Monday morning EARLY (5 AM) a frantic Didier woke up Ray and Adam and babbled something incoherent about Kathy "missing" and "being in trouble" and "drugged" and that she'd been taken to a rehab facility in Chicago. Ray and Adam thought he was nuts, possibly paranoid-scizophrenic, and that Kathy could take care of herself. Besides, we had just seen her last night. Didier wouldn't explain much more, he was in such a hurry to go, so we let him and went back to bed.
[Didier roused Hazel and Jason and they agreed to go with him to Chicago. About an hour out, he attempted to call Ray again (who was still asleep), but again he was incoherent and Ray was unmoved. Driving like a bat out of hell, Didier was pursued by law enforcement vehicles. Instead of pulling over, he sped up. When they finally got him off the road (with a road block), he insisted they must be looking for someone else with a vehicle just similar to his. He kept insisting "I don't have time for this" and "Make it quick." They gave him a stack of tickets for assorted violations. Didier called Kathy's supervisor and asked him to explain to the State Patrol guys what was going on. Naturally, they didn't buy it, and ended up taking Didier into custody. Jason and Hazel, with Jason driving, followed them back into town to the jail.]
By about this time, Adam and I were up and showered and dressed and enjoying a leisurely breakfast at the nearby IHOP. This time when Didier called me, he asked how one gets out of jail. I very nearly hung up on him. He summarized his pursuit and subsequent arrest. Trying to keep my voice level, I advised him to call his lawyer, and disconnected. Adam and I discussed the matter and decided not to do anything: We fully believed Kathy could take care of herself, but if it was true that she had been flown to a rehab center in Chicago, then she was being well taken care of. We decided that with Didier in custody and Kathy under the watchful eye of hospital staff, the world was a safer place.
Over breakfast we noticed an article in the paper stating that the body of one Gary Augustine, 19, had been found near the lake the night before. The cause of death was not given, but they said drowning was suspected.
Thinking about what might still be down in the caverns, Adam called Elizabeth and within an hour we met her at her house. She seemed much more lucid than she had the past two days. As Adam talked to her, I studied the paintings she had in her living room: abstract things-I've never understood such art. Then for a second, looking at an abstract design in red paint, the words "Welcome to the Twilight Land" seemed to form out of the jumble of patterns. I blinked, and it was gone. But later Adam said he'd observed the same thing. I didn't ask Elizabeth specifically about the words, but asked about the paintings in general. She said she was the artist, and that she found painting therapeutic. She said nothing about messages, hidden or otherwise.
Adam wanted to explore the caves a little more. Much as I didn't want to, I had to admit it was probably a good idea. We purchased supplies and Elizabeth agreed to come along. Adam's concern was based on a comment Kathy had made, that the dark, cold, oppressive feeling they'd had in the cave was just like the one she had experienced in the mine shaft in Colorado when they went to retrieve the Sky Disk. Could these two things be connected somehow? And could there still be anything down there? Adam proposed going down just to see if they could sense that cold, dark, oppressive feeling. I opted for staying at the cave entrance and keeping watch.
They explored the tunnels in the direction Adam remembered escaping from the day before. They found slime from the creature, but no real sense anything was still there. There was an area that was still unnaturally cold, but it seemed to be thawing, as though it would take a while for the cave to return to its natural temperature, now that whatever-it-was was gone. Then they explored up the tunnel the way the creature had come from, and found something very interesting.
They found a room with some kind of distilling aparatus set up, with propane-powered heating coils, glass tubes, and a small side room full of bales of some kind of dried leaves that were not marijuana. With the apparatus was a mason jar full of some kind of dark red liquid that looked suspiciously like blood. Bingo.
Elizabeth found a lid for the jar and Adam took some of the leaves, they took pictures of everything, and came back up. We decided to call in the local authorities and let them deal with the drug-making apparatus, not mentioning the jar of blood. We also got our pictures developed, got double prints, and shared them with the police. Elizabeth agreed to show the police where the cave was, we gave our statements, and headed back to Chicago.
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