She moves the torch, trying to see further into the shadows. The beam of light from the cheap torch is fairly weak, only reaches a few metres before the darkness swallows it up. When she points it to the right she catches a glimpse of something right on the edge of the beam of light. She tries to hold the torch still, screwing her eyes up in an effort to see better. A small, pale stick is poking out of a pile of rubbish. When she leans forward she realises that it isn’t a stick, but a bone.
The truth is up there, Sailor’s voice hisses in her ear.
The crack in her chest opens wider, letting out an icy chill. The blood drains from her head and she staggers slightly. And without any warning the edge of the hole gives way and she finds herself falling headlong into the cold darkness.
Darling,
I tried to get hold of you yesterday, I called you at home, and even went past your house. I know I’m breaking the rules, breaking our agreement. But not hearing from you is driving me mad.
I can’t believe that you’ve abandoned me. Not now, when I need you most. I can’t believe that everything you’ve said, all the words you’ve whispered, have been nothing but lies. Unless perhaps you believed them at the time, just as much as I did? Did you think the two of us really could make it?
I hate you, but at the same time I still love you. More now than ever. Isn’t that strange?
Chapter 39
W
hen she comes round she’s lying on her front at the bottom of the sinkhole. There’s water dripping on her face, her head hurts and she can taste soil in her mouth. She must have hit her head, but the leaves and earth seem to have cushioned the fall and to her relief she hasn’t broken anything. She sits up. Apart from a few scratches and the headache, her only injury is a split eyebrow. She presses the back of her hand to her head to stem the bleeding while she tries to get an idea of where she is. The torch landed in the pool of water by her feet, and doesn’t work at first. But she shakes it a few times and hits it hard against the palm of her hand, and it comes back to life.
She shines it around her. The hole, or – more accurately – the cave she has landed in is bigger than she thought. Approximately seven metres in diameter, with the heap where she’s sitting roughly at the centre. Around the edge the roof is only a metre or so off the ground, but above her head it’s a good deal higher. The hole up above is no longer a perfect circle, and now has a gouge along one side where the soil gave way. Small clods of earth and stones are still falling, splashing into the large pool of water by her feet.
She shines the torch into the darkness to her right and soon finds what she’s looking for. The heap with the small bone sticking out of it.
The pool is only a few centimetres deep, and her shoes are already so wet that she hardly notices the water as she moves cautiously closer. The torch lights up what she had thought was a pile of rubbish surrounding the bone, revealing a pair of thin horns and the remains of fur, sinews and hooves. The carcass of a deer that must have fallen down the hole some time ago. The tension in her body eases, then turns into fear as she realises her predicament. She’s in an abandoned mine deep in the forest, in a place where nobody ever goes.
She clambers back up onto the heap. The hole is much too far away for her to be able to reach it. She explores the rest of the cave, looking for something she might be able to stand on. All she finds are a couple of rotten wooden beams stuck beneath a load of stones over by one wall, and the rusted remains of a tin bucket. There’s nothing here, nothing that could help her climb back up.
Panic starts to bubble in her chest, lurching into her throat when the torch flickers a couple of times before going out. The murky light coming through the hole only illuminates a few square metres of the floor of the cave. The rest is as black and cold as the old milking parlour. And this time there isn’t anyone looking for her. No one’s going to come.
She feels her breathing get more ragged, a warning sign that a panic attack is on its way, and she hurries back to the cone of light from the hole. She sits down on the heap, sticks her head between her knees and tries to focus on not hyperventilating.
In.
Out.
Iiin.
Ouuut.
Why the hell did she come up here, on some wild goose chase after ghosts? She’s stuck down here now. Stuck, stuck, stuck . . .
Her head starts to spin, and the blood oozing from her cracked brow makes her close one eye. For a moment she thinks she’s going to faint, then suddenly she hears Ruud’s voice in her head.
Calm down, for God’s sake, Veronica, you have to calm down! This is just a temporary setback, something you need to work through.
The hammering in her chest slows. The cave, the hole, the whole of this bloody valley are just another obstacle she needs to get past. Just like Leon, Ruud himself, and the agreement. Temporary setbacks.
She manages to take a deep, shaky breath. Then another one. The panic slowly loosens its grip.
She straightens up, then gets to her feet and tries hitting the torch against her palm again. It comes back to life at once. She wades through the pool of water and explores the cave again, more thoroughly this time. The side where the dead deer lay is towards the top of the valley, and the ground there is dry. A metre or so beyond the pile of fur, horns and bones is a smooth rock face, which might mean that this is where the mine ends, where the rock becomes harder. Perhaps that’s why there’s a cave here, to store things in, possibly – the rusted bucket would tend to support that idea. And if this is the end of the tunnel, then it must lead off in the opposite direction. She looks at the pool of water, and sees the way it spreads out from the middle of the cave towards the wall with the wooden beams embedded in it.
She makes her way over there and realises that the beams were once the supports for the collapsed tunnel. Water is filtering through the stones at the bottom, and it takes her just a few minutes to clear enough of them to be able to shine the torch through to the other side. The air in there smells even more strongly of subterranean damp. But she can feel a draught on her face, and realises with growing hope that there must be another opening at the other end. She removes some more of the stones and shines the torch through the hole again. A narrow tunnel leads off beyond the blockage. The light of the torch shimmers off the water covering the ground.
The wooden beams stuck beneath the stones make it possible to carefully enlarge the opening near to the floor, and soon it’s big enough for her to crawl through. She turns and glances back at the comforting light from the hole in the roof. Tries not to think about the darkness of the milking parlour.
She puts the torch in her mouth and snakes through the gap. The water beneath her is ice cold, making her gasp as it soaks through her clothes.
Getting through to the other side is easier than she expected, and once she’s there she finds she can almost stand up in the tunnel. The floor is covered by a reflective mirror of water, constantly topped up by the water running in from the cave behind her, as well as the hundreds of drips and trickles making their way down the uneven, shiny rock walls. It takes her a few moments to realise that the water isn’t standing still. It’s moving very slowly, into the darkness in front of her.
There are large, rusty bolts sticking up every so often. Presumably there had once been a set of rails that were removed when the mine was closed. She moves forward at a crouch, shining the torch before moving her feet. The water splashes around her, the ripples breaking the smooth surface and swallowing the light from the torch.
Every three metres there are rotten, almost black wooden supports wedged beneath crossbeams in the roof. She takes care not to touch the supports and tries not to think about how many tons of earth and rock are above her head as she makes her way onward.
The tunnel is sloping gently downwards, and slightly to the left. She’s sure about the slope, the movement of the water is enough to prove that, but the curve is more of a gut feeling. She guesses that the tunnel runs close to the side of the valley where
she fell in, and that it’s one of a series of mine tunnels at various depths that have left the valley floor extremely unstable. The thought unnerves her, all the more so when she realises that the amount of water running down the walls is increasing.
About fifteen metres along the tunnel the thin covering of water has become a sluggish stream reaching up to her ankles. She stops for a few moments. The tunnel is still heading downwards, following the slope of the valley above, which means that the water level is only going to get deeper. She can still feel the faint draught, so somewhere in front of her air is getting in, through some sort of opening.
Ten metres further on the water is up to her knees and she has to move even more slowly. The sound of running water is getting louder. She can feel the pull of the water on the backs of her thighs, then her backside. When the water reaches her waist the current gets stronger and she realises what that means even before she reaches the blockage.
The roof has caved in, and the tunnel is blocked almost completely by two large boulders that must weigh several tons. She can shine the torch between them, can feel the draught and see that the tunnel curves off ahead of her. But she can’t get through.
She curses loudly, mostly to fend off her growing panic. Her teeth have started to chatter and the muscles in her arms and legs are starting to twitch involuntarily. She shines the torch at the boulders again and sees that the water seems to get sucked down immediately in front of them. She sticks her hand down and feels the surface of the rock. Around knee height she finds an opening, and after more exploration she estimates that it’s wide enough for her to swim through. On this side, anyway.
She shivers, and feels the spasms in her muscles turn into nonstop shaking. How long has she got before the cold gets the better of her? Quarter of an hour, maybe. Less if she dunks the rest of her body in the ice-cold water. And what happens if she gets stuck halfway? It didn’t take a genius to work out the answer to that one.
For the first time she seriously considers turning back and trying to pile up enough stones from the tunnel to build a pyramid tall enough for her to be able to climb up and reach the hole. Then she realises that she’s already removed the stones that would easily come loose when she enlarged the hole to get into the tunnel, and even if she did manage to loosen some more, there is no way there were going to be enough. Her only chance – unless she feels like sitting below the hole calling for help, which would almost certainly be utterly pointless – is to dive down and go through this opening, then carry on along the tunnel to wherever the air is getting in.
A sudden gust of air between the boulders carries with it a faint smell of forest. That makes her mind up for her. She switches the torch off and sticks it in the pocket of her jeans. She takes a deep breath, then bends her knees and sinks into the ice-cold black water.
The current pulls her towards the opening faster than she expected. The water’s so cold it makes her head throb. The gap isn’t large, and she feels in front of her with her hands, grabbing hold of a protruding piece of rock to pull herself forward. She keeps her eyes open at first but there’s not really any point: the darkness down here is as dense as in the milking parlour, so she closes them and concentrates on feeling her way with her fingers.
She pulls herself further forward with her right hand, then kicks with her legs, but her knee hits the rock and the pain is so sharp that she almost stops. She feels in front of her again, trying to find something to use to pull herself forward. She manages to move a little further before she comes to an abrupt halt. She’s stuck, just as she feared, and she can’t pull herself loose with just one hand. The oxygen in her lungs is fast running out, used up by the cold and her racing heart.
She manages to squeeze her other hand through to help, feeling around for a new handhold, but all she can feel are smooth rocks or cracks that are too small to get her fingers into. Her lungs are burning and her vision starts to waver. Her left hand suddenly seems to have stopped working, it’s no longer doing what she tells it to. It’s only a matter of time before the same thing happens to her right hand.
Her body isn’t moving at all, in spite of the water rushing faster and faster around her. She’s run out of air now and it feels like her lungs are going to burst. Fireworks are exploding on her retinas, before slowly fading to black, like the tube of an old television. One last thought, four words pulsing through her.
You
Can’t
Die
HERE!
Her anger gives her fresh energy. She reaches her right arm out as far as it will go. Her fingers are tingling, her arm is on the verge of becoming useless when she suddenly feels a definite edge. That must be the other side of the opening.
Her fingers have contracted into a claw, but she manages to get a grip and with the last of her strength uses her right arm to pull at the same time as she twists her body. The pressure around her increases and water rushes past her head, making her ears pop. Her mouth is about to open to draw a breath, filling her lungs with the dark mine water.
She clenches her teeth, straining so hard that her jaw aches as she continues to twist herself round. And suddenly she comes loose, and shoots out like a blockage from a pipe. She hits her head, then her knee. She kicks out with her legs, manages to reach the bottom and push herself upwards. She can’t hold her breath any longer. Her mouth opens to take a deep breath. And she fills her lungs, not with water but cold, damp air that is scented with the forest.
Chapter 40
T
he air hole is just round the corner, exactly where she had thought. Part of the roof has collapsed, leaving a hole the size of her fist, with loose soil around it. Her frozen fingers are stiff and numb as she pulls down stones and lumps of earth. She shuts her eyes as the soil rains down on her face. Her body is shaking uncontrollably with cold, but after a couple of minutes the hole is large enough for her to brace herself against the wall of the tunnel with her feet and squeeze through it.
When her head and arms are above ground she grabs hold of the tussocks of grass growing at the bottom of the sinkhole and pulls herself upwards, centimetre by centimetre, until her whole body is out in the warm air. She rolls over onto her back, her body still shaking, and suddenly bursts out laughing. She laughs so much that tears start to run down her cheeks, and the spasms of laughter merge with her shivering. She must look like some sort of crazy woodland creature. A troll or a dryad, roaring with laughter as she crawls out from the underworld, filthy and soaking wet, her face smeared with blood.
The fit of laughter passes but she carries on shivering. In spite of her numb fingers she manages to pull her dripping top off, but that doesn’t help much. She needs warmth, more warmth than this shaded sinkhole can offer.
She struggles out of the hollow and tries to get her bearings. She realises that she’s not far from the large thicket hiding the shack. So she heads unsteadily towards it.
The logs in the basket may be ancient, but they’ve been under cover and the wind blowing through the gaps in the walls has helped keep them dry. Fortunately the matches she found earlier are also dry, so it doesn’t take long before she manages to light a fire in the small stove with the help of some crowberry twigs. As with everything else to do with nature and the forest, she has her Uncle Harald to thank for knowing what to do.
She hangs her wet clothes up next to the stove, then sits shivering in just her bra and pants, holding her hands up towards the flames. She feels a prickly pain as the feeling slowly returns, and almost bursts into laughter again.
When she was training to be a therapist she read about this phenomenon, but has never experienced it before. Survivor’s euphoria. The feeling resembles a cocaine rush, and for several minutes she feels immortal, as if she hasn’t got a care in the world. But as her body temperature slowly returns to normal, so does her mood.
What has this stupid excursion actually achieved? The reply is easy. Nothing at all. She may have found the shack that Sailor and Rooth once used
, but there’s nothing to suggest that Billy was ever here. Nothing that either confirms that he died or indicates that he survived, which is what she was secretly hoping to find. And even if Sailor’s addled brain managed to produce a few rational sentences, his mutterings about the truth were hardly reliable. All things considered, she hasn’t got any closer to the answer to any of the many questions swirling around inside her head. Meaning that Isak’s identity remains a mystery.
She picks some small stones out of the soles of her shoes and throws them irritably into the bushes outside the entrance to the shack. The stones are from the mine. They’re small and black, and she can almost crush them between her fingers. They’re made of clinker – poor quality coal that used to be ground into grit and spread on the sportsgrounds and running tracks in half of Skåne, or was simply dumped in huge heaps. She tosses another stone away. It hits something in the bushes with a metallic clattering sound.
She looks up in surprise, pulls her wet shoes on and goes outside. The bushes form a dense thicket. She throws another stone in the same direction as the last. Another clatter, louder this time. There’s something in there, something hidden by the sharp brambles. She goes back inside the shack and pulls on her trousers and top – even if they aren’t completely dry, at least they’re warm. Then she heads out into the bushes.
Despite being careful, thorns dig into her thigh almost immediately. More scratch her arm and she lets out a yelp of annoyance.
She’s been scratched plenty of times by the time her foot hits something solid. It takes her a few moments to realise that it’s a fairly large object, covered by a dirty camouflage net.
She tugs at the net, feeling the tension mount as she gradually uncovers the object. A rectangular metal chest, slightly larger than a washing machine, standing on a concrete base. On top is a large handle and two metal eyes. The chest, which was probably once used to store dynamite, is large enough to hold a full-grown adult if they were curled up, and certainly a child.
End of Summer Page 19