And just like that, all pretense was gone. Me and Anna were set to rigging the house full of IR-sensitive security cameras and running the cables out to their van. They had already set up a rge tent and stowed their multitudes of gear inside it. Mrs. Everly and John had changed, ditching the business-wear completely for cargo pants and heavy jackets they strangely referred to as “blouses.” I couldn’t see the resembnce. They looked like the jackets on military uniforms, only bck, with softer fabric over the torso that was soon covered by bullet-proof vests.

  When I said all pretense was gone, I meant it. The odd thing was how Mrs. Everly spent the whole time compining about her back pain. She couldn’t be that old, and despite her compining she seemed to have no issues toting around the rifle she pulled out of a case. When I asked where they were going, she just smiled and meaningfully patted a backpack. The way she and John fell into step together as if this was normal sent a pang through my chest. Why can’t things just be normal?

  “You double-checked the backpack, right?” Chris asked Mrs. Catherine.

  “You don’t need to worry. She’s not that stupid, and she has supervision as well.”

  “What’s in the backpack?” I asked worriedly. I was at a loss by this point, but I needed to say something.

  “Not C4 this time thankfully.” As if that was in anyway reassuring.”

  “This time?!” The typewriter I’m using for this manuscript doesn’t have an interrobang, but I need to go through the extra effort of typing an excmation point just to stress how absurd this was.

  “You did sign the NDA. Ever since then things have been a bit more normal, retively speaking. Most of what you heard before had is exactly what we’ve been doing. Nothing major to worry about.”

  “No. C4?” I can hardly focus on hooking up cameras to the server in the back of their van, ostensibly to record evidence of the paranormal, with that being mentioned.

  “How does the saying go? ‘there’s not a problem in the world that can’t be solved with an appropriate application of high explosive?’ She never shuts up about it.” Mrs. Cat frowned at the binder she was paging through. “I strongly disagree, and I know she’s smart enough not to take it to absurd levels.”

  “You’re really saying that after what happened in Philly?” Chris snorted.

  “She saved our lives with that.”

  “What do you mean ‘in Philly?’”

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about. You’re better off not knowing. Honestly I still think that doing recruiting this way is a horrid idea, but our boss insisted on it.” Cat sighed. “It’s a lot better than how I was recruited.”

  “You had it easy.” Chris cut in. “You didn’t get shoved in the back of a van and threatened with prison.”

  “You had that coming and you know it.” Chris scowled, but didn’t refute Mrs. Catherine. Silence fell, broken only by the occasional turn of a page in one of the many files pulled from a Pelican case. There was a bank of monitors on one wall, but neither of the two women seemed to be paying it any mind. The st of the cameras had been rigged to the small server rack pulled from the van, set to record, but it seemed all there was to do now was to wait for something to happen.

  After a half hour, footsteps approached, and the fp of the tent door fpped open to admit John and Mrs. Everly, the ter carrying a now much emptier backpack.

  “Liah, do you have the topo map handy? I want to check something again.” Mrs. Catherine sighed and reached for the document tube from earlier.

  “What was the point of using false names in the first pce?” She asked as she unrolled the map onto a folding table.

  “Oh, oops.” For a group of spooks that’d have the Lone Gunmen foaming at the mouth they’re rather sloppy. Is that a reference anyone nowadays would even get? I’m the only one reading this manuscript so it should be fine. So Mrs. Cat’s real name is Liah? Or is that a pet name?

  Mrs. Everly examined the map, looking closely at an area to the north of the property, down a steep hillside. She gred a hole at the lines on the map, before muttering and reaching into a pocket. Of all things, she pulled out a pendulum, the crystal bob sparkling in the LED lights of the tent.

  She held it out over the map, her face going sck and eyes gzing over in a thousand-yard stare. The pendulum rocked back and forth, slowly at first, before spinning in an increasingly tightening circle that seemed to defy gravity, finally stopping. The pendulum chain was taught, pulling towards the spot on the map she had been eyeing, and Mrs. Everly broke into a satisfied grin.

  “As I thought. Someone or something pced a gmour.” Mrs. Cat cursed, but after witnessing the previous spectacle it hardly registered in my ears. Pendulums don’t do that. They follow gravity and they follow physics. Ghosts and the paranormal likely exist, but we’re here to analyze them with science, no to do… whatever that was.

  “Do you need me to dispel it?” Chris asked. I thought we were here to investigate the paranormal, all scientific-like, and here they are talking about magic as something that’s solid fact. I’d call them on it, but that pendulum wasn’t just doing that on its own. What did I just see?

  “Nah, if something’s there we don’t want it to know we’re coming. I thought something was off with that stream down the slope. It doesn’t show up on the topo, but there’s a small cut that I was just able to see from the trail. My guess is it’s fed by a spring, and if there’s a spring then maybe there’s a cave to go with it.”

  “A cave…” Mrs. Catherine sounded anything but thrilled at the prospect of their being a cave. Was there something bad about that? As a prospective new-higher, it was only right for me to ask.

  “On its own, not really. Humanity has had a very long association with caves, from the first “cavemen” to today. In the past they’ve often symbolized birth and rebirth, in pretty much every single culture. They were often used in initiation rites such as the Eleusinian mysteries. Generally, that’s viewed as a positive, even if it means being fed hallucinogens and being led around by a bunch of torch-bearing priestesses.

  “But they also have associations with death and the underworld. Caves are liminal spaces, on the boundary between the normal world and the world beyond, or the world we might have come from before depending on who you ask. As I mentioned, the Eleusinian mysteries had some pretty strong connections to underworld gods and goddesses, with Hekate being the one to help Demeter find her lost daughter, who ended up as queen of the underworld. Although again, that’s not the concerning part here.

  “What we find actually concerning is the fact that there’s a damp, cramped, dark hole that something deliberately tried to hide from us, and that we have to explore. Clearing houses is bad enough, but tunnels and caves are nightmare material even from a mundane perspective. All the discussing the archetypal symbolism of a cavern does nothing to change to reality that there’s clearly something there that we’ll likely have to drag out into the light of day. Figuratively speaking, as we’ll need to do this sooner rather than ter.”

  “It can’t wait until tomorrow?” I don’t know anything about clearing tunnels, but the thought of crawling into a pitch-bck abyss was well beyond what I’d expected.

  “Something is down there, and that something might be key to resolving our clients’ compints. And its key to- well, we can’t be sure you need to know about that part yet.” So there’s more they aren’t telling us. And whatever it is means running around with very serious-looking rifles.

  “Chris, do you think you could grab the ssh wire?” John, who up until now had remained silent, grabbed a pelican case from the corner. “Who’d have thought we’d need these?” he said, holding several sets of bulky olive-drab telephones.

  “Good thinking. VHF comms won’t do us that much good down there.” Mrs. Everly started loading several more boxes onto a wheeled cart.

  “Do you need me to do anything?” I asked, I was feeling rather extraneous, with everyone else here knowing exactly what they needed to do.

  “Not yet, but soon. We’ll have to leave your friend and Chris up here. I don’t want anyone running around without a battle buddy, and we’ll need a pair to wait outside the cave just in case something happens. That said we can’t leave our gear unattended. Liah, Gabe and I will explore the cave, since we’re the shortest, while you wait outside with Jeff.” She finally dropped all pretense of using fake names, but she didn’t even seem aware of it. She was too busy checking the myriad of pouches on her vest, all of which looked filled with ammunition. There were even a few grenades. Not what I’d expect from ghost-hunters, but nothing about this night had been what I’d expected.”

  “Jo-Gabe? He makes sense, but why Mrs. Catherine? She doesn’t even seem armed.”

  “Why would I go into a potentially dangerous pce without my familiar?” Okay, now she’s just fucking with me. But why isn’t anyone ughing?

  By then, Anna has returned, on the heels of Chris carrying a rge spool of wire. I had a fshlight shoved in my hands, and a headmp shoved on my head, but was told not to turn them on unless absolutely necessary. The moonlight was enough to walk by, they said, and indeed the moon and stars speckling the night sky were brilliantly bright. Far more impressive than the small spattering of weak stars we get in the city.

  Mrs. Everly led the way, eyes shrouded by a nightvision monocur, with Jeff(?) taking up the rear and me in the middle dragging the car full of gear behind me. I was tempted to compin but the guns being carried spoke of their concern that something big might go bump in the night. Normally I wouldn’t have gone along with it but the atmosphere had a way of getting to me. That and the realization that they were clearly not just a group of whack jobs. They absolutely sucked at undercover work, but I’m not their supervisor so it’s not my pce to call them out on it.

  One thing’s for sure, I’m gd I packed being prepared for needing to camp. The temperature had dropped to the low forties, and a crisp breeze made me thankful for the base yers I had thrown on. It gets cold out here in the mountains at night. The trees should have cut the wind, but it chilled my face all the same. It didn’t seem to affect Mrs. Everly, but with all the gear she was wearing it was only natural she’d manage to stay warm.

  We followed the path for a while, until we got to a part where it dipped down towards the woods. The tall man behind me reached behind his back for a machete and made quick work clearing a hole in the trail-side brush for my cart. Stepping into the tree line, darkness seemed to envelop me, and only the silhouette of the woman in front of me helped me stay on-track. Five minutes ter, and I found myself next to a babbling spring that sparkled in the light from a gap in the trees. Further upstream was the gaping bck maw of a cave.

  “Of fucking course.” Mrs. Everly muttered, then she began unloading the cart.

  AnnouncementIt's been a while. I've been swamped with different life events over the past year above and beyond homebuying but I was still thinking of writing stories, and now things are finally starting to calm down. The next few chapters might be a bit rough as I get back into the swing of things.