The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  "You'll use our belts," Jeff said.

  What Amy wanted to do was run down the hill. She had an image of herself attempting this, bursting into the clearing, confronting the men waiting there. She'd tell them what had happened, find a way to communicate everything that had gone so wrong here, miming it out for them. It would be difficult, of course, but somehow she'd get them to see her fear, to make them feel it, too. And they'd relent. They'd get help. They'd let them all depart. Mathias's brother was lying on the opposite side of the hill, his corpse pierced with arrows, but still Amy managed, for a brief instant, to believe in this fantasy. She didn't want to be the one who was lowered into the shaft.

  Jeff took her hand. He was opening his mouth to say something-to convince her, she knew, or tell her that she didn't have a choice-when the chirping resumed from the bottom of the hole.

  Everyone but Mathias ran to the shaft, peered into it. Mathias was nearly finished braiding, and he kept at it, not even pausing.

  "Eric?" Jeff yelled. "Can you find it?"

  Eric didn't answer for a moment. They could sense him stirring down there, searching for the source of the sound. "It keeps moving," he called. "Sometimes it seems like it's to my left. And then it's to my right."

  "Shouldn't it light up as it rings?" Amy asked Jeff, her voice low, almost a whisper.

  Jeff shouted, "Is there a light? Look for a light."

  Again, they could sense Eric moving about. "I don't see it," he called. And then, a second later, just as they were realizing this for themselves: "It's stopped."

  They all waited to see if the sound would start again, but it didn't. The sun touched the western horizon and everything took on a reddish hue. In a few minutes, it would be dark. Mathias was done with his braiding. They watched him join this final section to the others, then attach their makeshift backboard to the two dangling strands. He finished just as the day began its sudden descent into night. Then Jeff held the crank while Mathias and Stacy lifted the backboard out over the shaft's mouth. They spent a moment staring at it as it dangled there: Mathias had covered the aluminum frame with one of the archaeologists' sleeping bags, cushioning it. They piled all four of their belts on top of the sleeping bag. Amy knew that though she hadn't yet agreed to Jeff's proposition, the question had somehow been decided. Everything was ready, and they thought she was, too. Mathias joined Jeff beside the windlass, taking hold of its crank. Stacy stood there, hugging herself, watching.

  "Just climb on it," Jeff said.

  So that was what Amy did. Girding herself, thinking brave thoughts, she stepped out into the shaft's opening, crouching on the aluminum frame, clutching at the braided strands of nylon. The backboard creaked beneath her weight, rocking back and forth, but it held. And then-before Amy even had a chance to collect herself, or begin to second-guess her decision-the windlass started to turn, dropping her from the day's gathering darkness into the deeper darkness of the hole.

  It had taken them a long time, but now, finally, they were coming. Eric didn't know how long, exactly, it had been, perhaps not quite as long as it had seemed, but a long time nonetheless. Even under the best of circumstances, he wasn't very good at reckoning the passage of time-he lacked an internal clock-but here in the hole, in the darkness, under the stress of everything that had happened thus far today, it was far more difficult than usual. All he knew was that it was becoming night up there, that the blue rectangle of sky had taken on a brief blush of red before fading into a blue-gray, a slate gray, a gray-black. They'd made a backboard and Amy was crouched on it now, dropping toward him.

  Hours, Eric supposed. It must've been hours. Pablo had been screaming and then he'd stopped, and Stacy had shouted down to him, and they'd talked back and forth, and Jeff had told him to blow out the lamp. Then they'd all vanished to make the backboard and lengthen the rope-it had taken them a long time, too long-and he'd first crouched, then sat beside Pablo, gripping his wrist all the while. Talking, too, off and on, to keep the Greek company, to raise his spirits and try to trick him-trick both of them, maybe-into believing that everything was going to be all right.

  But everything wasn't going to be all right, of course, and no matter how hard Eric worked to throw a tone of optimism into his voice-and he did work; he consciously struggled for it, an echo of the Greeks' playful bantering among themselves-he couldn't elude this difficult fact. There was the smell, for one thing. The smell of shit-of urine, too. Pablo had broken his back, lost control of his bowels, his bladder. He'd need to have a catheter put in, a bag hanging from the side of his bed, nurses to empty it and keep him clean. He'd need surgery, and quickly-right now, earlier than now-he'd need doctors and physical therapists hovering about him, charting his progress. And Eric couldn't see how any of this was going to happen. They'd worked all afternoon to build a backboard and with it they were finally going to get him out of this hole, but what would that accomplish? Out of the hole, up there among the tents and the flowering vines, his back would still be broken, his bladder and bowels leaking urine and shit into his already-sodden pants. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  Eric's knee had stopped bleeding finally. There was a steady, throbbing ache, which jumped in volume whenever he shifted his weight. Jeff's T-shirt was stiff with dried blood; Eric set it on the ground beside him. His shoe still felt damp.

  Eric told Pablo how people healed-implacably-how the worst part was the accident itself, then the body went to work, mobilizing, rebuilding. Even now, even as they were talking, it was beginning to happen. He told Pablo about the bones he'd broken as a child. He described falling on a wet sidewalk and cracking his forearm-he couldn't remember which bone, the radius, maybe, or the ulna; it didn't matter. He'd had a cast for six weeks, the end of the summer; he could remember the stink of it when they cut it off, sweat and mildew, his arm looking pale and too thin, his terror of the whirling saw. He'd broken his collarbone playing Superman, flying headfirst down a playground slide. He'd broken his nose falling off a pogo stick. And he described all of these accidents for Pablo now, in detail, the pain of each one, the course of his eventual recovery: his implacable, inevitable recovery.

  Pablo couldn't understand a single word of this, of course. He moaned and muttered. Occasionally, he'd lift the arm Eric wasn't holding and seem to reach for something at his side, though Eric couldn't guess what, since there was nothing there but darkness. Eric ignored this movement-the moaning and muttering, too-he just kept talking, working at it, his voice high and falsely cheerful. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

  He told Pablo of other accidents he'd witnessed: a boy who'd skate-boarded into traffic (a concussion and a handful of broken ribs), a neighbor who'd tumbled off his roof while cleaning out the gutters (a dislocated shoulder, a pair of broken fingers), a girl who'd mistimed her jump from a rope swing, landing not in the river, as intended, but upon its rocky bank (a shattered ankle, three lost teeth). He talked about the town where he'd been raised, how small it was, how ugly and provincial, yet somehow picturesque in its ugliness, somehow worldly in its provincialism. When a siren sounded, people went to their front doors, stepped out onto their porches, shaded their eyes to see. Children jumped on bicycles, raced after the ambulance or fire truck or police car. There was gawking involved, of course, but also empathy. When Eric had broken his arm, neighbors had come calling, bearing gifts: comic books for him to read, videos to watch.

  He kept hold of Pablo's wrist with his right hand while he talked, squeezing sometimes to emphasize certain points, never letting go. His left hand moved back and forth between the oil lamp and the box of matches, touching one and then the other in a continuous, restless circuit, moving lightly across them, as if they were beads on a rosary. And there was something prayerful about the gesture, too; it was accompanied by a pair of words in his head. Yet, even as he told his tales to Pablo in his confident, assertively optimistic voice, he was silently repeating the two words, chanting them internally while his hand shifted fro
m lamp to matches to lamp to matches: Still there, still there, still there, still there…

  He described for Pablo what it had felt like to ride his bicycle in pursuit of the sirens, the flashing lights. The excitement-that giddy feeling of drama and disaster. He told him of happy endings. Of seven-year-old Mary Kelly, who knew how to climb a tree but not how to get down, her fear making her scramble higher and higher, crying as she went, pulling her tiny body upward, forty feet, into the very crown of an ancient oak, a crowd gathering beneath her, calling to her, urging her back down, while a wind came up, gradually increasing, making the branches sway, the entire tree seeming to dip and rise. He imitated for Pablo the collective gasp when she almost slipped, dangling for an excruciatingly long string of seconds before she managed to regain her foothold, crying all the while, the sirens approaching, the boys on their bicycles. Then the fire truck with its ladder slowly angling skyward, the cheers when the paramedic leaned deep into the foliage, grasped the little girl by her arm, yanked her toward him, throwing her over his shoulder.

  Eric had the sudden sense, in the darkness, of a hand touching the small of his back. He jumped, almost yelped, but caught himself. It was just the vine. Somehow, it had managed to take root down here, too, at the bottom of the shaft. He must've leaned into it as he talked, creating the impression of its having reached out and touched him, cradling him at the base of his spine, almost caressing him. It was impossible to keep his bearings here; he was as good as blind. All he had to orient himself was Pablo's wrist and-still there, still there, still there-the oil lamp and the box of matches. He slid forward to escape the vine's touch-it was creepy, and it made him shiver; he didn't like it-shifting until he was right up against Pablo's broken body. When he moved, there was a sharp, tearing pain from the cut in his knee, and it started to bleed again. He patted at the ground, searching for Jeff's T-shirt, then pressed it once more to the wound.

  He circled back to the girl on the rope swing; Marci Brand, thirteen years old. She'd had braces and a long brown ponytail. He told Pablo how they'd all laughed at first, seeing her fall, he and the other children. There'd been something comical about it, cartoonlike. They'd watched her drop, heard that awful slapping sound as she hit the rocks; everyone must've known she was hurt. But they'd laughed, all of them, as if to deny this, to undo it, stopping only when they saw her try to stand, then crumple awkwardly, falling onto her side and sliding down the rocky bank into the water. Her mouth was cut-she'd hit her face against the stones-and a murky cloud of blood slowly formed around her in the water as she floated there, thrashing her arms. Her eyes were clenched shut, Eric remembered, her expression contorted. She was grimacing, but not crying; she didn't make a sound, not even when they pulled her out, dragging her back up onto the bank while one of them rode off on his bicycle to get help. Later, they all felt guilty about having laughed, especially when it looked as if she might not be able to walk again. But she did, eventually-implacably, inexorably-with a slight limp, perhaps, although this was barely noticeable, not noticeable at all, really, unless you knew the story, unless you were watching for it.

  Now and then, Eric thought he could see things in the darkness-floating shapes, balloonlike, faintly luminescent. They seemed to approach, then hover right in front of him before slowly withdrawing again. Some had a bluish green tint; others were a faint yellow, almost white. These were tricks his eyes were playing on him, he knew, physiological reactions to the darkness, but he couldn't help himself: whenever they appeared to come especially close, he'd relinquish his grip on Pablo's wrist so that he could try to touch them. As soon as he'd lift his hand, though, the shapes would vanish, only to reappear at some new spot, farther away, and resume their slow, gently bobbing approach. He took the T-shirt away from his cut knee. The wound had stopped bleeding again. Immediately, he reached for the lamp, the matches: still there, still there…

  He told Pablo other stories, too, tales that hadn't ended so happily-implacably, inexorably-changing them for the wounded man's benefit. Little Stevie Stahl, who was swept into a storm sewer while playing in a flooded field, was no longer discovered by a volunteer scuba diver, half-buried in silt, bloated beyond recognition. No: he reappeared five minutes later and almost a mile away, spit out into the river, cut and bruised and crying, it was true, but otherwise, miraculously, unharmed. And Ginger Ruby-who'd set her uncle's garage on fire while playing with a book of matches, and then, disoriented by the smoke and her rising panic, fled away from the door through which she could've easily escaped, and died crouching against the back wall, behind a row of garbage cans-was, in Eric's retelling of the story, saved by a fireman, brought out to the cheers of the gathered crowd, gasping and coughing and covered with soot, her shirt and hair scorched, but otherwise (yes, miraculously) unharmed.

  The cold air coming from the open shaft on the far side of Pablo's body wasn't constant. Sometimes it would stop, seem to hold its breath, and the temperature in the hole would instantly begin to rise. Eric would start to sweat, his shirt growing damp with it, and then, abruptly, the cold air would return. This constant fluctuation unsettled Eric, frightened him, made the darkness within the shaft seem threateningly animate. Each time the draft paused, he felt as if it had been blocked by someone-or something-a presence that was hesitating just in front of him, examining and appraising him. Once, he even thought he heard it sniffing, taking in his scent. His senses were playing tricks again, he knew. But still, he had to resist the urge to light the lamp, his hand pausing, wavering, then resuming its steady back and forth: still there, still there, still there.

  He told Pablo of his friend Gary Holmes, who'd dreamed of becoming a pilot. Gary had badgered and cajoled and begged his parents, wearing them down year by year, until they finally gave him flying lessons for his sixteenth birthday. Every Saturday, he'd ride his bicycle out to the local airport and spend the afternoon there, entering this new world. Three months into it, Eric was playing soccer-a youth league, four separate games going on at once, the fields lying parallel to one another. A small plane flew over, very low, buzzing them, the players pausing for a reflexive instant as the aircraft's shadow swept across them, everyone ducking involuntarily, then peering upward. The plane flew on, banked, made another pass, the games stuttering to a more complete halt. The referees blew their whistles; they were waving their arms, struggling to restore order, when the plane banked a second time, its engine stuttering, coughing, falling silent. And then-a handful of seconds later, the time it takes to breathe, exhale, breathe again-from somewhere within the wooded area west of the fields came the slamming, splintering, crunching sound of the crash. Not in the version Eric shared with Pablo, though. No, as Eric told the story, someone had understood what was happening on that very first low pass. One of the coaches, then another. They began to shout, pointing, the referees joining in with their whistles, everyone yelling suddenly, running. The plane was in distress; it was attempting an emergency landing. They needed to clear the fields. And they did it. By the time the plane had banked, returned for its second pass, everyone was crowded back against the sidelines. The plane landed roughly, bouncing, crashing through one of the wooden goals, its front wheels digging into the soft earth, nearly flipping it, so that it finally came to rest tipped forward on its nose, its propeller bent, its windshield cracked. Eric hesitated for a moment here, struggling to imagine what Gary and his instructor's injuries might've been, how that plane's abrupt return to earth would've battered the two bodies in its cockpit. A shattered kneecap, he decided. A dislocated shoulder, a cracked pelvis, a mild concussion. He waved these aside even as he listed them. They all healed, he assured Pablo, as such injuries always do-yes, once again-implacably, inexorably.

  The others were busy up above, braiding the strips of nylon they'd cut from the blue tent, building their backboard; they didn't have time to think. But Eric was down here in the dark, with the smell of Pablo's shit and urine, the rising and falling of his moans, his muttering. So it was probabl
y natural that he was the first of them to begin to wonder if the Greek might not survive this adventure, if his body had moved beyond the realm ofimplacable andinexorable , if he was, after all, going to die in the coming hours or days while they hovered helplessly about him.

  It seemed as if Pablo might've fallen asleep-or lost consciousness. He'd stopped muttering, anyway, stopped moaning, stopped reaching out into the darkness for whatever it was that he imagined to be waiting there for him to grasp. Eric fell silent, too, sat beside Pablo, holding his wrist with one hand, touching the lamp, the matches with the other. Time seemed to pass even more slowly without the sound of his voice echoing back at him from the shaft's narrow walls. His thoughts returned to Gary Holmes, to the photograph of the mangled plane on the front page of the local paper, the memorial service in the high school auditorium.

  Gary had been a friend of his-not a close one, but more than an acquaintance, and, a month after the funeral, Gary 's mother had stopped by Eric's house. "Eric?" his own mother had called. "There's someone here to see you."

  Eric had hurried downstairs, to find Mrs. Holmes standing in the front hall. She'd come to ask if he wanted Gary 's bicycle. It was an odd, awkward encounter; Eric's mother had stood there watching them talk, looking tearful. She kept reaching out to touch Mrs. Holmes's shoulder. Eric had felt startled by the request, and strangely embarrassed-after all, he hadn't been that close to Gary. He tried to decline the offer, only to change his mind when he saw how stricken Mrs. Holmes looked at the first, hesitant shake of his head. Yes, he said. Of course he'd take the bike. He thanked her, and then his mother was crying in earnest. So was Mrs. Holmes.