Taker (12 page)

You Sound Like My Mother

T
he opening to
the attraction appeared oddly symbolic. Just like visitors from long ago would have, Nicole stepped out of the fresh air and into the yawning mouth of a skull and continued into the dark cave inside. It was dank in here, and the dripping — presumably from rainwater gathered at the top of the cave — had a different quality to the irritating sounds of the modern Fountain of Youth ride. Everything about it felt real.

Evidence of recent parties littered the floor: a sleeping bag or two, cigarette butts and a burned-out campfire pit. In front of them stood the empty platform, and two pitch-black paths led off to the left and right where the ride began and ended. The ride’s tracks showed signs of rust — evidence that, long ago, there had been water underneath, providing the thrill of splashes for the visitors. The tunnels inside looked dark and forbidding, and paintings of Caribbean pirates decorated the walls all around. A chipped statue of a giant parrot adorned the corner of the cave, and an old skeleton lay chained up to a hook on the wall, looking more realistic than it ever had. The years had not been kind to this place.

“Anything look familiar?” Amy asked.

Nicole shrugged. “All I remember was an underground cave, which this isn’t. But the stones seem the same and it smells the same.” She stared down the tunnel tracks where the ride would have gone.

“Could be down there,” Ben suggested.

“Seriously?” Amy retorted. “You want us to go exploring a dark passageway with God knows what lurking down it?”

Sensing the rising tension, Drake made an effort to get organized. “I say we explore the rooms around here slowly and methodically before heading down into the ride tunnels.”

Amy moved closer to Ben and gave him a light, playful punch with a genuine smile. “Sorry I freaked out a bit.”

Ben shrugged, feeling a little redeemed.

“All right, fine. Are we done with all the drama? I like Drake’s idea,” Nicole continued. “Let’s just look here first. Maybe we’ll find it?”

They began their painstaking search. Each took a corner of the room looking for what Nicole described as a door. But aside from the odd skeleton and the creepy parrot, nothing presented itself as a hidden entrance or exit or otherwise. Nicole found herself fighting off rising frustration. She could have sworn this was the place — the stones felt right, for a start, and the dripping was exactly as she remembered it from what she considered were her flashbacks.

After 20 minutes of detailed searching, it was time for Nicole to state the obvious.

“We’ve got to search the tunnels now.”

Drake and Amy exchanged pointed looks.

“Fine,” Amy said, kicking a sleeping bag into the corner and sitting down on it. “Then can we at least rest here first?” She avoided Nicole’s glare and straightened out the sleeping bag beneath her, retrieving an old cigarette lighter as she did.

“I thought you wanted to get this over and done with quickly? The paparazzi guy? The feds? Remember?” Nicole stared down at Amy, who put on her best sullen face. She started flicking the lighter in a steady rhythm, as though it was the most fascinating thing around right about now.

“Amy, please.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“Fine.” Nicole gave a low growl of frustration and started gathering up her things.

“Wait a second. Guys — guys, check it out,” Ben whispered. “The lighter.”

“What about it?” Amy retorted.

“Look at the flame.”

Amy flicked it again, and the flame flickered for a moment before she released the catch and it disappeared.

“Too quick. Keep it lit,” Ben urged, crouching down beside her.

She did as he asked, this time keeping the flame alight. It flickered forward.

“That’s it,” he said, more to himself. “Can I have it?”

Amy snatched her hand back, but Drake was quicker and grabbed the lighter from her and gave it to Ben.

“Thanks. Saw this in the last
Relic Hunter
movie,” Ben explained.

Ben headed over to the corner of the room, flicked the lighter and kept the flame burning. He watched as the flame hovered and stood still.

“Might help if you don’t breathe on it, dummy,” Amy jabbed.

Ben thought to himself that the Relic Hunter never had to contend with annoying assistants. He continued regardless.

He’d reached the farthest wall to the west when the flame flickered as he’d hoped, illuminating the skeleton chained up to a hook on the wall.

He didn’t need to issue a second invitation to his friends, as even Amy got to her feet to get a closer look.

“There’s a draft strongest somewhere around here.” He indicated to the flickering flame.

“Great. The passageway behind the dead dude,” Amy quipped. “Sold.”

“Amy, help me push,” Drake suggested. He, Amy and Ben positioned themselves in front of a patch of stone.

“On the count of three.”

The stone moved inward a little, which raised their hopes, but then, despite a massive amount of effort, it stood unmoved.

“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just a loose boulder,” Amy said.

Frustrated, Amy returned to her sleeping bag. Nicole, meanwhile, was left with a thought buzzing around.

Don’t push your luck.

Nicole sank to her knees and started scraping the sawdust and chippings from the floor nearest the skeleton.

“Give me that light,” she beckoned to Ben, who shone the glow stick down on the floor. What it revealed made him gasp.

Sure enough, an indented arc splayed out from the doorway where some object had been opened outward. Above it, the skeleton’s arm was attached to a hook.

“Pull,” she said. “That’s not just a hook — it’s, like, a doorknob. We must be able to pull it?”

Poised to pull, with the support of Amy behind him, Drake set one leg against the solid wall and used all his might to start to dislodge the door from its frame.

After some effort — and groaning — from Drake, with a crumbling noise, the door began to ease out, grinding against the flagstones.

“That’s enough,” Nicole directed. He wouldn’t need to pull it all the way out for them to slip inside.

Amy’s face said it all — she was more than a little frightened at the thought of entering a dark, hidden room. “Amy, don’t worry. It’ll be OK,” Ben said. “I’ll go first.”

“Really?” Amy said, surprised but without malice.

No, not really
, Ben thought, but he was starting to feel the need to be protective of Amy. Some primitive nature within him was evolving to be more assertive and reassuring to his friends.

“Just go slow and steady. Anything happens, turn straight back.” Drake patted Ben on the back. For a moment, Ben felt a swell of pride, and he shoved any fear he may have had down deep.

“Here goes nothing,” Ben said as he disappeared into the opening.

After what seemed like hours — but in reality was just a couple of minutes — Ben returned, aghast, his face as pale as the bones of the nearby skeleton.

“What’s wrong?” Nicole touched his arm.

“We need to turn back.”

“Why? What did you see?”

Ben grabbed Nicole’s hand on his arm and started to lead her back the way they had come. “I’ll tell you when we get outside.” Ben continued to push past Nicole and drag her out of the hidden corridor.

But Nicole muscled past Ben and slipped through the narrow gap, using her glow stick to illuminate the passageway below, which was becoming a little brighter with every step. Then she saw a staircase and came to see what Ben had discovered.

Along the walls of the spiral stairwell, a little farther down, there were two torches. Nothing out of the ordinary there, apart from one detail — they were lit.

Nicole felt a lump rise inside her as a thousand fears crowded her mind all at once.

They were not alone.

Nix, Come Back to Us

U
nwilling to leave
Nicole to explore alone, the group caught up and saw for themselves the lit torches.

“Maybe we should turn around. It could be the feds again,” Amy said, trying to talk some sense into Nicole.

“It’s not the feds. Why would they be ahead of us hiding in a dark, hidden tunnel?” Nicole asked the group.

Everyone shrugged in response. It was a valid question.

They were silent in their descent, each fighting back their own thoughts and fears while attempting to remain alert for signs of what might await them below — any advanced warning at all could mean the difference between life and death.

Step by step, the narrow, winding stairwell spiraled down. Time had worn some of the stone steps shiny and smoothed-down in the middle, where many footsteps had gone before. Perhaps water had leaked down here, too, eroding each cut stone. There was no handrail, so Nicole had to use the walls to steady her path. The walls crumbled a little when touched. The whole cavernous place evoked an older time — much older than the original amusement park itself. And the floors, walls, and even the humid smell of the air were feeling more familiar to Nicole by the second.

Looking down, it seemed like they would need to go a bit further before they would reach the rooms below. Ben had suggested throwing a stone to see whether it would rouse any attention, but Drake had nixed that idea, figuring whatever was below would then have a heads-up that they were coming.

But facing their fears was easier said than done. In Nicole’s mind, there was the inevitability that they would be arriving at something new — a turn in the road or a fresh discovery. She wanted it to happen soon, because the anticipation was knotting her stomach and pounding her heart. On the flip side, there was a part of her that would be glad to descend these steps forever rather than face whatever was awaiting them in the depths.

Nicole watched Ben step ahead of her. He was holding his nerve. It occurred to her then that she wouldn’t have anything to Balance against if what they found at the bottom needed to be taken care of.

A noise from down below disturbed their progress.

Ben held up a hand, and the party stopped in its tracks. Ben craned his ears to try to hear another sound like it, and try to identify it. He looked up at his friends behind him, the adrenalin rising, and saw their nervous breaths, visible in the flickering torch flames.

After a moment, he’d heard nothing further, and Drake signaled for Ben to continue. Nicole reached out and took his hand, linking her other with Amy’s behind her.

As they rounded the next corner, a draft lifted from the rooms below. Nicole knew this meant they were drawing nearer to some larger chamber.

“OK,” Ben whispered. “We’re almost there.”

Drake nodded and gestured for Ben to hold his silence.

Nicole squeezed Ben’s hand. She could not have known that was perhaps the most distracting thing she could have done, but it had the effect of summoning a hidden reserve of courage in him. With bravery pumping in his veins, he let go of Nicole’s hand and rounded the corner first.

He peered in for a look, and all around the room there were lit torches. But no one was there.

“It’s clear,” Ben announced, and he entered the room.

“There’s no other door. No other way out,” Nicole observed, joining him.

“One of us should go back up again. Watch our backs,” Amy offered, hugging deep into Drake.

“No one else was on the island. You can’t land anywhere else,” Ben remarked. “Don’t worry — whoever it was probably left before we got here.”

Nicole stood rooted to the floor surveying the large room. It was empty, save for a few bales of hay, and the absence of dust showed a lack of human inhabitants. An empty fireplace stood at one end, and the old, worn flagstones matched those of the room above it. Odd chains hung from the walls here and there.

“It’s weird, for torches to have been lit and then the person to run back up there. Unless it’s a trap?”

“The torches!” Ben remarked, pointing at the flames of the old wall fixtures. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, they saw that the flames flickered away from a gap, which seemed to be releasing a draft blowing outward.

Drake was first to the wall, and he immediately began to test the cracks in the large rocks. As he scraped between the stones, great clumps fell away.

“Help me!” he urged, and the rest of the group joined in, scraping between the rocks with their bare fingers.

Each focused their anxiousness into working on their part of the wall, digging in and burrowing away. Gradually, a large stone loosened and a gap emerged.

Ben got to his knees and put his eye to the emerging hole.

“It’s another room!” he exclaimed. Energized, he redoubled his efforts.

Before they knew it, the gap had opened up large enough for somebody to enter. Without further delay, Ben made himself as small as he could and poked his head into the room.

“It’s circular,” he whispered back. “And empty.”

He looked up. He was under the stars, as though far down in a deep well.

“It’s a well. We’ve come to the bottom of a well or a tower!”

“No one there?” Nicole asked.

“No. No one.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Amy whispered, prodding the back of Ben’s leg. This had the effect of making him jump, and the sound of head bumping rock could be heard, followed by the echoes of “Ouch!”

Undeterred, Ben crawled into the base of the well.

As he landed on his elbows in the next chamber, he heard a metallic clink. Underneath him were coins. Hundreds — possibly thousands — of old coins in silver and gold. These, he thought, were people’s wishes.

Was this a wishing well?

Ben moved the glow stick, and his eyes widened as he examined the coins. These weren’t U.S. coins — rather, they were coins from centuries ago. Some had Aztec-like symbols stamped onto them; others had mythological stamps like the pillars of Hercules.

He lifted himself up. The room was circular and about 20 feet in diameter, and, judging by the walls, he estimated they were about 30 to 40 feet below the surface. At one time there would have been some wooden roof and winch for a bucket, but the hole was clear and circular. The bright, starry night was tantalizingly close. And for a moment Ben found himself wishing he were up there — not enclosed and trapped like an animal in this pit below.

He could hear Nicole climbing through the gap.

“Look!” she exclaimed.

She touched his shoulder, indicating to the far wall, where a rusty old chain was hanging. It led down to the ankle of a skeleton huddled in the corner. The sight of the bones sent chills down Nicole’s spine. These bones were no cheap amusement park prop. This was real.

Although the person had passed away hundreds of years before, Nicole approached it slowly out of respect. Something in her made her stoop down and meet the skeleton at eye level. At that exact moment, Amy and Drake arrived in the room. They stood at the far side of the well and held hands in silence as they watched Nicole examine the bones.

As Nicole stared into the skull, her friends began to fade from her consciousness. It seemed a lot darker in there now, and Nicole soon discovered she was alone. She looked up at the murky sky above — the stars were much brighter, and the evening sky much clearer. A chilly breeze blew through the room. She was in the place of her dreams, in what she thought had been a dungeon.

This was the dungeon.

Then she felt the rain from above. It was gradual at first, but the few drops that made it down splashed on the floor.

The first time she knew the girl was in the room again was when she heard the rattling of the chains.

Nicole blinked saw the blond girl edge forward. This time she seemed oblivious to Nicole’s presence and intent on something else. Nicole watched as the thin, ragged girl came to a stop under the entrance of the well and gazed up, opening her mouth to catch the rainwater from above. The girl moved a little more forward, but the chain strained behind her and her leg could travel no further.

The same leg of the skeleton.

“Nicole?”

She heard Ben’s voice, but she couldn’t see him. Only she and the girl were in this circular room.

“Nicole? Are you OK?”

“Nix, come back to us!” There was Amy’s voice, more worried than Ben’s.

Nicole looked around blindly. How to find her way back out? It was like she was dreaming. She knew her friends must be in this other reality, but she couldn’t sense their presence.

Maybe she had to pinch herself back to reality. She pulled a thin strip of her own wrist skin and dug her nails in.

She jumped from the pain and caught a flash of Amy’s concerned face.

“She’s opened her eyes! Fight it, Nicole.”

Nicole pinched again, and soon it was like swimming up out of deep water. Her body was sluggish and slow, but she knew she had to keep telling herself the important things, over and over. That this was not her reality. Hers was in the same room, but in a different time.

Another pinch, and Nicole clenched her eyes shut. She was alive; she wasn’t dreaming anymore.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself strung out on the floor, lying in Amy’s arms.

“Thank God!” Amy cried.

Nicole felt Amy’s arms surround her, and a wetness on her own cheek suggested that Amy had been crying.

“I’m OK. Really.”

“Nicole, you had us scared with your zombie gaze. Were you somewhere else?” Ben asked, taking Nicole’s other arm and helping her to her feet.

Nicole nodded and accepted the can of soda Drake was offering.

“This is it,” she whispered. “The Fountain of Youth.”

“This … well?” Amy retorted incredulously.

Nicole nodded. “I was here. Or a Balancer was here. I can feel it.”

Amy, Ben and Drake took another look around to appreciate the significance of their discovery. They had set out to find an old amusement park ride, but instead they had found undiscovered areas below the original amusement park itself.

A sound of sliding stone suddenly alerted them that they weren’t alone, however. The wall was beginning to ease to one side, and a sliver of light grew wider and wider between the cracks of some stones. The mystery person who had lit all the torches was about to be revealed.

The old man climbed into the well several feet from them and dusted himself off before speaking. “There’s no need to be afraid,” the man said with a huge smile. “I’ve been waiting such a long time for this.”

To Ben, the man’s voice was familiar. He stepped forward, craning to get a better view of the figure emerging from the shadows. He wore an old tweed jacket with corduroy trousers, and he had wiry white hair and age spots on hands.

Ben felt a huge surge of relief.

“It’s OK.” Ben turned back and smiled at his friends. “
It’s OK!
Do you know who this is?”

Ben reached out and vigorously shook Professor Jim Barnard’s hand. Barnard was the man from the obscure Web videos, the one who had spoken of the Balancer myth. Barnard was the man who knew more about Balancers than anybody else did. Barnard was their Yoda.