Under the Flowers

Chapter 3: The Voice Calling Out From the Grave

Chapter 3

The Voice Calling Out From the Grave

Talon and Aggie arrived in town the next morning around ten and headed for the general store. Long before they got there they passed the only hotel in town. Black smoke had covered the windows enough that the place looked empty and abandoned.

Most of the building was still intact and standing strong but the fire had damaged it to the point that the rooms were not usable. A few buckets still lay along the edge of the street near the boardwalk out front.

The streets had come to life a couple hours ago and people were inspecting the damage and trying to decide what had happened. Up and down the main street, wagons and saddle horses rattled by. Reed watched the hustle of the everyday lives in the little city from the seat of the wagon while Talon went to see the back of the hotel.

Joseph Long was standing with some other business owners when he got back there. They said “Hi” to Talon and then went on talking. Talon listened to see if he could learn what had happened. No one seemed to know. What they had decided was that it was vandalism.

Larry Adams, owner of the West Branch, was standing with them. He looked flustered and a little defeated. He decided he needed some thinking time. “I’m going down to the saloon,” he said. “If anyone needs me, that’s where I’ll be.” He took one more look and started for the saloon.

“Who would do something like this?” asked Talon.

“Who knows,” said Joseph, ”but it ain’t something you would expect to see in Cougar Rock. If this sort of thing is what happens to growing towns, then I think I like the old way better.”

The men had moved out to the street and were still talking about the fire when Dexter Jackson rode up. He was easy to spot. Not only was the man as big as a barn, he was the only one who ever rode a Belgian. They were draft horses too wide for most men to sit astride all day. Dexter looked worried. He wasn’t a well-known man in town and had only been there a few months. Dexter and his son Seth were for the most part prospectors. They were also the only black people in town and that made them more noticeable.

Dexter rode up to the front of the hotel and dismounted like he meant to go inside. He tied the draft horse to the hitching post and looked around. Talon was watching him and he noticed Talon so he walked over.

“Mornin,” said Talon.

Dexter looked a little disheveled. That was how he normally looked to Talon. His hat and clothes were still holding mud and sand from his work the day before. He had a wide belt and homespun trousers but his shirt was only a red long john top. He had a heavy beard and Talon noticed for the first time that he had an earring in his left ear. The earring had been bonded while on his ear and could not be removed. It looked like silver. His normally alert, large brown eyes were downcast and his forehead was wrinkled. He had a very worried look about his eyes and face. He took off his hat and held it to his chest as he was walking up. It was a sort of respect thing that Talon never really understood but was afraid to ask.

Dexter was a good bit taller than Talon and he was considerably larger built. Fortunately, he was one of those gentle giants that don’t have anything to prove. That was one of the good things about him.

Talon didn’t really know him well but he had spoken to Dexter a few times on his way to the headwaters when he started looking for better gravel to work in. He usually stopped by the round corral if he saw Talon working there. He liked to talk horses and seemed to know a good bit about them. He was always jovial around Talon, but in spite of his gentle nature, there seemed to be something under the surface you wouldn’t want to press.

Dexter always looked like he had outgrown his clothes. Even his hat seemed a little small.

“Mornin,” Dexter said back, “I was just wondering if some of you folk could help me. I lost my boy. He never came in last night. He went to dig a grave for Mr. Johnson but he never came back to camp after that. The grave is there. I saw the dirt when I passed by, but that’s all. Seth ain’t there. You ain’t seen him have you?”

All the men looked at each other. No one said anything for a few seconds. Joseph was the first to speak.

“Well, I guess I ain’t seen him since the other day. It was late. He had him a spud bar and shovel he got from somewhere and was headed out towards your claim. But ain’t seen him since then.”

Dennis Caldwell had been one of the men in the first circle when Talon had showed up. “Ain’t this about a mess,” he said. “First we got our only hotel in ashes, besides that somebody up and shoots a stranger. Now the fella digging the grave has gone missing. If this keeps up, my stable could be the next thing to go up in smoke. Makes me glad I got insurance. This is getting a lot bigger than our volunteer night watchers. This is looking like we need an actual sheriff. I been saying that all along. Maybe now people will listen. This little town is growing way too fast. We don’t even have a jail anymore now that the hotel burned down. Was anybody in there by the way, when it happened?”

No one seemed to know that either. They all just stood looking at each other a little bewildered like.

“Maybe we ought to take a look,” said Joseph.

The five men carefully entered the front door of the smoke-stained hotel and walked through the twenty-four-foot wide lobby. At the back of the lobby was a large door, and behind that there was another large room with a back door that exited the building to the alley behind it.

As soon as they entered the first door, light from the missing rear wallboards showed them what they had come to see. On their right as they came in was a steel bar door with a heavy chain and lock to keep it closed. Behind the door was a dead end natural shaft. It was where one of the lava tubes had stopped and left no way out. The walls and part of the floor were flow rock from the Yellowstone volcanic era. High-pressure eruptions that caused the lava tubes under Idaho in the first place had carved the ground under most of the area into caves that had blown through a natural cave system already there, resulting in an anthill effect inside the mountain where Cougar Rock had been built.

The tubes were everywhere. This one had been used for a jail since the town was new. At one point it had been longer and ran along the hillside the hotel was built into. The builders cut it off to make room for the hotel. The short piece left behind had a two-foot thick stone wall built across it to seal it off and a jail-type door three feet wide had been cemented into the wall. From inside the jail, the only thing that could be seen was whatever was in front of the door.

In the heat of summer, it was a good place to be, because the temperature was always cool in the shaft, even when it climbed to over a hundred outside. Now and then night watchers used it to escape the night heat and rest for a little while. Night watchers were so called because they volunteered to try to keep watch over the town at night. When Cougar Rock was small it was a great idea for the town and was cheap. But those days had just ended.

One of the men tried the lock when he got to the door. It was locked.

“Anybody in there?” He called out.

No answer came back.

“Better have a look,” said Joseph. “Smoke could have left someone in bad shape.” On the wall not far from the door was the key to the lock. The men entered the natural cell and couldn’t see anything. It had no light. Dexter noticed a lamp on the counter on the way in and retrieved it. From his pocket, he produced a stick match. He struck it with the edge of his thumbnail and lit the lantern.

Inside, the cell was empty. Smoke had added to the unsavory sight of the place and added a dusting on the cot mattress with a sooty black stain. The walls were scarred from graffiti and tobacco spit and the cell smelled of old urine. Part of the floor at the closed end was dirt and had been dug into by past prisoners trying to escape. The digging always stopped when they ran into rock.

Aggie had hassled Talon into wearing his best clothes. They were the ones that were made for him a few years ago on his way to his new life and he worried about them as soon as he entered the cell. The stone grey tailored pants and bright red plaid shirt were important to him and he kept inspecting them. He had a new pair of boots as well. He bought those from Joseph Long at the store. They made him look like a regular dandy but they also made him feel rich. Aggie liked how he looked in them and made him wear them any time she could.

The other men were dressed mostly in cotton dungarees. They were Levi Strauss and anyone who could afford them wore them. Talon wished he still had his on.

He was glad Aggie was still outside. This wasn’t a place he would have liked her to see, or to smell for that matter. He walked over to the dirt part of the floor and in the dim light of the lantern looked for tracks or maybe a temporary grave someone might have dug to get away from the smoke. The floor had tracks but they appeared to be old. On all the broken rock piled in the end of the shaft and on the walls were the names of dismally bored prisoners. Some were in pencil and hard to read but others were scrawled in the white chalky marks left by the alkali that was scaled onto some of the rocks. The place had a very depressing spirit to it and looked more like Satan’s torture chamber than a place to keep people in. It smelled even worse.

“How long has this place been a jail?” Talon asked.

“Long as the town’s been here,” said Joseph. “It was here before the hotel was built. They tell me the shaft was a good bit longer back then. They cut it off to build the hotel. That’s when they put this wall here in. The other one that was at the old entrance was taken down and the rock used for this one. The jail’s been here longer than the hotel.”

Joseph could see the disgust on Talon’s face.

“Now and then,” Joseph quickly added, “someone throws a bucket of water on the floor where there’s stone and tries to help the smell, but it ain’t worth much. We need a new one now.”

Talon couldn’t have agreed more. They looked a little longer, decided it was empty, and walked out into the back of the hotel again. The floor there was also flow rock. Over the rock had been layered sawdust that had decomposed into dirt. More sawdust had been added until the floor was about four inches deep in old dust and chips. It was a large room of about twenty-four feet square. The walls were pine that had been cemented down to the stone floor.

The sound of the jail door closing sent a little chill down Talon’s spine as he stood in the dim light coming in from the fire damaged hole in the rear of the room. The place would have been a little spooky to him even without the cell. Dust clung to the walls and hung like cobwebs from the ceiling joists. In one corner were some old kegs that looked empty. A little trash had been tossed onto the floor and left lay. The smell of the cell was still present even six feet from the door. There were no windows anywhere in the room and soot from the fire had added a black film that hung on everything.

He stood for a moment with the other men and was ready to leave when he saw Dexter by the door. He had forgotten about Dexter. He had been in the cell but only in a couple feet and then went out to wait by the exit door. His eyes were open wide and he was still holding his hat.

Talon wanted to say something but he wasn’t sure what it should be. For an instant the room was silent. Someone walked past the hole out in the alley and everyone looked in that direction.

“Well,” said Dennis.

“Hush,” Talon interrupted.

“Say what?” questioned Dennis.

“Be quiet.” Said Talon. He raised his hand to face Dennis.

Dennis looked over at Joseph. He wasn’t used to being told what to do, especially being told to shut up. He didn’t know if he should be offended or not, but he decided to wait it out and see.

“There it is again,” Said Talon. ”Did you hear that?”

Everyone stopped to listen. Talon was the only one who seemed to have heard something, and even he wasn’t sure what he heard. In a few seconds, it happened again.

A faint voice was in the room with them. That time they all heard it. It was like something far away that somehow knew they were there, an eerie sound but not one that could be mistaken for anything but a human voice. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Like a voice one could imagine drifting up from a grave.

Dexter backed a little toward the door. He was staring at the old cell door. His eyes were even bigger than normal and he had his hat wadded up where his huge fist had closed tightly around it.

Talon wanted to head for the door at first himself. He also was watching the cell door. The image of his old cabin door breathing on his feet the first time he saw it came to mind. This, however, was not wind. What he heard was a human voice. The first thing in his mind was that the place was haunted. That old cell could easily have caused that, he reasoned. Everyone stood stock still.

“Anyone ever die in here?” Asked Dexter. He was whispering.

No one either knew or was willing to explain anything.

“Where did that come from?” Asked Joseph.

No one answered. Then it came again. Someone was calling for help from somewhere distant-sounding. They were about to make tracks when the floor suddenly vibrated with the impact of something solid. The boom was impossible to miss. The sound combined with the vibration in the floor made everyone jump. Then it happened again — boom, boom, boom! It was under their feet.

“This floor is solid stone,” said Dennis in a bit of a panicked voice. “Nothing could live under there.”

That was enough for Dexter. He turned and headed for the door at a deliberate pace. Talon grabbed his shirt as he tried to pass. Boom, boom, boom, went the floor again. Talon realized what Dexter could not have known. There had to be a shaft under the floor that was holding someone.

Dexter stopped when Talon took hold of his shirt and was ready to pull his hand free if anything else happened. He was closest to the door, so he waited just a second more. There wasn’t much that Dexter feared, but due to his raising, he feared anything that might get your soul from the other side. He was ready to bolt, and so were some of the other people, when they heard the voice again. It was definitely coming from under their feet. Talon went down on his knees and began scooping away the old chips. Under several inches, he came to stone that was flat for the most part and had little flow marks in it that would have made it nearly impossible to keep clean without the sawdust.

“The floor must be thin here,” he said, “I need something to pound with.”

It took a moment for the others to realize what Talon was thinking. It was the only thing that made any sense. The door between the lounge and the back room had a dead weight made of lead that pulled the door closed after it had been opened. Dexter, somewhat in spite of his better judgment, cut the rope that the weight was hanging on. He handed it to Talon. The weight of it was around ten pounds. It was the perfect thing. Talon raised it up and slammed it onto the floor.

“Easy there,” said Joseph. “If it’s thin enough we could all wind up in the devil’s locker.” Talon looked up at him and was about to say something when the floor sounded again. Boom, boom, boom!

“Help,” someone called out from under the floor. The voice was faint but it was easier to hear now that the overburden had been removed. The floor couldn’t have been more than a few inches thick at most and the sound of the spud bar hitting the floor again sounded like it was being dropped on the floor from inside the room.

“Can you hear me?” The voice called from below.

“We hear you,” called Talon. “Who are you?”

“It’s Seth Jackson.” The voice called back.

Dexter could hardly believe his ears.

“Seth,” he called back, “how’d you get under there, son? Are you okay?”

“Say, is that you Papa? I fell through the grave and can’t get out.”

“Are you okay?” Dexter repeated.

“No,” called Seth, “I’m hungry.”

Dexter had also gone to his hands and knees and was calling through the spot Talon had cleared on the floor. He smiled a smile big as a baby moon at Talon.

“He’s okay,” said Dexter. ”He was born hungry.” “You get yourself back up to the grave Seth. I be on my way.”

Dexter rose to his feet as smooth as an athlete. He patted Talon on the shoulder and without another word disappeared out the door. Without the weight, the door stood open and what light the smoke scum let in was a welcome sight to Talon.