What Lies Below Read online

  Table of Contents

  FRONT MATTER

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  A FAVOR TO ASK:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WHAT LIES BELOW

  A dark mystery novella by

  MARK LUKENS

  What Lies Below—Copyright © 2014 by Mark Lukens

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or in any other form), is entirely coincidental.

  PLEASE CHECK OUT THESE OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR:

  Ancient Enemy – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

  The Summoning – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

  Descendants of Magic – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

  Night Terrors – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

  Sightings – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

  The Exorcist’s Apprentice – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

  Ghost Town: a novella – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

  A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

  Devil’s Island – Coming Soon

  ONE

  “I had the dream again,” Pam told her psychiatrist.

  Dr. Stanton leaned back a little in his chair. He had one leg crossed over the other with his leather-bound notebook balanced on his lap. He held a silver pen lightly in one hand, the pen poised over the paper inside the notebook. His gray eyes were impassive behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He managed to somehow look focused and thoughtful at the same time, like he was both listening intently to Pam while daydreaming about something else.

  Pam lay on a leather couch, the back of her head resting against one puffy arm with Dr. Stanton in the background behind her. Yes, it was an honest-to-goodness psychiatrist’s couch. If Dr. Stanton thought it might be a cliché having one of these in his office, he didn’t say so.

  Dr. Stanton was a very lean man in his late forties or early fifties. Pam wasn’t really sure of his age, or much else about him. If, at any time over the last four and half years, she tried to inquire about his life, or if she tried to steal snippets away about him, he would artfully maneuver the conversation back to her.

  These were her sessions after all, he would remind her. She was paying for them, he would joke. But then he would tell her—with all jokes aside—that she was here to talk about herself, her problems, and her dreams.

  Yet she still wondered about him. She tried to play detective in her mind, attempting to figure out what he was really like behind his psychiatric mask. Was he married? She didn’t see a ring on his left hand, or even a pale line where a ring might go. She knew that a lot of psychiatrists didn’t wear wedding rings, or anything else that might give away anything about their personal lives.

  And she had known a lot of psychiatrists over the years. Her father had been a psychiatrist. A great one. A famous one.

  “Tell me about your dream,” Dr. Stanton told Pam. He always called them dreams—never nightmares.

  Pam closed her eyes and her body seemed to settle even deeper into the comfortable couch.

  Really, she wondered, where did they get these couches? Was there like some kind of psychiatrist mail-order catalogue they purchased from?

  “It’s the same dream I keep having,” Pam said with her eyes still closed. “My mother is about to leave me. I’m eight years old again, and I know she is going to leave and I’m never going to see her again. She has already packed her bags. I can see clothes all over my mom and dad’s bedroom, all over the floor, like she tore them out of the closet and flung them all around the room. There are empty hangers in the closet where her clothes used to be. Somewhere my mother is yelling at my father in the house, but now I can’t find her. I’m scared that they are going to hit each other. Hurt each other. I run downstairs. I guess I think my mother and father might be in the basement for some reason …”

  Pam hesitated, and then she sighed. “And then I can’t remember any more. I know in the dream that my mom hasn’t left yet. It feels like there’s still some time for me to try and stop her from leaving me, to beg her to stay.”

  She paused for a minute, her eyes still closed, her body very still on Dr. Stanton’s couch. “I know I dream more after that, but I can’t ever remember any of it. I can never remember anything past that point.”

  Pam opened her eyes and sat up quickly on the couch. She felt frustrated, like she had come up to a wall of mist in her mind that she couldn’t see through.

  “I’m dreaming about the moment my mother left me and never came back,” she said. “And now my husband has left me and I worry about my daughter. She’s the same age I was when my mother left me. I just … just feel so bad for her. I don’t want her to go through what I went through; always waiting for him to return, hoping and praying that he will change his mind and come back. Blaming herself, thinking that she did something wrong.”

  “I’d like to try something,” Dr. Stanton said as he shifted in his chair slightly. “I’d like you to lie back down on the couch again and close your eyes.”

  Pam glanced at Dr. Stanton.

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “Please. Just lie back down on the couch and close your eyes.”

  Pam exhaled slowly and did as the doctor asked. She lay very still with her eyes closed.

  “Just relax, Pam.”

  She nodded.

  “I want to try some very light hypnosis.”

  “Okay,” Pam said without moving or opening her eyes.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Stanton told her. “I want you to keep your eyes closed and let your body relax. Let every muscle in your body slowly relax. I want you to focus only on your breathing and the sound of my voice. Nothing else matters right now … just let everything else slip away.”

  Pam inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, and then let it flow out of her lungs. Her breathing stayed deep and even, just how Dr. Stanton had taught her to breathe.

  “You’ve done this with me before,” Dr. Stanton said in his low and soothing voice. “There is nothing to worry about. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Pam could feel her body relaxing.

  “Very good, Pam,” Dr. Stanton whispered as he set his notebook and pen on the table beside his chair without a sound.

  “Now I want you to count backwards from ten,” Dr. Stanton said as he stood up quietly.

  “Ten,” Pam whispered. “Nine … eight …”

  Dr. Stanton bent down and reached behind his chair. He pulled out a small ax, its blade scalpel-sharp, the lethal edge winking in the sunlight that filtered throu
gh the closed venetian blinds over the window behind his desk.

  “Good, Pam. You’re doing very well,” he said as he stood beside his chair with the ax in his hand.

  Pam didn’t move; she lay on the couch with her eyes closed, her body relaxed. “Seven … six …” she whispered.

  Dr. Stanton crept towards the couch with the ax gripped in his hand and stood right behind Pam. Her blond hair was spilled over the puffy arm of the couch, her face smooth, her eyes closed. He lifted the ax up, ready to chop it down right into the middle of her face.

  “Five … four …” Pam whispered.

  Dr. Stanton swung the ax down …

  TWO

  … and Pam sat bolt-upright in her bed, stifling a scream that was caught in her throat.

  She looked around in panic.

  My bedroom, she thought. I’m in my bedroom.

  It was just a nightmare. The same nightmare she’d been having for a while now. In the recurring dream, she was always in Dr. Stanton’s office. He put her in a hypnotic trance. He had her count down backwards from ten. But then she was suddenly outside of her body at the same time and she watched Dr. Stanton get the small ax out from behind his chair. She watched helplessly in her dream as he walked over to her. She watched him stand behind her head that rested against the puffy arm of the couch. His face was so unemotional, he seemed so detached, like he was in a trance himself.

  And then he swung the ax down …

  Pam closed her eyes again as a shudder ran through her body. Her skin felt tingly, like a thousand spiders were crawling across her flesh.

  She opened her eyes again. Her breathing was slower now, her heartbeat calming down a little.

  She pulled the sheet off of her body and sat at the edge of the bed. She moved her bare feet around on the carpet until she found her slippers and then she slid her feet into them.

  It was raining outside, and the sound of the water tinkling against the window should be soothing, but the nightmare (dream—Dr. Stanton never called them nightmares, they were only dreams to be interpreted) still had her in its clutches.

  Pam glanced at the alarm clock next to her bed. Eight thirty a.m. Sarah must still be sleeping or she would’ve already snuck into the room and crawled in bed with her by now. Sarah was on summer break, and she had been out of school for a few days now, and every morning so far she had come into the bedroom to snuggle into the bed with her. Sometimes Pam would wake up to see Sarah lying next to her on her side, just staring at her until she woke up.

  And then Pam would tickle her until she squirmed out of bed.

  Eight thirty a.m.

  She wondered if it was too early to call Dr. Stanton and tell him that she’d had the nightmare (I mean dream) again. She had been having the dream on and off again for the last three months, ever since Doug had packed a bag and left her and Sarah without even so much as a note or a reason. Of course, Pam really knew the reason. She’d seen the phone number on his cell phone, she’d read the text messages. And when she’d confronted him about his cheating, he’d flown into a rage. And then a few weeks later, he was gone.

  Pam closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to think about that.

  She had already told Dr. Stanton about the dream many times now. And every time she apologized to him about dreaming him as an ax-wielding killer.

  Of course, Dr. Stanton wasn’t offended. But he believed that there was something more to her recurring dreams—a dream within a dream. He believed there was something about the dream of her mother leaving.

  “But why now?” Pam had asked him. “Why am I dreaming so much about my mother leaving me?”

  “The answer is kind of obvious,” he’d told her. “Your husband leaving you has triggered some deep-seated memories of your mother leaving you. It has opened the wound back up, so to speak.”

  And maybe he was right. Both abandonments were somewhat similar. Her mother had left her when she was eight years old without a note, without a kiss goodbye, without a screw you … nothing. And Pam had never heard from her again.

  And now her husband leaves just like her mother did. He packed a suitcase, took the bare necessities with him, and then he left. He left the money in the bank. He even left his car behind. It was like a car had stopped by the house (probably driven by his new girlfriend) and picked him up, and then they drove off to start their new life.

  The sound of the bedroom door opening startled Pam.

  Sarah slipped inside the door and smiled at her.

  “You can stop creeping,” Pam told her. “I’m already awake.”

  Sarah darted across the room and jumped into Pam’s arms.

  Pam grunted with the effort of catching her daughter, and then she squeezed her with a hug, rocking her back and forth. Then she nuzzled her neck and hair with her face, kissing her.

  “Stop,” Sarah squealed. “That tickles!”

  Pam let Sarah pull away. She stared at her daughter’s angel face. How could Doug ever leave an angel like Sarah?

  His loss, she thought. And good riddance.

  What if he came back? Would she let him back into their lives after being gone for three months with some woman? Could she? She wasn’t sure; and she didn’t want to dwell on it. She had a feeling he would be back some time in the near future with his hat in his hand, begging to come back. Probably after the tryst with whatever woman he was with was over.

  It wasn’t like she shouldn’t have seen this coming. They’d had their share of arguments and fights in the months before he left. He had become more and more angry with her, snapping at her about everything she did … even snapping at Sarah for no reason. And after she’d confronted him about his infidelity, he started to pick on her. Everything about her seemed to make him angry or drive him crazy. He was tired of what he called her “mental problems,” he was sick of her nightmares, and he didn’t like her seeing a psychiatrist.

  “Mom?” Sarah said, breaking her thoughts.

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You are?” Pam asked with feigned shock.

  Sarah nodded her head as she smiled. She had blond hair like Pam’s, but Sarah’s was still that child-like platinum blond.

  “Well, we should do something about that.”

  “How ‘bout pancakes?”

  “Sounds delicious,” Pam said and plopped back down on the bed. “Wake me up when you get done making them.”

  “Mo--oom,” Sarah sang out, grabbing at Pam’s hand and trying to pull her up from the bed.

  Pam still pretended like she was asleep, fake snoring.

  Sarah crawled into bed and Pam attacked her, tickling her again until she squealed with laughter.

  Finally, Pam stopped tickling Sarah and popped back up out of bed.

  She looked down at her daughter who was still on the bed, smiling and staring up at her with her big blue eyes.

  “Well, are you going to lay in bed all day or come help me with the pancakes?”

  THREE

  After breakfast, Pam called Dr. Stanton. His receptionist told Pam that he was busy with a patient so she left him a message. She already had a session scheduled for tomorrow, but she just wanted to talk to him for a few minutes. The dream still clung to her a little, and it still gave her a chill when she thought about it. But just being on the phone with Dr. Stanton’s secretary was already beginning to make her feel somewhat better.

  Sarah was watching Pam from the archway to the kitchen.

  Pam gestured at Sarah to hold on a minute, and then she walked deeper into the living room.

  “He said that maybe he would have some time around six o’clock this evening if this is an emergency,” the secretary told her on the phone with what Pam felt was a little bit of an edge to her voice.

  “No,” Pam heard herself saying. “It’s okay. It’s not really an emergency. I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon anyway.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thanks. Sorry to bother h
im.”

  “It’s no bother, ma’am,” the secretary said with that edge to her voice that said it was a bother to her.

  Pam walked back into the kitchen and hung up the phone. She felt a little silly for even calling the doctor.

  Sarah was still watching her.

  “So,” Pam said to her daughter. “What are we going to do all summer?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Go to the beach?”

  They only lived an hour and a half away from the beach, depending on the horrendous traffic of course.

  “Not today, sweetie,” Pam told her. “It’s raining.”

  “Then maybe tomorrow.”

  “I need to see the doctor tomorrow, and you’re going to stay at Amber’s house for a few hours.”

  “Then the day after that.”

  “Okay,” Pam said. She couldn’t help smiling. “We’ll make a day of it.”

  FOUR

  That night, after Sarah was tucked into bed, Pam went into her bedroom and sat down on the bed with her back against the headboard. She had the TV on at the other end of the room, but she had the sound turned all the way down.

  She slid her legs underneath the covers and turned on the lamp next to the bed. She opened a book, a historical romance that she was struggling to get through.

  But as she read, her mind drifted back to the nightmare from this morning. She knew that she would talk about the dream with Dr. Stanton tomorrow, and it would make her feel better, but right now the dream still chilled her to the bone and she wasn’t exactly sure why. It was one of those dreams that seemed so frightening in your mind when you were in the dream, but then it sounded a little silly when you spoke about it out loud. It was a kind of irrational fear, a nameless and shapeless fear behind the dream itself, like a darker and deeper evil hiding in the darkness.

  She wished she had power over her dreams. She had heard of people who knew they were dreaming and they could dream about whatever they wanted to. Maybe it was called lucid dreaming, but she wasn’t sure. If she had that kind of ability, she would definitely dream about something different, maybe even dream about the hunky Roderick in the book she was reading.