Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

“I know, right?! Isn’t it awesome! We should grab some beer,” he said enthusiastically as he hustled over to the fridge and started shoving cans in his pockets.

“John, how deep is that thing?” I asked, taking a step back; fearful that it would suck me in and never let me go. “I have claustrophobia, John!” Fuck the near panic, I was in full blown hysteria mode, I would have willingly gone to the zombies at this point rather than deal with the wormhole.

“See you on the other side!” John said as he quite literally dove into the hole. I expected to hear him start screaming that he was stuck or that the giant worm from Tremors was chasing his ass.

“Great, Talbot, like you needed another fucking reason to not go into the hole,” I said aloud after thinking about the movie that had scared the crap out of me in my youth.

“You coming?” drifted up from the hole. I thought I was imagining it, but then I distinctly heard him tell me to bring more beer. The zombie falling through the window was the last bit of motivation I needed. I screwed up royally and got into the hole feet first. I was death-clinching the small lip of the trap door as I pulled the door shut just as the zombie inside crawled over to me, it’s mouth not more than a few inches from my fingers. I was plunged into a darkness a blind person would have sensed.

I could hear the zombie scrambling to its feet. I let go of the lip just as it stepped on the trap door. My fingers were pinched a little bit, but it was nothing compared to the slamming of my heart in my chest. I wasn’t moving, John had slithered down the hole like a snake, and I was stuck fast. I tried to wriggle along, but my arms were pinioned above my head, and I didn’t have the room to bring them by my sides and help me move.

I wanted to cry. I could feel the walls collapsing on me, breathing was getting difficult. My next option was to push the hatch open and kill the zombie in the cabin, but I knew I’d never get out of the hole quick enough. It would be gnawing on my face as I struggled to get free. Die in the dark or have my face eaten, those were the two choices I was weighing out when John spoke.

“You coming, man?”

“John, I’m stuck!” I screamed. The zombie above me stopped its shuffling. The cabin door finally gave way with a resounding splintering.

“Did you grab more beer?”

“Would you leave me here if I didn’t?” I asked, truly concerned.

The zombies above me were having a field day on the cabin; what little possessions were in there were being reduced to rubble. I could hear the planks on the trap door creak every time one or more of them stepped on them and I sincerely hoped they would hold up. I shrieked—yeah dammit, I shrieked—when I felt John’s hand wrap around my ankle.

“Did you hear that, man? Sounded like a banshee,” he said in all seriousness.

“That’s probably what it was then,” I said in a near falsetto voice, not yet getting my rampant emotions in check yet.

John was pulling me down the hole. I was trying my best to not eat dirt…I was not succeeding.

“Hi ho, hi ho it’s off to work I go!” John was singing at the top of his lungs.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked in response to his song choice. I was being dragged through a tunnel by a tripping madman singing Disney songs…with zombies above me. I couldn’t have made this shit up if I tried.

“You ready?” John asked me.

“For...?” I was beginning to ask as I felt myself falling. It seemed like I was suspended in space for hours, free falling through the cosmos, but now that I’m looking back on it, I’m pretty sure that was a side effect of the drugs I was on. The fall was no more than six feet, and I landed awkwardly but softly on some strewn hay.

The cavern—that was what it was—was lit up with some small lanterns that John must have placed here. “Where the...what the hell is this place?” I asked, standing up. I had a good inch or two from the top of my head to the ceiling. I tried my best to not think about it or my claustrophobia would begin to set in again.

“Chateau de Simms.” He smiled, his face caked with dirt, I rubbed absently on mine realizing I probably looked much the same. “Come on, come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me further away from the entry hole.

The cavern opened up, the ceiling now a good eight or nine feet from my head, the knot of claustrophobia around my heart began to loosen. The room stretched further out than side to side, maybe twenty-five feet by ten feet. I was having great difficulty with spatial relations and the echoing was completely throwing me off, threatening to give me one hell of a case of vertigo. I could smell a faint scent that harkened back to days of yore.

“Oh, my babies!” John wailed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking around wildly.

John sat down heavily by a row of huge potted plants. Correction, huge Pot plants. I had only seen plants this size on the news during drug busts.

“They’re dying,” he said sadly as he caressed some of the sticky buds.

“John the Tripper, I need to wrap my head around this can you start from the beginning?” I asked.

John looked up and over at me, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. “Well, scientists say that the universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly...”

“No, man, not that far back.”

“Mesozoic then?” he asked clearly confused with my request.

“This cavern, John the Tripper, let’s start with this cavern,” I clarified, or so I had thought.

“Cave formation begins when rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide as it falls through—”

“Oh fuck, man, you’re hurting my head.”

“Here smoke some of this,” John said, extending his arm, a fairly good sized joint in the palm of his hand. “This will help.”

“Like I need more drugs.” I said sarcastically rubbing my temples.

“Exactly,” John said as he looked in his hand and seemed surprised at what he found. “Did you give me this?” he asked. He sparked it up before I could respond, even if I wanted to.

I’ll admit the sweet smell of the smoke was enticing, but I needed to be closer to reality as opposed to the opposite.

“Man, this is some good shit,” John said as he took a sharp inhalation. “Where’d you get it?” he asked as he pulled the joint away and was looking at the burning end. “Colombia maybe?”

“I don’t really remember,” I told him; that seemed easier than trying to reason with him.

“You got anymore?” he asked, taking another toke.

I shook my head negatively as I began to explore our surroundings. Besides the landing hay and the potted pot plants, there were some tailgating fold-out chairs, a small collapsing table, a bunch of candles and some UV lighting that seemed to run on a cord that went back up the hole we had previously exited from.

At the far end of the cavern was another hole a little bigger than the other, this one looked like you could crawl on hands and knees, but I was in no rush, the mere thought of it got a quickening in my pulse.

“Did you make this place?” I asked John, hoping he would be on a cohesive thought upswing.

“It was here,” he said with abbreviation as he took another hit.

“The tunnel from the cabin was here also?”

“No, I did that. I was pretty sure an alien spacecraft had crash landed here in the ‘40s. So I rented a ground penetrating radar set-up. When it bounced this hole back up, I had to see what it was. Figured the ship would be down here too, it wasn’t.”

“The previous cabin motel owners—or Stephanie for that matter—didn’t care that you dug a hole in the middle of that room?” I asked, pointing back up.