Relic

by Gretchen McNeil

  “Obviously.” Frankie brushes by, shouldering me none too gently as she makes a beeline for Jack. “This place is breathtaking. Thank you so much for bringing me here.”

  I roll my eyes. “Us, Frankie. There are like eight of us.”

  “Holy shit, dude!” Rob bounds into the enormous cavern. “How fucking awesome is this?”

  “Right?” Jack says.

  Graham swings his light around. “No one’s going to believe it.”

  “That’s what camera phones are for,” Terrence says. Flashes ignite the darkness. In the brief burst of light, I see Terrence near the wall, panning his camera phone around the cavern, and half wish I’d thought to bring mine. “We’re like the first people here in a hundred years.”

  “Except for those college students,” Sonya says.

  “Close enough.” Terrence’s flashes speed up. “We’ll be famous.”

  “You think?” Graham asks.

  “Of course,” Terrance says. “We’re modern explorers. Like Captain Cook in uncharted seas.”

  “Didn’t he get eaten by cannibals?” I ask.

  Terrence clears his throat. “Details.”

  “Check this out!” Rob cries.

  All the Maglite beams race across the cave to where Rob stands in front of what looks to be another tunnel.

  “Let’s see where it leads,” Graham suggests.

  “Isn’t that where we came in?” Greer asks.

  “Here’s another one!” Jack is on the other side of the oblong cavern, beside a dark archway.

  “Or is that where we came in?” Greer sounds confused.

  “No,” Frankie says with an exasperated sigh. She swings around. “We came in over there.” Only her flashlight illuminates solid rock, no tunnel.

  “You sure about that?” I ask. I love it when Miss Know-It-All is wrong.

  “Huh,” she says, still examining the spot she thought we came in. “I could have sworn . . .”

  “Here are two more,” Terrence says.

  I slowly rotate the flashlight around the cave. “One, two, three, four,” I count the tunnel entrances out loud. “Well, one of them must lead to daylight.”

  “What do we do?” Greer asks.

  “Four tunnels,” Jack says decisively, “eight of us. We’ll split up and see where they lead.”

  “Split up?” Sonya asks. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  I don’t blame her. Every horror-movie slaughter begins with people breaking into small groups. “Maybe we should stick together.”

  “This isn’t a slasher flick.” Rob laughs. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Jack says. “Then we’ll all meet back here. Sound good?”

  “But—” Sonya begins.

  Before she can finish her thought, Terrence takes her hand in his and pulls her toward a tunnel. “It’ll be fun!” he says. “Come on.”

  I watch Sonya stumble along after Terrence and disappear through the tunnel, while Frankie shimmies up to Jack. “I’ll be your partner,” she says with enough innuendo in her tone that I want to rip her face off with my bare hands.

  “You’re with me, Princess,” Rob says, dragging Frankie away from my boyfriend and into a darkened tunnel.

  “I’m going to kick her ass one of these days,” I say to Jack.

  “I’d pay money to see that,” he says.

  “Me too,” Graham adds.

  “Gross.” Greer grabs her twin brother by the arm. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  “You’ve got to admit,” Jack says, still staring after Frankie and Rob, “she’s got a pair on her.”

  I bristle at the admiration in his voice. “And I don’t?” I can’t help being peeved, especially considering how blatantly she’s been hitting on him in front of me.

  Jack sighs. “Do you want me to tell you you’ve got a giant, elephantine sack? Fine. You do.” He places his hands on my hips. “Happy?”

  I shake him off. “What am I, twelve? You don’t need to placate me.”

  “Baby, don’t be like that.”

  I know I’m being the “irrational girlfriend,” but despite Jack’s casual attitude, this subject is hitting too close to my insecurities.

  “You know what, Jack?” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Frankie’s not the only one on this trip with an enormous set of balls.” And without another word, I turn toward the last tunnel and march off alone into the depths of the earth.

  TWELVE

  I BARREL INTO THE DARKNESS, HEEDLESS OF THE POSSIBLE dangers of the abandoned mine. At the moment, I don’t care if I fall down a forgotten shaft or crack my skull open on a low-hanging rock. All I care about is proving to Jack that I can be just as fearless as his ex-girlfriend.

  Which is stupid, I know, but I can’t help it. Jack’s never given me any reason to be jealous of her, and I realize it’s my own insecurity fueling my anger. I slow my pace, feeling foolish. Why am I so hung up on Frankie? Just because she’s transferred to Davis for the fall? I should be confident enough in myself—and my relationship—to not give two shits.

  Except I do.

  I take a deep breath and run my flashlight over the floor of the tunnel. I’ve gone maybe fifty feet, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the one we came down. The ceiling is higher, the walls closer to me, and the ground is strewn with tennis ball–sized rocks that make it difficult to maintain my footing. I’m not sure if I’d been hoping we’d picked the exit in this game of creepy cave roulette, or if I actually wanted to prove to both Jack and myself that I was as brave as I pretend to be, but a sense of uneasiness spreads over me in this damp, dark hole.

  I pause midstep. Damp? That’s weird. Since we arrived, everything about the old Bull Valley Mine has been parched, dry, entirely devoid of any moisture, but as I stand listening in the stillness of the cave, I can distinctly hear the sound of dripping water, and the air smells like wet newspaper.

  I swing my flashlight toward the wall, and notice with a start that the rock looks slick and shiny. With a tentative hand, I graze the striated surface and pull away, rubbing my fingertips together.

  They’re wet.

  What had Frankie said? Sandstone, then shale, then limestone below the lake. If the walls are wet, that means somehow we’ve descended beneath the water level, which is, at this very moment, seeping in through crevices, slowly filling the mine. Equal parts that’s so cool and get me the fuck out of here.

  “Jack!” I cry, turning back the way I came. “You have to see this.”

  Silence.

  “Jack?”

  The only response is the thundering of blood in my ears as my heart shifts into overdrive.

  “This isn’t funny,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m only half expecting him to respond with a wicked laugh from the darkness, but as I stand there, ears straining to hear anything other than the slow drip of water and the pounding of my own heart, I can feel the fear wash over me like a veil of cobwebs, sticking to my face, my hair, my skin. My palms begin to sweat even while my hands have gone ice-cold, and perspiration bubbles up on my lip as the panic of being alone in the dark sets in.

  Calm down. All I have to do is retrace my steps and head back into the main cavern. Jack will probably be there snickering at me, and if not, I’ll just wait for everyone else to return. Fifteen minutes isn’t that long.

  I take a deep breath and edge back the way I came. But I only get a few feet before my flashlight hits a wall.

  “What the hell?” I blurt out loud. There absolutely, positively should not be a solid mass of rock in front of me. I literally just walked down this shaft like sixty seconds ago. Rock walls don’t appear out of thin air.

  Or do they?

  Don’t be stupid. Clearly, I’m disoriented by the darkness and instead of doubling back, I’ve accidentally moved deeper into the mine. I mean, it’s a freaking tunnel, not a labyrinth. One way in, one way out. I turn slowly, tracing the walls with my beam and realize that I’m at some kind of de
ad end.

  See? Totally nothing to freak out about. This is just an unfinished shaft. The miners probably started to blast it into the hillside, realized there were no copper veins in the limestone, and abandoned it.

  I do a one-eighty and confidently head back toward the cavern. At least I know I’m going the right way this time.

  The tunnel is longer than I thought, stretching before me into the black. I come to a sharp bend that I don’t remember at all, but I push on. I must not have been paying attention in my annoyance with Jack. I was so ticked off I was practically speed walking, and covered more ground than I realized.

  Either that or the walls are moving.

  Stop it, Annie.

  I catch a slight echo to the soft patter of my shoes against the earth, offset by half a second. An echo, just like we experienced in the main cavern. Does that mean I’m close? I walk faster, suddenly desperate to be out of the close confines of the abandoned shaft. The air smells stagnant, and my shoes slip on the wet stones, but I press on, expecting to feel cool air on my face any moment as I emerge into the openness of the cave.

  But I don’t. I’m still in the tunnel, which feels smaller than it did a minute ago, as if the walls are closing in on me.

  What the hell?

  I pause, shining my light along the wall of the tunnel, trying to determine how long it stretches. There’s no way I went this far.

  It takes me a moment to realize that I can still hear the echo of footsteps behind me.

  Only I’m not moving.

  “Jack!” I cry, spinning around. He should be there. I heard footsteps right behind me. But as my light pans the tunnel, it’s totally empty.

  “If you are messing with me, I’m going to kill you.” I’m trying to sound brave, but even I can hear the tremor in my voice. I cling to the hope that Jack is going to step into the beam of my light, grinning ear to ear. Or that Rob and Frankie will come around the bend. Or the Lake Patrol. Or anyone who isn’t the creepy fisherman who attacked me last night, or Terrence’s legendary Man of Squaw Creek.

  That’s when I see it. Just a fleeting movement from left to right, blacker than the darkness in the cave. The shadow darts across the tunnel, pauses, then crosses again, closing in.

  Shadows don’t jump from wall to wall. And they don’t occupy space.

  There’s someone—or something—in the cave with me.

  And I don’t care who the fuck it is. I turn and run.

  I can hear the faint steps behind me. Large, hollow. Whatever is following me sounds massive, and yet I can’t feel the reverberations of his footfall. Like he’s not even touching the ground.

  That’s impossible. All of this is impossible. If there’s something down here, it’s just an animal. A bear maybe. Dangerous, but not mysterious.

  Are you sure about that?

  I think of the dismantled wall of glittery pink stones and Terrence’s comment: Was it built to keep people out or to keep something in?

  Holy fuck, what the hell is down here?

  I race forward, light bouncing around the cave walls, in a panic. My lungs burn, my legs struggle on the slick stones. My wrist smashes against a jagged rock protruding from the wall, but I hardly even register the pain. The thing behind me sounds closer than before: its pounding footfall thunders in my ears, and there’s a putrid stench in the air, like raw meat that’s been left in the trash bin for too long. I push myself to move faster, desperate to escape whatever this thing is behind me, but I don’t know where I am, running blind, lost underground.

  I can feel something behind me now, a vague sense of mass, but I don’t dare turn around and look. I don’t want to see it. I just want to escape.

  Something brushes my hair. It’s close enough to touch me.

  “Help!” I scream, realizing I’m about to be overwhelmed by my attacker. “Jack! Help me!”

  But instead of being tackled from behind, my cry for help seems to confuse the creature. It stops dead. The air behind me feels open and cool.

  I double my speed, feeling for the first time that I might have a chance. I round another bend and the tunnel splits in two. I have half a second to decide and I’m all turned around, totally clueless as to which way is north, or even up at this point.

  I take the tunnel to the right, praying it leads me back to my friends, or at least into the sunlight.

  Not more than a few feet into the tunnel, I trip on something and tumble forward. Then everything goes black.

  The first thing I notice as my eyes flutter open is the searing pain at the back of my head.

  Blinking in the near darkness, I push myself into a sitting position and cringe. My head feels as if a million needles are stabbing into it at once. I must have clocked it on the limestone when I fell.

  I fell because I was running. I was running because something was chasing me.

  Holy shit, I’ve got to get out of here.

  I flail around for my flashlight and my fingers find something smooth. It’s long and thin, and as my fingertips graze across the forked knob at one end of the object, I realize it feels like a bone.

  For some reason I pick it up, holding it close to my eyes. I can see the gleaming whiteness of a familiar shape.

  A femur.

  Bile rockets up the back of my throat as I drop the bone to the ground. Is it human? It’s large enough. But what is a human bone doing down here? I push myself back in horror, scrambling to get away from it. But the rocks beneath me aren’t stable. They roll and shift as I try to crawl across them. They’re smoother than the limestone, softer. I look down and find a sea of white beneath me. Dear God, it’s an entire pile of bones.

  Bones that you can see.

  There’s light in the tunnel. Somewhere ahead of me, there’s an exit.

  I rush forward, desperate to get away from the death and decay that cling to me. The tunnel ascends at a slight incline, the light growing with each step. I can see it now, a small hole just feet from me, an entrance to the mine long ago blocked by debris. I’m on my hands and knees, clawing at a mound of dirt and rock. At the top, I can see that the light is actually filtered through some kind of crystal, pink and shiny. A halite wall, just like in the entrance shaft.

  I use my fists as sledgehammers, punching at the halite bricks. My hands burn—the halite must be heated by the hot sun—but I’m able to make a hole big enough to haul my body through.

  With my last ounce of strength, I grip the sandstone boulders on the other side of the shaft and pull myself up and over the mound.

  Sunlight washes over me as I tumble down the mountain.

  THIRTEEN

  I LIE ON MY STOMACH, FACEDOWN IN A CUSHY TUFT OF DRIED pine needles and short grass, trying to catch my breath. With every ragged inhale I detect the sweet, musty scent of sugar pine as well as a fair amount of dust that soon coats the inside of my nose and mouth. I’m not sure how long I’ve been lying here, but I kind of want to stay forever, the summer breeze rippling across my back while strands of hair tickle my nose and lash against my cheek. I feel safe, protected, far from the depths of Bull Valley Mine.

  My eyes fly open as I remember the shadow, the sense that someone was hunting me in the darkness, the pile of bones. I push myself to my knees, body screaming in pain from every joint and limb, and squint into the sunshine. I’m in a clearing at the base of a steep hill, and the only things moving are the blades of grass, quivering in the breeze. Behind me are a smattering of tall evergreens, their long shadows stretching across the clearing and up the craggy hillside like elongated fingers, and beyond I can see the shimmering surface of Shasta Lake.

  It’s peaceful here. Quiet and cheerful. And despite a sharp pain in my side, I laugh softly.

  Shadows in the mine, shifting walls of rock, piles of human bones. Imagination playing tricks on you much, Annie?

  I blame those damn campfire stories. And Jack for letting me storm off without him in the first place.

  Is he lost down in the mine? I shudder i
nvoluntarily at the thought of the dark caverns and twisting shafts. Imagination or not, it was creepy down there, and I’m glad I’m out here in the sunshine.

  Except I don’t really know where here is. What do I do?

  Get back to the boat.

  Voice in my head has a point. If everyone else met in the cavern after our fifteen minutes of exploration, they might still be down there looking for me. Except for Sonya, who’s already back at the boat calling in a missing persons report over the radio.

  I hurry through the clearing toward the lake, dodging trees and prickly bushes, until I reach the edge of a cliff, the lake directly below. Craning my head left to right, I don’t see any sign of the houseboat, or of anything else for that matter.

  I picture the concrete highway and the iron trellis bridge. We passed them both on the way up the Squaw Creek arm of the lake toward the mine. I couldn’t have traveled so far west to not be able to see them from my current vantage point, which means I must have landed upstream.

  Feeling more optimistic than I have all day, I turn and, keeping the lake on my left, carefully pick my way west toward the houseboat.

  “Annie!”

  I see the outline of Jack’s Mohawk silhouetted by the afternoon sun as he leaps over the side of the houseboat and sprints toward me. Within seconds, he’s thrown his arms around me and is holding me tightly.

  I equal parts want to cry on his shoulder and punch him in the gut, but after walking for what feels like hours, I’m too damn tired for either. All I can do is lean into his body, relishing its warmth and strength.

  He releases me and grips my face with his hands. His eyes are wide. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I’m not even sure that’s the truth, but I’m not gravely injured. Even the ache from where I hit my head has gone away. “You?”

  “I’m good.”

  I glance at the boat. “Who else—”

  “I got back about an hour ago. Rob arrived right after. Sonya just got here.”

  I catch my breath, all of my panic returning in an instant. “That’s it?”

  Jack nods.

  Jack, Rob, and Sonya. What happened to everyone else?