HAUNTED SONA
CHAPTER FIVE
As soon as the elevator came to an abrupt stop, Michael's gaze darted to the control panel. The lights for two floors blinked on and off, with a mechanical humming sound coming from behind the panel. Immediately after he reached his hand out to touch the buttons, all the panel's lights faded into darkness.
The message came in loud and clear: You, the living, are not in control here.
Michael glanced at Mahone, whose back was up against the car's rear wall. He was able to steady his breathing, though out of sheer surprise Alex sucked in a gulp of air when the doors roughly slid open again.
"At least we're not trapped in here," Michael whispered.
"Yep. Thanks for finding the silver lining in that cloud, chief."
Mahone wasn't being his acid-tongued, grouchy self. The spurt of a laugh that punctuated his words sounded suspiciously nervous. He was making conversation, maybe just breaking the thick silence. Alex reminded Michael of himself as a little kid on Halloween night or after seeing a scary movie, how he'd say something inane like, "Guess I'll go to bed now." The sound of his own voice would ease his fears.
Right now, he couldn't see anything calming either of them. He swore he could hear Alex's heart pumping like a jet engine and he was pretty sure Alex could hear his, too.
"You first?" Michael asked, waving an arm at the open doors.
"Hey, listen…" Alex motioned for him to go first. "Age before beauty!"
Okay. That was funny. Grudgingly, Michael smiled and stepped out first. "Right."
Under his feet, the ground sounded and felt different. Enough light from the elevator allowed them to see.
"Wood planks. Looks like a walkway," Michael said.
"And what's that on the wall?"
Turning, Michael saw an oil lantern on a shelf-like crevice in the rock wall. Even more curious, there was a matchbook beside it.
"Convenient," Alex remarked. He held the lantern while Michael lit the wick.
"Don't complain."
"I'm not. But somebody besides us has been here. We're not the only ones who know this is here."
"Uh-huh. And what's this?'"
Alex held up the lamp before responding. "This is dangerous. Whatever you do, watch your step."
Michael's eyes widened. Just how far down did this place go, anyway? The moss-covered, somewhat slippery stone stairs offered no banister and, at the top where they were, the steps were barely wide enough to offer protection between them and a fifty-foot drop.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeewwww!" Mahone complained behind him, retching. "I'm gonna be sick. What the hell is that?"
"Don't ask." Michael lifted his shirt to cup around his nose and throat.
That stench clinging to the air, he'd smelled something similar before. Reminiscent of decaying meat…but worse. A winged creature, either a bat or an owl, it was hard to tell which, screeched and batted its wings past them, almost knocking them off their feet. Michael grabbed at the wall. The lantern, in Mahone's grasp, banged hard against the wall. It looked like he was about to drop it.
"You got it?" Michael called to him.
"Yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it." He cussed, then inspected the hand that had scraped against the wall.
"Looks like a nasty gash."
"I'd be messed up a lot worse than that if my ass had gotten knocked off these stairs." Wincing, Alex wiped the blood onto his beige pants leg. "Owww. Just go. Come on! Let's get down further, where we won't break our necks if we fall."
Toward the bottom of the stairs was a blood-chilling sight. Off to the side, slumped against the wall, was the half-rotted corpse of a man. This one appeared to be an American—another foreigner, like themselves, sentenced to that Panamanian hellhole. His mouth was open in a perpetual scream and his eyes appeared to have been gouged out. The expression on his face, part of which had been eaten away by rats or maggots or other creatures, was of inexplicable terror.
"Maybe we should turn around," Mahone suggested, his voice shaking slightly.
"Look—water."
"Water? Where?"
"There. And…a boat." Michael shook his head. "Damn. What is this place?"
Sure enough, there in that passage that led from the building into a cave, was a body of water. Dark, black water. There was no telling how deep it was, nor how far it extended.
"There's a river in hell, supposedly," Michael mused out loud. "Isn't there?"
"Correct. The River Styx. Dante's Inferno, I think."
Grinning, Michael untied the boat's rope from the makeshift pier. "I thought Styx was the name of a band in the 70s."
"It was." Alex got into the boat and carefully set down the lantern, then grabbed one of the two oars as Michael climbed aboard. He broke into song, hamming it up: "Babe, I'm leavin'/I must be on my way/the time is drawing near/my train is going/I see it in your eyes/the love, the need, your tears/and I'll be lonely without you/I'll need your love to see me through…"
"That was dreadful!" Michael said, doing a poor impression of Simon Cowell. "But Paula and Randy will love you, I'm sure."
But Mahone ignored him, now on a roll, with both rowing and singing, hilariously off-key. "You know it's yoooooou, babe/whenever I get weary and I've had enough/feel like giving up/you know it's yooooooou, babe/giving me the courage and the strength I need/please believe that it's true…"
Michael gave up and joined in, singing, "And, babe, I love yoooooou!"
"Ahhhh, only a dork would know the words to that song!"
Behind him, Mahone wasn't being mean; he was kidding around.
"A dork. That'd be you," Michael told him.
"Oh, yeah. Like you're so cool."
Look at him, Michael thought then. Sitting there in that boat, smiling and laughing and goofing around with him so easily. He could have almost liked the man. Almost. Mahone could have very easily been out on a boat on some lake out on the country with him, fishing for trout or bass to bring back to a cabin where Sara and Pam waited with a couple bottles of Chardonnay for their guys to come home. So Alex had a fun-loving, goofy side to him, proving he was a guy that, maybe in another time and another place, as the old cliché goes, would have made for a great friend, the kind you can laugh and shoot the breeze with for hours.
But reality slapped Michael hard in the face: This was the man who'd ended his father's life. This was the man who would have framed him and Lincoln and left them in that Godforsaken place to die, if Michael hadn't been quicker on his feet. This was the man who had ruined everything, ultimately, for him and Sara.
He whipped around, giving Alex his back. He got back down to business. "How long do you suppose we should do this?"
"I don't know. Till we get somewhere, I guess. You mad at me? Come on, don't be a jerk. I was just bustin' you—"
"I know you were. Like we were old friends, you and I. Well, we're not, Alex." Michael glowered at him over his shoulder. "We will never be friends."
Alex stopped rowing for a moment, his oar poised in the air. His mouth twitched and his chest rose and fell with his breath. "Yeah, I know, you already told me. You see me, you see the man who killed your dad. We—you, me—we're both up to our necks in trouble in this place, but you don't want to work with me, put that aside. Oh, no, not you. I'm trying to—I don't know. I can't make that up to you and I know it's not enough to say I'm sorry, but—"
"Saying you're sorry? That's supposed to make it all right?"
"Damn." Another word followed that, one much rougher, mumbled under Alex's breath. "It's not supposed to do anything. Look, I killed your father and I'm sorry I did. I'm. Sorry. Michael. I thought I was doing my job."
"Say you're sorry already," Michael snapped, "and then don't start in with your excuses. You're always making excuses for the things you've done, Alex. That doesn't cut it."
"I'm not making—look, Scofield," Alex paused, shifting in his seat on the boat, "I just—I did a lot of things that are just—that I have to live with. Okay? But I did what I had to do or what I thought I had to do. I made a lot of bad decisions—"
"That's putting it mildly—"
"STOP INTERRUPTING ME!" Alex exploded. It took a second, but he composed himself. He rubbed a hand over his mouth gruffly and went on. "Tell me something, Michael. Are your hands clean? With your big, elaborate plan to break your brother out of prison…anybody get hurt along the way? Anybody lose their life? Did your conscience bother you? Make you stop? Or did you just keep right on goin', cause nothing was gonna stop you from protecting those you loved? Right?" His next words were spoken through clenched teeth. "But you just go right on judging me. You…self-righteous little bastard."
Challenged and angered, Michael turned around, only to be thrown off balance by the sudden, pronounced rocking of the boat. It was as if they were whitewater rafting, the vessel was rocking and shaking so much, and yet the water was as calm as a serene mountain lake.
"Alex—the lantern!" he shouted.
Mahone reached for it but it was too late. His oar sank into the water as the flames from the lantern ignited and the portside of the wooden boat caught fire. Michael exchanged a helpless glance with him, both men shooting to their feet, both knowing what was about to happen, that they were left with no choice but to abandon the boat.
And to jump into the water. To make matters worse, Michael, the color draining from his face, saw something out of the corner of his eye and knew what had caused the boat to become unsteady.
There were hands—three, four, five pairs of them—the skin mottled and gray with death, the fingernails having grown into blackened claws, reaching out of their watery grave and grabbing onto the sides of the vessel.
Note to Readers: Thanks for reading & commenting! I really appreciate that. I'm trying to update this a lot better than I have in the past. I hope to have Chapter 6 up in a few days, too. Cheers! -- Seabluemermaid