Chapter Eleven
“How did the Keeper escape the Creator of Life?”
“He has always been one who took lives in the physical plane he existed in. He killed for the sake of releasing the children from the burden of having to grow up and live in a bad world. Something in his mind crossed over long before he did. We discovered him many years ago and have been offering shelter to those he has killed in your world. Most of his victims accepted our offer to joins us and now reside inside the Mist with us.”
“But how did he keep from getting sent to the Place of Chains?”
“Blood, Fluids and Spirit drive all life. Blood and Fluids can not be brought into the Place of Chains. Only a small dose of energy, controlled by the Keeper of the Place, is allowed inside. Those sent there live out eternity never knowing the touch or the energy of blood and fluids ever again. It drives them crazy in their spirit. The Place of Chains is a dark, awful place that scares most of us to even think about.
“The Keeper of the Cabin built a maze underneath the Cabin out of the blood of his victims. By calling upon the elements of Rock and Wood and Air, he assembled a hiding place in the dark beneath the Cabin. Rock and Wood and Air have no life of their own and can only share in a gift offered to them freely, much as we. So they readily made a deal with the Keeper of the Cabin for some life.”
“So, he switched sides in order to create this new hiding place?”
“Yes. But more than that. His deal with Rock was to open him a place in the ground for his workshop. In return, he sacrifices his victims upon a slab chosen by Rock which feeds the plane of Rock. With Wood he made a deal to furnish the hidden place and protect it with it's woods and paths of mazes through the woods. Wood is allowed to share in the sacrifices at all stages. With Air he made a deal to exist physically in the plane of air after his death, ensuring he could still walk the planes of existence in physical form snaring victims and keeping a supply of Blood, Fluids and Spirit coming to them all. Air exists all around everything in most planes of existence. Therefore, almost every deal has to include some deal with Air. That is why you could smell the metallic tinge on the air as you walked through the Mist before. We share the Blood, the most potent part of life, with Air.”
I was beginning to get a picture of an existence far beyond any of my Sunday School teachings. What's more, I was starting to understand how I fit into it all.
“Exactly.” She exclaimed loudly. “Now, you're starting to see the world as it really is. Few people ever really do while they are alive in the human plane. Too easy to accept the easy, simple traditions of the past.”
“Yeah, but my image of the Creator of Life does not include illicit sex with ghosts or whatever you are.”
“It's not illicit unless you are a human being trying to use sex as a way to control or fashion some kind of joy outside of your required existence. Sex is never bad. Just the way it can be misused. Remember, it's always about life. Every act. Every deal. It's about life. Sex is about life at all levels. As humans you share an ability to create life. Not just procreative life but life at an energy level that draws upon everything good in the universe.
“When you share with another human, on your own plane, there is the inference of commitment. Because you become responsible for creating another life, you inherit that commitment. That is a serious deal in life. Breaking deals is forbidden. The Creator of Life handles all broken deals. Deal breakers in the spiritual planes end up in the Place of Chains. But when you share with someone from another plane, Like passing through the Mist, you are merely creating energy, not procreative life. That is a different deal. A deal of inclusion, not commitment. There's a difference.”
“Okay. That's great. And I am trying to accept that we are now … One … as members of the Mist. But I still need to get inside the Cabin and find Kathy. Do you know the way in?”
“Yes. Open the window from the outside. It is a doorway inside. We know Kathy went in but we can not hear anything from her inside.”
“Hear from her? You mean she's...dead?”
“No. I mean exactly what I say. We can not hear her inside. Rock and Wood protect her from us. We can not go inside. Only a physical being or Air can go inside. Even Air can not get us inside because of the deal with Rock and Wood.”
I understood. It amazed me that I did, but I actually was getting a picture of how this thing worked.
“Careful,” she warned. “Get too cocky and Rock or Wood will kill you. Inside, we can not offer you a chance to join us. All there is inside is Air. The Agenda of Air is to spread things around. Pleasure is not one of Air's big priorities. You can change later, after your choice, but not until Air extracts a huge amount of energy and labor from you. Like I said, Air is all about growing and increasing itself and whatever plane it has deals with. Whatever you do, do not join Rock or Wood. They do nothing but utilize energy so, there is no way to work your way out of that deal. The work of Wood to convert Air from one state to another for human consumption is a painstakingly slow process that really uses more energy than it creates. It takes forever for the process to earn you a chance to move. Of course, unless you enjoy the warped, cruel world of the Keeper, don't join him either. The only way to earn a chance to move from his Cabin is to kill, maim and destroy life, which makes all of us others unwilling to take you in any move.”
“I see.”
I really did. The entities of the Mist did not see my chance of dying as a bad thing. Life is born and life dies. Simple. It's the choices we make that last forever. Especially the choices about life. How many times had I heard my mother say those same words?
“Evelyn? Oh, at least a million times, I would guess,” the little girl answered my thoughts.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Evelyn is one of us.”
“She is?”
“Yes. Do you remember that car accident she had many years ago?”
“Barely. I was only about five at the time. But I remember my dad saying many times how close my mother was to dying from that.”
“She was. In her time of crying out, we answered her and she gave of herself for the energy to keep living so she could see you one last time. She gave us of her blood at the time, which was everywhere due to the accident. We can not just take. We have to ask for it. She gave willingly when we explained our deal to her. She gave her sacrifice and asked us to give her enough energy to last until help could arrive and give her the chance to see you. We did. And she lived, too. She's a very strong woman, your mother.”
“She is, indeed. Do you know anything of my father? He's dead already.”
“No.” She answered too fast for my liking.
“That sounded ominous.”
“You're dad was a close-minded thinker. He believed he knew all the answers and yet his answers rarely resulted in things going right.”
There was a hint of anger in her voice. Dad had a way of ruffling people's feathers. Apparently he could ruffle feathers in the spiritual realm, too.
“You're father died of cancer. In the end his body was making too little blood and releasing too much fluid. His energy was fading fast and when we approached him, he really had little left to offer us. When he heard our offer, he called us wicked, evil creatures sent to sway him from the right path and separate him from his god. He called us demons and worse. He invoked about every evil reference I have ever heard in one long statement of his denial of our offer.”
I chuckled out loud. That sounded exactly like dad.
“As far as I know, the only offer he got after that was from the Creator of Life himself. He's probably in the City of Thrones or under it or somewhere, singing or chanting or whatever those people do.” Her tone revealed that she thought very little of those people.
“You have a problem with those who choose holiness as a way to live?” I asked.
“No. Holiness is okay, I guess. One way of reconciling this multiple planes of existence after life into a physical and mortal mind. But th
ose that are so exclusively minded to believe that they have to be in the City of Thrones to be in the presence of the Creator of Life, are tiresome to us with a broader scope of existence. Nothing wrong with it. They just think they are better than us. In the religion you were taught, you believe your God is omnipresent, right?”
“Sure.”
“Well, how come when you die, you believe you have to be in His sight to be in His presence? If he is able to be everywhere when you are mortal, how can he not be everywhere when you are spiritual?”
“Good question,” I answered. “I guess some people are better at being mortal than they are at being spiritual.”
“Amen to that,” she laughed. “Isn't that what your mother always says when she heartily agrees with someone?”
I laughed. It was exactly what my mother always said.
It was time to go.
“I need to go.” I said.
“We understand. We hope Kathy is alright.”
“So do I.”
I slid the window up on the old cabin. It creaked and groaned and stuck several times before I got it all the way up. Once I felt it slam into place high up in its casing a bright light shone beneath the window and a stair casing downward appeared before me. In the comparative darkness the light was blinding.
“You're on your own, now,” I heard the little girl say as I entered the staircase and headed down.
The little girl. I had never asked her name. She knew mine. I tried to think about asking her her name. Nothing. I walked back up a few steps and heard her ask what was wrong.
“Nothing,” I thought. “Just wondered what your name was.”
“Marcie,” She replied immediately, like she was waiting for me to ask. “Short for Marcella.”
“Pretty,” I told her.
“Thank you. Now that I have shared sex with you, I have a whole new appreciation for Johns.”
Shaking my head in amazement and some unbelief at my new friend's status, I turned to head back into the bowels of the Keeper of the Cabin's maze. I chuckled to myself at her statement as I passed out of the hearing of her and the rest of the Mist. I figured she had no idea how her statement sounded. But I had other things to concentrate on.
Before me stretched out a rock and wood braced hallway of large proportions. From the bottom of the stairs, I judged the ceiling height to be about ten feet. The hallway was at least twenty feet wide. I could drive my truck through here. The cabin up above would fit a hundred times over just in the part of the hallway I could see.
I navigated the hallway quickly checking two rooms I passed along the way. No one inside. One was apparently a storage room. There were chemicals and some gasoline in there with a lot of wooden furniture whose usage I did not know and was not sure I wanted to find out about.
The hallway turned left and right and left and right again. Then it split off into three directions. Higher, straight ahead and lower. I chose lower. Something told me the Keeper liked low places. I checked another two rooms as I passed their doors. Still the hallways went downward. I had no real way to measure such things but it felt like about a hundred feet down by the time the hallway leveled out. The lighting changed, too. Everything on this level was red.
Ahead I saw another series or passageways. Straight, left and right. I had no idea which way to go or how much time I had to get to Kathy.
I sent out thoughts like I had thought them with Marcie above in the woods. I was grasping at straws. I had no idea if the people of the Mist could hear me down hear. They seemed to believe they could not. They did not answer me.
Desperately, I searched for Kathy in my mind. She was one of the Mist people, too. We had a connection through the Mist according to Marcie. I was hoping that something would join us together, somehow. I still did not know exactly how all this worked. I was trying everything.
Nothing.
“Hello, John.” The low, guttural growl from Kathy's hallway.
Of course!
This was his world. I had entered his world and he controlled everything here, including thoughts.
“Are you the Keeper of the Cabin?” I asked.
“Yes. And you are trespassing.”
“Give Kathy back to me and I will leave.”
“And if I don't?” There was a sense of humor and confidence in his voice. He was toying with me.
“Then I will search until I find her.”
“And then?”
“I will take her out of here. By force if necessary.” I gave him my ultimatum.
“Force is always necessary here, John,” he said.
“Where is she?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“She will not be safe until she is away from you.”
“You do not know what you are talking about, John. No child is safer than when she is with her father.”
“Father? What makes you think in your perverted, twisted mind that you are her father? Tell me where she is you evil coward, so I can get her and leave. NOW!” I screamed in my head.
“I know I am her father John because I was married to her mother.”
“What?”
“That's right, oh slow-to-comprehend-boyfriend. She's my little girl.”
I thought of a little girl named Marcie.
“Just like her,” the Keeper said in my head. “My little girl was supposed to join me many years ago but I got sidetracked by her uncle coming to hunt for her and me. I escaped by going back to his house through the woods and pretending to be asleep in the hammock out back. I thought Kathy would be alright in the cabin until I could get back. When I did get back, she had already wandered away. The police got to her before I could. In the excitement of the girl showing up and telling her abduction story, they lost track of the location and wrote it off as another victim who got lucky and escaped the clutches of a killer. I could not touch her after that, so I had to let her grow up in this awful world and make her own way.”
“You were going to kill your own child?” I could not believe this explanation.
“Still am. In the physical plane.” he chuckled.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“You have nothing to say about it, John. She's my little girl and I am claiming her.”
“She's going to be my wife and I claim her by the love we share.”
I have no idea where that came from. I just wanted to have a claim that trumped his.
The Keeper chuckled.
“You are not married yet, John. You have no claim. Besides. It does not matter. Even if you were married, a father's claim trumps any man who comes my daughter's way. You're not her first, you know?”
“Doesn't matter.”
“Oh, a player, huh?”
“No. A man in love.”
“How sweet. Too bad it isn't enough to save her for you. But I'll tell you what. When she has been sacrificed and chooses to join me, I will allow you to choose the same thing. I have no argument with allowing you to make love to my daughter for all eternity in my world, John. Great energy, that.”
The Keeper laughed. A deep, dark laugh that filled me with dread at his meaning. Surely Kathy would never join her crazy father in his world. I wondered if she knew of the Mist world, or remembered it. Was she too young to remember the night she gave her sacrifice to Aaron? The thought of being separated from Kathy for all eternity stung my heart severely. If the Keeper had been within reaching distance I would have attacked him at that moment. I am not a violent man but I have my limits. Kathy was my future. Maybe not totally but enough of a factor that without her my future was starkly different. No one, and I mean no one, was going to take that from me.
“Very good, John.” The Keeper let me know he could still hear my thoughts.
“Then show yourself, you coward.”
“In my world, I give the commands, John.” His voice boomed inside my head.
“You don't like being pushed around, do you?” I taunted.
I had seen pictures
of him at Kathy's house. Her father had been a small man with a fragile frame. Not exactly what a cop would be looking for in a killer. He must have hated being pushed around all his life. Somewhere he had transferred all that hatred to the kids he had murdered.
“It was not hatred, John. I saved those kids from the world that would chew them up and spit them out because they were not as strong as the others. I saved them from all that. What I did, I did out of love and concern for them. No one loved those kids as much as I did. No one did for them what only I could. I released them to live in joy and peace. I allowed them to leave behind the world that would only torment them the rest of their natural lives.”
“You killed them.” I was amazed that he expected me to buy into his demented explanation.
“You are just like all the rest.” He shouted in my brain.
“If you mean I am sane and you are crazy, yeah, I am just like all the rest.” I taunted.
“I am not crazy, John.” He regained his control. His voice lowered in pitch in my head.
I smelled something coming out of the right branch of the hallways before me. Familiar. Disgusting but familiar. Wet leaves and death. That's what I smelled. Like in the woods that night. I started down the hallway.
“Where do you think you are going, John?”
“I am coming to get you and take Kathy out of here.”
“Who do you think you are and where do you think you are?” He demanded.
“I am the guy who's going to marry Kathy. Right now I am going to take her out of here with or without your consent. Notice, I am not asking for your permission to marry her. My mother always told me not to talk to crazy people.”
Slam!
An invisible wall of something as hard as a rock hit me full in the chest and drove me back about ten feet leaving me sprawled on the rock floor of the hallway. I gasped for breath and choked on my own surprise as I tried over and over to get the air back into my lungs. I struggled for a breath.
Nothing.
I flailed around flinging my arms and legs out like I could stop the invisible whoever or whatever was doing this to me by some accidental attack. Nothing. I was slowly losing energy. My brain was shutting down and slowing down the rest of my body in response to the lack of oxygen. My arms looked like they were moving in slow motion.
Again and again I gasped but no air was coming. I was starting to think about dying right there and having to choose where I would spend eternity. Slowly asphyxiating while scrambling around on a cold, rock floor in a long, dim hallway. Then a thought came to my mind. A long shot, if I understood things correctly.
I called out to Air in my mind, reminding it that I was of the Mist people and Air had a deal with them. If the deal was broken with me then it was broken with all the Mist people because I was of them. Maybe Air could not carry the people of the Mist inside the Cabin. But neither could it deprive air to those of the Mist who were still living. The physical world was allowed inside the Cabin. The Keeper needed to bring in his victims. My physical presence broke no deal. To take air away from me for no reason was a deal breaker.
Air understood my threat. In the spiritual world, Marcie said the Creator of Life dealt with those who broke deals. The Creator of Life oversaw all deals. Break one and you were banished to the Place of Chains. By depriving me of my need for air, Air was breaking a deal with Mist.
Immediately the air flooded back into my lungs. I breathed deeply and savored the effect of full lungs on my psyche. Not being able to breathe was a major downfall to enjoying life. But breathing itself was more pleasure than I had ever remembered before. They say you never realize how important something was until you lose it. I was living proof of that. Thankfully living.
“This is my world, John. I control all things here.”
“Not my breathing.” I reminded him. “Not the Creator of Life.”
“Even He must go by the rules. He has no power here.”
“Why? Because you designed it that way?”
“Of course. This is my place, not His.”
“His rules still apply and even you can not break those.”
“Inside here, they can not touch me. Wood and Rock protect me in here and Air allows me to venture forth.”
I was thinking fast. Deals. That was the answer. It had kept me alive so far.
“You just tried to deprive me of air, Keeper.”
“So?”
“As I member of Air, through your deal with Air, you are liable for all other deals with Air and the other parties making those deals. In effect, you tried to break Air's deal with the Mist people when you tried to deprive me of my air.”
“That is not so. I was only redirecting the air within my own realm.” Worry was creeping into his words now.
“No, you purposefully attempted to take the air away from me, thus depriving Air of completing its deal with the Mist people. I have a complaint and as soon as you poke your head out of your kingdom, the Creator of Life will deal with you for your deal breaking effort.”
“No. I tell you. That was not my intention.”
“Maybe not. But it was what you did. By purposefully depriving me of air, you broke the deal the Mist people have with Air. In fact, if I look closely enough, I am still a living human. I'll bet the Creator of Life has a deal with Air to supply all those living humans, too. You just broke a deal for the Creator of Life. There's no way he's going to let you off. You are definitely headed for the Place of Chains.”
I emphasized the Place of Chains to give more weight to my threat. I tried to make it sound ominous. Marcie had said those in the other planes feared the Place of Chains.
“No! It can't be.”
“Tell you what. Let's you and I go outside and ask. What do you say? Just you and me. We'll ask and see what happens. Okay?” I chuckled to show my disdain for his predicament.
“No. I control what happens in here.”
“Of course you do. But your supply of Blood and Fluids and Spirit, whose energies feed your deals, come from outside. Sooner or later you have to emerge and my complaint will still be valid whenever that is. Kill me and I will join the Air and demand an even more severe sentence as both the victim of your deal breaking and a part of the injured party, Air.”
“This is not right.” the Keeper stated. “This is my world. I created this. I make the rules in here.”
“Sure. Sure, Keeper. You make the rules in here, in your tiny, fake plane of existence. But you are still under the rules of the Creator of Life when you go out there. Break them and there are consequences.”
There was a long silence in my head and I got back up and continued walking toward the smell I had first smelled.
“That was a long shot you played.” It was another voice. Masculine.
“Who's there?”
“Edward of the Air.”
“Oh.”
“What if we had not been willing to allow you to use the deal with the Mist people as a lever?”
I would have suffocated.
“Not an ideal outcome.”
“No. I agree. But I was serious about asking to join Air upon my death and from there I would have filed a complaint about the way I was killed and the deal being broken would be part of that explanation. Air would never want that on their record, jeopardizing the plane of Air.”
“Agreed. But Air is so huge it makes rules for others not the other way around.”
“Still, all things answer to the Creator of Life eventually. Air may be greater in existence in many planes...”
“All planes.” Edward interjected.
“All planes. But still even Air ultimately responds to the rules of the Creator of Life.”
“You have played the game well, Young John.”
“Game?”
“Certainly. Did the Mist Folk not explain to you that the game is played at every level and plane of existence?”
“No, they must have forgotten that fact.”
“You have done well to
reason that out for yourself, then. Physically, you would never have succeeded in your venture into the realm of the Keeper of the Cabin. It is a spiritual game that could only be played with the spiritual rules.”
I reached a door with a gold handle. Turning it, I entered and met the Keeper face to face. He snarled at me in the harsh light of his own realm. He growled at the smile on my face. I could see his translucent body absorbing light at times and then letting it pass through at other times. He flickered with the density of a candle flame only he had form and position in his stance. I wasn't sure if he had a real substance of form or whether it was a trick of the light and air to make it appear so.
“I'll make a deal with you, Keeper.” I offered.
I saw that Kathy had been tied to a large slab of rock in the center of the room. She was naked and squirming against the ropes that bound her. Little troughs had been cut into the white slab of marble for the blood to flow down during the sacrifice. At the end of each trough was a large wooden bowl. This must be how the Keeper shared his sacrifices with the Rock and Wood. I concentrated on finishing this fight with the Keeper once and for all rather than attending to the distress of my lovely Kathy.
“A deal?”
“Yes, a deal. You want to keep operating, correct?”
“It is my plan, yes.”
“Well, I will forgo my complaint about you breaking our deal with Air if you let Kathy and I both go and promise to never bother either one of us again or ever work within a thousand miles of my campground again.”
I saw Kathy stop squirming as the Keeper considered my words. I did not meet her eyes, which I'm sure would have been searching for some explanation from me. I needed to concentrate now.
“How about I let you go and keep just her?”
“My terms are non negotiable. All of it or no deal. Me and her. No more attempts to bother us. Move away from my campground. All of it. In return I leave you alone and make no complaint.”
“And if I don't make this deal...”
“I get to the Creator of Life as soon as I can and report your deal breaking actions and you lose everything as well as ending up in the Place of Chains the next time you poke your head out of here.” I was sure I had him.
The Keeper gave the impression he was mulling over my offer.
Maybe I will just kill you, too and command the Air to not break our deal by doing something that causes my realm to be destroyed.”
“Your deal for protection is with Wood and Rock. Your deal with Air is for the ability to move around. Air can not make a new deal with you to break the deal with the Mist entities. And Air is not obligated by its current deal to protect you.”
“You believe you are a smart one, don't you, John?”
“Not really. But I will use whatever I have to fight for those I love.”
“Then why do you oppose my doing the same? I built this place for Kathy. The world is no good. I wanted her to have a good place to come and live forever.”
“I am in that no good world. I love her and I will protect her at all costs.”
“But she is my daughter.”
A gasp almost shouted itself across the rock confines of that sacrifice room. Obviously Kathy knew nothing of her abductor's identity. The tall, willowy form of the Keeper would not have suggested her small framed, fragile looking father. He had not revealed himself to her yet, either.
Then I realized I was still talking to the Keeper in my mind. Kathy had heard us talking together in our minds. That threw me a little. Kathy was in my head, too.
“If you love your daughter, as you say, give her a chance to be happy in her physical life. Do not take that happiness away from her because of some warped view you have of a better way”
“It is not warped.”
“It is not normal to our way of thinking, either.”
“Because you do not see what I see. You have never been tormented by them.”
“Give me a break. Okay, so, you were small growing up. Maybe you were not the toughest guy in school. But try being the son of a minister who barely makes enough to feed his family. Try being the kid who always had to turn the other cheek and let others run over him to keep the peace. You might have had some bad breaks, but you had choices still. I had no choices. You do what you do because you choose to take the easy way out. I do what I do because I have been taught to do the right thing no matter how hard the road is. Stop acting like you're doing anyone a favor. You are only taking revenge for your mistreatment on those who are too defenseless to stop you. Try attacking adults for a while. Even as a spiritual entity, they would probably still kick your butt.”
“Had you plenty scared several times,” he reminded me.
“Okay. So, you can scare people? My point is that you have taken a road that allows you to feel like you are doing something but actually only allows you to just become a bully like all the bullies you always hated. You are not fixing anything. You are adding to the problem by becoming part of the problem.”
“Okay. I get your point.” He was breaking.
“Let us go. Leave us alone forever and move away from here. Those are the terms. In exchange, I do not complain. As long as you stay away from us, I will never complain about what you did.”
A long pause gave me time to take a quick look in Kathy's direction. She was indeed looking at me. She gave a slight pull against the bonds that held her as a way of saying, 'Get me out of here.'
“Deal.” the Keeper said.
“And letting us go means escorting us out of here to freedom.”
“Deal.” he repeated.
Months later Kathy and I were married. My mother came to the wedding and was delighted to meet Kathy and welcome her into the family. The campground was up and running and our first season was looking very profitable. Kathy quit the police department and came to work with me full time at the campground. We never reported the confrontation with the Keeper or explained to Detective Mercer what happened to me in the Mist. We just wandered back out of the Mist about dawn and found the detective asleep on his watch. He was glad to see us and told us he was getting ready to send in the cavalry if we didn't come out when we did. We thanked him and reported that all was well now that I had found my Kathy. And it was, too.
Read the other books in this series. Here is a sampling of Chapter One of Book Two, DARK, from the Campground series.