Blackteeth Read online

  “There’s some who stay in other holes,” the girl from South Africa said. “I’m Tam, by the way. The boy from Nacogdoches is Luke. Frenchie there is Ben, Benoit if you want to be fancy. Up in the front are Hadassah, Nash, and Davi. They’re from, um, Israel, the UK, and Brazil. I’m from Cape Town in South Africa.”

  “How about you jokers shut the hell up before them things decide to come down here for a little hootenanny,” came a furious whisper from Luke.

  Mun-Hee kept by Hesper. “Why did you change the color of your hair? How did you get those black eyes?”

  Hesper glanced at Moss. “The hair was so people wouldn’t recognize me easily. The black eyes were a misunderstanding,” she said.

  Mun-Hee’s head swiveled directly in Moss’ direction. “He hit you?”

  “Not him,” Hesper corrected. “He and his father were…are desperate to know what happened to Olivia, his sister. She’s one of us.”

  “But how did he get here? How do you know he’s not one of the Blackteeth’s people?”

  “Mun-Hee,” Hesper said quickly. “I’ll explain it all but somewhere where everyone can hear it. I’ve been back to the other side, back to the real world. I can get you home. I can get all of you home.”

  Hesper could feel all of their excitement. Mun-Hee and she had many conversations about how to return to wherever home was, but they hadn’t known. She had covered herself in the blackest muck imaginable and lain in wait for the Blackteeth, searching out whatever information she could until she realized that the pools were something very special. After all, all of them remembered coming through the water, and Hesper and Mun-Hee had explored the pools for exits to other places. They had found nothing, thinking that the Blackteeth’s paths were well concealed. They hadn’t made the connection.

  In truth it wasn’t one special pool; it was all of the pools, and all that was needed was a means.

  Hesper touched the pendant at her neck and thought about how to get children through the waters to wherever was safest. She could take two or three at a time through the pool she knew went to the Tennessee River in Alabama. The Oregon one would be out of limits and completely unsafe.

  Mun-Hee said there were fourteen kids here and then there were a few others spread out in other places. She could figure it out if she just thought about it hard enough. Those would be the easy ones to get to freedom. What would be more difficult were the ones who had been captured by the Blackteeth and were being held even now.

  “How many do the Blackteeth have in the holes now?” Hesper asked Mun-Hee.

  “Three right now,” Mun-Hee said. “They’ve tightened up. Then they all seemed to disappear except the ones around the holes. Those can’t be lured out. We make noises to get them away from the holes, but they’re not biting. I would have snuck in to see if I could take one out, but one of our sentries caught sight of you. Caught sight of what you did to those two Blackteeth. Anyone who cuts their heads off and leaves them like that isn’t a friend of the monsters, and I only knew of one person who would do that. So we came to see what was happening. Made a little noise so you would know it was us and not them.”

  “I could cut their heads off,” said Luke defiantly. “Alls I need is one of them fancy weapons like she’s got.”

  Hesper glanced at the bush axe in her hand. She would have brought a dozen of them if she could have. She didn’t have time to think about it. Her plans had to be as fluid as the rain streaming down a window in a thunderstorm. Get the children here out first. Then, get Moss to the holes if he still wanted to do that. She would bring those children out if she could at the same time. It would be a race back to the pools. She glanced at Moss. Maybe he would even understand that his wants were no longer important. Once she was back in the world, she’d be happy to give him the pendant, and he could trip-trap through this world to his heart’s content.

  “We’re getting them out,” she said and she caught Moss’s eyes. He nodded. It was true that he was a good person. The kidnapping scheme had been madness borne of desperation perhaps more fueled by Abel Symmes than by Moss.

  “The ones here,” he said. “What about the ones in the what did you call it? The holes?”

  “Everyone. All of them. No one gets left behind.” Hesper looked around. They took a left and passed through some of the builders’ original rooms. The doors were tall here but didn’t look like they’d been closed in a thousand years. She could see where the children had piled rocks beside each one for future defense needs. “Are you in?”

  “Of course, I’m in,” Moss said hotly. “Why wouldn’t I help?”

  “You didn’t sign up for this,” Hesper said. She realized that Mun-Hee and the boy from Texas were avidly listening to them.

  “I didn’t know,” Moss whispered. “How could I have known?”

  Hesper didn’t have an answer for that. “We need to figure out a quick plan, Mun-Hee. The Blackteeth were chasing us on the other side. They were after me because I killed so many of them after they wiped out our group.”

  “It was you who”— Mun-Hee made a chopping motion with his right hand across his neck— “killed them. Made them real mad.” He whistled lightly. “Should have known. You must have killed a couple dozen of them. They angry as bees from a hive that’s been knocked to the ground.”

  Hesper responded in Korean. “They brought it on themselves.” She sighed and said in English. “By now they surely realize I’m back here.”

  “Wait,” said Luke with amazement evident in his voice. “You really were back home? You found a way back? Really did?”

  All of them stopped in their tracks and turned to stare at Hesper.

  “It’s through the pools,” Hesper confirmed.

  “Ain’t nothing in any of the pools we looked at,” Luke denied firmly, skepticism coloring his expression, giving weight to the adage, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it is.” “No one can get through them we saw,” he said rapidly. “Only the Blackteeth know the way. We watched, but we ain’t figured it out.”

  “It’s because you need a key,” Hesper said. “Then we go where we want.”

  “They chased you back home, too?” Mun-Hee asked. “How did they know where you were?”

  “My blood in the water,” Hesper said with a glance at Moss. Moss winced perceptibly. “There’s more, but we need to move quickly.”

  There were other turns and twists as well as another tunnel. It became apparent to Hesper that Mun-Hee didn’t take a risk when it came to the safety of the children. He’d learned all too well that trust was a commodity with which they couldn’t afford to take risks. “We keep the new ones in a separate place until we’re certain,” he told Hesper.

  “Should be keeping both of them in there,” Luke said sourly. “Don’t know ifin we can trust them or not. Especially the big guy.”

  “I know Hesper,” Mun-Hee said firmly. “She helped me escape. She killed the Blackteeth. Tam saw her kill the two Blackteeth not hours ago. She’s always had my back. If she says we can trust him, then we can.”

  That didn’t make Hesper feel all that better. Could they trust Moss? Probably. It was in his best interest to come with them. He protected himself, and he could find out more information about his sister. Then he could go back with Hesper and the rest. He might even be looking for others besides Hesper. She remembered that Abel and Moss had a group that included some kind of medical person named Vera. They might not believe a fabulous tale from a girl who was once missing for an entire decade. They might not believe a story from Moss. But they would have to believe something when a dozen or more children came through one of the portals and landed in their laps. These would be children who were all missing for extended periods of time who would all tell the same story.

  It wouldn’t be a YouTube video showing a man with a smoking gun in the grassy knoll, but it couldn’t be easily argued with.

  Ultimately, it didn’t matter who believed what as long as the children were freed from the Black
teeth.

  “I only want to help,” Moss said. “I came with Hesper to help her and because she saved me, too. I want to find my sister, but I suppose that might not be possible.”

  “Shit, fool,” Luke said. “Do you know how many the Blackteeth have killed?”

  Mun-Hee said a nasty word in Korean and then added in English, “Shut it, Luke. It isn’t his fault.”

  “Where is this key?” Tam asked. “How did you find it? How do we use it?”

  “The Blackteeth who travel back and forth use a special material to control the portals,” Hesper said. She pulled the pendant out and showed it to them. “I watched them and kept watching them until one of them showed me the way. Then I killed it and took the key. Since they’re still using the portals, obviously there are other keys. We can get several through at once, but it would be better to have other keys.”

  They all digested that information.

  “We kept some of their belongings,” Mun-Hee said. “Some of them had necklaces like that. Then they stopped wearing them after a bit. The ones we killed later didn’t have them. I guess that was when you took theirs.”

  “Probably,” Hesper agreed.

  Mun-Hee stopped. “Here we are,” he said. He slashed his hands in front of him in a deliberate gesture. “That’s to show that we’re not here under duress.”

  Two children emerged from the shadows and greeted them. One was a small girl not older than nine years. She held a piece of metal with one sharpened end and the other wrapped with cloth. The other was a stocky boy of twelve who had a long curious tool of the builders’ design. It looked like a wrench, but the end was star shaped. “What took you so long, Mun-Hee?” the boy asked. He looked oddly at Hesper and Moss.

  “Found an old friend,” Mun-Hee said. “Get everyone together. Get the patrols back as they come in. Make certain no one is followed. We need a meeting. We need to talk to everyone.”

  Mun-Hee led the way into another interior room, and Hesper recognized it as something like what she’d found before. Machines sat on each end and faint blue lights rippled across their surfaces. It indicated that something was still running even after all this time. There were scribbles on the machines where children had carved words into them. Some were names and dates. Others seemed to be guesses at what the machine did such as “lights for far side of grand hallway”. Not all of it was in English and some of the writing were logograms and some were hanja. Some of it appeared Cyrillic and resembled what the builders used. The room was a large one with built-in tables and benches made for beings much taller than the humans who were currently using it.

  Moss stared at the equipment with rapt inquisitiveness. Hesper thought that perhaps he was trying to distract himself. “Do you know what it does?” he asked.

  “Some minor control station, I think,” Mun-Hee said. “We don’t have a scientist around who might tell us. We try pushing buttons once in a while, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. We think it’s locked. Like a computer monitor would be locked. My mother used to lock her cellphone. You know?”

  Moss nodded. Then he focused on the other children there. Hesper counted in her head. There was Mun-Hee, Luke, Tam, Benoit, and the three others who’d found them. Hadassah, Nash, and Davi were the others. The two who’d greeted them made nine. Then there were two more inside the room. A girl of about thirteen with blonde hair snarled into a mess that had been tied up with a black shoelace stared at them with equal parts of awe and fear. A boy of about five sucked on his thumb, and his blue eyes seemed as large as a full moon in the sky.

  Mun-Hee counted, too, using his fingers to total the number of his crew present. “Missing Dab, Squid, and Nona. Should be checking in soon.” He glanced at Hesper. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat,” Hesper said. She looked at Moss who shrugged.

  Mun-Hee motioned at the thirteen-year-old girl with the blonde hair and she got busy. There was dried fish and fungi that had been fried. They served the food on metal platters that had been fashioned out of something the children had found. Hesper had a hard time forcing even a small portion down her throat as she looked at the children.

  It was true that Hesper had been frightened out of her mind when she had taken the only exit available to her. She was so desperately afraid that something would yank her back that the nightmares were exorable. She’d had a plan. She’d always intended on following through with it. She just hadn’t realized that there had been survivors from her group or nothing would have stopped her. Not the stinking psychiatrists who thought she was insane or her mother who had only good intentions or any of the police detectives who suspected she was culpable in any way. And not Moss or his deluded group of family who thought they could pry answers out of Hesper. But she had been delayed and that was something that ate away at the foundation of her soul.

  Guilt and shame were the moods du jour.

  Two other children crawled in through the entrance and stopped as they saw Hesper and Moss. Mun-Hee said, “It’s okay. This one is Hesper. She’s with us. She’s always been with us. The other one is Moss, and he’s here to help us, too.”

  A final person wriggled into the entrance and froze as she saw the newcomers. Clearly fearful, the person began to inch backward.

  “It’s okay, Nona,” Mun-Hee said to that person. “These are friends. This is Hesper”— he pointed at Hesper— “who freed me in the beginning. Just like I freed the others.” He said to Hesper, “She doesn’t talk. Found her on the south side of the facility, living there in the darkness by herself. I don’t know how long she was there because she didn’t talk then and doesn’t talk now.” He clicked his tongue like a dismayed parent. “You know what that’s like.”

  Hesper knew exactly what that was like. Then she became aware that Moss had leaned forward and stared intently at Nona, who stared back at him just as intently. All the other children went still and silent as they realized something was happening.

  The girl had dirty brown hair that was the same kind of mess as the rest and her arms and legs were smeared with dirt and crap in order to disguise her from the Blackteeth. Her clothing was the tattered remains of other clothing that had probably been stolen from the same piles from which Hesper had pilfered. She was so thin and small it was hard to guess her age. Her eyes were brown in the dim light, but Hesper thought she could see a hint of green in them.

  Moss’s mouth opened and nothing came out.

  “Dad?” Nona said finally, almost a croak from the lack of use. “Dad, is it you?”

  Moss swallowed, and everyone heard the noise as he forced saliva down a dry throat. “It’s not Dad,” he forced out after a few moments. “It’s Moss, Livie. It’s really me, Pookie-Pie.”

  Nona didn’t need to hear anymore. She hurled herself at Moss and wrapped herself around him so tightly it was hard to see where one began and the other one ended.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A fugitive never stops to pick the

  thorns from his foot. – African proverb

  Of course, Olivia couldn’t have known how Moss had grown up in the time she had been missing. Hesper supposed he did look like Abel, but then Abel had been ten years older when Hesper had met him and bitterly worn down with the effort of trying to keep a broken family together. Moss had apparently grown into a man who strongly resembled the father that Olivia had known before she had been taken.

  “We called her Noname for a while,” Mun-Hee said to Hesper as they watched the siblings’ reunion, “and then it was Nona because it sounded better. Olivia sounds even better.” He hummed for a moment. “I never would have guessed she was an Olivia.”

  Hesper and Mun-Hee sat together, and she held his hand as they watched Olivia clutching Moss as if she wouldn’t let go. To be honest, Hesper had never been happier to be wrong about something. It felt good to be wrong.

  While Olivia and Moss whispered to each other, Mun-Hee sent two of the children back out to watch.

  Knowing they couldn’t afford to l
inger any longer, Hesper settled her shoulders. She began to draw in the dirt in between her feet, gesturing to Mun-Hee to watch. “Here’s the long gallery and the grand hallway. This”— she pointed to an area— “is where we had our first base.”

  Mun-Hee nodded. “We don’t go there now. Left the bodies there and there they still are.” The other children gathered around and peered at what Hesper was drawing.

  “So, if I haven’t forgotten, we’re about here now”— she pointed to an area on the opposite of the long gallery.

  “Give or take,” Mun-Hee said. “Not exactly right.”

  “Sorry,” Hesper said. “Moss and I came in through a pool in this area.” She pointed again to an area that was far away from where the first base had been.

  “All the way there,” Mun-Hee said. “Lots of Blackteeth in that area.”

  “Less two,” she said.

  “Less two,” he agreed contentedly.

  “We can’t go that way because it isn’t safe,” Hesper said. “I would imagine they would have posts waiting for that. Maybe on this side and on that side, too.”

  “Any pool, you said,” Luke interjected. “Let’s go right the fuck now. Don’t care where. Just now. We can be there in minutes.”

  “Yes, any pool,” Hesper agreed, “but it would be better to come out in a place we’re familiar with. I don’t want to pop up in the middle of the Amazon River in a place with giant river otters, pink dolphins, and anacondas. I guess any of those would be better than the Blackteeth, but we can choose one where I’ve been before. I got home to Alabama using that one. We came through another way from Oregon state.”

  “Won’t the Blackteeth expect that?” Tam asked. “If they might think you’d go back to the one you just used, wouldn’t they expect the other?”