The Cave

by Tom Clarke

  As the two men entered the small room they both came to a stop, muzzles up covering an empty space. There was a single candle burning on the ground next to a tall stand up mirror.

  “What the hell is that thing doing here?” Jim said as he scanned the small room for the person he had seen not just 20-seconds ago.

  As Jim and Nico stepped into the room an image started to appear on the mirror. It was an image of a young pre-teen girl in a flower print summer dress. She was walking with a tall man in a brown suit. Jim looked on, recognizing the man in the suit as the man he had made the deal with back in the woods.

  As they looked on the image in the mirror portrayed the man in the brown suit walking with the young girl into a garden. The girl turned to say something to the man who suddenly raised a large hunting knife above his head and buried it into the girl’s chest. The young girl screamed, fell to her knees, and tried to remove the knife as the color drained from her face. Crying, she fell onto her side, the man in the brown suit raised his hands in the air with his palms facing out and started to dance.

  “Jim” Nico said in a hushed yell, “Over there, in the corner. It’s the tablet!”

  Jim turned from the mirror and could see partially buried in the dirt, a stone tablet. “Is that it?” Jim said as he walked over to it trying to shake off the images he had just seen.

  Nico and Jim both knelt and took a knee, looking at the partially buried tablet with their flashlights. Nico started to reach for the tablet then stopped, quickly withdrawing his hand, he grasped and shouldered his rifle pulling the stock tight into his shoulder. “Did you hear that!?” Nico said as he pivoted towards the passageway that lead back towards the entrance.

  Jim and Nico both stood, Jim bringing the muzzle of his shotgun to bear on the darkness in front of them. “What?” Jim asked as he scanned the blackness in front of them. “Nico! What did you hear?” Jim asked again.

  Nico brought the muzzle of his M-4 rifle up, pointing in at the darkness in front of him. He took a few steps forward and stopped, “Jim, grab that tablet, we have to get out of here!”

  Before Jim could say anything, Nico moved to the side of the passageway and took a kneeling position near the wall, covering the darkness in front of him.

  Jim turned back to where the tablet was buried. He stepped forward, knelt, and started to dig the flat stone out of the dirt. As he pulled the stone tablet free of the dirt floor, he heard a voice, a whisper, coming from the darkness behind him. “He’s not who he appears to be” the voice said.

  Jim turned and saw nothing but darkness and shadows cast by his flashlight. A chill ran through his body as a child’s voice called to him by name from the darkness, “Jim, they must not get the stone. He will betray you.”

  Jim stopped, looked up and saw that Nico was still facing towards the passageway. As Jim looked back down at the tablet, now free from its dirt resting place, an urge to destroy it suddenly welled up inside him. He had a flash of himself standing and firing his shotgun point blank into the stone. The vision of himself destroying the stone tablet was suddenly replaced with the memory of his wedding day, dancing with his wife, trips they had taken together, the fights they had, and then the smile on her face when he retired from law enforcement.

  Jim smiled then the rage that he had felt when he realized that his wife had been kidnapped came storming back into his mind. The happy, calming memories had had were replaced with a storm of violent images of what he was going to do to the people, the monsters, who had abducted his wife. Anger clouded his mind as he ground his teeth together, reached down and pulled the stone tablet from the dirt.

  As Jim stood with the tablet a slight glow came from the standing mirror in the opposite corner of the small chamber they were in. “He will kill you all!” the child’s voice said as Jim placed the tablet into his backpack.

  “Not if I kill them all first!” Jim replied with a snarl in his voice.

  “What?” Nico asked as he stood.

  “Nothing” Jim replied. “I’ve got it. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  As Jim moved up to join Nico he grabbed the mirror and slammed it to the ground destroying the glass face. Stepping over the broken mirror he suddenly could hear squelch coming across his radio. As he and Nico moved forward, back up the passage heading towards the entrance, Jim called into his portable, “Darrel come in. Darrel do you copy?”

  As they got closer to the entrance, Jim could hear a voice mixed in with the squelch. “Stop!” Jim said to Nico as they entered the main chamber, just short of the entrance.

  “Darrel do you copy?” Jim said into the portable radio again. As Jim adjusted the volume on the radio he heard the voice again, this time a little clearer, “Kill them when you come out” the voice said.

  Jim and Nico both looked at the radio in Jim’s hand, and then at each other. Before either could speak there was another voice coming across.

  It was Darrel talking in a whisper, “Jim, Nico, be advised company out front. Jim, how do you copy?”

  Jim and Nico each took a position on either side of the passage leading to the entrance.

  “Go ahead Darrel” Jim spoke into the radio.

  Darrel hushed voice came crackling back, “Contact times four at the entrance. Four males, three dressed in priest attire, one in a suite. No visible weapons, no visible vehicles, no other contacts.”

  “Copy, stand by” Jim replied.

  Jim made eye contact with Nico, he then pointed at him and then with his hand open and flat, palm facing the ground motioned for Nico to stay in his position. Nico nodded and took a knee.

  As Nico covered him Jim slowly edged up to the entrance, just close enough so that he could see the men standing out front. After looking, he slowly moved back into the darkness of the cave. Once back with Nico he again radioed Darrel. “Darrel, Jim.”

  “Go ahead” Darrel replied.

  “We are going to come out and confront them. If I pop the bang hit the one in the suit.”

  “Copy Jim, when you pop the bang I will hit the suit.”

  “Affirmative” Jim replied. “We will then fall back to the truck and meet you there.”

  There was a short silence, “Copy, fall back to the truck.”

  Jim puts the radio back into his pack and looked at Nico, who had a look of confusion on his face. “Bang, what bang?” Nico whispered. “What are you talking about?”

  From the side cargo pocket on his pants Jim pulled a flash-bang partially out. Nico nodded in agreement. The two of them then raised the muzzles of their rifles and moved towards the entrance.

  As they stepped from the darkness of the cave and into the waning light of the day they came face to face with three men dressed in traditional priest attire, and a fourth that was dressed in a nice looking, dark colored, expensive suite.

  “Get your hands up!” Jim yelled as he aggressively approached the four men at gunpoint.

  All four of the men raised their hands as Jim and Nico approached them. “Mr. Richards, please, we are on your side” the priest standing in the center of the group said. “We are not here for you, we are here for him” the priest then said pointing at Nico.

  Jim leveled his shotgun at the priest’s chest, “If you drop your hands again the only thing you will be here for is a gunshot wound!”

  The priest smiled and raised his hands again. “Who are you?” Jim asked.

  The priest turned towards Nico, “Nico, we know it was you. Please, there is still time, come home, come home to God, let us help you!”

  Jim walked over and in a swift motion struck the priest in the side of his hip with the butt of his shotgun. The priest winced in pain and stepped back, “I’m asking the fucking questions here!” Jim yelled. “Now, again, who are you?”

  Before the priest had a chance to answer, the man in the suit stepped forward towards Jim. He made it one step and suddenly found the barrel of Nico’s rifle in his face.

  “You move again playboy and my m
an Nico is going to punch some .223 sized holes in your dumb ass! Gentleman, I’m on a tight schedule so if no one has anything to say to me we will be moving on, try to stop us and I will plant you in a ditch!”

  The priest standing in the back moved forward placing a hand on the shoulder of the man Jim had just hit with his shotgun. “Mr. Richards our names are not important as we serve God and not man. I am Nico’s superior and I am here to bring him home, along with the tablet you have in your backpack.”

  Jim stepped closer to the priest, “First off you cannot have the tablet, I need it for some personal business. Second, I think Nico is going to go wherever he wants to go, with me, with you, back up the road to that stupid little safe house you have. However, I suspect that it’s going to be with me.”

  “It’s funny that you mentioned the safe house” the priest said turning towards Nico. “You didn’t have to kill them Nico. The old man looked up to you, he used to talk about you all the time. You didn’t need to kill them.”

  Jim looked past the priest at Nico, who still had the barrel of his rifle pointed directly at the head of the man in the suit. “I didn’t kill anyone” Nico said as he adjusted the rifle against his shoulder.

  “Nico, my son, we went to the house, we saw the bodies. We know that it was you. We also know that you allowed those men to enter the cathedral with the explosives.”

  “I had nothing to do with that!” Nico yelled back, his grip on his rifle getting even tighter. “We were infiltrated, for all I know it was you!” he yelled spinning and pointing the rifle at the priest. “Jim, I swear to you I did not kill those men at the safe house!”

  “Nico” the priest said with a half-smile on his face. “You walked away from God once, please don’t make the same mistake. Come back with us. Bring the tablet and come back with us, Jim you are welcome too. Come home to God.”

  “Which God?” Jim asked, grinding his teeth. “The loving God that I knew as a child, the one that my wife prays to every night? Or the God that crawls out from under piles of dead and broken bodies!”

  The expression on the face of the priest changed, a scowl ran across his face. “Mr. Richards, I know this is hard for you to understand, but they are one and the same. You cannot have the light without the dark, good without evil…. they are one and the same. I would have thought that you, someone who spent your entire adult life wading through the evil that men visit upon each other would understand that.”

  Jim just stared at the priest, his mouth open and his head slightly shaking from side to side. “I fucking knew it! You and your sharply dressed boy toy are with him! Aren’t you!?”

  The priest took a deep breath, “I knew you would not understand. We are on the side of balance, there needs to be a balance between the dark and the light and yes, sometimes that means that the light must fade a little. That does not mean we are on the side of evil. We serve God!”

  Jim just looked at the priest, an expression of disbelief rolling across his face. “I know your plight my son” the priest said in a gentle voice. “I sympathize, but I cannot let you give them the tablet, even at the cost of your wife.”

  The look of disbelief suddenly turned to one of rage. The priest saw the anger flashing in Jim’s eyes, “Please, my son, try and understand” the priest said as he reached out a hand towards Jim. “You have done a wonderful thing here, retrieving the tablet. Now we can take possession of it and ensure its safety within the walls of the church.”

  “And want about my wife?” Jim said as he burned a hole in the priest’s chest with his stare.

  The priest put his other hand up, “She will be with God my son. All her pain and suffering in this world will be done. She will be in a better place, waiting for you.”

  Jim just stood there, he felt a heavy weight slowly enveloping his body. It was as if all the pain and anger he had been feeling since his wife’s abduction was coming home to roost all at once. He was so tired, maybe the priest was right, maybe he should just give in and accept the very real possibility that Shelly was gone, and he was playing right into the hands of the ones who had taken her.

  As Jim stood there an image began to form in his mind’s eye, a memory from when he was a young recruit at the police academy. It was the state police training sergeant in charge of his squad. “Why do we take the pain?” the sergeant yelled. “So others don’t have to” Jim replied out loud.

  “I beg your pardon,” the priest said. Jim looked up, straight into the eyes of the priest, “I take the pain so others don’t have to!” Jim said in an aggressive tone of voice.

  Jim stepped back from the priest, “If you were really a man of God you would be finding ways to help me free my wife from those evil fucks that grabbed her. Not trying to fulfil your own agendas!”

  The priest stood up as straight as he could, “How dare you speak to me in that way! I am a man of the cloth, a servant of God! I speak for the church and his holiness.” Before he could finish his sentence, the priest felt a heavy blow to the side of his head, a sharp pain and then his ears started ringing.

  The priest took a step back as Jim reached up and again struck him in the side of his head with his handgun, pistol whipping the stammering priest to his knees. Jim then raised the muzzle of his handgun towards the other two members of the party, “I will kill you where you stand!”

  Jim looked at the priest on his knees, and then up at the other two men who were with him. “I too am a servant of God!” Jim said in an aggressive loud voice. “I’m going to bring his divine justice, wrath, and pain to the evil you assholes have allowed to fester and grow!”

  Jim stepped forward and put the barrel of his .45 caliber handgun against the forehead of the priest who was kneeling on the ground, bleeding from the side of his head, “I’m talking Old Testament wrath! Doom to anyone who opposes me! So, if you want to survive the next few seconds I suggest that you pick yourself up and run as fast as you can back to your world of choir boys and collection plates. Now!”

  The two priests, feeling that they had just met the real devil, turned and started running back in the direction they had come from.

  The man in the suit just stood there, staring at Nico. “My brother you know that I don’t scare as easily as the ones who wear the collar.”

  “I know” Nico replied as he lowered the muzzle of his rifle to a low-ready position. “Please, Dimitri, I did not kill the bookkeeper or the shop owner. I ask you to believe me, you know me, I’m not the bad guy.”

  The man in the suit lowered his head and in a thick Russian accent said, “Nico, we have been together for many years, I know the true you. I know what you did all those years ago, and I know your curse.”

  Jim watched as the man in the suit stepped close to Nico and put his hand on his shoulder, “My brother when Jesus wept he wept for you, not at the pain you inflicted when you struck him with your spear, he wept for you.”

  Nico lowered the muzzle of his rifle completely down, so it was pointing at the ground. “I know your pain my brother. So-called men of the cloth, like the ones that just ran from here have told us that you are a traitor. They said that you were the one who allowed those bombers into the church. They said that you were attempting to recover the tablet for your own personal gain, not for the glory of God.”

  The Russian turned from Nico and Jim and looked up to the sky, “That’s why I volunteered to come with those cowards today, I wanted to, I had to, see for myself. I am sorry my brother, I never should have doubted you.”

  The Russian turned back and faced Nico and Jim. “You told me once that you felt the church had been infiltrated, I laughed. I should not have, you were right, we have been infiltrated. Slowly and with great deception, evil has taken a seat at our table, making good men believe that evil deeds are really the work of God. The balance, no good without the dark, how could I have been so stupid? I am ashamed my brother.”

  “No more!” The Russian said as he reached out and took Nico’s hand. “I am with you!�
� The Russian then turned to Jim, “Sir, we are with you until we rescue your wife and stop this evil or until we are dead in the fight!”

  Jim looked at Nico, “We?” The Russian smiled, “Yes brothers. Nico the squad awaits a call from me to join your fight. 10 of us fully equipped and ready to go.”

  “Well, let’s get going then,” Jim said as he smiled at Nico.

  “What are you smiling at Jim?” Nico asked as they turned and started walking back towards their SUV.

  “You” Jim said as he patted his friend on the back. “You and your merry band of church commandos.”

  Jim stepped around Nico and walked next to the Russian. “So, Dimitri is it?” Jim said as he held out his hand. Dimitri smiled and shook Jim’s hand, “It’s nice to finally meet you. The great Jim Richards, we have been keeping tabs on you since you and Nico shot up that strip club. Nice work by the way.”

  Jim smiled and then pulled out the handheld radio. “Darrel, you copy?”