Christie and James looked down at Maeven, and she looked up at their surprised and relieved faces, looking down on her inverted. They had heard the noises in the vehicle and had climbed up carefully onto the floating junk pile unsure of what or who they might find.
Begglar, Nell and I were the last to ascend the pile, and the climb over tangled cables, around sharp unstable pieces of rusted metal and battered car parts that could just as easily slice and cut through flesh if we made a misstep in our ascent.
The junk pile was not accessible from where we entered the cavern without attempting a swim through the water, but we were hesitant to do so. As serene as it might seem, the clear bluish water was too perfect. This was not a Caribbean isle, with pristine ocean blue waters and white sands, typical of a Sandals Resort commercial, but an underground cave with seepage from a junk pile. No telling what chemical mix might be within those waters. What acidic component might cause burning the moment we entered the waters.
James had found a floating piece of an aluminum wing, bumping gently along the shoreline, and with some effort, we were able to draw it towards the rocky shore and utilize it as a makeshift raft. Its surface was mottled, and patches of paint had flaked off, but we could tell it had once been a dark blue with a large white star on the end of the wing. It was made of riveted aluminum and floated just as easily as any flat bottom boat would have. In the construction of such aircraft, the gas tanks were often within the wing of these styled planes, and when we stepped upon it and tested out weight, it buckled slightly and seemed to be hollow, like a pontoon. The fuselage of the wing was nowhere in sight but could have just as easily been somewhere submerged within the water below. The wing had torn and had a ragged sharp edge of twisted panels, but enough of the hollow sealed plating kept most of the water out. Something about the appearance of the wing jogged a memory, but I could not be sure that its shape was more than coincidence. The wing was not of the modern F-Series fighter jet types, but more in line with the period in which the old cars were in fashion.
A mysterious disappearance. A lost propeller-driven fighter plane, a squadron that had mysteriously vanished around the time the old cars and other battered appliances were in modern use. These were navy planes. TBM Avenger torpedo bombers to be more precise. If my suspicions were correct this might very well be a wing of one of the missing Flight 19 training squadron that vanished just off the coast of Florida back in 1945. In an area that had come to be known as the Devil’s Triangle. A region whose vertices were drawn from islands and major cities Miami; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Bermuda. An area known also as The Bermuda Triangle.
It made my head spin. How could this and the other Surface World items have gotten here? What other mysterious did this Mid-World hold that had a connection to unsolved disappearances?
This had been my speculations, but since I could not corroborate them, I just made a mental note to file the details away and search out what I could not have known from popularized stories later that might have been sensationalized for the public for dramatic effect. Like any official investigation of suspicious activity, officials often hold back information from the public and press briefings so that they may assess a credible source from a huckster’s tales seeking their fifteen minutes of fame rather than providing useful details that might solve a case. With the held information, they are able to detect some inconsistencies or credibility in accounts that are phoned-in tips provided to the investigative team.
Since the mysterious disappearances were over seventy years old, more of those held back details may have been released within the literature surrounding the incident. Every plane has some uniquely identifiable markings so that they can be distinguished in a salvage operation, and each piece will have an issued serial number that could link back to the plane, its line, and its manufacturer and model. The numbers were like a fingerprint that could be cross-referenced.
Begglar and I used the wing and his staff to pole push the makeshift raft through the water to the base of the debris pile, ferrying our intrepid team from the rocky shore’s edge to the back of the cave. James and Christie had gone first and were the first to hear the distinctive cries coming from the blue sedan precariously balanced twenty feet up from the water surface. Sure enough, the blue water had a slight corrosive effect on Begglar’s staff as he plunged it into the topaz deep, pushing the craft from the bank. We were again right to be suspicious of it.
Begglar, Nell and I were the last ones to come to the edge of the junk metal mound, when we heard James and Christie’s discovery. Quick as we could, we exited the raft, scrambled up the hill to be a party to their miraculous discovery. It had been perhaps a half hour or so since Maeven’s disappearance, and to find her translocated in another part of this cave system was mind-blowing and surreal.
Maeven stared, unable to believe her own eyes. She had tensed, her fingers curled behind her knuckles her breathing coming in rapid panting as she almost flung her fist savagely upward to thwart the plans of her perceived attackers. Finding instead her friends and companions, she caught herself before doing damage.
“How did you…? What is this…? Where is the hospital…? How did I get here?”
Both James and Christie laughed in delight and relief.
“You’re back. You’re safe. Nell says you awakened in the Surface World, but you’re back so soon.”
Maeven put a hand to her chest, “Let me catch my breath. I think they gave me a sedative. What I don’t understand is why I am here and what happened outside on the ice.”
Begglar and Nell managed to get up to the car door level and add their smiling faces to the witnesses of this joyful reunion. “You’ve been in hospital quite some, young lassie,” Begglar volunteered, “The shifts come in the night as we sleep. O’Brian said it before. We are occupants of both worlds because we have been called to seek and find in this one.”
A muffled, plaintive plea came from the trunk compartment, interjecting into the surprised conversation.
“Can someone help me? Anyone out there?”
“Who is in there?” James asked, jerking toward the trunk, holding his halberd at the ready, his head whipping back to look to Maeven. “That wasn’t you?”
Christie and James had buttressed up against the vehicle a little and now attempted to hold it steady, careful not to stand before the front of the car and risk it falling further. A back wheel had caught one of the many steel cables and now seemed to have a pretty good hold on its shredded tire and wheel.
“I have no idea who it is,” Maeven responded, now able to sit upright in the seat and edge closer to the open door, “I just woke up here and heard noises from the back. I tried to get up, but the car slipped further down, and I did not know what to do except lie still and then I heard other voices.”
James moved to the back of the vehicle. The old car trunk was indeed locked and looked as if it had rusted shut. It had a corroded turn handle, but no key lock.
“You inside,” James called, “Can you move back to the seat edge away from the bumper end of the trunk? I am going to try something to get you out, but I don’t want to injure you doing so.”
“I…I don’t know,” the small voice sounded terrified, “I cannot see in here and there is little room. I don’t know where you are. I cannot…ugh…” Movement and straining noises came from within.
A despairing cry issued forth from inside, “I think…I think, there’s something dead in here. Oh, dear God.”
Heavy, panicked breathing, sounding as if she was hyperventilating, “Get me out…[sobbing noises]…Please get me out of here…[sniff]…whatever you have to do…[shuddering]… Just please…hurry.”
James raised the hammer end of the halberd, holding it carefully but steadily in a two-handed grip, raised it and swung downward, hard and with powerful striking force, hitting the handle lock, bending it in the metal with a [thwack!] then it popped loose. The metal of the curved trunk denting severely, but now absent its exterior locking post. The edge of the trunk metal buckled just enough that its edge gaped a little above the truck seal along the backside of the vehicle.
The trunk had indeed formed a rust-seal and red coppery powder dusted James with bits of oxidized brown flakes for his trouble.
Begglar pointed to the raised metal lip that had buckled, “See if you can use that blade tip or spike to prise open the bonnet there, lad. Jimmie it open, if ye can.”
James did as Begglar had indicated, and eventually, with much wrenching, the old metal groaned, and the trunk lid sprung open.
A girl, or young woman, I should say, lay nestled within, curled into a shivering fetal position. Her hair was dark, stringy, and matted with sweat, her body abraded and scraped, barely clothed. She wore a shift-top, like a lacey bed shirt, of the fashion worn, by women of Azragoth for evening attire. Fairly modest, but of a light cool material, for sleeping but not outerwear. Her legs were scratched but bare, her small curled fists looked like they had bled and been abraded. Dried and wet blood stained her fingers and knuckles. She wore a kind of panty-underwear that did not seem of the modern Surface World but could easily fit in this world. Her skin was pale, slightly emaciated as if she’d been locked within the trunk for two or three days with no food or water. She smelled ripe of sweat, urine, feces and was understandably humiliated and embarrassed. Whoever, or whatever had done this to her, whether in human form or not, was truly a monster. A spindle wheel well, jutted into the trunk cavity, giving the girl little to no space to move about. She was as weak and feeble as one might expect someone to be who had been confined into such a small space for any length of time. Her body shivered as we tried to reach down and comfort her and help her raise up. Her face was obscured by her hair, and turned downward, as it was obvious that she had difficulty moving her neck. To get her out of here one of us would have to carry her up the debris hill towards the purplish blue lighted cut above.
When she finally turned her head upward, James, Begglar, Nell and I were visibly stunned. There was something strange about her eyes. Reflections within them, glowing over her pupils and irises, showing an illumination and reflection of a place that had no counterpart reflection within the cavern in which we occupied.
The girl was seeing and experiencing and interacting with some other realm while being present with us. As we looked into her strange eyes, all of us present, for Christie had helped Maeven exit the vehicle, and join our gathering higher up and around the back of the vehicle, felt the dread and terror of the girl’s story begin to emerge.
And as this connection bathed our minds, those of us who had been present at Begglar’s Inn at Crowe, suddenly recognized the young girl for who she had been when she’d been bathed, fed and more modestly dressed, before she’d endured this terrible ordeal.
Laura had come back to us in the Mid-World.
…And Laura had been right. There was something else rotting and dead in the trunk.
“State of Panek” – Story #9
A man stood in the middle of the dirt road, legs firmly planted, breath steadily chugging smoke into the frosty night air—One fist spastically clenching and unclenching at his side, the bent rod of a tire iron swung loosely in the other. With the sheen of animal eye-shine beneath thick eyebrows, he scowled at the approaching car as it slowed, headlights revealing him in a sickly yellow glare beneath the twilight gloom and overhanging tree cover.
At about twenty feet away, the car, a black Camero with red racing stripes and garish neon plates, braked to a grinding stop. The smoky dust train behind it formed a dimming corona as the stirred caliche particles, reflecting moonlight, slowly drifted earthward. Billows of dust plumed on either side of the car and wafted forward, blanketing the car’s hood and windshield, enveloping the man in the road in pearling fog.
The driver and his female passenger glanced nervously at each other and back ahead, as the man in the road began to stride purposefully toward them.
The girl turned her head slightly, keeping one wary eye on the approaching figure.
“Denny, I don’t like this.”
The driver, Denny Jessup, eyes kept forward, briefly considered revving his engine, throwing the gearshift in reverse and fishtailing backward, but he held his ground. Not one to back down first, he smirked and readjusted his sweaty grip on the steering wheel and gearshift.
“Just relax, Carly. Perhaps he’s broke down somewhere.”
“What’s that in his hand?” she asked leaning forward, squinting.
Dappled moonlight glinted off the dull black metal bar in the man’s clenched fist as he approached, steadily closing the distance between them.
Carly, leaned back in her seat, nervously pulling a strand of hair behind her ear, “Denny, there’s something wrong about this guy, let’s go . . . NOW.”
The man, now ten feet away, nodded to the driver, and crossed against the headlights to the passenger-side of the vehicle.
“What’s he doing?! Denny?!”
The girl reached for the gearshift but Denny caught her hand.
In horror, her eyes met Denny’s and her mouth gaped, shocked.
“Oh, my god! Denny, what are you….!?”
The cold night air swiftly entered the car, as did the fisted, gloved hand of the man through the shattered passenger glass. With a firm grip on the girl’s ponytail, he yanked her backward, grabbed her flailing arm, and pulled her through the passenger window, safety glass raking her struggling body as she tried to wrench free. With a loud crack, and a wet burst of blood, the tire iron struck the side of her head and all conscientiousness and fight went out of her. Her limp body crumpled over the car door and slumped onto the dust of the caliche road.
The feral eyes of the man lifted and peered in at Denny, as he clenched and unclenched his sweaty palms on the steering wheel. A sheen of sweat silvered his upper lip and his pale face illumined green by the glow of the instruments in the dash.
Fear etched across his face as he trembled at the savagery of what he had just witnessed and been a reluctant party to. Heart pounding, in short breaths that blossomed in the now cold interior of the car, he shuddered and set his jaw.
“Are we square? You’ll leave my sister alone?” he asked, just above a whisper, eyes not daring to make contact.
“Square,” came the raspy voice of the man at the window, “Thanks for the pig.”
***
She woke to what smelled like the heavy scent of diesel fuel; confined in a five by eight foot cage, reinforced with welded rod iron and pipe. The side of her head throbbed painfully. Her vision was blurred. And her face was swollen, tender and wet with what she could only imagine was blood. She lay on a thick, coarse blanket and burlap feed sacks, barely dulling the chill she felt in her aching bones. A low rumbling sound, like animals grunting, buzzed in her head. She turned on her stomach and smelled the earthy, fecund scent of mud mixed with raw feces and urine. Beneath the raised aluminum flooring rails, through half-inch-wide gaps she could faintly see a dark, wet gutter of concrete and draining sludge slowly moving towards gray light. Wincing at the odor of the filth below, she groaned and turned on her back. A heat lamp glared above the four by four inch mesh roof of her cage, out of reach, barely emitting enough warmth to keep her shivers down. To her left, something slimy and wet pushed into her arm, and she stiffened. Eyes clearing, with a shudder, she slowly turned her head . . . and screamed.
Cacophonous, echoes of her throaty terror pierced the night air, reverberating off the aluminum walls of her prison, forcing her to cover her head and ears against the terrible sounds that followed. Curled into a fetal position, on the filthy blanket, shivering in pain and terror, she wept uncontrollably praying that this was all just a very bad dream.
***
The snarl of trees defied her—reaching with rough jointed arms, grasping with dead leaved fingers, rustling with her every shuddered step in forward flight—the panicked noises of crackling brush sending out the alarm, dark birds above flapping in response, lifting noisily into startled flight. The rough bark crumbled in her grasp as she sought to steady herself, the hair of their hoary heads, fallen to skirt the sloping floor with mounds of shriveled and decaying scales. With warding hands, she guarded her face against their wooden claws, scratching and tearing her at defenses as she stumbled ahead. Fording through nests of brambles, her clothes snagged, and her heart and labored breaths pounded against the once eerie quiet with each frantic footfall. The man was coming—her hope of slipping away, thwarted by the dense foliage and sloping terrain. He would find her gone in a matter of moments and would find her quickly, thrashing about as she was. As she scrabbled up the hill through the leafy detritus, she knew the furrows and wounds of exposed dark earth where her feet had cut the ground, the traitorous broken limbs that had snapped in her desperate fingers and the strands of snagged vines would eventually lead him directly to her. He would grip her by the hair, brutally backhand her into unconsciousness, and carry her back to her cage in the hog barn.
The beatings would start again, and another pig in a cage next to hers would die. Such horrible piercing shrieks. Terror flooded her mind, adrenaline coursed through her muscles as she shuddered at the thoughts of what he would do to her even if she survived. His version of human was not something she could bring herself to imagine. He would feel this betrayal, and nothing she could say or do now would satiate his rage. Two more cages lie next to the one she had escaped from only moments ago. Two more chances, he had said. Two more days to become human—to become . . . his.
***
Will had promised him his life for a favor. A favor. What was to stop him from demanding another. Denny’s sister or his girlfriend. Didn’t matter which. If he didn’t deliver one, Will would take both. His life for theirs. His life… What kind of life could he have after what he’d done? This wasn’t life. Better if he had just said, “No deal” and died there in that tunnel in Afghanistan. No kind of life was worth living after such a betrayal. But Will would have had them either way. He would have left him there to rot, starve and die of thirst. Denny did not know which would have killed him first, gangrene in his wound, dehydration from blood loss and the sweltering heat, or the gnawing hunger when he finished his last remaining MRE. Perhaps he would have passed out from the blood loss and just died in his sleep, but who would have warned them, stopped him. He had to live. The oath was insane, but so was Will. Any other guy and Denny would have believed he was just having his chain pulled, but Will… Will was different. Will was a real psyche job. Will should have been put away behind several kinds of closed doors in a little rubber room for the rest of his born days. The army brass should have done it, but Will was committed, intimidating and Will was dangerous. Most of all Will enjoyed the killing. And those things were highly valued and rewarded in a time of war.
***
“I made a deal with the devil. What do you think about that, preacher?”
“I think you’re a fool. The Devil makes deals with a stacked deck. There is no way you win with him.”
Excavatia 