Michael Koryta - Last Words

“Other entrance?” Mark said.

Evan nodded. “You got it, brother. You’re the one who’s going to need to understand this shit and weigh it against whatever comes out of Cecil’s mouth. That’ll be intriguing.”

“All right. Tell me what I’m weighing.”

“First entrance to Trapdoor was the one on the property my father kept. But he was secretive about that, was scared to death to tell people, because he was looking at ten years in Pendleton if things went wrong during his trial, and that’s a long time to let your oil well sit, right? He thought somebody would claim it, somehow. So he went looking for money and lawyers fast as he could.”

“So Cecil connected him with Pershing.”

“And that didn’t work out so well all the way around. I’ll say this much for Cecil — he never said shit about the cave, to the best of my knowledge. He had to scramble once the other entrance opened, though. The second entrance opened twenty months after my father found the first. Think about all the time the cave has sat down there, right? A thousand years, or is it a million, I don’t know. Hell of a long time, just sitting there. And then one year it rains too much. One year out of all those. One wet year too many. For all those thousands of years, nobody would have killed over this land. Then something shows itself under the ground, and now we’ve got, what, three dead already, and Ridley down below somewhere. All because of the chance to take money out of the ground.”

Mark followed him around to the northern corner of the trailer, closest to where the ground sloped off into a deep sinkhole, a farmer’s nightmare. The trailer was raised on cinder blocks and skirted with a rotting piece of fascia. Evan pulled one of the fascia panels loose and crawled under, and Mark followed. There wasn’t much clearance, maybe two feet at most. It was a belly crawl. Evan slid forward over the wet soil, pulled a flashlight from his pocket, and turned it on. The beam showed an elevated concrete ring with a rusted manhole cover over the top.

“What do you think that is?” Evan said.

“Somebody wants it to look like the septic tank, but you don’t drop a trailer on top of your septic.”

“That was a last-minute call. My father spent the days just before his trial out here with Cecil Buckner. They rented an excavator and did the job alone. He still didn’t trust it, though, so they moved the trailer too. I suppose it worked. Not the worst idea in the world, really. Most people don’t pause to study on trailers and septic tanks.”

He crawled over and pushed the lid back. He had to set the gun down to do it; the lid was plenty heavy. When it had scraped clear, Evan rolled onto his right shoulder and waved for Mark.

“Not bad, right? Only my old man could think to hide his golden ticket in shit. More I think about it, more it suits him.”

Mark crawled close enough to see, and then Evan lifted the flashlight and shone it down. The false septic tank spread out into a narrow and deep chamber of stone. Deeper than the light could reach. In the center, a long ladder made of steel cables and aluminum steps dangled. The walls sloped inward, forming a V, and it looked tight at the far end.

Mark glanced away from it and out at the fields that swept toward Trapdoor, and the distance seemed extraordinary. He’d made it all that way in the dark?

“This is where you put me?”

“Hell, no! You’d still be down there, your bones sitting alongside my old man’s. You went in the main entrance, the one people know about. And not far in, either. But in your attempt to get out, you just went farther in.”

“I thought I was getting close,” Mark said. “I thought I was heading the right way.”

“You were heading deeper into the cave.”

It seemed impossible to believe, but if anyone would know, it was the man who’d left him there.

“The entrances connect,” Evan said. “Only two people ever figured out how. My dad from this end and, apparently, Ridley Barnes from the other. Because Ridley got there, didn’t he? Hard to kill a man if you don’t get to him.”

“Your father is the dark man,” Mark said.

“The what?”

“He’s down there,” Mark said. “Your father’s body is down in that cave.”

Evan nodded.

“The teeth came from Detroit,” Mark said. “The police seem convinced of that.”

“That’s because they were mailed from Detroit, yes. Cecil needed people to stop looking for my father. The longer they looked for him, the more trouble it would be. Good news was, there was already somebody in the game who’d promised to kill my dad. And his people were in Detroit. Cecil drove up there and mailed them down and damned if he wasn’t right — it quieted the search awfully fast. Everybody had been waiting for my dad to get popped when he came out of prison, so when they finally had evidence that he had been, they were content with that. The old boy who put the hit on him, he wasn’t one to miss. That’s why, during the short time my dad was back in this town, he was stealthy about it.”

“Cecil pulled your father’s teeth out of his mouth?”

“No,” Evan said. “I did that.”

He didn’t look away from Mark. His face was hard and his voice steady and dark. “Cecil offered. I didn’t think that was right. I thought if anyone was going to treat his body like that, it should be family.”

Mark tried to imagine what that had been like. How long had it taken? How easily did they come out? How often did Evan see those images when he closed his eyes at night?

“I was told he never came back to town after he was paroled,” Mark said. “Everyone seems to believe that. How long was he really here?”

“If they believe it, then Cecil did his job. All summer, from the day my father got paroled to the day I came in here with Sarah, Cecil was hustling to keep my father quiet and invisible. It wasn’t easy. My old man was fixated on the cave and he would drink and do dumb shit, call Pershing and make threats, go down there and tag the cave with paint like a little kid. Cecil would rip his ass and then put the blame on Ridley, and that was easy enough because Ridley Barnes is the craziest fucking man who ever walked through this county. He’s talking to caves, right? Got himself friends down there, rocks he thinks are people. You know how convenient Ridley Barnes was for Cecil Buckner? Damn, brother, you have no clue just how valuable that old boy was. He was like one of those loons who stand on street corners preaching about the end times and government conspiracies or whatever. People expect him to say crazy shit, do crazy shit. They don’t expect him to say the truth.”

“You took Sarah in there for your father?”

“I did not take her in there for him!” For the first time, his mask of good nature shattered and Mark could see the dangerous rage that existed beneath it. When Mark spoke again, he took care to keep his voice gentle.

“Then what happened?”

“Just what I said happened from the start. We went in there because Sarah wanted to, then somebody scared us, and she hid. Then she was lost. Every bit of that was true.” He swallowed. “I just didn’t mention that I met my father in the cave. When I left her to check out the noises, the drunk son of a bitch came in and screamed at me for telling her about the cave. Except I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to tell her anything that she didn’t know, that everyone who paid ten bucks for a tour didn’t know. I tried to explain that. I’ll never know if she heard any of it or not. He laid me upside the head with a Maglite, and by the time I came to, they were both gone. So I went for help. I went to Cecil. I’ve spent ten years wishing I’d turned in any other direction. Hell, just gone right to the cops and let the old man go back to prison. But he was my father. I didn’t like the man, but he was my father. And the only friend he had in this world was Cecil Buckner.”