Hallowed Read online

  Next, I tied the torn beach towel to the one of the Roman columns above the door, the wind just stiff enough to give it an occasional flutter. Hopefully, it would be enough to get their attention.

  I faced the door and tried to prepare myself. My hands shook. When I tried to think up another good reason why I shouldn’t go down there, the only one I kept coming up with was that I wouldn’t be competent enough. After all, my father was an officer of the law. I could get Claudia killed.

  But that “if” was countered by the immediate surety that if I did nothing, I couldn’t live with the burden that my hesitation might have contributed to her death.

  Leaving the key behind in the lock, I whispered a quick prayer, turned on my flashlight, and started down the steps. I grasped the handrail along the wall securely and probed the darkness with my light. After the initial four steps, I could see another four more steps at a ninety degree angle to the first four. These ended at another wrought iron door, this one folded like an accordion. Once I stood before it, I realized that I was looking into the car of an elevator.

  Shoving the door to one side, I shined my dim light within the car, only six by two and two feet deep, scarcely large enough for two riders (or maybe three really ambitious ones).

  The flashlight beam caught something sparkly on the floor of the car. I kneeled and saw that it was the ghost charm from Claudia’s bracelet.

  Rage flowed through me like steam through a pipe as I pocketed it with its companion. I took a moment and got myself back under control.

  She is still alive, I told myself. Go to her.

  As I climbed into the elevator car, I wondered if there could possibly be electricity to power it. Hadn’t this project been abandoned since last year when he committed suicide? Surely his estate wasn’t still paying the utility bills.

  The panel inside the car only had one button. It was labeled appropriately with the word “Descend” in ominous gothic script. What unsettled me was the fact that there was no opposing button. There was however a keyhole. I surmised that only the right key would allow this car to go back up.

  Taking a moment to consider that concept, I was forced to ask myself why someone would need to control what came up, but not down?

  Something they didn’t want to reach the surface, a voice within answered.

  This revelation did nothing to increase my enthusiasm for going down.

  Why didn’t I have the presence of mind to bring rope?

  With a sense of predestination, I reached out and slid the metal door shut. I pushed the button, and the light beneath it sprung to life. It was the first evidence of electrical power I had seen.

  The inner door rolled laboriously closed, sealing me in the claustrophobically close walls. For a moment, there was no movement and no sound indicating that the car might be preparing to move. My heart began to quicken. I considered the possibility that I was indeed trapped here in this confined space.

  Then I heard the click of a lock release, and I felt a draft on the back of my neck. I spun to find a narrow crack on one side of the wall behind me. I grasped the edge and pushed. It smoothly slid across the rollers it was seated on and opened into a long subterranean corridor of grey stone walls.

  Something was altogether wrong about it, I sensed. First of all, the quality of sound was all wrong. I should be able to hear the sort of echoes that a large chamber naturally produced. Instead, it sounded muffled. Second, there was no breeze from the mouth of the corridor.

  I stepped forward and realized a moment too late that the perspective of the corridor remained the same, then the floor dropped out from under me. My heart leaped into my throat and a second later, I realized that I was resting safely two feet below where I had started. I could still see the realistically painted image of the subterranean corridor on the wall just above me. This was the real elevator. The other had been merely another theatrical prop.

  Damn Folliott! I shook my head in frustration. On any other day, I might have appreciated this sort of scare, but today it was just going to exasperate me.

  It was then that the floor began to sink roughly into the ground, shuddering and shaking. I was moving swiftly down a shaft painted purposely blurry to give the effect of traveling at a high rate of speed, but now that my bullshit detector had been activated, I was able to see behind the magician’s cape.

  Ten seconds later, the floor shuddered then gave an upward hop to simulate a sudden drop. I turned and cast my dim light around the cold stone walls around me, looking for a break in the seamless congruity. On one wall, the following words had been chiseled into the stone: “Brick by brick, I seal his doom.” I recognized it from Mrs. Hebert’s English. It was from Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” obviously meant to conjure images of being buried alive, but I wasn’t falling for it this time.

  I put my hands on the etched wall and gave it a push.

  There was a click and the stony wall popped backwards an inch. A hallow whistling sound of a quality that was almost human called through the narrow dark seam. I pushed it open to reveal a subterranean passage. This time it felt real. The sound quality, the breeze, the drop in temperature all told me that I was in one of the many cave systems that made up the Texas hill country.

  I set foot into the large, open chamber, the nearly overpowering ammonia odor of bat guano flooding my sinuses. The fading light in my hands could now only reveal several yards at a time. As I stepped from of the elevator, I took one glance back at the car and realized that it had been built into the wall of the cave.

  It must have taken a great deal of work--more than the surface might indicate--to hallow out the space within the wall and run the equipment that it would take to install an elevator. And why? Why had Folliott wanted so badly to get to the cavern?

  My thoughts were interrupted by an electrical buzzing sound, as the floor of the elevator began to rise back up. Instinctively, I rushed forward and grabbed the outer edge of the floor as it rose to chest level. I threw all my weight into an effort to stop its progress but the car continued upward with no hesitation. I peered up at the stony crags of the wall face approaching.

  Letting go, I dropped to the floor and grabbed manically at the emergency kit, unzipping it and ripping out one of the apples I had put aside. Without calculation, I tossed the apple through the slowly diminishing entrance, hearing it roll and bounce against the back wall of the car.

  At least, they’d know, I’d been there.

  I was left with an empty shaft with no apparent way to climb back up. There seemed to be no choice but to go forward.

  Finding the remains of a small animal, I wedged the false stone wall open with a bone, for whoever might follow, and looked back up the elevator shaft one last time. It was deep, probably forty or fifty feet by my estimate.

  Snapping off my flashlight, I noticed that the only source of light, however dim, came from the elevator shaft behind me.

  I checked my watch, committing the time to memory.

  One thirty seven PM.

  Trying to conserve my batteries, I started forward, walking as far as I could get with the light from the elevator, but it didn’t take long for the darkness to swallow me.

  I shined what was left of my light along the floor and followed the pre-determined path that had been laid out, I assumed, by whoever had installed the elevator. The path rose and the ceiling dipped, until I was walking through a narrow passage. Occasionally, I would run across the bones of some small animal—possibly a bat, possibly something bigger—that had taken its last breath down here in the gloom.

  Besides a constant wail of wind, I could hear a steady drip-drip-drip of water in the distance. I tried to orient myself according to that sound by giving it the arbitrary direction of north. When the path shifted to the right and I began to hear the sound coming from my left, I called that direction east. When the sound started to fade behind me, I called the direction I was headed south.

  Then the dripping sound disappeared altoget
her and once again I was walking directionless in the darkness, a slave to Folliott or whoever had constructed this place. Were these paths here thirty-five years ago when Dad, Uncle Hank, and Ronnie Wicke had first come? And what about the elevator? If it had been constructed only recently, how had they managed to enter before? I had no way of knowing.

  I removed an apple from the emergency kit. Instead of leaving the whole thing behind on the path as I’d planned, I bit into it and spit a portion of it behind me. The white center will be easier to pick up in the darkness anyway. I had no choice but to conserve, as I had no idea how far I had yet to travel.

  Chapter 33 Friday, October 30th, (2:15pm)

  I watched with dread as the bulb on my flashlight wavered sickly. Focusing the dim pool of orange light on my wrist, I squinted down at my watch face. For nearly an hour now, I had been walking from one seemingly identical chamber to the other. The only sign that I was going in the right direction was the steady upward climb and the protesting of my calves.

  About fifteen minutes ago, a loose orange rope border had appeared threading its way from one metal rod to another, an attempt to keep those adventurous explorers who might be tempted to stray from the path on the straight and narrow. I shined the light down over the ledge to my right and saw that like a spiral stairway, I could see the lower portion of the path that I had already covered looping below me in the distance.

  What an idiot I had been for not investing in a book of matches or even a lighter!

  In my experience, something as simple as switching the batteries around could squeeze a little more juice out of them. Figured it was worth a try.

  I knelt on the cold stone floor, set the emergency kit aside, and snapped the flashlight off. Instantly, I was cast into true and complete darkness, so much so that I couldn’t even detect my hand an inch from my face.

  Carefully, I unscrewed the base and slid the first battery into my palm, placing it deliberately down against my shoe and marking its place in my memory. Removing the second one, I rubbed it briskly against my shirt and returned it to the flashlight, reaching down for the first one against my shoe.

  A sharp wail tore through the cave directly in front of me.

  Instinctively, I jerked and felt my foot kick the battery. It clattered and came to rest somewhere in the impenetrable darkness.

  Cursing myself, I reached out palms flattened, groping blindly across the cold stone floor. Remembering the elevator and its conspicuous lack of an “up” button, my ears became keenly aware of every little sound, my nerve-endings tuned to every change in the air flow around me.

  Dammit! Where was that battery?

  My hand fell on something warm. I felt whatever it was pull away beneath my palm. I shoved myself backwards in utter terror, feeling the flashlight case strike the stone floor beneath my hand, not caring for the moment whether or not I had lost the remaining battery from inside it.

  What the hell been that been?

  Then I heard a girl’s voice break the silence beside me.

  “Hello?”

  It was the high-pitched sound that only the very young can produce. She must have been barely a foot away from me.

  Then piercing the darkness, I heard that wail again in the distance. It was plaintive and devoid of all humanity. Yet, it was the sort of sound an animal could never have made. Only a soul in indescribable pain could have produced it.

  There was a whimper beside me, once again sounding like a young girl.

  “Are you lost too?” the tiny voice asked.

  “Don’t worry,” I heard myself saying. “I’m going to help you.”

  “Do you know the way out?” I could hear the aching hope in the child’s voice and the hunger for reassurance.

  I spoke into the darkness. “Yes,” I lied to her. Then, before I could consider the consequences of a response, I heard myself ask the question: “What’s your name?”

  “Tracy.” My heart momentarily skipped a beat.

  I found myself saying: “Tracy, my name is Paul.”

  Then she began to cry, but it was a sound of great relief, no longer of fear.

  “You’re going to be safe,” I told her. “Hold on while I turn on this light.”

  The next time I heard the tiny questioning voice, it was starting to fade, almost as if her body was being whisked away from me at a great distance and speed. “Paul? Are you still there? Paul?” By the time she uttered my name for the last time, her voice had faded totally below my range of hearing.

  I reached out instinctively toward the sound, and my hand closed around the cold tubular shape of the “C” cell battery. I yanked the flashlight case up, slid the battery back in with its brother, and firmly tightened the cap back down on the base.

  I had light again.

  Panting in an attempt to catch my breath, I turned the wavering beam first one way, then the other. The chamber was exactly as it had been before I’d turned off the light.

  “Tracy?”

  My god! What had just happened, I asked myself

  All the muscles that I had involuntarily kept tense the last few minutes, loosened all at once. I began to quiver uncontrollably.

  How long had the experience actually lasted?

  I stood and trained the flashlight down at my wrist. The beam was consistent this time, though not any brighter than it had been. I knew it would die very soon, this time permanently. I had to find my way out of here now.

  I peered down at my watch, then did a double take.

  It read two-forty. Had nearly thirty minutes just passed?

  How was that possible?

  Time… had a funny way of slipping past in the darkness, I recalled Tracy saying.

  I looked down at the empty stone floor beside me, searching for any evidence of a small child. There was no footprint smaller than my own in the dust.

  “Hello?” I called tentatively. Then after a few moments, I tried a much louder, “Hello, Tracy!”

  No response, beyond my own echo.

  And what about the scream, I asked myself. One thing I knew; it hadn’t been Claudia. It couldn’t have been human. What sort of creature could produce a sound like that? An owl, I told myself. A screech owl can sound like a screaming kid.

  That was no screech owl, the reasonable part of my nature interjected.

  I reached into my pocket and opened the blade of my knife, tucking it into the hand that held the emergency kit. Taking a deep breath, I started forward again along the path with the kit and knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

  Less than thirty minutes later, the light once again began to waver.

  I knew without a doubt that it was going out for good this time.

  I rushed forward in a heated attempt to get as far as possible on the last bit of juice that was left in those “C” cells. The last thing I saw just before the light gave out completely was the next big open chamber. I skidded to a stop just inside as the light finally flickered out. I put the useless flashlight back into the emergency kit--somehow resisting the urge to hurl it as hard as I could against the nearest wall. Hesitantly, I closed the knife and pocketed it. I didn’t need the added aggravation of a stab wound.

  My hands held out before me, I marched blindly ahead into the darkness, my arms weaving back and forth before me, my legs rigid and robotic.

  Hurry, I heard a voice distinctly say. She needs your help.

  My confidence level rising with the success I’d had so far, I shuffled quicker.

  Run, Paul. Run.

  I had actually begun to trot, when the toe of my sneaker struck what felt like a raised ridge, and I fell forward wildly off balance, my hands shooting out in front of me in an effort to fall on something other than my face. My arms fell completely into empty space. I felt my chest strike the ridge I had just tripped over, momentarily knocking the wind out of me. For an instant, I grasped at the hope that I could see light, realizing a moment later, that I was witnessing neural fireworks thanks to the lack of
oxygen.

  I rolled over onto my back and lay there gasping for air, feeling the tinkling of a thousand small cuts on my palms and eventually regaining enough motor control to crawl to my knees. The ridge I had tripped over was the border of the path.

  I hawked as much saliva as I could into my mouth and shot it out in front of me with as much force as I could manage. I cocked my ear and listened for the silence to break. I had counted to ten before I heard a splat far, far below.

  Taking a deep breath, I rolled again onto my back and squeezed my eyes shut.

  I had nearly walked off into a dead drop.

  At some point, the rope border had completely disappeared.

  I groped about and found the emergency roadside kit. Well, there’s something approximating good luck, I thought. At least I hadn’t hurled that accidentally over the edge.

  Unzipping it, I found the bottled water and poured a handful into my stinging palms, then took a small sip, reminding myself that I must conserve. No telling how long I might be down here.

  Come to us.

  The voice had come from a few yards to the left in the empty darkness of the void, but this voice was distinctly different than the one that had called my name just before I had fallen.

  I rolled from my knees to my feet and took a few steps away before I realized that I heard laughter. The sound was warm and welcoming, at odds with the very nature of the environment that enveloped me.

  It sounded like other people.

  Then I stared up into the darkness and realized that I was seeing browns instead of blacks. I squeezed my eyes shut then ventured another look. Now I was definitely seeing the thinnest suggestion of light coming from somewhere below.

  “Hello!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  There was silence, followed by two dim voices answering simultaneously.

  “Hey,” the distant voices answered from far below.

  “It’s me,” I bellowed, crawling to the edge and hanging my head over.

  “Hank! That you?”

  Was that Dad, I asked myself?

  “Up here!”