“I can’t control it. God help me. God help all of us. It’s free. After all this time, it’s free again.”
It was dated two days ago, and signed, Tom Hopman.
24
Fred looked up as Charlie and Bill returned from the rear of the chamber.
“Anything happening outside?” Bill asked, and Fred realized that nobody had even bothered to check while the two men were away. He stood, with Sarah as ever moving like a part of him at his side. He looked out of the small window. The glass was thick, obscuring some of the view, making it blurred and unclear. But he saw enough to know they weren’t leaving anytime soon. The pit glowed red and orange. Around its rim, tall figures danced. They were mostly just dark shapes framed against the fiery glow behind them, but they were defined clearly enough that horns, tails and even talons were clearly visible.
First ghosts, then bears, now fucking demons?
Fred turned away, looked to Charlie, and shook his head. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The older man nodded in reply.
“So, we wait,” Charlie said. “Ain’t not much else we can do.”
Fred saw Ellen Simmons flinch at that, and expected a retort. But none came. The woman left the stove and went round the room serving coffee.
“There’ll be corned-beef hash along in ten minutes or so,” she said. “It ain’t going to be much, but it’ll be hot.”
“Ellen, darling,” Charlie said with a smile, waving towards the iron door. “It’s as hot as hell in here already.”
The woman actually blushed as she returned to the stove. Big Bill joined Doc over in the alcove with the writing desk, and Charlie sat down beside Fred and Sarah.
“You got any smokes left, lad?” the older man asked. “I’m pegged out.”
“I’ll swap you,” Fred replied. “For a story. What happened after the rockslide? And don’t try to dodge it. I can see the way she looks at you now.”
Charlie looked grim.
“It ain’t anything that should be told here,” he said. “It should wait until we’re back up in daylight, with the sun on our faces and beer in our hands. But if it’ll pass the time…”
He took a cigarette from Fred, lit up, and started to speak, gazing off into a far distance, remembering.
“We didn’t fall too far,” he started, but we went sideways as well as down and when we came to rest, we had only rock above us and a wall of dirt at our backs we couldn’t dig through. Ellen was in a bit of a state. She didn’t even calm when I let her hold the flashlight. She was screaming fit to burst and I thought she’d bring more of those… things… down on us. So I shut her up.”
“You hit her?” Sarah said. The shock was clear in her voice.
Ellen Simmons laughed and turned back from where she was working at the stove.
“No, dear. He kissed me. And right properly at that. I’m staying kissed.”
Charlie looked sheepish.
“I didn’t have any other choice. It worked though. She got quiet right quick.”
He took a long drag from the cigarette, smiling to himself. Fred gave him a nudge.
“Okay, enough about your love life. How did you get out of there?”
“I’m an old hand in tunnels,” Charlie replied. “You know that. I kept going right and up, where we could, hoping to find a way to the surface. I was half expecting to find the same tracks you found. Instead, we found more death.”
He went quiet again, and when he spoke, it was in a whisper.
“Ain’t gonna be much of a rescue for us,” he said. “At least not for a while. We found what was left of the CDC folks in a new hole—a big hole. There were trucks and trailers piled over and into each other. And bodies. A lot of bodies.”
A thought suddenly struck Fred.
‘The injured? The ones that were with us last night?”
Charlie nodded, and a single tear ran from his left eye. He wiped it away angrily.
“Them too,” was all he said in reply before continuing.
“Ellen was a rock. She helped me search the wreckage. Ain’t no survivors. And there’s worse. Some of the bodies looked melted, as if something had been at them, eating them.”
Fred was remembering the burn Doc had taken outside the bar as Charlie went on.
“Anyway, to cut a long story short, I found the gun, the flares… and a radio. I hoped to get somebody up top, somebody to rescue us.”
“And you got us instead,” Fred finished. “Your run of good luck is holding.”
Charlie sucked the last smoke from the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.
“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Not for too long. If I know the military mind, they’ll be bombing the shit out of the town before too long. For all I know the order’s already given.”
“Surely that’s a good thing?” Sarah asked. “They’ll kill them all… all the bears.”
“You ain’t thought it through, girl. We’re sitting on the edge of the source of the problem. Where do you think them bombs will target?”
“And there’s something else we need to think about,” Doc said. She walked across the floor, skirting the edge of the pentagram, deliberately not stepping on the lines. She carried a battered leather journal.
“You need to hear this.”
“Food first,” Ellen Simmons said. “Ain’t no sense making decisions on an empty stomach.”
“I’m not sure I want to eat, after what I just read,” Doc whispered, but they all took a bowl of hash when offered, and there was silence as they ate.
“So, what’s so important, Doc?” Charlie asked as he put his bowl down. “I take it you’ve found something that explains the mumbo-jumbo?”
It was Big Bill who replied.
“Mumbo-jumbo is right. If I’d known what Hopman was up to, I’d have thrown him in jail years ago.”
“Charged with what?” Fred asked, pointing at the pentagram. “Being deluded ain’t a crime.”
“No,” Bill replied. “But murder is. And Charlie… you ain’t gonna like this. At least one of them skulls belongs to a man you knew.”
Fredisdead.
It came as a whisper, from some corner of the cave they couldn’t identify, and it wasn’t repeated, but all six of them were on edge as Doc started.
“This is a record,” she said, holding up the journal. “A record of a family obsession that goes back nearly a hundred and fifty years.”
“Them grooves in the floor are older than that,” Charlie replied. “I know my rocks.”
“I’ll get to that,” Doc said. “But first, there’s this.”
She read from the start of the journal.
“Two hundred dollars the land cost me; everything I had and then some. But it will be worth it if the Old One is there, where the Cree say he is buried. Riches and power beyond the ken of man—that’s what they say he promises. We’ll see. But first, I need to find the Gateway. Myth and legend is all I have to go on. But if it’s there, I’ll find it.”
Doc looked up.
“It goes on in that vein for a long time. That first entry is dated in the 1870s, and signed, George Hopman, who I think must be the great-grandfather. And twenty years later, he was still searching. He’d started digging by then; the first of what would be many mineshafts. There’s a lot of frustration in his writings. Until we get to the nineties. That’s when things start to get really strange.”
“He has started to whisper to me, in the shadows, in the dark. He asks for rituals, for obedience, for sacrifice. And he is getting stronger. I have sent to Boston for advice. Maybe the Brethren can help.”