Veiled Existence Read online

After they each introduced themselves, Max swept an arm toward the living room. “Take a seat. I already got out a couple of our maps.” Curling papers were stacked on the coffee table and Max sat in the center of the couch in front of them. “The reason I asked you to come here is because the Action Squad maps the underground as we explore. Since I didn’t know which map we’d need, I’d rather look at them here than drag them around.”

  “We really appreciate it,” Dale said.

  Tyler plunked down next to Max, leaning forward to study the street map overlaid with lines in various colors of ink, marker and highlighter.

  Dale took the easy chair, so Jeni rounded to Max’s other side, her eyes drawn to a table across the room where two teapots stood side by side. Though obviously identical, the smooth polished aluminum of one teapot contrasted the other’s dull, corrosion-stained appearance. A screw protruded from the side of the worn teapot where its handle should have been.

  “So where did they find your friend’s car?” Max asked.

  Dale unfolded a paper with hotel letterhead and reached forward, setting it on top of the map.

  Max scanned the page, nodded and then dropped it into his lap so he could flip through the maps.

  “Hey, were those building blueprints?” Tyler asked.

  Max smiled, withdrawing a sheet from the pile. “We don’t always explore underground.” Placing the paper on top of the others, he smoothed it out with his hands. “Grab those coasters.” He motioned with his head to the end table next to Jeni. She put the stack on the map, distributing two coasters on the corners closest to her while Max anchored down the opposite edge.

  After scanning the complex rendering, he put his finger on the paper. “So the car was found here. It’s pretty close to these park caves—or party caves as we call them—but I’m sure the cops have already scoped those out.” He tapped his finger on the map absently. “There are two lesser known cave systems nearby. One that I heard was blocked off and the other not many people know how to get into. Is there anything else you know that might help?” He looked from face to face, his gaze landing on Jeni last.

  To break eye contact, she stood. “Do you mind if I get a glass of water?”

  “Sure.” Max also rose. “How about you guys? You want a beer or something?”

  “Got anything with caffeine?” Tyler asked. Dale opted for water.

  Jeni followed Max into the kitchen realizing that her ploy to avoid scrutiny had just put her in a room alone with him. Max realized the same thing.

  He opened a cupboard and got out two glasses. “I trust my intuition. And I’m picking up a weird vibe from all of you that’s telling me not to buy this freshman prank story,” he said. “So before I agree to get involved, I need to know, is this drug or mob related?”

  Her back to him as she filled the glasses at the sink, Jeni huffed a small laugh. “No way.”

  “Is your boyfriend involved in anything illegal?” Aluminum clinked on glass and then the refrigerator door suctioned closed.

  With the glasses filled, Jeni turned slowly, scanning the room for anything to look at besides Max. “No.”

  Max cracked open a beer and took a swallow, waiting for her to meet his gaze. “Paranormal then?”

  The unexpected question drew her focus immediately to him. His eyebrows lifted slightly, his mouth set and eyes serious. Jeni’s throat worked, her mind racing with indecision. She rubbed her hands on the top of her thighs.

  A slow grin spread across Max’s face. “Now we’re getting somewhere. So what are we dealing with? Despite all the time I’ve spent underground I’ve never encountered a vampire, but I haven’t ruled them out either.”

  Incredibly, he didn’t sound skeptical. The guilt eating away at her insides demanded that she ensure their best chance of finding Ice. But fear that he wouldn’t help if he knew the truth kept her lips clamped shut.

  Max picked up the soda from the table and walked into the living room. “Before we go any further, I need to know more about what kind of entity we’re dealing with.”

  Jeni cringed, collecting the water glasses and arriving at the doorway in time to see Dale’s lips flatten into a line. As Tyler shifted his gaze to her and narrowed his eyes, Max said, “Ah, don’t look at her like that. I guessed.” He handed the cola to Tyler. “You realize the more I know about what’s really going on, the better I can help.”

  As she gave Dale his glass of water he caught her eye and shrugged. She exhaled, releasing the tension in her shoulders and then took her seat on the couch.

  No one spoke.

  Max’s gaze was fixed across the room as he said, “Look. I’ve had some… interesting experiences in my life.” Jeni realized he was studying the two teapots. “I believe that things happen that defy explanation. And that’s okay with me.”

  He broke his stare and made direct eye contact with each of them before continuing. “I’d like to help you. All I ask is to know the truth about what I’m getting into.”

  Jeni attempted to swallow. “We’re not sure.” Her voice rasped. She took a sip of water and cleared her throat. “Maybe a ghost. Or a witch. Possibly both.”

  When Max didn’t flinch, Dale spoke up and recapped what they knew so far. It took a depressingly short amount of time.

  “So, maybe a witch and a ghost working together?” Max turned to Jeni.

  She set her water on the end table and nodded. “That’s what it sounds like in the priest’s diary.”

  “Tell me about this legend,” Max said.

  Dale began relaying the legend of Deirdre of the Sorrows and stopped mid-tale, his eyes stretched wide. “Frick. I should’ve thought of this sooner. Deirdre’s nurse was a druid.” He sat forward in his chair, the most animated Jeni had seen him. He took in their questioning stares. “Druids practiced ancient magic. Some had talismans that would rejuvenate them and they lived for hundreds of years. That might explain the old woman.”

  “And the daughter,” Jeni said, catching on. “Perhaps she found a way to reincarnate Deirdre. Or raise her ghost.”

  Tyler threw up his hands and slumped back on the couch. “As if,” he muttered.

  Dale finished the legend to catch Max up.

  “And the victims in the diary were found near caves and water?” He bent over the map for a few minutes then sat back and took a drink of his beer. “Kessel,” he concluded. “The opening is in a bluff, fairly close to the river. It’s not easy to find unless you know it’s there. The Kessel caves are defunct lagering caves, or cellars, beneath the old Kessel brewery. The building still stands, but it became Royal Brewery in the fifties and has now been converted into artist lofts. The caves are supposedly completely blocked off, but a few years back we found a way in.”

  Drawing a phone from his pocket, he started typing. “I’m sending an S.O.S. to the Action Squad.” Finished, he made eye contact with each of them. “Look, it’s not necessary for you go into the caves. It’s dirty, smelly and dangerous.”

  “Count me in,” Tyler responded immediately. Jeni saw the same gleam in his eyes that she’d noticed when they were sneaking into the church.

  With her nerves already stretched thin, the more Max talked about caves, the more Jeni felt like the diminishing hold on her composure was going to break. This was her out. She’d sworn that after the incident at Itasca State Park, she’d never go into a cave again.

  Dale spoke up. “I’d like to go. Ice saved my life once. I owe him.”

  “I have to go.” Jeni flinched, surprised she’d spoken the thought out loud.

  Max must have detected uncertainty in her voice. “We might be down there a long time. The trek through the sewer tunnel alone is about a mile.”

  Jeni sucked in air through her mouth as fear threatened to close her throat. She was going to get her boyfriend back. “I have to go,” she stated firmly.

 
Max cocked his head, but he didn’t argue. “Okay. I assume you guys don’t have any type of gear so let’s see what I can come up with.”

  Jeni accepted a pair of jeans and a shirt, and then retreated to a bedroom to change. Concentrating on the clothes helped to temporarily dull the panic swelling in her chest. Although loose on her, the pants were women’s jeans and she hoped Max wasn’t going to get into trouble for letting her borrow them. In another situation she would’ve laughed at her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a lumberjack—a lumberjack who’d recently lost weight.

  She emerged from the bedroom with a hand bunched in the waistband of her jeans and found Max handing Dale a pair of waders. “These’ll make up for the short pants.” The jeans Dale wore were not only short, but baggy, presumably held up by a belt cinched tight—which is exactly what she needed.

  “Hey, got a belt I could borrow?” Jeni asked.

  Max eyed her doubtfully. “Not with enough holes in it. Hang on.” She heard him clump into the basement and then he was back, holding a bundle of rope. He put one end in her hand, circled around her, then cut the length off.

  The borrowed gear seemed to fit Tyler the best, except, like Jeni, he didn’t have boots. “One of my buddies, Whitey, is going to meet us there. I asked him to bring extra boots. Okay then,” Max said, swinging the front door open. “I’m optimistic about finding your friend, so why don’t you follow me over there?”

  As they filed out the door, Jeni forced air into her lungs, refusing to think about what she’d signed up for.

  Finished with the note, Ice folded it into a square that would fit in his jacket pocket. Another question cropped up and he sat for a moment, mulling it over. Assuming he managed to escape the cave and sewer system, he’d need a way to ensure that he would find and read the note—the sooner the better. Taking inventory of the few belongings he had with him, Ice’s hand landed on his chest, feeling the bump of the sun pendant under his clothes. The medal was something he would miss—something he would look for.

  Reluctantly, he reached behind his neck and unfastened the chain. With the pendant enclosed in the note, he looped the chain around the paperboard, and then tucked the small package into the inside pocket of his jacket and zipped it shut. Sending a silent prayer to the Great Spirit, Ice snagged the lamp and the backpack and turned to the hole.

  Lying on his stomach, he thrust the lamp into the neighboring passageway, evaluating his next move. Feet first, his long legs would probably reach the small pile of rubble at the base of the tunnel wall. Putting the light aside, he maneuvered the pack through the opening and dropped it to the ground. Then, wriggling part-way through the hole with the lamp in his hand, he extended his arm as far as he could toward the ground before letting the light drop, hoping it wouldn’t break. It clattered to the cave floor, falling on its side and rolling against the wall, but remained lit.

  On hands and knees, Ice turned around and backed his feet through the hole, dropping to his belly when the back of his thighs touched the stone wall. He scrabbled at the dirt as his body bent at a right angle, afraid of abrading his face or hitting his head if he dropped too fast. Instead, terror gripped him as his shoulders became wedged in the small opening. Taking a moment, Ice inhaled and then blew all the breath out of his lungs. Drawing his arms together, he squirmed side to side, finally maneuvering one shoulder past the lip of rock so that his body weight could pull him the rest of the way through.

  Without sleeves, his arms would’ve been scratched up, but his jacket allowed him to get away with only minor bruising. He sat still for a few minutes on the heap of broken rock and gravel marveling that he had made it out of the cavern. He wondered what had made the old woman decide to revoke the enchantment and allow him to leave. Perhaps they thought he’d never find his way out.

  “We’ll see about that,” Ice muttered, rising to his feet. His hand shot to the wall as he swayed, head spinning. Since his early explorations of the cave, Ice hadn’t been on his feet for some time and didn’t realize how weak he’d become. Regaining equilibrium, he shouldered the backpack, picked up the lantern and moved toward the open archway at the end of the short tunnel.

  His light revealed a brick passage extending as far as he could see in both directions. Sludgy water flowed briskly along the bottom of the shaft, its foul odor offering only one conclusion: this was a sewer. Though the air was an improvement over the stagnant and heavy mist of the cave, the smell was no less offensive. The brightness of the lamp sent rats scurrying away, their claws scrambling for purchase on the narrow ledge that ran above the water line. His chest fluttered with the unsettling feeling that he should have stayed put in the brewery cave. Ice shrugged it off.

  Drawing in a breath of the fetid air, he surveyed one way and then the other, finding the passage identical in both directions: brick walls joined by arched ceilings covered in stalactites of slime mold so numerous it reminded Ice of the ruffled lining of a coffin. The sewer transported waste water to the sanitation plant where surely it ran through some kind of filter. With that thought as his reasoning, Ice ducked under the rubbery fungus, stepped into the liquid sewage and began to slog against the current.

  Had he not been frightened and dog-tired, some of the sights in the subterranean world would have fascinated him: drips of slime mold hanging in mucus-like tentacles longer than his hand, countless cracked and crusty pipes vomiting water into the central flow, a massive rusted wheel in a rotting framework, which was probably once used to operate a large sewer bulkhead.

  With every step away from the cave, the sense of uncertainty grew within him. Taught to hone and trust his intuition during medicine man training, Ice tapped the resource when evaluating side tunnels and deciding when to make a turn. But as his uneasiness increased, he began using size and water flow to guess how minor or major a shaft was and tried to stay in the main sewer. His progress was slow, hampered by his physical weakness and impaired mind. When he found structures that afforded a chance to rest with his feet out of the water, he took them, sometimes nodding off.

  Once, a sharp pain in his hand woke him from a catnap and he fumbled for the light, finding blood streaming from the fleshy part of his palm. The size of the puncture indicated that a rat must’ve thought he’d be a tasty meal. Scrunching his nose up at the thought of the many diseases he could contract down here through an open wound—not to mention the rat itself—Ice dug the first-aid kit from the backpack and cleaned and bandaged the injury, hoping it wasn’t an exercise in futility.

  Time was nonexistent. Ice didn’t know if he’d been traveling the sewer tunnels for most of a day or only a few hours. The sense of foreboding confounded him. He struggled against the temptation to surrender to despair and exhaustion, thinking about his mom, Nik, Jeni.

  At the thought of his mom, Ice brought a hand toward his chest just as his lantern revealed a junction ahead. The culmination of structures afforded a good resting place and Ice stepped out of the water, wishing he had on boots. On most days he wore boots—work boots, hunting boots, hiking boots—but he’d been abducted from a party where he’d decided to wear shoes instead. Canvas tennis shoes that were now beyond ruined, his feet numb from being cold and wet for so long.

  Propping himself against the damp wall, his hand returned to his chest to feel the bump underneath his clothes. He felt nothing. Straightening with a thudding heart, Ice reached behind his neck only to find the chain was gone. Picturing the medal slipping out of his shirt and disappearing into the mucky, rushing water, he searched his pockets anyway. Discovering a lump in the inside pocket of his jacket, Ice drew out the bundle, sighing when he saw the familiar chain.

  Ice frowned, necklace clutched in his hand, trying to remember putting it in the pocket. He unfolded the cardboard, scanning the scrawled message. Horror came over him as he realized why he continually felt as if he were making a big mistake. He thought back to the crossings where he was sti
ll relying on his intuition to guide him and wondered how much influence the reluctance to leave had on his subconscious.

  How many times had he intuitively turned opposite of the way out?

  They followed Max as he turned into a chain restaurant and parked at the back edge of the lot. The rain had become a steady drizzle and Max’s friend, Whitey, was waiting inside his car when they arrived. Max suggested they introduce themselves so he wouldn’t mess up their names. Whitey was about Dale’s height, but broader, with black stubble peppering his dark skin and a knit cap pulled over his head. Jeni wondered if the nickname was a play on his actual name or just an ironic moniker, but didn’t ask.

  “Who needs boots?” Whitey rumbled, holding up a pair of tall boots that Jeni equated with fishermen. After Tyler claimed them, Whitey turned to Jeni with a pair of black rubber rain boots patterned with bright red ladybugs. She thanked him and then sat in the back seat of the rental car to put them on.

  Max cracked the door open. “How’s the fit?”

  “Kinda big, but I’m glad to have them.”

  “If we’re wading through muck, you don’t want it to pull your boots off,” Max said, reaching into his pocket and producing a pair of thick wool socks. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “I thought this might be the case. Whitey’s girl has big feet.” He chuckled.

  Jeni responded with a smile. Max’s take-charge manner and easygoing personality put her at ease—or as much ease as she could feel with the certainty of entering a cave in her near future.

  As she poked a foot into the second boot, her phone chimed. Although she’d stopped thinking she might receive a miraculous message from Ice, her heart still lurched each time her phone made a sound. Drawing the device from her pocket, Jeni saw a text from Carolyn.

  “Not right now,” she muttered to herself as she typed a message letting Carolyn know she’d talk to her later.

  With everyone outfitted—Max had distributed flashlights and wore a coil of rope in cross-body fashion—they gathered on the grass behind the cars, their backs to the spitting rain. Max pointed across the field. “Your friend’s car was found there, but I didn’t want to get in the middle of a police investigation. So we’ll hike through here to get down near the river.” He swept his arm toward the patchy woods to their left.