Shadow Stations: Unseen (5 page)

My mind was still chattering when I closed the shutters.

I rummaged through the professor’s desk and took the lid from a box of stationary buried under some envelopes. He would never miss it. Scissors, and a tiny hole in the center, and the lid turned into a simple shield. It looked like something a little kid would make, but it should work.

Once I locked my bedroom door, I ran the screwdriver through the shield and turned on the flashlight. My nerves almost got the better of me, but I wasn’t going to stop now. I’d already tried two of the symbols on the cover. That left the upside down U and the trident.

I tapped the trident with the screwdriver, not sure what to expect. A band with tiny gold lines appeared, one line, two lines, three, continuing in sequence until they became impossible to count. I couldn’t imagine what they represented, but I touched the second set and held my breath.

The probe shot under the shield and seized my wrist as if it possessed an evil intelligence.

* * *

My bedroom walls disappeared and I found myself floating behind the prisoner in a tomblike tunnel. He was still alive, breathing hard, bent over in obvious exhaustion. The top of his hooded head brushed the primitive stone ceiling, which meant he had to be in the ruins. Faint green light from a hidden source ahead fell over the water-stained walls.

“
I’m here,” I whispered. “I came back.”

The prisoner whirled around before I had time to ask him anything else. Had he heard me this time? Heavy footsteps sounded behind us in the tunnel. My heart lurched. So we weren’t alone. The prisoner staggered into the shadows ahead, pressing his shoulder against the wall to keep from falling. His wrists were still bound behind his back.

“
Da spukt es
,” a guttural voice shouted behind us. It sounded like German.

When the prisoner swung around to look over his shoulder, I saw our pursuer, a huge man with a disfigured head that resembled a lumpy potato. Sunburned black, the German had lost his right eyeball and right ear. He gripped an enormous tree branch with stubby hands that were missing several fingers.

“
Halt, stopp. Da spukt es.
”

Halt. Like hell. German was never my best subject and I had no idea what
spukt
meant, but I got his point. He wanted us to stop, which wasn’t bloody likely going to happen. The prisoner whipped his head around and hurried downhill. The German was gaining ground, dragging his monstrous branch over the tunnel floor. In the dim light I could make out an earring in his one remaining ear and a soccer ball tattoo on his neck.

When the prisoner began to run, his pursuer ran, too.

“
Halt
.” The German thumped the branch on the stone floor.

The prisoner ran faster and faster. As the tunnel dipped sharply, the terrible whispering I’d heard outside began again. It couldn’t be coming from the insects in the trees since we were underground. We turned a corner and ran headlong into thick veils of ominous black smoke that clung to the walls and floor as it streamed downhill. I had no sense of smell and could only wonder if the ruins were on fire.

The prisoner hurried deeper underground into the oppressive gloom as the whispering and black smoke grew thicker. I still couldn’t make sense out of what I was seeing. Tendrils of black smoke twisted into shapes that almost resembled desperate outstretched hands and then drifted apart. More smoke flowed in from a narrow doorway in the tunnel wall, but the prisoner raced past the opening as if he was afraid to take it.

The German was almost upon us.

The tunnel turned, and we ran from the manmade ruins into an enormous natural cavern with ancient stalagmites that had formed rock columns over the centuries. Nightmarish shapes twisted around the rock into those same terrible outstretched hands, drifted apart, and twisted again under that same faint green light, but I couldn’t see the source of the light. The rush of incomprehensible whispers grew almost unbearable.

The prisoner splashed into an underground stream that wound down to a mirrored black lake in the cavern’s deepest recesses, but his pursuer’s footfalls were right behind him.

The German’s meaty hand reached out. “
Stopp
.”

Breathing hard, the prisoner smashed his shoulder against the German and knocked him over into the stream. Water splashed. Legs and arms flew everywhere as the two men went down together, snorting and gasping. The prisoner grappled for the tree branch with his legs, but it sank under the water.

The German wrenched him up with powerful arms and rammed a fist into his face so hard the prisoner’s knees buckled and his head lolled back. The huge man spat off an insult. With his face inches away, he gritted his teeth and pulled as if he were trying to rip the prisoner apart. His eye bugged out and his muscles shook and then I heard metal snap and suddenly understood.

Freed after all this time, the prisoner lifted his hands in slow amazement and reached out to pound the German on the shoulder in a gesture of heartfelt thanks. I wondered why he didn’t speak.

The German
’s grin spread across his filthy face. “
Da staunste, was
?”

Thock.

The hunter.

My heart raced at the horrible, familiar sound. A burning hole appeared in the German’s forehead. Blood spurted from his nostrils. The man’s eye glazed over as he tottered, died on his feet, and collapsed face down in the stream. Water spread over the silver box on his back. He was another prisoner.

A second
thock
hit the water. Whirling around, the prisoner gave the German a frantic shake, but the man stayed face down in the water with a bloody hole in his skull. Whispers rushed toward us, desperate, urgent, pleading over and over. The prisoner fled from the corpse and ran along the lake where the strange shadowy smoke drifted and twisted and drifted apart. When another
thock
echoed through the cavern, he plunged into the black water up to his chest.

* * *

Seconds later, a force ripped me out of the ruins to my bedroom, where I held my head, nauseated and panting for breath. The dull ache in my wrists radiated to every finger. The clock said midnight. I’d been away for two hours according to the gold lines on the side of the device. I’d discovered the controls. Then I leaned over the side of the bed and threw up on the floor.

Chapter 8

I cleaned up the puke with an old shirt, struggled into the hall bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face. The purplish-red lines on my wrists had grown darker. I found some Ben Gay and a bottle of Bactine in the medicine cabinet and was trying to decide which one to slather on my hideous skin when I heard footsteps on the stairs.

Tap, tap on the door. “Amy? You okay?” Mike said.

“
I’m fine.” My voice had that I’ve-just-thrown-up shake.

“
I thought I heard you throwing up.”

“
Yeah, that was me all right. I’m okay now.”

“
You sure? You think it was the chili?”

“
No, I don’t think so. I’m fine.” No, I wasn’t fine. I stared at my haunted face and my purple wrists and wished Mike would beam himself back to the couch.

“
Anything I can bring you? I could run to the store. The Giant’s open all night.”

“
No, no, I’m okay. I’m over it now.”

“
Okay,” Mike said, sounding reluctant to leave. “You call me if you need anything.”

“
I sure will,” I told him.

He waited another long minute, probably to see if I was going to puke my guts up again, and then his footsteps retreated downstairs. I knew he would do anything in the world for me, but I couldn’t face him right now. I soothed my wrists with Bactine and slipped into bed.

I couldn’t sleep, though. The bones in my hands were killing me. After a few minutes, I got up to lay my wretched wrists on the cool windowsill and stare out the window at the stars, which turned my thoughts to Ben. I needed to buy some flowers for his grave in the morning, something with blue, his favorite color, like mine. We’d planned to do so many things before the wedding and now I—

The faint shriek of the kettle came from the kitchen. Mike was making tea or coffee. I waited. Sure enough, sixty seconds later, his footsteps started up the stairs and came down the hall. A teacup rattled in a saucer outside my bedroom door.

Tap, tap. “Amy?” Mike said in a low voice. “I brought you some tea.”

I cracked the door, feeling awkward in my long shirt, and took the cup and saucer.

“
Peppermint.” He stared at my bare legs. “It’s supposed to be good for your stomach.”

“
Thanks.” I started to ease the door shut.

“
You sure you’re okay? What’s that smell?”

“
Medicine. I scratched myself. See you in the morning.”

I closed the door. How many times had I said I was fine when it was obvious I wasn’t? I was surprised he didn’t slam me for it.

The fragrant tea did smell good. I sat down in the dark and tried to think. I was crazy to go back, but the clock said twenty after midnight, which left plenty of time before daybreak.

I put the tea down, skipped the useless shield, and turned on the flashlight, feeling like an addict with a secret obsession. Light flared across the device. Once it came to life, I found the gold lines again and pressed the one that represented an hour. Tingling pain ran through my hand when the probe grabbed my wrist.

* * *

The massive rock roof grazed the prisoner’s head as he waded in up to his chest. Water sloshed up to his chin. He was running out of room. When the tremendous roof finally met the water, he sucked in a lungful of air and dove under the surface.

I streamed after him like a phantom. He turned out to be an experienced swimmer, but I wondered how long he could stay underwater or if we would even make it out at all.

The black lake wound toward a distant wavering light. Nobody seemed to be following us. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see pale shapes on the lakebed. The prisoner plunged down and swam away with wild, hysterical strokes, but he’d disturbed something that popped up through the depths.

The empty eye sockets of a human skull gazed up at us. Below it a horrifying pile of rotting bones littered the murky silt.

The prisoner raced toward the light, made it out of the cave into an open body of green water, and broke the surface, gasping, his chest heaving for air. The first rays of dawn were rising through the rainforest. Birds shrieked. We were on the far side of the ruins, which loomed behind the lake in a forbidding mountain of carved windows and shadowy porticos.

“
I’m here,” I said in his ear. “I followed you the whole way. Where is this place?”

To my disappointment he still didn’t react to my voice. He treaded water instead, spotted a stone hut near the shore, and swam toward it until he reached solid ground and grabbed two jagged rocks, one in each hand. I knew what he was thinking. Weapons.

Dripping wet, the prisoner left the shore and pushed through the ferns to peer inside the hut’s one small window. Through the modern glass panes we could see a sleek metal table with a camp chair, a metal cot, a pitcher and basin, and a cabinet with doors that was probably used for storing food or weapons, or both. The place looked like the hunter’s personal little Motel 6.

But the outer door was locked. With a weary sigh, the prisoner slipped into the smothering foliage and picked up a coconut from the ground, looking in all directions.

Something scrabbled in the green. Fur flashed behind bars. The prisoner parted the fronds and uncovered a trap with a long tailed monkey that looked as if it weighed about fifteen pounds. The silvery reddish brown monkey stared at him with frightened, almost human eyes and gripped the bars with its hands and feet.

No water. The sun had already reached the trap. The monkey held its mouth open from heat exhaustion or terror or both. I wondered if it had been in there all night.

The trap was a common live-catch model, but I couldn’t see primitive local people putting it there. The prisoner looked over his shoulder and opened the unlocked door, still holding one of the rocks. Horrified, I wondered if he was going to kill the monkey when it ran out and use it for food, but he let it escape and it scrambled up a palm tree.

The prisoner braced his legs and began to pound the trap, swinging as if he were possessed. Birds flew screaming from the trees. He broke the hinges, smashed the door off, and bashed the sides in until the bars split and bent down at crazy angles. When he finished, he sized up his masterpiece and placed the rock inside in the middle of the trap floor. A calling card. He couldn’t have made his message any clearer if he’d written
Fuck You and Your Special Island Paradise.

He took one more long look at the wreck, picked up the trap door, walked to the lake, and sent it sailing into the green water. The door floated for a few seconds before it sank into the depths.