A Game of Greed and Deception: A Mystery Drama (19 page)

NINETEEN

The path went straight ahead
and the walls continued to narrow more and more. The tunnel had darkened a good
bit but a flicker of light could be seen at a distance. Soon Tammy had to turn
sideways to pass through the tunnel without bumping against the hard, clay
walls. The ceiling also got lower and lower and she had to duck her head and
bend her knees as she went. Nervous about not being able to run should she be
confronted, Tammy kept a tight grip on the flail, while continually looking
back behind her. She soon came to the end of the razor-thin tunnel where it
spilled out into a large circular room. The entrance to the room was low and
Tammy would have to crawl on all fours to pass through it. She knelt down for a
moment and peered into the large room.

Three
steps went down into the room from the end of the tunnel. There were four lit
torches spaced evenly along curved walls made of stone. The ceiling also curved
and was made of bricks of various sizes. Tammy’s eyes opened wide when she saw
what was happening at one end of the room. Maria was standing on a wooden
table, the end of which was against the back wall. Her hands were bound behind
her back and her feet were tied together. Duct tape had been wound around her
head several times covering her mouth and eyes, only leaving her nostrils open
to breathe. A rope tied in the form of a noose was around her neck and was
pulled tight and firmly secured to the ceiling. She was standing on her
tip-toes to keep from strangling. Tammy winced seeing her look so helpless.

Wow, I can’t imagine that Stephen would
fucking risk the life of his daughter like that. Who else is down in these damn
tunnels? Has someone set up some kind of trap for me and done thinks he can get
me to come out to save Maria? What kind of fool does he take me for
?
Tammy poked her head out further to look around more before venturing into the
room. The ceilings were much higher up than she had thought initially. There
was no other exit to the room and Tammy knew that she would have to come back
out through the small tunnel. Then she looked down, and in front of the steps
was an unopened carton of Capri Magenta 100’s cigarettes next to one of Tammy’s
elegant nightgowns. The carton had a bow on it with the words “For You, My
Darling” written in bright red lipstick.

If
there was one thing that Tammy craved more than anything in the world it was a
cigarette. She thought what the hell, and tried to grab the carton, but it was
just out of her reach. Tammy put an arm through the narrow opening and slowly
pushed herself inside the circular room onto the top step. She quickly glanced
all around the room again and was sure that nobody else was there. She walked
down the three stairs, sat on the bottom one, and took the carton of
Capri
cigarettes.

Tammy
tore through the unopened cigarette carton. She put a cigarette in her mouth
and felt a surge of pleasure just from having it between her lips. Then she lit
the cigarette and inhaled some deep puffs of smoke. She took a good look again
at the table underneath Maria.
I don’t
get it, what’s the catch? I could get her out of there or just as easily knock
the table out from under that bitch. She needs to go anyways, at this point, all
she can do is hurt me. And where in the hell is Stephen – has he just lost his
fucking mind? When I find him all I can say is that hell hath no fury.

Tammy
finished her cigarette, flicked the butt to the ground, and stood up. She made
her way carefully towards the table, looking as she went both down at the floor
and up at the ceiling. There were no signs of any traps. She got to the edge of
the table and started giggling inside watching Maria sweat through her clothes
and make little squealing noises from under the layers of duct tape.
Maybe she knows where Stephen is? If I
remove the tape from her mouth, what can she tell me?
Tammy was racking her
brain for answers.
I doubt she could be
of any help. Because either she would try to lure me into some kind of trap, or
is just another piece in Stephen’s fucked up plan.
Whatever the fuck someone has planned with her, I’m about to finish it.
I came down here to kill whoever gets in my damn way, and I’m starting right
here and now.

Tammy
leaned against the edge of the table. She looked all around the empty room one
more time, and then thrust all of her body weight into the table. It moved more
than a foot and now Maria’s toes barely touched the corner of the table, inches
from falling off completely. Maria was squealing as loud as she could from her
covered mouth. Tammy smirked, took a deep breath, and thrust into the table one
more time. It toppled over completely, falling in its side.

With
nothing supporting her any longer, Maria kicked wildly as the noose pulled
tighter strangling her. Tammy ignored the violent struggle knowing that it
wouldn’t take long for Maria to die. Although the scene was grisly, Tammy had a
rush of adrenaline pump through her, knowing that this was all part of her
destiny to wealth and fame.

She
turned away from where Maria was hanging and looked at the wall behind where
the table had been. She noticed something intriguing – a carving etched into
the wall. Tammy went over and ran her finger along the edge of the carving. The
color of the otherwise dark brown clay was more reddish where it had been
carved into, and the shape resembled a person’s head. Tammy wondered what the
carving meant and if it could be a self-portrait of Oliver. She stepped back
again to get a better overall look. Circles cut out of the wall for eyes were
wide, almost perfectly round. A delicate protrusion looked like a tiny nose,
and a line etched into the red clay would be a little mouth. The overall shape
of the head was circular and two raised spots looked like puffy little cheeks
. This looks like the face of a child. But
who could it be?
Then Tammy’s head burst with euphoria as she suddenly
remembered what Darnell had told her about the Princess Treasure.
My God, it’s the face of a doll. The rock in
the shape of a doll that signaled the location of the buried gold!

Tammy
examined the carving in detail, and noticed a fine line that outlined it in the
rock. She knew that the face must somehow come out from inside the edge of the
carving, and tried pulling on it. It jiggled ever so slightly but was otherwise
very difficult to move. She took the dagger out from her back pocket and tried
to wedge it into the clay along the edge of the fine line. The clay was hard
and the dagger was too crude to fit into the hair-like opening. Tammy then
decided to use the dagger as a hammer, hitting the carving along the edge, and
then pulling on it. The doll face budged a bit more, and Tammy chipped away at
the edge to allow more room for it to move. After repeating this process over and
over, this piece of clay finally fell out from inside the wall onto the floor.

Tammy
eagerly peeped into the empty space expecting to see her newfound riches.
Instead, there was an exquisite hand-laid mural made from hundreds of pieces of
polished minerals. The minerals were of every color and brilliance, and had
been placed perfectly up against one another.
Ok, so now what’s this? Another secret compartment? There has to be a
way for this to open.
Tammy pushed and pulled on the mural, but it wouldn’t
budge. Each polished stone was embedded into the back of the wall. She felt all
over the brilliant mural with the palm of her hand. It was perfectly smooth to
the touch, except for a few small pieces of mineral that protruded out from the
others.

Tammy
pulled, pushed, and twisted each of the small protrusions but nothing happened.
Now she was sure that this mural could not be moved. She sat back down, totally
exhausted from all of the digging into the clay.
Ok, so what does this mean? There is every damn color of stone here –
dark blue, violet, beet red, pine green, canary yellow. It is a code? Perhaps
using the colors of the stones that are raised from the surface?

She
counted the raised pieces of mineral – there were seven of them. They ran along
a horizontal line near the center of the mural.
Ok, so let’s see here. From left to right, these colors are – light
greenish, milky clear white, deep dark blue, brilliant sea-blue, deep blue
again, emerald green, and canary yellow. But the exact colors are not obvious.
And some of the stones have traces of other colors in them. How the hell is
that gonna help me?
Tammy was racking her brain for ideas, paying no
attention to the now lifeless Maria dangling from the noose.

These raised stones have GOT to mean
something. Wait a moment – maybe it’s the names of them that are important.
I’ve done taken some geology classes before, let me see….starting from the
left….shit, I don’t even know the name of the first one. But the next almost
clear colored one is quartz, that’s easy. Then we have….God, I’ve seen that
beautiful dark blue rock before in shops…so brilliant….but what is it? Wait – I
think that’s azurite. Yes, that’s it! Now, after that, there is a sea-blue
mineral….shit, I don’t have any idea what it is. But next is azurite again, and
then that dark green one is definitely malachite.
She
bent over and took a whiff of the yellow mineral.
Yes, and that’s sulfur.

She
took a deep breath to concentrate.
So
what do I have? Unknown – Quartz – Azurite – Unknown – Azurite – Malachite –
Sulfur. Ok, using the first letter in their names gives me…__Q, A,__,A,M,S.
What in the hell does that mean?

Tammy
rubbed her temples gently to soothe the sharp pain in her head which was a
result of having to focus so intensely.
What’s
the name of that first mineral? It’s light green with touches of violet. I
think I’ve seen and even wore a bracelet made of that stone. Yes, I bought it
in a jewelry shop back in
Wilmington
.
What did the owner tell me? He said it was not actually jade but looked like it.
That’s right! It had some name that sounded like jade…ok, so I am gonna use J.
That gives me J,Q,A__A,M,S. Well what the fuck? That’s J.Q. Adams. Who is
J.Q…Oh my God, it’s John Quincy Adams, and old time president. So what the hell
did I need to know that for?

Confident
that she had solved the puzzle, Tammy stood back up and looked all around where
the table had been to make sure there weren’t any other clues. She circled the
room and found nothing else of interest along any of the walls. She took one last
look at the now lifeless Maria hanging from the rope. Then she pulled herself
back through the entry into the narrow walkway.

Tammy
hurried anxiously through the tunnel and back to the three-way fork. She
spotted the two torches that were close to the entry into the cabin above. She
walked past the torches over to the bottom of the ladder, looked up and saw darkness,
indicating that the trap door above had been closed. She slowly made her way up
the ladder to the top and indeed found that the way out was sealed from above.
She pounded on the thick wooden boards above her and felt certain that she
could not move them.
So someone is
playing me like a damn rat in a cage. But where the hell is Stephen and is
someone helping him? I guess I ain’t got no damn choice but to keep looking.
In a few moments she was back at the three-way fork and ready to head down the
last tunnel.

TWENTY

Tammy started walking along
attentively and found that this section of tunnel was not as narrow and easier
to navigate. The dirt walkway curved around to the right and then back to the
left illuminated by some more burning torches. Tammy kept checking behind her
as she went, wary of the still air and eerie silence. After walking for another
couple of minutes the path cut through a small rectangular room. There was a
putrid odor coming from this room like nothing Tammy had ever smelled before.
She held her nose and tried breathing through her mouth so as to avoid inhaling
the terrible stench.

The
space was quite dark since there were no torches inside. There was a flicker of
light coming from the tunnel that continued along at the other end of the room.
Tammy stepped gingerly into the room to have a better look around. On the right
side she saw two old large rectangular ice boxes which were smeared with soot
and grime on the outside. She remembered seeing a box just like these in her
grandfather’s garage and knew that they were used to keep things cold before
there was refrigeration. On top of one of the ice boxes was an old metal meat
cleaver with a wooden handle. Tammy picked up the cleaver and carefully ran her
finger along the blade. It was quite dull and worn down so she tossed it to the
ground.

On
top of the other ice box there was a rusty pair of metal pincers. Next to the
pair of pincers were old teeth fragments stained with blood. The thought of
yanking teeth from someone’s mouth with this primitive instrument gave Tammy
goose bumps and a tingling sensation on her skin. Some large metal hooks were
attached to the wall behind the freezers and one of them had what looked like
dried entrails hanging from it.

With
a feeling of nausea, Tammy turned to the left and then stepped back while
holding her nose when she saw what was creating the terrible smell. Large slabs
of decomposing meat were lying on the ground and completely infested with
maggots. Most of the meat had become a vile grey sludge which Tammy had never
seen the likes of before. The maggots wriggled and tore at the meat, hundreds
of them moving all at once. It was as if the sludge was alive, squirming and
oozing on the ground, yet slowly being digested by the hungry larvae. She
squinted to see better to the other end of the room past the maggots. There
were some skulls with their teeth missing scattered across the floor. The
stench was overwhelming, and Tammy swiftly passed through the room and went
into another well-lit stretch of the tunnel.

She
took a few quick breaths to keep from puking as she felt the nausea way up
inside her gut. The ceiling of the new stretch of tunnel was much lower and she
ducked her head a bit as she went. She walked along slowly for several minutes
as the tunnel wound underground like a snake in a vast meadow. Lit torches were
attached to the hard clay walls in increments of about fifty feet. As Tammy
walked, she felt some air coming into the tunnel from up ahead. In the blink of
an eye, a vicious gust of wind blew down the walkway and extinguished the
torches in the tunnel both behind and ahead of her. Tammy stopped in her tracks,
as a cold sweat ran down her forehead from fear of the unknown darkness. Then
she dropped to the floor and curled up into a little ball. A feeling of terror
from being alone in a pitch black space had enveloped her.

Tammy
frantically felt the ground around her. She didn’t want to move ahead and could
only concentrate on the sounds that her breathing made. She felt as if time had
stopped and she was trapped, unable to go anywhere. Then the pain started
again. More intense than ever before, the pain shot into her head like a round
of bullets fired from a machine gun. She tried to scream but no sounds came
out. Goose bumps covered her skin and she buried her face in her hands. It
brought her back, to that horrific day, more than eleven years ago…

***

“Where’s
my baby brother and when will I be able to see him?” Tammy asked the
receptionist at the hospital.

“He’s
down in the intensive care nursery. He’s very fragile and will be kept in an
incubator for a week. You know that he has a serious genetic breathing
condition. It just isn’t the best time to see him right now.”

“But
he’s my little brother and I want to make sure that he’s okay. I love him!”

“A
nurse is watching him, dear. He requires ventilation support around the clock.
There’s no need to worry, he’s in good hands. You will be able to see him when
he is allowed to go home with your mother.”

“Just
one nurse and no doctor?”

The
receptionist nodded.

Tammy
licked her lips and gave a wry smile. “Thank you.”

She
walked out of the receptionist area, and over to where the elevators were. She
knew that the intensive care nursery was just one floor up.

Tammy
got off the elevator on the second floor, and moved quietly through the
hallways. Medical staff personnel were busy tending to patients and nobody
seemed to take notice of a girl her age who seemed to know where she was going.
She looked around until she found the intensive care nursery. Then she looked
back and forth to be sure that nobody else was coming her way, and peered
through the glass. There were only two babies lying in incubators. The rest
were empty and the nurse had evidently stepped out.

When
she entered she made sure to identify her infant brother by the bracelet he
wore on his tiny arm. She gazed at him, her blue eyes bulging with a
calculated, penetrating look.
I’ve done had to grow up with three other younger
sisters taking all the damn attention away from me. I used to be the little
princess and now nobody cares about me. Well, I’m not letting some retarded
little brat come into my life to screw it up even more.

She
grabbed a pillow from the bed along one side of the room and went back over to
the incubator. Then she looked down again at the infant who seemed to her
unbelievably small. She felt a rush of adrenaline surge through her.
Still-faced, she raised the pillow and brought it down firmly over the side of
the helpless baby’s face covering his nose and mouth…

***

Tammy
suddenly snapped out of the migraine spell, with her heart pounding. Her face
was dripping with sweat. She took some deep breaths to try and calm down. She
wanted to stay right where she was, curled into a ball, and go to sleep. But
she knew that she had to move on and get out of the darkness. All other
priorities seemed small in comparison. Nervously, she got up on all fours and
started to crawl forward so as not to bump against the rock hard walls or ceiling.
She had to be careful not to put any weight on her broken hand and inadvertently
dropped the flail behind her.

She
moved very slowly through the darkness. She paused after crawling a bit to feel
in back of her and along the walls. The certainty that someone else was lurking
in one of these tunnels terrified her. After an interminable period of time the
tunnel floor started to feel moister. Tammy kept crawling along on the now
warmer, softer earth, until finally she saw a bit of light flicker in the
distance.

She squinted
as the light made her eyes burn. She crawled faster now, until the flicker
started getting brighter. Excited, she jumped up and moved more quickly towards
the light until she finally stopped at a point where the layout of the tunnel
changed. The clay walls ended at three nesting stone arches with pointed tops.
Set one inside the other, these archways were made from a hard grey and white
limestone. The air was really moist here, and light came into the tunnel
through the arches. Tammy touched the limestone and it felt rather slippery.

She
stepped slowly through the archways and entered a huge wide-open room. Torches
were burning on each of the surrounding walls. To the immediate left and right
side of the arches, just inside the room, was a stone pedestal. Secured on top
of each pedestal was a skull, which appeared to be that of a human, with the
teeth missing. Looking straight ahead, Tammy noticed that the back of the room
was partially sectioned off with a metal cage-like apparatus with a small
opening. Inside the cage there appeared to be a coffin standing upright against
the wall, and there were more bones, skulls, and what looked like other human
remains on the floor.

Tammy
stood stone still in awe as she surveyed the surroundings. Her heart beat
quickly but yet she was numb from the thought of what had happened here.
So this must just be one big torture
dungeon. But is this a dead end? There’s no other damn way out of here?
She
stepped very carefully as small stones and other fragments littered the ground.

On
the right side of the room some heat was emanating from what looked like a fire
pit. Tammy crept closer and saw the still smoldering hot coals piled on top of
each other. Next to the pit was an iron poker with a glowing red tip that must
have been scalding hot. There was a bit of a breeze blowing across the fire
pit. Bewildered, Tammy walked around the pit and examined the back wall. A few
baseball-sized tunnels had been dug into the walls, the ends of which could not
be seen, with some air passing through them. The air came out slowly from the
holes, until every minute or so, a firm gust of wind blew into the room,
causing the flaming torches to dance wildly.

She passed back across the
center of the room and over to the other side. To her surprise, there was an
old wooden table there. On top of the table was a neatly folded piece of paper
next to one of Tammy’s red lipstick tubes. She opened the paper and discovered
that it was a printed map of the series of tunnels and rooms beneath the cabin.
Then she looked up and noticed the wall behind the table. It was made entirely
of brick and had written on it with the red lipstick the words “Happy
Anniversary My Love”.

Confused,
Tammy sat down on the ground in front of the table.
So he came down here, left me anniversary messages, and is waiting for
me to arrive. Well here I fucking am – now where in the hell is he?
She
took the jade dagger from her pocket and started to carve into the hard ground.
The mental and emotional turmoil of everything was starting to take its toll on
Tammy.

She
closed her eyes, sat in silence, and tried to tune out the voices that screamed
inside her head. A sense of failure had brought a deep feeling of melancholy.
Taking a few moments to relax, she focused on listening to the sound of her own
breathing. This was like one big lucid dream, she thought, and wished that it
would end. Then she was able hear something that she hadn’t heard before – a
faint dripping sound. She listened again and it sounded as if water was slowly
falling onto the floor, one small drop at a time. She waited a couple of
minutes, finding a bit of comfort from the noise that each drop made. Then she
got up and followed the sound towards the back of the room where the metal
caging was.

As
she approached the caging, Tammy could not help but stare at the floor inside
it. Beautiful ceramic Encaustic tiles formed an exquisite hand-laid floor. This
floor space was five feet deep by ten feet wide, with the caging wrapped around
the edge of the tiles. Different shades of clay had been inlaid into the tiles
before a shiny glaze was put over them. The tiles were perfectly square and
about nine inches long on each side. Tammy stepped inside and kicked some of
the bones and soot out of the way. Right in front of her leaning against the
wall was a closed iron coffin with the head of a mummy on top. At the base of
the coffin was a pool of blood that continued to drip from the inside.

Tammy
looked down at the blood and then noticed the tiles forming the last two rows
near the back wall. Alternating with the tiles made from colored clay patterns
were ones that had faces carved into the ceramic. She counted the special tiles
and found that there were sixteen of them, eight in each of the last two rows.
Then she knelt down to examine them more closely. The facial carvings were
those of the first sixteen
U.S.
Presidents.

Tammy
stood back up and gazed out from the caged-in area into the rest of the room.
Goddam, what is all this? Is there someone
in that coffin or is it some kind of trap? And the Presidents – there must be a
way to use the clue from the mural. But how?

Fighting
her apprehension, Tammy slowly reached out with her good hand and grabbed the end
of the coffin which was attached to small hinges. She tried to open it but it
seemed stuck or locked from the inside. She took the dagger and wedged it in
between the coffin door and the frame. Then with all her might, she yanked at
the lid until finally it swung open.

The
inside of the coffin lid door was filled with razor-sharp spikes dripping with
fresh blood. Lying inside the coffin was Stephen, completely naked, and
stone-dead. The spikes had pierced him in dozens of places and he would have
certainly died from loss of blood. Burn marks were all over his flesh where
someone must have tortured him with the iron poker. A Heretic’s fork, just like
the one that Maria saw in the wine cellar, had been placed around Stephen’s
neck with a leather strap. The sharp prongs had pierced his throat and upper
chest area. Tammy stood in disbelief barely able to think or move. She stumbled
back away from the iron coffin leaving the hinged lid open and Stephen’s
lifeless body visible.