by Rio Youers
———
The cave’s geography formed in Courtney’s mind and she stepped quickly. The flashlight shimmered, so close, but the men were close, too. She heard one of them cry out and the other laugh wildly. Both sounds were shocking, and she came close to losing her nerve and scuttling back to Ethan. Instead, she ghosted silently around them and retrieved the flashlight. It jigged and danced as soon as it was in her trembling hands and she felt along the barrel for the switch, aware that her position—and maybe her intention—was now evident. As if to emphasize this, the cave echoed with another cry. Courtney screamed and whipped the light in the direction of the sound. The bad man had the knife in his hands and was pressing it to the other man’s chest. The glare caused him to flinch and turn away. He took one hand from the knife and held it in front of his face.
“Me!” the other man screamed, holding out his hand. “Give it to me!”
Courtney wanted to run but looked at the man’s outstretched hand. She remembered the way she had reached for him in the darkness, and the fractional nod that told her he would help if he could.
She returned that gesture now. She gave him the light.
———
Matthew felt the pressure of the knife point decrease as the light hit them. Oliver had removed one hand to deflect the glare and his body weight shifted. Matthew, through squinted eyes, saw a corona of red hair. The girl, he thought. He reached out his hand and screamed at her to give him the flashlight. Not because he wanted its reassuring glow, but because he wanted something solid in his grasp. Something he could use to break Oliver’s jaw.
As soon as the barrel slapped into his palm he brought his arm upward, twisting his shoulder, smashing the fat part of the flashlight against Oliver’s face. His head rocked to the side. The light stuttered. Blood sprayed from his mouth and he raised both hands, drawing the knife away from Matthew’s chest. Giving him no time to recover, Matthew lashed out again. The second blow was harder, more accurate, catching the hinge of Oliver’s jaw. A resounding crack. More blood. Oliver groaned and rolled off Matthew. The knife spilled from his hand.
Matthew sat up. His eyes spiralled and the cave dipped, as if it were being lifted at one end by a giant hand, tilted forward. Oliver held his face and groaned. Matthew pushed himself to his knees but overbalanced, spilling across a small skeleton that cracked and separated. He dropped the flashlight and the beam rolled away from him, illuminating, for a moment, the girl’s terrified face. He snatched it up again quickly, whirled, saw Oliver trying to get to his feet. Matthew gasped and looked for the knife but couldn’t see it. Buried in dust, perhaps, or fallen into one of the many cracks in the cave floor.
Oliver rose unsteadily. He staggered toward Matthew.
“Maah-fuggah,” he mumbled. “Goddamn maah-fuggah.”
No knife, but there—not ten feet away—was a good-sized rock, hefty and jagged. Matthew imagined doing devastating, skull-crushing damage with it. The darkness inside him shifted heavily. He almost grinned.
“Goan fuggin keeeeel ooooh.”
Matthew blinked blood from his eye and crawled toward the rock. His chest rattled. His arms shook. He collapsed, pushed himself up, clawed through the pain. Oliver screamed and spat out three teeth. His jaw hung at a broken angle and blood rolled over his lower lip. Matthew swept skulls and bones in his direction, knocking up a fan of white dust, and then threw himself forward, landing an arm’s length from the rock. He reached for it. The light flickered.
“Maah-fuggin gogg-zuggah!”
Matthew’s hand folded over the rock and he dragged it toward him. He heard the little girl cry out behind him—“He’s coming!”—and pushed himself to one knee. He shone the light on Oliver, who reeled closer, wild-eyed and bleeding.
“Mowdun . . . orrway gedz . . . wooorrn.”
Matthew teetered to his feet and faced him.
“Maah-fuggah.”
“You ruined my life,” Matthew said softly, almost disbelievingly. Oliver stumbled forward with another insane howl, and Matthew met him with the rock. It wasn’t a hard blow—Matthew lacked the strength for that—but it didn’t need to be. The rock carried its own velocity. It thumped like a hammer off the top of Oliver’s head. Blood flowed from his hairline as if poured from a jug. A triangular flap of skin drooped across his forehead, revealing the wet bone beneath. Matthew stepped forward and delivered a second blow, then a third. He heard Oliver’s skull crack—felt it crunch inward. Oliver slumped like a boxer one punch from hitting the canvas. He looked at Matthew, his eyes golden in the flashlight. Two more uncertain steps. More blood bubbled from his lips and a ghastly smile crossed his face, then he slumped to the floor and was still.
Chapter Sixteen
The little girl threw herself around him so fiercely that he stumbled and almost fell. Her arms were thin, her hair matted and dry, and when she pressed her face against his chest and started to cry, he felt the points of her cheekbones, the ridge of her jaw. Matthew dropped the bloodied rock and held her. He stroked her hair and whispered her name and told her that everything was going to be okay. Her tears soaked into his shirt, and amid the spiralling darkness in his mind—the shock, the pain and mental fatigue—he tried to calculate how long she had been trapped here. Couldn’t do it. Too much hurt running at him. The fact that she had been trapped here at all was terrible enough. One day would be too long. One second. Yet here she was, having survived, strong enough to hold him, and to cry. Matthew stooped and clasped her hand, his fingers folding evenly around it, so small and delicate, like some newborn thing. He held her like this not to give her reassurance, but to absorb her strength.
———
She led him to water and he drank, almost comically, like a dog in a river. The water was cold and invigorating. He removed his tie, balled it into a cloth pad, and used it to wipe the blood from his face and throat. Courtney shone the flashlight on the wound on his upper arm. It was deep, would almost certainly need sutures, but had started to coagulate, reducing blood flow to a few thin trickles. His sleeve was ruined, stained red. He tore it away, dipped it in the cold water, and used it for a bandage. Courtney helped tie it.
“We can go now?” she said.
“We can go now.”
She shone the light on the cluster of stalagmites where Ethan lay, knees drawn to his chest, dust in his hair. Shadows fell across him in thick straps. They appeared to hold him down. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent. A small bundle of bones, barely breathing.
“His name is Ethan.”
Matthew crouched and scooped the boy into his arms. So light, like a bird, something he could cradle forever without tiring. Ethan groaned. His eyes rolled behind his eyelids. His legs looped over the crook of Matthew’s elbow, his head against Matthew’s chest. Courtney led the way with the flashlight. She shuddered, seeing for the first time what she had hitherto only felt during her exploration. She stepped around drifts of bones, over fissures and between columns, moving wearily, and Matthew followed.
———
The tunnel, twisting a route to the surface, filled with light, its sick-coloured walls glistening, broad in places, narrow in others. Courtney and Matthew moved slowly but steadily, their breaths echoing off the rippled surfaces, their shadows ungainly. Matthew kept looking over his shoulder, remembering how Oliver had chased him along this tunnel all those years ago. Even though he’d felt Oliver’s skull splinter inward, and had watched him fold lifelessly to the ground, he still expected to see him shambling along in pursuit—to hear him first. Maah-fuggah . . . maah-fuggin gogg-zuggah. And Matthew would whirl around to see Oliver close behind, bleeding from everywhere.
“Can you go quicker?” he said to Courtney.
She said she’d try, and she did, but fell twice on the slick floor, and the second time the flashlight flickered and Matthew thought for one long, terrible second that it would snap ou
t and leave them in darkness. But it stayed on, hesitantly at first, and then more surely. Courtney wept and the tears flashed down her dusty face. Matthew bent at the knees, cradling Ethan in one arm so that he could help her up.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Go at your own pace.” He looked over his shoulder again, thinking for one moment that he’d heard something shuffling through the darkness behind them. “We’re okay now. Everything is going to be fine.”
They moved on, Matthew stealing glances over his shoulder, where the light ended quickly and the darkness stretched forever. Deeper than you can believe, Matthew thought, knowing that it was still a part of him.
They came, eventually, to the opening. Courtney cried again when the flashlight showed that most of the rocks had been removed and they would be able to get out. She lowered her head, red hair spilling in tangles. Matthew saw the knobs of her spine, the severe curve of her ribcage, pressing through her wet T-shirt.
“Can you climb up?” he asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll help you.”
Courtney nodded and pushed the barrel of the flashlight into the front of her jeans so that the light shone upward, and suddenly the stars could be seen through the opening like broken glass on a patch of asphalt. They were so clear and real that their silence was a dubious thing, as if it were more likely they should be singing. Courtney wiped her eyes and started to climb, using the gaps between the rocks as rungs, as Matthew had all those years ago. Her weak arms strained, muscles like thin rope. Matthew set Ethan down, easing his head to the hard floor, and helped her. She stepped into his palms, like stirrups, and he hoisted her. A brief, brilliant pain flared in his body, ascending to his brain, where it jellyfished, trailing stingers. He saw Courtney’s shape blot out the stars and thought, good that’s good, and then everything faded, for just a moment, and when it came back Courtney was shining the flashlight through the opening. Ethan lay still, so thin and pale he appeared perfectly formed, like an ultrasound image.
“Let’s go,” Courtney said.
Matthew glanced over his shoulder again. No sign of Oliver, although the idea of him lurching through the darkness would not leave his mind. He drew a deep breath, picked up Ethan, and passed him carefully through the opening. Courtney helped, curling her arms beneath him. She lowered him to the ground, crouched, one hand cradling his head. The other still held the flashlight. She shone it on the opening as Matthew climbed out. Fresh blood dripped from his head and splashed on the rocks. That’s as much of me as you’re getting, he thought, smearing drips from his forehead, wiping it on his shirt. Then he was out, standing in the clear and empty night. The stars arced above him. Point Hollow glimmered distantly. Matthew wavered and his shoulders hitched but no tears came from his eyes. Courtney looked away. Her hair was brighter than the stars.
“Can we go?” she said after a moment.
Matthew wiped his eyes as if there had been tears. He nodded and told Courtney that they could go, but first he had to close the opening. “Bury everything,” he said. He started to lift the rocks one by one, placing them across the opening, staggering them for structure. He couldn’t lift the heavier rocks, so used the ones he could. At some point Ethan started to cough—a wheezy, dry sound, as if his throat had rusted and was full of holes that flaked and grew larger with every breath. His chest jumped like a muscle flexing. Courtney groaned and stroked his face and took off her T-shirt and wrung drops of water from it. They splashed against his lips, dripped into the dry purse of his mouth. She did it again and again, using different parts of the T-shirt, until he stopped coughing. He made a murmuring sound. His chest rattled.
Matthew selected a final rock—the largest he could manage in his weakened state—and dropped it into place. He stepped back, closed his eyes, and whispered a fragile prayer. Courtney tugged his pant leg. He touched her hand, then looked at the opening. It was not completely covered, but would have to do.
Blood trickled into his eye. He wiped it away, looked at the stars.
Courtney tugged at him again.
“We’re going.” Matthew said.
“Which way?” she asked.
Matthew pointed toward Point Hollow’s lights. Courtney nodded and started to walk, wiping her eyes with one hand, finding a path with the flashlight. Matthew lifted Ethan into his arms and held him close. He felt the boy’s heartbeat shaking through his small frame. The strongest thing about him. A cannon made of glass.
Chapter Seventeen
As it had for insufferable years, the mountain woke him.
One eye crept open, bleary with blood and tears. He blinked it clear, then rolled onto his side. The mountain roared, and with such ferocity that Oliver thought he should be rattled from wall to wall, tossed around with the bones. He dragged himself to his knees. The gap in his skull creaked and dripped fluids. His buckled jaw swung loose.
He let the mountain colour his mind. Furious reds and purples. One rumble led inexorably into the next. In its indelicate phrases and modulation he discerned his failure. Could he continue to live with this violence inside him? And even if he could, what life would he have? Prison and torment? Insanity and rage?
There’s still time, a voice said. It spoke from within, but from within his mind, or the mountain, he couldn’t be sure. Matthew’s weak. You can catch him.
“Just leave me alone.”
Get up.
“I’m dying. It’s over.”
Get UP!
And he did, crying out, struggling to his feet. He cringed when the voice spoke again, because it sounded so close, and with it came a burst of heat that managed to burn and chill at the same time.
I say when it’s over.
Oliver turned and saw him. Dark on dark, wreathed in flames. Leander Bird’s orange eyes blazed and the mountain trembled with his anger.
Are you really so weak?
“You’re not even real.”
Are you really so useless?
Oliver lifted the gory flap of skin from his forehead and pressed it back into place, feeling the depression in the bone beneath, like the fontanel in an infant’s skull. He howled and shuffled away from Bird.
“It’s over.”
There’s still time.
“Fuck yourself.” He stumbled, dropped to one knee—
Get up!
—and got back up. And that was it: his innate doggedness, his refusal to stay down. It flickered inside him like the ghost in the mountain. Are you really so weak? the voice had asked, knowing that weakness was not an option. Are you really so useless? Knowing that Oliver had no grasp of failure. He was like the mountain in so many ways. Grey and unbreakable, and with a dark fire burning deep inside. It moved him—kept him running when others would fall. This was the reason he had been chosen.
Leander Bird stomped and smoked, his black arms reaching. Oliver’s spirit strengthened with every remorseless boom. He stood upright, shoulders square, shaking pain like tired leaves from a branch. He closed his eyes and found his superhuman core. That rare and brilliant thing. His own flame.
“I am alive.”
You are perfect.
“I am unstoppable.”
The perfect flame.
Oliver roared and flickered. He went inside, called upon elemental energy, feeling the earth roll through his body, the fire in his veins. He held out his arms and embraced his animal- and bird-self. Their strength and instinct first healed, and then lifted him. He was a survivor in the wild. A bear. An eagle.
Now hunt them down.
Oliver snarled. He tore off his T-shirt, not feeling the skin on his shoulders peel away. He discarded the blood-soaked rags, unbuckled his belt, took off his jeans and underwear. His eyes opened to the sight of Leander Bird floating above him like strange, aquatic life, something darker than the ocean, but alight inside. A swirling, poisonous anemon
e.
Hunt them. Stop them.
Boom and shudder. An earthquake. A hydrogen bomb.
He felt no pain. His skin glowed and his heart drummed furiously. His penis was engorged, iron-hard, twice—three times—its usual size. It swayed impressively as he stalked forward. Fluid dribbled from the tip in a long, silver line.
He’d worked too hard, and for too many years, to fail now. He’d earned his peace, dammit. Oliver dropped to all fours and sniffed the cave floor. His heightened sense of smell detected clusters of bones and stagnant pools. He padded forward, sniffing among the skulls and ribcages, until he found what he was looking for: his knapsack. Oliver pulled it open and reached inside. His hand closed around the .45’s grip. Standing again, he curled his finger around the trigger and fired twice into the air. In the brief bursts of light he saw the cave’s dark throat, the only way out. He lowered the gun and moved toward it.
———
Adrenaline barrelled through his body, producing prolonged hysterical strength that he believed, in his delicate mind, to be bestial force. He crawled through the tunnel, sometimes on all fours, with his erect penis bouncing and the .45 knocking on the cold rock floor. He saw only a window of purple light when he came to the exit. The human aspect of his mind registered that Matthew had attempted to cover the opening, but had used the smaller rocks and boulders and placed them inexactly. Oliver had little trouble dislodging them. They toppled with a satisfying sound. He licked his bruised knuckles and sprang onto the topmost boulder, into the opening, like a cat onto a window ledge.
———
At the foot of the mountain, less than a mile away, a flashlight blinked in the darkness, moving slowly, like a tired lightning bug, winking as it passed between the trees.
Oliver growled and followed.
———
The eastern sky was faded rose and a brushed, pale blue. An hour until full light. Oliver’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. He saw the silhouettes of trees and rocks, asymmetric images printed on grey paper, which he moved among carefully, knowing he’d be quicker if he could see better. He grinned and drew on human memory, veered from the rudimentary path, and picked his way toward a monstrous, tangled shape: the deadfall where he stashed the flashlight, wrapped in a Ziploc bag and sackcloth. Oliver scratched among the dirt, found the light and flicked it on. Darkness separated. He scrambled back to the path and looked west.