Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (23 page)

78. Heading In

That evening I realize just how attached I’ve grown to the dog Jocelyn named Midnight. My family never had an animal growing up, so this was my first dog. And while maybe I always imagined it would be nice to have a big one, maybe a golden retriever or a strong Lab or even a German shepherd like my uncle’s, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the little black Shih Tzu.

Maybe because I fell in love with her owner.

Midnight isn’t just a dog, however. She isn’t just this little companion that has been a bright spot (even if she’s pitch black) in a dark world. She stands for this wonderful thing I didn’t know I was looking for when I first arrived at Harrington High.

This wonderful thing that Jocelyn found before I did.

Hope.

I don’t really know what I’ll do if something happens to Midnight. If I can’t find her down below. If that creature ends up …

Stop it.

Mom knows something is wrong, but I don’t tell her what. She just assumes it has to do with everything else going on. The overall blah of being here. Midnight is such an easy dog to take care of that Mom doesn’t even know she’s missing.

I get a backpack that belongs to Uncle Robert and load it with stuff I might need. I wish I still had that gun I once used on Wade, but it’s long gone, just like he is. I have a knife that I’ll carry in my pocket. My flashlight will be in my hand. I stuff a jacket, an extra set of batteries, and a digging tool that one would use in the garden into the backpack. I’m not really sure what I’ll use that last thing for. I mean—if the ground caves in I don’t exactly think I’ll be digging myself out with a tiny shovel used for flowerpots.

I grab a bag of chips, then make myself a sandwich. Mom just assumes I’m still hungry from dinner. You know, like most seventeen-year-old boys tend to be. She doesn’t see me slip the sandwich into a plastic baggie as if I’m going on a picnic or a school field trip.

She makes a little small talk as we’re watching television, but I don’t really talk back. It’s an art to talk with someone but really not say anything. But I can’t stop thinking of the dog that may or may not be lost somewhere in the tunnels.

Gus might be lying. He might have already done something to her.

“Where’s Midnight?” Mom eventually asks.

She’s usually lying right next to me on the couch like some guard dog that resembles a chocolate-covered donut.

I don’t want to lie to Mom. I’ve lied—no, make that we’ve lied enough to each other.

“I don’t know,” I say.

And I don’t.

I’m just not telling her that I have to go down to the tunnels and look for her.

Mom doesn’t seem worried, since I’m not. We start watching one of those Friday night news shows about a man who murdered his family. Mom changes the channel, and on that show they’re talking about a woman suspected of killing her baby.

“I’m going to bed,” Mom eventually says, in a way that says
I’m so tired of this dark and dreary world.

“Good night,” I say.

She tells me good night back, and for once I really, truly hope that those words mean something.

I can’t exactly head into Mom’s bathroom and then disappear down the ladder into the tunnels. That entrance has been boarded up for a while, and it seems we haven’t been visited recently. I’m not sure why, but I don’t care.

The less I have to think about those tunnels, the better.

But now I head back to the creepy little cabin that in so many ways was the start of everything. The start of the realization that I had moved somewhere really bad, and that things were only going to get worse.

It’s cool but not cold. I’m wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and can feel my steady breathing as I walk uphill. The cabin looks just like before—small and abandoned and left to rot in these woods. My flashlight scans the empty windows that remind me of empty eye sockets—

Stop it.

It doesn’t look like anything has changed since I was last here. No remodeling by one of those television shows that brings in the semi and gets the town to make a dream home for a poor, helpless family.

“We made this into a special black well just for you, Chrisssssssss!”

I’m already a bit freaked out, and my nerves are making me think crazy thoughts. And this is all before I’m even down in the tunnel.

I step inside the cabin and see the torn floor in the center, the hole looking just like it did the first time I stepped over decaying wood and fell through to hit a dirt bottom.

My flashlight finds the bed next to the wall, the one with the shackles next to it.

I think of what Pastor Marsh told me about the Solitaire family in France.

They weren’t real vampires, of course. But they acted the part. They really were just monsters. They would slip inside people’s home and rape the women and kill the men. Selectively, of course. To make sure they ruled with fear.

A bed with shackles in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere suddenly makes sense.

This wasn’t some little place a family lived once. It was where someone was imprisoned.

I think of Mom screaming that something was coming into her room in the middle of the night.

Are demons physical beings? Or do they have to inhabit someone in order to get around?

I’ve tried reading up on demons in the Bible, but I haven’t gotten a lot of information. It seems like most of my “knowledge” is from movies like
The Exorcist
and
Paranormal Activity
, and I don’t think they should be regarded as the definitive truth.

Can demons rip people out of their beds?

I don’t know.

I think there’s a lot—a lot—that we don’t know about the spiritual side of things. That maybe we’ll never know.

That I don’t ever really want to know.

I shiver and then remember the extra few things I packed away for this little late-night journey.

They’re there for when I need them.

I find a little comfort in that.

I soon find the rungs of the ladder going down into the cold, gaping hole. I head down carefully, not wanting to fall again and knock myself out.

For a moment, I stand at the entrance of the round tunnel. Whoever carved these tunnels out did a lot of work. And I know they’re all around the town.

I exhale, then clear my throat.

“Midnight?” I call out.

It’s just a few minutes after twelve. I’m doing exactly what I was supposed to do.

A gasp of cool air seems to come from the mouth of the tunnel. As if it’s daring me to enter. I wait for a few minutes to see if I hear anything. But there’s nothing. Nothing but cold silence.

“Okay,” I say out loud.

I don’t know if it’s okay to pray for missing dogs, but I know it’s okay to pray. So I pray for Midnight. And myself.

And then I follow my narrow beam of light into the pitch black.

79. A Familiar Face

The dirt underneath my tennis shoes sometimes crunches as I step over a rock. Every now and then air blasts through the tunnel like someone is trying to blow out the candle on a birthday cake. My one wish is to find Midnight and get out of here. Of course, I’m not even sure if she’s down here. This could all be one big setup by Gus.

Maybe he and his friends will jump me and beat me up and leave me for dead.

But I don’t think that’s the case.

I think Gus is terrified of his daddy and won’t do something like that. He can touch my dog, but he still can’t touch me.

Maybe that’s what you think.

At times it seems like the top of the tunnel is dripping or leaking even though it hasn’t rained for a while. I keep track of every turn I make on my iPhone by typing down the opposite of what I did. When I take a right-hand turn, I type
left
so that I’ll do that on my way back.

Of course, if I’m being chased by a zombie or a demon dog, I don’t think I’ll be casually looking at the fine print on the note I made to myself.

Maybe I’ll whip out my iPhone and try to beat someone’s head with it just like Staunch did to me.

The air is stale down here. Maybe I’m breathing faster because of my nerves, but it seems like I just can’t suck down a decent enough breath. The sounds echo. When I occasionally cough, it seems like something is erupting all around me.

I reach an intersection that connects with another tunnel. I can either keep going straight, turn right as I already have three times, or take a left.

You’re lost and have no clue.

“Midnight.”

Calling her makes me worry more. It makes me feel that even if the sleeping ghosts didn’t know I was down here yet, they sure do now.

“Midnight, you around here?”

I’m growing more annoyed, which means I’m growing impatient and starting not to care if I’m heard.

I decide to head straight. I don’t mark this down since I’m not turning. Maybe I’ll remember, and maybe they’ll never find me again.

Have people ever gotten permanently lost down here? Like the guy at the end of
The Shining
?

I really don’t like that thought.

At least it’s not snowing.

Yeah. That’s really encouraging.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been down here or how far I’ve walked when my flashlight goes out.

“Oh, come on.”

I think I shout this, because I’m seriously angry. I jostle the flashlight and turn it on and off and then undo the back and twist it back on to see if that does anything.

Nope.

Come on. I mean—really?

Then I remember my iPhone, which is sorta my generation’s answer to the Swiss Army knife. I go to turn it on, and it seems as dead as the flashlight.

Emphasis on the word
dead
.

I eventually stop trying. I shiver and bring my arms close to my body for the moment, and stop and listen.

Silence.

What was that?

It was nothing. I didn’t hear anything.

Something shuffling on the ground.

I might be imagining things. I don’t know.

I’m about ready to get the extra batteries from my pack when I definitely hear something ahead of me. A crackling sound.

Then I smell it and know what’s making that sound.

Something’s burning.

I stare ahead and suddenly see an orange and red glow. Up ahead the tunnel veers right, not allowing me to see the fire but to see the illuminating flickers of light coming from it.

Get out of here, Chris, run back.

I hold a hand up to my mouth, but think for a second.

Something tells me I need to see this.

It’s a trap designed by Gus. He brought you down here to choke.

I cough and try not to breathe in. My eyes are burning and tearing up.

I decide I have to look. Now or never, so I decide now.

I sprint straight ahead with one hand still over my mouth and the other one holding the big metal flashlight. At some point I still need to crack somebody over the head with it. That’s why I got it. That’s why it’s so perfect.

The tunnel is getting thicker with dark smoke and warmer as I get to where it turns.

Except when I look around now, I don’t find myself in a tunnel anymore. Instead I’m standing in front of a burning house. Not a casual flame that a firefighter could put out, but hellish, scary flames that look more like an inferno. I duck back because they’re so hot and I feel like my face is being burned, my hair getting singed.

Where am I?

It’s still hard to breathe, still difficult to fully look ahead without squinting.

The two-story house could be anywhere. It’s not in a neighborhood. It seems to be surrounded by woods, maybe at the end of the road or a long driveway.

Then I see a dark figure standing out from the flames.

A guy, not very tall, standing and staring at the flames. He almost looks like he’s part of them, but he’s not.

In one hand is what appears to be a gas can.

He did it, this guy did this.

I wonder if the tunnel ended, and that’s how I suddenly came upon this scene. Yet another part of me knows that the tunnel didn’t morph into this. I’m here, and yet I don’t think I’m fully here right now.

Sure smells and tastes and feels like you are.

The man standing in front of me facing the fire turns, and I see that he’s a kid just like me.

A kid who looks a lot like a young Pastor Marsh.

No, that
is
Pastor Marsh. That’s Jeremiah Marsh before he ever became a pastor.

I see an awful expression on his face even as I see the tears streaming down both sides of his cheeks. It’s awful, because the look is of pure and utter joy. Like a guy who has found his place in life.

He turns back around and keeps watching the house that he just burned down.

Is this what happened to you? Is this why you turned out the way you did?

I want to leave this place, this vision or nightmare that’s full of raging fire and hot despair. I want to run back to the tunnel. Yet just as I turn to go, something brushes by me.

Someone.

And then he’s next to the teenaged Marsh. The figure is a lot taller and skinny, and he puts an arm around Marsh.

He turns and faces the boy, and I see that it’s Kinner. This is Walter Kinner, my great-grandfather, taking a weeping Jeremiah Marsh in his arms and holding him like he might do his own son.

I don’t want to see any more. I begin to back up and I shut my eyes and I say no over and over again.

Then I remember what else I brought with me. Besides the batteries and the jacket. Something I’m not carrying in my pockets but rather in my memory.

I draw a blank. I know I should’ve written the Bible verses down. I can’t remember them.

“The Lord is my rock,” I say. “Reach down Your hand and deliver me.”

Then another one.

“Have mercy on me. When I pray.”

It’s something like that.

“I come to You for protection, God—Lord. Help me. Save me.”

The verses that I memorized—half a dozen—all blur and morph like the flames reaching out to the heavens and drifting to black.

“Be my rock and my fortress, God. Please protect me.”

I open my eyes and find myself back in the tunnel. I’m still holding the flashlight in my hand, and it’s still not working. Same with the iPhone.

Now I’m turned around and have no idea which way to go. The flames and smoke are gone, even though I can still taste them and smell them.

That fire was real.

I decide to just keeping heading straight.

And as I do, I keep whispering and saying fragments of the psalms that I thought I knew.

I guess God doesn’t really care as long as you mean what you’re saying. And I do. I really do.