"Rush" - Chapter Nine, Part One
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Chapter One here.
Chapter Eight here.
Rush
Chapter Nine
No matter what he poked or twisted or gouged, there was nothing Dean could find hidden in the altar, and Grace had said the joss house had burned several times since the early days, anyway.
So that left the basement, just like he had suspected from the beginning.
He’d noticed the switch just inside the hidden door during his first visit, and when Dean flicked it on, he barked a laugh to see the single 60-watt bulb dangling nakedly from the middle of the ceiling.
“That remind you of anything, Quon-Jin?” he taunted as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. “Hanging in mid-air? I’ll bet you feel right at home in your old digs, don’t you?”
There were several stacks of aging cardboard boxes piled on wooden pallets scattered around the room, one or two of them nearly man-high, and the bare lightbulb threw harsh shadows over the uneven clay floor. The air was musty, and although he thought it might be his imagination, Dean smelled another, darker odor beneath the incense wafting in from the temple.
“So this is where you hooked ‘em, huh?” he challenged. “Got your celestial buddies stupid with opium, then fed your own sick habit by killing little girls. Guess you only had the ‘nads to prey on the vulnerable-isn’t that right, you sick fuck?”
The salt-gun was ready, he’d turned on the EMF meter in his pocket, and now Dean tossed the shovel down to the bottom of the stairs, where it bounced on the hard earth with a clang. Keeping a cautious eye on the room below him, he leaned down and ripped open the Velcro straps around his thigh.
With his knee free to move, Dean flexed it carefully, hand finding the strap just below his patella and tearing it open before reaching for the one at his ankle. He tossed the brace behind him, back out into the temple, then put his full weight on his bum leg, testing its limits. It twinged slightly, but it would do.
His grin broadening, Dean regained his balance with weight on both feet and ran his tongue along his lower lip.
“You know, I got no sympathy for those poppy-smokers,” he told the empty room, “but a kid? Man, you deserved what they gave you, and I hope you died slow and ugly for what you did.”
He could feel something gathering, an ominous tension rising in the room, and for just a second Dean thought about Sam, regretting he hadn’t at least called his brother to tell him what was going down. But it was too late for that now.
Dean stepped down onto the first riser of the narrow staircase.
“Come on out, Quon-Jin,” he called. “I’m not a little girl, but you might be able to take me. I saw Katie’s footprints on the stairs-you lure her down here and kill her? Offered her candy or a doll; friendship, even, huh? That how it happened? Only a coward would kill an eight-year-old, but I’d guess the yellow streak down your back was pretty wide, wasn’t it, ‘Bright Gold’?”
He sneered the Americanized name, his tone derisive, and whatever it was that was building in the basement, it grew even stronger, darker, with his words. Colder, too, and even beneath his jacket, Dean felt the goose-bumps rise on his arms.
He took another step down, and then another.
“You know, your great-granddaughter despises you for what you did,” he said almost casually now, although his eyes flicked constantly around the small room. “She’s ashamed of you, and I don’t blame her. Every day she goes to work, she’s reminded of what an evil sonofabitch you were, and now I’m gonna fix it so she doesn’t have to think about you ever again.”
The single bulb flickered suddenly, the buzz-hum of electricity spattering like hot grease in a skillet against the ceiling.
There!
Beside the first stack of boxes, a shadow formed, darkening, solidifying into the figure of a middle-aged Chinese man in black silk trousers and a richly embroidered tunic of deep blue, hair pulled back from his face in a long braid, glaring angrily at Dean.
The hunter smiled with satisfaction, meeting the spirit's gaze with one almost as dark, taking yet another step as he prepared to lift the weapon in his hand. “I gotta say, losin’ your pigtail must’ve been a bitch, Quon-Jin, and the look they left you with definitely didn’t suit you,” he said mockingly. “So I’m not surprised you went back to your old style. Doesn’t matter much, though, ‘cause I’m gonna dig up your real queue, and when I do? I’m gonna use it to put you down.”
The ghost’s snarl grew, twisting his lips cruelly, contorting his expression into something even less human, and then the temperature plummeted, sub-zero, Dean’s breath before him in a plume of white visible only for the millisecond it took for the naked light dangling overhead to nova suddenly and die.
In that same millisecond, Dean was eight steps from the bottom of the stairs, raising the shotgun to fire, and Quon-Jin lunged forward as if to stop him, the spirit’s eyes and mouth opened wide now, crying “No!” so loudly that the sound hammered at Dean’s eardrums, making him wince with the pulsing pain.
Then he felt small hands on his back, shoving him forward.
His left knee buckled instantly, and Dean grabbed frantically for the banister, felt the rush of fresh agony in his right knee and let go, tumbling into the basement, striking wall and stair-rail and wall again, then finally floor.
For a moment, he was staring dazedly up at the ceiling from where he lay, watching as light fizzed slowly back into the bulb overhead even as his eyesight grew dim. The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was the angry spirit of Quon-Jin Chin bending over him, claw-like hands outstretched.
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The man-skip gone from the mine entrance, and Sam knew that Steve and Erica would have ridden it down for the follow-up inspection. He checked his watch, frowning-Erica had told him they were starting at 3:00, and that it wouldn’t take long. It was now 4:30…surely they should have been back before this.
“Steve?” he called down the yawning tunnel, hearing the faint, muffled echo of his own voice vanish into the darkness. “Erica! Can you hear me?”
He’d tried his cell, but the battery charge was still low and he didn’t think the signal was getting through all the granite and quartz, anyway. Face pinched with worry, Sam paced about the shaft-collar for a few minutes before shouting out again. There was still no answer, and the unease that had set in flared sharply, goading him to action. He grabbed up a safety helmet from the supply cabinet and fastened it on securely, wincing as it grazed the lump on his head. Then he flicked the switch on the headlamp, testing, and pulled out his last good flashlight as well-Both working. Good. The string of bulbs Steve had hung through the main shaft were sufficient to light the way for now, but it never hurt to be prepared.
Sam thought for half a moment about heading back outside to give his brother a call, but the silence of the mine was disturbing enough that he headed quickly down the tunnel instead, stooping more than slightly, raising one hand and running the pads of his fingers along the stone ceiling to help him judge its height.
He moved swiftly, pausing regularly to call out, listening without success for an answering cry, following the rails down into the North Cedar.
On foot, it took him almost ten minutes to reach the tunnel to the Thirty-Six, where he found the man-skip, and another two minutes to make the upper drift, where the generator-powered lights glowed brightly. But there was no other sign of Steve or Erica.
He wasn’t sure why they would have gone down to the lower drift, since Steve intended to close it off, but there was nowhere else they could be. Frustrated, Sam jogged through the open granite room toward the tunnel that would take him to the forty-eight-hundred-foot level.
The cold spot enveloped him suddenly, and with no other warning the mule appeared before him, its spectral eyes rolling, long ears twitching nervously, nostrils flaring in fright just before it blinked out of existence once again.
That wasn’t right.
When he’d seen it before, Sam had been certain that the animal was a residual haunting, replaying a placid scene from its life again and again, but what he’d just seen was altogether different. This time, the mule had seemed on the verge of panic.
But he’d set wards…
Sam whirled, taking in the entire drift in a quick three-sixty, but there was nothing else to see.
“Erica!” he shouted, voice deep with concern. “Erica, can you hear me? Steve! Answer me!”
A hair-raising scream floated along the passage from the Forty-Eight, chilling him, and Sam began to run, forced to duck more and more as the rock ceiling pressed lower once he was into the pitch-black tunnel. He switched on his headlamp and flashlight, but they immediately began to flicker and dim, just as he heard another scream. Then Erica was hurtling toward him, the light from her helmet dancing spasmodically as she ran, her eyes frozen wide in terror.
“Erica!”
It was like she didn’t even see him-didn’t, or couldn’t. She had her hands outstretched before her, her breath coming in heaving cries as she threw a horrified glance over her shoulder and then barreled straight into Sam.
He grabbed her fiercely, shook her, trying to get her to focus.
“Erica! Erica, stop! It’s me-it’s Sam! Tell me what happened!”
She battled him furiously at first, a keening, sub-human noise in her throat, eyes wild.
“Nononononono,” she moaned, yanking back hard as his hands encircled her wrists, and Sam had to protect his eyes, his face from the talons she made of her fingers.
There was no noise other than her terrified cries, and no sign of Steve, no sign of anything pursuing her, but she continued to struggle frantically against him, battering Sam’s chest until finally, desperately, he enfolded her into an embrace, hugging her against him to still her. That was when she calmed at last, sobbing into his chest as he held her.
“Shhh, shhh,” he soothed, petting her, smoothing her hair as she fought to regain her breath, choking on her tears. “You’re safe, now. Erica, you’re safe. I’m here, now-tell me! Tell me what’s happened. Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”
She bobbed her head quickly, burrowing closer to him. “I saw-I saw-I don’t know how…There was a-a thing! A man! He’s got Steve!”
Clancy. It had to be Clancy. They must have missed something in the cemetery.
Sam shifted her away from him briefly, and the instant he did so, her panic returned in full force. She tried to wrench free, to resume her headlong flight back up the tunnel toward the Thirty-Six, but he held her firmly, his hands around her arms.
“Where are they?” he asked. “Are they in the Forty-Eight? Okay, okay-Erica, listen to me. I need you to go out of the mine and call my brother. His name’s Dean, remember? Erica, are you listening to me? Yes? Okay-here’s my cell. Once you get out of the mine, you need to call my brother and tell him that Clancy’s here. Erica? Tell him Clancy’s here, and that I’m going after him. Can you do that? Can you call my brother and tell him that Clancy’s here?”
She was making the keening noise again as he pressed his cell phone and flashlight into her hands. Then she ripped herself out of his grasp and scrabbled frantically up the tunnel toward the upper drift. Sam watched her until she disappeared into the darkness, then set his jaw and moved cautiously down the narrow passage toward the Forty-Eight.
Steve hadn’t run any power to this depth, but as Sam neared the lower drift, he turned off his headlamp. There was no need for it, as eldritch blue light played tenuously along the walls of the tunnel, glinting off the granite there.
“I don’t mind that the girl left.”
The Irish brogue floated eerily out of the drift, and Sam froze until it became apparent that Clancy was inside the Forty-Eight, talking to himself, maybe-more likely to Steve. “That leaves just you and me, Leland, just as it was at the start. And I’ll take back what’s mine!”
“You can have it!” Steve’s voice was high and quavering with fright. “Take it back! Just let me go!”
Setting his back against the tunnel wall, Sam ducked forward quickly to peer into the drift. Some twenty feet away, Steve Hartson was on his backside and elbows on the stone floor, gaping up in horror at the specter looming over him.
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“Dean! Dean!”
Grace knelt beside him, one trembling hand on his arm, the other brushing his face, and Dean hissed awake as her fingers found the bloody lump at his left temple.
Whoa-not dead!
He was more or less upside down, his shoulders on the clay floor of the cellar and the rest of him on the bottom steps of the staircase. The girl was squeezed in beside him, fright and concern bright in her eyes.
“Where is he?” Dean blurted, twisting awkwardly to see into the basement. “Where’s Quon-Jin? Where’s my shotgun?”
Sweet Jesus, he hurt like a sonofabitch, he thought, drawing his arms and legs in as Grace hurried away to retrieve the weapon, caught between banister rails halfway up the steps.
“Don’t move!” she urged. “You might have broken something.”
Dean got his elbows under him, then pulled himself down off the stairs until he was lying flat on his back against the cool floor.
“Nothing’s broke,” he assured her, although he wasn’t all that positive he was telling her the truth. Blood was running into his eye, and his knee felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Dean risked a quick look, a hasty exploration with two fingers, but his kneecap appeared to still be where it belonged.
“I told you to stay put,” he growled at Grace darkly, his eyes sweeping the room as he pulled himself to a sitting position. “How did you get in here?”
“Did you think I only had one set of keys?” she asked, her voice amazingly matter-of-fact for someone so pale with fright. “You didn't come out. Besides, it’s not a Chinese holiday.”
The air was cold-thick and electric. Dean could tell that Quon-Jin had not left the basement, was hiding somewhere amongst the stacks of boxes, and the hunter got his back to the wall in a hurry, drawing Grace with him.
“Help me up,” he ordered, “but don’t let go of the shotgun. Then I want you to hand it to me, and get the hell out of here.”
Grace took his arm, pulling until she could tuck herself under it, then pushing until he was standing, leaning heavily against her.
“I’m not leaving,” she said firmly, although he could feel her body quaking. “He’s my ancestor.”
Dean caught her chin, forced her to look at him, to look into his eyes and realize fully what was at stake.
“Grace, I have to end him.”
“He’s evil,” she replied instantly, not flinching, “and he’s my responsibility.”
Dean searched her face, saw the determination there, admired her fortitude, then scowled at her utter stupidity. But he understood.
Oh, God, he understood.
For a second, he tightened his arm around her shoulder, wondering if he’d have her strength if it came down to it-he said that I might have to kill you, Sammy-then released her and took the shotgun.
“Okay,” he said. “But stay behind me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
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“Hey!” Sam thundered, striding into the drift brazenly, unarmed except for the gun gripped tight in his hand. Shooting Casper never really accomplished much, even with iron bullets, but it might prove distracting.
The ghost of Bull Clancy towered over Steve Hartson, reaching down to lift the mine-owner off the ground and shake him like a rag-doll, then setting him back on his feet at arm’s length.
Steve’s arms wind-milled wildly, as though he were about to lose his balance, teetering precariously on the edge of something Sam could not see. Sam raced toward him, angling for a decent shot at the ghost, but then Clancy placed a giant hand against Steve’s chest and gave a tiny push. Steve rocked back and disappeared into the ground with a scream.
“No!” Sam shouted, immediately pumping six rounds into Clancy’s glowing form. The spirit faltered, whirling on him with a ghostly leer, then blinking out.
In pitch-blackness, Sam pulled up sharply before he accidentally stepped into whatever hole Steve had fallen through. He stashed the gun in the back of his jeans, then dropped to a crouch and moved forward cautiously, patting the ground before him with one hand until suddenly he was at the edge of what seemed to be a shaft cut straight down through the granite.
Sam flipped the switch on his head-lamp, which flickered dimly in the consuming darkness, providing little in the way of illumination. The opening in the drift-floor was relatively narrow, maybe three-and-a-half or four feet wide, but he couldn’t tell how deep it ran; for all he knew, there was no bottom.
“Steve!” Sam shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous drift. “Steve, can you hear me?”
There was a sound like splashing from below. Startled, Sam leaned down into the hole so that his light shone on an undulating surface maybe fifteen, twenty feet beneath him. Groundwater, almost filling a flooded chamber.
A loud gasp and more frenzied splashing told him Steve had room to breathe and room to move, both good signs.
“Steve!” he shouted again.
“Sam!” the mine-owner sputtered, out of sight, but then the water roiled in the faint light of Sam’s head-lamp and Steve swam directly under the narrow shaft.
“You okay?” Sam asked, as Steve began to weep in fear.
“Get me out, get me out!” he begged piteously. “I can’t touch bottom-oh, God, please get me out!”
“Take it easy, man-I’m gonna help you,” Sam soothed, dropping prone on the granite floor and stretching a long arm down into the shaft. “Can you take my hand?”
Steve reached up as high as he could, but it was easy to see their effort was fruitless. The hole was simply too deep.
“Help me!” the mine-owner whimpered. “Please help me.”
“I’m right here, and you’re gonna be fine, Steve. Just take it easy.”
Sam pulled his arm out of the shaft, pushing quickly up onto his knees, and Steve’s voice rose shrilly. “Don’t leave me!”
“Easy, man-I’m not going anywhere! I just want to get my shirt off, so we can use it to-“
He stopped talking and whipped off his long-sleeved outer shirt, testing the strength of the seams where sleeve met shoulder. It just might work, if….
Sam quickly made knots at each cuff, then dropped back onto his belly, holding one of the knotted sleeves and leaning into the shaft, allowing his shirt to dangle freely. The other sleeve reached almost to the bottom of the shaft.
“Steve, grab my shirt!” Sam ordered, and Steve raised his arms again, grasping desperately for the shirt but unable to lift himself out of the water far enough to catch hold, falling short by a foot or more-it was hard to tell in the dim light.
“I can’t reach it,” Steve moaned, choking and coughing suddenly as he took in a mouthful of water.
“Come on, try harder!” Sam inched himself forward until his upper body was dangerously deep into the hole--a winze, his memory supplied--and his own center of gravity threatened to pitch him into the water on top of the struggling mine-owner. He braced an arm against the winze’s granite wall to secure himself, then stretched an impossible inch farther down.
Steve gathered himself for another attempt, gazing desperately up at Sam from the flooded lower level. Then his eyes widened in terror and Sam watched his own thin shadow grow across Steve’s pale face, the light from the head-lamp dying quickly, only to be replaced by a blue glow shining down over Sam’s shoulder.
Steve shrank away, babbling incomprehensibly as Sam let go of the shirt and frantically pushed himself up out of the winze. He scrambled to his feet, surrounded by spirit-light and horrid, mocking laughter.
Bull Clancy had returned.
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Chapter Nine, Part Two here.
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