Shores of the Marrow Read online

  When the world has changed.

  That, of course, was what Mrs. Johnson called a supposition. And with an image of his mother holding out his lunch, his father telling him to tuck in his shirt, burned into his mind, Cal figured it a bold one.

  He wasn’t sure that the world would ever change. And even if it did, there was no reason to believe that it would become anything but boring.

  Boring, with a capital B. The worst kind.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey, you guys know why they shut The Pit down?” Hank asked suddenly.

  Both Cal and Brent shook their heads.

  “Not this again,” Stacey muttered.

  They were lying on their backs staring upward, feeling the effects of the whiskey that they had nearly finished. Cal’s eyelids were heavy, and he was slightly hypnotized by the way the clouds endlessly drifted across his vision. He felt like a child again, imagining fictional creatures hidden in their fluffy shapes.

  “Come on, Stace. You know it’s true,” Hank continued. “My step-brother Matt told me that his friend used to work here, at The Pit, before the accident.”

  Cal’s ears perked, and he pulled his eyes away from the clouds to look at his friend.

  “Accident? What accident?”

  Stacey groaned.

  “Don’t fall for it, Cal. It’s just a stupid—”

  “No, it’s not stupid, it’s true. My step-brother—”

  Stacey rolled over and pushed herself onto her elbows, and Cal couldn’t help peek into her shirt. His heart skipped a beat when he caught a glimpse of the tops of her small, firm breasts.

  “The same step-brother who is high like ninety-percent of the time? That step-brother?”

  Hank smiled.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. But he swears it’s a true story.”

  Stacey flipped over and lay back down in the grass.

  “Real reliable source, Hank.”

  Cal, his interest piqued, sat up.

  “What story? What accident?”

  He was amazed that during all fifteen years that he had lived in Mooreshead, and given the fact that he had been coming to The Pit for the better part of a decade, he had never heard anything about an ‘accident’.

  It was Hank who had first found the place. He was nine at the time, and it had never been made clear what he had been doing to stumble across it, but stumble he had. Fallen right in, actually. But instead of being upset, he had rushed to find Cal and tell him about the secret place he had discovered.

  Back then, they had had to cut through Mr. Willingham’s farm and the small forest bordering his lot in order to get to The Pit. It was easier now, what with Mr. Willingham getting so bored that he had spiced things up by putting the barrel end of a shotgun in his mouth a couple of years back, and they no longer felt like vagrant trespassers.

  Several times Cal had asked his father about the place, but other than a ‘oh, geez, I dunno Callum. It might be dangerous, you should probably steer clear of that place,’ or some facsimile, David Godfrey hadn’t offered anything of substance.

  Over time, Cal figured that his dad forgot about it, which was all the same to him. After all, this was their place to get away, to be free.

  Still, he was perturbed that his father had never mentioned anything about an ‘accident’.

  Hank licked his lips and smirked. Stacey’s dissension hadn’t discouraged him from telling the story. If anything, it had encouraged him. The one thing Hank liked more than stealing and smoking his mother’s du Maurier cigarettes was telling tales.

  “Well,” he began, “before I tell you about the accident, I think it’s best if I start from the beginning.”

  Cal rolled his eyes. Hank didn’t just love telling tales, he had a penchant for telling long tales. Long, rambling stories.

  And he just knew that this was destined to be one of them.

  “It all started years ago—maybe twenty, twenty-five years ago, the records aren’t that clear—”

  Stacey scoffed at the word ‘records’, but Hank ignored her.

  “Anyway, back then the Mayor, Steven Partridge, managed to convince some developers to mine gravel from right here in Mooreshead. You see, the state was in the process of extending the highway system in South Carolina—specifically Interstate 26, I think—and they needed a massive amount of gravel to do it. Mooreshead wasn’t the first choice, or even the fifth. Too wet, or some shit. But the thing is, Steven Partridge was determined. Back then Mooreshead wasn’t as prosperous as it is now.”

  Even Hank had to chuckle at this. If the US was represented by a tennis ball, Mooreshead wouldn’t even make up a single green hair. It had one high school, one fire station, four banks, and a God-fearing population of just under twelve thousand. Nothing about Mooreshead screamed prosperity.

  “Yeah, I know, I can see it in your face. But you’ve gotta remember, this was a while back, twenty-five or so years ago. Times were different, then. Harder. No money, no jobs. Which is why Steven Partridge fought so hard to get the contract here, despite the fact that it was ludicrous to think that there would be enough gravel, what with Mooreshead being so close to the swamps. There’s another, much longer story about what Steven had to do to get this contract, but that’s another story for another day.”

  Hank visibly shuddered, and Cal made a mental note to ask his friend about this tale another time.

  “Anyways, Mooreshead got the contract, and then things started to change, almost immediately.”

  “How?” Cal asked. For some reason, his heart was pounding away in his chest, and whatever fugue that the alcohol had brought on had since faded. He reached over and took another swig of the cheap scotch, grimacing at the burning sensation that cascaded all the way down to his stomach.

  “Well, for one, Steven was heralded as a hero. Knighted, almost. Got everything he could have wanted, because the townsfolk finally had jobs. Work meant money, and money meant food and entertainment. Survival. Anyways, the town flourished. Really, it wasn’t like it is now; for the seventies, it was fucking booming. Las fucking Vegas, baby. But not everyone was happy about the change. The church, for one, wasn’t a fan of the strip clubs, bars, and gambling halls that opened up as soon as the Pit started to become operational. Shit, you guys know the church…” Hank let his sentence trail off. There were somethings that couldn’t be said, not even here, in their sanctuary. “Let’s just say that these two ideas of Mooreshead started to clash. Steven himself became the primary target for the church, given that he was often seen at the brothels, or drunk off his ass. But here’s the thing: he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. As long as the mine stayed open, and there was work to be had, he was going to be re-elected, no matter what the church said about it.”

  Hank reached over and grabbed the bottle from Cal and gulped greedily. Then he took his time lighting up a cigarette, before lying his head back on the grass and continuing.

  “There was a priest back then, a man by the name of Father McCabe. You know Father Link from the school chapel?”

  Cal nodded, recalling the kind, young man who always wore the same pair of faded jeans with his white collar and black shirt. The man was gentle, funny, more laid back than any pastor he had ever come in contact with.

  “Well, Father McCabe was pretty much the exact opposite of Father Link. And Father McCabe was out to get the mayor, some would say no matter the cost. But even Father McCabe wasn’t powerful enough to stop the mayor, not yet anyway. Not until… not until the men started to dig deeper, and deeper, until they found something in the Pit, something old, something man made. That, my dear friends, was when the real trouble started.”

  Chapter 4

  “Gotta piss,” Hank said suddenly, rising to his feet.

  “Wait—what? What happened? What did they find?”

  “Hold your horses, Cal. Lemme piss first.”

  Cal stared as Hank started to walk toward a cluster of trees a dozen yards from where he sat.

 
; “Fuck—c’mon!”

  “He always tells it this way,” Stacey said quietly, drawing his attention. She was still lying on her back, her eyes closed. He liked her like this; this way he could observe her without risking being caught.

  “What way? What do you mean.”

  “Leaves halfway through the story. Makes you wait. And then tells the stupid part.”

  “Stupid part?”

  Stacey opened her eyes, turned her head, and squinted at him in the hot sun. Cal had been staring at the front of her shirt as he spoke, and he quickly raised his eyes to look her in the face. He tried to fight the color that rose in his cheeks, but lost. But Stacey didn’t appear to notice, or if she did, she didn’t care.

  Or maybe she liked it, Cal thought. It wasn’t that far-fetched an idea, was it? After all, Stacey was pretty. Not beautiful, no, but close.

  Cal and Hank and Brent on the other hand? They were average at best. Maybe she hung out with them because of the attention she got.

  “Yeah, it gets real dumb now,” Stacey said with an air of boredom. “I looked it up, you know. Went to the library. Couldn’t find out anything except that there was a Mayor Steven Partridge. But this Father McCabe? No record.”

  She turned her head back to the sky again and shut her eyes.

  “Which is why I call bullshit. Anyways, you’ll see.”

  Cal chewed the inside of his lip, then addressed Brent who lay to his left.

  “What do you think, Brent?” when the boy didn’t answer, Cal turned to him, and was surprised to see that was sleeping. “Brent? Brent, wake the fuck up.”

  Brent’s eyes snapped open, and a confused look crossed his face.

  “Wha—what? What happened?” he asked groggily.

  Hank chuckled.

  “Nothing happened,” he said as he returned from voiding his bladder. “Except maybe you having a wet dream.”

  “Fuck off, I was just dozing. It’s your boring ass story that did it to me, anyway.”

  Hank laughed, and then sat on the grass.

  “Well, what happened? What did the machines hit?” Cal demanded.

  Hank lit another smoke, and took several long, slow drags before finally bringing his eyes up to meet Cal’s.

  “You really want to know, Cal? I mean, once you hear this, you can’t unhear it.”

  Cal rolled his eyes, and Brent groaned.

  “Just fucking tell me.”

  Hank had a twinkle in his eye when he spoke next.

  “Well, let me first set the scene…”

  ***

  “Two years passed since they started digging, and the town was flourishing. But it couldn’t last, everyone knew that there was only limited gravel in Mooreshead. Mayor Partridge knew this, and he also knew that the second the money dried up, that the jobs that he had brought were no longer available, he was as good as dead. And, of course, the rest of the sins that came with the money—the strip clubs, the gambling halls, the bars—well they would go, too. When rumors hit town that they had dug as deep as they could, Steven Partridge pleaded with the company to keep on digging. When the company refused, saying that it was dangerous to go any deeper, he decided to go out to the site himself.

  “Now, keep in mind that at this point, Steven Partridge had ballooned up to nearly three-hundred pounds, and he had developed a taste in fine clothing— bespoke three-piece suits in particular. So, imagine this guy, showing up here, at The Pit, to tell the men of Mooreshead how to do their jobs. These were hard men, men with faces smeared with dirt, burdened with perpetual coughs and nicotine stains that ran all the way to their bones. Yeah, Steven’s approach didn’t go over well. Still, he offered the men bonuses, raises, if they kept on digging. He promised to shower them with money that he, nor the town, actually had—that didn’t exist. But Steven was obsessed with the lifestyle that he had obtained, and refused to let it go. Money makes the world go ‘round, Cal. Money. Nothing but money.”

  Hank paused and took a drag of his cigarette.

  “And? What’d they do?”

  “They kept on digging, of course. They kept on digging until they hit something.”

  “Struck a pile of shit, just like this story,” Stacey snorted. Brent, who had managed to keep his eyes open for this chapter, laughed.

  “Very funny,” Hank scowled. “The truth is, no one really knows exactly what they hit. I mean, they didn’t have cameras back then, not like the ones we have now. Anyways, if there were any photos taken, then the FBI would have confiscated them.”

  Cal’s eyes went wide.

  “The FBI?”

  Hank nodded.

  “Yeah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyways, there were seven people working in The Pit when they struck the thing, and reports of what they actually hit are mixed. Some say that they hit a hunk of ore in the earth, a giant piece of metal. Others say that it was just rock, while some still say that they didn’t hit anything, that the men were just sick of digging. But the story that made its way back to Father McCabe in town was that they had hit a tunnel of sorts. A portal, maybe, a passage.”

  Cal squinted hard, trying to determine if his friend was just pulling his leg.

  “A passage?”

  “See?” Stacey mocked. “Told you so, Cal. Told you, you were wasting your time.”

  Cal ignored her, his eyes now locked on Hank’s.

  “A passage? A passage to where?”

  Hank took a final drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the gravel pit. Cal’s eyes followed it with strange fascination, watching the glowing ember float through the air until it descended out of view.

  When he turned back, he was surprised to see that Hank was staring at him.

  “A passage to Hell, Cal. They say that the men had unearthed a passage to Hell.”

  Chapter 5

  “Hell? Like the Hell?”

  Hank laughed, but Brent wasn’t amused. He stood, wobbled on his feet, and then screwed up his face.

  “I’m not listening to this shit,” he said quietly. “This blasphemous nonsense.”

  Hank held up his narrow palms defensively, his dark eyebrows rising up his forehead.

  “I’m just telling the story! Don’t shoot the messenger!”

  “Well Stacey is right, it’s garbage. A fairy tale full of lies—did they find seven gnomes down there, Hank? A sleeping princess?”

  Brent started to walk away as he spoke, his back toward the dirt path that led to the mouth of the gravel pit, when Stacey hopped to her feet.

  “I’m going with Brent. I’ve heard this so many times, anyway,” she said with a flick of her long blond hair.

  Cal was conflicted; part of him wanted to go with Brent and Stacey, particularly the latter, but the story was enthralling no matter how far-fetched it had gotten. He glanced from Stacey to Hank, who still held his hands up as if instructed by an officer of the law. There was a sparkle in his eyes, one that seemed to draw Cal in.

  Instead of following after Stacey, who continued to stare down at him expectantly, he reached for the pack of cigarettes that rested on the ground beside Hank. He slipped one out and put it to his lips.

  “I’ll catch up with you in a few—after this smoke.”

  Stacey shrugged and offered a wan smile.

  Was that disappointment in her face? Did she really want me to come?

  Cal stared at her ass in her school skirt as she hurried away from him, trying to catch up with Brent. His mouth full of smoke, he turned back to Hank.

  “You like her, don’t you?” Hank said, smiling widely, revealing teeth that were just a little too large for his mouth.

  Cal felt his ears getting hot again, and it was all he could do to stop his entire face from turning into a tomato.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  Hank finally lowered his hands.

  “Meh, it’s okay. We all know it.”

  Cal swallowed hard.

  “All?”

  “Ha, yeah. Me, Brent—Stacey. Wha
tever, she likes you, too.”

  “Really?” the word came out almost as a gasp. “She said that?”

  Hank shook his head.

  “No, but I can tell.”

  Cal took another drag from the cigarette. In his excitement, he pulled in too much smoke and then started to cough. Hank reached over and smacked him on the back hard enough that Cal winced.

  “Fuck off, just get on with the story,” he said after regaining his breath.

  He’s messing with me… Stacey doesn’t like me, at least not like that. Not pudgy Callum Godfrey.

  Hank, still smiling, took a swig from the bottle of whiskey and continued.

  “Right, so, where was I?”

  “Passage to Hell,” Cal said quickly. “They dug too deep, and breached a passage to Hell.”

  Cal’s eyes drifted out over the empty gravel pit as he spoke. It was large, about fifty meters across, and extended at least forty or so meters into the earth. Covered in a thin layer of sand—sand he knew to be soft from back in the days when they used to run up and down the embankment—it was an impressive sight. His eyes continued down the side, which was now starting to become overrun by tree roots, and to the center. He knew little of gravel pits, but for some reason he had always expected it to end in a point, like the end of a freshly sharpened pencil. Only it didn’t. Instead, the bottom was blunted, like the inside of a thimble.

  Did they really hit something here? In Mooreshead?

  He tried to transport himself into the seventies, into Mayor Partridge in his fancy suit shouting at tired looking men with heavily-lined faces to keep on digging, the lights from mini-Vegas in the distance reflecting off his wide eyes.

  Keep on diggin’! Don’t y’all stop diggin’ now! Money, ‘tis what makes the world go round and what makes yer shovels and your contraptions there keep on diggin’!

  “Ah, yes, how could I forget.”

  And then his friend continued his story, and true to Stacey’s word, it slowly digressed into something that could only be regarded as pure fiction.