The B&B’s receptionist dangled a key attached to a thin metal ring from the end of his index finger. Petri failed to take it at first. He just stared at the key like some foreign object, wondering how easily it could have fallen.
They carried their backpacks upstairs. A small nightstand separated the beds in the room. Neither of them suggested moving it out of the way and pushing the beds together. Nina flopped down on the thick mattress with a long sigh.
‘I can’t sleep here,’ she said, finally breaking the silence.
Petri sat down on his bed. When they had stepped into the room, he had switched on the light and seen a cockroach scuttling away under the bathroom door, but that wasn’t worth mentioning.
‘There’s a bar downstairs,’ Petri said. ‘We could get wasted. If you want to.’
Nina thought that was the first good idea in a week.
They chose a table by the window, although they couldn’t see anything outside, only their own reflections in the uneven glass. Darkness had fallen during the thirty minutes they’d spent in their room.
‘Where are we going?’ Nina yawned.
All the other customers at the bar were men. They had barely glanced at Petri, but a few pairs of eyes had lingered on Nina, following her until they reached the table.
‘Pezenas is next,’ Petri said.
Nina did not react to this and only continued to stare at her own reflection in the window. Petri started to suspect that she might have meant something else by her question.
Where were they going? They had never needed to ask things like that before.
Petri watched Nina’s profile. Her face was young, unfamiliar and pale. Petri thought about Pezenas and was terrified that it would not be enough for Nina.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Petri asked. Shame followed right after. That was not a question a grown man would ask.
‘Nothing,’ Nina sighed. ‘My head’s so tired it doesn’t have anything to say.’
The girl brought her pint glass to her lips, quickly, and drank. She drank greedily until she gagged. She made no sound, but a jerk of her shoulders gave her away. Nina let the foam drip back into her glass.
‘Is there something wrong with the beer?’ Petri asked.
Nina wiped her mouth and leaned forward.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she asked.
She had tears in her eyes, but that was because of her gag reflex. Just a reaction without an emotion.
Petri had sacrificed so much for Nina. The kids would soon be at the age where they would know to blame the father who had left instead of themselves. They’d hear phrases like ‘mid-life crisis’. They would block his calls and tear up all the birthday cards he sent them.
Last night, while waiting for sleep and for Nina to come back from buying a pack of smokes, Petri had realized that one of them had sacrificed nothing. Twenty-somethings have nothing to sacrifice.
When Petri looked into Nina’s eyes, brimming with griefless tears, he knew that something would soon be said that could never be taken back. Here’s where it would finally happen. In France, near the Spanish border, in some B&B the name of which Petri hadn’t bothered to check.
Nina had just opened her mouth when someone dropped into the chair at the end of their table. The scent of soot, sweat and earth rolled over them.
‘Want to see some cave paintings?’ the man asked in English.
Unfamiliar accent. Matted, rust-brown beard. Still, the eyes revealed that the man was not that old. Thirty, at most.
‘Fuck. Off.’
Nina’s voice was icy, but the man pretended not to hear. He waved a hand at the bar and lifted up three fingers to the bartender.
‘On me,’ he said and pointed carelessly at Nina’s and Petri’s half-drunk glasses.
‘Don’t you understand what we’re saying?’
Nina’s eyes stayed on Petri.
‘I’m not some useless tour guide,’ the man said calmly, obviously used to objections. ‘I know caves no one’s ever even heard about. Unique chance. Take it or leave it.’
‘We’ll leave it,’ Nina said. ‘Get lost.’
The man tilted his head and thought for a while.
‘Okay,’ he said and gripped the table for support, about to rise.
‘Wait,’ Petri said.
‘What the hell you are doing?’ Nina whispered in Finnish.
‘Tell us more,’ Petri said.
The man sat down with a wide smile at Nina. The waiter brought their new glasses over and put them on the table.
The man explained that the area had many more prehistoric caves than the official records said. It sounded practiced, a routine speech, but Petri loved to listen. It was music that prevented Nina from saying something irrevocable.
‘I’ve been to Font-de-Gaume.’ Petri’s voice was steady; the voice of a grown man who would not break down.
‘Eh,’ the man snorted and waved his hand. ‘Boring. I can show you better ones. Practically untouched.’
The man told them about underground cave networks, hundreds of meters long, of ancient places of worship and ritualistic caves of shamans.
‘Stop that,’ Nina said to Petri in Finnish. ‘We won’t be going into any fucking caves.’
‘I’m Alex,’ the man said happily and offered his hand to Nina. A professional who knew who he needed to charm.
Nina kept her hands tightly under the table at first. She glanced at the man. Petri could tell that Nina wanted to smile. The short eye contact made her cheek muscles twitch slightly underneath her smooth skin. Petri had learned to register these things.
Nina put her hand out.
‘There you go,’ the man laughed. ‘Life’s too short to sulk.’
Petri and Nina told him their names. The man made them clink their glasses together.
‘I’ve spent more time underground than any official guide,’ Alex said and then leaned forward like he was about to share a state secret. ‘A part of me is down there right now.’
The man waited for their reaction.
‘Do you believe me?’ he asked when they did not give him one.
‘Maybe,’ Petri said.
The man pushed his chair back, glanced over his shoulder toward the bar and then bent down to untie his left shoe. His sock came off with a scratching sound, like it had scraped off the man’s leg hair. He looked over his shoulder again and then lifted his bare foot on the table.
The smell was so strong that Petri burst out laughing. Nina followed suit. And then, almost as one, they fell silent. They now saw what was wrong with the man’s foot.
‘What happened?’ Petri asked.
The man’s big toe looked unnaturally large. The hardened skin next to it looked like a yellowish tumor. Still, it was just a regular toe. It only looked huge because all the other toes were gone. The end of his foot was nothing but scarred skin.
‘I don’t know,’ Alex said, obviously enjoying the shock he had caused.
They heard angry yelling from behind the bar. The bartender was waving his arms at them.
Alex threw a lazy apology over his shoulder and slid his foot off the table.
‘I was exploring a cave alone about twenty kilometers from here,’ he said, pulling the sock back on his foot. ‘I slipped, lost consciousness. And when I woke up . . .’
He let out a strange whistling sound.
‘Gone. Bye bye, toes.’
‘Rats?’ Petri suggested.
‘Maybe. In any case, I left that cave faster than ever. Nearly got myself killed in the rush. I forgot the most important rule: never panic. Never.’
‘Horrible,’ Nina mumbled.
‘Not really,’ the man said. ‘I made it to the doctor and shocked a few student nurses. The main thing is that I still have my big toe. Tha
t’s the support pillar of the whole leg. Man’s got to have a big toe or he won’t be able to stand. You only need the other toes if you want to climb trees.’
‘You have to know that this is the world’s worst marketing speech,’ Nina said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you want us to come into the cave with you.’
Alex laughed.
‘Believe me, I learned from my mistake. I will never slip again. I will never panic again. And I will never go to a cave alone. If you follow those rules, it’s just as safe as riding a bike. Safer, actually.’
The man bought them another round. Their tiredness had lifted. Petri was almost happy, even though he knew it was all just a sad game they were playing before the inevitable.
‘A toe fairy!’ Nina suddenly cried out.
Alex didn’t get it.
‘A toe fairy took your toes.’
They drank to that. They agreed on a price.
They would see some cave paintings.
‘Is this your day job?’ Nina asked when they walked out of the B&B.
‘For now,’ the man said and dug something out of his pocket. Car lights flashed in the shadows. ‘Please,’ Alex said, holding the back door open. Petri waited for Nina to climb in the back seat. Men in the front, women in the back. Petri was all for equality, but they were in a conservative region.
Alex held the door open and stared at the ground. Nina went around the car and stood by the front door.
Petri pointed questioningly at the back seat. Alex nodded and smiled, but avoided his gaze. Petri climbed into the back seat.
Alex drove along the side streets at such speeds that he must have known these alleyways through and through. The headlights showed them glimpses of cobbled streets and flashes of empty gardens.
‘Did you train as a guide?’ Nina asked Alex.
Petri had to lean toward them from the back seat like a toddler who wanted to hear what his parents were saying.
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘I studied archaeology, but then well, things came up.’
‘A woman?’
‘Of course,’ Alex said. ‘And parties. And the whole world to see, with more women. And more. And more.’
Nina laughed. Petri only saw a part of her side profile through her hair. No eyes, just the tip of her nose and a mouth open in an unnatural laugh.
A sad game, before the inevitable.
After a twisting drive of more than an hour they arrived at their destination and stepped out of the car and into the cool night. It seemed they had driven uphill, as the lights of the village were far below them. Everything else was just darkness, rustling in the wind. A clear sky filled with stars above them.
Alex threw his backpack on, put on his headlamp, and told them to follow. They walked behind the bouncing beam of light, first on a path and then without one. Rotting branches crunched under their shoes. At some point, Alex turned his headlamp off and told Nina to grab onto his backpack and hold on. Petri didn’t have time to catch Nina by her hood, so he had to stumble behind them, relying only on his ears until his eyes started to get used to the dark.
‘We’re here,’ Alex soon said.
They were in a forest clearing. The calls of unfamiliar animals rang between the dark tree trunks.
‘Give me a hand, Petri.’
Alex bent down and wrapped his hands around a large object on the ground. It was hard to see any details in the dark, but Petri assumed the intention was to move a boulder aside. He went to stand opposite Alex and tried to get a good grip with his fingers.
‘Can you do it?’ Alex asked.
Petri couldn’t. Alex told him how to place his hands, and soon enough the boulder moved.
‘Good,’ Alex grunted. ‘I can do the rest by myself.’
The boulder fell on its side with a hollow sound.
‘Right,’ Alex panted. ‘I’ll go first, if that’s okay.’
He sat down on the ground, dragged his body forward and disappeared.
Petri and Nina stood under the stars and stared at the black hole in the ground.
‘Follow me.’
Alex’s voice echoed, like a sound in a container. He had switched his headlamp on. When Petri bent over the hole in the ground, he saw nothing but blinding light at first, then a hand that was reaching towards them.
Nina grabbed it before Petri could react.
‘Sit down first,’ Alex said in his echoing voice. ‘Just like that. Then give me your hand. And the other.’
Nina’s smiling face looked like a white sculpture when she disappeared underground.
A long silence followed. Petri saw a waving light in the hole, then nothing but darkness. He heard voices speaking, Nina’s laughter. Then that disappeared, too. Petri stood still and tried to think about what could be delaying Alex. A strange thought came to him. Could he push the boulder back into place alone?
‘All right, good sir,’ Alex said. The light came back, revealing the rugged edges of the hole.
Petri sat down on the ground and put his legs in the hole.
‘My hand’s here,’ Alex said.
‘Just step away,’ Petri said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah.’
The light stayed still for a moment and then disappeared.
Petri leaned his elbows on the ground and let his legs slide deeper into the darkness. Gravel scraped at his buttocks until gravity did its duty.
Petri came down legs first, but the drop made him stumble. Arms came around him right away. Petri tried to get a foothold on the slippery stones but had to lean on Alex for support.
‘You okay?’ the man asked.
‘Perfect.’
That was not true. Petri was feeling confused. The heat of the last few weeks, the exhaustion and his dehydration all seemed to condense to the jumping beam of light that blinded him and painted afterimages on his retinas. Petri pulled away as politely as possible and sought Nina with his eyes. The waving light only showed him fragments of a strange woman, an alien that had filled his every thought for a year and a half.
‘I’m here,’ Nina said, right in front of Petri. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course,’ Petri said.
Nina’s arms suddenly wrapped around him. It was so sudden that Petri failed to return the gesture.
‘All right, love birds,’ Alex interrupted them.
Nina took a quick step away.
Alex gave them both their own headlamps. They placed them on their foreheads. When all the light beams were on, they could see how small the space they were standing in really was.
‘Rule number one,’ Alex said. ‘Do everything like in a Mel Gibson movie.’
‘Which means?’ Nina asked, laughing.
‘In slow motion.’
Alex showed them how to move. He took a deliberate step forward, bent down, placed his hand against the wall of the cave with exaggerated slow motions, then stepped forward again.
‘Do you get it? Like Mel Gibson.’
Nina and Petri followed Alex. They walked forward with their backs bowed. Their clothes scraped against the walls.
‘Look,’ Alex soon said.
They stopped.
‘The first greeting.’
Petri only saw Nina’s heaving shoulders.
‘Look at the protruding stone on your right side when you go past it. It has a carving of a mouth and a pair of eyes.’
When Petri came to the protrusion on the wall, he stopped to look at it. Yes, maybe there was a mouth. Perhaps eyes. Still, it was something nature could have done. Empty eye sockets, corners of the mouth twisted downward. A dead expression that came alive for a second when a beam of light moved and twisted the shadows.
Petri turned his head from side to side.
‘Come
on,’ Nina said. She was whispering for some reason.
She was squatting less than five meters away, looking at Petri.
‘Alex is already talking to himself up ahead.’
The passage grew narrower and narrower. When they reached Alex, he explained to them that the caves were made for much smaller people. Their diets were poorer and so on.
‘But otherwise, they were just like us,’ Alex said, a wild smile on his face, ‘as you will soon see.’
They went deeper. Clothes scraped against the walls more and more. Breathing got heavier every moment. The relaxation created by the beers Alex had bought them started to evaporate. Petri had never been scared of tight spaces, but now he considered turning back. It was impossible to know how deep underground they were. The cave walls were so close at all times that it was impossible to find a spot where one shoulder wasn’t touching stone. Petri realized that his breathing was shallow. Right then, he started hearing Nina’s delighted calls.
‘Come here, Petri,’ the girl shouted in Finnish. ‘You’ve got to see this!’
Petri pulled himself together and moved forward. When he reached Nina and Alex, it was a relief to see that they were in a slightly more spacious chamber. They could both stand up straight. Nina was looking at something on the wall, her hand covering her mouth. Alex was right behind the girl, so close that their shoulders were touching. Their light beams were connected, pointed at the images on the wall.
‘Amazing,’ Nina whispered.
Petri came to stand next to them. The space around them felt luxurious after the endless passageway. The light beam revealed handprints. Someone, or some people, had dipped their hands in dye and pressed their prints on the wall. The shapes looked black, but maybe the blue-gray glow of their headlamps distorted the color.
‘Can I?’ Nina asked, hovering her palm over one of the handprints without touching the wall.
‘Of course,’ Alex said. ‘Maybe that’s the reason they’re here. Who knows?’
Nina placed her palm on one of the handprints. She did it slowly, as if the touch could have activated some ancient mechanism.
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 26