Three Lives (Mud Valley)
CHAPTER 50 - A dark quest, murder and an unimaginable burden. A 40-year saga of loyalty and the afterlife. Next week, the final chapter and epilogue.
The complete digital novel Mud Valley will be available Jan. 20 on Amazon.
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Chapter 50
— Three Basements —
Whit-Frank beckoned. Lucy followed him into the kitchen where the others waited lined up against the counter.
She pushed her palms outward, signalling them to back out of the way.
Whit-Frank smirked toward them, turned left, kicked open the basement door and banged down the wooden steps, looking over his shoulder.
“This way. This way. Yes, it’s over here,” he muttered to Lucy.
At the bottom, Lucy stepped onto the concrete basement floor and stopped at the line where the light ended, the limit for the light cast down through the stairwell from the kitchen.
She waited patiently at the edge of the dark, not because she was afraid, but because it pleased her to hear Whit-Frank knock his knees and curse at unseen things in the gloom.
Finally, the room took up the dawn and shadows appeared in the yellow-shrouded light cast by a single bulb. The room was a concrete bunker, barren but for a low table, sticks of discarded two-by-fours and a row of wooden shelves.
Whit-Frank headed for a small orange door to one side of the room and motioned for Lucy to follow. She ducked her head and entered another room about half the size of the first.
Whit-Frank quickly found the light in this room, exposing a second door, also orange.
Lucy’s nose clogged with dust and she sneezed several times, still moving, crossing the small room in four steps. Whit-Frank threw open the next door and coughed loudly.
“The den of inequity,” he said as it creaked open.
He meant “iniquity”, of course. Frank always screwed up words and it made Lucy worry. Could it be Frank for real? But she jettisoned the idea. This was Whit losing his hold on reality, simple as that.
Beyond the door, three small wooden steps led down to a broken, crumbled floor.
Ugh, it’s so humid, Lucy thought. The air thick and acrid. It burned to breathe.
It was impossible to see clearly, but directly in front of her, Lucy perceived a deeper darkness. Massive, it crouched within arm’s reach. She sensed its denseness, how it drew all light to it and snuffed it out.
Whit-Frank found the string and pulled. The light shone. Lucy screamed.
She’d imagined a beast lying in wait. But it was only a room, now that the light was on.
They stood in a long, narrow chamber and in front of her squatted an old, cast-iron boiler almost her height and twice as broad.
“Fuck,” she swore at herself for letting the brawny mass startle her.
“Heh-heh, heh-heh,” Whit-Frank laughed at her discomfort.
He nodded toward the wall, to Lucy’s right, about five steps away, where a web-covered, splintered wooden shelf sat, strewn with machine parts. Nothing had been touched for years, possibly decades.
Lucy didn’t care for the set-up. Her skin tightened at the prospect of becoming trapped at the dark end of the narrow room. She stepped aside and indicated Whit-Frank should go first.
He brushed past her and grabbed one end of the shelving unit. He heaved, and a shelf pulled away, fell off in his hands. Machine parts crashed to the dirty, oil-stained floor. This area hadn’t been cleaned since the house was built, Lucy thought. Not like other parts of the basement.
Whit-Frank tried again, holding onto the end boards this time. He hopped the unit and moved it, bit by bit, hop by hop. Sometimes, it scraped only a finger’s width, sometimes it moved an entire palm’s width. Eventually, he created enough of an opening to squeeze between the unit and the wall behind.
Lucy stretched her neck. Shit, there was an alcove behind the shelves.
Whit-Frank ducked behind, gone for a few seconds. He reappeared, searching. He reached around and above Lucy and grabbed the work light off the ceiling, where it had been hanging on a nail. He pulled on the extension cord, testing its length. It would be enough.
He held the work light by the handle, lifted it high, paused and turned to face her, deadly serious.
“This is it then.”
“This is what?” Lucy asked, leaning as far back away from Whit-Frank as the space permitted. She glanced to the door; sized up an escape route.
Whit-Frank’s eyes darted from side to side, then cast downward. It felt to Lucy like a show of remorse.
“Jeez, it’s fine,” he said. “I don’t intend to touch you. High on yourself, aren’t you? Come, come look.” He gestured behind the shelves and backed away to give Lucy room.
I must be crazy, she thought. But she moved toward the opening; squeezed her shoulders through.
The alcove behind the shelves was coated in layers of dirt and old paper. The mortar between the brickwork was crumbling, spiderwebs and grime glazed the wall. The floor was strewn with junk.
Lucy slipped and twisted her ankle, steadied herself against a wall. She straightened. That’ll hurt tomorrow, she thought.
Bits of wood and paper cracked beneath her feet as she inched forward. She kicked and tried to peer into the dark at her feet
As Whit-Frank brought the light closer, she saw clothing, time-tattered and filthy bits, half-buried in dirt. She kicked again and white, brittle bones crumbled and rose and tumbled with the dust in the narrow shaft of light.
On the floor, Lucy discerned a jumble of bones, two rib cages with arms broken and laid over top, two pelvises, and long, thick bones Lucy took for femurs.
She gagged dry, breathing in fine particles of bone and sinew. At the edge of her vision, Whit-Frank held the light high, his thin lips stretched into a snake-like grin.
It sickened her, that face.
“Heh-heh, heh-heh. Do you see me now?” Whit-Frank whimpered in a high, whistling voice and lifted his nose to point to a ledge cut into the back of the alcove.
Four empty eye sockets, dark cavities in the skulls of two abandoned souls, pointed vacantly back at her.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” she turned to Whit-Frank. “What is this? What the fuck is this?”
“Lucy, meet Ben Gordon Ford. At least that’s what his driver’s licence said. He’s the one on the right. In my message, I told you I killed him in Jury and dumped his car in the lake.
“The other one, I don’t know. She had no I.D. and I grabbed her out of a tent near the edge of town. That fucker Ben made me so mad. He was cool as the Pope as he died. Pissed me off and I had to do somebody else.”
A drone, the ancient chant of the old man played in Lucy’s head and she started to hum. It passed through the thick air like bricks and fell heavy to the floor. It felt ridiculous in this place. Lucy wavered. Her chants would do no good.
From beyond the light, a blur flashed. Whit-Frank’s yawning snake mouth lunged. Lucy slipped aside and shoved him past, disgusted by his touch.
She hummed more determined and squeezed out from behind the shelves, satisfied at the sound of Whit-Frank crashing behind her.
She sang the song for the ritual. She sang out of desperation because she didn’t know what else to do.
Her voice carried through the rooms. It travelled through the ducts and the pipes, and vibrated the air in the dank basement and shook free the decades of dust and grime.
She recalled the old man’s words and gave them substance, even while doubting their truth.
The song carried into the kitchen, where Erin took up a rough version and hummed along. Sylvia looked at her, then started to hum, too.
“Heh-heh, heh-heh.” Whit-Frank’s head appeared from behind the shelves, then his shoulders, hips, legs.
Lucy sang softly, shutting him out from her thoughts and moved.
Whit-Frank shouted to drown her out, but the song had already rung out beyond reach.
Lucy climbed the steps, crossed the threshold of the tiny orange door and entered the next room. She strode across the second basement to the second door, turned and waited.
Whit-Frank followed her shimmering aura as she glided from room to room, realm to realm and he produced from his pocket a vial. There were six blue pills left. He swallowed every one. Lucy was the perfect watcher.
He yelled to get her attention, to get her to turn around. She did and Whit-Frank tossed the empty vial to her feet.
Lucy made no motion. His actions made no difference to her. She exited the second door and made her way to the thin tunnel of light falling onto the floor in front of the stairwell that would lead her back to the kitchen.
Whit-Frank appeared in the last room behind her and collapsed. He roared and struggled to his feet. He reached his hand toward Lucy.
“What?” she said. She thought she perceived a change in his face, as though wax had sloughed off. His features were creased and soft. The pills were taking effect.
“I did it,” he said. “It was me.”
“You did a lot of shit. What do you expect me to do about it?”
“No Lucy, it’s me. It’s Whit. I’m talking to you.”
“It’s always been you, Whit. You’re ill. Let’s get you help.”
“No, Lucy, it’s really me.” The voice was slurring. “Listen. I did it. I killed Frank and burned down the lodge. All of that was me.”
Lucy, slipped, teetered. She regained her balance and studied Whit-Frank for a moment. What to think about this? The pills were grabbing hold and maybe the old Whit had risen through the gaps and reasserted himself.
“The fuck you talking about?” She turned to leave.
“Wait, hear me out.” Whit reached toward her and she stepped back.
He slumped to the ground, his back against a wall.
“When I took Frank back to his room at the lodge that night, I was pissed off. We were all pretty drunk and I was so mad, I wanted to bash his stupid face in.
“We got back to his room at the lodge and he takes his medication and does all this other shit. Then he shows me a bag full of pills, rainbows and blues and yellow ones. I don’t know what they were. He offers one to me and I take it.
“We’re sitting round his room, getting mellow and Frank starts to babble and he’s telling me shit. Half the time, I can’t make out what he’s talking about. He was murmuring about how he went to the hot springs and planned from the beginning to burn it down. He even packed for it and showed me a bunch of gasoline drenched rags in Ziploc bags he had, and all kinds of other flammable shit. He had this elaborate plan to start a fire in the kitchen. Said he’d already scouted the place.
“Guess what?” Whit squinted through the faint light, trying to glimpse Lucy’s face.
“What?” she said.
“He said he wanted to do it for you. He wanted to leave you one final gift to remember him by.”
“He made that much plain in his email,” Lucy said.
“Oh, yeah, but you know what else?” Whit didn’t wait for Lucy to answer. “I was with him when he wrote that message to you.”
He saw Lucy’s mouth open to speak, but he cut her off.
“Yeah, I was there, and I let him go because he was talking shit about how he was going to kill himself. The CF was getting worse and he was going die soon anyway. He wanted to leave this life as a big man, commit one last great act. He thought this would rescue you from your legal troubles and you’d remember him. He wanted the entire world to remember him. I remember him saying that.
“I asked him, what he’d done that the world would find so fascinating and he spills it all. He tells me every sordid detail. How he’s been feeding people pills so he can watch them die. He told me he’s been obsessed with death ever since he was a kid. Said he had to find out what it was like.”
Whit exhaled long and loud. When Lucy said nothing, he carried on.
“He tells me about, I don’t know, four or five murders, like he’s giving directions to a bus stop. He provides all the gory details, right down to their moans and their dying gasps. And that’s when I decided.”
“Decided what?” Lucy crouched a few feet away.
“He deserved it, he had it coming. So I push him, make sure he finishes the email to you. I tell him to put all his evil acts into it. The more shocking the better, then people will remember the name Frank Kappens.
“I stood behind him, got him to clarify details, made sure he was precise with the locations of the bodies and all that good stuff. He was really fucked up on pills and it took a lot to keep him focussed, but…,” his voice trailed off.
“You knew? For all these years?” Lucy said.
Whit nodded. His head felt heavy. He could barely lift it from his chest. “I knew. Worse, I carried out the final deed for him. That was me captured on the hallway security cameras wearing Frank’s jacket heading off to set the blaze. Nobody bothered to look too closely at the video because everybody identified Frank as the culprit from the start.
“I never told anybody. You were supposed to get the message the next day, but Frank screwed up and sent the message,” he waved his hands, “into the netherworld.”
“Fuck sakes, Whit.” Lucy whispered. “You knew? You fucking knew? And you started the fire that killed Frank too?”
Whit nodded, stared at the floor. “After I started the fire in the kitchen, I went back to his room and set that on fire too. Frank had brought a lot of combustible shit with him. He was passed out on the floor and didn’t even know I was there.”
“Are you being real right now?” Lucy twitched her legs and shook her head. “Is this Whit I’m talking to? What happened to Frank? Is this Frank? It sounds an awful lot like Frank.”
Whit’s tongue was numb and felt large in his mouth. He saw Lucy’s mouth move, but it sounded like the chit-chit-chittering of a dolphin.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so much trouble.”
His head fell forward and his body slouched down further against the wall.
Lucy tried to raise herself and fell back to the floor. She glanced at Whit’s body a few feet away. He was unconscious, but she could see his chest rise and fall.
She heard a commotion in the kitchen, struggled to her feet and ascended the stairs to direct the police and first responders to Whit’s body.
* * *
Bonus material
For the latest stand-alone short story go here: Skinny Ned and Just Joan
Check out back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Jury (Mud Valley) at the link below.
The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.
Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, absurdist flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.