by Holly Hook
I tell Ned what we found. "What if someone came through, poked their head out, and went, 'oh, crap. We missed Wompitt?' They could be digging another tunnel towards us for all we know."
"I agree," Weslie says.
"She came up with that idea," I say. I don't want to make her sound like a wimp here. If she managed to face her fear and come down there with me, I'm not going to take the credit away from her. She deserves to have a little recognition.
Ned scratches the stubble on his chin. "It was blocked with a bunch of rocks?"
"Yes," I say. "About a hundred feet in or so. We couldn't go any farther than that."
"Were there any openings in the blockage that Dwellers could have gotten through?" he asks.
"I didn't see one," I say. "I checked. It looks like someone piled all those rocks there to block off the tunnel for whatever reason."
Ned turns and surveys the town again. Jaden's watching us. He hasn't touched his food as he seems to be waiting for us. He must be worried.
"I think," Ned says, "We will need to keep a close eye on this situation. I know what's under Wompitt. Wompitt sits right on top of stone and there's only several feet of dirt under us, so it is difficult to dig into without someone noticing. The stone under us is one of the reasons we chose to settle here. Whoever dug that tunnel ran into that stone and had to give up."
“Are you sure no one can dig in?” Antoine asks. “I mean, several feet of dirt might be enough to hide a tunnel, you know.”
“We would hear someone trying to dig their way in at night,” Ned says. He's getting defensive. “Don't tell anyone what you saw yet. Let us all eat our dinner and get to bed.” He waves us towards everyone else. We're out of their earshot and no one's really listening.
I get the sense that Ned is trying to prevent a panic. Like he's scrambling. He rubs his temples like he has a headache. I have one, too, and I brush dirt out of my hair. I can't even bathe until tomorrow morning. The waterfall's the only option.
"I will think more about this tomorrow," Ned says. "We have another work-filled day ahead of us. Eat, and go to bed." The anger is coming back. The dictator. He walks away. "Put more on the fire," he barks at someone. "Keep this very bright all night."
I look at Weslie. She shakes her head. "I don't understand him sometimes," she says, leaning close to me. "He acts like big macho man all in control, but other times...I think he's like a little kid and doesn't know what to do. His older brother left him here, after all. He's not someone who should be in charge.”
"I don't care," I say once Ned's out of earshot. "He shouldn't have made you go down there.” I'm ticked off for Weslie's sake. We both could have died and Ned wouldn't have cared.
"Let's eat and go to bed," she says, turning away. "I'll see you in the morning. I have guard duty again tonight. This is the second time this week. Ned just won't give us a break. It's like working a dead end job that you're never going to escape."
“Don't you want to escape?”
But Weslie's walking away and sitting next to Jaden. He has my notebook out and ready. I'm not sure I have the energy to tutor him tonight.
But I do. I have him writing words now. Actual words. At least he's learning fast. We sit there and I have him copy my writing way after everyone else clears the area and way after Weslie heads up onto the catwalk and replaces the rope ladder that Ned's thrown on the ground. Antoine follows and talks to her for some time. Even with the fire going, I can make out the magical glow of the galaxy overhead. There's no city lights around to spoil it. I can't help but wonder if we're in the same galaxy or if this is some faint, distant blob captured in some telescope image. Or if we're even in the same universe at all.
At last, Weslie shoots us a tired look and Jaden stands. “Bed,” he says, yawning.
“I agree. Tomorrow, we're doing four and five letter words. And longer sentences.”
“Agreed. But you have to show me some certain four letter words.” Jaden takes his lesson page with him and heads around the corner to wherever his cabin is.
“Agreed.”
I turn to go inside. I part the fur curtain in front of my door, letting the light shine inside. My bed's still as awesome as ever, with the yellow spotted fur blanket on top of the straw. I can't wait to dive into it, but before I do, I scan my floor.
No Dwellers.
No holes.
No movement.
I walk around on it, pacing. What if they dig up right into my cabin?
But Dwellers can't dig. Garrett said so. And they're not going to get through these planks.
Pit joins me. He's been gone all night. He rubs on my legs like he doesn't want me to go to bed.
“I'm not doing any adventures right now,” I tell him. “I've got to sleep.”
Or did Garrett lie to me, just in case I escaped and managed to settle here? He'd want me to feel secure if he's still bent on snatching me. And if he finds me again? He ordered the Dwellers to take me to their deepest, worst mine. He wants to do away with me ever since I stabbed him. Ever since I hurt him.
Ever since I did what my father did.
I wait for Melissa's voice to come, but it never does. I collapse into my bed and stare at the ceiling of the cabin. It lets in tiny slivers of the amazing starlight.
I breathe slower. Close my eyes. The rock barricade splays out behind my eyelids. It tumbles and thousands of Dwellers pile over, their eyes trained on me. The Dwellers blur into darkness that washes over me and drags me down into its depths.
"You are going to see your father today."
Mom stands in the living room, greeting me as I get off the bus. No. Trapping me. All relief I had from being home is gone. I'm ten years old. Fourth grade. Even though it's been almost two years since I've seen him last, I still don't want to go. The other kids aren't getting any better. Melissa spent the entire ride home telling all her friends around her how her dad is going to take her to the circus this weekend, and how my dad is in jail making tick marks on the wall. How I'm going to go home and sharpen my knives. And I can't say anything. I can't fight back. They'll just say I want to kill them.
Maybe I do.
No.
I don't.
They're just other kids.
"Mom, I don't want to go see him." I can go to my room and start doing some homework. I can escape. But Mom's standing between me and the hall. Worse, there are moving boxes in front of it, too, since we're packing up to go move in with Garrett. Where is he? He would never make me go and see my father. He'd never force me to go to that prison. I haven't even seen it before.
"You're going, sweetie. Just this once. Your father really wants to see you. He loves you and wants to see how you've grown. Believe me, you'll regret it later if you don't go and talk to him. And you'll be safe. There will be police right there, watching the two of you."
I don't want to see my father behind bars. It'll make Melissa's words true. I don't want to see the things that they talk about.
But Mom steps forward, takes my backpack full of homework, and sets it down on the living room table. I search around for Garrett, but he's not here. He must be at work. This is why Mom chose today.
"You're going," she says, and guides me to the car.
I keep my hands folded all the way there and focus on that. Mom drives and drives and drives across open fields and through woods that remind me of where I had to go to summer camp. The prison is about an hour away, right away from any towns and somewhere back in the woods. There's a sign warning us not to pick up hitchhikers. This is the prison area, all right. I wonder if I'll see my father in an orange jumpsuit, with his thumb in the air and begging to be let back into our lives.
But there's nothing there. The woods are creepy out here and it's getting dark already since it's winter. The trees' branches all look like evil fingers grasping at the sky. I keep praying for Mom to get off any exit and turn us around, insisting that it's getting to be about dinner time. The silence in the car presses closer and
closer on me and makes me want to scream.
"Can we please go home?"
"After you see him. It won't be as bad as you think."
My stomach ties in knots. I'm sick. I don't want to see this. I don't want it to be real.
But Mom's forcing me. It's like the time she made me go a summer camp. At least she hasn't made me do that ever again. I even got to take dancing this year like I wanted. Garrett convinced her that I needed to have some fun after school and I love dancing. I hope I get to take it next year, too. He even paid for the lessons.
We get off the highway. The woods are even thicker here. Scarier.
And after we drive another ten minutes, the trees part and the prison looms ahead.
It's a low concrete building in a huge field, complete with guard towers and a chain-link fence that would cut anyone to pieces who tried to climb over. I make out the outline of a guard sitting inside the shack where a gate's closed. I pray that he doesn't open it for us. That he tells us it's too late and we have to drive back home. That visiting hours are over for the day, for the month, for the year.
But he leans out of the shack and waves us closer.
Mom tells him her name and why we're here. I try to shrink back in the seat and disappear. The guard's looking at me. He's a nice man. At least, he seems like one. He's got a badge on and a gun, but it's leaning against the wall of his shack like it's there for show.
And then he waves us in and says something about an officer who will meet us.
"Mom," I insist. My stomach turns. We're inside now. What will the kids at school think if they know this is how I spent my afternoon? What will they say?
"Mom!" I sit up straight now and grab the back of her chair.
"Pit!"
His cold nose rubs against my skin and I wake.
The thatched ceiling of my cabin spreads out in front of me. Pit's standing on my bed, sniffing at me. The fire still crackles outside and a decent amount of light filters in around the curtain that's hanging in my doorway. There are still stars above me, spread out over the sky above. It must still be late at night or early morning at the earliest.
But Pit takes a step back on my bed and approaches again, like a cat waking me up and wanting to be fed. Talia's cat, Mr. Sunshine, used to do that to her every morning. She'd joke that he was her hairy alarm clock and the one on her nightstand was just the backup. Pit's acting the same.
"Come on," I say, pushing him off the bed. He jumps down and then back up again. "Come on! I need to sleep." He's not whimpering like he was when the centipede was approaching our cave. This is different.
But he's so...insistent.
Then I remember.
The tunnel Weslie and I explored. The one that came up to the surface. The one that almost got into Wompitt.
Pit's behavior might have something to do with that. He's smart. I can trust him.
There could be more and Pit's here to warn me about it. He showed me where the hole in the fence was last night.
I sit up. Find my jeans and sweater, and put them back on. I smell like dirt. Literally. Some of it's still stuck to the fibers of my clothing.
Pit jumps off the bed and stays off. He heads for the door and pulls the curtain back with his nose. Come on, he says. Come on. I have something to show you.
"Okay," I say. I wonder if I'll get yelled at for not being in bed this late like I'm some little kid. I wonder if Ned ever sleeps or if he stays up all night like some wizard, watching everyone. He could, for all I know. The man must never sleep with as high as his blood pressure is.
Pit walks out of the cabin and stands by the fire. His long ears are up and he looks more like a rabbit than a dog now. His magenta spots shine with the light from the flames and ripple almost like they're liquid. He's so cool. I'm glad that these people have found a way to tame these guys.
"Where to?" I ask. I'm glad to have him back.
Pit walks towards the wall of the town. Weslie's standing up there, leaning on the wood of the fence and looking out into the night. A torch burns next to her, casting her red hair in a strange glow. On the other side of the gate stands a man who has gray in his dark hair. He's also looking out into the night with his hands on his chin, like he's trying to hold his head up. These people need more sleep. I wish Ned would recognize that.
The rope ladder hangs down from the catwalk. Pit walks towards that and I start to climb it.
"Hello?" Weslie asks. She sounds so groggy and out of it.
"It's me," I say. "I'm breaking curfew."
"There is no curfew here," she says. Weslie sounds so glad to see me. I wonder what kind of company that man up there is. "Come on up. It gets so boring up here all night. Unless you're an astronomy buff. They should put Antoine up here more often. I swear."
I wonder why Pit wanted me to come up here with the guards so bad. There's no danger...is there? I stop on the ladder and listen, but no Dwellers skitter around outside. There's no scream from a new Megapede or anything. There's just Weslie and this other guard and a huge, endless expanse of black.
"Thanks for going down there first," Weslie says. There's heavy guilt holding her voice down. "Thanks. I know I should have gone since I'm a little older, and it wasn't fair for Ned to send you down there when he wasn't sure what the tunnel was. He should have gotten a shovel, dug out that hole, and gone down there himself."
She sounds bitter. Hateful. Ned has passed his guilt to her and I don't blame her.
"It's fine. You were having a panic attack."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You were down in those mines longer than me. You have every right to have one when you go underground."
"It's just that--" she starts, and coughs. The fire on the moss torch next to her whooshes with the force of it. "It's just that," she says, “Well, you know how I told Ned that it must be true that you killed the Megapede when you first got here?"
"Yeah. Why?"
Weslie takes a breath. This is hard for her to talk about. "Once in a while, the Megapede would get into the mines. They normally live in the caves below that, but once in a while, they get turned around on their way to the surface. And they get in the mineshafts. The Dwellers even flee from it. It only happened twice in my time working down there, but it was twice too many times. The first time, the Dwellers let us run to an upper shaft. And the second time--"
"Weslie," I say. "Whatever happened, I'm sorry."
She searches the dark. "My brother and I were mining together that day," she says. "The Dwellers put us down there, alone in a lower tunnel. They're always standing guard when you work, Elaine, just out of the torch light so that if you try to run, they catch you. The only time you can is when something horrible happens. Like a Megapede getting into your tunnel.
"Scott and I heard it coming too late. They don't scream underground. They only do that when they reach the surface. But we heard its legs. It was like listening to a million bones rubbing together in the dark. Or a million teeth. It was the worst sound I ever heard in my life.”
I shudder. I know that sound. It's what a painful, horrible death sounds like.
"And then we heard the Dwellers running. Fleeing. They were leaving us there in the tunnel to deal with that thing. My brother and I only had our tools to fight with. We started to run, too, to follow the Dwellers, but we weren't fast enough. Megapedes can move fast, almost as fast as the Dwellers themselves. As far as our masters were concerned, we were a sacrifice so they wouldn't have to die." A single tear rolls down her cheek.
I know where this is going and my chest tightens with what Weslie is about to tell me.
But I remain silent. Take a breath. Wait for her to continue on her own time.
"We ran, but it was catching us. It was the first time the Dwellers had left us alone down there, had let down their guard. My brother was joking and trying to keep me calm. He kept saying maybe this was our jailbreak. But the sound of those legs just got louder. Louder. And then, my brother must have realiz
ed that it was going to catch us. He stopped and pushed me forward, up an incline that led up to the upper levels. He screamed at me to run. To go for the surface. I turned around. I saw my brother there, pickaxe raised, facing down the Megapede that was in the tunnel. It reared up and I saw what it was like on the underside. Those pulsing, green stripes. Those wiggling legs. Those jaws. My brother was staring right at it. He didn't know it would make him pass out. But he slumped to the ground. There was nothing I could do, Elaine." She's talking faster now. "Nothing. It jumped on him and I heard it biting him. All I could do was run. And run. The Dwellers were nowhere to be found. But I could hear it biting into my unconscious brother, over and over and over again. You never want to hear something like that!"
Weslie collapses onto the wooden fence and buries her face in her hands.
And sobs.
All I can do is stand there and hug her from the side. "I didn't know," I say. "I didn't know." What do I say? "Your brother wanted you to get out."
"My brother is the only reason I'm here," she says. "If he hadn't...if he hadn't...the Megapede would have eaten both of us right there in the dark. I wouldn't be here right now. I shouldn't be here.. He was brave. I wasn't. I just ran."
Run, Elaine, Shawn shouts.
Get out of here.
His words rise in my mind again, telling me to leave him. To leave Travis, too.
"Weslie, I get it."
She lifts her face from her hands. Her face is a wet mess. Her eyes, red.
"I get it," I repeat. "I had to leave my boyfriend and my other friend to the Dwellers. They told me to run. It's why I'm here. If I hadn't, I'd be right down in that mine right now, too." I know my situation isn't as bad as Weslie's. Shawn and Travis might still be alive. "I'm just a big coward."
"You're not," Weslie says. She wipes a single tear away from her cheek. "You are not. You climbed into that hole out of your own free will. In the dark. I never would have been able to do it if you hadn't gone down first. And you killed the Megapede. I never would have done that, either. You're a lot tougher than you think you are."