Now
DOC BIGSBY HAD so many theories about the tunnel that Gideon struggled to focus on just one.
His theories about time travel, second dimensions, and alternate worlds were so heavily detailed with scientific jargon and complex mathematics that the three of them were quick to cast those aside, not as impossibilities, but as over their heads. They were hunting for something more streamlined and tangible. After what Maddy had told them about her experiences in Lalaland, and after she’d seen some of the photos of the colorful vines and fish and seashells that had appeared around the tunnel’s southern entrance overnight, Doc’s theories on nightmares and dreams and sleep in general took them closer to where they wanted to be. And now, after they’d had time to read through much of Detective Harrington’s notes—specifically those referencing strange occurrences in and around the tunnel, strange behaviors of so many locals over his time on the job after visiting the tunnel, and the dozen or more citizens (what he called oddities) he and Doc had discussed—it was clear that Lalaland, as Maddy described it, was somehow connected to that tunnel.
“Are we all in agreement on this?” Gideon asked Maddy and Beth as they stood exhausted inside Doc’s home office, having spent the past two hours going through his files.
Beth said, “I don’t think we can deal with it unless we believe it.”
“Three murdered bodies were left outside the tunnel as sacrifices,” Beth said. “I think whoever did it is hiding inside the Beehive. I’m waiting on a warrant.”
Gideon said, “Screw the warrant.” He found Beth grinning at him, tiredly. “What?”
“Just that you’ve changed, Giddy-Up.”
“Whatever,” Gideon said, eyeing the pile of files they’d deemed most relevant. He began to box them to take to the Smite House. Maddy had heard from the Bettses, and they were now less than two hours away from Harrod’s Reach with their comatose daughter Lauren.
“Why do you call him Giddy-Up?” Maddy asked, amused.
“Because they’re assholes,” Gideon said.
“Because Gideon, when he was a kid,” Beth said, “ran like a total goof. Like he had two left legs and didn’t know which one to lead with.” She grabbed Doc’s binder of laminated pictures, of the things that had gotten through the tunnel. “There was a town near Charleston, in the 1920s.” She seemed to be talking to Maddy.
And Maddy guessed at where she was going: “Bellhaven?”
“You know of it?”
“Every town has its legends.” Maddy paused, then turned to face Beth.
Gideon watched both women. “What?”
Maddy said to Beth, “You don’t think?”
“I do,” she said.
“This have something to do with your Murder Room?” Gideon asked.
“Pit,” Beth corrected. “Murder Pit. And yes.”
Earlier Beth had explained her years of work on cluster violence, work Gideon knew she’d begun as a teenager, and he assumed this was where she was going with this. “Somebody care to fill me in, or are you two just gonna stare at each other?”
Maddy said, “According to legend …”
“More fact than legend,” Beth said. “I have copies of some of the old newspapers.”
“Wouldn’t mind seeing those,” said Maddy.
“I’ll schedule the tour.” Beth then said to Gideon, “The town of Bellhaven nearly ripped itself apart in 1920. It divided over religion, and completely turned on each other. It was on my radar because of the violence that occurred there, but if I’m remembering correctly now … the woods there …” She looked to Maddy.
Maddy said, “That’s what us locals talk about the most. What happened to the woods that year. You either believed the stories or you didn’t, but everything, every plant, tree, bush, or whatever, bloomed at the same time. And they tracked it all back to some weird chapel inside the woods. Like that’s where all these blooms and colors sprouting throughout the forest were coming from. Like whatever was coming from that chapel was responsible for what was happening to the town.” Maddy closed her eyes as if thinking hard on something.
Gideon asked, “Maddy, you okay?”
She opened her eyes, waved him off. “I’m fine, I just can’t believe I didn’t see that correlation until now. Especially after what I saw over there during my coma.” Maddy broke the brief silence with a question for Beth: “Gideon told me about the mayor. Stitched up like a doll. But what about the other two bodies?”
Beth leaned back against the wall, folded her arms, is if wrangling with whether or not to reveal what she and Gideon knew.
Maddy must have seen the glance Gideon and Beth shared. Maddy said, “What is it? Why are—”
“One of the bodies was decapitated,” Beth said quickly.
“And the other?” Maddy asked.
Beth answered again. “The other one was raped.”
“And strangled,” Gideon added.
Maddy’s face went white. Gideon immediately moved toward her.
Beth finished what they both knew Maddy wanted to hear. “She was beaten to death with a horseshoe.”
Before Gideon could corral her, Maddy slipped from Doc’s office, hurried down a hallway, into the kitchen, and out the door to the deck. Gideon followed her into the backyard, where dusk was quickly approaching. Maddy paced, arms clutched against her stomach, and then doubled over near the bushes lining the garage to throw up. Gideon knelt beside her, held her hair back as she heaved until empty, crying. And who could blame her? Her assailant was quite possibly hiding in the town of Harrod’s Reach. Most likely inside the Beehive.
“I’m going to kill him,” Maddy said, wiping her mouth, leaning into Gideon’s embrace. “If he’s here, I’m going to find him and kill him.”
Even as he attempted to calm her, Gideon felt rage burbling within him, thinking, Not if I kill him first. He looked up at Beth, who seemed preoccupied by something else inside the garage. “What is it?”
Beth said, “There’s a light on.” She stepped inside the open door. A second later she calmly said, “Gideon …”
He knew from experience that the calmer Beth’s voice got the more urgent the situation, so he was quick to his feet, and Maddy stood with him. Inside the threshold of the open garage door, Gideon noticed Beth had her gun out. Her other hand she held out toward them, as if to keep them calm.
If it was a cat, it was the biggest one he’d ever seen, more the size of a German shepherd, but feline in its movements. It purred loudly and clawed at the second of what looked to be a series of four large freezers lining the garage’s back wall. For now, it paid them no attention as it scratched at the second freezer with what looked like bird talons rather than claws. Its black, oily hair was long and, under the glow of the lone ceiling bulb, touched with swirls of purple and red. The paws, Gideon noticed, appeared more like knuckled human hands, and the head … Jesus Christ … what was this thing? Those were ears of a human.
Maddy’s voice quivered next to him, “Pandafeche.”
Beth stepped closer, aimed her gun.
“Shoot it, Beth,” said Maddy in a low tone. “Now.”
Gideon held an arm out to keep Maddy back.
“Shoot it,” Maddy said again, with even more desperation.
And then the thing, what she’d called the Pandafeche, turned its head toward them, slowly, and instead of the feline face Gideon had expected, the features, although covered in thick black hair, resembled that of a human. It didn’t just hiss, but grinned.
Maddy screamed this time, “SHOOT IT!”
Beth pulled the trigger. Nailed it on a back haunch. The thing blew back against the second freezer with a thump, and blood sprayed. Badly wounded, it made another attempt to come toward them, and Beth shot it again, this time exploding the head.
Maddy screamed, buried her face into Gideon’s chest. He wrapped an arm around her, turned his head away as well, even as Beth calmly approached what she’d just slain.
Beth nudged it with her foot, and Gideon could tell it took some strength to do it. She gripped the handle atop the freezer lid the thing had been trying to open.
“Beth, careful …,” Gideon warned.
Maddy stepped away from him, inching closer to that dead thing.
Beth opened the freezer’s lid. She gave the cool air a moment to disperse, and then reached inside. By then, Gideon was close enough to look for himself. She pulled out what looked to be a freezer bag, and inside it, a perfectly preserved, frozen frog, but instead of the typical greenish brown, this one was purple, and the size of a splayed-fingered hand. On the sealed freezer bag, in black ink, Doc had written: December 11, 2018. 4:56 PM. Could have been when he’d captured it, or killed it, or even when he’d locked it inside the freezer, but it was clear this was one of many.
Gideon stepped closer, felt the chill escaping into his face. The freezer was stacked high and deep with similar bags, some small, others larger. The next one showed a frozen yellow squirrel: July 7, 2015. 12:01 AM. And below that was maybe a mole, with fur as red as a ripe apple. One way to find out how long Doc had been collecting these was to go through every freezer, every bag, and catalogue them, but if Gideon knew Doc, he felt sure he would have kept a catalogue for reference.
A minute later, as Gideon was digging through the frozen carcasses in freezer two and Maddy was doing the same inside freezer number three, Beth, who must have been looking for the same thing, said, “Found it.” She held up a brown, leather-bound logbook and fanned through it. “How old was Doc?”
Gideon said, “Sixty. Maybe sixty-one.”
“Some of these dates go back to the mid-nineteen seventies,” Beth said. “Which would have put Doc starting to collect them when he was an early teenager.”
Gideon looked over his shoulder at the dead beast and said to Maddy. “What did you say that thing was?”
“Pandafeche,” she said. “Italian folklore. They cause sleep paralysis and nightmares. But I’ve seen what they can do over there. They’re vicious.”
“How did something that big get through?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know,” said Maddy. “We … over there, it was …” She grew frustrated, started again: “It has more to do with the imagination. And we tried to keep the … these imaginings, from coming through.”
“Through the tunnel,” Gideon said.
“Yes,” she said. “And others like it. But that’s what has been changing people’s behavior. Sometimes, even though they fight like hell over there to keep it from happening, the spirits of these imagined things, these legends and folklores, get through.” She pointed to all the frozen animals and reptiles inside the freezers. “But I can’t explain this. These physical … I just can’t.”
Beth pulled out her phone. The open air from the freezers had already cooled the garage enough to see her crystalized breath. The sun had begun to set outside. “I saw this today. Down by the tunnel.” She hit play on her phone, and a video showed the largest deer Gideon had ever seen, moving through the woods as Beth, he assumed, pursued it. But it was black and massive and … Beth said, “Take a good look at the antlers.” They were red with swirls of orange, and sharp as knives at the tip. “It ran off,” said Beth, pocketing the phone. “But it was even larger, as you can tell, than that.” She pointed toward what Maddy had called the Pandafeche, which had already begun to invite flies.
Maddy said, “They’re all over Lalaland, deer just like that one.” She shook her head.
Gideon said, “What?”
“You were lucky, Beth,” said Maddy. “That it wasn’t hunting season. They’ll gut you with those antlers. They travel by the dozens. They attack in herds. Hunting season … It’s the opposite from hunting season here,” Maddy said. “Over there, they are the hunters. It’s the Land of Wrong. Somewhere, at some point, somebody dreamed those up enough for them to stick. They’re all over Lalaland.”
“And now we have one here,” Gideon said. “At least one.”
Beth said, “High activity.”
“What are you talking about?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Beth said, although Gideon had a good idea she did. She flipped through Doc’s logbook, his decades of inventory, scanning pages, scanning lines, before looking up. “But by the looks of what’s in here, the things that tunnel is allowing through …”
Maddy finished for her: “They seem to be getting bigger.”