Chapter Twenty

Corey landed in a world unknown to him; someplace he didn’t think could exist inside a mountain. Then again, this wasn’t Jersey anymore. He brushed himself off after tumbling head first at the bottom of the slide, feeling lucky not to have incurred a concussion.

Where were the others? Would they be coming down before or after him? He thought of the monster that chased him and figured they’d taken a detour.

If one of them didn’t make it, he’d never forgive himself. He always thought of himself as the big brother to the band. They trusted him and took him in when it seemed like both of his worlds eschewed him. His old stomping grounds didn’t want him, and the suburbs, lower middle class as it was, still regarded him with a cautious eye.

The band had always been there. They treated him as an equal. When they heard him play his sax in class, they’d almost knighted him on the spot. Nobody, besides his parents, ever took him at face value before. His old neighborhood didn’t, simply because he wouldn’t play their game, especially after Iron took his cousin from him.

And here he stood, in a living metaphor for the jungle from where he came.

A howl bled from above. A vast tapestry of green and purple hung from the cavern’s ceiling, woven into a living trap from the stalactites. Something squealed from the left. Another something echoed from the right.

He’d assured the guys he would be okay. He always said that, even when he knew things wouldn’t be all right. This was one of those times.

His parents named it the jungle, not the townsfolk from the “better” side of town. Those people simply didn’t refer to it at all. The kids and cops called it Iron, for the factories that once drove the town now sat abandoned like sleeping leviathans waiting to swallow whole the rest of the neighborhood’s soul. Cultures bled together like a soup so distasteful it choked many who stayed behind. Black, Hispanic, Indian, White, you name it—if you lived there, nobody thought much of you. The sense of community had died a long time ago and survival was the only motto that mattered. His parents’ lifestyle, from when they’d attended high school in town, had faded and decayed in to a laughing nightmare.

Some people still got along, tried to hold onto something, but the gangs, drugs, and apathy strangled anything from blossoming.

That was why his family left. After a beating that nearly killed him and left his cousin dead, Corey’s parents had abandoned their world and moved to the side of town where many people welcomed them with open arms. His parents, that is. He now wore the sign of pariah as teens from his school either feared him (the new neighborhood teens) or despised him and wouldn’t mind him dead (the old gang). He suspected some of his friends were thankful he’d escaped, but they would never dare say it in public.

Here, once again, he found himself in a jungle, but of a much different kind. A literal kind that would never be found in any science book he devoured or on any documentary he watched religiously.

The sounds coming from above, the sides and even below his feet rang out in clanging melodies and off key harmonies, which threatened to bring on one of his legendary migraines. He couldn’t allow that to happen if he wished to survive and save the others. Who’d save him down here?

* * * *

Corey looked around, overwhelmed as his eyes swam out of focus. A plethora of life sung to him, humming his death song. It hung like a barbed wire blanket wrapped in poison and electricity over his head.

A path wound its way down the middle of the forest and he immediately thought of two things: Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” and one of his favorite songs, “Jungleland.” One took him away from Iron by nourishing his imagination and the other helped him deal with the hell in which he lived. That sax player helped guide him into a therapy of sorts, musical therapy, when he’d begged his parents for his own saxophone and told them he wanted to be the next Clarence Clemons. Now he needed both heroes to help him stay alive.

The stench filled his nostrils. A mixture of deep pine meshed with rainforest fleshed out with the rot of something long in decay.

“Why are you here, boy?”

What? That voice—where did it come from? He whipped around, swinging his horn as though it were a bat. Was there someone hiding in the mass of trees and vines? The voice had emanated from the vines and flora overhead in a convoluted chorus, just out of sync with itself.

Go home, boy. You aren’t strong enough to pass. Death will be your last song.

“I didn’t come this far to die in demented terrarium,” Corey said stubbornly to the air. “Who’s there?”

“Who’s there?” The phantom voice echoed his.

“Stop messing with me. It won’t pan out well for you.” He attempted to steel his voice but it shook, at least to his ears.

“Does this feel like home, little man? We hope so, because it will be the last home you see. All of us plan a very, very long sleep for you. A forever bed would do you well and it’s only steps away.”

Each of the slow, lingering voices bounced off the walls in a pseudo-stereo effect, leaving him to decipher who, or what, said what from where. Keep them talking and just keep moving.

The dark, spongy path led straight ahead. Straight ahead was never a good thing, not without a solid plan and plenty of firepower, of which he had neither.

Except for his instrument.

He gazed down at it, the strange metal glinting off the phosphorescence of the leaves and glimpses of the bright wall behind him. Strangest sax he ever saw, he mused, keeping one eye on his surroundings.

He wondered what John Coltrane or Clemons would have done now. Those guys wouldn’t turn tail and run, would they? Maybe one of those guys on the easy listening stations would, but not them. Satch, his music teacher, wouldn’t either and he grew up in Newark.

“Fight or flight,” he said to whatever hung above him.

When they showed themselves, he knew both options were imperative if he were to survive.

* * * *

Long, serpentine-like creatures poured from everywhere like streamers from Hade’s New Year’s party. From mere inches long to stretching a yard or so off the walls and ceiling, they reached out in waves toward him.

Each whispered, holding still, but many opened massive jaws, flashing fangs at him.

“Come lay with us and give us your song. You belong here.”

A long striped tendril with teeth wrapped around his left leg and tugged, its mouth turning upwards to his frightened gaze. The pressure pained him but he froze, fearful to yank back in panic. Maybe that’s what would trigger it to bite.

“They don’t want you back home, do they?”

His head swiveled left and right, aware of the green and red creatures inching closer to him, the fetid odor reaching into his lungs.

Could they read his mind or was this just a mental trick they tried on everyone? Anyone who trespassed this way would be an outlaw or outcast attempting to flee to a better life. He pushed the familiar fears back and turned away with the instrument.

He swung the sax like a sword to slice the creature in half on his leg, then with a few sickening thuds, he crushed every sinuous thing that tried to bite him. They hung, broken from their branches or vines, some dead, some simply stunned.

Gotta move, he told himself, beating his way through the thick vines to find the path. Was it straight ahead? Too much debris hung over the path for him to see. It was better, he reasoned, to keep going steadily. He knew he’d be dead if he stopped moving. More and more of the vine-creatures lashed out as he crashed through the forest, some hitting him with quick strikes, others surprising him with a sneak attack.

At first, they numbered maybe a dozen or two, but the more he swung, the more emerged. His mind recalled the hydra, the monster that grew two heads for every one that Hercules cut off. Within a minute, they had surrounded him and bit at the metal in his hands. He dropped instinctively to the ground.

I’m as good as dead, he thought. Just when we thought we would find acceptance, maybe show our world we could play with the best of them—here I am, snake bait.

“Your music is our song now, horn boy.”

Horn boy? Something clicked. The switch flipped on inside of him. His weapon had greater potential than he’d realized. It was time for that power to emerge.

He licked his lips and thought of the song which probably inspired this gauntlet device. Maybe even Springsteen himself had come here and fueled the fire without realizing it. It seemed as though every other great musician had been through the River.

Now or never, he hummed to himself.

He blew out a long G, a lower note in the sax-like thing’s tenor tone. Both lungs emptied into the metal as his jaw tightened on the ivory mouthpiece. The note shook the living tapestries above and beside him. It also shook its taunting, hungry inhabitants. Each snake-thing quivered, hung in place and then retreated.

It was working!

He nearly screamed aloud, but instead watched as they recovered the moment he stopped the note. He sounded another one, a long Eb, a powerful somber note that shook some of them to the ground. Quickly, as they lay stunned, he ran forward and let loose. He recalled the best lines of his heroes and inhaled as much as humanly possible before blitzing the walls and ceilings with a rain of sweet tones.

“Why? Why are you doing this? We would help you live here.”

He played harder.

“You’re hurting us. Why? We only wanted your song. Why would you hurt music?”

Corey couldn’t help but grin in victory, even though he still couldn’t see the end of this trial. Maybe he would make it out alive. Poe and the others needed him to finish the mission.

Then, the voices chilled him with what he knew couldn’t be a ploy.

“We might die, but he won’t. He’ll be waiting for you. He always waits. He eats the song you play. He devours all.”

“What the heck does that mean?” He let the sax fall away for a moment to cry out, knowing they wouldn’t tell him anything, but fear burst through his veins, stronger than it did the night his family left the old neighborhood.

That night, over a year ago, the darkest, most soulless eyes watched him get into his father’s car and mouth their final words to him. “You will never be free of here. We will find you and pay you for deserting the place where you belong.”

But he didn’t belong there, not with their guns and drugs and lost dreams.

And he certainly didn’t belong here. Others awaited him—others he belonged to and they to him.

He quickened his pace and played his heart out. He was going to make it. The tapestries slowed their movement, the snakes and worm-like things dropping, hanging silently as he sensed he was nearing the end of this nightmare.

And nearly ran right into him. It. Whatever the bowels of this world spit up through what could only be the sewer of this cavern.

“Clarence, don’t fail me now.” His voice came out in a hoarse whisper, but he forced himself to play on, blazing a fiery blues lick straight into the thing’s maw.

Only to hear it laugh at him with fetid breath—and open up wider.

* * * *

The path through the dense forest turned into a dark walkway with a hardened surface. He began to feel safe from the dangers surrounding him until it came to life beneath his feet.

With a quake, it turned a full rotation, twisting from its back to its belly to unveil a sight Corey knew he would wake up screaming at for weeks, if he survived.

Like an annoying mouse on a python’s tail, it tossed him aside, preparing to deal with him another way. Maybe he jumped; it happened so fast his instinct took over. Images of that King Kong flick where the ape shook the crew off the log bridge into the nests of insects below whizzed through his mind. He wondered if this was what people meant about the end of one’s life. But then the wooden path completed its turn and what he saw caused him to vomit all over it.

Legs. Hundreds of them. Maybe more. All twitched, spasmed and grabbed at the air as they shook free from the ground beneath them. He wouldn’t have to fall to enter that movie nightmare.

The creature’s wordless voice shook the ground beneath its body as Corey feared staring at it eye to eyes. Its maw opened wide as eyes on stalks longer than his body focused and swung down at him. Over two bodies tall, the segmented creature towered over him and breathed. A wave of decay from a meal it may have had ages ago wafted down at him, causing him to envision half-digested maggots burrowing through his hair.

He threw up again and the fluid sent the legs into a tizzy. They smelled food. Him.

He held his sax in front of him in defense, but knew on too many levels that it wouldn’t help one bit if he swung it. One errant step and the myriad legs would pull him in, crushing him like a nut that the head would devour in one chew.

Finally, resolve forced him to meet the face that wasn’t anything like any other he could imagine. At least six stalks now bore into him with pale, emotionless eyes. Corey wondered if it could actually see. If it lived this far into the depths of this alter earth it might be utterly blind, relying more on movement, but seriously, did it really matter?

Each stalk locked onto him as the mouth unfurled itself. He could only imagine the alien from the movie of the same name. One set of jaws drooped low to allow another set to reach forward and drip something viscous onto the ground before him. The ground sizzled in its acidy odor.

It was alien.

“Give me your song.” The mouth rose up higher as the legs retracted and the segments contracted, causing it to lurch forward and upward, sensing its prey’s futility.

A thought rumbled through his fear of a night, close to Halloween, late after his parents had fallen asleep. He’d watched the myth of the Saint of Ireland, who’d lured the serpents away from the citizens who’d cowered in despair. The Saint had used music to hypnotize them, to draw them out of the country.

Corey had one chance, one that would likely kill him, but the Accidentals didn’t give up, especially when everyone—now everything—expected them to do just that. He smiled and winked at the behemoth, but still shook in fear.

“If I’m not going home in one piece, you’re going to meet my good friend here, you ugly spud.” He inhaled and the sax came alive in his mouth, becoming part of him. He felt like when he’d rehearsed with the band for the first time, the first time they played in front of an audience and another’s solo became his own. But instead of burning notes into an inferno to annihilate the beast, he took the deepest of breaths and channeled the soloists who’d colored “Born To Run,” “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Kind of Blue” and those bootlegs of early Clemons when the song took a back seat to pure soul. He exhaled the notes. Each tone filled the cavern and embraced the beast. The sweet pitches developed and birthed new harmonics in slow vibrato.

At first, the millipede thing thrashed in anger, or terror. It needed its meal. The sounds disrupted its entire system and caused the legs to fail in their grasps at him. The eye stalks drooped in fatigue and the bulbs at each end glazed over. If they’d ever had sight, it was now fading. Still, animal instinct ruled his attacker.

Corey’s blood coursed in jet streams as he felt fear and joy meld. Slow, he begged his lungs. Slow down if you want to live. He allowed more of the melody to fall out of him, echoing off the walls, deadening the living tapestries and confusing the head of the monster.

Play, he told himself. Kill the ugly thing, even though he knew he only had to escape.

He played, easing out the sweetest of overtones in a D minor melodic scale, rising one step each phrase.

Then it happened. As suddenly as it rose, the head turned and sunk back down into the path, the path that it was once again. Eyes and legs still swirled, but in a throe that might have signaled death. All those years living in Iron came back to Corey in an instant and he launched himself, vaulting over the legs then stepping right onto the head. He was careful to avoid the gaping maw. He’d expected it to open wide and suck him inside like Jonah into the whale.

But it didn’t.

Instead, once he passed the head he nearly cried at the sight of an opening just wide enough for him, or the creature, to wriggle through. The thing had been hiding it, hoping to have its prey eventually give in to broken hope. He tumbled past and crawled through the narrow tunnel on the other side of the monster. As he wriggled through the hole, a pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him through.

He passed out when he saw who’d met him there.