Double Eagle Double Cross, page 20
He took a tentative step forward, steadied himself, then took another. Soon he was moving steadily but slowly in the darkness. The movement warmed him some, and once again his worries were reduced to stubbing his toe or banging his head.
Gradually he became aware of a slight breeze blowing up through the chasm, and when he stopped and listened, he was sure the sound of the surf was louder, the familiar boom suggesting he was nearing the end of his journey.
Eventually he emerged. The phosphorescence of the small breakers against a beach offered the only dim light in what he knew must be a cavern similar in size to the first one.
A thought struck him, and he felt a knot form in his stomach. He dropped to all fours and, on his hands and knees, felt along the ground. Soon, keeping with the picture he had in his mind, his left hand came in contact with a smooth shaft. It could simply be a piece of driftwood, he told himself, but as his hand followed the shaft, it soon came in contact with a piece of metal and then what was without a doubt a human skull. He patted the sand with his right hand and soon grasped the end of a rope, the rope he had left lying near the mouth of the crevasse. He sat back in the sand and smiled ruefully in the darkness, allowing a low, humorless laugh to escape his lips. In the darkness, in his sleep, he had allowed himself to get turned around, and rather than exploring deeper into the crevasse, he had inadvertently returned to the sea cave where he had begun his journey.
Chapter 28
“Yo, dude.”
A man dressed in what appeared to be rags—or at least clothing rejected by the local Goodwill organization—stood in the porch light. His hair was dark, braided in dreadlocks, and his chin was covered with stubble. His skin was dark, and although he was not bad looking, his features were so generic that no particular racial ancestry was readily apparent. Behind him stood a taller man, thinner, his height exaggerated by the contrast with his companion. His dirty, blond hair escaped from underneath an equally dirty six-panel cap; a sparse blond mustache and wispy beard sprouted from his chin.
“And dudettes,” the blond man added as he peered past Obie, obviously spied the women, and added the greeting as though it were the only polite thing to do.
“Is Charley home?” the darker man asked.
“You know Charley?” Obie asked.
“Oh sure, dude. Great guy. Which one?” The answer followed by the question was as confusing as the appearance of these two vagabonds.
Obie paused, tried to sort through the answer, then asked, “What do you mean, which one?”
The man grinned and bobbed his head as though the whole conversation made perfect sense. “Chuck the old man or Charley the kid?”
“You knew them both?”
The man frowned now. “Which one do you mean?”
Obie was having a hard time following the man’s logic and, with all that had gone on, was growing impatient. “Which one do you mean?”
“Knew or know?”
“Knew or know?”
“Yeah, dude. We knew Chuck the old man, but he’s dead now so I can’t really say I know him anymore, can I? That’d be creepy. But we know Charley the kid ’cause he’s not; unless he is.” He frowned and looked at Obie with some alarm. “Is he?”
“Is he what?”
“Dead, dude.” He looked over his shoulder at his blond companion and said, “These old dudes. It’s tough to follow their thinking sometimes.”
Mac stiffled a laugh but couldn’t help herself from stealing a glance toward Jack.
“No,” Obie stated flatly, refusing to respond to the comment. “We don’t believe Charley, the kid, is dead.”
The statement was greeted by a huge sigh of relief. “Oh good, man. You had me worried there.”
Bill stepped up beside Obie, his size presenting a formidable presence in the darkened doorway. “And who exactly are you?”
Oh,” the dark one responded. “My name’s Jim.”
“And my name’s Bob,” the blond chimed in.
“And how do you know Charley?”
“Knew or know?” Jim asked.
Obie rolled his eyes, but Peter called from inside the room, “Either one.”
“Oh, well, Chuck, the dad, the dead one, he used to hang out on the beach with us, bring us food, told us all about that Mormon thing he was doing. You know. Great guy.”
Peter had stepped closer to the door and now, along with Obie and Bill, formed an intimidating wall. “Chuck, the dad,” Peter intoned with obvious suspicion, “always insisted on being called Charles and would never have been caught doing something Mormon, let alone talk about it.”
Bob snorted. “Tell me about it. That’s what Charley said too.” Then, looking at Obie, he explained, “That’s Charley, the live one, not Chuck, the dead one.”
“Mormon thing?” Bill’s eyes narrowed.
Bob nodded his head, reminding Bill of a bobblehead, but it was Jim that answered. “Yeah, you know. He was going to join the Mormons, get baptized, the whole religious bit. He was pumped about the whole thing.”
“Seemed like that’s all the dude wanted to talk about,” Bob chimed in.
“Whatever you want, get out of here,” Peter growled. “Charles was as anti-Mormon as anyone I’ve ever known.”
Jim and Bob glanced at each other, and then both laughed. “That’s what Charley, you know, the son, the live one, thought too. But then when the people at the Mormon church over here told him it was a fact, I think he started believing it.”
Their reply silenced Peter for the moment, but now Mac wormed her way between the three men who had been blocking the doorway. “How do you know Charley?”
“Know?”
“Know. The live one,” she confirmed.
Bob’s face lit up. “He fed us pancakes, dudette.”
“He fed you pancakes?”
“Sure, this morning.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed as she tried to understand. “You just happened to drop by this morning and told Charley that his dad was going to become a Mormon and he fed you pancakes?”
Jim looked directly at Mac, his face and voice seeming to take on a new focus. “You’re Mac, aren’t you.” It was both a statement and a question, and it surprised Mac.
Before Mac could respond, Bob said, “Wow. She’s hotter than Charley said.”
“Yeah, and feisty too.”
Mac wasn’t sure exactly how to respond, finding out that Charley had talked about her with these two, finding out that they thought her, well, more attractive than Charley had said. Did that mean he had said she was homely? Ugly? And had Charley said she was feisty, or was that simply a conclusion by Jim? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Before she could formulate a response, Jim continued.
“We knew the old man for, oh, all summer before he was killed. We’ve known the kid now for about a week.” He glanced over his shoulder at Bob for confirmation then turned back to face Mac. “I think since the night he first got back. Anyway, this morning we happened to drop by just to say hi, and he invited us in for pancakes.”
Bill jumped on the information. “You say that was just this morning?”
“Yeah, dude. He makes killer cakes.”
“We arrived this afternoon but haven’t seen him. Did he mention where he might be going today?” Bill asked, straining to sound kind but a hint of the old interrogation voice creeping in.
Jim shook his head and frowned as though deep in thought. “No, man, although he did seem a little distracted.” Then his face brightened. “But hey, when he shows up, tell him Jim and Bob came by to see him.”
Again Bob bobbed his head and flashed them a huge, lopsided grin. “Yeah.” He snorted a short laugh. “He’ll probably try to make some lame joke about how we were his home teachers or something.”
***
He was back in Japan, standing on a train platform. He saw Mac on the opposite platform, looking at him as though she expected something from him. Why was she in Japan? She shouted something, but he couldn’t understand her above the incessant roaring of the trains. He tried to shout, but she shook her head, indicating that she couldn’t hear. They had been trying with increasing frustration to come together, but each time one attempted to cross the tracks, a train would rush between them with a loud echoing boom.
Charley awoke, cold, hungry, thirsty, curled into a ball, his back against a large stone surface, smaller stones digging into his side, cold water lapping against his frozen toes. His neck was stiff, and he had a headache from sleeping with his head at an odd angle. Water dripped off his nose, but the dampness of his hands and sleeves could do little to remedy the situation. A steady roar still filled his ears, interspersed with an occasional deep-bass boom. The dream was still vivid, and he struggled to understand where he was, still trying to see the oncoming train, looking for Mac in the darkness. It gradually came to him—the cave, the surf, the isolation, the near panic that seemed to creep up on his subconscious with increasing insistency, which he kept at bay only through his own will and logic that, no matter what the outcome, panic would serve no purpose.
He groaned and forced himself to sit. He could see the outlines of the opening of the cave, the entrance a slightly lighter shade of black than the rocks that formed it. That meant the morning was approaching. He shivered and realized that, despite the wet suit and the clothes he wore over it, he could, and soon would, succumb to hypothermia if he didn’t get dry soon. He forced his stiff muscles to move and climbed unsteadily to his feet.
The chasm still needed to be explored. It may offer the only possible way out of his predicament. He looked around, gazing intently into the darkness at the now diminished beach at his feet. The tide must be coming in.
He fell to his knees and explored the nearby surroundings with his hands. His left hand was still sore from the cuts he had received, and the possibility of infection worried him. It took only a few moments before he felt the familiar coarse texture of the rope. He stood, and “seeing” the rope with his imagination, much like a blind person might, he ran it through his right hand until he found one end. He then wrapped it around his waist and tied a knot. Once that was secure, he began looping the rope over his left shoulder almost as though it were a bandolier. At last he came to the other end of the rope. Carefully he unwrapped the last few loops from his shoulder until he had a coil of what he judged to be about ten feet of rope; then he dropped the coil on the ground. This rope would trail him as he walked. He couldn’t push the rope, so he would always know the direction from which he came. It needed to be long enough that it couldn’t accidently get coiled or wrapped near his feet but short enough that it wouldn’t get tangled on the edges of rocks as he progressed up the dark crevasse. With his rope compass prepared and trailing behind him, he felt carefully along the rock wall until he found the mouth of the crevasse and once again began his exploration.
As had been the case the previous evening, he had no gauge by which to judge how far he traveled. He was walking in total darkness, his hands following the relatively smooth sides of the split in the rock. He was thankful that the bottom was sandy and relatively free from obstacles, yet he still moved slowly, reaching one foot in front of the next to avoid banging his shin on some unexpected rock or, even worse, accidently falling into some unexpected hole. He waved a hand in front of him, fearing he might bump his head on some rocky protrusion or simply walk into a rock wall marking the end of the passage.
As before, the only evidence of his progression was the sound of the surf in the cave behind him, growing more distant, but that was so gradual that it provided no reliable information. As he progressed, his mind began to wander. He thought of his parents, of their death, of the growing suspicion that it might not have been an accident. He tried to understand why someone would have wanted to kill them and why someone—perhaps the same person—had tried to kill him and may have succeeded. He chastised himself again for leaving only some vague clue as to his purposes rather than simply calling his grandfather and asking for help.
At times he prayed. They were not pleading prayers for deliverance but rather for strength, guidance, peace. Sometimes they slipped into the realm of easy conversation.
His present situation brought his mind around to recalling how he had gotten here. He had simply been exploring a hunch, gathering information on a rainy day when nobody else should have been on Hobbit Trail. But somebody had been, and that somebody had cut his rope. That meant they had followed him, but who could it have been? Jim and Bob were the only ones who knew he was going somewhere, but he had trusted them. Could his trust have been misplaced that badly? Who else could have done it, and why? It seemed important, and he felt like he should know.
He thought again of his parents. Had his parents’ death had something to do with his present predicament? Of course they were related. That seemed so obvious now, but why and who?
“What’s the connection?” he shouted, his voice echoing up through the steep walls of the crevasse. But he heard no answer in return. The next time he whispered. “What’s the connection?”
He argued and discussed the situation out loud as he made his way through the darkness, presenting one theory then forming his own rebuttal, his voice echoing eerily through the darkness. He had started out along the Hobbit Trail, and now he was deep within the bowels of the earth, talking to himself, a lot like Gollum, the creature in The Lord of the Rings.
“Where are you, my preciousss?” he whispered, mimicking the voice of the cave-dwelling character.
His hand, which he was constantly waving in front of him in the darkness, hit a ledge, drawing him out of his thoughts. He stopped, reached out, and tentatively grasped the edge. It was on the left wall, about chin height, and the edge was square. Obviously manmade.
Chapter 29
Wisps of fog lay low across the sand like an ephemeral blanket, blurring the houses and the jetty, contracting the beach into her own small world, a world that moved with her. Above her the sky was bright blue streaked with pink, wispy clouds. The rains had moved out overnight, and the day promised to be glorious. Mac wished she felt the same way.
She jogged comfortably. She was used to harder pavement, but she found herself fascinated by the narrow strip of sand wedged between the reaches of the surf and the dry upper beach. Only about five yards wide, it provided a perfect surface for running.
She had tossed and turned all night, frustration building from her inability to do anything or even make a plan. Charley was missing. Peter was going to call the campus in Corvallis and the OSU Marine Sciences Center in Newport today to see if Charley was at either place, but her gut told her he wasn’t. Charley was missing, and she was sure he was in trouble, but she didn’t have a clue where he was or even where to start looking.
Finally, tired of tossing and turning, not wanting to sit around the beach house, she had put on her workout clothes and taken to the beach. Running on the beach on such a morning should be one of the most delightful experiences she could hope for and a perfect place to find the solace she so longed for. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. She worried about Charley far more than she had expected. That worry had finally convinced her that she needed to pull her head out of, well, out of the sand and admit to herself that she cared about him. That she actually wanted to build a relationship with him.
She pulled her gaze up from the sand a few feet in front of her and tried to look out across the breakers to soak in the beauty of this place so foreign from the desert she was used to yet in many ways so similar. A figure came out of the fog, jogging toward her. A woman, black jogging suit trimmed in fluorescent green, a baseball cap on her head, sunglasses covering her eyes. As they neared each other, Mac could see the blonde ponytail bobbing in the air behind her. Mac suddenly realized who it was.
Oh no, she thought. That’s the last person I need to see this morning.
“Hiiiiii.” Roxy smiled brightly, her artificially whitened teeth flashing, and waved as though pleased to find a long-lost friend.
“Good morning!” Mac answered brightly, her broad smile masking her feelings of hypocrisy.
Mac hoped Roxy would continue on past, just two ships passing uncomfortably close in the night—or morning fog as the case may be—one hoping the other might hit an iceberg. No such luck. Roxy dipped her left shoulder, jogged in half a circle, and was soon running shoulder to shoulder with Mac. They weren’t running stride for stride, since Mac’s stride was much longer, but Roxy easily matched the speed as they moved south toward the jetty.
“Great morning, isn’t it?” Roxy raised her voice to be heard over the pounding surf.
“Beautiful.” Short and sweet and maybe she’d get the hint and go away.
The low mournful note of the horn buoy rolled across the morning.
“The bar must be open,” Roxy announced.
Mac’s initial reaction was one of wondering why someone would worry about drinking this early in the morning and why would Roxy announce that, but then Roxy motioned forward, and Mac could see the masts of a boat rising and dipping beyond the rocks of the jetty, its hull hidden by the barrier. She remembered that the opening at the mouth of the river was called the bar, referring to the sand bar that could form there, and that occasionally the ocean would become so rough there that the coast guard would close it to any boat traffic. Mac saw another mast, this one triangular with what appeared to be a satellite dish on top, speeding past the first set of masts.“Coast guard,” Roxy grunted as they approached the automobile-sized rocks of the jetty. “Must be going to check things out for themselves.”
They slowed as they approached the rocks, the sand becoming softer where the waves crashed against the barrier and ran farther up the beach. Mac could see dozens of starfish clinging to the rocks in the tidal wash. She would have loved to wade out and explore, touch, experience this unique and fragile ecosystem. She would have loved to climb up on top of the jetty and watch the coast guard cutter and the fishing boats fight their way across the bar and out into the ocean. But not this morning. Not with Roxy. She would wait and have that experience with Charley.
