BEDLAM LOST
by Jack Castle
Copyright © 2015 by Chris Tortora
e-Book Edition
Published by
EDGE-Lite
An Imprint of
HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.
CALGARY
Notice
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
* * * * *
Dedications
Dedicated to those who kept the dream alive:
Wife, muse, and soulmate Tracy Tortora
My two best friends Chad Bryant and Greg Wahlman
Mentor Dr. J.P. Waller.
Our Lord and Savior.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank the fine folks at EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing: Editor Supreme Ella Beaumont, Publicist and Fairy God-Mamma Janice Shoults, Formatter and Support Man of Awesome Mark Steele, and of course, the Mad Hatter in charge of it all, Mr. Brian Hades.
Contents
BEDLAM LOST
Dedications
Chapter 1
Hank
Chapter 2
Emma
Chapter 3
The Note
Chapter 4
Jeb Sutton
Chapter 5
The Rakewell Building
Chapter 6
The Crazy Lady
Chapter 7
Emma’s Arrival
Chapter 8
Jack-o’-lantern
Chapter 9
The Harbor
Chapter 10
Latitude 61
Chapter 11
Emma’s Hotel Room
Chapter 12
Check Out
Chapter 13
Welcome to the Last Frontier!
Chapter 14
Totem Pole Canyon
Chapter 15
The Waterfall
Chapter 16
Hunting Barnabus
Chapter 17
The Naked Pedestrian
Chapter 18
A Not-So-Merry Chase
Chapter 19
A Family Video
Chapter 20
The Fall
Chapter 21
Visitation
Chapter 22
Stanley and the Scarecrow Man
Chapter 23
Wake Up Hank
Chapter 24
Jeb’s Diner
Chapter 25
Simon Says
Chapter 26
The Broken Man
Chapter 27
Memories
Chapter 28
Is This Purgatory?
Chapter 29
The Tunnel
Chapter 30
The Harbor
Chapter 31
The Airport
Chapter 32
A Little Remodeling
Chapter 33
Welcome to Mt. Olympus
Chapter 34
Wakey, Wakey, Rise and Shine
Chapter 35
Dead Reckoning
Afterword
“Iditarod Dad”
About the Author:
Details
“From thereupon do I this body bring.
To tell you who I am were speech in vain,
Because my name as yet makes no great noise.”
“And of that second kingdom will I sing
Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself,
And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy.”
—Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
“How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.”
—Thomas Harrison, Miami 2000
Chapter 1
Hank
“Please … please don’t kill me.”
The disembodied voice sobbed in the darkness, begging for his life. The hammer of a heavy-duty revolver drew back…
A tiny light in the distance: a pinprick of light at the end of a long tunnel moved rapidly closer. The growing hot white light, accompanied by a roaring sound, increased in severity and relentlessness.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Hank McCarthy bolted awake to the sound of a roaring locomotive heaving straight for the car. He flashed open his eyes, squinting from the light and found himself sitting behind the wheel of a crimson red Ford Explorer. He jerked back, but there was no place to go. Far too late to move, he braced for final impact.
As the deafening train ripped past his SUV a scant few yards away, he realized he was idling parallel to the railroad tracks. The intense pain of the train’s horn still registered in his ears and his body trembled violently for a few seconds while he emerged from his deep slumber. It took him another moment to realize he still wasn’t in danger of becoming track paste.
Where am I?
A light touch on his shoulder revealed creamy white, French-manicured fingers. Their owner lovely: almond-shaped eyes, perfect white teeth, and curly nutmeg hair framing a face that would make even a fairytale princess envious. His wife, Sarah.
“Wow, babe,” she laughed nervously. “I knew you were tired but you were really out there.” He had been driving for a long time. She gave him a funny look. “You want me to drive the rest of the way?”
Hank’s throat was so dry his tongue had swelled two sizes. When he finally managed to talk it was above a hoarse whisper. “Honey, where are we?” He wanted to scream the question at her. The whisper was all he could manage.
“Are we there yet, Daddy?”
A glance in the mirror confirmed what he already knew: five year old Annabelle sat strapped in her car seat by a five-point retention harness originally designed for fighter pilots. Little Annabelle shared her mom’s good looks, but had inherited his limited patience.
“Almost there sweetheart,” Sarah answered for him. “We just have to board the train.”
“But I’m so-o hungry,” Annabelle complained.
“Have some more Goldfishes, honey,” Sarah answered. Without missing a beat the box came over the seat with two quick shakes, and Annabelle beheld the delicious golden baked treats.
Annabelle was placated for now. She stared out the window with her mother’s hazel eyes as she absentmindedly devoured the helpless fishes in her hand.
One year old Henry snoozed soundly in his car seat beside her. When it came to the looks department, Henry took more after his pop. Dark wavy hair, firm jaw affixed to a kind face. And dark blue eyes, somehow sweet and fierce at the same time.
Hank took this all in, but none of this answered the question that still burned in his aching head: Where the hell am I?
He peered through the SUV’s open window. A majestic wilderness with snow-capped mountains, stitched with evergreens, sprawled out around them seemingly endless. The overcast skies and down-creeping snowline suggested winter was closing in. This looks like the Pacific Northwest? That didn’t make sense.
The train tracks emerged from the forest in the distance, miles behind them, and then came up to a rickety but serviceable train station smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The station sign read HavenPort, Alaska.
Alaska? When the h
ell did we decide on Alaska? I must be dreaming. We live in the desert. Two thousand miles away.
“Look Mommy, look!” Annabelle yelled wildly from her car seat. “A moose, Mommy, a moose!”
Hank turned his head and groaned at the stabbing pain in his temples. He rubbed at them mightily: If his hand weren’t already there, he’d have thought he’d been stabbed on both sides of his head with an ice pick. Must’ve slept wrong while I was snoozing behind the wheel.
“Oh Hank, she’s right.” Sarah cooed beside him. “There’s a moose in the lake over there.”
Just beyond Sarah’s window he could make out the moose meandering across a shallow lake.
Hank suppressed the huge urge to punch the windshield. Why will no one answer me? Where are we?
Sarah turned towards him. “Do you see him?” Before he could answer, she dug frantically through her mommy purse the size of a saddlebag. “Now where’s my camera?” She turned back to the kids, “Annabelle, honey, do you know where mommy’s camera is?”
This doesn’t make sense. We live in Wyoming. I don’t even remember deciding to come to Alaska, let alone driving here.
“There it is.” Sarah took her camera from the center console compartment. Before she could snap a picture…
WHUMP, WHUMP.
Hank jumped at the sound of a large man pounding the palm of his meaty hand on the hood of the Explorer.
“Hey pretty boy, you’re holding up the line,” he said in a gruff voice, “We ain’t got all day.” The big man was dressed in overalls and a baseball cap. His rough, heavily-pockmarked face, oversized bulbous nose, and squinty eyes loomed over Hank. He stepped to the side of the hood and motioned Hank to pull forward. An impatient driver in a rusted Ford-150 behind them laid on his horn.
“C’mon buddy,” the driver shouted.
On autopilot, Hank shifted into drive and pulled forward. The SUV drove forward up a dirt incline ramp and onto a flatbed train car. They were one of many; all lined up behind an antique locomotive the color of charcoal. Hank put the car in park and switched off the engine.
“We’re on a train!” Annabelle shouted with glee.
As other cars loaded up onto the freight cars, Hank saw something strange on the train depot platform. It was a comely woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Unlike the people wearing layers of warm coats and hats around her, she was only wearing a long physician’s lab coat. Not so strange in itself, but the white in her coat was so sharp in color, and such a shocking contrast to the drab filtered daylight, it was as though someone wearing bright colors had stepped into an old black-and-white movie. It actually hurt Hank’s eyes to stare at it.
What’s her problem, why is she staring at me?
He felt his eyes squint and his brow furrow, but before he could ask Sarah if she saw the strange woman, the train jostled into motion. The woman in the lab coat still studied him. Hank looked away, pressed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and then attempted to clear his vision of her by rubbing away the sleep. At this, the doctor, as he thought of her, frowned and wrote notes on her clipboard.
The back of his neck throbbed so bad he stared rigidly forward. The locomotive chugged away, leaving the depot, and the strange doctor lady, behind. The train then negotiated a bend and soon the tracks straightened again. Hank could now see their destination: a dark tunnel opening at the base of an enormous snow-capped mountain. Huge piles of shale flanked the entrance as though they were bones spewed up from those who had dared to enter the gaping mouth before. The impatient driver parked behind them turned up his radio and AC/DC’s, ‘I’m on the Highway to Hell’, blared over his speakers.
“Mommy, where is the train taking us?” Annabelle must have also noticed the foreboding tunnel opening for she added, “It looks scary.”
You got that right.
Sarah barely heard her. She was toggling through her shots of the moose on her camera. She answered, absently, “Remember sweety? There are no roads into town. The only way in is to load your car on the train. The three mile long tunnel is the only way in or out.”
Hank opened his mouth to speak, but the vortex suddenly gobbled up the locomotive engine clanking down the tracks ahead in one enormous bite. The dozen train cars that immediately followed also vanished one-by-one into darkness.
With great effort Hank worked up the will to speak, “Sarah… I don’t want to go in there.” Hank shivered uncontrollably. He found both hands clenched on the steering wheel and he could feel his feet pressing into the floorboards. As if that would do any good.
Sarah ignored him. “Look kids, here we go.”
Hank glanced at a wooden sign at the tunnel’s entrance. The finely crafted sign was supported by two thick tree poles. The sign had seen better days Hank thought, but he could just make out the faded white lettering.
Welcome to HavenPort!
Year Round Population: 492
Before Hank and his family were swallowed by the mouth of the tunnel completely and the darkness closed out the last of the fleeting light, Hank glimpsed a shocking image in the rearview mirror. His children’s broken bodies littered the back seat and his blood-spattered wife lay dead in the seat beside him.
Chapter 2
Emma
When Emma’s eyelids fluttered open she found her cheek pressed against the dirty rope of an old wooden swing.
Did I fall asleep?
The swing hung from the solid branch of a very old and monstrous oak tree. As far as she could see, a field of wheat breathed with each pass of billowing wind. The only blemish on the golden landscape was a scarecrow, just like the one in, The Wizard of Oz. It hung from its perch a good seven feet in the air. Emma could almost hear the We’re Off To See The Wizard song in her head and half expected the straw-stuffed mannequin to jump off its perch and start singing and dancing.
A porch door creaked behind her. “Emma!” came an old woman’s voice. It was her Mee-Maw. Wait a minute, Mee-Maw died a few years ago, didn’t she?
“C’mon inside, girl, supper’s getting cold.”
Emma turned her head to glance over her shoulder. When she did, a piercing pain manifested itself at her temples. It was so bad, she even cried out a little and expected to find open wounds on both sides of her head, but when she rubbed at it furiously with the palm of her hand, the hurt began to fade.
What the heck was that, a brain aneurysm?
Still reeling from the echo of pain she heard a door clanging shut behind her.
The screen door banging in the wind belonged to a quaint farmhouse with a faded red sheet metal roof. It was a cozy two-story farmhouse that sat atop a modest hill surrounded by a few acres of Kentucky blue grass. The house and yard was a small oasis in the endless ocean of the billowing wheat stalks. Emma slid down from the swing. She found herself in a white dress and bare feet; the fresh-cut grass felt good as it scrunched beneath her toes.
The last thing she remembered… What is the last thing I remember? Wasn’t I working in New York? How’d I get back home?
Before she could give it any further thought, the screen door creaked open once more, only with more force this time. A heavy set, older woman, wearing a moo-moo, was holding a silver pot filled with mashed potatoes in the crook of one arm and stirring its contents madly with a gargantuan wooden spoon. It was a utensil Emma’s childhood bottom knew well.
“Emma, everyone is waiting on you,” Mee-Maw shouted with irritation.
Emma started across the lawn but some movement caught her eye in the wheat field. For a moment, she spotted nothing but the billowing stalks
. She was about to turn away when she saw someone standing out there. He was watching her. He was too far away to make out the features beneath the ridiculous hat he wore. It was then she realized the scarecrow was no longer upon his perch.
What happened to the scarecrow?
Emma stared at the man in the hat. It was the scarecrow. He now appeared to be standing in the field … staring back at her. Her heart started beating faster and her breath became rapid and shallow. She shook her head and said aloud, “No way.”
A stiff breeze swept the wheat field and she shuddered from the chill.
That’s ridiculous. He probably just fell off his perch in the wind. It only looks like he’s standing up because he’s propped against the stalks of wheat.
“Mee-Maw,” she began to ask, forming a question about the creepy scarecrow in the wheat field.
But Mee-Maw’s patience was long gone. “Girl! Get your bottom inside. Don’t think you ain’t old enough for me to tan your hide with my wooden spoon!”
“Mee-Maw,” Emma began again. She wondered why her words were so slow and clumsy. Her tongue felt too large for her mouth.
Her dainty feet carted her across the wooden deck boards of the porch and into the house. As Mee-Maw practically shoved her inside, she could hear her youngest brother shout, “C’mon, Emma, I’m hungry. Everyone’s waiting on you so we can say grace.”
As the door CLANG-CLANG-CLANGED closed and open three more times, she glimpsed the scarecrow standing in the field one last time.
Was he holding a clipboard?
Chapter 3
The Note
Eating dinner would only take half the time it took for Uncle John to say grace. He was always the self-righteous one, except on really hot days when you found him throwing up whiskey behind the barn.
Uncle John had come to live with the family ever since Paw had died last year. He was an out-of-work minister who needed a home. Mee-Maw needed a man around the house. The only problem was Uncle John wasn’t half the man Paw was.
“Emma, look at me, look at me,” cried a sweet, childlike voice shrieking with delight.
Emma’s twelve year old sister, Missy, had taken two straws and stuck them up inside her mouth. “I’m a walrus.” Like Emma, Missy had hair the color of caramel, light skin, and big, expressive, bright blue eyes. She was pretty when she smiled, but embarrassed by her two front teeth which were slightly crooked. The Smith household couldn’t quite afford braces yet. Missy giggled. She was easily the best part about coming home.