Home of the Gray Dog - Segment 12

Chapter 56

With Jack close on his heels, Walker returned to the first floor’s entrance room, his cell phone already out and in his hand. Before he could dial for the Sheriff, however, the sound of loud young voices coming from outside through the open front door got his attention.

         “I found it. I should tell Mr. Walker, not you!” Walker recognized the nasal voice of nine-year-old Douglas, one of the original foster children. He also identified two more foster boys, Eddie and Brennan, arguing with him.

         Before they came to blows, Walker stepped outside, a frown on his face. The children stopped yelling immediately. Pushing Douglas toward the annoyed adult, Brennan said all in one breath, “He saw something way back in the field behind the mansion, but we all brought it for you.” Eddie nodded, but added nothing else to his explanation.

         Looking down at the pale blue cloth held out in Douglas’s hand, Walker reached down but couldn’t bring himself to take it. He recognized it immediately as Samantha’s dress, the one he had complimented her on the first time she had worn it.

         In a daze, he hardly heard Douglas when he explained, “It was just lying kinda hidden under a pile of leaves on the ground.” He said quickly, “I didn’t rip it, honestly I didn’t! It was like that already, Mr. Walker.” He started chewing his bottom lip, a habit Walker had seen before when Douglas felt scared.

         “It’s okay, Douglas, I believe you.” Walker finally took the torn dress and handed it back to Jack who had come out of the mansion behind him. “Jack, would you call the Sheriff and get him going retrieving Colin’s body? I’m going with the boys to where they found the…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, panic once again rising at the thought of what Colin might have done to Samantha. Her sweater, her dress, he thought, following the boys, his feet moving automatically, but his mind elsewhere, where did that bastard leave her, and is she still alive? Please, God, let her be alive.

         Within ten minutes, the four of them reached an overgrown field behind the barn rarely used by anyone on the estate. The tall grass was overgrown with berry bushes and poison ivy. Walker could see why everyone avoided the area. He realized the police officers probably also stayed clear of it during the search. Pushing through the berry bushes behind the three boys, his clothes were caught on the bushes and his exposed skin scratched and bloodied by the thorns. For the first time, he saw the boys, wearing only shorts, had comes through the thorns once already. All were dripping blood down their legs, unnoticed.

         Pulling his shirt from one strong berry bush, Walker suddenly stumbled backwards to trip over something on the ground. Barely catching his balance, he looked down and saw a woman’s shoe. “Boys, wait!” he called out to the children walking ahead of him, “See if you can find the other shoe.” The boys doubled back to where he was standing and spent the next few minutes exploring that particular patch of ground.

         Eddie was the one who found the mate to the shoe Walker was holding and wordlessly handed it to him. Walking on again, they eventually found more items, a pair of torn and bloody nylons hanging from one bush, a lacy bra on another, and finally a matching set of underpants next to a pile of mossy rocks. Finding these items was like nails slammed into Walker’s heart, the implication of what might have happened to Samantha tearing at him.

         With Colin dead and the location of Samantha dying with him, the chances of finding her, whether dead or still alive, were slipping away with each passing minute.

Chapter 57

“Well, we’ve explored from the county road to the front of the mansion, with absolutely no luck at finding her.” Sheriff Bitson wiped his sweating forehead with the back of his hand while telling Jack of their lack of progress. The return of the Sheriff and three of his officers upon receiving the emergency phone call from Jack left only the deputy and one of the policemen still searching the grounds.

         “I need one of you,” interrupted Jack, before the Sheriff could continue, “to go down and get a body out of the underground cavern.” He looked pointedly at Officer Shannon Casey, a recent addition to the Westbrook Police Department who just barely met the minimum height and weight requirements. She compensated for her slight build with the tenacity of a terrier to prove herself a better officer than any of her male coworkers. Those who hired her to protect and serve already knew her reputation as someone not afraid of any dangerous circumstance.

         Jack quickly explained what to the waiting Sheriff needed to do. He described the narrowness of the tunnel, what was at the end of it, and why the person to get Colin’s body had to be fairly slender. When he finished, he silently listened while the Sheriff gave the young woman a chance to back out of this assignment.

         “Let’s go!” With those determined words, Officer Casey unwittingly became the instrument for discovering the terrible hidden history of the mansion.

* * *

          Behind the barn, Walker and the three boys continued their search for any clue about Samantha’s location. A fruitless and hot two hours went by without any success.

         “Brennan,” Walker said, stopping to once again pull a sharp thorn out of his bleeding arm, “this is getting us nowhere.” When the boy came over to him from where he had been a few yards away, Walker winced at the condition of Brennan’s bare legs. For the first time, he noticed the boys were also barefoot as well as only wearing shorts and T-shirts. “I want you three to go back to the mansion to get your legs cleaned up and then round up some adults and equipment to cut this underbrush away.”

         Walker stopped suddenly at hearing the sound of an automobile close by. “Eddie,” he called out to the boy nearest to the sound, “can you tell where that car is?”

         “I think it’s heading for the bungalow over there, Dr. Delaney’s.” Eddie often ran errands for the doctor and was the most familiar of any of the boys with the nearby area. “Do you want me to go get her?” Without waiting for Walker’s answer, Eddie took off as fast as the tangle of weeds and bushes allowed.

         “Dr. Delaney,” he started yelling even before he reached the road. “Dr. Delaney, stop!” The squeal of tires as the doctor applied the brakes let those out of sight of the car know she had seen Eddie running down the road toward her. Silence followed for a few minutes until Walker spotted a rapidly talking Eddie practically dragging the woman through the bushes. At any other time, the animation of the usually taciturn child would have delighted Walker. Now, all he could think of was finding Samantha and having this waking nightmare over.

         “Walker, these kids shouldn’t be here.” When Sherri reached him, the doctor in her first noticed the condition of the boy’s legs. Only after she had quickly examined all three boys and ordered them to head toward her car did she give her full attention to Walker. She saw he was barely able to keep on his feet, swaying back and forth in near total exhaustion.

         “Sit down, Walker, before you fall down.” He complied with her stern order when his trembling legs simply gave out from under him, and he landed sitting down hard on the ground. “Now, stay there until I send some more people out to help you. Yes, I’ll have them bring cutting equipment,” she said before Walker could repeat the instructions he had already given Eddie.

         Repeatedly turning around to make sure he was still sitting, Sherri made her way back through the bushes to where the boys were waiting on the side of the road. Once they had all piled into the car for the remainder of the short drive to Sherri’s home, the boys told her of finding the clothes and of their long hot search for more clues.

         Unlike the innocent children, the doctor was aware of what Samantha might have gone through in the last three days. When Walker had told her, once the boys were gone, of finding Colin’s body, she knew the chance of finding Samantha alive was practically nonexistent.

Chapter 58

Jack, Sheriff Bitson, and Officer Shannon Casey made their way down into the caverns. When Jack told him cell phones were useless there, the Sheriff first returned to his squad car and brought back a set of walkie-talkies. Upon reaching the entrance to the tunnel Jack previously crawled through, Shannon removed everything from her utility belt, including her gun, and clipped one of the walkie-talkies to it instead.

         After handing Shannon his own flashlight, Jack helped the slender woman into the tunnel with one last bit of advice. “Watch your step when you get to the body. There’s blood all over the place, which makes the area very slippery.”

         Shannon nodded her understanding and started crawling on hands and knees down the long tunnel. Every now and then, the two waiting men heard loud annoyed cussing whenever she bumped her head on a low overhanging section of limestone.

         Despite the seriousness of the situation, Jack couldn’t help grinning at her large and varied repertoire of swear words, some new even to him. At one particular explicit blasphemy, Sheriff Bitson actually blushed, causing Jack to laugh for the first time in three days.

         When Shannon reached the end of the tunnel, she flipped open the walkie-talkie to report back. “Okay, Sheriff, I’ve reached the body. Yup, he’s dead all right. There must be 10 pints of blood back here.”

         “Can you manage to get the body back out through the tunnel?” Sheriff Bitson asked this before realizing she would first need something to wrap the body in to preserve any evidence of how he had died.

         “Jack, do you have any plastic sheeting?”

         “I can get you some, and I think you should also have pictures taken of the body. Don’t you?” Jack knew that any clue to Samantha’s whereabouts might be on Colin’s body. “We have an elderly guest upstairs, Franklin White, who is a photographer and probably can lend your officer one of his cameras.”

         While the Sheriff passed on this information to Shannon and asked her to wait, Jack raced upstairs to find plastic sheeting and Franklin. An hour later, he returned with both since Franklin insisted on being the one to take the photographs. The once emaciated man, found starving and locked in a shed, now was healthier but still thin enough to get through the tunnel.

         “Be careful, Franklin,” begged Jack, worried about the elderly man’s safety. He understood the need for the pictures to be accurate if they found Samantha or her body, but still cringed as Franklin slowly crawled down the tunnel away from him.

         It took another hour for Franklin to take numerous shots of the body, insisting to an impatiently waiting Shannon it was better to be thorough than fast. The bloody body did not bother him any more than it did the young officer with him. During his long and illustrious career as a famous photographer, Franklin had covered many wars and become immune to the sight of death in all its forms.

         After tucking his camera back into its protective case, Franklin unfolded the plastic sheeting he had previously dragged down the tunnel and helped Shannon roll the body in it, tying it securely with most of the rope Jack had also found.

         He was about to head out through the tunnel with only his camera when Shannon stopped him. “If you take the end of the rope, Jack and Sheriff Bitson can drag the body out after you get out.” She looked past the body at back of the cavern not seen in the light of the Coleman lamp. “While here, I’d like to see what’s in the shadows back there.”

         Franklin agreed to her plan, fully understanding her curiosity. If he were 40 years younger and more agile, he probably would want to explore, too. Instead, he helped her maneuver the heavy body into the tunnel, grabbed the end of the rope, and crawled back to where Jack and the Sheriff were waiting.

         With all three men pulling on the rope, the bloody plastic container slowly and carefully slid out of the tunnel. More officers came to help, and they carried Colin’s body back to the first floor and out to a hastily summoned hospital ambulance.

         While Sheriff Bitson followed the ambulance over the hill to the hospital, Jack went with Franklin back to the photography studio Walker had once set up on the first floor. Franklin headed into his dark room, leaving Jack to pace back and forth outside the closed door.

         He hoped Franklin’s photographs would help find Samantha, and each minute that passed without a sound from behind the door felt like an hour to him.

Chapter 59

Behind the barn, Walker watched Dr. Delaney lead a group of volunteers toward him. His many elderly guests carried every type of cutting equipment and soon were hard at work removing the acres of overgrown berry bushes to reveal the ground underneath.

         “You stay put, Walker,” he heard more than once in the following hours when trying to wearily get back on his feet. Usually it was Sherri, worried about his condition who yelled this, but now and then an elderly voice would call out this order. The progress of clearing the brambles was painfully slow, and Walker worried that this third day would also end without a sign of Samantha.

         The sun was just dipping toward the horizon when Joe Carpenter yelped in surprise. “Who the hell are you?” he managed to ask when over the shock of suddenly seeing the head of a strange woman peeking out of the ground at his feet. He had been about to call out for help in moving a large limb from a nearby tree that had fallen to the ground when out popped her head.

         Ignoring the weakness in his legs, Walker managed to get to his knees and then stand using Sherri’s helping hand to accomplish this. He found himself leaning heavily on her arm as they and the rest of the volunteers headed in the direction of Joe’s voice, curious at what he had found.

         “I’m Officer Shannon Casey,” the feminine voice announced, “and I need someone to dig me out of here!” The hole through which her head protruded was small and almost covered with the decayed tree limb. When some of the men pulled and tugged at the heavy wood, it slowly moved to reveal a larger hole, obviously made by humans and not by nature. Even with the limb removed, anyone passing by over the years might have missed it with all the overgrown vegetation surrounding it.

         There was, however, evidence of someone recently clearing the way into the hole. “Everyone, step back,” ordered Joe, noticing large footprints and signs of something dragged into the hole. “Officer Casey, hold on while we dig you out.” He took off his plaid shirt, leaving his chest covered only by an undershirt, and carefully placed it over the footprints, hoping to preserve the evidence in this way.

         After that, avoiding the area under and near the shirt, the men continued digging into the earth until Shannon was able to climb out into the fading daylight. The people watching backed away in horror at the sight of her clothes, bloody from being near Colin’s body hours earlier.

         When finally standing on her feet, she asked, “Who is in charge here?”

         “I guess I am,” replied Walker, slowly making his way through the crowd of people surrounding her. “You mentioned your name, but what were you doing down there?” Even though he asked her in a friendly way, Shannon heard the underlying tone of authority in his voice.

         “Are you Mr. Walker then?” At his nod, she went on, “I think you should check out what’s down there yourself. It’s like a prairie dog town with so many branches off the place where the body was I couldn’t explore them all.” She turned and glanced back at the enlarged hole next to the downed limb. “It was only by following the trail of blood that I found my way to this place.”

         Handing the flashlight she was still holding to Walker, she waited to see what his next action would be. It didn’t surprise any of them when Walker climbed down the hole without any hesitation. When he disappeared from view, everyone started peppering Officer Casey with questions about what she had seen.

         Without anyone noticing what he was doing, Joe quietly went into the hole behind Walker. He slowly followed the man who had saved his life years earlier. If it was Samantha’s body dragged inside by Colin, Joe did not want Walker all alone when he found her.

Chapter 60

“Officer Casey,” asked Sherri, interrupting the others’ questioning, “how safe is it to walk down there with just a flashlight?” She worried about Walker in his current exhausted condition.

         “Damn, I forgot all about it.” Shannon scowled at her own stupidity.

         Sherri asked sharply, “What? Forgot what?”

         “The Coleman lamp, that’s what. I kept the flashlight hooked to my belt and used the lamp to get here. I should have told Mr. Walker where I left it by the exit.”

         Excitement filled Sherri’s voice at hearing this. “Can you show me where it is?” She practically dragged the officer away from the crowd still surrounding them. “I need to get down there in case Walker or even Samantha needs my help. Hurry up!”

         Officer Casey had finally met her match in stubborn women. Once again, she descended down through the hole, quickly followed by the doctor. There to one side was the aforementioned lamp. She had turned it off to save the battery when the hole to the outside came into view, but once again turned it on.

         “Whose blood is that?” Sherri looked down at the streaks of clotted blood leading away from her.

         “It belongs to the dead man, I think.” After answering, the officer immediately headed back outside. This left Sherri to go further into the underground area by herself. With the lamp providing more light than a smaller flashlight, she made faster progress over the uneven limestone pathway.

         Not many yards away from the exit but around a sharp corner, she accidentally slammed into Walker’s back. He and Joe were standing at the entrance to yet another wide corridor, debating whether to continue on the way they had started or to explore that new area.

         “What the…” Walker’s startled voice echoed down both long dark pathways “Oh, it’s you, Sherri.” He turned around to face her, smiling at the sight of the bright lamp. “Which way should we go? I guess it’s lady’s choice since Joe and I can’t decide.”

         Sherri glanced down the corridor with the drops of blood. She then made up her mind which way to explore. “The officer already came down that way,” pointing to the wider corridor, “and she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary…except for blood, of course.”

         “Of course,” repeated Joe, “then we ought to go down the other way.” Without another word, the three of them started down the unexplored path. Within minutes, they noticed what appeared to be a room on the left side. Walker was now carrying the lamp and shown it into the room. What the bright light revealed filled him with revulsion, and he started to gag. Joe looked over his shoulder, and what he saw shocked even the more worldly older man.

         “Miss,” he quickly said, trying to shield Sherri from what was inside the room, “you don’t want to see this. No lady should!”

Continued in next segment.

Home of the Gray Dog - Segment 13  (18+) Chapters 61 through 65. #1264526 by J. A. Buxton