Flesh Worn Stone Read online

  “You speak Spanish?” John asked.

  “Enough to get by.”

  John went to the engraving, fingering its deep grooves. “It’s also a pirate emblem, is it not?”

  “It could be,” Steven said. “They all had different emblems, different logos.”

  “But rebirth or death? Isn’t the Christian tradition usually rebirth and then death, rebirth through the act of Baptism?”

  “What makes you think it has anything to do with Christianity?” Steven asked. He wasn’t a believer and, when pressed in religious conversations, he didn’t like participating in any of its forms. Religion could be blamed for most of the world’s ills.

  “God doesn’t mean anything,” Darius told them. “Why we are here is all that matters.”

  Faint sounds of laughter mixed with fear and agony drifted out of the small cave entrance. There were also wisps of scents…meat cooking and filth.

  “There might be answers in there. I…we have to be some sort of prisoners,” John told them. “Though I don’t know what crime I could have committed to be sentenced to such a place.”

  “Maybe it’s a joke,” Steven offered, “some sort of reality television event. Maybe Ed McMann is about to jump out and hand us all a check.”

  The group stared at him for a moment, silent, and he had to wonder if any of them could begin to imagine what sort of twisted and depraved individual would sentence someone to a place like this, kidnapped, cut, probably raped in the case of the young girls. What sort of person would put a person in a place like this in the name of television?

  “I don’t know, but I don’t plan on finding out,” Darius told them, moving next to John by the cage entrance. The bamboo bars were smooth and weathered, like they’d been here for many, many years and had many hands on them, like the steel stair rails in an old refinery. The door at the center was fastened only with a piece of wire. Darius quickly untied it and stepped through.

  As soon as he did, an ear splitting alarm sounded, forcing the group to cover their ears. Darius cowered and then stepped back through the doorway. The alarm went silent. He stepped back out and the siren wailed again.

  “It knows when I step out,” he said to no one in particular as he stepped back into the cell.

  “Motion detectors, perhaps?” John asked, testing the entrance way himself. Stepping outside the cell produced the same siren, rustling birds from the trees in the cliff face above. Stepping back in quieted it.

  “Who cares if there’s an alarm?” Cassandra said, standing. Her red hair caught in the gentle ocean breeze like an angry solar flare. “There’s an alarm but there isn’t anyone coming. There isn’t anyone to prevent us from leaving. There aren’t any guards.”

  “Cassandra,” the other girl said, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder, “we don’t know anything yet. We don’t even know where we are.”

  “I don’t care,” Cassandra told her, shrugging off the comforting hand. “I’m going. This is crap…I didn’t know it would be like this.”

  “You didn’t know it would be like what?” Steven asked, but the girl didn’t answer.

  The young girl took a few tentative steps away from the cage’s gate, turning and looking in wide circles, half expecting prison guards to materialize out of thin air as if Scotty had flipped the switch on the teleporter. When none appeared, she moved further down the beach, the alarm still wailing, until she was at the water’s edge. She knelt down, washing her face off with crystal clear seawater, then motioned for her friend to follow.

  “It’s fine,” Cassandra hollered back to her friend, barely audible above the wail of the siren. “Come on!”

  “There are people coming,” John, standing near the cave entrance, told them.

  “What?” Steven asked, his hands over his ears.

  “People…coming,” John repeated, pointing to the entrance.

  They flowed from the cave entrance like water from the dike once the proverbial thumb was removed. The men and women were dressed in filthy rags and their combined stench made Steven want to give up the imaginary contents of his stomach. They were of all ages, all ethnicities. A man, his scruffy beard obscuring most of his face and neck, shoved Steven back against the bars of the cage.

  “Stay out of the way,” he hissed, his breath reeking of rotten meat and soured milk.

  “Where are we?” Steven choked out as he gasped for air. “What’s going on here? Please…I don’t understand.”

  He was interrupted by a rough knee to the crotch, driving the air from his lungs and sending pain spiraling through his body.

  The bearded man watched as others pushed the remaining new arrivals up and away from the gate, two men holding Darius who, surprisingly to Steven, didn’t resist. Amanda tried to surge forward, tried to stop them once she realized where the five men in the front were heading, but the woman in front of her kept her pressed back against the bars, her forearm against her neck.

  Cassandra, once she saw the group of men sprinting from the open gate, tried to take off running down the pristine beach, but stumbled and fell face first into the sand. The men were upon here in a second, fists flashing. Steven couldn’t see around the man holding him to the bamboo bars, but could hear the girl’s screams even over the alarm. Amanda screamed just as loudly as her friend, her line of vision a little clearer. The fists continued to fly until finally the screaming from the beach stopped. They came back to the cage, carrying Cassandra between them like pallbearers at a funeral. She looked at Steven meekly, her already bruised face now a twisted mass of cuts and abrasions. Her eyes were blank, the girl solidly in a state of shock.

  “Where are you taking her?” Amanda pleaded but the woman holding her didn’t answer, instead hitting her hard in the stomach and then releasing her. Amanda slumped to the ground, gasping for air.

  The others were released as the entire mass of people retreated back into the cave tunnel as quickly as they had appeared. It was several more seconds before Steven realized that the alarm was no longer sounding either. His heart still raced, though, and he quickly went to Rebecca’s side.

  “Are you all right?”

  “They killed her…that poor girl. They killed her for getting out of the cage.”

  Steven suspected she was right, suspected that there was a set of clearly defined rules for their new prison. He also grudgingly gave the prison masters a certain amount of respect, thinking that their system, if he was correct, was ingenious. The incisions could only mean that there were some sort of tracking devices embedded in their bodies and, instead of having guards, their fellow prisoners enforced the rules. It certainly cut down on the cost of guards, he though.

  “I don’t think she was dead, Rebecca,” he answered.

  “Nor do I,” John agreed, “but she was hurt quite badly.”

  “We have to go get her,” Amanda demanded. “We have to go get her now.”

  She stood and started towards the cave entrance, but Darius blocked her. “No, we can’t.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “No. It’s not safe. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know if we’re supposed to leave this cage or not.”

  John nodded in agreement. “And our current available evidence suggests that we should not, in fact, leave this cage, and that if we do, the penalty is death.”

  “You can’t stop me from going in there.”

  “How is the alarm set off?” John asked aloud, examining the gate for some sort of electrical connection.

  “I think there are RFID chips here,” Steven offered, pointing to the general area of his still aching side. “They’re tracking us, at least through the gate.”

  “Like a GPS?”

  “No,” Steven said, “more like when someone tries to steal something from a department store. The sensors and wires have to be embedded inside the bamboo, or maybe there are some directional monitors on the cliff face that we can’t see yet.”

  “Get out of my way,” Amanda a
gain demanded of Darius who stood like a stone statue.

  “I won’t allow you to go in there to your possible death. We don’t know if that’s within whatever rules govern this place. We don’t know anything.”

  “I know that my friend and I were kidnapped, raped, drugged, cut and tattooed like animals,” Amanda began. “I don’t know why we’re here, or why they would do these evil things, but I do know that I will not let them hurt her anymore. Now get out of my way.”

  Darius nodded gently then stepped out of the girl’s way, but Amanda stopped at the cave entrance, staring blankly ahead.

  “I don’t really want to follow her,” Darius said. “I know I should, and that it would be the chivalrous thing to do, but I’m scared to set foot inside that tunnel.” The big man stared at his feet, apparently embarrassed by his lack of courage and thinking of what was going to happen to the two girls inside. Steven once again felt guilty for his initial impression of the big black man. He could see that in the current situation, Darius’ own fear was conflicting with his fear of what was happening to the girls, and it was having a profound effect on the man.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” John replied. “There’s nothing out here for us, no escape and no appearance of a rescue on the horizon. Whatever this place is, it is inside these cliff walls. If we stay out here, as beautiful as it is,” he said, pointing to the beach, “we will die within days. There is no food, and more importantly, there is no water. We cannot survive on sand.”

  Steven, still holding Rebecca, told the group. “The other girl, Cassandra…she said ‘this isn’t how this was supposed to be’ before she ran out, like she knew something about what was going on. Did she know why we’re here?”

  Amanda ignored him, still crying uncontrollably, her chest heaving like a child who’d cried itself into a frenzy.

  “I’m sure she meant it in general terms,” John replied quickly. “Like this isn’t the way life was supposed to turn out. How could any of us know what was going on here?” He stood, taking a deep breath. “There is only one thing to do, but much like our large friend Darius, I do not want to do it. We can only go inside the cave and attempt to find out what’s going on.”

  “I don’t want to,” Darius said sadly, “but I can’t see any other option. Let’s go.”

  Steven helped Rebecca stand and once again lied, “it’s going to be all right.”

  She looked at him coldly, the tears replaced for a moment by something else, something he hadn’t seen in his wife’s eyes before, and managed a smile. “How’s this for excitement?”

  * * *

  He remembered exactly the conversation they’d had, where they’d been, even the Jasmine scent of her perfume. He remembered the cool breeze filtering through their open window, the smell of the bayou that ran behind their house. He remembered quite vividly the nightgown Rebecca wore and the way its red lace danced with the wind. The boys were sleeping soundly upstairs and the wine was uncorked and on the windowsill. He remembered their lovemaking, as passionate as the first time, and then relaxing in each other’s arms by candlelight.

  “Is this all there is to life?” she’d asked, leaving him a bit confused and taken aback.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just sometimes wonder if this is all there is. Don’t get me wrong. Life with you and the boys is wonderful. I can’t remember ever being so happy. I just wonder, sometimes, if this is all there is to life.”

  “It isn’t enough?” Steven asked, wondering if the wine was taking hold or if the conversation was something he should be worried about. He didn’t know what he’d do without Rebecca. After Michelle had died, she was all he had. Her and the boys.

  “Of course it is, silly,” she said, caressing his cheek, “but that’s not what I mean. Don’t you miss the thrill? The desire for excitement?”

  “What, like bungee jumping?” he asked, still perplexed.

  “Sure…like bungee jumping. There’s a rush there, a thrill you can’t get by standing still. The sudden onrush of the ground…the fear of death. That’s what’s missing. We don’t fear death.”

  Steven did. He remembered his first wife’s corpse, barely recognizable when he’d been asked to identify her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, again stroking his face, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay,” he told her, “I just don’t get what you’re getting at.”

  “Life seems perfect. We have great boys, both of us have great careers. We live in this ideal house overlooking the bayou and we have great friends we can laugh with. We have everything we need,” she told him. “But do we have everything we want?”

  “I have everything I want,” he said playfully, cuddling closer to her and trying to lighten the mood of the conversation, “But if you want a little excitement, how about we go again?”

  She laughed out loud in that way only she could, completely disarming and enchanting. “Oh, you want to go again? Like we’re teenagers?”

  “You bet.”

  “Come get me, big boy.”

  * * *

  They lingered another half an hour before conquering their collective fears of the cave and stepping forward. When she finally found the courage she’d lacked, Amanda darted ahead of them. Light danced with shadows in the cave entrance, barely filtering around the large form of Darius, who took the lead, followed closely by John, then Steven and Rebecca. The entrance was barely wide enough to walk through and Steven half wondered if Darius’ shoulders scraped the side, if maybe his head was bouncing along the top of the tunnel. The tunnel was filled with sound, not only of their own haphazard scuffling, but of the people ahead of them. There had to be hundreds, judging from the cacophony of sounds not unlike a market festival or even the food court at the mall. There was laughter, screams, fear, and happiness all in one place at one time.

  Amanda stood by the cave entrance, completely shocked by what she saw.

  “My god,” Darius said softly from the lead, stepping out of the tunnel into a larger chamber.

  The cavern was immense, at least three stories tall and as wide as several football fields. Stalagmites and stalactites of different proportions dotted the ceiling and floor, sticking out like shark’s teeth glistening with moisture. There were hundreds of people, some of which were the same who’d come through the cave earlier, yet almost indistinguishable from each other in their filthy clothing. They wore the remnants of faded blue jumpsuits, the ancestors of the bright, new suits that Steven and the others wore. Many wore simple kilts made from black plastic garbage bags, burlap sacks, and all sorts of other accumulated trash. Others wore clothing that looked leather, but had a different shine to it. There were many bare-breasted women, both young and perk and old and sagging. It took him aback, his slight arousal only abated by the sudden onslaught of smells. Meat cooking intertwined with raw sewage, rotting fruit and human stink.

  There were hundreds of haphazard shelters around the cavern, built between cone-shaped rocks jutting up from the floor and constructed of black plastic garbage bags, blankets, wood and cardboard. The entire cavern reminded Steven of a documentary about horribly poor people somewhere in Mexico, living in a cemetery in whatever shelters they could put together. The only thing the shelters had in common was the lack of any sort of roof. They all appeared to be opened to the air, and he could only assume they were meant more for some sort of privacy in the crowded cavern than anything else.

  Thousands of torches burned, filling the air with a thick haze not unlike walking through Houston on a high ozone day, and the smoke burned at his nose. Smaller outlets dotted the walls of the cavern and there were hundreds of people there as well. Clothing hung between the upper story outlets and some stalagmites, much like it might between buildings in 1950’s New York. Children played everywhere, and had Steven not been through one of the most traumatic events of his life, he might think this was a community like any other. Poor, yes, but just people getting b
y.

  “Would you look at that?” John said, amazed, and as Steven followed his gaze, he couldn’t help but gasp in shock himself.

  In the center of the cavern, constructed above a raised platform of stone and hanging between the stalagmites, was a very old wooden ship. It was in rough shape, showing its hundreds years of age, with many holes throughout its hull. Its masts were gone and thick ropes held it suspended at the top of the cavern with a network of wooden and rope ladders, suspended platforms, and bamboo suspension bridges forming a meandering path down to the raised stone platform. A tattered black flag, bearing the same pirate emblem that was engraved into wall of the cave, hung over the side of the ancient pirate ship.

  “They had to have moved it in here a piece at a time,” John said, marveling. “I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work that took.”