Chapter 21: In the Pit

Luis watched the shrubbery as the car made its way down the narrow dirt road. Martin sat in the middle of the back seat and beside him was Kathy. They both wore the dog collars and Kathy was naked, looking out the window, her thoughts and mind perhaps lost forever.

He stared out but his mind was back at the quarry, at the sights he had seen, trying to sort out what the potential implications might be.

The first night in the pit had been the worst. After a couple of hours of sitting, his mind began to wander and he found it hard to keep if off the darker paths. There was always the fear that he would hear Martin's little giggle and the short uneven footsteps approaching. He detested what the little monster had done to them. He felt especially bad about Kathy. After their brief exchange, she had curled up into a fetal position and rocked herself into a trance-like state. It might have been sleep except that he heard a groan or moan come from her every so often. Perhaps it was just a nightmare. A nightmare within a nightmare, he said to himself, trying to chuckle.

He watched her body quiver for awhile and then his boredom turned him back to the pole that anchored the two of them to the bottom of the pit. He put his hands around it and tugged but the pole would not budge.

It's useless, he thought but he couldn't bring himself to entirely give up. He paced around and searched his mind for some way to slip the chain off the pole.

An explosion rocked the night and Kathy bolted upright and screamed. Her eyes were wide with fear and her hands covered her ears. Luis ran over to her and held her gently.

quot;Ssshhh, it's okay, it’s okay. "

"No, I'm going to die, I'm going to die! Don't you know that, can't you see! "Her eyes were glazed and unfocused.

"Kathy, Kathy, listen to me. "

"No," she sobbed," we're going to die. "Her sobbing increased as the night shook with another explosion. It was followed by the loud hum of machinery moving. The sounds of engines had grown louder and Luis realized that whatever activity was going on above the pit, its intensity was increasing. There was a third explosion and Kathy buried her head in his shoulder. He had seen catatonia like this before. It was fairly common in victims, especially victims who could not rationalize or understand what was happening to them. A few years ago he had been covering a large cult in the Big City that snatched people off the streets and tortured them as part of their ritual. He remembered listening to the screaming and then seeing the same glazed look - eyes that looked out onto a world that could no longer be understood. How had he brought the victim around? He had infiltrated so many groups that each experience had blended together somewhat but Luis thought he remembered.

Slowly, cautiously, he pulled the victim out, starting with the familiar and the facts that he already new about her.

"What's your name? Tell me, go on tell me, what's your name? " he gently asked, wiping the dirt from her face. She didn't answer but nodded her head up and down vigorously.

"What's your name? " he persisted. She tried to brush him away, as if he were an insect that was annoying her with its buzz.

"What's your name? " he asked again and this time she answered.

"Kathy, my name is Kathy. "

"Are you a teacher Kathy? "She nodded her head affirmatively and coiled herself even tighter into a fetal position. Luis recognized it as a sign that the real world was beginning to impinge upon her closed world. He pressed her harder.

"Where are you? "

"Nowhere. "

"Kathy, where are you? "

"Go away, leave me alone," she groaned.

"Where are you? " he said more firmly. Her eyes opened and she looked at him. "Where are you? "Her nostrils flared and her eyes focused. Her hand snaked out and gave him a hard slap across his face.

"Leave me alone! " Her gaze smoldered with anger. "Just leave me alone you bastard! " she screamed.

"Ssshhh, we've got to be quite. "She continued to look at him, her breathing becoming a bit more regular.

"You bastard, why won't you just leave me alone? Do you think I want to be here, waiting to die? Or do you think I want to live with the humiliation of being treated like an animal? You didn't have the courage to help me when you could so now you have to bother me when it’s too late. Leave me alone! "

"No," Luis said as he unfastened the buttons to his shirt. He took the soiled oxford off and handed it to her. "I won't leave you alone, and I won't just let you die. Put this on. "He handed her the shirt and she stared at it for a moment.

"I don't need any favors from you. "

"It's not a favor. "As he said it, another explosion rocked the earth, sending Luis careening onto the floor. She watched him slowly get to his feet.

"What are they doing? "It was the second time she had asked him the question and he still didn’t know. The explosions and the constant hum of machinery made Luis think that perhaps they were building something.

"I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd say it sounds like construction. "He hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. She put the shirt on.

Luis sighed and told Kathy everything he knew, starting with his suspicions after the Hanson deaths and ending with Martin's attack on her. As he spoke, her nerves seemed to settle and he could see her calculating and assessing the situation. He finished and she shakily got to her feet. Kathy began to cackle.

"You really expect me to believe that story. You've gone mad. "

"Perhaps you'd like to explain what's happening? "She paused and her face suddenly changed so that she looked like she might start sobbing again.

"I can't. I don't know what's going on, it doesn't make sense. Martin, Martin, he was one of my students. He was shy and withdrawn, but not a monster. He was one of my favorite students. "

"Something happened to the boy. I don't know where it all started but something changed him. He died, and when he came back Martin was like a barbarian given his every wish. I suspect he killed his parents and started whatever is going on out there. "

"Killed his parents? "Why? "His past experience with the occult had given him a framework and a background which Kathy didn’t have. Without this advantage he very well may have been as lost as Kathy.

"I'm not sure. "

"Don't lie to me, you know or suspect something, what is it? " He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to tell her about his evolving thoughts.

"My grandfather was a wise imaginative man and he used to tell me a story. My mother said it was baloney and my father would get upset when he would tell it to me because he thought it was only going to scare and confuse me. But my grandfather would always tell me in secret that it was true. Every time he told it the story changed slightly but the crux of it remained the same.

He was born in a small town in Spain, just South of Madrid, and worked as a cobbler. He would make shoes mainly to sell to his village but every year around Christmas he would work extra hard to make some surplus shoes which he would bring to Madrid. It was about sixty miles and the trip would take him three days on foot. That area of Spain is very dry and hot in the summer and he would rest during the day and travel at night. One summer on the third night of his journey he was getting ready to travel again when he heard a scraping sound. He would hear it and then it would stop, and just when he thought it was his imagination, he would hear it again. His curiosity was stronger than his fright and he used the meager moonlight to try to make his way towards the scraping sound. It would come and go, come and go, and constantly my grandfather was wondering whether or not he was finally out of his mind and just imagining the whole thing.

Finally, he spotted something moving in the distance. He didn't know if it was a man or an animal, but he slowly walked towards it and finally crept up right beside it. It was horribly ugly and like nothing my grandfather had ever seen before. It's face was warped and instead of eyes it had two sockets covered with a slimy opaque type of film. It's limbs were long and gangly and my grandfather claimed there were blades at the end of them. The creature was making the scraping noise by moving the blades back and forth over a large rock underneath it. It had some sort of tail that split into three and then into three more before ending in small reddish color balls. He couldn't exactly distinguish these characteristics in the dark. It was about the size of a large dog and its torso was flat and smooth.

It was a revolting creature and my grandfather's first thought was to destroy it. He looked at it and it looked back at him and he realized that it was injured. When he looked closely, he could see a dark liquid staining the rock underneath and flowing onto the sand beside it. The gangly head lifted and the opaque eyes stared at my grandfather. He was sure whatever it was had not come from this earth. He was also sure it was in intense pain.

He said that they looked at each other for a moment and in that time my grandfather became aware of an entire existence beyond what he had ever imagined. In those opaque eyes he saw strange beauty and desire side by side with death and destruction, passion with fury, procreation with extermination. This portal only lasted for an instant before the creature's head drooped and then it was still. My grandfather watched it the entire night, wondering if it was dead and if death even applied to such an unearthly product. Finally when the sun rose, he decided its life was extinguished and he was determined to give it a last bit of dignity in an alien world. He spent half the day in the blazing sun burying the thing.

You see, those few moments had changed my grandfather's life. It had shown him things he could never have imagined as a simple man in his small town. He never went to Madrid. Instead, he went back to the village, packed his bags, and headed off to the strangest world he could find, America. He never stopped yearning to find the strange world he had seen in that creature’s eyes.

Who knows what he ever really saw. He would swear his experience happened but my father told him it was just a hallucination from being in the dessert for so long. The story would always end with my grandfather telling me:

'Luis, never forget that there are things out there we don't understand. Lands that have not been explored, and powers that are beyond our comprehension. Some of it is good and should be embraced, some of it though, is bad. '

You see Kathy, there are things out there that don’t fit into the rational world we’ve so conveniently built. Most of the time, its easy to ignore the strange and pretend it’s an aberration or a lie. If it's not quantifiable, if it cannot be replicated, then it must not be real.

But when something inexplicable happens, something that cannot be explained away, or pushed under the rug, reality bulges and buckles. Sometimes I think, it can break.

There are forces at work in Wellow Falls that come from the same place as my grandfather's creature. If you try to explain it away or ignore it, it will break you.

He finished and became quiet, made somber by the telling of his most sacred memory. Kathy’s mouth hung open.

"Are we just going to die? " she finally asked. Luis looked up and smiled at her.

"No, no Kathy. We've got to get out of here and let someone know what's happening in Wellow Falls. "

She still didn't look convinced.

"So what can we do? If whatever is happening is so powerful what can two people chained in a hole do to make a difference? "

"We need get a warning out so that he can be stopped. The town has censored itself to protect the holiday weekend. I'm a journalist and this is a story we’ve got to tell. The world needs to know what is going on in Wellow Falls. "

"If it's not already too late. What if Martin has already spread beyond Wellow Falls? "He realized it was a possibility.