Sinkhole

by Deborah Jackson

  Ray looked at Pete with the same suspicious gleam in his eyes. But there was a glimmer of that other thing, too. The rapacity that drove some people to commit unspeakable acts. It was funny, because this was the first time she’d seen it in Ray. In fact, throughout this trek, it was Ray, even more than Kat, who’d kindled her interest in caves with his childlike delight. But now he seemed different. And he hadn’t even mentioned Kat in all of this. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come running when they dipped into this Shangri-la valley? Surely she wouldn’t have wandered away in the dark.

  “Ray. Where’s Kat?” Megan stood up and spun around, looking for the telltale glitter of golden highlights in Kat’s hair, not that they would be easy to spot here.

  Ray’s face paled, the greed fading away. “What do you mean? She was right here. Kat. Kat!” he yelled.

  No reply came back, just the echo of his voice. They all waited, Ray panning the flashlight around the mural-splashed columns and treasure-crammed tomb, but no movement disturbed the dust, no shapely silhouette appeared, no tiny squeak of life. Kat had effectively vanished.

  “It can’t be. Pas possible,” said Ray, his voice increasing in volume, his eyes darting back and forth. “She was right here. She made me leave her in the dark, insisting she wouldn’t move. I wasn’t gone more than twenty minutes. Where could she be?”

  “Well, she couldn’t have teleported out of here,” said Pete, suddenly the voice of reason. “She has to be somewhere nearby. We’ll just have to search.”

  Megan agreed, feeling for poor Kat, lost in the dark, possibly injured and suffering, but at the same time she was reluctant to leave her newfound treasure behind. What if they had difficulty retracing their steps? What if they all wound up in trouble, blindly following Kat? This would once again be Site Q—buried and forgotten. But Ray was no longer in the thrall of their discovery. He’d become frantic, hopping from one foot to the other and swinging the flashlight around like a searchlight.

  “Stop,” said Pete. His voice held a commanding tone that took everyone by surprise. He reached out and grabbed the flashlight from Ray’s hand. “There.” He pointed the beam at the ground where imprints of knees and elbows tracked through the gritty earth in little cupolas that wound between the array of monuments and carefully placed offerings. “She crawled out, that way.”

  Ray looked at Pete with newfound respect and gratitude. “Right,” he said. “We’ll follow the trail. She can’t be far.”

  Since Pete still held the flashlight and seemed more in control at the moment, Ray allowed him to lead. Megan brought up the rear, but not without her own two-cents’ worth of instructions. “Watch where you step, okay? These artifacts have stayed intact for a thousand years. I’d hate to see them destroyed by one careless step.”

  Ray looked back and scowled. “Your concern for Kat is touching.”

  Megan’s face burned. “Kat would say the same about stalactites and gypsum roses, even if you were lost. Destroying things doesn’t help us find her.”

  Ray gave a terse nod and did seem to step more lightly, squeezing between statues set like giant chess pieces, and trying to keep from tipping over pottery or crushing jade, gold, or silver jewelry beneath his hiking boots. In his attention to delicacy, he almost rammed into Pete, who’d stopped abruptly and aimed the flashlight through twin columns that looked like a gateway.

  “There,” he said. “I think I see her.”

  Megan stood on her toes and leaned over to peer around the higher, broader shoulders of the men, but couldn’t manage a better glimpse. But a gasp from Ray galvanized her to action. She thrust around him, horrifying herself by knocking over a statue, and gazed beyond the narrow opening in the columns. Kat was lying on her belly, face down. She was as still as a corpse atop a heap of skeletal remains, as if she’d been pitched onto a mass grave in Auschwitz. Megan sank limply to the ground, a mewl escaping from the back of her throat. Could this be where the journey ended? Would they all end up as sacrificial victims to the Serpent King?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Mark was suffocating. Trapped again, in the past, in the black hole behind his parents’ summer cottage. He was nine—a courageous age, an age when he could explore without Mom glued to his side, hovering over his shoulders. They came here every weekend, to the Muskoka, north of Toronto, where the lakes and rivers pursued winding paths through the towering pines and deciduous forests. A placid getaway from the frantic pace of the city. There was so much to see, so much to do. Canoeing, hiking, swimming, clinging for dear life to a banana boat as his father cracked it through the water with his motorboat. Of course he’d been warned not to venture onto the Quicksand Trail, an old seabed site of limestone bedrock pocked by sinkholes. He’d been nagged to death about biking on the rooted-over mud paths. But he was nine—ripe for adventure, heedless of danger.

  Early on, Mark had learned from his father that money could buy just about anything. Whatever he wanted, Daddy supplied. Skateboards, ski trips, windsurfers. If he got into trouble at school, Daddy would march in like a god and offer to buy the new science equipment they needed, or support a field trip to Europe. He’d wave his money around, and the problems would disappear.

  “Money is power,” his father would say. “Once you have power, you can control everything and everyone around you.”

  So what couldn’t he do, really? If anything happened to him, Daddy would just fix it. You didn’t have to be kind, as his mother kept telling him he should be, or smart like his book-devouring brother, just rich.

  That sunny day in July he’d leaped on his bike for a race into the woods, into the forbidden zone. Pedaling to beat the wind, he’d traveled at least five kilometers down the trail before he started pacing himself, taking time to admire the thick clumps of blueberry bushes and the sky-piercing cones of the white pine. The heady scent was intoxicating, the prickly brush of leaves and needles against his skin invigorating. There was nothing more exciting than communing with nature, knowing that you were superior, that you could control it. An appetite for power is what his father had instilled in him. He would have even more power if he became a doctor—the power of life over death.

  He felt it now, flowing through his veins. Immense. Electrifying. Unstoppable.

  He didn’t see the root snaking over the path, didn’t see the wheel of his bike hit the bulge, until it was too late. Suddenly he was sailing through the air, headed for a massive injury, or worse.

  Mark hit the ground, but didn’t stop there. He sank right through it, through a thin crust of leaves and vegetation and into a hole. He continued falling for what seemed like hours. Rotating in space, he managed to touch down feet-first with a massive thump that curdled the milk in his stomach. Pain jarred up his calves and thighs. Then came the eye-popping plunk of his buttocks and back hitting the ground and finally, less severe, but still brain-numbing, his head cracking the thinly-matted ground. He lay there, stunned but still conscious, pain sizzling up and down his body.

  “Mom?” he moaned. “Dad?”

  He knew they couldn’t hear him, but hoped that a psychic connection would somehow tell them that he was in trouble. Dirt trickled in from the hole onto his forehead. He brushed it off and tried to sit up. Bolts of pain zigzagged through his head and neck. His ribs felt bruised and battered. Ignoring the pain like a soldier on the battlefield, he clawed at the wall and pulled himself up. He was okay. He had the power. He could survive anything.

  He tipped his head—not without a lot of screaming protests in his neck and brain—and looked up at the shaft that he’d fallen through. It was sheer on all sides, smooth white rock that glistened with moisture where the paltry beams of light penetrated from the shadowy forest overhead. A few roots clustered at the top, but nothing grew at the bottom to grasp and climb with. He looked around. Maybe there was some other way out. He couldn’t see very far, but a cave of some sort extended to either side, a narrow tunnel where water had once wormed a sloping passage to left and righ
t. Where it led was a mystery. Darkness hung a black velvet cape to either side, smothering all light. Mark had nothing with which to spear the darkness.

  He looked up again. He had to climb. There was no two ways about it.

  He blinked the pain away as best he could and dug a handhold in the rock. Launching himself upward, he jammed his foot into a narrow crevice. Now he had to find another perch for his fingers. He scrabbled at the stone and found an outcrop. Clinging to the rock face like Spiderman, he smiled. His father was right once again. He had the power.

  That’s when the rock crumbled in his hand. The outcrop slid out from under his foot, and he tumbled spastically back into the hole.

  Crunch. This time the ankle felt severely damaged. He blinked away tears, but they leaked out anyway. How was he going to get out of here? Perhaps someone would come along and see his bike. Maybe if he called out, a venturing hiker might hear him.

  Mark began calling. Screaming, yelling, moaning until he was hoarse. But nobody came. Nobody but he had taken the treacherous trail. If he’d had any sense he would have known that, but panic born of pain and desperation had set in. He called and called until his voice splintered and cracked. It was no good.

  He’d have to find a way out through the cave. If he took the left-hand tunnel, the one that sloped upward, it might lead to an exit. Mark struggled to his feet, pain slicing up his leg. When he tried to put weight on his right ankle, he felt an agonizing jolt and eased up immediately. How the heck was he going to be able to walk? He’d have to hop, in a slippery cave, in the dark. But hey, he had the power.

  Mark hopped into the tunnel, his hands reaching for the wall for better support, although he had to put his right foot down occasionally to keep from tripping. Half a dozen hops and he’d left the diffuse light from the hole behind. The rank mold and must made him gag, but he kept going. Splash, through some stream, his runners now soaked, he kept going. Cold seeping into his skin, some slimy creature skittering up the wall, he kept going—but he did retract his hand rather quickly. When the cave leveled off and began to descend, he stopped.

  He was exhausted, dirty, and pain-wracked. Now the cave was sloping downward. How deep it would go, or whether it would angle upward again, he had no idea. Should he continue or should he go back? Did he even have the strength to move any farther? He sank to the ground. It was padded with dirt and debris and something that reeked like a manure pit. He could no longer support his pounding head, so he rested it against the water-oozing wall. Tears flooded his eyes and tracked through the grime on his face.

  “You’re wrong, Daddy,” he whispered. “I can’t do anything I put my mind to. In this cave, I’m powerless.”

  How long before Mark fell asleep, he didn’t know. But the weariness in his mind eventually caught up to the weariness in his body. He drifted and slumped to the ground. The cushion of litter wasn’t as uncomfortable as hard rock, but had he known what it was, he probably would have crawled frantically away. He awoke with a start, a high-pitched squeaking sound penetrating his awareness. He felt something brush against him, fluttering and flapping wings. They were leathery wings and furry rat-bodies.

  Bats.

  Mark tried to slap them away, but more and more bodies flapped and brushed against him, tiny claws scraping his skin. Then he felt a scaly garden-hose creature slither over his abdomen. And then another.

  “No, not snakes!” he screamed.

  Mark scrambled to his feet, needles lancing his ankle and leg, but fear had him in its grip. His bowels felt like jelly and he’d soiled himself, but he hardly noticed that. All he could think of was escape. But his panic and frenzied movements had terrified the nesting bats. They streamed overhead now, scraping and scratching his scalp, batting his shoulders and chest, whining in his ears. He screamed again, slapping at them and limping down the tunnel, back toward the hole he’d fallen through. He stumbled and fell twice, feeling other creatures crush beneath him—hard beetle carapaces and squishy centipedes. As he struggled to his feet, his head became tangled in a gigantic web. He’d stumbled into a horror film, and it was all too real. Thrusting the clingy threads aside, he hobbled onward, adrenaline forcing a tremendous pace. When he found the hole, hardly visible in the night but still a beacon in the blackness, he raced toward it and scrabbled for any minute crevice, clutching and grabbing and forcing himself upward. He was almost there, almost to the top. A root dangled within millimeters of his grasp. But the slick rock defeated him again. He fell backward into the hellhole and lay still.

  Perfectly still. Couldn’t move anymore. Just remained flat in the carpet of leaves and guano and stared upward. All he could see was the sliver of moonlight through the hole. All he could hear were the creatures rustling and squeaking. All he could feel was their approach, their scuttling and skittering over his body. He was going to die here in the most horrifying place on earth—a cave.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Kat’s body had shut down. Partly from the gnawing pain of her disease, but mostly out of fear. Alone in the dark, groping through this Mayan graveyard, she’d simply collapsed. Better that than screaming or crying. She needed to rest, to scour her mind of all the heavy, paralyzing thoughts, and suspend all thought until Ray returned with the light. She lay in a half-doze, her body crumpled over the bulges and peaks of skulls and ribcages and spines, when suddenly a clammy hand clasped her neck and rolled her over.

  “Kat? Are you okay? Please wake up.”

  She opened her eyes and the light bloomed. Ray’s warm tender face and Megan’s relieved grin beamed down on her. She even welcomed the sight of Pete, standing behind with arms crossed, shaking his head.

  “I- I’m glad you came back. This place is creepy as hell.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if that’s where we are,” said Ray. “Too many graveyards at this site.”

  Kat struggled to sit up, her head pounding. The movement reawakened pinpricks from the slivers of bone that had been ground into her hands. She examined the slivers with interest and calmly began to pick them out. “What is this place, Megan? Is it a tomb?”

  Megan nodded, hesitated for a second, then proceeded to brush some debris from Kat’s hair. Surprisingly, she held out her hand and Kat gladly took it.

  “But why so many bodies? Are these human sacrifices again?”

  Megan swept her gaze around, squinting as if in deep thought. “No, I don’t think so. Normally there would be three or four, sometimes five or six, with the death of a king, but not—” she gulped, “—dozens.”

  Kat sighed and surveyed the skeletons. They were huddled together, their bones angled outward as if caught in the throes of agony—as if they were being eaten by cancer. “It could have been lethal gas.”

  The others murmured in half-hearted agreement.

  “What about the treasure then, Megan? What does it all mean?”

  “I can only speculate right now,” she said, tucking wisps of chestnut hair behind her ears. “I’d have to examine the hieroglyphs more thoroughly. But I believe this was meant to be the tomb of the Serpent King. They must have transported these gifts for the king to support his Underworld journey. The body of the king must be in this cavern too, likely in a sarcophagus.”

  Kat looked at the skeletons with renewed fascination. They didn’t seem as horrifying in the light, but the assemblage of bones was still disturbing. “So these could be the bearers, the artisans who decorated the pillars and walls.”

  “Possibly,” said Megan. “Or part of the funeral procession.”

  “But they must have climbed down here by a more efficient pathway. They could have been poisoned by the gas before they could double back. We just have to search this cavern and find their route.”

  “Good idea,” said Pete. “Rest break is over. We search. And when we find a tunnel, maybe we can take some of this hoard with us—something to show for our troubles.”

  Kat eyed Pete, feeling uneasy again. Was that all that concerned him? The treasure? She h
ad to admit, the first breathtaking sight of it had stirred an ugly sentiment, but after losing her way in a graveyard and feeling the pain resurface, it hardly mattered to her anymore. In fact the bodies were of much greater significance. The way they’d come in could also be the only way out. The treasure could sit down here and rot for all she cared.

  “You’re right about one thing, Pete,” she said. “We can’t stop searching. But I think we’ll leave the Mayan riches to the academics and the local inhabitants. It does, after all, belong to this country.” She looked at him sternly, but he merely shrugged.

  “Whatever. My company won’t be too keen on me coming back empty-handed, though.”

  “Don’t tell me they’re as callous as the media likes to paint them. I’m sure they’ll be happy that you at least made it back.”

  “Right,” said Pete without inflection.

  Kat grimaced, a sour taste in her mouth. Suddenly she disliked their discovery, the relics even more than the bodies. They were a liability—a seduction that could lead to the classical playing-out of greed. She didn’t want her team fighting amongst themselves. They had to focus, work together to find a way back to the surface. Kat squared her shoulders, determined to get them there.

  “Ray, can you and Pete return to camp and collect the rest of our gear? We’ll start searching from this location. Megan, maybe you can begin examining the site, look for any clues in the glyphs as to what might have happened here. I’m going to gulp down some water and map out a grid.”

  “Um, Kat,” said Ray, looking at the ground, shuffling, then looking up again. “We only brought the one light, remember? We’d have to leave you in the dark again. Megan couldn’t do anything either, without . . .”