Night Chill

by Jeff Gunhus

  Jack reached out to the walls for balance and readied himself to turn his body around in the confined space to head back to the surface. Before he made his move he noticed Lonetree had stopped below him.

  Grunting from the effort, the big man managed to wiggle out of the backpack. He looked back at Jack, raising his hand over his eyes. “Watch your torch. If you look right at me, your light is in my eyes.”

  “Sorry.” Jack cocked his head to the side so that the beam hit the wall.

  “How are you doing?”

  Jack sat down on the muddy floor. Hearing Lonetree’s voice, the urgency to turn around started to fade. He sucked in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, willing himself to relax. “Just tell me whatever is down here is worth it.”

  Lonetree didn’t bother with an answer. He reached up and switched off his light and pointed at Jack’s helmet. “We need to let our eyes adjust a little. Turn the switch on the side of the helmet. No, it’s on the other side.”

  Jack turned the switch and the world went black. The cave walls disappeared, replaced with a pure darkness unlike anything he had experienced. It oppressed his senses, as if it were actually sucking light out of him. He waved his hand in front of his face and had no sensation of movement. The claustrophobia returned. He imagined being lost in the void, left alone to struggle through the cave, a blind, pale worm burrowing through the earth looking for the sun. A shudder ran through his body.

  Lonetree’s voice rose up from beneath him. “We’ll wait about five minutes for our eyes to acclimate. When we put the lights back on, avoid looking straight into the light so you can keep as much of your night vision as possible.”

  Jack gave a thumbs up. He immediately felt foolish. He couldn’t even see his hand himself. “Right, five minutes.” Jack closed his eyes and mentally tried to put himself somewhere else. Somewhere above ground. Some place with sunshine and open spaces.

  Lonetree’s voice dragged him back into the cave, rising up from the tunnel like the rumble of an earthquake.

  “My brother died about two years ago. I was on assignment in Afghanistan, Navy SEAL. Doing pretty much what we’re doing now, crawling through tunnels looking for bad guys. Only better armed.”

  The tone in Lonetree’s voice made Jack crane forward as if he were a kid at a campfire and the storyteller had just started a tale. He sensed this was what he had come to hear.

  “Anyway, I find out he’s dead in a radio check with the surface. There aren’t many details, only that he’s dead, car crash they think. The radio operator tells me he’s sorry. His brother died in Iraq and he feels for me. Which was good, since I figure someone should feel something. I can’t. I’m just frozen solid. Can’t move. Can’t breathe.

  “See, the night before, down in the caves, I had a crazy dream about my brother. I was used to strange dreams. It’s part of the drill when you’ve been in a lot of combat, especially when you run the kind of missions I have. But it’s even worse when you’re hunting underground, alone in the dark, hours of silence for your mind to turn in on itself.”

  Jack noted the use of the word ‘hunting’. It wasn’t lost on him that Lonetree’s prey had been human. Terrorists or not, the thought still made Jack uncomfortable.

  “This dream was different though,” Lonetree continued. “I remembered every detail, every word that was said. He was in the cave with me. There was no light, but I could see him without a problem, as if we were standing in the middle of a field at high noon. The strange thing was that it didn’t shock me. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that my kid brother would appear out of nowhere a thousand feet below a mountain range in Afghanistan. I remember so clearly not wondering how he had done it. I just accepted it. The same way you accept it when you fly in a dream, you know?”

  “What did he say?” Jack asked.

  “He told me things, many things. I’d heard it all before. From my old man when I was a kid. Most of it sounded insane. But I didn’t mind. It was a dream. What did I care if he talked a little nuts? My kid brother had crazy in his bones. Part of the family tradition, I guess.” Lonetree paused, just long enough to steady his voice back into its low, rolling rumble. “I wouldn’t have given the whole thing a second thought except for one little detail.”

  The hairs on Jack’s neck tingled. He realized he was gripping the rock walls next to him as trying to hold on to the real world.

  “You see, in this dream, this clear, lucid dream a day before I talked to the surface, my brother came me in that cave to tell me he had been killed.” Lonetree paused. Jack strained his ears to pick up any sound coming from the passage beneath him. After a full minute of silence passed in the dark passageway, Lonetree’s voice rose up once again. It was full of emotion, not pain, but seething hatred. “He told me how it’d been done. He told me every sick detail of how they tortured him. Most important of all, he told me who was responsible.”

  Jack couldn’t see the man’s face in the darkness, but the emotion in Lonetree’s voice was so intense that his imagination created what his eyes could not see; a mask of pain and anger and an almost animal savagery, lips twisted into a terrible sneer as they spit out the words.

  Jack’s own words came out as a whisper. “Why did they kill him?”

  An explosion of light erupted around him, making him wince and shield his eyes. It was Lonetree’s helmet lamp. The light jumped up and down as the big man struggled to move the position of his body. Soon he had reversed the location of his feet. Instead of sliding down the tunnel feet first, Lonetree was positioned to crawl forward on his hands and knees. He shoved the backpack ahead of him and started to edge forward.

  Jack knew that the answer to his question lay at the end of the tunnel. That recognition brought out a mix of emotions; excitement to find out what was causing all the bizarre events of the last few days; yet trepidation that the answers were more than he was prepared to deal with. Still, for the first time that day, Jack had no thought of turning back. No second-guessing what he was doing there. Whatever secret lay buried in this cave was somehow connected to Huckley and the hallucinations. He could feel it. And finding out about Huckley and whoever his accomplices were put him one step closer to protecting Sarah from harm.

  Curiosity and determination to protect his daughter overwhelmed all other emotions. He needed to know what was at the end of the strange journey he was on. What kind of secret was so important that it had been buried at the bottom of a cave? And by whom? These were questions he was no longer willing to leave unanswered.

  He twisted his body until he was face down on his stomach, the smell of the mineral rich mud so strong that it stung his nostrils. As he scrambled forward, he calculated that Lauren and the girls were probably just reaching Baltimore. He thanked God he and Lauren had agreed she would take the girls down to her friend’s house. At least they were safe, away from all this madness. Safe where no one could find them. With everything going on at least he could take comfort in that.

  With a grunt, he pushed off with his elbows and heaved himself toward the retreating light ahead of him.

  FORTY-SIX

  Sarah was mad. Becky was hogging all the cool band aids, the ones with the Sesame Street characters on them, leaving her the very uncool regular band-aids to play with. And whining wasn’t changing her sister’s mind one bit. The whole thing just served as a reminder that big sisters were horrible sometimes, a fact she pointed out to Becky in a pouting voice. In response, Becky called her a baby and gave her hair a hard tug. Tears welling up in her eyes, Sarah got up to go tell Nurse Haddie. And, as if things weren’t bad enough, as she walked over to the nurse’s station she realized she needed to go to the bathroom.

  She poked her head around the corner and saw Nurse Haddie talking on the phone. Her mom always told them never to go to the bathroom alone in the hospital. What if you fall in? she always asked. The comment predictably broke the girls up into a round of giggles and promises to flush each ot
her down the toilet at the first chance. But they always followed the rule. As funny as it sounded, the idea of getting stuck in the toilet was kind of scary.

  But Nurse Haddie had her back to Sarah. She was twirling her hair around her finger and laughing into the phone. Her voice sounded funny, like her mom did sometimes when her dad called on the phone. All giggly and soft. Adults were weird, Sarah decided. After a full minute of waiting, her bladder won out over her pride and she went back to ask her big sister to go with her.

  “I told you you’re a baby,” Becky teased. “Can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself.”

  That was enough. She scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue. Since that didn’t have the effect she wanted, she bent down and picked up the pink rubber ball they’d brought from home. She raised it in the air as if she was going to hurl a pink fastball at her sister’s forehead. It worked. Becky let out a shriek and covered her face with her hands.

  Sarah lowered her hand, turned and walked away. After a few steps, she turned around and, with a roll of her eyes, said, “Becky, you’re such a baby.” She kept walking, a huge smile spread across her face.

  After one last hopeful look into the nurse’s station to see if Nurse Haddie was off the phone yet, Sarah set off for the bathroom. She’d been to the hospital enough to know where it was, just through the door that led out of the emergency room and down the hall to the right. She walked to the door with her head down, trying to bounce the ball with alternating hands, the pink ball looking extra bright against the lime green floor.

  Through the door, out of the ER, and right into temptation. On the other side of the door was a long, empty hallway. Shiny linoleum stretched out in front of her like an airport runway, completely clear of any obstacles, and totally absent of any adults. The hall almost begged for her to throw the rubber ball. It was clear all the way down to the elevator at the far end. She could just imagine how cool it would look with the ball skipping along the linoleum, bouncing off the walls the whole way down.

  But what if someone walked out of the side rooms and saw her? And what if they told her mom?

  She chickened out. Her mom would be really mad if she heard she threw a ball around the hospital, especially since she wasn’t even supposed to be in the hallway by herself to begin with.

  She spotted the blue sign for the bathroom three doors down the hall. Seeing the sign, her urge to pee took on new urgency. She hustled down the hall to the door and was about to go in when a different urge hit her. She turned and faced the direction she had just come from and chucked the ball down the hall toward the emergency room door. It bounced around in a satisfying way, careening off the white walls and making neat squeaking noises when it hit the linoleum. After bouncing for a bit, it rolled to a stop against a wall, well out of the way where anyone might step on it. Sarah decided to leave it there and pick it up on they way back.

  She leaned all her weight against the heavy bathroom door until it swung open and she went inside.

  When she reopened the door she was pleased with her accomplishment. She couldn’t wait to tell her mom that she had gone all by herself, even though she weighed the possibility that she might get in trouble for it too. She’d just blame Becky. After all, she had asked her sister to come with her and she was the one who said no. Maybe she could find a way to get her sister in trouble and brag all at the same time.

  Sarah’s plotting was interrupted when she glanced down the hall. She felt a pit form in her stomach as she realized she might get in trouble from her mom after all. Her ball was gone. Someone must have walked by and found it while she was in the bathroom. Busted.

  Something hit her between the shoulders, not too hard but enough to scare her.

  She little out a yelp and spun around.

  It was her ball.

  And there was no one in the hallway.

  “Hello?” she called out. There was a soft echo in the hallway, a sound effect that made her feel very alone. She felt nervous, like someone was watching her. It was time to get out of there. She bent down to get her ball, but as she reached down, it started to roll down the hall.

  Scrunching her eyebrows together, she watched as the ball came to a stop a few feet away from her. She stepped closer to it, but again it rolled away just out of reach. “Who’s doing that?” she demanded of the hallway. Nothing. Not even the echo this time.

  Squish. Squish.

  Footsteps on linoleum.

  Right behind her.

  Sarah turned around at the sound. But the hallway was empty in that direction too. Holding her breath from being so scared, she turned back and saw her ball rolling away from her. And it wasn’t stopping this time. In fact, it was speeding up as it went. Sarah stared, watching it go further and further down the hall, all the way down to the elevator.

  Just as it was about to hit the elevator, the metal doors slid open and the ball shot inside and bounced off the back wall of the elevator.

  Sarah stepped back against the side of the hallway, wishing she could blend right into the wall. Whoever was in that elevator would definitely tell her mom.

  But no one came out. The ball bounced around, hitting the different walls, and then came to rest. Sarah knew the elevator doors usually closed after a while, but these didn’t. The elevator stayed open. The ball right in the middle of the compartment.

  Sarah waited to make sure no one came out of the elevator. She looked back the other direction to see if she could spot whoever was responsible for the ball’s strange behavior. Still no one.

  She took a few faltering steps down the hall trying to gather her courage. She looked over her shoulder again wishing there was someone else around. The hospital was never very busy, but usually someone was around. A nurse or a cleaning person. But there was nobody. The hall was empty. She thought about going to get Becky or Nurse Haddie. But part of her knew Becky was somehow responsible for all of this. Sarah pictured her sister hiding at the end of the hall, waiting for her to chicken out so she could call her a baby again.

  The image of her sister was enough to get her feet moving. Thinking the quicker she moved the less time she’d have to get caught, she broke into a run and hurried down the hall as fast as she could, the squeaks from her sneakers the only sound in the dead air.

  By the time she reached the elevator, she was out of breath. She stopped. Now that she was there, so close to the getting the ball, she started to get nervous again. Too scared to rush right in, she wiggled her toes right up to the edge of the entrance and peered in. Her ball was the only thing in the elevator.

  Balancing on one foot and holding on to the side of the open door, Sarah stretched her other leg into the elevator compartment, trying to reach out for the ball. Her toe just barely touched the side of the ball. Shifting forward a little, she was able to get a better angle and place the side of her sneaker on top of the ball.

  Carefully, she pulled her foot back toward her. It was working. The ball was rolling toward her. Suddenly, her foot slid off and the ball skidded to the back of the compartment.

  Sarah groaned. The last thing she wanted was to go into the elevator. She couldn’t explain why, but the empty compartment scared her. Maybe she should just leave the ball where it was. She would get into a little trouble, but it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

  But the image of her sister stopped her. Sarah imagined her laughing and singing;

  Baby. Baby. Sarah’s a baby.

  Sarah took a deep breath and wrung her hands together. She needed to get her ball.

  Reaching out with her right hand, she wished as hard as she could that the ball would just roll to her. She imagined she could reach all the way to the back of the elevator. She pictured her arm stretching out until her hand hovered over the ball. In her mind, she lowered her hand until it wrapped around the ball.

  To her surprise, she felt the pressure on her fingertips. She felt the texture of the ball. Carefully, she pretended to pull the ball toward her. Her eyes went wide.


  The ball moved.

  One rotation.

  Then it stopped.

  Another rotation.

  Then it stopped again.

  Sarah smiled. She was doing magic. She wasn’t sure how but she knew it was cool.

  But then the ball was stuck. No matter how hard she tried, it refused to move. She concentrated but the ball not only wouldn’t roll toward her, but it went back the other direction one rotation.

  She cocked her head to the side. It felt like something pulled at her hand when the ball rolled back. She tried to make the ball move again.

  Nothing.

  She relaxed her concentration.

  As soon as she did, something wrapped around her wrist and yanked her arm.

  She flew forward into the elevator, hitting the floor hard.

  She scrambled to her feet, knowing she had to get out of the elevator. She had to run back into the hall as fast as she could. Get back to the emergency room. Back to Nurse Haddie. Back to her sister. Back to safety.

  There was a hiss. Then a roar. The heavy metal doors flew in from the sides and crashed together with enough force to shake the compartment.

  Sarah ran at the door and tried to force her fingers into the seam and pull the doors open. It was too late. She was trapped. The elevator was already going up.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The tunnel was a tighter fit than Jack had expected. Unless he had seen Lonetree disappear through the hole in front of him he would not have believed it possible. He kept reminding himself how much larger Lonetree was than himself. If the big man could fit through then he ought to be able to get by without a problem.

  But it was a problem. He was stuck. The passage was all smooth rock now. The absence of the mud ought to have made the going easier, but Jack had only moved forward a few feet after over ten minutes of struggle. The rock pressed in on him from all sides. The ceiling was so low that he had to turn his head to the side to pass through. It was impossible to turn to face the opposite wall. His helmet would get wedged between the floor and roof if he tried to change positions.