carved bricks. There was a tunnel concealed behind a hanging curtain, one much more roughly cut and cumbersome for walking.
“Down near the end here is the room you will use. Don’t let the darkness frighten you none; there are torches and the like, and nice soft beds just ahead.”
He stopped suddenly and waved them onward. “There is the room, as I promised. Now the children can use this room, it is smaller but has more than enough cots. You three can go on in here.”
The man’s wife entered cautiously, followed by his father and then himself. There was a resonant clanking sound, and the man turned to find a barred door closing quickly before him. He threw himself at it but fell back from the thing, smarting along his body. His daughter began to cry loudly from across the passage, but this time the sobs of horror.
“All tucked in?” the wife’s voice asked from the darkness.
“Yes, Mother, nice and safe.”
Deep in the man’s heart, he felt a raving ache, a ravishing pain of failure and sudden loss, and his hope of many years turned suddenly brittle.
“Now, all of you toss out all of your belongings, all of your clothing, everything,” the woman said sweetly, sickeningly like a mother to a young child.
“They said you would help us…” the man’s wife wept.
“Do we have some new guests?” a male voice asked from down the passage.”
“Yes, Father, and there be a witch among them for sure—maybe two!” Mr. Heart’s voice sounded gleeful.
“Excellent. We will begin the cleansing tomorrow. What have we for dinner, good Mrs. Heart?”
The man, lost deep within his own failure, tormented by the sobbing of his children, loosed a mournful scream, not quite unlike the hounds that had pursued them, but with an endless pain that no dog would ever come to know.
PART 1
Chapter 1
“In one hundred yards, turn left,” the Tom-Tom navigator announced with its artificial woman’s voice.
“Almost there, I hope?” Ethan asked. He cut his dark hair short, but his eyes were always vibrant, deeply passionate and always intelligent. His slender build sheathed tightly in a Creed t-shirt, which was under a loose, threadbare flannel. This matched the over-worn, should-have-been-retired-long-ago button fly jeans.
“It says another eighteen point six miles,” Abby replied. She shared Ethan’s eye color, but had changed the color of her hair some time ago, so much so she was almost certain she had been born blond. Ethan was one of the very few people on campus that knew the truth, or so she thought, but certainly, the only person presented with any pubic evidence.
“Can we stop and get some food?” Madison asked from the back seat, her body pretty much just a hand rest for Chris, her current hump buddy and beer guzzler extraordinaire. She was small of frame but ample in the curves and bumps that make a woman feminine. She was an eye-catcher, constantly sought after by the rest of the male student population. Madison enjoyed this attention, and like now, always wore clothing that hid no ripened curve or slender, delicate feature. Even dressed for hiking as she was, she radiated sex like a fire does heat.
“I got something you can eat…” Chris retorted comically. He was dressed much like Ethan, but with expensive Oakley sunglasses on his face and an appreciable ponytail tucked beneath a worn leather bomber jacket.
“Yeah, Chris, right—but I want something I can, you know, swallow.”
Chris just beamed a larger smile at her, showing off his near-perfect white teeth.
Ethan chuckled lightly.
“Not while I am in the car, please,” Abby replied dryly, unsure if it would happen with her in the car or not.
“Turn left,” Tom-Tom said.
Abby heaved the extra-large steering wheel over, bringing the rusted Nova into a squealing turn.
Chris began to laugh. “Alignment, baby; save you on tires. Listen to this old bitch squeal!”
“When I can afford it, Mr. Manny, Moe, and Jack, or whichever one you are.”
Chris smiled at her in the rear view mirror. “Take it over to the high school. The Auto Shop Class will do it free. That’s what I do.” He was an Economics major and the most effective tightwad on campus. Many of the student body came to him for money saving tips when they were running low, which was rather frequent.
“When we get back, I guess.”
“I’ll take you,” Ethan offered.
“I’ll give you the number for the school, Ethan; don’t let me forget when we get back.”
“Thanks, Chris.”
The turn revealed more endless farm fields stretching down either side of the car and the entire length of the unpainted blacktop road for as far as any of them could see. The fields were now barren, harvested well before the late November weekend, tilled and turned, and nothing but disinteresting dirt.
“What’s the name of this guy we are supposed to meet with when we get there?” Abby asked, her eyes searching the road for some traffic sign or unique characteristic. She was sure now with the little Tom-Tom navigator suction-cupped to the dirty windshield that she knew what it was like for a pilot to “fly by instruments” during a particularly cloudy day.
Ethan drew out a small handheld computer, a college going-away present his parents had gotten him as he pursued his degree in Computer Science. After a few short taps followed by a few short beeps, Ethan said, “Mr. Thomas Brighton, Curator of the Heart House and Underground Railroad Museum.”
“A museum? No one said anything about going to a museum!” Chris complained loudly. “I thought we were going to an old house or something, do a little hiking…”
“We are. This is the guy we have to see before we can go to the house. He has the key and map and everything,” Abby offered.
Madison patted Chris on the crotch gently, as a mother would a child’s shoulder. “Now calm down, stallion. You won’t learn anything, I promise.”
Chris hiked his hips forward on the old duct tape-covered bench seat. “Are you still hungry?”
Madison smiled up at him, “Soon, horn-dog, soon.”
“How much further do you—” Chris began.
“In one thousand yards, you will have reached your destination,” Tom-Tom answered without waiting for him to finish his question.
Abby looked at Chris, his face a large question mark, and then they both scanned the road ahead. With the exception of the large mountain that had grown from the horizon as they drove, both sides of the street held nothing but turned soil and vagrant weed.
“We should be able to see it…” Chris trailed off.
“There’s a farm house or something over there,” Madison said, pointing to the right of the car.
In the distance in the midst of a field sat a squat, little white house, battered with age and disrepair. It was more weathered wood than white, but the remaining paint was the only color not the same as the soil surrounding it.
“Could that be it?” Abby asked no one in particular.
“In five hundred yards, you will have reached your destination,” Tom-Tom said.
“Could someone actually live there?” Madison asked, disgusted.
“I suppose. It is the first building we’ve seen in almost an hour. I wonder if an ambulance would even try to make it here in time…” Chris wondered aloud.
