Black Water

by Jon Fore

  “She is going to be so scared by herself,” Abby said sadly.

  “I didn’t even notice she was gone until you said something.”

  They started down the passage, no longer holding hands to allow for use of the cane.

  “Do you think we will find her again?” Abby sounded on the verge of crying again.

  “I think so. Depends on how fast we actually get out of here and bring help back.”

  They came to a cross section where they could go left or continue straight as they had above. Ethan looked at Abby and could see the pain on her face, the small beads of sweat collecting on her brow. “Does that hurt now?”

  “Yeah,” she huffed. “A little now.”

  “Let me see what we have for pain.”

  “I could use something to eat and drink. You don’t happen to have that in there, do you, my little Boy Scout?”

  He did not answer but offered her an energy bar, the kind that mountain climbers or long distant runners eat for quick energy.

  “Are there a lot of calories in this?” she asked him.

  He rolled his eyes at her. “They are all good calories; just eat it. I have three bottles of water also, and nine more of those bars. Here we go, and some Tylenol for that ankle.” He offered her a bottle of water and a fist closed around some pills.

  She took the pills and they shared the water as Ethan worked his way through the mostly-oat energy bar.

  “So, which way you think?” Ethan asked.

  “Let’s go left this time; the air that way doesn’t seem so stagnant.”

  They continued on, moving much slower than before, but Ethan did not say anything. He could only imagine the pain she was in and did not want to push past her tolerance. The concern for Madison was urging her hard enough, and to push further could cause her worse injury.

  “Oh my God! Do you smell that?” Abby asked excitedly.

  “What?”

  “I smell pine! This is fresh air; we’re close to being outside again! Come on!”

  Exhilaration raced through him, riding on a wave of excitement: the darkness was about to end, they were about to be free. He rushed to keep up with Abby, who seemed suddenly unaware of her own pain. There was no light to be seen ahead, but the air was warmer here, fresher.

  The passage came to a sharp curve, and then to another. As they rounded that, they could see light, not the blaring warmth of the sun, but the soft subdued glow of the night’s sky.

  When Abby caught sight of this, she immediately began to weep again, this time from pure relief that it was about to be over, this tormented journey through this God forsaken dungeon was over, and they could get help for Madison.

  As she was about to leap out from inside the passage and into the night air, Ethan grabbed her violently and pulled her back. She revolted, her eyes blinded by the tears, her fists pummeling him. “Let me go! I want out of here!” she screamed desperately, hovering just above sanity.

  “Abby! Stop for shit’s sake!” She had caught him in the eye, and he held it now gingerly. “Look out there!”

  She wiped away the moisture from her lashes and blinked herself into focus. There before her was the cool but still warmer night air, the stars and moon hidden by the mountain. However, below that was a sheer cliff, smooth but for a few fissures and a drop of some eighty feet or more. She had almost leapt to her death in an attempt to be free.

  “We have to think this through, Abby,” Ethan urged.

  She began to weep again, her emotions a conflictive surge, she hated and loved, despaired and hoped all at once. She threw her arms around Ethan. “I’m so sorry…” she wept.

  “I know… I know…”

  “Let’s jump for it anyway, what do you say?”

  “Abby, it will kill us…”

  “I know!” She shouted, and then began to sob in earnest. “I don’t care anymore, Ethan! We’re going to fucking die in here anyway! Let’s just get it over with! We can die together…” she said this last softly, tenderly.

  “Not going to happen, Abs.”

  She sagged in his arms and cried, cried for near an hour; all that time, Ethan looked out at the open sky for what he was certain would be the last time and enjoyed his closeness to Abby and the aroma of a wild forest in late autumn.

  Chapter 13

  After crying for some time, Abby fell into a fitful sleep, comfortable if only for the fresh air and secure feeling of Ethan’s arms. He let her sleep while he struggled with his own guilt and fears, his sorrow and feelings of helplessness. Madison was not his girlfriend, or even really his friend, but he could not convince himself that he was not responsible. His father had taught him early that women were a treasure to cherish, to look after and keep safe. In this, he had failed.

  The sun slowly began to rise, almost without Ethan noticing. He wondered if perhaps he had fallen asleep as well. His back had locked long ago in a cramp, and one of his arms had fallen asleep, yet he loathed waking her—she was at least resting and would need her strength, especially with the injury. He would just allow her to wake on her own, something he hoped he would not have to wait for long.

  The edge of the sun broke over the horizon and began to pour like hot milk, setting the forest below to blaze. Ethan felt his throat tighten at this, the majesty and wonder of the beauty.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” Abby asked sleepily.

  “Incredible…” he said, waiting patiently for her to rise on her own. After a number of minutes, she did not seem likely to move herself, so he said, “You should sit up and see below.”

  She rolled up from him and peeked down the cliff face to a small lake below. The brilliance of the sun had just begun to reach the water, and the ripples of its surface began to toss it about like a glimmering plaything. “It’s dazzling…”

  “I knew you would like it,” Ethan said as he began to rub his arm and arch his back. “Aren’t you glad you stuck around to see it?”

  She turned on him, her face glowing with infant sunlight, her eyes wet and excited. She suddenly leaned forward and kissed him hard, searchingly, lovingly. “Yes, I am, Ethan.”

  “I’m glad you did, too. Hungry?”

  “Not as much as thirsty.”

  “Me, too, but we are light on the water, just a bit, okay?”

  “I know, just a bit,” she repeated and sipped at the bottle of water Ethan offered. “It looks like we are still about fifty feet up. Do you really think there is an entrance down there somewhere?”

  “I really don’t know; God, I hope. For all I know, this could be it,” Ethan said, the glimmer of hope waning in his voice.

  “How would they get supplies all the way up here?” Abby asked sarcastically, trying to reignite both of their hope.

  “I don’t know. It does not seem like it would work, I guess. However, there had to be a way to get people up here in secret and supplies to the jail that would not go the same way as the house, if this place was supposed to be so secret. We will find it.”

  “I think we will, but not sitting here,” Abby said longingly, taking in the sky and the faint warmth of the sun.

  They sat together for a short while, the sun growing warmer and more intense as the time slipped by. Neither cared to abandon the outside, the smell of pine, the still remaining splashes of fall color, but both knew they were not to be rescued from there and must make their own way out. Still, it was some time before Ethan nudged her.

  “Come on, let’s get moving. The exit won’t come to us.”

  They stood together, Abby still hindered by her ankle, but not so much so as yesterday. The cane, even with its off-balance center and crude handle, had become more comfortable, easier for her to manage. It thumped rhythmically with her footsteps as they headed back toward the main passage.

  They made the left as they should and worked themselves deeper into the unending darkness. After some time, the floor of the passage became naked rock, the sand behind them scattered to the sides where it made tiny drifts
like snow. The walls as well became rough, more like a mining tunnel than a proper passage. The ceiling had become rougher still, a frozen undulation of rock, like the tide of a never moving ocean frozen in its rush toward a missing shore.

  “Maybe this had started as a mining project…” Abby mused quietly.

  “If it did, dear Abby, then they had to have begun digging at the base of the mountain.”

  “That means there is a way out of here!”

  Ethan could hear the smile on her face.

  “Unless they had not finished construction…”

  “Shut up,” Abby said lightly as they continued down the now-curving passage.

  The faint sound of dripping water came to them, sharp and echoed, but certainly distant. It was the sound of many drops of water falling into a body of itself, a musical tinkling that for whatever reason inspired an even greater hope. Water—one of the primary staples of life—was somewhere inside this hellish place. It was proof that God had not abandoned them entirely, that even the evil here could not stop the gentle persistent hand of nature.

  They decided not to stop for a rest but to push on to the water. Abby longed to wash her face, wash the filth of the dirty passages, the collapsed floor, and the bones she had touched from her hands. Ethan hoped that the water had found its own way out, possibly running to the outside and the lake below. The tunnel they were in was descending in a slope, and it was very possible they had gone down the fifty feet and they were that much closer to being free.

  They began to find old wooden supports along the passage, shoring up the ceiling where rubble had fallen and left gapping openings in the ceiling above. Thick lengths of timber were fixed together with the same large iron nails, their heads pounded and misshapen. It reminded Ethan of a Wild West tour he had taken as a child, one that included a manufactured gold mine.

  Abby suddenly stumbled, her feet troubled by something on the floor of the passage. She caught herself by way of Ethan’s shoulder. She turned quickly to see what had tripped her, and her flashlight fell upon a ravaged corpse of some animal, some creature, about the size of a small dog, left heaped in the corner, useless. Its coat was torn and laid open from the thin white bones now poking through. Whatever it had been, it was unconsumed.

  “What is it, Ethan?”

  “It looks like a dog, but it’s hard to tell…about the size of one anyway.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “You missed something, Abs. If it got in here, we can get out, right?”

  “Oh, that’s right! Let’s keep going.”

  She turned and headed down the passage, her light illuminating the floor, his the roof. More and more of the torn corpses littered the ground as they continued, each ravaged but seemingly unconsumed. It began to disturb them. Neither were naturalists, but Ethan was sure that man was the only animal that hunted for the pleasure of it. He wondered if perhaps these were digested creatures, swallowed without chewing and defecated whole. He wondered if it were perhaps a large snake; he was sure they swallowed their food whole, but what did it look like coming out the other end? Then they found the deer carcass.

  It was broken, the bones pulverized in many places, and its hide bore large, gaping claw marks on its flank, one of its legs cleanly cleaved away. The savagery of its death upset Abby greatly, but what bothered Ethan was the fact that the meat had just barely begun to swell with rot and the blood around it was still red, the deep red of dried blood not yet oxidized.

  He drew out his revolver and replaced the spent cartridges with fresh ones. He did not know what would take such morbid pleasure in the rending of forest animals but he did not care to be the next one.

  They continued along until the tunnel suddenly opened into a large cavern, a sizeable lake in its center reflected their lights in a dead sort of way. The explosion of open space was disorientating, as if they had just fallen into open air and had begun to float. It took them many moments to orientate themselves. The room was chill, but the air was fresher and once more pine-scented, but something else infected the air: the stench of rotting flesh. Ethan was not surprised considering the murdered animals that had begun to choke the passage.

  They approached the water’s edge together and looked into its midnight depths. It was still with the exception of the randomly falling droplets from above, which sent ripples rushing across the surface. It would then settle to an inky black, concealing its depths, hiding its contents. For some unspoken reason, the lake filled them both with an uneasy apprehension, a building desire to be away from it. It was a simple mockery of how pooled water should be and completely unnatural.

  Abby seemed transfixed on the surface, looking deeply for an answer to some question she had yet to ask. Ethan began to look around the cavern with his light, finding a number of passages leading away again. There were too many for him to consider, and he hung his head in defeat. It was a dangerous emotion for him to have, but why should he be that bastion of hope for others? Why could no other give him an anchor in the storm of life’s unfairness?

  He battled shortly with the emotion and defeated it with sheer willpower, a raw and ancient desire to survive. If not for him, he would push on for Abby and see her back to the true and good sunlight.

  When he brought his head back up, he caught sight of a faint glow within one of the numerous passages leading away from the lake. “Abby, turn off your light,” he instructed quickly as he switched his off.

  “Why?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “Turn it off and look,” he said as they were plunged into darkness.

  It took Abby a few moments to adjust to the darkness, but faintly, a whisper of light came from the passage on the other side of the lake, the true white light of the day’s sky.

  “Oh, thank you, God! Let’s go; I want to see the sky!” she shouted in exuberance and turned her light back on.

  Ethan helped her rise again, and they began the lengthy trip around to the other side of the lake. It was difficult going—spilled boulders slippery with a colorless moss or slime in some places; dangerously narrow strips of ground in others. They navigated all of this while desperately trying not to touch the black water of the lake.

  When they had worked their way around to the far side, they heard the water moved by something but they could not locate it with their lights, just telltale ripples across the water’s surface. Being this close to their freedom, fear began to rise but more as desperation, and Ethan began to rush Abby toward the dimly glowing passage ahead.

  Something was building, growing, and becoming a threat to them, as it had the forest creatures. It was a hideous thing, and it pleasured itself by rending flesh. Whatever it was, Ethan refused to see it. He pushed Abby harder; she already began dragging her cane in a desperate attempt to get out before whatever was about to happen did happen.

  Just before they passed the glow, the wash of dim light from the real world outside, they heard a voice.

  “Abby… Ethan… Come and stay with us…”

  It was Madison, but her voice had been twisted and dried, baked into a raspy hiss of its original musical sparkle.

  “Madison!” Abby screamed, and there she was, just beyond the daylight, standing almost timid, bleeding from many places. Her head hung from her shoulders and her normally vibrant hair lay limply across her face. She was nude except for the torn flesh yawning open to reveal the red beneath. She raised her arm toward them, it clearly broken in places, twisted and crooked.

  “The Captain wants to know things…and if you tell him…he can make you feel wonderful…” Her voice trailed off in a pleasurable hiss of agony. “He really wants to talk to you, Ethan…”

  Abby began to cry, screaming repeatedly, “Madison! No!”

  Ethan swallowed the building surge from his belly and brought the gun up. He hovered just before the limp hair, where he was sure her head would be, and fired.

  Her head exploded out the back, and she leaned forward for a moment then collapsed ba
ckwards, the young vibrant beauty now nothing more than a brutalized corpse. Abby screamed a long and mournful scream, joined by many other spiteful voices filled with hatred, a wild calling for vengeance. Ethan played his light around the room and found a large number of corpses, all long dead but their decay incomplete and their flesh dripping with the water of the horrid lake.

  He shoved the still-screaming Abby into the mined passage and toward the sunlight. He turned with his revolver held out, warding him from the onrush he was sure would be there but did not find. In its place was a pair of blood red eyes, still just under the edge of the water. He lowered the revolver and saw a black segmented leg gently break the surface and come down softly on the shore. It gripped the ground with its wickedly long talons, which sank deeply into the rock.

  Chapter 14

  They rushed from the rough cavern, the ceiling hanging low enough they had to hunch over and move slow for final few feet, avoiding carefully the rounded protrusions of rock. The sun screamed its brilliance at them as they came free, and they stumbled down a short incline, the trees stopping their wild progress.

  “I can’t believe you shot her!” Abby screamed into his face when they stopped. “How the fuck could you kill Madison, you son-of-a-bitch!” She began pummeling Ethan with both arms, trying desperately to hurt him as he had her.

  “Abby! Stop, Abby! It wasn’t Madison. Didn’t you see her?”

  “You don’t know that! It was her; I saw her eyes!”

  Ethan grabbed her wrists and held her close from behind, both in an attempt to comfort her and stop the battering. “Whatever lives there, in that hole, it had her. She was not Madison.”

  “And you know this for sure, you bastard?” she screamed into the trees.

  Calmly, he responded, “Yes, I was sure.”

  Abby struggled a moment more, then slumped in Ethan’s arms to continue sobbing. The freshness of the air, the warmth of the sun, the fact that they finally broke free of the horrible underground place fell on her like rushing water, and she cried her grief, her anger, and for her hard won freedom. She had proven herself strong; no matter what else may come to her, she knew this one thing with certainty.