Epilogue

1.

At the very moment Cooper gave into the ceaseless bombardment of water, when he resigned himself to death and possible interminable damnation, a set of strong, calloused hands grabbed him at the armpits and yanked him above the surface of the water. He choked and vomited and choked some more, his eyes blurred and unfocused. The water continued to rage at his side, carrying bobbing victims off like driftwood after a spring storm.

"You'll be fine, now. Better move, though, before that water gets worse."

Cooper felt too weak to stand. He remained on his hands and knees as he looked up at his savior. He recognized the man. At first his heart leapt with joy, as if this sudden meeting hadn't been mere coincidence, but a long-awaited reunion. But these people didn't know him. And he only knew of them from his dreams.

"Come on, Papa. Let's go." The girl's voice was insistent, edged with desperation.

He remembered the surging water and how it carried Jane away from him, too fast for him to ever hope to catch up. "I couldn't save her. She's gone."

"No one's saved in the Underground."

"Papa--"

"But you saved me." He looked from Harold to his daughter, draped in a thin blanket and naked beneath, then back again. "Where's Benjamin?"

"How do you know about him?" Harold Barrow stepped in front of his daughter to shield her from Cooper.

Close by but out of sight, people screamed in pain, wounded mortally but fated to never succumb to their wounds.

"You're Harold. That's your daughter, Edwina. I've dreamed about you. The Blankenships wanted me to help you. Their spirits linger inside their house, unable to move on knowing they couldn't help you. They showed me--their spirits--showed me everything."

Harold looked at him sharply and took up a defensive stance.

"I know this sounds crazy--"

"You know the preacher?"

"I bought their house. My name's Ted Cooper. I've dreamed of your family coming to the Blankenships' house, how you listened for the sound of Eunice's organ and saw the water dipper sign. You gave the secret knock. They took you in and you waited for Benjamin to arrive."

The flowing water rose higher to breech the banks. Cooper stood and for a moment he thought he might black out. Harold grabbed him by the arm to steady him.

Harold leaned in as if for clarification, his posture relaxing. "You really knew them?"

"Papa, I don't trust him." Edwina looked at Cooper with disdain. Since the night of their capture, her hair had been shaved. Her eyes were cold and unwavering.

Cooper felt his eyes well with tears. "I've seen what you've had to endure. I'm so sorry." "Oh, Mr. Cooper, it's not your fault," Harold said.

"I can help you. I know the way to the surface," Cooper said, certain that everything the Blankenships had revealed to him had led to this moment. "Where's Benjamin? We have to get moving."

"That's a long story too long even for this place. We'd be happy though, if you know the way to daylight."

"Papa!"

"Hush, girl. We need all the help we can get. I haven't been this far from the stables in fifty years or more."

"It's this way." Cooper shouted into the old man's ear to be heard over the sound of the raging water.

Edwina was reluctant, her father less so, but they followed as Cooper navigated to higher tunnels, twisting away from their nightmare.

Cooper knew they were close when he came across the stones set at the corners of the low tunnel to mark the distance leading to his home. The Blankenships never intended for the markers to be used to travel back toward their house, but they served a vital and reaffirming role just the same as they came across one after another.

"This is it. Mr. Cooper, we're close, aren't we?"

Cooper pushed aside a few large boulders, exposing the hidden entryway to his basement. He climbed through the opening, helping the Barrow's one after the other.

"I haven't seen this place in so long. But it feels like yesterday." Harold held his daughter's hand as they shared a heartbreaking look.

"Oh, Papa--" The coldness left Edwina's face, and the transformation revealed the true depths of her beauty. She embraced her father, looking at Cooper over Harold's shoulder.

The skin of her cheek had begun to sag, showing blood and pus beneath. When her face creased into a smile, the skin began to separate along those lines.

"It's coming on. Oh, how I've prayed for this moment."

"We better go, Papa."

His embrace lingered several more seconds, then he held his daughter at arms length. "I wish Benjamin were here, Sweets. He was a good man."

Edwina's happiness dimmed for a moment, but she blinked it back to full gleam. Decay flowed from her eyes in the wake of her tears, trailing gray runnels down her face like melted wax.

When Cooper turned to lead the way upstairs, a bitter gust of air slammed into him. In the stagnant basement heat, he nearly staggered, but the sensation quickly passed.

He whispered as he climbed the stairs, the Barrows a step behind, "You said I would help save them, but they saved me. I bet you knew all along, didn't you?"

A fading cold caress brushed his cheek, then was gone. He never felt the Blankenships' presence again. His deed was done. The Blankenships could finally rest.

"Sunlight, sweet Jesus, sunlight!" Harold cried out as they reached the ground floor landing. Cooper's home was in shambles after Ethan and his men tore through it, but no place had ever seemed more inviting. He guided them upstairs and through the hallway leading to the front door. Broken glass littered the floor. Dust billowed in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

"Papa, it’s beautiful!"

Cooper turned to face the Barrows, but they didn't take note of him. Their failing faculties were focused on the warm glorious sunlight--a sight they'd been deprived of for over seventy years. Cooper rushed ahead and opened the front door, stepping aside to let them walk by.

By the time they reached the outside porch, Harold and his daughter could barely move. They were rotting. But their vigilance never flagged. Cooper sat on the edge of the porch and rested. Harold and Edwina walked down the steps, up the drive and around the bend near the street. He thought they wouldn't have lasted much farther, but Cooper never found any evidence that they hadn't made the end of the drive, and just kept walking.

Whenever he reflected back on that moment, that's how he pictured it. Father and daughter walking hand in hand down the road, occasionally exchanging smiles, every moment free.

 

 

2.

The grave was small, but so was the boy. Jimmy just hoped it was deep enough. Louise had collapsed ten minutes ago, too weak in her advancing decay to lift her head. But Jimmy wouldn't rest until the job was finished. The boy had to be buried.

They had reached the surface in reasonably good shape, exiting from a tunnel hidden beneath a shed. They didn't know the property owner. Just as well.

They reached a side lot, and under a large oak, they began digging with large sticks. The ground was rocky and laced with knobby tree roots. It was hard, slow digging, but the surroundings would make a serene resting place. Once the hole was deep enough, Louise handed him the bundle, then collapsed.

Her eyes were still open and blinking. She gasped when he placed the wrapped blanket in the hole. He shoved in the loose soil, and though he felt the tremors as he cried, he didn't feel any tears. He could no longer cry, too far gone now. He could barely stand as he finished the burial.

His skin was dissolving and pus slicked what remained. His lungs tugged in his raspy chest. It was coming. He had to hurry.

They'd planned on returning Underground once the burial was complete, but they would never make it.

Jimmy fell to his knees next to Louise, then stretched out next to her. He placed an arm over her. Her skin was cold.

Either the sun was dimming with the coming night, or his vision was failing. Either way, he would never see it again. Each time he blinked he was surprised when his eyes opened again.

"Dwight."

"Hmm?"

"Your father. We should name him after your father."

"I like that. Thanks."

"I love you."

"Love you--"

 

 

3.

Maybe it wasn't so bad. Wounds heal in time, don't they?

Thea Calder fell to her knees inches from a glass-still pond with clear water that revealed her face.

Sure she felt the sharp rocks crashing into her as she attempted to escape, but certainly it couldn't be this bad.

Blood flowed from her flowing locks across her forehead, drying in a morbid inverted crown. She touched the wounds on top of her head and pain shot through her eyes and her vision dimmed. She leaned closer to the water and wished she had her fancy brush and its matching comb.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember her escape. All she saw in her mind's eye were falling rocks, and brash sparks flashing across her vision when she was struck, and the walls, the very walls were coming in. And then she was running. Running blind and scared and with no hope of escaping. But then somehow she did. Somehow, she'd found a pathway to the living world, a world where people aged and wore down and eventually died.

She opened her eyes and her reflection had somehow worsened. The fugue of shock was lifting. Left exposed in its place was a lightning bolt gash in her right cheek. Her nose was also shattered, both flattened and swelling at the same time. And when she opened her mouth to scream, she discovered the splintered remains of her front teeth glaring back at her.

She shoved away from the pond. Her hand encountered a good sized rock. Hefting it as she stood, she threw it at the water and shattered the image. She turned, retracing her steps from where she'd emerged from the earth minutes earlier.

Ethan. Ethan will help me. No. Don't count on him. You can never trust a man to help.

But the Underground. She craved its curative touch with a growing intensity that bordered on lust.

Gray dust still billowed from the small hole in the ground when she crawled inside. It choked her, clinging to her lungs and clogging her sinuses. She closed her eyes and pushed deeper inside. Her heart was beating crazily and she tasted blood as she moved. But she was moving. And soon the healing would begin. And then she would never age again. Would never suffer the indecency of wounds or scars or pronounced leers from nosey neighbors. Because once she was Underground, she would never leave ever again. With or without Ethan.

After several minutes, her grasping fingers encountered a solid wall of tumbled in stone. She began to panic as she searched for an opening.

There wasn't one.

No. No, not now.

She couldn't go this way.

She knew of other tunnels.

But she could never face the world above.

What if someone sees me?

She fell to the floor and begged the Underground to stretch its powers to reach her. She sat like that for a long time. Waiting, feeling phantom healing tingles that she quickly dismissed. Her tears flowed. Long after the dust settled, her tears flowed.

 

 

4.

It felt like Ethan was back in the Everglades, slipping in and out of consciousness. The weight bearing down on his chest was reminiscent of the pressure from his wounds inflicted by those damnable Seminoles. The poisonous infection running riot throughout his system had swollen his tissue, making him nearly choke on his own blood and phlegm; that's how he felt now, but in this case, the weight on his chest was countless tons of rock.

He inventoried his senses. He couldn't see, but his years belowground accustomed him to the heft of this sensation. The sounds of rocks grating, falling, finding a place to settle for the coming millennia came from all directions.

Otherwise, he could blink, wiggle his nose, lower his bottom lip. His left index finger budged a fraction of an inch when he tried with all his might to move… anything. Boulders sandwiched his body practically flat. His limbs ached dully, but he was helpless to do anything about it.

This was hell. No doubt. He closed his eyes, let his mind drift. It didn't take long for his thoughts to coalesce, and as they did, they found a focal point. Thea.

Thea, Thea, my lovely Thea. He would never see her again.

The stones pinning him shifted, crying like a lonesome animal searching for one of its kind. His bones crumbled under the weight, compression fractures networking through his limbs, his chest. He'd never felt a more intense pain. In all the world, there had never been a deeper wound. Never in existence had such a hapless soul been less able to simply let go of the mortal coil.

The damned Underground.

Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, but they didn't fall. Instead, they were absorbed into the crusted rock and dust pressed into his skin.

If I cry long enough, will my tears dissolve these stones, freeing me?

He opened his eyes to blink, but he never finished the task. What he saw kept his eyes open and once open, they remained.

The shifting stones revealed a two inch shaft through the innumerable layers above him. Two inches opened to sunny daylight. Motes of fine debris filtered down into the hole, but he didn't blink. He couldn't take his eyes off the sight of the sun above him. He could never look away. Never was going to be a long time, indeed.

 

 

 

 

Twelve Years Later

"Hold still."

Jacob frowned as his mom fussed with his collar.

"It's fine, Mom. Straight as an arrow."

A whirl of gray streaked the hair over her left brow. Her face was tan from working around the farm. She smiled up at him.

"I can't have you looking disheveled. It's a big day, you know."

Through the kitchen window he could see their guests dressed in the their finest Sunday attire. It seemed like everyone in Coal Hollow was in attendance, and certainly most of the town had been invited. They stood on either side of an aisle leading to the edge of the peach orchard.

Ellie stood under a white lattice archway, holding a bouquet of flowers. He remembered that day so many years ago, the day of her brother's funeral. Her biggest concern had been trying to find the most beautiful wild flowers to pick for his mom.

Ellie's father never surfaced after the incidents in Underground. As far as Jacob knew, she never learned about the dark turn his soul had taken. Some things were better left unsaid. On a larger scale, an official story was created to explain the loss of twenty-two residents of Coal Hollow. Since Jimmy's body was never recovered (at least in the official story), the devastating loss was easily explained away as a tragic accident. The story described a search party valiantly combing the abandoned mines for any trace of one of their own. How inopportune for a cave wall to collapse during their searching and an underground lake to sweep them away.

After escaping the Underground, and with no evidence that her father survived, the Fowler's had taken Ellie in for good.

"Are you ready?"

"Just a minute, Mom."

He took a deep breath, trying to gather himself. The last time he could remember such stress was on the beaches of Guadalcanal. The white sands washed red with American blood, the air thick with smoke from weeks of artillery bombardment. He'd seen bloodshed before, but this battle changed his friends. Their vengeance had turned them into something unrecognizable, but still somehow all too familiar. Once the momentum turned in their favor, they scourged one tunnel after another with flame throwers at close range, and when their enemies still wouldn't submit, they would enter the dark burrows with bared bayonets, killing anything that moved. They'd become monsters. Jacob had already seen too many monsters. He would never again raise his weapon.

"Where's Cooper?"

"He's by the orchard, right where we should be, I might add."

Even as Jacob became a man and soldier, even later when his life took a decidedly unexpected turn, he missed Jimmy. He wished he was here by his side, jabbing him with funny barbs, but ultimately putting everything in perspective. Simply thinking about his brother tended to put his mind at ease, and right now was no exception.

He could do this. When he exhaled a deep breath, it came as a long, calm gust of air.

"Okay. So everything's ready?"

"Absolutely." She offered her arm. They hooked arms and walked out the back door.

Jacob leaned over and whispered, "So, you don't think it's weird, us walked the aisle together?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

He reminded himself to walk as slow as reasonably possible. He took in the guests as they walked, trying to smile and make eye contact. People sighed and a polite round of applause greeted them.

"See, everything's perfect."

Many of the faces in the crowd were new to Jacob--spouses of Coal Hollow residents he had never met, or people with whom he had grown up but no longer recognized after being away for so long. A few faces never changed, though.

Arlen Polk stood at the end of an aisle. Now an old man, a spark lit his eye that showed his wits only grew stronger with the years. Shortly after surfacing from the Underground, he opened the grain elevator just outside of town. After his elevator enterprise took off like gangbusters, he imported stone masons from Chicago and opened a school to teach select local boys their skills. Though still in its infancy, the school was gaining a national reputation, while keeping quality jobs in town. Arlen had an uncanny knack for business. Some people claimed his higher functioning resulted from injuries he received during the search party accident. Some people claimed he had been touched by God. Some other's knew the reason, and they kept his secret.

 

At the end of the aisle a small gathering: Ellie, Hank Calder leaning on his walking cane, Cooper.

Everyone counted Cooper as one of the victims of the mine disaster. Jacob's mother only learned of his survival when he showed up at her door a year ago, his beard now mostly gray, but his eyes warm and inviting. At the time, Jacob was finishing up his studies and only learned of the reunion through his mother's weekly letters. Through the weeks, Jacob saw their relationship evolve.

"Nervous?" his mom asked in a whisper.

"A little. You?"

"No. Not when I'm this happy."

Jacob handed his mother over to Cooper and he took his place under the arching flowers, facing the crowd. His collar felt tight on his neck, but he didn't allow it to choke back his words as he began the wedding ceremony.

THE END