Limbo

CC:

The girls are obviously kind of freaked out when they see the paper floating near Andy, but personally I'm pretty relieved. "So you know where it is, then? They didn't break in and steal it?"

The marker moves toward the paper again, and we all crowd around to see the words, "Of course I know where it is, how else would I show you? You'll need to help me get to it, because it'll take too long if I have to do it myself, but let me actually bring it out, I don't want any of you to get hurt."

"Lead the way, then, he only gave us two hours," Andy responds, and the pad of paper starts moving, leading us through the kitchen to a padlocked door next to the pantry. Charlie fishes his keyring out of his pocket and pops the lock, and when he opens the door, we see a staircase going down to the basement.

"This is probably kind of irrelevant, but how did you get it down there with the door locked?" he asks. "You may be able to go through walls or whatever, but I doubt that the medallion could."

"No, I pushed it under the door, then picked it back up."

"Makes sense to me," Jake says, as we start down the stairs.

When we get downstairs, we see that the basement is only partly finished, the paper floats to one of the further corners, hovering next to a big metal drum. "If you'll move this, I'll get the necklace for you," she writes. "But everyone needs to step away before I do, to be sure nobody gets hurt."

"What did you do, set a booby trap or something?" I inquire.

"I didn't exactly set it, I just made use of what was already there. It's the only way I could be sure that they wouldn't get ahold of it."

The three of us gather around the drum, and even though it's pretty heavy, we manage to shift it over, and see that there's a small door, a hatchway, really, set into the lower part of the wall. "Shit, I never even knew that was there!" Charlie blurts out, sounding rather startled. "I kept putting off moving that barrel, because it was so heavy, so I never even saw that hatch."

We all move away from the door, then the bolt that holds it in place slides back, and it swings open. I get curious and turn on the flashlight on my phone, shining it into the opening, then Bob, Jake, and Juliet do the same. For a few seconds, all we see is what appears to be a lumpy, uneven dirt floor, but then the necklace starts to float up into the air, and we're kind of surprised to see the "dirt" shift. Then the noise starts, faint at first, but getting louder by the second:

"Buzzzzzz"

Then it finally dawns on me that I'm not looking at dirt, I'm seeing what basically amounts to a fucking carpet of rattlesnakes, who have been disturbed by Rachel moving the necklace out of the middle of their pile. Everyone instinctively backs even further away, and Jake mumbles, "Holy shit, this takes the concept of a guard dog to a completely different level!"

The door finally closes, and the necklace hangs in the air for a second before she becomes visible to us again. And judging by how the girls are whispering amongst themselves, I'm guessing that they can see her, too. But as she moves toward us, I see that she's not quite the same; instead of energetic and vibrant, she's quiet and dejected, maybe even a bit wary.

She walks over to me and holds out the necklace, so I reach out for it and ask, "Where have you been? We thought that someone broke in while we were at the show and stole this. Everyone has been worried about what might be happening to you."

A look of surprise flickers across her face, then it closes off again, and she replies, "Really? Can't imagine why, since I'm sure you've heard what a horrible, evil bitch I am. I didn't figure anybody would want me around, so I've just been hanging out in there most of the time. When everyone is home and awake, at least."

"Everybody knows that's not true," Jake informs her. "Even Ash. He's been having trouble sleeping since you disappeared, so I think he's probably been beating himself up for being that much of an idiot."

She mumbles something, so quietly that nobody really understands it, then inquires, "Okay, can someone tell me exactly what's going on here?"

Alice tells her about Melissa kidnapping Ash and Jinxx, then Andy relates the phone conversation, and she covers her face with her hands for a second, then looks around and asks, "So are you telling me that you seriously think that you're going to go and give this to my father, and that he's just going to hand them over and let you all go on your merry little way? Have you not heard anything I've told you, or have you just lost your minds?"

"No, we're not that stupid," Andy responds. "Susan's already called the cops, and when he tells us where to take this thing, they'll go pick him up."

"When did you call them?"

"Before we even left the restaurant to come back here," Susan explains.

"Then where are they? There's always at least one car within a couple miles of here, so they should have showed up before he even called you."

This stops everyone cold, because she's absolutely right, they should have been here already. Charlie turns to Susan and asks, "Did you talk to Whitworth when you called?"

"No, someone else answered, they didn't give a name," she tells him. "The guy I talked to said that the chief was out of the office, but that he'd get someone out here as soon as he could."

"Well, we sure as shit can't just sit here waiting for someone to show up!" Andy erupts. "So what do you suggest that we do, then?"

"Obviously, we're gonna have to go after them," she responds. "But since we can't depend on the cops showing up, we can't just waltz in unprepared. We need to have some sort of a plan to take down my father, and anybody else that gets in the way."

"Okay, sounds good in theory," Bob interjects. "So, since you know him better than we do, would you happen to have any suggestions?"

For the first time since she's shown back up, she smiles, but it's not her usual incandescent grin. This one is just short of being a snarl, and she looks slowly around the basement, then says, "Oh yeah, you'd better believe I do." She glances at Charlie and asks, "Would you happen to have a bag handy that I can borrow?"

"What, like a trash bag, or agrocery bag, or what?"

The grin gets wider, and she opens the hatch again. "No, I was thinking more along the lines of a burlap sack, or maybe a duffel bag, actually. I thought that I might bring a few of my little roomies along."

When she says this, I remember what she said the first night we all met, about her dad's fear of snakes, and I feel a grin start to creep across my own face. "Oh, you've definitely got a mean streak goin' there, sweetie. I think I like it."

"Glad you approve. I figure that this is at least a down payment on what I owe the sadistic fucker."

Once everyone else grasps what she has in mind, I see several more smiles appear, and then Charlie says, "Okay, I guess we're going in, but I still don't think we should try it without some sort of backup, so here's my idea. You ladies will go into town and hunt Whitwell down personally, that way we make sure he's getting the message. We'll go to wherever they tell us to go with the necklace, and while his attention is focused on us, Rachel can spring her little surprise. Hopefully that will generate enough chaos that we can grab the guys and get the hell out of Dodge, then the cops can just swoop in and take them down."

Susan dashes upstairs and comes back a couple of minutes later with a couple of gym bags, holding them out to Rachel. "Will these work, do you think?"

"Yeah, I think they will," she answers. She pulls them into the space, and the buzzing starts up again as she starts cramming snakes into the bags, which they don't seem to like even a little bit. I watch for a few seconds, and I count at least fifteen of the creepy little fuckers before I stop watching. She brings the bags out, and we all make sure to stay clear while she carries them upstairs.

Once we're all back up out of the basement, Charlie and Bob go to get their guns, and then the ladies all pile into one of the cars and start for town, hopefully to find the chief and get us some help when we call to let them know where we're going. Once they're gone, Andy takes a picture of the necklace and sends it to Ash's phone, with the message, "Is this what you wanted?"

Not even a minute later, the phone rings, and when he clicks to accept the call, we hear, "That's exactly what I want. I knew you could find it, given the proper motivation. So now I'm going to send you a text with some directions, and I certainly hope that you can follow these as well as you did the earlier ones, because you have one hour to bring me that medallion, or your friends start losing fingers. Remember, one hour."

Then the phone goes dead, and all we can do is wait for the text.

Notes