Chapter Fifty-Seven: What Does It Want?
The storyline was nearly over, yet we hadn't reached The End yet. There was something further to get done.
We raced back to the mine entrance where Nicholas' SUV was parked. When we arrived, we saw that the workers had left.
Off-Screen.
So we were back to that.
Hesper was sitting in his wheelchair at the entrance to the mine. His guards were carrying boxes as they walked past him and disappeared into the area where the elevator was. Hesper had one of the boxes next to him. He was reaching into it and messing with its contents.
“What are they bringing in?” Anna asked.
Hesper lifted one of the items out of the box as if to examine it. I saw it glinting in the sunlight.
"It's gold," Dina said. "Boxes of gold."
"Why would he be bringing boxes of gold into the mine?" Kimberly asked.
That was a good question. He had clearly thrown his wife into the caverns in exchange for something. Was it gold? Success? Who knows.
“Maybe he was trying to return ill-gotten gains,” I suggested.
Nicholas shook his head. “I don't know what he's doing but he didn't have any gains. Not from this mine. He went bankrupt after this venture. It was his most embarrassing personal failure. He was humiliated. And then our plane went down. The crash put him in a wheelchair and killed my moth-“
He stopped talking as he realized that the story he had been told must not have been true.
"I'm going to trap them in there," Nicholas said.
"What?" Anna said. "We can leave now. They aren't going to stop us."
Nicholas ignored her.
"We need to jam the elevator," he said. "Then we can have a talk."
"They have guns," Anna said. "We should just leave."
Finally, Nicholas acknowledged her. "And what happens when they discover we have escaped? You think they'll just let us be? They threw us into that pit to die. Threw his own son... They're not just going to let us walk free."
That was probably true, but it didn't really affect us. Still, our characters would likely be motivated by that logic. It was clearly scripted as much as anything was scripted in this broken storyline.
“We just need to see if there's an emergency shutoff,” Camden said.
“Do you want to get that close?” Kimberly asked. "They have guns."
"We'll wait until the elevator has lowered some and then jam it up," Nicholas said, looking around for some means of doing so.
"That might work," Kimberly suggested, pointing to the earth mover that had been used to unseal the mine.
Nicholas' eyes lit up.
Nicholas scurried toward the earth mover. He got into the operator's seat and found its key. As Hesper and his guards started moving into the elevator, he started trying to turn the machine on and get it moving. Yet, he clearly didn't know how to operate it very well. He started moving forward clumsily, lowering the jackhammer attachment on the front of the machine into the ground on accident.
"Let me do it," Kimberly said. "My dad had a construction business. I know how to operate it."
Her Savvy jumped up as her Convenient Backstory ability kicked in. I didn't think it would work off-screen, but then, I don't think we were supposed to be off-screen in this scene anyway. The storyline was still broken. In fact, I noticed that the story went off-screen for anything involving Hesper, as if he and the big dead thing in the mines were somehow being hidden from the audience, glitched.
After a few more failed attempts at operating the contraption, Nicholas finally relented and let Kimberly try. Thanks to her ability, she was able to make it work well enough.
“It's now or never,” Camden said. “Hesper is about to get back on the elevator.”
Of course, we couldn't just walk away. Not really.
We needed a final word from Hesper. An explanation.
Kimberly's savvy was pretty high right now. Odds were, her plan to use the earth mover would work. It wasn't too far-fetched even by real-life standards. By movie standards, it was practically guaranteed.
One of Hesper’s guards wheeled him around into the elevator along with a stack of boxes and his other guards. The mine elevator was slow compared to a normal elevator.
As soon as the metal gate closed and that elevator started to descend, Kimberly kicked the earth mover into gear and drove it as fast as it would move down toward the entrance to the mine. From there, she didn't slow down much at all. She lifted the scoop of the earthmover so that it would knock into one of the support beams for the elevator and bend it over into the motor relay.
Crunch.
Rerereererere.
The motor was bound up and could no longer lower the elevator. Smoke started to pour out of the motor. As I ran up to the mouth of the mine, I could smell the internal components of the motor burning. The elevator car had gotten stuck. The top of it was just below ground level. Hesper and his men were trapped just far enough underground that we didn't have to worry about getting shot.
The elevator supports were bent and the brakes had locked up.
Kimberly backed the earth mover up and waited to ensure the elevator was stuck before shutting it off and getting out.
Nicholas ran up behind me. “Dad. What the… What did you do?”
“Nicholas,” Hesper said. “What are you doing here?”
He sounded surprised.
“What am I doing here?” Nicholas asked. “What are you doing? What did you do to my mother?”
Hesper didn't respond for a moment.
“Your mother died in our plane crash,” Hesper said. He said it without emotion.
“She's still down there,” Nicholas said. “I saw her. You tied up her hands.”
More silence.
“Son, Listen to me. This is all a misunderstanding. Just help me out of here and I'll explain everything.”
“Explain everything now,” Nicholas said. “Explain it and then I'll see if I'll help you out of there.”
Hesper yelled out in frustration. “Just do as I tell you.”
Nicholas didn't answer. “You just tried to kill me. I'm never doing anything you ask me again.”
“If it wasn't for me you wouldn't be here,” Hesper said.
“Why do you always say that?” Nicholas asked.
More quiet contemplation.
“You weren’t what I asked for.”
Nicholas looked taken aback. “I never asked for a father like you either.”
Hesper started to laugh. “I don't mean like that.”
For a moment he stopped speaking. Then, he took in a deep breath.
“The first thing I put in was a gold watch,” Hesper said. “I told people it was a $10,000 watch. It wasn't but it was still more expensive than I could afford. I scraped it while trudging through the mine looking for the copper ore my idiotic geologist said would be there. Every rock without pay dirt was a reminder of my failure. And then I scuffed my watch. It loosened the strap too. I could have had it fixed but I was frustrated.
“A crack had opened up in the mine wall a few weeks earlier. We had dug too far to the west. I threw my watch in just to hear it crash against the rock below. Of course, all I heard was a splash. I regretted it immediately. I wanted my watch back, but what could I do?
"I continued looking for copper ore and found none. I fired my crackpot geologist. The company he worked for tried to get my business back. I didn't have any money to pay them but they didn't know that. One of the owners visited my office and gave me a gift. He said that it retailed for over $10,000 and that it was a token of his appreciation for our long-standing business relationship. When I opened it, it was the very same kind of watch I had just thrown into the mine. I thought it was a cosmic joke.
“But it ate at me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it was more than a coincidence. I couldn't fight the urge to throw something else into the cavern just to see if I could get more back. We had been looking for copper in the mine. I went to the bank and got my last hundred dollars out in one-cent pieces. They were made of pure copper back in those days. I threw them into the mine. The next day, one of my guys finds a vein of copper.
"I just knew it wasn't a coincidence. I went to the bank and got every loan I could and turned it all into gold. I tried one piece at first and then when that worked I put the rest in.
“Within a few months, I had turned things around. I was pulling more gold out than I could even believe. I ounce I threw in turned into five ounces in the mine. But the happy days didn't last. It came time to tally things up. Costs, labor, interests on my loans, repairing equipment, lawsuits, one of my mines down south collapsed. My bank went out of business because of fraud and I lost millions. After all was said and done I only had a hundred dollars left. And that isn't including the cost of opening the mine to begin with."
He started laughing.
"I was broke. Ruined. The grand fool I was, I mined out every single bit of gold I could find. I should have left some in and then sold the mine to save on time and expense.
“After finding out that even with my unending supply of gold I wasn't making any money, I… I got frustrated."
He paused for some time.
"When our plane crashed into the lake, I thought I would die, but I didn't. I was so disappointed. Instead, I was injured. I couldn't feel my legs. Your mother made it out alive. We searched for you for days, but your body was long gone. You were too young to swim.
“Your mother was crazed over losing her baby. I was enraged. I wasn't fortunate enough to be successful nor was I unfortunate enough to die. I decided to ask the mine for one last favor. Your uncle, whom I had shown the mine and its magical properties, helped me. I couldn't shake this feeling that the waters wanted something more personal, more substantial. I dreamed about it at night. With a sudden realization at that moment, as I lay in my hospital bed, the water didn't want to trade gold for more gold. It wanted something more. That had to be it.
“So your uncle and I gave it your mother. I asked for my legs back. Pleaded with it. It wouldn't tell me what it wanted. It wouldn't tell me anything. All I heard were splashes. Your mother cried out for you. She was never so interested in being a wife as she was in being a mother. You should know that.
"I waited in vain for my miracle and it never came. I could not walk. I left the mine defeated. When I returned to the hospital for treatment, hoping perhaps that the doctor would give me some miraculous news, I was instead greeted by the police. A fisherman had found you on the shores of the lake. You were alive. After days and days, you had been found alive. It was impossible.
“You were not what I asked for. Why would it not tell me what it wanted? I would have given it anything. See, I think my mistake was that I didn't get Martha's consent. I think that must have been it. She did not walk into the mines willingly. But you did. I was certain that would be enough, but apparently, it wasn't. Why won't it just tell me what it wants? I tried to figure out how to profit from the mine but I couldn't.
"Soon some government agencies started asking about pollutants. I couldn't have them poking around, not with your mother down there. I sealed up the mine, planning to open it in a few years once I had a better plan and some more money.
"After some worse luck, we lost the company to bankruptcy. I put the past in the past, but this has been eating at me for thirty years... What does it want?”
Hesper had a madness in his voice. A crazed obsession. I knew that the Unknowable Host could passively create servants, but it was more than that. I think using its power also infected you in a different way. One of its many unreadable tropes must have caused this.
It was nice to have a bad guy not try to justify himself or convince you to go along with their plan. It was a change of pace.
Nicholas could not comprehend what he was hearing.
He didn't have very long.
Outside of the mine, the sound of a motor starting up echoed through the gravel pit.
“What's that?” Anna asked.
No one knew.
We began running out of the entrance of the mine. As we did, water started to trickle down into the entrance. At first, it was a single stream but it grew and grew until a small river of water began splashing its way down the entrance.
“The water pump,” Camden said.
The mine drainage system was situated outside and up around to the left. When we turned and got a view of it, we found Corey smashing the controls with a blank expression on his face. The pump wasn't just blowing water back into the gravel pit where it ran down into the entrance of the mine, it was blasting water everywhere, dozens of feet into the air. Much of it was getting out onto the fields to the east.
When he caught sight of us he turned. “We weren't supposed to stop the spread,” he said. “I think this is what he wants.”
Corey smiled.
We heard yelling from inside the mine. The water reached Hesper. Hope he wasn't thirsty.
“What do we do?” Kimberly asked.
"We leave," I said.
“Any of that water that doesn't get back in the mine is going to end up in the water table,” Camden said. “I'm guessing that's how the animals got possessed last time.”
“We need to go,” Anna said. “Look.”
She pointed out to the field next to the gravel pit. The animals had made it out of the air shaft. They stood watching us. They didn't attack. That part of the story was over.
“What about the machine?” Dina asked.
“It's gas-powered; it'll run out in a few hours,” Camden answered. "Besides, I don't think those animals will let us near it."
With the workers all gone, there were far fewer vehicles near the gravel pit. Nicholas' SUV was still there.
We loaded into the SUV, but before Nicholas started the engine, he paused. He handed the keys to Kimberly.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I'm going back to get my inheritance and my mother,” Nicholas said. “Go home. I'll be back in a little bit.”
He leaned over and gave Kimberly a kiss.
He ran away from the SUV back to the table where we had gotten our climbing gear. He started grabbing things off the table. I didn't know what he was getting but he seemed to have a good idea of what the equipment was.
“Is he going back in the mines?” Kimberly asked.
Surely not.
Nicholas gathered all of the things that he needed and tossed them into the back of the truck near the table. He opened up the door and fished a key from his pocket.
He turned on the truck and started to drive away from the entrance to the mine. He drove west.
“He’s going for the wishing well in the Straggler Forest, isn’t he? The money at the bottom?” Camden asked. "I wonder what the deal was with that."
"I think we'll find out soon enough," I said. As I watched him drive away, I noticed something familiar. “You guys recognize that truck?”
“Isn’t that the same one Akers had?” Anna answered.
“I think it will be,” I said, as the needle on the Plot Cycle clicked toward The End.
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