Riverwatch

Chapter Five: Halloran

As Jake was telling his friends about that afternoon’s discovery, across town another type of celebration was going on.

Kyle Halloran was getting drunk. He sat at the bar in Mikey’s Place, his oversized frame dwarfing the padded stool, his thick, meaty hands wrapped around a frosted mug of beer, his ninth of the night.

His craggy, square-jawed face reflected the emotions roiling there just beneath the surface. He sat there, dressed in the same sweat-stained T-shirt and jeans he’d been wearing all day while working under the hot sun, and let the anger swell inside him like gas in an overripe corpse.

Fuck Jake! he thought savagely. Bust my ass all day long for the guy and does he show any gratitude? Hell, no!

He slammed the mug up to his lips, drunkenly unaware that the glass cracked against his teeth. He took a long swallow, finishing off the drink.

The first time I ask for a raise and what do I get? "Sorry, Halloran, you’re just not working hard enough for me to give you one yet," he mimicked in a high squeaky voice.

Halloran slapped several bills down on the counter and stumbled out into the night air. The cool crispness cut through the beer-induced haze, sharpening his anger. Insisting on a raise earlier in the day had gotten him fired. Now, as Halloran stumbled off down the street, barely conscious of where he was going, his thoughts turned to how he could pay Jake back for his prejudice against him.

After considering several plans, each of which involved physical damage to Jake himself, Kyle stopped for a moment under a streetlamp, trying to discern just where he was. The sign before him read "Lamplighter Lane", and it took him several moments to realize that he had wandered in the opposite direction of his apartment.

"Shit!" he swore into the darkness, turning to go back.

As he turned, the peak of a house caught his eye as it rose over the tree line to his left.

It was the Blake estate once known as Stonemoor, the very place he’d been working for the last several weeks. Seeing it brought his thoughts of revenge back into focus, and a plan began to form. He’d heard something that afternoon that he could use against Caruso.

Something about the cellar…

Then he had it. A secret passage! Cantellis’ crew had found a secret passage down in the cellar. Joey Henderson had told him about it at lunch that afternoon. He’d barely heard him at the time and now he wished he had listened more closely. Hadn’t he said something about it leading to some kind of secret room, a storage room, or a …

A treasure vault.

The idea took sudden hold. Why else would somebody build a room underground that nobody could get to? That had to be it!

It took only a moment for him to make up his mind about what to do with the information. When opportunity knocks, only a fool doesn’t answer, he thought, and I am no fool. Right here in front of me is a way to screw Caruso over and get rich at the same time.

He glanced around, satisfying himself that no one was watching, and then set off through the woods in the direction of the estate.

Ten minutes later he was crouched by the corner of the supply shed by the side of the house. A quick survey of the area assured him that that idiot, Caruso, hadn’t hired a night watchman. Just shows how stupid he really is, Kyle thought wryly. He stepped out of hiding and over to the shed. Reaching out, he tried the door.

Locked.

No matter. He knew how to deal with the situation. Kyle wandered around to the back of the mansion to where the construction crews had been discarding the wood and metal pieces they’d been replacing inside the house. From the pile he selected a piece of iron about the length of his forearm.

Halloran returned to the shed and forced the point of the pole into the opening between the doorjamb and the hasp of the lock. One strong heave and the door swung open with a muffled crack. Kyle stepped inside. It took only a few moments to gather the supplies he needed: a couple of heavy-duty flashlights, a pickaxe, and a shovel.

The mansion’s front door gave more easily than the trailer’s had. Once inside he flipped on one of the flashlights to light the way. The mansion was set back a good way from the road and who in their right mind would come out here at this time of the night? It was creepy enough in the daylight, never mind at night. Goosebumps rose on his arms the moment he stepped inside.

He found the steps to the cellar and descended into the darkened basement. He crossed the floor, the damp muck sucking at his heels, the darkness surrounding him, pressing in at him from all sides.

If he’d been sober, he might have noticed the heavy silence that enveloped the house in its smothering embrace. He might have noticed the air of tense expectation that filled the spaces between that silence like a living entity, making the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.

But he remained blissfully unaware.

The dark maw of the staircase leading underground suddenly loomed in the floor before him, and he jerked himself to a stop, almost stumbling down the steps. The gloom from the tunnel mouth seemed thicker than the darkness around him and he shone his light down the steps, cutting through it with the precision of a scalpel. Dust motes swirled in the beam and he could see where the passing of others earlier in the day had disturbed the thick layer of dust on the floor.

A vague sense of unease slowly seeped its way through his pores. He had the sudden feeling that someone was watching and he turned quickly, shining the light back across the room in the direction he’d come.

The room was empty.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of giving up this crazy scheme and going home. Visions of gold danced before his eyes and the notion was soon forgotten. He’d come this far. There was no stopping now, he thought.

Taking a deep breath, he strode down the steps into the darkness below.

In Room 310, the old man lay trapped in that twilight realm that hovered between sleeping and wakefulness. He lay on his side, curled into a fetal position, a thin trail of spittle falling from his slightly parted lips to the surface of his pillow. Every few moments he was wracked by spasms that made him quiver as if volts of electricity were being passed through his body. His eyes flicked back and forth beneath the protective skin of his lids.

In his dreams, he stood in a narrow stone tunnel, a little behind and to the left of a tall, hulking man who in turn stood before a brick wall that sealed off the passage in which they stood. The man’s emotions rolled off him in waves; he was full of rage and spite. He stood there, smashing at the wall with a pickaxe, determined to break through to the other side. The old man watched as the youth lifted the axe yet again, those powerful arms swinging it toward the wall with tremendous force. As the stroke fell, time seemed to slow, and he watched in horrid fascination as the pickaxe swung silently downward. He could see that much of the barrier had already been destroyed and he knew that if the man succeeded in breaking through, the ancient adversary would be free to walk the face of the earth.

He could not allow that to happen.

Unwilling to admit defeat, yet knowing that he was probably too late, he screamed out in desperation, hoping against hope to delay that final blow.

"Stop!!!"

His swing faltered, the handle slipped in his hands, and Kyle came close to smashing his kneecap into oblivion as the heavy head of the pickaxe bounced off the wall before him and came rearing back in his direction.

"Fuck! You could have crippled me!" he said savagely as he turned to face the speaker, his anger overcoming his fear at being discovered.

What he saw as he turned brought his cursing to an abrupt halt, however.

The corridor behind him was empty.

"Hello?" he called in a suddenly shaky voice.

His cry echoed back at him along the length of the tunnel, ghostly whispers of sound. Hello, hello, hello….

"Who’s there?"

Who’s there, there, there….

"Shit!"

Shit, shit, shit….

Kyle turned away. "Must have been my imagination," he mumbled to himself, dismissing the incident from his mind with the overconfidence of a drunk. He could see that it would only take another swing for him to break through the barrier and as he hefted the pickaxe once more those visions of gold returned to dance in his mind.

He brought the axe up and then back down again in a solid swing.

The stroke was directly on target.

With a loud crash, the stones before him gave way, revealing a hole a foot or two in diameter.

"Yes!" he cried exuberantly, this time not even hearing the echoes as they bounded away in the darkness behind him. A couple more minutes and I’ll be rich! He dropped the axe and retrieved his flashlight from where it had been propped up on a nearby stone to provide him light.

He shone the light into the hole.

A horrible, hideous face lunged out of the darkness at him.

"Christ!" he screamed, his sudden fear making his voice high and shrill.

He dropped the light, not hearing the small sound of breaking glass as it struck the floor, and grabbed the pick-axe, bringing it up over his shoulder ready to strike at the thing should it emerge from its hole.

Kyle was too stubborn to run away. He waited there in the darkness for a moment, his ears straining to hear the slightest sound from the thing ahead of him. He trembled with fear yet held his ground, prepared to smash the thing’s ugly face as soon as it stuck its head out of the hole.

Nothing happened.

After a few minutes, he cautiously bent down and felt around at his feet for one of the other lights he’d carried in with him. His heart racing in his chest, he slowly moved closer to the hole and shone the light back inside.

The face was there again and he almost jumped away a second time when he noticed something he’d missed before. The eyes of the thing were coated with a thick layer of dirt and dust.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

He stepped closer, putting his head inside the hole, closer to the thing itself. This time he could see more clearly and after another minute he started laughing softly. His laughter grew from a light chuckle to a total, uncontrolled braying, until he was laughing so hard that tears ran down his face.

The thing was a statue. A fucking statue! he thought to himself. I was scared of a statue! His laughter echoed inside the enclosed space. He failed to hear the raw edges of hysteria in its tone.

Feeling much better than he had a moment before, Kyle pulled his head back out of the hole he’d created and once more hefted the pickaxe. Five more minutes of work made the hole large enough for him to step through.

Shining the light around the room, Halloran could see that the chamber he stood in was little bigger than ten by ten, with the same distance between the ceiling and the floor. The statue seemed to be the only object in the room.

He moved around it, his steps stirring up small clouds of dust. The statue was made of some kind of dark unfamiliar stone. It didn’t seem to be worth anything, as far as he could tell, no rubies for eyes or anything like that. After another close look he dismissed it from his thoughts and turned away.

He was here for treasure, not some weird stone statue.

Problem was, as far as he could tell, the rest of the room was empty.

There also didn’t appear to be any other way out except the one he had created.

Now what?

He stood still and thought for a few moments, eventually deciding that there must be another secret room hidden inside this one. No one would take the time and energy to carve a room like this out of solid rock to stick some ugly statue in it, would they?

Turning his back on the statue, he began running his hands over the surface of the walls, searching for hidden levers or switches which might activate an opening. He occasionally struck the wall roughly with the haft of the pickaxe, listening for echoes that might indicate the presence of an open space beyond. That was how they always did it in the movies. He figured that it might work for him as well.

After fifteen minutes of searching, he hadn’t found anything, despite traveling around the entire room twice.

Frustrated, Kyle turned to face the statue. Suddenly the room seemed to dip and sway like an unstable boat in rough seas. He put out a hand to steady himself, only to discover that the wall seemed to be receding. This upset his equilibrium further. His feet tangled between themselves and before he knew it he struck the floor heavily, knocking the wind from his frame.

For a moment he stayed where he was, regaining his breath. After a minute or two he realized a sharp pain was radiating from the palm of his right hand. Pulling himself into a sitting position against the base of the statue, he reached out with his other hand and dragged the flashlight back from where it had fallen when he dropped it. By its light he could see a deep cut crisscrossing his right palm.

Must have fallen on the axe, he thought to himself, and a quick glance in that direction with the flashlight showed a faint red smear along its blade.

He shifted his position, intending to climb to his feet. He only managed to pull himself up on his knees before another wave of dizziness washed over him.

His head spun, the room reeled around him, and the flashlight fell from his hand with a distant crash, shattering against the base of the stone.

The darkness that suddenly enveloped the room matched his own.

He was unconscious by the time his body hit the floor.

With the echoes of his shout reverberating in his mind, the old man awoke. His heart was trip hammering in his chest like a snare drum, sending a sharp pain through his left side. For a few anxious moments he was certain the frail vessel would burst asunder.

No, he thought. Not now, not yet, he silently pleaded. It seemed someone heard him, for the pain slowly receded and his heartbeat settled into a more stable rhythm. He breathed a bit easier and raised a weak hand to wipe the thick sheen of sweat from his brow.

The chill in his gut and the sudden joyous laughter that echoed in his mind told him all he needed to know about the effects of his warning.

The beast was free.