Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1) (16 page)

“Maybe when I’m old enough to fall asleep before dinnertime I’ll get involved,” he said. “Until then I’ve got better things to do.”

I’m not in great shape, but neither were Steve and Cecilia, so we took frequent breaks. The floor of the tunnel remained smooth. We found a few more tools and more markings on the walls. Sparks fluttered around my head every time we came to a marking on the wall. He didn’t have a fit like at the construction site, he just seemed interested. I took pictures of some of the signs just in case. We stopped for lunch before we reached the end.

“How far do you suppose this was intended to go?” Earl asked.

“I’d say about as far as the construction site,” Mordecai said. “Under the mountain and out of town. Only a total lunatic would try to tunnel all the way to Seattle or Tacoma from here.”

“Our town’s not exactly short of those,” his cousin reminded him. “The Frys do like to dig.”

The thought of tunneling for hundreds of miles underground made my skin crawl. I fed Gregory a raisin to distract myself. Once I got used to the idea of a land squid he was fun to have around. As we hiked, he crawled all over my jacket, changing colors as he went. His antics might have been one of the reasons Sparks was doing so much flying.

We had a little warning that the tunnel was going to end. The last light switch was working, but the bulb burned out as soon as Mordecai switched it on. We didn’t need it because the tunnel was starting to glow.

We kept walking until we encountered the only bend in the entire tunnel. The floor was less even here. Sparks darted ahead, and the pendant rattled in my pocket. When Sparks came back, I heard the familiar screams of animals.

“I think we’ve arrived at the construction site,” I said.

“Great,” Zebulon replied. “Who wants to go first?”

“I’ll go,” Steve said without hesitating.

“No, I will,” Cecilia said. “I’ve got experience with witchcraft.”

“How is that going to help here?” Steve asked.

“Being a wizard hasn’t helped you figure this out. Maybe I’ll see something you and Fiona haven’t.”

“I’m less concerned with ancient lore and more with chupacabras,” Mordecai said. “I’ll go check it out. If I start screaming, everyone run back to the entrance.” Before we could protest or suggest that someone who was armed go first, he was around the corner.

“How long do you think we should wait before we go after him?” Zebulon asked.

“I’ll give him ten minutes,” Earl said. “That’s enough time for him to get somewhere and form an opinion.”

“What should we do if he doesn’t come back in ten minutes?” I asked. “Going around the corner one by one until we’re all dead doesn’t seem like a good idea, and if we all go back now we won’t have anything to report.”

“We can all go together,” Cecilia said. “Then one or two of us might escape with useful information.”

Fortunately, Mordecai came back before we got too worked up.

“It’s a portal,” he said, “a big one. Huge, even. You should all definitely come see this.” We followed him around the corner.

***

The tunnel opened up into what seemed to be a natural cave. There were even stalagmites. I hadn’t known there were limestone caves in the Cascades, but I’m no expert on geology. Since I was standing in one now, they must exist. Or we’d entered another dimension while we were walking. For the sake of my sanity, I was going to go with the first explanation, even though words like eldritch and cyclopean sprang to mind as we shone our flashlights around the cavern. I saw dark handprints and broken stalagmites, and more mining equipment scattered across the uneven floor. The rock formations made it hard to judge, but I think the cave was about the size of a baseball diamond. I didn’t see the portal itself until I looked up. Unlike Fiona’s it was glowing. I suppose that meant it was open. It was a disk the size of the cavern, formed of what I assumed were mystical runes of some kind floating in the air above us. As I watched, it glowed even more brightly for an instant. In the glow, I saw beyond the portal to the roof of the cave. There was movement up there.

“Holy shit!” I said. “Did anyone else see that?”

“Yeah,” Zebulon said. “There’s no way we’re shooting all of those.” The ceiling was carpeted with chupacabras.

“Can they burrow through stone?” Cecilia asked.

“No, it looks like there’s a crack in the ceiling,” Mordecai said. “See?” He shone his flashlight in the direction he wanted her to look. There was something there on the ceiling, although it was hard for me to tell what through the squirming masses of radish monsters.

The light seemed to bother them. They shifted away from it. Just as I was thinking that if they saw us we were screwed, one of them saw us. It dropped from the ceiling. Zebulon and Earl both pointed their guns at it and fired. The chupacabra and the bullets both hit the portal and ricocheted. As we ducked, more of the creatures dropped from the ceiling and bounced against the portal. It seemed that they couldn’t get through it.

“I hope there aren’t any gaps between the portal and the wall,” Steve said.

“It doesn’t look like there are,” Mordecai said. “For all the natural formations, this cave is an almost perfect circle. We should stay away from the walls just in case.”

“So now that we’ve found the source of trouble, what happens?” Earl asked.

“Some of these symbols look familiar,” Steve said. “Do you recognize them, Cecilia?”

“You’re right,” she said. “They’re like the symbols on the key.”

“It’s different from the one in Fiona’s house,” I said. “This one has a lot more writing.”

“I think that’s because it’s a fixed destination portal,” Steve said. “Not that I’m a portal expert, but I do know that the more restrictions there are, the more writing there has to be.”

“You’re ahead of the rest of us,” Mordecai said. Gregory was perched on my shoulder now, staring up at the portal. As I joined him in staring upwards, trying to ignore the screaming that Sparks was still sharing with me, Gregory moved to the top of my head.

“Why would Abner have thought this place was valuable?” Steve asked.

“Can you imagine how much money he could have made bringing tourists down here?” Mordecai said. “This must be what he was thinking about all those years he was promoting tourism.” That didn’t sound right to me, but I hadn’t known the man in life. “The only question is, did he have a plan to get past the barrier or was he going to dig a new tunnel at the mall site?”

“It’s a long walk for a tour,” Steve said. “Most caves with artificial entrances only make you walk a few hundred feet at most. I can tell you, getting permits for any of it would be a nightmare.”

“That’s very interesting,” Zebulon said. “If that was his plan it’s never going to happen now, so what do we do with this place?”

“The only thing I can think of is to try to close the portal,” Cecilia said. “I don’t know how to do that though.”

“My vote is to not touch it,” Steve said. “You can see for yourself they’re trapped on that side. Changing anything risks letting them get through to this side and then they can easily follow the tunnel back to town.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Cecilia asked. Steve stared upwards.

“We could fill in the crack from the other side. I’m assuming the surveyors I hired the first time were crooked because that ceiling can’t be very far below the surface.”

“That could work,” Mordecai said. He had a digital camera with him, and he began taking pictures of the portal. “Then we can get some dynamite and concrete and seal this side properly.” We explored the chamber and spent some more time looking up, but there really wasn’t much else to do. We headed back to the tunnel. It narrowed just before the cave, so there was only room for one of us to go through at a time. I was the second to last to go through. As Cecilia went ahead of me, a fern-like appendage slid down between the portal and the wall. I shoved Cecilia forward, and it missed. She tried to get up again, and instead of going ahead, she turned to me.

“What was that for?” She demanded. I didn’t have to answer because the vine caught her arm. She screamed. I grabbed the vine as it pulled at her. The chupacabra’s bodies were only the size of a beach ball, but I could immediately tell that I wasn’t strong enough to prevent it from carrying Cecilia away. I did my best, putting all my weight on her arm as I tried to unwind the vine.

“Help!” I yelled. I could see another vine coming down. Whoever was behind me grabbed me by the waist, but I wasn’t the one being dragged to my death. It turned out to be Zebulon. He tried to cut the vine with a knife, but it was too tough. I was about to suggest that he cut Cecilia’s arm off instead when an unexpected savior appeared.

Gregory jumped off my head and on to the vine. He wrapped his tentacles around it and began to eat. It only took him a few seconds to sever the thing. Gregory didn’t stop there. He continued eating his way up the vine. Both vines tried to retreat behind the portal. Gregory tried to hang on. There was a horrible grinding noise, and one of the vines came free, dropping back to the ground along with Gregory. The vine rapidly disappeared into Gregory’s beak. He had swollen to the size of a basketball, but still tried to climb my pants leg. He seemed surprised when, instead of scooting up as usual, he tipped sideways and lost his grip. I laughed and picked him up by the head. He didn’t weigh much more, but he was as taught as a balloon. I steadied Cecilia with my free hand and urged her down the tunnel to safety.

***

Cecilia was still pretty upset about almost being eviscerated. She thanked both Gregory and me for rescuing her.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you for shoving me,” she said. “I wasn’t even thinking about the risk.”

“It’s all right,” I told her. “I should have said watch out or something. Did anyone know that Gregory would eat those things? I thought he was a strict vegetarian.”

“He’ll also eat rocks if you don’t keep an eye on him,” Earl said. “Maybe those things really are sentient radishes.”

“Can we use that?” Steve wondered. “He’s too tiny to eat them all, but if they’re scared of him. . .”

“Do you think they were?” I asked. “They reacted, but they might not remember. We don’t know how smart they are.”

“I think you’d better ask Fiona about it before trying anything,” Earl said. “She’s pretty protective of Gregory.”

“Maybe she’ll know what to do about the portal,” Mordecai said.

“We aren’t going to learn anything else in here,” Cecilia said, “and it’s too dangerous to go back in there, so we might as well go home.”

It was a long walk, and it was late at night when we reached the entrance. We ended up spending the night in the tunnel since, as Mordecai pointed out, we’d just end up collapsing in the marsh if we made it back after midnight.

The next morning Gregory had shrunk considerably. We opened the seal, and Sparks immediately headed to the side. We were all still groggy, but I called to Earl.

“Remember the dead people we didn’t have time to deal with yesterday?” I asked. “It’s probably time.”

We went over to Sparks and sure enough, there were corpses. I didn’t need Sparks to tell me that they were the missing researchers. Some of them had been stabbed in the heart, at least one of them had been decapitated, and most of them had been shot.

“This is the real deal,” Cecilia said after looking at the symbols painted on one victim’s chest. “Someone knew what they were doing when they killed these people.”

“What
were
they doing?” Steve asked.

“They were looking for that door,” I said. “They brought the tourists here to search, and when they didn’t find anything they killed them. The ones who were stabbed were sacrifices in order to . . . I’m not sure. Get luck? Or power? They think it will help with finding the door somehow.” I sat down against the hill and stared into the forest. “Even at gunpoint they couldn’t get anyone to go over there.”

“The effect gets worse the closer you get,” Mordecai said. “It’s awful at close range.”

“I know that now,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. The killers are those fake cops, that businessman Earl killed, and Dr. Abe Finch. Plus some other guys in fancy suits.”

“Shocking,” Zebulon said. He didn’t sound very shocked.

“Yes, who would have thought Dr. Finch would turn out to be a villain?” Earl said. “And conveniently, he’s one of the last ones left. I shot a couple of guys in suits at the hotel last night.”

“Then we’ll have to catch him,” Mordecai said.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on that researcher woman,” I said. “Assuming Fiona doesn’t kill her first.”

“Someone also needs to keep a close eye on you,” Steve said. “These guys seem to think you’re a great sorcerer the way they’ve been following you around, and you do have a talent for finding certain things.”

“If they want corpses they’ve shown no hesitation in creating their own,” I said.

“I volunteer to watch Jaspar!” Zebulon said. “We could have this wrapped up tonight!”

“Not that soon,” Steve said. “I still need to come up with a way to keep the chupacabras in their cave while I pour cement on top of them.”