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| Kronbelt |
Here is Part III of this Mystery!
The story of these events is posted at iRez in four parts, and here for archive purposes.
Do drop by iRez for other posts about Identity, Virtuality and Culture, among many varied topics.
Enjoy.
*
Do drop by iRez for other posts about Identity, Virtuality and Culture, among many varied topics.
Enjoy.
*
The morning
of the next day was quiet. Sarah resumed her routine of climbing to the
rooftops and surveilling the town. She woke up early and wandered the desert
areas, making sure there was nothing unusual out there. From the top floor of
the old company building, Sarah could see the whole town. There was smoke
coming out of the café’s chimney. Carter was busy.
Andrews
came out of the theater, stretching his arms in the air and looking quite
content with himself. As a kid, she often sneaked inside to hide in its
darkness. The stage curtain was closed now, its bright red contrasting sharply
with the decaying wallpaper and the rotting lining of the chairs. They still
stood aligned, side by side as an army of well-trained soldiers ready for
battle, but they had seen better days. She never paid, nor did the other kids
back then. Andrews would let them watch from the aisle, as long as they
promised to be really quiet, and they were. A gathering place for rich and poor
alike, the theater slowly lost its importance when the sandstorms became more
frequent.
Palmer was
nowhere to be seen; he only showed up for meals, and vanished for hours. He
seemed to have the ability to become invisible in that cemetery. Sarah could
almost swear that, one day by the cemetery building, she heard him laugh yet
she couldn’t see him anywhere. She would discover his hiding place, Sarah was
sure of it, if she tried hard enough, but the last thing she wanted was to find
herself in the gravedigger’s lair, alone with him.
As she
walked down towards the café, Palmer suddenly ran past her, grinning. “Oh, this
is going to be fun! Come on.”
“What is
it?” asked Andrews, standing at the entrance, looking annoyed.
“Well, lady
and… gentlemen, good old Faulkner is dead.” Palmer looked extremely amused.
“Told you
he would die of the cold,” whispered Sarah.
“Oh, no. No,
Sarah. He was shot.” Palmer continued to chuckle. “He now has his own
ventilation system.”
The
ill-timed attempt at being humorous didn’t make anyone laugh.
The cook mixed
the ingredients of the day’s stew in a gurgling pot furiously. He mumbled and
grumbled a few unintelligible words. The theater manager prudently pulled the
jacket flap over his holster.
“It seems
we are now all suspects, huh,” retorted Palmer emphasizing the word now.
“Shut up,”
growled the cook. “You were a suspect before too. But no one ever mentioned the
fact that you chop up your bodies with an axe. Or do you do it with a knife?
That’s a lot of work.”
“Now that
we mention it,” replied the gravedigger snickering. “How do you cut your pieces
of meat and where do they come from, Carver? Do you have a secret stash
somewhere of beef and pork? Or are you dropping by my place and grabbing a few
juicy bits, huh?”
Carver
grabbed one of the butchering knives and in a split second he was near Palmer’s
table grabbing his neck with one hand and pushing the knife into the
gravedigger’s chest.
“Stop
that,” yelled Andrews, pulling them apart. Sarah took a mental note that he was
stronger than he looked. “Carver, get back behind the counter. Palmer, sit down
over there.” He pointed at the table in the corner where Faulkner used to sit.
“This has gone way beyond the acceptable. I think we must call for help.”
“Help?”
Sarah hadn’t moved from her chair during the whole upheaval. “Help? Who’s going
to help us? The last time we called for help, remember what happened? And it
was a serious situation. Did they come over to help us?”
“Yes,
Sarah, I remember. Mrs. Benjamin ended up dying…”
“Gallbladder.
Ridiculous. They’ll never help us. They are probably thinking, let them kill
one another. Then the problem will be solved for good.”
Andrews
nodded. “We must do something. It wasn’t Faulkner who was killing everyone,
obviously.”
“It was
Sarah,” slashed Palmer from the corner, after an uncomfortable silence took
over the room.
“What?
Sarah? Why do you say that?” asked Andrews incredulous.
“I don’t
like her…” Palmer’s sibylline look reminded Sarah of a snake sliding surreptitiously
to assume a position from which it could strike the fatal blow.
“Well,
Palmer, liking, or not liking for that matter, is not exactly the best way to
establish guilt, is it? Let’s focus here. We all carry guns. None of us can be
cleared from being a suspect simply because we were all by ourselves throughout
the night, right?”
No one
replied. Carver walked from behind the counter to the record-player and started
cleaning the dust off of the buttons. “Where is your ring, Palmer,” the cook
asked.
“I… I left
it at my place,” replied the gravedigger, himself surprised by the fact that he
had lost his ring.
“Really?
Interesting. And where is Faulkner now?”
“In the
mine.”
“Mine?
Didn’t we leave him in the manhole?” asked the theater manager agitated.
“Yes, but I
went there to check on him and the manhole was open. So, I walked around the
area and ended up in the mine. That’s where I found him.”
“Really?
Well, that is interesting,” continued the cook. “You were the only one who
could move that huge boulder when we stuck Faulkner inside the manhole and now
you find him in the mine.”
“I… I
didn’t do it, Carver. I swear.” All the hilarity was now gone from the
gravedigger’s face.
“And… you
lost your ring. I wonder if we will find your ring in the manhole or in the
mine,” said Carver scratching his head exaggeratedly. Ok, first things first. Let’s
go bury Faulkner and look for that ring of yours. We’ll eat later.”
*
Ben Faulkner’s
burial took place around midday. A sandstorm was starting and they hurried
things up. No ring was found.
As the
afternoon drew close to an end, Sarah perched up on her hut by the hillside.
She was tired. She needed to stay away from these guys as much as possible.
They were dangerous.
As the last few people died from the virus, she was left
alone in town with these six men.
Many times,
she thought about evading the quarantine. She even found a way to do it. The
mine had a tunnel, very narrow, barely visible, that the authorities forgot to close.
Sarah had crawled through the tunnel for hours and, much to her surprise, it led
to a neighboring city where the people who didn’t test positive for the virus
were moved to, during the early days of the quarantine.
Still
perched up on her hut and while she considered her chances in the city, Sarah
spotted a shadow bouncing on and off the rocks with the waves, at the bottom of
the lighthouse. It looked like a sack filled with something.
She walked
down to the beach and over to the water. The shipwreck was stuck in the same
place. This used to be a wonderful beach, but it was now covered with garbage
and debris.
She moved past
the surf and climbed onto the rocks. As the sack got closer, she tried to seize
it, but it was too heavy. She tried again and this time she managed to grab
hold of it tighter. When the wave came in, she pulled it up. It was Mr.
Andrews.
*
“Where the
hell is Palmer?” grunted the cook. “When I find him, I’ll kill him, I swear.
I’m sick of this. What an animal. I’m sure he’s hiding, the coward weasel.”
Sarah
looked at him. This could be a very big problem. She didn’t want to be left
alone with the cook. His stained and sweaty undershirt was covered by an apron similarly
stained and sweaty. This man had once been a successful cook. For some
mysterious reason, he left the city to open a small town café where he was also
very successful at first.
“Let’s go
find him, Sarah.”
They roamed
the whole quarantined area, the town, the desert, the mine, the cemetery, the
road, even the mining offices. Nothing.
“I want to
check that place of his,” he said, determined.
So, they
went back to the cemetery. Palmer’s laziness drove him to bury people in
shallow graves. The winds blew the dirt away and the silhouettes of the bodies
were clearly visible in some of the most recent mounds.
By the
roadside, a small hut rusted and crumbled. It was empty. Sarah walked inside,
stumping her foot where the ground seemed stirred.
“What are
you looking for,” asked Carver. He stood by a pile of wood, ashes and bones
outside the hut.
“His hiding
place. It must be around here.”
“Hiding
place?”
“I heard
him laugh a while back, but I couldn’t see him. He must have a trapdoor
somewhere.”
“Have you
checked the building on the other side?”
Sarah
nodded. The sandstorm was picking up again. She would let Carver walk about and
get tired. In case it came to that, she wanted to be fresh to fight Carver off,
but it didn’t take the cook long to find something.
“Sarah,
come over here.” He pointed to a gap on the floor. “There’s a ladder inside.”
Sarah
looked around. The walls were so dark that she couldn’t find the switch for the
trapdoor. She slid her fingers on the wall, making sure to keep an eye on the
cook. Suddenly, the trapdoor opened.
“What did
you do?”
“Nothing,
Mr. Carver. I was trying to find the switch.”
“Good
grief, Sarah. Let’s go in.”
And they
started climbing down the wall ladder. It was a long way before they reached
the lower level and they weren’t prepared for what they saw.
The
structure was impressive. It resembled a temple, the ceiling a few stories
high. At the top of the room, the pulpit made of a dark stone could be accessed
by two ramps, one on each side. Sarah walked up. A book in Latin, two black
candles, incense and a dagger on a piece of cloth. A bad omen, she thought.
“What is
going on here,” asked Carver. “Did you know about this?”
“No, Mr.
Carver, I didn’t. It’s the first time I’m here.”
The tough
cook was visibly shaken.
“I don’t
know about you, Sarah, but this Palmer…”
“Yes, Mr.
Carver.”
“Let’s get
out of here…”
“Yes, Mr.
Carver.”
Part IV and last!
