Primal Fear

by Boucher, Brad

  The chase had been on for only ninety seconds, but in that short time, John had managed to open up a serious lead between them, even without the benefit of a flashlight. He sprinted wildly through the dark forest, choosing a path seemingly at random, avoiding trees and deadfalls through blind luck or exceptional reflexes.

  Harry cursed himself for sending Charlie and Blackwell on ahead without a radio of their own. One of them, younger and faster, might have been able to head John off by now. It was taking everything Harry had just to keep the fleeing Eskimo in sight. Only by maintaining radio contact with the other members of the search team could he hope to have any chance of stopping John in time.

  The radio crackled in his hand, a sudden burst of static followed by Brochu’s hoarse voice. “How far out are you along the path? We need to know where he’s going to come out of the woods.”

  Harry thought it out before replying, struggling to get his bearings. He had a general idea of the layout of the quarry property, and he knew when they’d left the path he and John were headed due west. But he was still unsure of how deep into the woods they were, how much further they would have had to walk along the path to meet up with Brochu and the rest of the party.

  “Maybe a mile or two,” he answered. “I can’t be sure. Just start fanning some men out along the edge of the woods.”

  “Got it.”

  John widened the gap between them once more, and now it was only through a series of quick glimpses that Harry managed to keep him in view at all. In the darkness, in the thickness of the woods, it was impossible to judge their progress. But it wasn’t long before Harry realized just how poorly he’d estimated the distance to the quarry.

  Ahead of him, he caught sight of John again, this time breaking free from the stand of trees and into an open clearing. He was perhaps fifteen yards away, picking up the pace now that he’d reached open ground. Moments later, Harry reached the same point and discovered that the clearing was in fact the wide field that bordered the quarry on its eastern edge. If he didn’t catch John soon, or if John didn’t watch where he was going, the young man would almost certainly find the edge of the quarry in less than a minute’s time.

  Harry picked up the pace, less concerned now with keeping John in full view than with somehow narrowing the distance between them. He pushed his legs as fast as they would go, conscious of the fact that at any given moment he could step on a rock or into a hole, but doing his best to ignore the likelihood of it. A spill like that would only end in injury; if he couldn’t stop John’s run, it would end in the young man’s death.

  A sudden gust of wind blew up around him, sweeping the falling snow into his exposed face, into his eyes, destroying his visibility. He turned his face downward, keeping John’s footprints in view as best he could. They were all he had to go by, all he had to keep him in line with John’s trail.

  The seconds ticked by, each one adding to his fatigue, every step bringing him closer to the drop-off at the edge of the granite pit. He tried to gauge the remaining distance, but the driving snow made a visual confirmation impossible. He made a rough estimate, hoping it was more accurate than the one he’d made on their position in the woods when John had first run off.

  His radio crackled to life in his hand. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

  “Nothing yet, Harry,” Brochu reported. “We’re still fanning out.”

  Harry didn’t reply; it would only slow him down. The other men were spread out too far down along the rim of the quarry to do him any good. The message had distracted him, however; he couldn’t recall how far he’d come since leaving the woods, couldn’t make a new calculation on his proximity to the pit.

  It could still be another fifty yards away, or it could be the very next step he took.

  The thought frightened him, slowed him down. He fell into a fast jog, concentrating now on following John’s trail through the snow.

  The wind was beginning to die down, at least for the moment, and Harry seized the opportunity to examine the surrounding area as quickly as he could. His eyes scanned the darkness at the borders of this new field of visibility as he swept his flashlight back and forth through the falling snow.

  At first he couldn’t make out anything at all, but then he spotted John no more than ten feet away. The young man had come to a complete stop. Beyond him, Harry could see the great yawning mouth of the quarry, its edge less than three feet away from the spot where John now stood.

  Harry stopped short, still unclear on John’s intentions. He was about to use the radio, to relay his position to Brochu, but then he thought better of it. If John had suicide on his mind, any sudden move on Harry’s part might cause him to jump. He clipped his radio back onto his belt.

  “John,” he said, “what are you doing?” He started to move towards the young man, moving as smoothly and quietly as he could.

  John didn’t answer. He only stared out into the blackness of the pit, as if mesmerized with the riddle of its depth. He’d dug the mysterious object out of his pocket again and clasped it tightly between his palms.

  “John? Answer me. What’s going on?”

  Further along the rim of the quarry, far off to Harry’s left and perhaps a half mile away, Harry spotted the floating points of a pair of flashlights. Two of the men from the search team, closing steadily on their position. Harry lifted his own flashlight and waved it in their direction.

  “I found it,” John said. “It’s right here.” All at once he seemed alert and coherent again, as if whatever madness had gripped him earlier had suddenly left him. “Harry, I need your flashlight.” He held out his hand. “Quickly.”

  Harry stepped closer, lifting his flashlight as though he was about to hand it over. But when John moved to reach for it, Harry seized the young man’s wrist in his free hand, tugging him away from the quarry’s edge.

  John blinked at him amid the falling snow. “What are you doing?”

  “That’s what I’m about to ask you.”

  “It’s here, right in the face of the quarry. I can feel it.”

  “What’s here, John? Jesus, try to make some sense.”

  “Let go of my arm and I’ll show you.”

  “You’ll tell me. Now.”

  “Do you think I’m going to jump? Is that it?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  To his left, Harry could see the bobbing points of light growing closer as they moved in his direction. Three more lights had joined them and their pace had increased considerably.

  John sighed. “The spot I stood over before, in the woods, I could feel something buried there. I could sense it, the same way . . . it’s the same way you feel when you know when you’re being watched. And I knew there was another way in, a second way to reach that point. It’s here, I know it. It’s a tunnel entrance, a cave, and it’s just over the edge of the quarry.”

  Harry glanced towards the pit. “You’re crazy.”

  “I’m not. I know it’s there.”

  “How can you know something like that? It’s a—”

  “Let me show you. Give me your flashlight.”

  Harry debated it, finally deciding that John wasn’t about to give up on this strange notion of his. He seemed so sure of himself, completely positive his senses weren’t deceiving him. Harry nodded, handing over the light.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I’m trying to, John. I really am.”

  They moved forward, coming within a few feet of the pit. Harry could hear the wind whistling over its edge, sucking the snow down into the blackness. He came to a stop.

  “This is close enough for me.”

  John shook his head. “Not for me. I have to see the rock face.” He dropped to his knees, and then laid himself out flat, belly down in the snow. He began to crawl carefully closer to the edge. “I have to get as close as I can.”

  Harry thought about grabbing him again, pulling him back. And yet something kept him from it, something inside he could b
arely acknowledge, let alone identify. He’d felt something when he’d grabbed John’s wrist, like a secondary jolt from a bare wire, leaping through John and into his own hand.

  It was an odd feeling, a sense of proximity, of closeness, as if the face of the truth was just around the next corner. Even now, a dim echo of the feeling remained, an enigmatic vibration among his thoughts.

  Finally coming to a decision, Harry spread himself flat on the ground beside John, crawling on his elbows and knees towards the drop-off. He was grateful for the darkness, pleased that it disguised the true depth of the quarry. There was only an interminable sea of blackness stretching out below them, and it was almost easy to imagine it was only ten or twelve feet deep. Had it been daylight, with the bottom of the pit clearly visible far below, Harry was certain he would have been unable to bring himself so close to the edge.

  John swung his right arm over the edge, training the beam of the flashlight on the bare rock face. At first Harry couldn’t make out anything that resembled an opening. There were hundreds of cracks and fissures along the jagged rock face, but none of them looked particularly revealing.

  And then the wavering beam of the flashlight swept back over the rock to betray a patch of blackness at the very limits of the light’s effectiveness. Studying it carefully, Harry could see that it wasn’t a shadow, as he’d had first assumed from the sharp ledge of rock that jutted out just beside it. There was no mistaking the fact that it was an opening, one more than large enough to accept a man.

  “Holy shit,” whispered Harry. “I don’t believe it.”

  In the darkness, with the wind whipping the snow through the beam of the flashlight, it was difficult to judge just how far down the opening was. It appeared to be about twenty or thirty feet below them, but Harry wouldn’t have put money on that estimation.

  “I told you,” John said, “I knew it was here. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you feel something strange here?”

  Harry nodded. “I feel . . . I feel something, but I don’t know—”

  “Like some kind of contact, right? Is that what you feel? Like something pulling at you?”

  “Yeah, exactly.” That was precisely what it felt like, a dim sense of attraction to this spot, the sort of instinctive feeling he imagined a migratory bird must feel when it came time to fly south for the winter.

  They climbed to their feet and stepped away from the edge.

  “Take off your gloves,” John instructed.

  “What?”

  “Just do it.”

  He complied, and John pushed something into his hand. In the darkness, Harry couldn’t make out what it was, but its shape was long and slender, curved inward with a jagged, pointed tip. Its texture was peculiar, impossible to identify with only the sense of touch.

  “Hold onto that,” John said. “Tell me what you feel. And whatever you do, please don’t drop it. It’s very important.”

  “What is it?”

  John ignored the question. “Just tell me what you feel.”

  Harry closed his fist tightly around the object. Almost immediately he felt the strange feelings of contact intensify within him. They blossomed among his thoughts, overwhelming his own sensations like the shadow of a cloud blotting out the sun’s light as it passes overhead.

  He could no longer feel the bite of the cold against his skin, could no longer hear the restless howl of the wind as it swept past his ears. Even the hard ground beneath his body might have disappeared for all he knew, the lack of every other contact being so utterly absorbed by the object in his hands.

  And the pull on his senses grew stronger still, given free reign now in this sudden void. All at once, he felt an almost overwhelming urge to scramble down the cliff face, to leap blindly into the cave and search out whatever force awaited him. After all, how could he ignore something that could hold such immense power over his thoughts and senses?

  He felt no fear, no sense of caution; he felt only an influential certainty that the solutions to all his problems lay waiting just out of his reach, the answers to all of his questions just beyond his grasp. And they could all be his, if only he’d be bold enough to make a positive and decisive move in their direction.

  From far below this certainty, another voice reached his thoughts, riding the intricate network of his nervous system like a gentle current.

  “. . . Atae,” the voice whispered, so softly he couldn’t be certain he’d even heard it. It came again, this time more forcefully, “Atae,” like a beacon in the darkness of his senses.

  He pushed the voice away, a touch of fear rising within him each time it whispered that single cryptic word.

  “. . . Atae . . .”

  It began to die away, and he centered his thoughts on the call of the tunnel’s secret before the mysterious voice could return.

  He took a step towards it.

  And suddenly it was ripped away. His consciousness returned immediately, an instant awareness of his surroundings, of the cold blackness around him.

  He was on his feet now, with John’s hands wrapped firmly around his arm, pulling at him, tugging him away . . .

  Harry looked down, saw that he was standing only inches away from the rim of the granite pit, the frozen dirt and fallen snow at his feet breaking loose and tumbling down, down into the blackness. He felt an oppressive sense of vertigo, a cold certainty that he was going to fall, a feeling that he was pitching forward, into the hungry maw of the quarry.

  But John pulled at him again, dragging him away from the edge of the cliff and back to a safe distance. They fell onto the hard ground together, Harry collapsing weakly into the fallen snow, trying to regain his bearings, to reconstruct the last couple of minutes.

  “What happened? What was I . . .”

  John let go of him, pushed Harry’s gloves back into his hand. “Here. Put these on before you lose your fingers to the cold.” He rose to his feet, walked back to the edge to retrieve the strange object that had started the entire series of events.

  “You almost stepped over the edge before I could stop you. Jesus, you’re lucky I got to you in time. You were moving before I knew what the hell was happening.”

  “It’s the same . . . the same as when you first left the path in the woods . . .” Harry struggled to his feet, his breath coming in ragged gasps as the full scope of what had just happened flooded through him. “I almost . . . I almost . . .”

  “You almost killed yourself.”

  “It was so strong. And nothing else mattered. There was nothing else, just the pull to reach the truth. I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

  John returned, pushing the arcane object—the cause of everything that had just happened within Harry’s whirling senses—back into his hip pocket.

  Harry reached for it. “I want to know what it is. What it does.” He could feel his senses returning now, but his hands were still shaking terribly, his heart still hammering.

  John batted his hand away. “Not now,” he said. “Not yet. It’s too strong. You have to understand what you’re dealing with first. It’s not safe here for either of us.”

  Harry let his hands fall to his sides. Deep in John’s voice, he perceived a hint of fear, as if he’d come to suspect he might be out of his league at this point, despite all his knowledge of the legends and history of his people.

  He nodded, pulling on his gloves and glancing to his left. The approaching flashlights were only ten yards away now. He waved his light at them again, and within minutes, the small party had closed in on their position.

  Ben and Tappert headed up the small group, and they struggled to catch their breath in the freezing air as Harry announced that the crisis was past. He pulled his radio off of his belt and repeated the news to Brochu, who quickly relayed the information to the rest of the search team.

  “What the hell happened?” Ben demanded, his eyes on John.

  John opened his mouth to explain, but Harry cut him off.

  “John thought he saw someo
ne in the woods.” He shot a quick glance in John’s direction, hoping the younger man would read his intentions and corroborate with him. “I told him to wait for me to round up a few more men, but he was worried the guy might get away.”

  Ben seemed unconvinced for a moment, but then he nodded. “So?” he asked. “Was there somebody out there?”

  Harry shook his head. “Nobody that we could find. And the only footprints we found were our own.” He swept his flashlight over the ground to demonstrate his point.

  “Sorry,” John said. “But at the time, with the wind blowing all the snow around . . .”

  “It’s easy to make a bad call in all this shit,” Ben said. “Believe me, I know.”

  Harry clapped his hands together, trying to work some of the heat back into them. “Let’s move out,” he said. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

  There was no argument from the rest of the men and they began to file back to the rendezvous point. As they moved away, Harry turned to John and held a single finger to his lips. Harry couldn’t pinpoint his reasons for not revealing the location of the cave to the rest of the men, but something about the feeling he’d had at the lip of the pit, and his poor understanding of what was really going on around him forced him to maintain his silence. At least for now.

  Later, when he’d managed to pry the entire story out of John, maybe he would be ready to confirm the discovery of the cave. But not yet.

  Not until he had some answers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Look, I promise you, this is not going to be a problem.” Harry turned the truck carefully into his driveway. “I called her from the station, and she said, ‘yes, that’s fine, bring him over’.”

  John shrugged, apparently unconvinced. “I would just hate to impose more than I already have.”

  “John, you saved my ass back there. If it hadn’t been for you I would have walked straight off that cliff. The way I figure it, a hot meal and a warm house is the least I can do.”

  Harry could understand John’s reluctance to impose; he’d been raised the same way, to gratefully accept the generosity of others but not to actively recruit it. But with the road conditions worsening by the hour and the storm giving no sign of slackening, there was only one logical choice. The nearest motel was in Evans Mills, a forty-five minute drive on a good day. He couldn’t expect John to chance the icy roads and drive all that way just to return at daybreak the next morning.