “There you are.”
“Starr, get out of here! Go get help!”
Knowing he was alive gave me hope. It also filled me with dread. If there was any chance for freedom, he was it, unless he got locked up too. Or worse.
Ruby appeared. The villagers stood like statues at the sight of her.
“What is that bloody thing?” Dustan asked, clutching his sword.
“Don’t try to fight it,” I said. “You’ll only make it angrier.”
I didn’t like calling Ruby an it, but referring to her that way sounded more fearsome.
Starr tossed Amos aside and approached my cell. Ruby made strange hissing sounds to keep everyone at bay. Starr aimed his gun one way, then the other, ordering everyone to stay back.
“What goes on here?” Killian bellowed.
I peeked around as Killian stepped down the stone stairs. “Starr, he’s their leader! Grab him!”
Starr rushed over and seized Killian by the collar of his robe. He jabbed the gun under Killian’s chin and said, “Order your people to unlock that door or I’ll have my alien friend infect your village with a painful life-threatening illness!”
Mean, I had to admit, but effective. Captain McCarran was right. These people’s nerves were as frail as tissue paper. They had no idea what Ruby was or what she was cable of doing, and that scared color into them.
Killian ordered Dustan to unlock the cell door. When he did, I told everyone inside to leave. They all did, except for McCarran.
“We have to go,” I urged.
He was apprehensive, too afraid to move. I grabbed him by the arm and pushed him forward.
“What the hell is that?” Clint asked, looking at Ruby.
“She’s a friend of mine. And she’s helping us, so don’t be a dick to her.”
Starr came up to us, dragging Killian with him. “Let’s go.”
We headed toward the cave’s entrance with the villager’s eyes following us. To make certain no one interfered, Ruby let loose with a loud screech, sending them into a panic. They ran for the safety of their homes and never came out again.
“Where did you two come from?” I asked as we hurried down the curvy tunnel.
“I’ll tell you later,” Starr said, pushing Killian on. “Did you notice that pool below us?”
“Yeah. Is it—”
“The life sourrrce,” Ruby cut in. “Yesss. We havvve found the fragggment’s weakness.”
Chapter Thirty-four
We traveled down the coiling tunnel toward the energy pool by the light of the torch I held.
“Let me go
, you bloody bastards!” Killian cried, then coughed harshly.
“Why do you people sound like you’re all from England?” Starr asked, shoving our hostage forward.
Killian caught his balance and brought himself back to full height. When he turned to face Starr, he had a hateful expression I hadn’t seen since I’d jokingly told an ex-girlfriend her butt looked big in her new dress.
“Easy,” I said, stepping in, “he’s not a POW.”
“We need to get baaack to the surrrface,” Ruby urged.
“Holy cow!” someone shouted. “You talk?”
“She speaks dozens of languages,” I said. “And not all from this planet.”
“What should we do with Contagious here?” Starr asked.
“Bring him,” I said. “We might need to use him as leverage if his people come after us.”
Luckily, the journey wasn’t far. I kept hearing the racing steps of Killian’s people echoing behind us, while Ruby screeched intermittently to scare them away. If it weren’t for their fearfulness, we might have already been killed.
The salt of the ocean scented the air as we came to a low tunnel. At the end was a small crawl space where the sweet smell of freedom became stronger.
“This opening should be closed off,” Killian said angrily. “People must have been leaving the underground again. I’ll have them killed for this!”
I waved for the previous prisoners to go ahead. They didn’t have to be told twice. There were lots of them, some crying, others shoving. Waiting for them to crawl out only intensified the suspense. McCarran, though, stayed in place.
“Get Ruby and Killian out,” I said to Starr, taking the torch from him.
“Those freaks are right behind us,” Starr argued.
“Just go.”
Thankfully, he didn’t protest, but helped Ruby into the crawl space. As he shoved Killian in after her, I took McCarran by the arm. “Don’t be stupid. Do you want them to take you prisoner again?”
“It’s been four hundred years since I’ve breathed the ocean air,” he choked out tearfully. “I’ve forgotten that smell.”
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