Beneath the Hill (part 4)

In the third part of the story, our hero began to uncover a dark secret that lurks beneath the surface in Jackson Hollow. Will he discover the true depths of the evil?

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The road that led out of Jackson Hollow was the same one that had led Abishai into town the day before. On that end of town, however, there were a few scattered farms. The largest of them belonged to Judith Bolling—so he had been told by the constable as they had walked back to town the night before. It wasn’t hard to make out which one it was either: two large barns towered over a picturesque farmhouse with an immaculate and ornate front porch.

The most striking feature was not any of those buildings, but rather a large fenced-in area that abutted the road. It was bounded on the roadside by a tall, chain link fence that had been interlaced with strips of plastic, wood, and even what appeared to be rubber from old tires to create a makeshift privacy fence. The work was shoddy and incomplete; it was a simple matter for Abishai to find a place to peer through and his curiosity got the better of him. Almost as soon as he looked, part of him wished that he hadn’t.

The fence concealed a sort of junkyard. Even that seemed too grand a word for it; it was more like a loose collection, a spattering, of individual junk heaps. If there was any organization to it at all, Abishai could make nothing of it. But it was not the piles of detritus that caught his attention. On the far side of the enclosure, picking through one of the piles was a young girl. He waited for her to turn her face and then he was sure: it was Mabel, the girl he had rescued from the cave.

A thousand thoughts raced through his head all at once, but before he could decide on a course of action a gate opened in the fence, off to the left and in the direction of the farmhouse. Mabel busied herself with her sorting as Judith Bolling herself stepped through the gate, followed closely by a beefy young man who resembled her too closely to be anything other than a son or grandson. He carried an ancient side-by-side shotgun, resting the barrels on his shoulder.

“Meemaw’s here to check on you, little one,” were the only words that Abishai could make out. The girl did not run, but when Judith reached out to pat her on the head, the fear in her body language was clear.

Abishai was contemplating how long his shot would be and how quickly he could scale the fence and reach the girl when two more similarly-armed and equally large men came through the gate and stood next to Judith. He ducked quickly out of sight when one of the gun-toting men turned in his direction. By any reasonable account, he was powerless to save the girl, yet he could not see how he could possibly do anything other than make the attempt.

“Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face,” Abishai whispered in prayer. “Lord, I know what I must do, but show me how. Please.”

For the moment it was clear that rushing in would be worse than pointless. Abishai would almost surely be killed and the girl was likely to come to harm. He would have to find another way. He waited for Mayor Judith and her entourage to disappear before continuing on his way up the road.

After a quarter mile of walking, the road took a sharp turn to the right, beginning to make its way up the hills and out of the hollow. To the left, however, Abishai spied the head of a trail. Someone had tried to hide it, but had done a poor job. He walked a few yards into the tree-lined path and surmised that it very well might lead around to another part of the Bolling farm. Retrieving his two reserve magazines and sliding them into his belt, Abishai headed down the trail.

A hike of some half an hour or so did, in fact, bring him around the back side of the Bolling farm. The autumn air had begun to divest the trees of their leaves, giving Abishai a good view of the farm from a safe distance. The larger of the barns blocked his view of all but one corner of the fenced area; he would have to get closer.

Just as Abishai was deciding the best path through the trees, he heard a loud noise somewhere behind him and off to his right, further up the trail. It was some kind of clanking, the sort of metal-against-metal sound that only machinery could make, he thought. If he’d learned anything in his wanderings, Abishai knew to be aware of his surroundings at all times. Before he could move on the farm, he must know the source of the noise.

He followed the path in the direction of the sounds; they were intermittent, but regular enough for him to follow as they seemed to grow closer. The trail descended sharply into a wooded glen; jammed up against the hillside was the point from which the sounds had their genesis. It was a factory of some sort; that much was clear to Abishai. What was being made there was less clear.

From somewhere back on the trail the rough sound of an ill-maintained diesel engine roared toward where Abishai was standing. He got off the path and hid himself as best he could while keeping the trail in sight. Moments later the vehicle came into view: one of the bodyguards from the junkyard was driving a green and yellow utility vehicle. Mayor Judith sat beside him in the front; crowded in the cargo area were the two other henchmen and Mabel. Abishai only caught a glimpse of the girl as they sped by, but she appeared to be asleep—drugged or sedated, he assumed.

Seeing that circumstances were going to force his hand, Abishai waited just long enough for the vehicle to begin its descent toward the factory and then ran after them as fast as his legs would carry him. The factory was unguarded, but the approach was now lined with people—several dozen, at least—who appeared to be awaiting the arrival of Judith with anticipation. A roll-up door stood open, ready to admit the vehicle which promptly disappeared inside, followed closely by the lines of onlookers.

Image by cocoandwifi from Pixabay

Abishai dropped everything but his rifle, sprung from his place without even taking the time to look around for stragglers, and ran for the lowering door. He slipped under it and into the shadows, heedless of what dangers might await him on the other side.

The bowels of the structure were unlike any factory Abishai had seen or imagined. All was darkness, save for a light at the end of a long corridor that apparently formed the spine of the building. It was down that corridor that the procession was moving, toward the light, chanting unintelligibly as it moved in slow procession. Abishai nearly bumped into the vehicle in the darkness, but was not surprised to find it empty. The girl’s destination and that of the grim parade could only be the same.

Large tanks loomed in the darkness, lining the passage. He thought he could make out the letters “CH3N” on one of them, but the rest of the designation seemed to have been scraped off.

Abishai made his way slowly and silently until the corridor opened into a wide, dimly-lit room with high ceilings that reminded him of nothing more than a cathedral. Those in the procession had knelt around a small platform that was placed against the far wall. Abishai crouched in the shadows just inside the entrance. The flickering light of a dozen or more torches sparkled on the back wall, which Abishai realized was solid, rugged rock. They were inside the hill, then.

A loud click was followed by the sound of a generator revving into operation back down the corridor. Above the platform a single electric light buzzed on, revealing Judith, arms outstretched, wearing a tattered black robe.

Once more she launched into the strange mixture of something like Latin and Old English that Abishai had heard earlier. Her voice was clear and melodic, failing to completely shed her Appalachian timbre even when declaiming in some foreign tongue. The dark assembly was as thoroughly captivated by the sound of her voice as if they had been locked in a cage.

Judith went on at some length—fitting that a politician would be profuse with words even here, Abishai thought—giving Abishai’s eyes time to fully adjust to the dark and to look around. He had taken up a place just to one side of where the corridor entered the room; on the other side were two of Judith’s guards, standing next to a cart of some sort. Straining his eyes, Abishai could just make out the top of Mabel’s head.

Just then, Judith's voice rose in pitch and she began speaking in English once more: “The act of offering is god, the oblation is god. By god it is offered into the fire of god. God is that which is to be attained by him who sees god in all.”

Judith raised the back of her hand to her nose and snorted something. As she threw her head back and heaved several deep breaths, the throng repeated her actions, their sniffing echoing off the walls and ceiling.

The words had been from no prayer that Abishai had ever heard. Before he could begin to think where it might have come from—and before he even wanted to think about what the crowd had just ingested—a second light shone toward the stage. It revealed a round, metallic place in the rock wall that turned out to be the door to a furnace. It swung open slowly and he noticed that it was Tayloe and Carter, the pastor and the constable, who were flanking the door to either side.

"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen,” Judith intoned. The crowd echoed back a monotone “Amen.”

Judith raised a long knife, eerily similar to the one that threatened Abishai at the mouth of the cave mere days before. “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” she shouted. “Praise be to Armand Rivers who taught us the forms and the precepts and left us the necessities to make the crystals!” Judith then lowered the knife, appeared to put something on the flat of the blade, and repeated the sniffing ritual.

“Praise Armand!” the congregation exclaimed. Judith held the knife aloft and the noise of the crowd rose to a general clamor, drowning out whatever words she was mouthing.

Abishai glanced over to see that the two guards were preparing the cart to move forward. Now was the time to act. He chambered a round in his rifle, waited until they had moved in front of him—one of the men pulled the cart from the front while the other trailed behind it—and then sprang out of the shadows.

Like something out of an old karate movie, Abishai leapt toward his unsuspecting foe, landing a flying kick directly on the outside of the big man’s kneecap. The leg buckled and the man went down, but any sound he made was smothered in the din. Before the man even had time to turn and face his attacker, Abishai brought the butt of his rifle crashing down into the man’s face. There was just enough light for Abishai to see the man’s eyes roll back in his head. As he fell, he toppled forward, jostling the cart, and inadvertently alerting his partner; Abishai tried to catch the man, but lost his own balance and ended up seated on the floor.

As he turned to see what was the matter, a look of confused irritation was quickly replaced on the second man’s face by an angry sneer. He drew a knife from near his belt and started toward Abishai. In the same instant, Abishai raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger.

Click!

The misfire came during a lull in the ritual commotion and the big man’s eyes got wide. He saw his chance and took it, lunging toward Abishai who was scooting backwards on the floor and trying to regain his feet all at the same time as he tried to clear his weapon.

“Tap, rack, bang. Tap, rack, bang,” he repeated to himself, almost audibly. He had practiced the motions more times than he could count, but never when it had mattered this much. He kept his vision locked on the approaching blade, yet still his fingers found the bolt. Time seemed to slow as Abishai forced his eyes not to follow the flight of the round that was expelled from the chamber.

The man had a mangled ribbon of scar tissue where his right eyebrow should have been; Abishai noticed it when the man raised the knife high in his right hand, preparing to strike. With his left hand he reached out toward the barrel of Abishai’s rifle. Just as his hand reached the muzzle, however, Abishai fired three rounds in quick succession. The first ripped away the index finger and continued on its flight, piercing the man’s rib cage, while the two that followed hit center mass; plumes of blood blossomed just above the sternum.

He stumbled and fell, but his momentum carried him forward into Abishai, who jerked his torso to the right, trying to avoid the blade. He was only partly successful. Had he remained in place the knife would have surely lodged in Abishai’s throat. He avoided that fatal blow, but did not escape all injury as the knife grazed the left side of his head and his ear. Reflexively, Abshai reached upward, but his arm was blocked by the body of the man who was convulsively coughing up blood as he slumped the rest of the way to the floor.

The shots had brought the pagan cacophony to an abrupt halt; people in Abishai’s immediate vicinity backed away. Taking advantage of the moment of shock he grabbed the cart and yanked it along with him as he sprinted for the corridor.

“Stop that man,” Judith shouted. “He’s an accuser of the brethren!”

Abishai turned back, sweeping his rifle back and forth and scanning the mass of humanity for any would-be assailants. 

“He cannot live, brothers and sisters!” Judith was pointing toward with her knife. “He cannot leave these halls alive.”

At first, no one moved. Perhaps, Abishai thought, the woman’s grip on the people was not quite so secure as she seemed to think. But then the crowd began to close around him.

“Get back!” he shouted, freezing the people in place momentarily. A moment was all he needed. He leveled his rifle at the center of the horde, but then quickly jerked it slightly upward. “Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth,” he whispered as he released his breath, centered Judith in his sights, and fired.

The Mayor’s hand went limp and her head jerked back. As faces whipped around toward the platform and then back again in shock, Abishai wasted no time. Before Judith’s body had hardly collapsed to the stage, he hoisted the girl over his shoulder, kicked the cart over in the narrow opening of the corridor, and ran for the exit. He hoped there would be enough confusion for him to put some distance between himself and the enraged, torch-wielding congregation.

“Avenge our lady!” he heard Pastor Tayloe shout.

“He cannot live!” Constable Carter bellowed in reply.

Abishai did not look back; he could barely see in the dark passage, but kept barreling forward heedlessly. Blood dripped into his eye from the gash that he had received. He jerked to a halt when his right leg crashed into something. Looking down he could just make out that it was the release valve from one of the tanks that he had passed on the way in. He turned with his back toward the factory entrance, shielding the girl’s face from what he was about to do.

Holding his breath and raising his foot he stomped as hard as he could on the release valve; it bent but did not break. With a second stomp, however, it gave way and created the high-pitched hissing he had hoped for. Abishai quickly repeated the procedure for the three other tanks in the line, hoping that, whatever the chemical was, it would buy him some time.

Panting harder than he had in years, Abishai arrived at the entrance; the mix of running and adrenaline was almost dizzying. He placed the girl in the utility vehicle and then located the door controls. As soon as the door had rolled up a few feet, he drove outside, willing the reverse drive to go faster. He made a wide turn and the engine belched its objection as he floored the accelerator.

He looked back just as the door had fully opened. Somewhere deep in the corridor there was a flash and an instant later the low thrum of an explosion. Fire filled the factory along with muffled screams and indistinct shouting. Abishai reached the lip of the tiny valley where the forsaken structure stood and brought the vehicle to a stop. Looking back, he could see thick clouds of black smoke pouring out of the door; one or two people stumbled outside, gasping for air, but none that would be pursuing him any time soon.

Minutes later he had retrieved his pack and reached the trail head. The girl was beginning to come to—no surprise given the jostling she had taken on the frantic ride she had just taken. Abishai helped her out of the vehicle and propped her up against a pine tree, laying his rifle and pack nearby.

“Wait here a minute,” he said. He patted her face gently to get her attention. Looking her in the eyes he repeated, “Wait here a minute. I’ll be right back. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She was drowsy, but gave what Abishai took to be a nod of understanding.

He turned the utility vehicle to point it back down the long, straight stretch of road that led from the top of the hill where they had come out of the trees back toward Jackson Hollow. Searching in the brush he snapped a stout, low-hanging branch off an oak tree, judging the length and the forked end by eye, and praying it would serve. Abishai started the vehicle down the hill, then, taking his foot from the gas, jammed the branch in between the pedal and the front seat. As soon as he saw that it would hold, he tumbled out, hoping to make it as far as the grassy shoulder of the road, but being rewarded with a nasty bit of road rash on his forearm instead. He rose to one knee and responded with a gleeful pump of his fist when it was clear that the little truck-like thing would go quite a ways before it ran off the road. It might not, in the end, buy him much time, but he would take every bit he could get.

Returning to where he had left the girl, Abishai could see that she was more or less fully awake now.

“Mabel? Do you think you can walk?”

“I remember you,” she said. “Yes. I can walk.”

He took her hand and helped her up.

“My name is Abishai. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, but we have to go quickly.”

“Okay. Does that hurt?”

She was pointing at Abishai’s head. He reached up, pressing his finger against the sticky, congealing blood.

“A little. But I don’t think it’s bleeding any more.”

As they crested the hill a minute or two later, Abishai gazed over the next valley, spotting no town and wondering how far they would have to go. There would be time to look at the map later, he supposed.

“That’s not my name, you know.”

“What?” Abishai asked, returning from his contemplation.

“Mabel’s not my real name. I was too scared to say so before.”

“I’m sorry. What should I call you?”

“I’m Hannah.”

“That’s a pretty name,” he said. “Do you know what it means?”

The girl shook her head.

“It means grace or favor.”

“Okay,” she said. “Where did you learn that?”

“It’s my daughter’s name.”

“Where is she now?”

It was an innocent question, Abishai knew, yet it pierced him.

“My Hannah, by God’s grace, is somewhere safe now. And He’s been gracious to us today.”

“That makes me smile,” said Hannah.

Abishai said nothing, but smiled to himself. He pulled a sweatshirt from his pack, offering it to Hannah. She pulled it on, rolled up the sleeves, and walked by Abishai’s side as the afternoon sun slowly dropped behind the mountains.