Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  On the road to Trapdoor they passed the tumbledown trailer that had once belonged to Carson Borders. The headlights caught a glimmer of police tape. Ridley hit the brakes so hard that the truck fishtailed and what was left of the tires was put to shrieking work. They held on to the road, but just barely.

  The truck was across both lanes when it stopped but Ridley didn’t care to move it. He kept his foot on the brake and stared at the trailer. The snow all around it was mashed down and trampled by tire tracks and boot prints. A perimeter had been cordoned off with tape.

  “What is this?” he said, but of course Julianne was unable to answer. He thought she might know and he was tempted to remove the tape to ask but afraid of the result. The point was to make it into Trapdoor, and it was more than logical that the surface world would try to prevent him. Perhaps the scene at the trailer was not even real.

  “Do you see that?” he asked Julianne.

  She was eyeing him warily but she nodded.

  “I don’t mean the building. I mean the rest.”

  Again she nodded. He thought she was being sincere. “Okay,” he said. “All right, that’s very good.”

  He took his foot off the brake, but he was shaking now.

  “The thing to remember,” he said, “is that this doesn’t matter. All of this, what we see up here? It doesn’t mean a thing. What matters happened down there. We can’t see any of what matters. Not yet. That is what we must remember!”

  He had started to shout and he didn’t like that, because it suggested a lack of control. He concentrated on his breathing until they reached Trapdoor. Just beyond the closed gate, he pulled off the road and into the snow and killed the engine. He took the sapphire necklace down from the rearview mirror and put it in his pocket and then he got out of the truck and took both backpacks out of the bed. He opened Julianne’s door, took her hand, and helped her out of the cab. He would never have admitted it but the touch of her hand was comforting. He doubted that she felt the same about his.

  “There’s a garage up ahead and to the left,” he said. “That’s the caretaker’s quarters. We’ll walk there. Don’t run.”

  She didn’t run. He put one of the backpacks over her shoulders, and she moved to cooperate, no sign of resistance. They walked on the other side of the tree line and parallel to the drive, went as far as the back corner of the garage, and then Ridley whispered, “Hands, please. Only for a little while.”

  She offered them reluctantly, and he tied them without ever having to take his eyes off the house. This was why you practiced. You never knew what would be asked of you.

  “All right,” he said. “Quietly ahead. Quietly. And, Julianne, you might see some things that will suggest that all of your efforts have been wasted. That I’ve lost control again. Don’t be fooled. I’m in control.” He extended his hands, palms down, like a child waiting to play a slap game. They showed no more movement than the ice over the creek.

  He nudged her forward and they walked around the garage and up the exterior stairs that led to the apartment above. He was entranced by her movement. He’d anticipated that she would struggle to walk, that fear would make her clumsy. Instead, she glided along in perfect step, matching his energy and joining it, like a dance partner.

  Maybe you’re wrong about her. You don’t know what she really said to Novak. You’ve made assumptions.

  No, no, no. He had trusted once and would not again. The surface world was false and she had come from it.

  At the base of the steps that led to Cecil Buckner’s apartment, Ridley paused and studied the windows, looking for any indication that Cecil was up and moving. He wasn’t at the window, but Ridley could see his socked feet resting on a coffee table, a can of beer beside them. He was clueless and unprepared, as he should be. Despite his proximity to Trapdoor, Cecil had never learned to listen to what she might tell him, the warnings she might whisper. The very notion that he was entrusted to be the cave’s caretaker was offensive.

  Ridley positioned Julianne in front of him, withdrew his knife, flicked the blade open, put it to her throat, and shoved her forward. He walked with his chest pressed to her back and guided her up the stairs. He reached around her then and knocked on the door with his free hand.

  The beer had vanished from sight but now it returned to the coffee table and Cecil’s socked feet went into motion and the door was opened. His eyes took in the scene fast.

  “Ridley,” he said. “What in the hell…Ridley, no, don’t—”

  “Let us in.”

  Cecil took a step back, too willingly, and Ridley saw that his eyes were drifting right, and so he released Julianne and stepped around her and punched Cecil once in the face and kicked him once in the groin, and the bigger man fell to the floor in gasping pain without ever reaching the shotgun leaning against the wall just to the right of the door.

  “Your choice, Cecil,” Ridley said. He guided Julianne inside and closed the door behind them. Cecil was writhing on the floor.

  “I know this is not the way it is supposed to go,” Ridley said, “but I’m going to need to get in to see her tonight. There simply is no other choice at this point. It has to be done.”

  For a time Cecil didn’t answer, just gasped his way back to breath, a string of spit hanging from his lips. He got slowly to his hands and knees, looked up at Ridley, and said, “You stupid son of a bitch. You’ll end up in prison. Ten years free, and you’ll still end up in prison.”

  “There’s a lot left to play out before that,” Ridley said, “though I acknowledge the possibility. I always have.”

  Cecil breathed through his mouth, his eyes flicking around the room in search of options.

  “Keep your attention on me,” Ridley said. “There’s no need to delay. I just need the keys.”

  “All you had to do was wait, you freak,” Cecil said.

  Ridley nodded with sorrow. “I tried to. You know that. But it was easier for you. You never had any questions. And if you did, they were about me. Now, imagine being me and having those same questions.”

  “You’ll end up in Terre Haute waiting on the electric chair.”

  “The keys,” Ridley said, beckoning with his hand. “Otherwise, you’ll watch everything that happens to her and it will happen in your home and before your eyes. And you will know that you made a choice that might have stopped it. You’ll live with that.”

  Cecil rose unsteadily.

  “I’ll give you the damn keys, though if you were only smart enough to wait, they’d have been yours anyhow. Now that will never happen. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Where are the keys?”

  “Right behind your head. Hanging on the peg.”

  “Get them for me.”

  “They’re only a foot away from you.”

  “Get them for me.”

  Cecil shuffled forward, walking in pain, and extended his arm to reach around Ridley for the keys. When he made his next move, it was with speed that Ridley hadn’t anticipated. Cecil had been a fine athlete in his day, his name still in the Garrison High record books for tackles, and his muscle memory had lasted through the years—he got both arms around Ridley and drove him back into the wall. Julianne was trapped between them, in danger from Ridley’s knife, which was the reason he hadn’t been prepared for the assault. He’d expected Cecil would value her life more than this.

  He couldn’t allow her to be hurt, not yet, not when they were so close to the place where he would need her, and so he dropped the knife and stumbled backward. All three of them hit the floor hard. Ridley rolled and Cecil did exactly what Ridley had expected and went after the shotgun. Ridley stepped over Julianne and grabbed the back of Cecil’s head just as he reached the gun. Rather than pulling him back, Ridley drove him forward and slammed Cecil into the wall. The shotgun clattered to the floor just as Cecil’s nose shattered.

  Cecil threw a high, powerful elbow that might have found Ridley’s face if Cecil hadn’t slipped on the hardwood floor. This
was why Ridley kept his boots on even in his own home. Traction was something you could never take for granted.

  Cecil was a tall and muscular man, bigger and stronger than Ridley, but he did not have traction and he did not have momentum. Ridley banged Cecil’s face off the wall one more time and then threw him to the floor. It could have ended there, should have, but Cecil landed near the knife and made the mistake of reaching for it.

  Ridley raised his boot and smashed it down on Cecil’s hand and felt the bones break. Cecil cried out and rolled away, clutching his wrist to his belly as Ridley picked up the open knife. He felt in control at that moment, aggressive but focused, the goal clear: incapacitate Cecil and enter the cave.

  Two changes occurred. Fast. One: Cecil reached for the shotgun again, even after he should have known better. Two: The knife spoke to Ridley. It was open and in his hand. In its designed position. Ready to do what it was meant to do, but more than that, what it had already done on a night he could not fully remember.

  Night, was it night? Maybe day. Darkness. Certainly darkness. Down there, all days become nights and neither matters. And you held the knife like this and you—

  Cecil’s fingers scrabbled for the shotgun and missed. Ridley pulled the big man’s head back and saw wide white eyes, and then Cecil’s chin rolled up and back and his throat was exposed. Ridley was ready then, ready to slash the knife down to do what it was intended to do, what Ridley was intended to do, when Julianne howled from beneath the tape over her mouth. The trapped sound was soft but its intensity was not.

  He looked back to where she lay on her side on the floor, a helpless spectator, and he saw only terror in her eyes. It was the way Ridley’s sister had looked at their father on many occasions. Whenever Ridley saw that look come into his sister’s face, he had interceded. It hadn’t gone well for him, ever, but he’d always done it.

  Julianne took a gasping breath that made the tape over her mouth bubble, and the look in her eyes made Ridley cringe. All she saw was horror, and she blamed Ridley. She was afraid of him, and that was a standard part of his days now and had been for years, but it had never been desired. He had never wanted to cause fear. People feared him, yes, but it wasn’t a product of his intentions. Actions, perhaps, but never intentions.

  He slid off Cecil Buckner’s back and swept the shotgun across the floor. Cecil didn’t struggle. His eyes were on the blade that had nearly carved through his throat.

  “You can wait here in peace, or they can find your body,” Ridley said. “Now put out your hands.”

  Ridley was even faster with the paracord this time, binding Cecil’s hands and then his ankles, then connecting the two with a fast hitch. There was no need to pull Cecil’s feet as close to the back of his head as Ridley did, but the knife was no longer involved, and it seemed that Cecil should be forced to consider that and appreciate it. His life had been saved by the look in a stranger’s eyes. Would he ever know that? Ever understand how close he had come? Ridley doubted it, and so he pulled the cord tighter, pulled until Cecil’s heels came close to the back of his skull, and his spine was pushing its limits. Cecil shrieked in pain and Ridley found the tape and wrapped it quickly over his mouth to silence that aggravating sound. When he was finished, Cecil was bound with his hands and heels pressed together, his body arched backward. The paracord cinched tighter as he struggled. Soon he would realize that. He would remain in that position until someone came to free him. Ridley hoped that it would take some time and that Cecil would use the time to think, but he wasn’t optimistic about that possibility.

  He straightened and took the keys—there were three key rings on different pegs and he took them all—and considered the shotgun briefly but decided against it. A gun was not a caving tool, and when he entered Trapdoor, he wanted the cave to know that he was pure of heart.

  “We’re close,” he said, and then he used the open knife to guide Julianne back toward the door.

  52

  Mark was driving too fast over the icy roads when he called Danielle MacAlister, but the Ford held steady in its lane.

  “You said your father bought his land for timber rights,” he said.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Novak. Nice to hear from you again.”

  “You said your father bought his land for timber rights,” he repeated.

  “Correct.”

  “He never did any cutting.”

  “The cave redirected him, obviously.”

  “But he owns property in all directions and most of it is open field, no timber at all. There’s a local who rents it for horses. The cave maps that Ridley drew are guides, but they’d have nothing to do with ownership. Those would be standard maps. Parcel maps. Ridley stopped drawing the underground maps at one point. Stopped sharing them with your father, at least.”

  “We’ve already discussed this.”

  Mark made a turn, felt the tires slide, and corrected for the skid. “I disagree. You told me what you wanted to share. I have new questions. I’m on my way to see you, in fact.”

  In truth, he wasn’t even sure of his questions. The property mattered to Ridley. The property mattered to Pershing MacAlister’s family.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

  “Explain how.”

  He could hear her breathing. For a moment he thought she was going to offer something, but all she said was “I’ve taken enough of your questions. You have no legal authority. If you come here, it’s trespassing. I can have you arrested.”

  “Tell Cecil to open the gate. It’s what he’s there for. To keep an eye on things, make sure there’s no trouble.”

  “Do I have trouble, Mr. Novak?”

  “If you didn’t think that you did, you wouldn’t have come up here. You damn sure wouldn’t have stayed.”

  “You broke into our property and got lost in the cave. That’s why I’m here.”

  “It’s not why you stayed. You stayed to know what Ridley was telling me.”

  “You’ve already earned that confession once. I’m not hiding that interest.”

  “What are the stipulations of the land trust?” Mark asked. “The property just sits there untouched, forever, is what Cecil told me. Your father felt that strongly about it?”

  “About a girl being murdered on his property, a girl who’d been about to join his family? Yes, he felt strongly about it. He didn’t want to let this become a sideshow, an exploitation of tragedy.”

  “Your father sounds like a shrewd businessman. But rather than bring a concrete company down here and just fill that entrance in and call it a day, he makes the decision to pay a caretaker to live on the property. For ten years, he does this. He’ll do it for another ten? Twenty?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was tight.

  “How do you not know? It’s your property.”

  “It’s in a trust. The environmental stipulations of the trust might preclude that sort of—”

  “No legalese, no stipulations. You’re an attorney, you know what it says. What will the situation at Trapdoor be in ten years?”

  “Probably not what you think, but it’s none of your concern. I’ve been patient enough with you and I—”

  “Show me the trust documents, then. You won’t even have to talk to me this time. Just show me those documents and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You won’t see me if you come here. I’ll send for Cecil. It’s his baby now. I’m done with your questions, Mr. Novak. If you come here, you’ll need to deal with Cecil.”

  “This is why he’s worth keeping on for a decade, Danielle? To keep trespassers away from the cave and questions away from your family?”

  The line went dead.

  Mark didn’t call back. Just kept driving. Snow was falling again. The conditions and his speed would have bothered him when he arrived in Indiana but they felt familiar now. Muscle memory. Sometimes the things you thought you’d left behind circled back for you.

  53

  The door was in sight and the k
eys were in hand but still the surface world wouldn’t grant Ridley access without resistance. He and Julianne were no more than fifty feet from the entrance when the security floodlights went on.

  The footbridge and the gate were instantly illuminated, and the light spread out almost far enough to reveal Ridley and Julianne. They were in the farthest reaches of the shadows. He stopped walking and grabbed Julianne’s arm to bring her to a halt. The lights had come on without warning, as if tripped by a motion sensor, but he knew that the lights here didn’t operate on motion sensors. Someone had turned them on, which meant someone had seen them.

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing—not just closing, slamming—up at the big house just above them, and then a flashlight beam appeared.

  Ridley pushed Julianne farther from the light. This required leaving the creek bank and moving out onto the ice itself. They’d made it three steps when there was a single loud crack followed by an uneasy yawning sound all around them as the stressed ice fought to hold. Ridley stopped moving. If the ice broke beneath them, it would draw that flashlight beam their way, and then he would have to act fast.

  Water bubbled up beside Julianne’s foot but the crack didn’t spread. The ice sheet creaked and strained but it held. Ridley kept his eyes on the house, and a few seconds later the source of the flashlight appeared: Danielle MacAlister, walking with hostile purpose, walking toward them. Ridley’s jaw clenched as he reached for his knife. He did not want Danielle to be part of this but he could not allow her to disrupt him either. He simply couldn’t.

  He had put the knife to Julianne’s throat and was ready to push her into the light, ready to show Danielle the consequences that awaited, when Danielle turned away from the creek without breaking stride.

  She wasn’t coming to the cave. Wasn’t coming to confront them. She was following the driveway.