Even after the chaos in the country, the government still needs to do a census. Suddenly, there are mysteries to solve, like missing people and children, and a goddess named Cybele and her portal…
It’s no secret here at the bureau that I’m not a fan of fieldwork. The truth is, I’d rather be chewing glass while listening to Tiny Tim’s greatest hits…but I digress. My name is Nels Ghostly. I know this because it says so on the nameplate on my desk. I’m a researcher for the Union Department of Justice and have been for the last ten years now. I love my job. Most agents long for the thrill of fieldwork involving only life and death situations. Their aspirations always require dodging a hail of bullets, vanquishing the bad guys, and receiving a hero’s welcome upon their return. But for me, my predisposition runs closer to endless hours of researching in the investigation itself—preferably at my computer and away from those little metal projectiles that can empty a body of its life force in the blink of an eye. So I wasn’t that excited when I learned my newest assignment was going to involve just as much legwork as research time. The assignment: A missing persons case. And not just any missing persons case, but one that would affect the entire population of this country. Unfortunately, the best point of reference to identify the missing was the last federal census taken in 2030. Together with old Federal Income Tax records, a plethora of photographs from the now extinct online social media and genealogy DNA files made the search a little less daunting.
*
Our personal assignment took us to a little town called Otto that was located northwest of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, on the eastern shore of Fort Gibson Lake. I say “our”—that includes me and my partner, Worthy Butterworth. She’s a grouchy, quarrelsome, and insensitive middle-aged woman who’s prickly about her looks, her name, and just about anything else. She is all of that, yes, but she’s a damned good agent who has an uncanny way of reading people. I admire the hell out of her, but would never in a hundred years admit that to her face. She wouldn’t allow it.
We picked up a loaner car from the makeshift UDOJ office in Tulsa, a 2028 Ford Diamond with 225,000 miles on it, and proceeded to drive to Otto. The air conditioner probably hadn’t worked since 2040, and with the scorching July temperatures, we both were testing the effectiveness of our deodorant. The truth is, technology had been at a standstill for the last thirty years. No antigravity Jetson cars, no cure for the common cold.
I glanced over at Butterworth who was rereading names of the missing from our case on her laptop.
“You realize this is a fool’s errand. We’re never going to find these kids,” she said, looking over the top of her reading glasses.
“How do you figure?”
“Well, one—they’re Native American. Two—need I remind you they’re all goddamned orphans under the age of ten. Nobody wanted them, not even their own parents, not even their own tribes. Three—both their given names and surnames were changed at some point into something unremarkable. Just look at these names: a John Johnson, a Sarah Taylor, a Linda Smith, a Susan Williams, and so on and so on.”
“I take it nothing distinguishable like Ghostly or Butterworth.”
The corners of Butterworth’s lips rose slightly. “Not a Humperdink, not a Quackenbush, and definitely not a Ghostly.”
It was my turn to smile now, and as I did, trickles of sweat dripped into my eyes. I quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of my shirt, but the sting, although dulled now, still lingered.
Butterworth picked up her water bottle and handed it to me. “Here, you look like you could use a swig of this. Oh, I have to warn you, there’s Butterworth spit on the lip.”
I took the bottle and said, “I’ve had my shots,” and greedily drank.
As we drove past a sign that read, OTTO 5 MILES, I couldn’t help but wonder how the changing dynamic of the country had brought us to this point. It had been thirty long and chaotic years since the initial upheaval of the country in 2030 which turned the “Land of the Free” into a scene from Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities.” The violence, the justification of violence, and the pure worship of violence permeated every household in America that year and for many years to come. During that time, the political arena slipped nicely into a totalitarian regime after Texas seceded from the Union and subsequently, the domino effect of other states that followed—mostly from the Midwest and the South. Those states wasted no time developing into 3 large distinct territories: “The Old Northwest” whose Midwest territory boundaries were everything from the 37th parallel straight up to Canada and from Idaho to the border of Minnesota with these three exceptions: the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona—“The Lone Star South” which was everything from the western border of Texas to the Atlantic seaboard and everything from the 37th parallel down to the Gulf of Mexico—and finally, “Northern Dixie,” which consisted of the states of Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and Virginia. The rest of the states pledged their allegiance to the Union. But neither geography nor political party affiliation really had anything to do with it. There were just as many people leaving the territories to join the Union as there were people leaving the Union for another dominion.
Now, logically, you would assume all three territories would have seceded for the exact same reasons, pooling their resources and combining their strengths against the Union. But as it turned out, they were farther apart in their political and religious objectives than previously thought. So much so, they became each other’s nemeses, vying for dominancy. It was a mess. Vicious wars broke out along their borders, especially where the states of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas converge. They barely took notice of the Union, so was their race to reign supreme. It lasted for 29 bloody years, and eventually, they were decimated from within until, one by one, they surrendered, reluctantly joining the Union again.
*
After a long cooling shower at the Otto Motive Rest Stop Motel (no, I’m serious), I made an official request to meet up with the town sheriff at the old orphanage late that afternoon. When we got there, a uniformed officer about six-four and in his late fifties greeted us at the door. “Sheriff Williams? I’m UDOJ Agent Ghostly, and this is Agent Butterworth. We’re here investigating the whereabouts of the 32 orphans who used to live here.”
He glanced down at our government issue sidearms for just a second and said amiably, “Thought that might be why you came all this way to see this place. My deputy said you didn’t offer no explanation.”
When we didn’t react, he continued.
“So anyhoo, I’ll answer your questions the best I can, but you have to understand that was thirty years ago. Don’t ‘spect you’ll find much here.”
“Probably not, but we’d like to look around anyway.”
“Suit yourselves,” he said, unlocking door of the now abandoned building. The structure itself was a large two-story Victorian mansion that looked to be built before the 21st century.
“Sheriff, were you on the force when the children went missing?” Butterworth asked.
“I was a first-year deputy and as green as they came. When those kids disappeared, the whole department was just as baffled as the rest of the town. The search went on for months…and then years,” he said as he stepped into the foyer.
I walked past him and said over my shoulder, “But wasn’t that the same time as the when the clearances began?”
“Our part of the Lone Star South hadn’t been officially organized at that time. Almost took another nine months before the plan was initiated because of the sheer number of reservations in this state,” he said and looked away.
Butterworth eyed him carefully. “How about unofficially?”
Sheriff Williams just shrugged.
This brand of nefariousness was practiced by all three territories—some worse than others. They called it Manifest Destiny Anew, but it was just another transparent catchphrase for ethnic cleansing. It began gradually for each state once secession was officially established, placing pressure on all of those citizens not of the Caucasoid race, not of the Christian religion, and not of heterosexual persuasion—to vacate each territory. I’m not entirely sure why, but Native Americans were of the first to be targeted. Perhaps because the white man had been displacing indigenous people the moment a European merchant ship dropped anchor off the east coast shoreline. After years of bloodshed, the Native Americans fled to Canada or relocated to the state of Washington. However, most of the tribes in Oklahoma were forced into either New Mexico or Colorado.
The elimination program to dispel African Americans proved to be even more of an undertaking. There were so many in the Lone Star South that house-to-house searches that mirrored the Jewish clearances of the ghettos of Poland were an hourly occurrence. Although these hunting expeditions were handled by the secret police, the government relied heavily on its citizens, who were all too eager to participate, to inform on their friends and neighbors. By the time they were finished, a muted manifestation of slavery had been reinstated, and only a fraction of the African American population remained—hard to believe, but there you go.
The fate of Hispanic Americans twinned the bad fortune of African Americans, including wearing the yoke of servitude. Most Hispanics were herded across the border into Mexico or dumped into the Union states. But quite a few were used as farmland field workers.
And since most of the followers of Islam were already living in the Union states,
expulsion was relatively easy, as were other non-Christian religions. Those of the Jewish faith were understandably quick to fold with the harsh reminders left behind by the Holocaust. And Atheists and Agnostics who were astute enough to see what was coming either got out early or converted.
The LGBTQ community, however, was an entirely different situation altogether. There was never a documented mass exodus from any of the three territories. In fact, no records have ever been found for even one single individual being officially seized, driven to a Union state, and then dropped over the border. Not one case. Their departure was always shrouded behind a curtain of clandestine circumstances. It happened more times than we’d like to admit, and not only with the LGBTQ community, but with all undesirables in the territories.
If this hadn’t been enough, a healthy portion of Union states were less than welcoming to these newcomers. They had their own problems with income and housing. Even when a state sided with the Union, there were still thousands in that state who voted against it. These voters quickly picked up and moved to the Territories. Contrastingly, thousands in the Territories who voted against secession had moved to the Union states.
*
“S’pose you’ll be wanting the full tour,” Sheriff Williams said.
I nodded and the sheriff led us up the stairs.
“We’ll start at the top and work our way down. Like I said before, the place was stripped out years ago. The owners—that would be Cyrus Elmore and his daughter, Angeline—sold off what little they could to make the mortgage payments, and everything
else was later pilfered by looters. While they were trying to sell it, Cyrus went bankrupt
and ended up eating the business end of his shotgun. Did it right up here in the attic. Guess he’d get a little payback for the bank foreclosing on him by making the place worthless to sell again.”
When we entered the unfinished attic area, Williams pointed at the faded red stained floorboards and said, “This is where it happened.” Right then, his cell phone rang. He placed it to his ear, smiled amiably at us again and mouthed the words, “I gotta take this.” He then started back down the stairway again.
Butterworth and I pulled out our little flashlights and scouted the area. There wasn’t much to see, just a lot of cobwebs and dust. As we were making our way back to the stairs, my flashlight caught something written on one the open rafters near to where it connected to the floor planking. I stooped down to get a closer look and saw where someone had carved the words, SIBILEE OPEN THE GATE into the rafter. “Hey Butterworth, what do you make of this?”
She squatted and examined the words. I could hear her whispering the message over and over again. After a few seconds, she stood up and said in her best cartoon character impression, “Troll tweet from some termite?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she remarked sharply, miffed that I didn’t get the reference. “It doesn’t sound like a Native American name to me. It wasn’t the name of the people who ran this place. And we both know it wasn’t one of the children’s names.”
I took a snapshot of it with my phone and we went downstairs. The Sheriff was still outside as we covered the second floor. We split up to make the investigation go faster since we were beginning to lose the daylight. It was Butterworth’s turn to hail me from a small bedroom in the back. When I entered, she was kneeling in front of a window, holding up a large swath of wallpaper barely clinging to the plaster. “Watch,” she said and let the wallpaper drop. The words, SIBILEE OPEN THE GATE had been written in crayon just underneath a windowsill.
“Well, this just got interesting.” The wallpaper had been loosened by water damage, starting at the corner of the windowsill that was about two and a half feet from the floor. “It looks like the children were deliberately hiding it from adult eyes. But how did they keep the wallpaper up?”
Butterworth pointed to the top edge of the wallpaper swath. There was a brittle, yellowed piece of scotch tape that had been adhered horizontally across the paper’s edge. When I looked underneath the windowsill, I could see the faintest outline of residue on the wood that matched the piece of tape. I got my phone again and took several snapshots.
We reached the main floor just as Williams came in from the front porch. “Do you folks mind locking up? I have a bit of Sheriffing to take care of in town.”
Butterworth took the keys from his hand and said, “Not a problem. Oh say, Sheriff, do you have any idea what Sibilee means?”
He shifted his gaze from Butterworth to me, and then back again before answering. “Not a clue,” He then turned and walked back out a little too hastily.
“Yeah, I’ve got a few more questions I need to ask the Sheriff later.” I said smugly.
“I have a few of my own,” Butterworth added. “Shall we get to it then? I’m starving.”
We found two more messages before we were through. One in the basement on the
mortar seam between a row of red bricks in tiny crayon letters, and the other in the study
which was carved on the underside of one of the lower shelves of a built-in bookcase.
*
We ate at a fairly nice restaurant in town: she with her usual beef anything, and myself with what pork dish on the menu they offered—we’re so embarrassingly predictable. We both had our laptops open beside our plates, silently researching as we consumed our dinners. Butterworth was looking for the meaning of Sibilee, and I had the task of running down Angeline Elmore’s most recent address. It didn’t take me long to find it, and on the plus side, she was living right here in Otto and within walking distance of the restaurant.
I finally put my fork down, and sat there suddenly awash with doubt that our assignment wasn’t a fool’s errand. You see, after the secession wars ended, the Union Department of Justice, in conjunction with the International Criminal Court, began investigating war crimes perpetrated by those most responsible in the territories. There were so many of these allegations that needed to be investigated that the UHS and the UFBI were also helping in the inquiries. The strategy was to hopefully locate the victims of these crimes before charges could be made. As you would think, the estimates alone were staggering. We’re talking roughly 100 million people to find. And every one of them needing a voice to champion the importance of their existence. This reason alone, I suppose, puts it all in perspective for me.
“Any luck?”
Butterworth never looked up from her screen. “Maybe. There’s nothing referenced under the spelling S-I-B-I-L-E-E, so I entered a blanket scan for names sounding the same but spelled differently, I keep being directed to a name spelled C-Y-B-E-L-E and pronounced in the UK the same way as S-I-B-I-L-E-E. This might be a winner. It says she was a goddess originating from Asia Minor whose doctrine spread west to Greece, and then Rome. She was a goddess of fertility and a protector in times of war. Amongst several other deity roles she was known for, one was the Guardian of the Gateways. You had to acquire permission from Cybele to pass through the doorway of time and space to other worlds—including the underworld.”
“Are we talking about portals?”
“Seems so. According to this, there are quite a few suspected doorways worldwide.”
I rolled my eyes—I couldn’t help it. “We’re saying there’s a chance those kids escaped by the process of a portal. How are we going to put that in our report?”
Butterworth was getting angry. “Don’t shoot the messenger, Ghostly. I’m just telling you what it says here. It fits the facts as we know them so far. Looks like they were pleading for this Cybele goddess to open a gate for them. What I’d like to find out is how some Native American orphans learned about a goddess from Asia Minor that opens portals to the where-the-hell-are-we universe?”
“The where-the-hell-are-we universe?” I repeated and began to chuckle. Butterworth looked at me stony-faced with her forearm resting on the tabletop in a forty-five degree angle in front of her. Slowly, she lifted her left forearm inches off the table, still bent at that same angle. Her arm, hand, and fingers were locked in a pose that looked like she was about to karate chop someone sideways. All at once, a hissing sound escaped her lips, her arm and hand shot up in an arc above her head, then went every which way as she loudly cried out, “Whooooosh!”
My chuckles burst into hysterical laughter which then made Butterworth crack up
until her eyes began to tear. Watching her hilariously mimicking someone being shot
through a portal tube was one of the funniest things I would ever witness in my lifetime.
*
The night air hadn’t dropped the temperature very much as we stood in front of Angeline Elmore’s front door. When she answered my knock, the only thing I was thinking about right then was air conditioning. “Angeline Elmore?”
“Yes,” she said slowly as her face expressed genuine puzzlement. In one hand, she held a high ball glass filled with either whiskey or bourbon. From behind her, a heavenly cool breeze wafted out through the doorway.
We quickly held up our badges, but didn’t put them away just yet. “I’m Agent Ghostly of the Union Department of Justice, and this is Agent Butterworth. We’d like to come in and ask some questions about the children who went missing thirty years ago.”
She looked at our badges more closely this time (we knew she would), nodded her head, and politely stepped to the side so we could pass. “Can I get you anything to drink? I’ve got whiskey, but no ice cubes at the moment. I just put the trays in the freezer.”
We declined and moved to the living room where she offered us her sofa to sit on. Butterworth cleared her throat and began the inquiry. “Angeline—may I call you Angeline?” She nodded and Butterworth continued. “Could you lead us through the events on the day the children went missing?”
“As I recall, it was like any other day at the orphanage. The children awakened, got dressed, were fed their breakfast, and then did their morning chores. When their teachers Miss Duncan and Mr. Morse arrived, they began their school day as usual. The classes
were almost split equally between them with Mr. Morse teaching the younger students
and Deena the oldest. It was a shame what happened to him after the disappearance.”
I exchanged glances with Butterworth. “What did happen, Angeline?”
“Well, it was quite tragic really,” she said as she ran her fingers back through her hair to push back the long, blonde, dulled strands threatening to fall back across her face. She reminded me of that actress, Veronica Lake, just before her death and ravaged with years of heavy drinking. “Because he was an unmarried man and a schoolteacher of little children, the scrutiny of suspicion fell on him first. For the longest time, the police tried their best to pin it on him. But he held fast to his alibi and his innocence. They finally let him go, but by that time, he’d lost his teaching credentials and his good standing in the community.”
“Is Mr. Morse still alive?” Butterworth inquired.
“Barely. He’s got terminal pancreatic cancer, spending what little time he has left at the Otto Hospice and Palliative Care Center. His first name’s Theodore. Here, I can give you the address if you’d like.”
“That would be helpful,” I said and handed her my notebook.
“So what happened later that day?” Butterworth asked after Angeline handed me back the notebook.
“After school was over, we ate our supper and later that evening, my father and I put them to bed. It was about 8:30 before we retired to the study, sharing our daily snifter of brandy. My father had been reading the paper and I was reading the good book. I don’t know when I drifted off, but it was already morning when I awoke. Father was still in his chair too, snoring heavily. I went upstairs to check on the children because I thought
they’d already be up by then…and that’s when I discovered they were gone. You
probably know the rest of it.”
I nodded. “Just a couple more questions. Was sleeping all night in the study a regular occurrence?”
“For one of us, sometimes. For both of us at the same time—never.”
Butterworth put her notebook back in her pocket. “Was the name Cybele ever mentioned by anyone in the household or by chance, you’d seen it written somewhere in the orphanage?”
“Cybele, you say,” she repeated, frowning. She sat there thinking, sipping on her whiskey. “No, not that I can recall. Are you saying this Cybele person took those poor children?”
“We’re not saying anything right now. Just that we recently heard the name.”
*
The next morning, we drove first thing to the Hospice to talk to Mr. Morse. As bad as Angeline described his condition, we didn’t want to miss our chance to interview him. We stopped at reception and a nurse took us to his room. He shared it with two other men who were also making long distance travel arrangements with Saint Peter. “Mr. Theodore Morse?”
He never turned his head but his eyes shifted in our direction. “Yes,” he said, his voice ragged. He’d lost so much weight by now, the skin on his face was shrink-wrapped to his skull, collapsing his cheeks, and the flesh and muscle around his eyes had sunk back so far into the sockets, it gave the illusion his eyeballs were popping out of his head.
I gently introduced ourselves as we showed our badges. Upon hearing this, a patient from the last bed down behind a side curtain sneered, “Stinkin’ Unionites! Didja come here to gloat? You know what they’re really here for, Theo? They want to pin the blame on you for those missin’ Injun brats before you die!” The man must have overextended himself by yelling and began to cough and strangle and wheeze.
“Is that why you’re here?” Morse’s voice was very weak.
“We just want to hear your version of the events that led to the disappearance of those children.”
He winced from excruciating pain as the cancer gnawed away at his internal organs. “There’s…there’s not much to tell. I went to the orphanage that morning, taught the day’s lesson plan as usual, went home, and then…and then met up with a few friends at Sooners Saloon for dinner and drinks. I had one too many Bahama Mama cocktails that night so…so I crashed at a friend’s house nearby.”
“Why didn’t the police believe your alibi?” Butterworth asked from the end of the bed.
“They accused me of slipping out after my friend went to…went to bed. Especially, that Goddamned excuse of a sheriff we have now.” A pitiful high-pitched, mewling cry escaped his lips and for a moment, I thought he’d passed. But when I looked closer, there was still a faint rising and falling of his chest. “Water,” he finally moaned.
I looked over and saw a cup with a bendy straw beside his bed. I gently positioned the straw at the corner of his mouth and his lips closed around it. When he had enough, I placed it back on the cart. “Why do think the sheriff was so determined to pin it on you?”
“Probably didn’t want the investigators turning their focus back to his girlfriend
again.”
“His girlfriend?”
“Well, Deena, of course. Deena Duncan. Oh, you didn’t know that,” he said and
winced again with pain. “They…tried to hide it from everyone, but Angeline and I were well aware of it. I saw them together in Tahlequah coming out of a restaurant. I was both shocked and curious…so I…so I followed them to see if I’d read the situation incorrectly. I hadn’t. They drove directly to a motel, and when they parked, I noticed the car beside his was Deena’s. He finally married her.”
“Do you think she was involved with the kid’s disappearance?” Butterworth inquired.
Morse took a long time to answer. “She certainly was an odd duck, I can tell you that. And she wasn’t quite the Christian she professed to be…but then again, who is? Still, Deena had a strong fascination with ancient theologies of Europe and Asia Minor that went beyond simple inquisitiveness. I think she…she believed in it herself.”
Butterworth shot me a look of “I told you so” and quickly asked Morse, “Did you ever hear the name Cybele before?”
“Oh that…just once. One afternoon while I was stepping out of class to use the restroom, I…I…” His body began to twitch and he gritted his teeth. This went on for a couple of minutes before, bit by bit, he began to regain his composure. “Where…was I again?”
“The restroom,” I reminded him.
“Right. Anyway, as I passed her class, I overheard her teaching the history and wonders of some deity called Cybele. She…she treated this Cybele goddess as though she were speaking about Christ, saying that when Cybele returns and opens some gate, they would be saved. I started back to my class, but something made me turn around. I found myself again standing outside her classroom intently listening. She was telling the
children they needed to secretly write their plea all over the house to magnify their
sincerity to this Cybele goddess. I…I don’t know if they ever did. I never saw anything.”
A nurse brushed by me and injected a needle into the tube still affixed into Morse’s arm, “If you’ve any more questions to ask him, do it quickly. Once the morphine takes hold, he’ll be too incoherent to communicate.”
“I’d rather have a Bahama Mama,” he told her.
She smiled and as she was leaving the room, she said, “Sorry, Mr. Morse, it just doesn’t have the kick this stuff has.”
“Theodore, did Deena have a special place she’d often go that she might have felt as sacred?” I asked as fast as I possibly could.
“I…don’t…know. But Angeline…might,”
Butterworth opened her mouth to sneak in another question, but realized Morse had already wandered off the beaten track into the heart of tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
*
Once we got back in the car, I called Angeline to verify what Morse had claimed. She picked up on the second ring and I put her on speakerphone. “Angeline?”
“Yes. Is that you, agent Ghostly?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re calling to ask you a couple of more follow-up questions.”
“I thought I recognized your thick Union accent,” she said and Butterworth turned her
head away as she suppressed a laugh. “You said we. Is agent Butterworth there? Tell her
I said, hey.”
Butterworth leaned closer to the phone. “Hey right back at you.”
“Uh, Angeline, what we wanted to know is whether the sheriff and Deena Duncan
were having a secret romance?”
“Oh my, yes. Thought they were being so discreet too,” she said chuckling.
“The other thing we wanted to know is: Did Deena have a special place she might’ve gone for contemplation or somewhere she thought was special or sacred?”
“I can’t say what she did when she was there, but she sure spent a lot of her free time west of Wooded Hollow—.”
We suddenly heard a dull thudding sound, followed by a faint groan, and then… nothing. “Angeline, are you all right? Angeline!” Someone hung up the phone and we were left listening to the familiar sound of complete quietude. I tossed the phone into Butterworth’s lap, threw the gearshift into drive, and stomped the accelerator to the floor. Butterworth called ahead for an ambulance and police assistance. I thought that by the time we’d get there, we’d be the last considering we started on the other side of town, but as fate would have it, we were the first. (Okay, I admit I might’ve broken a few speeding laws on the way.)
Angeline’s front door was wide open, which is never a good sign. So we both drew our weapons and proceeded inside with caution. There was no one in the living room or the hallway, but when we entered the kitchen, I saw a lake of blood surging across the floor, originating from behind the kitchen island. I was hoping that if the blood was still spreading, there might be an outside chance to stop it. The first thing I could make out was a little bit of her hair. Tragically, it was the only thing. Someone had cracked her skull with something heavy and kept on hitting her until the only thing left was the unrecognizable horror that lay at my feet. Butterworth came up behind me and I heard her gasp. When I looked back at her, I expected to see either fright or revulsion radiating from her face. No, it wasn’t either of them. It was tremendous rage. Her eyes never left the body as she uttered, “The person who did this needs to die a slow and painful death.” I heard someone enter the house and I got my badge out. A male voice from the hallway shouted, “Otto City Police Department. Is anyone there?”
“In here, Officer.”
*
I explained the situation to the first two officers, and reminded them to treat it as a crime scene. Sheriff Williams never did show up. No one knew his whereabouts. The ambulance had arrived as Butterworth and I walked back outside. The paramedics were midway up the walk, and I informed them the victim had already died. While they were right there, I asked the driver named Dave if he knew exactly where Wooded Hollow was. I had to be cautious not to ask any police officers of our intended location. At that particular moment, we weren’t exactly sure who to trust. So, I approached the paramedic instead, betting if anyone would know where it was and how to get there, it would be him. My hunch proved to be correct. He told us Wooded Hollow was near an inlet of Fort Gibson Lake.
So before we left town, we made a detour and stopped at the Otto fire department, where we borrowed two full-face gas masks after paying a hefty deposit. Paramedic Dave warned us that a section west of Wooded Hollow was off limits to the public. Apparently in 2029, CO2 gases began leaking out of small fissures on Hades Hilltop with the focal point being Sybil cave. When a couple of kids were found dead on the hill from asphyxiation, they surrounded it with a high electric fence, posting huge warning signs every fifty feet. They said the leakage was brought on by global warming heating up the surface of the earth. What the public didn’t know was that the electric fence had been out of service for the last twenty years. It was way too costly to continue its upkeep when most of the tax revenue was being funneled into the war effort.
“This Sybil cave you speak of, can you tell us anything specifically about it? Like is the cave large or small?”
Paramedic Dave rubbed his chin and explained, “Tell you the truth, I’ve never been in it. But it was mapped out years before the secession. The entrance is no larger than your average front door of a house. I’ve been told the cave itself runs straight back about 30 yards and then makes a gentle descent for another 30 yards. At the end of this, it makes an el-turn to the left and runs into a solid wall around 40 feet later. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
*
“Do you think it was Deena working alone, or do you think they were both in on it?” Butterworth pondered.
I glanced over and noticed she unknowingly kept touching the grip of her weapon every ten seconds. “Easy there, Sundance, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if either of them are involved. Of course, all that being said, I feel I’d guillotine them both today if no headsman could be found—but that’s just me.” Butterworth didn’t say anything, never once looked at me, but her hand relaxed and gradually inched its way back into her lap again. Looking for an excuse to get her mind off her gun, I said, “Get your laptop out and see if you can find more on Hades Hilltop. How long has it been called that? And what, if anything, does that have to do with Cybele?”
After a minute, she announced, “Oh, here’s something…it says that it was named by
two French explorers around 1721. They called it Colline d’Hades. It doesn’t say why.”
“What in the hell did those explorers experience then that made them choose that name? You don’t think the hill’s been leaking gases on and off now for centuries?”
Up ahead, I could see Sheriff Williams’s police car parked on the side of the road. I slowed down and pulled up behind it and parked. Butterworth looked up from her laptop at the sheriff’s vehicle and then to me. “The volunteer headsman has arrived,” she said dryly. “Make sure your blade is very sharp.”
I nodded, and we got out of the automobile. Despite the rising temperatures, we began our hike west through the forest toward Fort Gibson Lake with our gas masks and flashlights and a pair of bolt cutters in hand.
Paramedic Dave explained that once we passed by the tip of the inlet, we’d be able to see the first signs of the fence. Again, he was correct. He said to follow the fence for about 300 yards until we’d come upon a three by six feet gate. Since law enforcement had the only key to the lock, I thought the bolt cutters might come in handy. But when we got there, the gate had been left open.
“I believe it’s time to suit up, Butterworth,” I said in a hoarse voice. My mouth and throat felt like hot sand. All the fluids in my body seemed to have been absorbed into my shirt and pants, as they clung firmly against my skin. The mask was only going to make things worse. So we continued on, side by side, our weapons gripped with both hands, our arms outstretched in front of us. To anyone else, it would have appeared our weapons were tracking the scent of the cave like an odorous radar signal leading us directly to it. When the cave opening finally came into view, I turned my head to ask Butterworth if she could see anyone from her vantage point. That’s when we heard a shot ring out. I’m not actually sure if I heard the report of the gun or the sound of the bullet as it hit my gas mask. But the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back with my head throbbing. Slowly, I became aware of the sound of more gunfire, and Butterworth’s voice calling my name.
“Ghostly! Ghostly, are you hurt? Talk to me!”
A couple more shots rang out and I saw bits of bark explode from the front of the tree she was hiding behind. Then I heard Sheriff William’s voice say, “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? Had to come sniffing around here, getting your Union noses into everybody’s business and ruining our lives.”
“We didn’t kidnap those kids. That was all you and Deena’s doing. I just don’t understand why you did such a thing?” Butterworth shouted.
“Why we did such a thing? To save their lives, of course. Nobody wanted them. Their futures were destined to be sold as sex slaves to the perverts and sickos. I couldn’t let that happen.”
I tentatively touched my forehead as they spoke. The gas mask had been grazed on the facepiece body over my left eye. This particular model had a metal plate surrounded by silicone rubber. Had there been no metal plate, a portion of my skull would’ve been blown off. I still didn’t know the extent of the helmet’s damage, but I couldn’t detect any gas leakage. And oddly, all I could think of was, “There goes my deposit.”
“But you could’ve taken them to New Mexico yourself,” she said.
“Lady, you think sex perverts and sickos don’t exist in the Union, too? Even with the
secession and the war going on, the sex slave network still thrived as it always did. We had to get them out of here.”
“Keep him talking. Do you see my gun anywhere?” I whispered.
Her head snapped around and she jumped slightly, surprised I wasn’t dead. She surveyed the area around me and zeroed in on the gun. “It’s about three inches from where your left hand is now.” Another shot grazed the side of the tree and she turned her attention back to the Sheriff. “But something went wrong, didn’t it?”
“It always does,” he said with regret in his voice. “We had it all planned. Deena would drug the Elmores and I’d borrow one of the school buses. And if you’re wondering, it’s pretty easy when you’re the law in this town—you have keys to everything. It was Deena who was heavily into the mythology, and I was heavily into her…had me half-believing in it myself. She was the one who was aware the cave could be used as a portal, but only on some celestial timed event, like when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars sort of crap. All that really meant was I had to get them here inside the cave at 12:36 AM sharp.”
I got to my hands and knees, and ripples of dizziness lapped at my consciousness. She saw what I was attempting to do, and she fired two more shots into the tree in front of the Sheriff. Then she reached down and grabbed my shirt, and hauled me behind her. “Why didn’t Deena go with you?”
“She was to drive my cruiser to the school and wait for me there. And she did.”
“But you didn’t make it to the cave on time. What happened?”
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “Like an idiot, I took a bus that was near empty. Halfway there, I stopped at the Phillips 66 and pumped in a few gallons. It
only took seven minutes, but it turned out to be seven frigging minutes too long.”
Something on the ground behind the Sheriff was starting to move a little. I pointed it
out to Butterworth and whispered not to say anything yet. She nodded and said, “So what
did you do with the children after that?”
“What could I do? I wasn’t going to let them live the rest of their lives being a child molester’s chattel. I gave them my flashlight and told them to go all the way to the end of the tunnel and wait for Cybele there.”
“And what about Angeline? Why did you kill her?”
“Deena did that. She wanted to make sure no one stopped us from getting to the gate at the appointed time. But I had to drug her before we got here to keep her from seeing the truth in there. I figured I’d carry her inside and we’d wait for Cybele. If it turned out this was all some ancient worshipper’s pipe dream, then I’d remove both of our masks and wait for the coup de grace of the Grim Reaper instead.”
Suddenly, Deena rushed up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with a very large rock, and all the while screaming, “You bastard, you led them to their deaths! You bastard, you bastard!”
Sheriff Williams’s body took two robotic steps and then dropped. You could tell by the icy, vacant look on his face he was already dead before he hit the ground. In the seconds it took for us to react, Deena had bolted into the cave. Because I was teetering on the edge of faintness to give chase, Butterworth went in after her. You could still hear Deena shouting Cybele’s name as it echoed off the rock face deep in the earth’s belly.
*
Butterworth and I stood outside the fence watching the forensic team from UDOJ as
they brought out the body bags. Thirty-two little bodies in all. And I wondered what was
going through their minds before death collected the last precious beat of their hearts.
Was it the enormous pride they felt when receiving their first “A” or a gold star in class? Was it the expectation of being chosen when adoptive parents visited the orphanage? Or was it much simpler? Perhaps a small gift at Christmas wrapped with pretty paper and ribbon—just one. What grievous act was so hideous and so offensive that God or the gods deemed it necessary to punish these thirty-two children to a life infused with loneliness and shame and oppression?
I felt a tear run down my cheek as they passed by. There were tears also in Butterworth’s eyes and I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. She twisted away from my hold and looked away. We stayed there until the last of the children had gone by. I figured we owed them that much.
And what of Deena Duncan, you ask? Butterworth told me she followed Deena all the way down the length of the tunnel. She said the cave itself was only about eight feet wide by eight feet tall. It wasn’t that difficult to keep track of her with Deena’s flashlight beam bouncing off the walls as she ran, and with her screaming Cybele’s name at the top of her lungs. When she came upon those bones lining both sides of the tunnel, Butterworth said she almost dropped her gaze. She told me the moment Deena turned the corner at the el-turn, a pinkish bright light filled the cave. It lasted for just a nanosecond and then everything went dark again. When she did get to the el-turn herself, there was nothing there but a dead end and more bones.
Our report never mentioned a portal, only that the suspect got away. I personally don’t
think we’ll ever see her again. Butterworth, hoping against hope, prays that Deena does
come back. There’s still the matter of that unpaid comeuppance to sort out.
END
