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After driving past the farm once to see if anyone was there, they went straight to the Hilltop Barn. Maddock finished the conversation over his cell and parked behind the barn so that their vehicle wasn’t visible from the road, and close enough to the back so that it’d be difficult to see from the house.
They’d traded their white SUV for a black one, and loaded it down with gear from the hardware store just before it closed. After spending the night, they’d left their luggage in a nearby town’s hotel.
Bones told Maddock calling Tam would be a waste of time. Maddock wasn’t going to admit his friend had been right.
Tamara Broderick was the leader of the Myrmidon Squad, a secret segment of the CIA tasked with investigating and countering dangerous groups, such as Trident. The exact goals of Trident were unclear, but they’d demonstrated keen interest in items of power associated with the ancient world as tools to further whatever those goals were.
Maddock said. “She had no information on why Trident might be here, and says to keep her abreast.”
“So, you didn’t mention the crystal Ruth gave us?”
Maddock opened the driver’s side door. “You know Tam. More interested in telling people what to do than listening to what they have to say.”
Bones grinned and opened the passenger-side door. “So, paying for our new ride and hotel stay never came up?”
The red-painted barn looked at least a century old, lending credence to the journal Bones carried. The barn’s condition spoke to how well the Harshbinner family had maintained it over the decades. A pulley covered in surface rust hung from a bar above a swing-out door that opened into a loft. Maddock ignored the large sliding door, and the rope that dangled from the pulley down to it. He reached into his pocket for the key to the side door’s new padlock.
Bones’ gaze followed the line of poles bearing power lines to the isolated structure. The poles’ weathered condition and the antique insulators concerned him. “Even money says the Mayans mined the copper for those power lines.”
“No Wi-Fi then?” Maddock quipped.
The journal discussed wiring and lights installed to help the brothers excavate the mud and debris. It also mentioned explosives set to go off. No purpose or reason for the need to have such a contingency was given.
Maddock pointed to the gravel leading up to the cement ramp in front of the barn’s sliding door. Delicate flowers with browning petals had sprouted up between the rocks. “No recent traffic in or out.”
“The journal indicated electricity, but that doesn’t mean it still works,” Bones said, gazing back toward the house. “They might just store equipment in there, or junk.”
“Or nothing,” Maddock said, his hand brushing along the pocket holding the depleted crystal. “No sense debating.”
The barn’s interior was dusty, a nightmare for anyone with allergies. Splinters of morning sunlight shined through narrow gaps between some of the vertical boards.
A red Massey Ferguson tractor sat parked not far from the closed sliding door. Maddock was no expert, but its smaller size and exposed seat suggested it dated to the 1960s, maybe the 70s. In front of him rested something with wheels, bins or boxes, and something rotary beneath them. It was some sort of planter. A disk plow rested beyond the tractor.
Several built-in shelves stood against the walls using the twelve-inch beams as bracing hooks. Old hammers, tongs, bailing hooks, shovels, post-hole diggers and more rested on the shelves or hung from nails and hooks. Scattered crates and bins lined the walls. A coating of dust said the tractor, and everything else, hadn’t been disturbed for several years.
Bones rested a hand on the tractor’s seat. “Dude, farming with this must’ve sucked.”
Maddock couldn’t argue. A far cry from modern tractors with enclosed, air-conditioned cabs, and GPS to assist planting.
Wooden slats nailed to a pair of parallel beams formed a ladder up to the overhead loft. Maddock spotted a few bales of straw, or maybe hay, up there. The cement floor looked decades newer than the barn’s stone foundation.
Bones strode over to the south wall. He pulled out his Maglite to supplement the scattered narrow shafts of sunlight.
Maddock watched Bones’ beam follow the wiring. He reached over and pressed a push button switch. Two of four incandescent bulbs lit up. One attached to a rafter lit up the hayloft. The other highlighted several cans of oil and a grime-covered funnel lying on a tool bench.
Bones continued following the wiring under the loft. A twisted gaggle of wrapped electric wires ran along a beam and down into a galvanized pipe set into the cement floor. A wooden feed bin concealed the pipe from view, unless you went along the side to look for it.
Two framed boxes above the bin each held a knife switch. They looked beyond old-school, like props from a black and white Frankenstein movie, used when the mad doctor wanted to turn on the juice. Both, with the handle hanging down, were in the disconnected position. The wires leading to the top switch had been cut and wrapped in tape brittle with age. In addition, an antique padlock kept the switch from being lifted to the on position.
Bones looked closer. Slaymaker? Someone had probably tossed the antique lock’s keys on some shelf two decades before he was born. He called over to Maddock, “The wires got to be the key. Looks like they go into the cement here.”
Maddock agreed. According to the journal the brothers had strung lights in the cavern. And some demolition boxes. He moved over to his friend and appraised what Bones had found. “The wires could go down right there, paralleling an entrance to the cavern. Or, there could be an elbow in the piping, carrying the wires anywhere under the cement.”
He tapped his boot on the floor. “This has been around a while, but I don’t think it dates back to the nineteen forties or fifties.”
“Metal detector?” Bones asked.
Maddock lifted the lid to the antique wooden feed bin. It had a divider, forming two compartments. Scraps of wood, cut boards and plywood from various projects over several decades filled both sides.
“We might have to move this to follow the pipes,” Maddock said. “Looks sturdy, but could be heavy.”
“Maybe heavy for a pair of white dudes.” Bones grinned. “Luckily you have me.”
Maddock laughed. “What we don’t have is a metal detector.” He looked over at a sledgehammer on a low shelf, leaning against the wall. “I don’t think Mrs. Harshbinner would appreciate us breaking the floor on a hunch.”
Sunlight entered the room as the side door opened. A snarling Doberman Pinscher stalked in, followed by a busty brunette wearing a stained cotton shirt, bib overalls, and carrying, of all things, a pitchfork. Sweat, mud on her boots, and bits of straw stuck in the frayed bun she’d put her hair up in suggested she might’ve actually been using the farm tool.
Bones appraised her. A little on the short side, well-muscled—in a feminine way—and wide brown eyes. A 9.25 for sure. Unless she smelled like manure.
“We don’t take well to trespassing around here.” Her voice held both conviction and confidence.
Maddock smiled and put his hands on his hips. The young woman was still near the door and the guard dog, still showing teeth and growling, remained at her side. “We’ve heard that one already. We’re not trespassing. Mrs. Harshbinner invited us here.”
“Right,” she said, eyeing the two men with suspicion. “Dolph, sit.”
“If you’re from around here,” Bones said, “you know that dude, Deputy Collins. Check with him. I’m Bones, short for Bonebrake. He’s Dane Maddock; he’s just short.”
“Whatever,” Maddock said.
Unfazed by Bones’ attempted humor, she said, “Or, I could check with Ruth Harshbinner.”
“You could do that,” Maddock said, hoping she wouldn’t take that route. One call, potentially informing Johnny or, worse, Trident, of their presence was bad enough. “She won’t hear the phone ringing with her roommate blaring the TV and her hearing aids turned off.” He shrugged dismissively. “Unless you’ve got all day, I wouldn’t trust the Mallard Creeks’ staff to get her to the phone quickly.”
The woman leaned on her pitchfork, giving the two men a second appraisal.
“Or call Pari, Mrs. Harshbinner’s grandniece,” Bones suggested. This girl looked to be five or six years older than Pari, but it was worth a shot. “She’s the one who connected her with us.”
“Pari, huh?”
Maddock moved to pull his cell from his pocket. Dolph stood up, snarling. He held up his phone. “I have Pari’s number, if she isn’t working at the moment.”
“Dolph, sit,” the young woman said. She pulled her cell from her pocket. After a quick exchange with Deputy Collins she smiled and relaxed, petting Dolph on the head. The canine looked up at her, tongue lolling out to the side.
“Dolph?” Bones asked.
“I’m a Dolph Lungdren fan.” Her expression went stony, her voice flat. “I must break you.”
Both Bones and Maddock laughed.
“I’m Brenda,” she said, flashing a Colgate smile.
“Bet she’s a farmer’s daughter,” Bones mumbled.
“So, what are you doing in Mrs. Harshbinner’s Hilltop Barn? Are you ghost hunters?”
Maddock saw she was serious. “No,” he said, stepping around the planter and making his way to Brenda. Bones followed. “Mrs. Harshbinner asked us to do some videotaping for her.”
Brenda squinted one eye at them. She tipped her pitchfork toward Maddock. “Are you looking for what her son’s looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” Maddock said. “From what the deputy said, Johnny hired a crew with a backhoe to dig up his mother’s outhouse.”
Brenda giggled, then put her hand in front of her mouth. Dolph continued to sit, panting, but keeping an eye on Maddock and Bones. “He’s probably been reading from the wrong book.”
Both Bones and Maddock maintained their poker faces. “Why would you think we’re ghost hunters?”
She ignored his question. “Where are you two from?”
“South,” Maddock said. “What about you? You must live nearby.”
“Dairy farm across the field. Not the wanna-be industrial pig farm whose manure lagoon stinks to high heaven when the wind blows this direction.” She frowned.
“Didn’t hear any car or truck drive up,” Bones said.
“Saw your SUV and rode my bike.”
Bones quirked an eyebrow. “Tricky with that pitchfork?”
“You guys don’t exactly answer questions, do you?” She put a hand on her hip. “You must be the guys who beat up Don Murphy’s boys.”
She observed them, then smiled. “You did. That makes you okay in my book.” She flipped her pitchfork so that the tines rested on the cement. “They’re asking around town, trying to find out about you two. Johnny is too.”
“What are people saying?” Maddock asked.
“Not much. Johnny’ll probably get his fancy lawyer on it. Hands out his attorney’s business cards to folks he don’t like.” She grinned. “Bet you got one.”
Maddock kept a straight face, but Bones smiled.
“Thought so.”
Maddock nodded his head in approval. “You didn’t answer why you wanted to know if we were ghost hunters.”
“’Cause, this barn’s haunted.” Her eyes grew wide and serious. “Me and Pari’s seen him. Mrs. Harshbinner has too. And so did her husband, Harold.”
“Harold?” Maddock asked.
“Okay,” she said, spreading another Colgate smile. “Just trying to catch you. Harvey Harshbinner. When I was younger, and finished with my chores, I’d come over and help Mr. Harshbinner.
“Anyway,” she continued, “he told me about the ghost he’d seen, so one night when Nelli was sleeping over, we snuck out and into this barn. And wouldn’t you know it. The ghost of Mrs. Harshbinner’s uncle showed up, standing over by where you were, holding some sort of hourglass. At first I thought it was a lantern.” Her eyes focused over by the feed bin. “Sort of blueish in color. We were too scared to run, or scream. He just looked at us for a minute, waved and then sort of faded down into the floor.”
She looked at Maddock and Bones with a skeptical eye. “You probably don’t believe me.”
“We’ve seen a lot of things people wouldn’t believe,” Maddock said.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Let’s just say our experiences make us more likely to believe your story.”
“That still isn’t an answer,” she said. “But better than I get from most.”
Brenda picked up the pitchfork, then shifted it to her left hand. She squinted one eye, then came to a decision. “Did Mrs. Harshbinner hire you two to videotape what’s talked about in her father’s diary?”
“Diary?” Maddock said.
Brenda rolled her brown eyes. “Let’s quit beating around the bush, guys. I spent a lot of time with Mr. Harshbinner. Johnny hated getting greasy and smelling like gasoline. So I was like his son—more like a grandson ’cause Johnny’s older than me. I helped Mr. Harshbinner repair mowers and did odd jobs. He helped me build a competition riding mower and took me to the pulling contests.”
“Lawnmower pulls?” Bones asked.
“Sure.” Brenda’s face took on a wistful look. She sighed and scratched Dolph behind the ears. “Off and on, during all the time we spent working, he told me about the diary, and stories about what’s hidden on this farm. He hinted it was hidden beneath the barn.”
Maddock and Bones exchanged glances.
“It’s what Johnny wants,” she said. “Wants to contest the new will. It gives the property to the church instead of him. He’s saying his mother isn’t competent in her thoughts anymore.” Brenda frowned. Her voice fell to just above a whisper. “Him and his lawyer might win. Last couple of years, her mind’s been slipping. Sometimes pretty bad.”
Maddock and Bones exchanged glances again. So, maybe Ruth Harshbinner was going to lose the farm, and anything beneath it.
“Do you have a metal detector back on your farm?” Maddock asked.
Brenda cocked her head, thrown by the question.
“To follow the wires,” Maddock explained. He gestured to the wall and the old switches. “There’s supposed to be lighting below. Following those will give us an idea where.” He tapped with his boot. “Under this.”
Brenda shot Bones and Maddock a movie star smile. “I know exactly where the entrance to the cavern is. I’ll show you, if you let me go down with you.”
When Maddock and Bones didn’t say anything, Brenda added, “I’ll even do the videotaping for Mrs. Harshbinner, if you want.”
Time was a factor, with the potential for Trident to get involved. Maddock scratched his head. Brenda would be a complication, if they let her videotape, especially if they found anything out of the ordinary. While Harvey Harshbinner had obviously shared with Brenda, Maddock didn’t know how his wife would feel about it.
“Sure,” Bones said, always the more impulsive of the two, and interested in having a good-looking woman around. “We’re not exactly on a tight schedule, but this is a side-job favor.”
Brenda flipped her pitchfork around so that the tines were pointed up again. “You know my family runs a dairy farm. What exactly do you guys do?”
“We’re contractors for the government,” Maddock said, which was not completely untrue; they did occasionally work for Tam Broderick and her Myrmidon squad.
“You might look good in some of the video shots,” Bones said.
“Very funny,” she said, looking down at her work clothes. “Maybe if I clean up.” She walked past Bones, winking up at him, then began tapping the wooden end of her pitchfork against the cement, listening. Then she took three paces away from the wall and tapped until the thud sounded less solid, more hollow.
“Figured it out myself one time, and Mr. Harshbinner smiled at my ingenuity.” She continued tapping, forming an outline scraped in the dust with her boot. “Never exactly said if I was right but, when he wasn’t around, I used my softball bat to check every inch of the cement floor.” She finished her circuit, leaving a three by three-foot square just a little further from the wall than the feed bin. “This is it, or it ain’t anywhere.”
Dolph came to sit next to her, watching the two men with curiosity.
“You get the sledgehammer,” Maddock said, nodding over to the low shelf were one leaned against the wall. “I’ll go get the video camera.”
It wasn’t long before Bones had the area cleared out, tossing the broken pieces of cement and scraps of plywood from their position covering a metal door.
Maddock took a quick video shot with the camcorder of what his partner had uncovered. It was an older model, but still fit in his hand and, had three hours of memory and two backup batteries, one of which was now charged, leaving them two. He’d plugged in the third using one of the barn’s outlets.
“You were right, Brenda,” Maddock said while Bones put the sledgehammer back in its place. She grinned from ear to ear.
He knelt to brush away the last few bits of broken cement and examine the door. It was plain steel with rivets and painted black. A few of the rivets had a light patina of rust showing through. There was no handle or visible hinges. It appeared to be set into a metal frame built into the cement.
While it contained sketches and descriptions, the journal had nothing about the door, other than the keys. “Get me a piece of paper,” Maddock said to Bones.
His friend tore a sheet containing advertisements from the back of one of the old manuals on a shelf.
Maddock took the paper and folded it once, then slipped it into the gap between the door and metal frame. “Four inches thick.”
“Looks like what they make manhole covers out of,” Brenda said.
Bones nodded. “It’ll be heavy.”
“Not too heavy for you?” Brenda teased.
“You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “Heavy for Maddock.”
Maddock ran the paper along the crack. Twice, on opposite sides, it ran into something. “Some bar or mechanism is holding it in place.” He crouched above the door, examining it. “Either we’ll have to find the keys, or chip and break out this entire frame. Or get a cutting torch.”
“Jackhammer would be faster,” Bones said, “but louder. And you can’t find them down at a Walmart, or the local hardware store.”
Maddock leaned close again and ran his finger across two divots in line with some of the rivets. He pulled out his pocket knife. After a moment he’d dug out bits of wax that had been poured in, on top of a cork. Using his Maglite, he said, “Looks like something screws in and there’s two holes at the bottom, like something is meant to slide into them.”
Bones leaned close and ran his fingers inside the hole Maddock had cleared out. His index finger barely fit. He felt the ridges, threaded for a bolt. The two holes at the bottom were maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter, with a shallow curving groove leading up to each. He pressed his finger in again, as far as it would go. “If the door’s four inches thick, the holes are only about two and a half deep.”
“Keys on the mantle.” Maddock snapped his fingers. “Be right back.”
Bones and Brenda exchanged glances as Maddock hurried out the barn’s side door.
When he returned, Bones was petting Dolph and regaling Brenda with the highlights of their adventure in Hocking Hills with Connie and Nelli. Maddock held up the cast iron rings that had been screwed into the side of the mantle. Both he and Bones had mistaken them for nothing more than decorations.
He tossed one to Bones, who examined it. The ring was attached to a threaded post with two short prongs extending from the end.
Immediately he and Maddock began screwing the keys into place, using the iron ring as the lever. When they’d nearly screwed them completely in, they began hearing metallic scraping beneath the door, followed by a pair of clicks.
“Get the video camera running,” Maddock said to Brenda as he and Bones stood and then bent over and gripped one of the rings. On three they lifted the heavy metal door. Several grunts came from each man as they hefted it to the side and rested it on the cement floor.
Both Bones and Maddock trained their Maglites down into the hole, revealing a square opening about an inch and a half smaller on either side than the door. Round slots showed in the metal framing where round bars from the door had been retracted when the prongs were engaged and turned.
A metal ladder was affixed to a stone wall. At the bottom Maddock saw what he thought to be a landing, and then possibly a set of stairs, either poured concrete or carved into the stone. He guessed the former.
“Flip a coin to see who goes first?” Maddock asked Bones.
“Screw that,” Bones said, climbing in. He descended the nine-foot ladder and then looked up, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “Ladder’s got some serious rust going on.”
“If it will hold your fat butt up, it should be sturdy enough for me,” Maddock said.
Bones smirked, then pointed his Maglite. “See that pulley up there?”
A rusty pulley hung from one of the main beams.
“There’s another one like that over there, and one outside,” Brenda said, pointing at another high beam. “Mr. Harshbinner used it to get stuff up and down from the hayloft. The one outside hardly works, but the ones inside should.”
“Probably how they lowered equipment in and lifted mud, rocks and debris out,” Maddock said.
“Mr. Harshbinner said he’d been told the barn was built to hide what’s underneath it.”
Maddock nodded at her comment, recalling that’s what the journal said as he watched Bones descend. Then he went over to the door and began unscrewing the keys.
Brenda watched him, but didn’t say anything. Unlikely as it might be to happen, he didn’t want someone to arrive and lock them in. Nobody, except possibly Mrs. Harshbinner, knew where they were. And he didn’t want to count on the memory of an old woman rehabbing in a nursing home. As he unscrewed the keys, the locking bars extended. When Maddock finished, he walked over and placed the keys on a shelf already filled with an array of wrenches, old drill bits, boxes of nails and more.
Bones had a little trouble taking the stairs. What had been carved out for standing room hadn’t taken someone who was nearly six-foot-six into consideration. Nevertheless, he continued. He’d been in far more cramped and dangerous cave formations.
Maddock sat and slid his legs into the hole next. The Doberman Pinscher watched him from a few feet away, now easily eye to eye.
“Shouldn’t I go next, to videotape?” Brenda asked.
“Let us check it out first,” Maddock said. “There’s supposed to be explosives placed down there.”
“Why?” she asked, her brown eyes going wide.
Maddock shrugged. “To make sure nobody else could claim whatever they found?”
“Looks like mostly limestone,” Bones said, his voice sounding muffled and distant. “Must’ve been a fracture in it, allowing the sinkhole that originally caught their interest.”
Maddock made his way down the ladder and then the stairs. The air was damp and cool, probably a little over fifty degrees, what he expected. He made his way to stand next to Bones in an eight-foot wide area that ran left and right for about twenty feet. Rotting barrels, buckets, tins and old oil lamps were stacked on the stone floor and natural shelves created by erosion. Water dripped from the ceiling, forming scattered shallow puddles.
Both Maddock and Bones had studied a little about geology. Maddock figured that sometime in the past, parallel faults caused areas of the limestone to drop, forming a graben, or rift valley. And then, over the centuries, geologic movements and erosion had done its work. He spotted some stalactites, white, which meant they were probably formed from calcite. But they were relatively short, being only a few inches, and many appeared to have been broken, probably during the excavation, as the ceiling was only about six feet from the floor.
The cavern’s floor looked to have been shoveled out, probably soil and rock debris that built up over the centuries, reaching past the most recent ice age. Maybe longer. He and Bones would be able to estimate based upon the length of the stalactites and height of the stalagmites. According to the journal there were some that were just over three feet in length.
Maddock wanted to go through some of the boxes and tins to see if there were any more crystals, but Brenda had made her way down.
“Wow,” she said. “This is so cool!” Then she shivered as she videotaped. “Literally, it’s cool.”
“It’s like a giant root cellar,” Maddock said, “but deeper, so it’ll remain a constant fifty degrees, or a degree or two warmer.”
“This place hasn’t seen light in a few decades,” Bones said. “And before the Mixon Brothers, it may never have been seen by man.”
“So, that makes me like the sixth person to see it,” the dairy farmer said. “Maddock being five and you, Bones, being number four. And Harvey number three.” She frowned, memories of her friend and mentor stirring up.
After a moment Bones said to her, “Don’t touch any of the crystals or other formations. They’re fragile and oils from your skin will permanently damage them.”
Maddock recalled several of the basic sketches, remembering that the cavern extended further northwest, toward the dairy farm and southeast, possibly extending beneath the road.
As if she were reading Maddock’s thoughts, Brenda asked, “How big is this place?”
Bones answered, “Maybe up to a mile of tunnels.”
“Cool as this is, I can’t hang out that long.” She frowned. “And dark. I mean, unlike city folks, I know what it’s like without lights at night, but this...”
“That’s okay,” Maddock said. “Mrs. Harshbinner asked us to do it, and to give her our opinion on anything of value down here.”
Bones began to wander off while Maddock continued talking to Brenda, hoping she’d leave so he and Bones could get busy.
“Government contractors?” she asked Maddock.
“We’ve done more than our fair share of cave exploring, here in the United States and across Europe and parts of Asia.”
Brenda checked her watch, obviously not happy. She handed Maddock the camcorder. “Dad’s gonna be wondering about me. Milking waits for no one.”