by Jack Ketchum
"This is no joke?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"Let's get Kim."
I handed him a flashlight and we ran down the hall. Our feet sounded heavy on the old rough floorboards. Beams of light swooped and skittered along the walls.
Kim was exactly as I'd left her. Except now she looked scared. I went after the rope around her wrists and Steve freed her legs.
"Jesus! What's going on? It was sort of fun till I heard you guys running around out there-" Her words played out into something like understanding. Her voice went harsh and bloodless. "Where's Casey?"
"Missing."
"There's a hole in the wall down there and some kind of tunnel. I found her book bag there. Two of the flashlights were in it. The other was lying in the tunnel. I don't think she left it there on purpose."
She looked at me. I could tell it wasn't registering with her.
"There's something in there, Kim. I don't know who or what but something. I think it's got Casey."
She swallowed. "Clan, please don't fool with me."
"I'm not fooling."
"Oh, my god."
"We've got to get help," said Steve.
"No."
I snapped it out at them. The two of them just stared at me. I could feel panic dart suddenly between us like bats in an unfamiliar room. I tried to explain, to keep it under control.
"I don't want to leave her. You understand? It's too late. By the time we got back here, she could be ...."
"Wait," said Kim. "Back up a minute. How do you know there's anybody in there?"
"How do I...?"
"Yes! How the hell do you know there's anybody in there with her? If she's alone we can just go after her, can't we? If she's just hurt or something?"
"She's not alone, Kim."
"How do you know?"
I remembered. And remembering must have showed on me. That feeling of something just out of reach in the dark. That terrible communicaiion.
"Believe me. I know."
^^H
I watched her stare into my eyes and shudder.
"I felt it there, Kim. Very close to me. And it was not like us. It
I saw them exchange glances. I knew what they were thinking. If it was as bad as I seemed to think, Casey could already be dead. But for me that didn't change a thing. Not as long as I still didn't know.
"You've got it," said Kim. "But what can we do? We don't have guns.
We don't have anything."
"There's stuff in the cellar."
I guess I'd made the rope too tight on her. She rubbed her wrists hard to restore circulation. She winced and looked at Steve.
And for a moment I felt their confusion. Real fear will do that to you root you dumb and empty to the spot, bankrupt of ideas. I could feel a whirling inside me.
"Look," said Steve finally, "I think you're right. We have to try to find her. But we won't be doing any good going off half-cocked, will we. I mean, what if this is just some elaborate asshole practical joke of hers? You know Casey. Whatifshe'sjustspoofingyou? You didn't actually see anything. How can you be sure?"
Try mixing terror and frustration together sometime. You get a fine rage. I felt like I was exploding. My hands were making fists on his shirt collar before I even knew what I was up to.
"You want to see the fucking joke? You want to see it? Come on!"
I dragged him to his feet. He didn't fight me. I pushed and dragged him down the hall, anger pouring out of me in huge burly waves. Kim followed, trying to get me off him. She hadn' the muscle for it. When we got to the stairs, I shoved him to one side and marched down in front of them, through the kitchen and down into the cellar.
The anger made me stupid and careless. If anyone had been waiting for us it would have been a very simple matter bringing me down. I was lucky, though. The basement was empty.
I waited for them at the foot of the stairs. I walked them past the piles of storage and threw my beam on the hole in the wall. Seeing it made the fury rumble up again. I grabbed Steve by the back of the neck. I forced him down in front of it.
"Smell it," I hissed at him. "Smell it, goddamn you! Inside. That's where I found her bag. She's in there. You think it's fucking funny?
You think that's a joke?"
I saw something tumble off his cheek.
"Clan, I..."
I let him go. He pulled away. I'd wounded him, all right. I watched him wipe his eyes. I felt great and wonderful. I felt like a damn bully.
Kim moved between us and faced me.
"Are you through now?"
Her voice was ice water. It was good for me and bad too. The shame was as strong as the anger had been. Nothing Steve had said was particularly out of line. It was only reasonable from his point of view. Another time it might have been typically Casey. I couldn't blame him for wanting to believe this was like the others. He hadn't sat in that tunnel like I had. He had no way of knowing.
"Clan ... I... I was trying to say..."
"I'm sorry, Steve. I'm just scared, I guess, that's all."
He stopped stammering.
"I was trying to say that I'll help you. Only..."
"Only he's not quite as dumb as you are, Daniel. Suppose you're absolutely right. Suppose there's someone or something in there. Then suppose we go in, and it's something big enough so that three rusty knives can't quite handle it. What happens then? Sorry, Casey? We tried?
"I don't think that's good enough, Daniel. Not good enough for Casey, or for us."
I looked at them. There was no need to apologize further. They knew.
They were pretty good people and they knew.
Her voice was calmer now.
"Look," she said. "I could take the car and go for the police. You and Steve could stay here and do whatever you can. I can drive as fast as either of you and I'm a lot more persuasive. But I'm telling you, I don't like the look of that hole. Not one bit. I don't think you should try to go in there."
"We've got to."
"What else can we do?" said Steven.
"Stay here. In case she comes out again. You are not heroes for Christ's sake! I want you to promise me you won't try."
"But what if she..."
"What if she NOTHING! You don't know what's in there; you don't knowifthedamnthingcavedinonher! Jesus! Could we please stop arguing?
We're wasting time."
"Okay," I said. "Go."
"Promise me."
Steven hesitated, glanced at me. I nodded.
"I promise," he said. "All right."
"Clan?"
"We'll be here. You know the way all right? You can find the way back to the car?"
"I'm already there.
I put my flashlight beam on the staircase for her and watched her run up the stairs and disappear around the corner through the kitchen. A moment later we heard the front door open and then slam shut again.
The house was silent.
"I'm sorry, Steve. I mean it."
"It's okay. I... care for her too."
We stood there together listening, hoping for sounds behind the wall.
Woman sounds. Alive sounds.
There weren't any.
It seemed as though a longtime passed. But in the rational part of me!
know it wasn't longa tall It was the standing there that made it seem so, listening to our heartbeats pulse down into something a little more like normal, staring into the dark corners of the room, everywhere seeing Casey.
But Kim was as good as her word. In a while we heard the car start up outside and two long blasts on the horn. They sounded very far away to me.
"What are we going to do?" whispered Steve.
"What do you want to do?"
He stared at me a moment and then bared his teeth, the best approximation of a smile he could manage at the time. I gave him one back that had to be just as bad. My guess is we looked like a couple of wolves in feral display.
"I'm not going to like waiting," he said.
"It's a half hour into town."
P "Twenty minutes if you push it. So what do you think? "I think we should have a look inside." "I was hoping you'd say that." He shrugged. "I know you were. I'd been very much hoping I didn't." We went through the stuff on the floor.
It was good to do that. It gave you a sense of purpose, of something leading to something, of potency and judgment. We were quiet and thorough and very content to be rooting around in there.
Personally I liked the pitchfork.
There were two tines missing on the left side but the head fit soundly into the shaft, so it didn't wobble, and the shaft was long enough to keep whoever we were liable to meet a good few feet a way. Steven found an axe handle. It was sturdy, with about five pounds of weight.
The knives were all rusty and useless. We decided to go with what we had.
We stood there looking ready.
We weren't ready.
I knew what he wanted to say to me because I had the same thing to say to him: are you sure about this?
Neither of us uttered it.
There was no way to feel good about it, no way at all, but jesus, it was Casey in there, the girl I'd made love to and listened to and watched with growing pleasure for a long time now. The woman who'd told me, finally, some of the reasons for what she was, who saw me as friend and lover. Sothatthehookwassunkdeep. Iwasn't about to abandon her.
As for Steve, I suppose he had his reasons too.
I know he did.
I'm trying to explain this now.
Because it wasn't very smart, what we did.
When you're whole and unharmed, no matter how scared you are there's always thefeelingthat nobody's going to touch you, really. It's only when the pain begins that you realize you're vulnerable. By then it's too late. By then it's a matter of getting out alive, that's all. But before that you jerk yourself off a little. Your mind does a little survey and there you are, strong, intact. So what's to worry? Your body gets insulted: have I ever let you down in a pinch? Guess not.
And, knees knocking, you plunge right in. Thrilled. Invulnerable. To get strafed by the firepower of your worst nightmares.
People are idiots, basically.
HYoung people worst of all.
Because kids don't believe in death. They have to be taught in order to believe-and the teacher is always disease or gaping holes in the flesh. Wounds. Pain. That usually comes later in life, but it comes eventually.
All the heroes are children.
So we two, playing with makeshift bats and sharp objects, went inside.
Just a little at first. In that first passageway there was only room to go one at a time, so I led the way, pitchfork always leading me a little, flashlight in my other hand. I could always feel Steven right behind me, crawling up over my ankles half the time, in fact, keeping contact. It felt really good having him there too.
When we turned the corner the passage opened up a bit. But there still wasn't room to gu two abreast. So when he started to move up on me I waved him back again. I didn't want to feel cramped in there any more than I had to.
Casey's flashlight was up ahead. I knew when Steven saw it because I heard him groan a little. It sounded very loud in there.
The wind was colder but not so forceful as before. The stink was still bad, though. I wondered what Steve was thinking, encountering it full blast for the first time. I wondered if it was making him sick. You think weird things at times like that, irrelevant things really, as though your concentration can't handle the sudden strain. I found myself wondering how his whites were holding up. Actually thinking about laundry. It was stunning to me.
one
kne mis; awa
I put my flashlight down and tried Casey's. It was dead. I put it in front of my own beam and saw that the clear plastic head was broken, splintered with tiny webbings. Just behind the plastic the aluminum backing was deeply dented in two places roughly opposite one another.
As though gripped by a powerful hand or pair of jaws.
I handed it back to Steve. There wasn't any need to speak. I knew he'd find the same things I had-the dents were impossible to miss. So was their meaning. Somebody had taken the flashlight away from her.
And they did not do it gently.
I heard him put it down beside him. I picked up my flashlight and started to move on. Just ahead a seam of lighter-colored rock
IDE AND SEEK
caught my eye. Most of what we were crawling through was a grayish black. But this was white. Sandstone or something. Flecked with red.
Tiny dots of red no bigger than the head of a pin.
Glistening.
I put my finger to it and it scraped away. It was thick and moist and cold. Blood. I looked closer at the area directly ahead of and to the sides of me.
The wall was sprayed with it. A fine dusting of Casey's blood. Of the life in her.
On the ground, about an inch from my left hand, I saw a small pool of it the size of a quarter.
From now on, I thought, we'd have a trail to follow. We'd be crawling through Casey's blood. Abstract it.
Get it away from you. That's it. Let only the coldness in, the anger.
"What is it?" "Blood here." "Oh my god."
"Only a little. Not too bad."
I wouldn't have bought it myself. And neither did he.
"We'll get him, Steve. I'm going to put this pitchfork right up his ass."
We weren't careless. We moved slowly along those fifteen feet or so to that second blind turning, slowly and carefully, under control.
I kept wondering why none of us had heard her scream. It must have happened very quickly. Either that or for some reason it had been impossible to scream. But there should have been something, some warning. I scanned the walls, looking for more blood. There hadn't been enough of it to indicate a neck wound. So what had silenced her?
Why did you come here, Casey? You must have smelled the death inside.
I did. How could you have done this to yourself, to me, to all of us?
Nothing you've told me can explain this thing to me. No rape, no seduction, no death, no guilt. You must have known. Suspected at least. Why fling your life around like a pocketful of change? It
makes no sense. It never has. It must run very deep, as deep as blood and bone, much deeper than even you knew.
We watched and listened. Even tasted the air I think for some scent of him. But I didn't think I'd be taken unawares. There had been too much connection between us before. In that black war of nerves I had absorbed too deep a sense of him. I'd know when he was near. And this time he'd know I'd come to kill him.
Still I was careful. I knew enough not to trust sixth senses. I was trusting to care and brains and muscle-and sharp contact. And to Steven too, my backup. Moving along with a will for it behind me.
Look out, I thought.
You've made both of us damned unhappy.
I refused to look for more blood along that track. I tried to push back all thoughts of Casey. I didn't want them weakening me.
I thought I was being very strong and clever.
By the time we reached the end of that section the palms of my hands were dappled red.
The walls opened up into a cavern.
The room was circular, roughly, about twelve feet in diameter. Its walls were high, at least fifteen feet or more. In its center lay a wide pool of stagnant water, gray, cloudy-looking. Water bled off the ceiling and dripped back into ita steady, sharp echo.
The floor was strewn with bones.
Hundreds of them, many cracked and broken.
There were so many it made them hard to identify. Piles, scattered everywhere. I saw fish heads, crab shells, the thin delicate skulls of birds. Others were a whole lot larger. Dogs? Maybe. I remembered that day long ago when we'd peered into the house and watched the carcasses come out one by one. It was possible they were dogs.
It was also possible they were bigger game.
"What is all this?" whispered Steven.
"I don't know."