Finished, she realized the only paper they’d brought remained buried in Ron’s pack. Shuffling over there dripping with pants around ankles was not an option, so with wiping a lost cause, she waited and wiggled as many long seconds as she dared before she tugged up her jeans and underwear and scuttled back to her sleeping bags, feeling that much more unclean.
Yet sleep still would not come. Sue-Min continued watching Pete though she saw little more than his blurred dim form. Of all the people to be stuck with in this insane situation. Of course, she’d seen him enough to know that he was decent looking, in a corn fed white guy kind of way. Sort of guy who was destined for a career in sales if he didn’t become a fireman or a cop. Sandy blond buzz cut, bulked out biceps. He’d go to fat once he had a family, but he didn’t and hadn’t yet. Stamina would be his best quality in bed. This was a guy who could do pushups for an hour. If only he weren’t such a creeper. Yuck.
She shuddered to shake off that train of thought and marshaled her mental focus back to priorities. They might both die here. How long could they survive? They had, she guessed, half a water bottle each plus maybe a backup liter stowed. She knew she did, was pretty sure about Ron. A handful of Clif bars stashed in their packs, possibly some other food too. Her pack held a little Ziploc of walnut halves, another of carrot sticks. That was all. She was pretty sure Pete packed some jerky, and Ron had maybe brought a couple foil-wrapped single serving vacuum packs of salmon or tuna that should still be in his pack. And the worse than useless popcorn. Even if they could make a fire. . . She shuddered at the thought of those tiny explosions in their deliberate silence.
If they stayed trapped for long, water would be their problem before food. She’d noted several fuzzy streaks of algae along the back wall that meant slow trickling seeps, imagined taking turns with Pete licking dirty water from the wall, each of them fighting not to gag or puke. Could she even do it? Could Pete? How thirsty would they have to be first? And would the seeps be enough? No water pooled below them, so the flow could only be agonizing slow.
Pete interrupted her speculations —I’m thinkin’ if this thing outside isn’t gone in half an hour, I’m goin’ out anyway, gonna try to sneak past it, over it, under it, whatever. She saw the faint illumination of the glowstick brush his face. —I don’t think it’s even. . .
He broke off and slid to his knees then drooped as if deflating till his forehead touched the pebbly floor, groaning a low pained groan all the way down. Sue-Min rose and stepped toward him, closed the gap by near half, but went no closer. He might be feigning only to fool her —Pete? Pete, are you all right?
He took a long time to respond, groaning again before he half-rose and spoke. —My watch. Please tell me it’s fucked up. It only says 9:15. It’s been way more than three minutes since I checked it. What the hell? What’s going on?
—Either way shouldn’t the sun be up?
—That’s what I mean. We should have sun but we don’t. It’s like time is speedin’ up and slowin’ down.
—Now you’re talking crazy.
—Am I? Then you explain this shit. First it’s four in the morning, then all of a sudden it’s nine. Then half an hour, maybe an hour passes, but it’s only three minutes on my watch. What’s causin’ that? That thing might be weavin’ a web out of time . . . or maybe it just inhabits some kind oftime vortex it found, and it sits like an ant lion in its pit, waitin’ for its next victim. Which tonight just happens to be us. Or this morning, whichever it really is. . .
—The sun’s got to come up sometime. I mean, we are in a cave, in a canyon. It’s going to take a while longer here, that’s all. Don’t you think the sky looks lighter outside now? I think it does, a little. Most likely your watch is screwed up. Maybe you bumped it climbing up here.
—I didn’t bump it. And it was workin’ fine before.
—Well whatever. Maybe these rocks have a high magnetic content, maybe they’re messing with your watch. I’ve heard of caves in El Malpais like that, where a compass doesn’t work. Whatever it is, there has to be a natural explanation.
—Oh yeah? Does that thing outside have a natural explanation?
—Maybe. Maybe we just don’t know the explanation yet.
—Bull-shit! That thing is a demon or an alien or something from another dimension. There’s nothing rational or natural about it!
—Come on Pete. I’m scared as you are, but we’ve got to keep it together. Talking about demons isn’t doing either of us any good. We should be talking about how we’re going to get out of here.
—Okay, fine. Hey Sue-Min, do you know how we’re gonna get out of here?
—I still think your idea of waiting till sunrise was a good one.
—Except maybe there isn’t going to be any sunrise. Not for us.
—There has to be. It’s just late because of our location, the canyon, the cave. . .
Pete rested hunched now, haunches on calves, knuckles of his clenched fists jammed down amidst the pebbles.
—What if the sun never rises? What if we’re caught in this monster’s vortex forever?
—What if we wait just a little longer and see if the sun comes up and the monster goes away? Isn’t that worth waiting for, when we can walk right out of here, maybe even find Ron? It was your idea anyway.
Pete just shook his head and groaned some more. For several reasons she was trying to keep up a tough front but his apparent collapse wasn’t helping. Not one bit. The truth was his comments had begun to get to her, especially his forecast of unending darkness. Shivering, she hugged herself, hoped he didn’t see.
Sue-Min told herself Pete’s watch was just bumped or broken. It might even start spinning backward next—and if it did, would it take them back to when Ron was still with them? Or were the movements of its damaged hands altogether meaningless, irrelevant to their current situation, the malfunction simply coincidence?
Pete rocked in place, spoke a cryptic sentence —I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.
Sue-Min shivered. —What the hell was that about?
He turned to her. —It’s from this play I was in, back in my UNM days. Beckett. I have this jones you know, for nerdy smart girls, and one I dated for a while was a theater major. She had this idea I’d be a good actor, kept pushing me to try out for plays she was producing. I finally did and got a part in this Beckett thing. It was weird shit—I played this guy in a wheelchair who kept a bloody handkerchief over his face most of the time. I still remember most of my lines though. My memory’s good like that.
Sue-Min struggled to wrap her thoughts around the image of Pete the thespian but it was too much for her to process. Her mind was already overloaded and all she really wanted to do was go back to sleep, return to the sleeping bag whose upper half still smelled like Ron. Was this faint and fading fragrance all she had left, all that remained? She could not accept that. Ron was resilient, Ron was Ron. Unless she saw definite evidence of his death, she would keep holding out hope he was still alive. And probably needing their help if he was. . .
At home if Sue-Min couldn’t get to sleep she would just
. . . it was the only thing that helped her fall asleep most nights. How long could she go without jilling off? She thought of the Seinfeld episode,The Contest. Hadn’t Elaine been the first one out in that?
Pete would want to do the same of course. Would he even make an effort to be discreet? Ick. She groaned softly to herself. Once again their situation added levels of complexity to simple quotidian acts.
She shook her head again to clear it then asked Pete —What does your watch say now? She spoke without turning in his direction.
He did not answer immediately, did not turn toward her, did not even look at his watch. Sue-Min kept her peace. It was not as if she had anywhere to go right at the moment.
Finally Pete examined his watch as she observed him. She remembered the device as an old school analog, an inheritance she guessed, his dad’s or his grand
dad’s originally. He stared a long minute at the face beneath the crystal but neither moved nor spoke. Finally he said to her without turning —Still 9:15. The second hand moves but I don’t think the other hands have even budged from where they were before.
—That’s weird.
—You’re tellin’ me.
His voice was bitter, hopeless, beyond even cynicism. Sue-Min considered how much worse the betrayal of his watch would hurt him if it really were an heirloom. She turned away from him toward the opening and. . .
—Pete! Look! Look outside!
He turned slowly but once he faced the exit she knew he saw what she saw too. The sky was lighter now, what she could see of it to either side of the silent immensity at least. No question. The shape of the thing did not resolve itself in relief and continued to defy her efforts to make sense of it overall.
—Do you see it? The sky is definitely getting brighter.
—But that thing is still there.
—Still here now. . . We don’t know how it got here. We don’t know how or when it might leave.
—If it leaves. How do we know it’s not here to stay?
—Can you be a little less pessimistic? It was your idea anyway about it leaving with the light. Don’t you want to test out that thought, see if you were right?
—I don’t want to know if I was wrong. I just want to get out of here. We’ve got to find a way to escape.
—Let’s see how bright it gets and what the monster does. Come on—if it’s really after 9:00 now, we should definitely be getting sunlight down here, even if it’s not direct.
It wasn’t quite sunlight, but something was changing in the sky, a dim glow visible to either side of the enormous entity. It was an unusual brightness, neither the indigo of twilight nor the poet’s rosy fingered dawn. Nor the sun’s normal clean yellow-white. Something was wrong with this light. Something was off. She couldn’t even put a color to what was more so just less of the dark than any presence of actual light, and offered no direction of origin as far as she could tell. The central bulk that bore the blossom thing grew no clearer, even in contrast at its sides. The blossom itself grew no less bright.
She glanced at Pete again but he remained concentrated on his watch, his left wrist held close to his face, just below the green tube in his right. Without turning away from it he spoke —You really should come see this, Sue.
—I’ll pass.
—Seriously. The hands are all running backwards now. Come see.
Sue-Min didn’t like the sound of that but she was no way going to get close enough to see for herself. She was just going to have to trust him about the watch. She was pretty sure she could grant him that, at least from a distance. Even if what he said were true what the hell did it mean for them? She could see the sickly glimmer from outside spreading into the cave like a thin liquid spill, but it signified nothing to her yet.
Sue-Min watched the slow growing glow and Pete watched his watch. The monster remained shapeless, motionless. She glanced at Pete and back and the monster was gone. Fast as that. She missed whether it sank into the canyon or ascended into space. Or blinked out suddenly, faded away slow. . . No sound marked its departure, no flash of light. No wind. Shouldn’t some kind of sonic boom have erupted as air rushed into the space it left empty?
Pete remained fixated on his watch. She called to him, a little louder than she would’ve dared before.
—Pete. Pete, look!
He looked. Paused.
—What happened? Is it doing something?
—I think it’s gone. It was sudden. It just . . . blinked out. Well, I blinked and it was gone.
Pete scrambled toward her. She felt a fresh rush of adrenalin but held her ground. What could she do if he really came at her? She should’ve already grabbed the knife from her pack for protection, or even better the Glock from Ron’s. Too late.
He passed her without a glance though, arrived at the entrance. From the dripline Pete looked every direction.
—You’re right. Holy shit. It’s gone. Almost like we dreamed it up.
He stood and hurled the glowstick into the void. Its arc quickly dropped it from her sight, but she saw Pete’s chin dip as he followed it down.
—Nothing. It’s really gone.
He turned to Sue-Min. —Are you ready to get outta here? For all we know it might come back. We should make time while we can.
Sue-Min was not so sure they should leave the relative safety of the cave. If such a colossus could vanish with neither warning nor coda, how easily could it reappear, catch them in the open? Perhaps that was its plan.
Yet Pete already had his headlamp on and was over the lip, on his way down. —C’mon! Let’s go!
She wanted to shout —Wait, call for some discussion of options, seek some consensus, but Pete was on the move and hadn’t given her any chance for talk. And he had the keys to the truck.
She scrambled to the edge, hung over and called to him. —Wait! Give me a minute! I at least have to put my boots on.
Already twice her length below he looked up, nodded, said merely —Hurry!
—What about our packs?
—Leave the packs. We’ve got to move fast, travel light, get back to the truck as quick as we can. We can pick up our packs when we come back with the cops or whoever. Nobody’s going to touch our stuff here meantime.
She grabbed her own light from where she’d left it by her pack—safe to use it now she guessed, hoped—began lacing her boots, restrapped her bra. Pete was right. Her pack would only overbalance her on the way back down. They had a window of safety and they’d have to hurry through while it stayed open. However briefly it did. They had no way to tell how long that might be.
When she hunched over the edge she found Pete waiting in the same spot below. His presence gave her comfort, a surprise in itself. Her hands dug for purchase among the dusty pebbles but her feet found good holds, and soon she was below the rim, her hands on solid stone, heading for Pete. He didn’t move. As she made her way toward him, he offered encouragement —C’mon, yeah, that’s it. Right this way. His steady voice provided a beacon without her looking down.
Soon she was right above him, and for a moment she feared he might grab her ankle and yank her right off the slope, the last witness to whatever he’d gone and done to Ron. That spasm of terror passed and a fresh impulse seized her, the desire to kick Pete right in the face, send him tumbling into the slot below. He would never bother her again if she did. Never bother anyone. But the keys. . . How badly broken might his body wind up, wedged in the crack below? Would the keys be accessible? What if they flipped from his pocket into the pitch filthy water? She’d never find them, shuddered at the thought of having to reach into that cold opaque foulness, grope blind amongst the sticks and bones. Even if she made it back to the truck without the keys, what could she do? She had no real idea how to hotwire a vehicle. Seek help from the ranchers? Hike out all the way on her own? What if the police found her bootprint pressed onto Pete’s forehead?
The moment passed. She could not do it. She was no murderer. Her Baptist upbringing on the farm held that far.
Pete continued his descent and she followed. Though she had to feel with her feet for footholds, she found her handholds on the ribbed rock face with relative ease, and descended keeping just above Pete. They shared no more words till they arrived right above the coffee colored creek at the bottom of the crack, where Pete had to comment —Phase One done at least. And we’re making good time I think . . . not that I can tell anymore. . . Now we’ve gotta get up and outta here. Are you ready?
—Yeah.
She was scanning ahead and behind for any remnant of Ron’s broken body, but she saw nothing in her little headlamp’s limited beam beyond the stony V, the stagnant water, the scattered broken ends of branches or bones. No Ron. And still no monster.
Pete began to chimney along the crack back the way they’d come, and two seconds later she followed. He didn’t look back.
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As Sue-Min rushed to keep up her left hand slipped and her foot sunk half up her calf in the stagnant ink. Right off she felt the cold and cried out, an exclamation half gasp half yelp. She stopped her fall with her forearm, her submerged foot finding no bottom, and wriggled to brace herself anew, but before she could yank her wet foot free, Pete was there to take her arm, offer support. She would’ve shooed him off but her scraped palm already throbbed and the water was cold and who knew what worse?
—C’mon, he said, —Grab my arm, and she paused only a moment before wrapping first her right hand then her left around his bicep. She could feel the damage to her hand—after everything, she’d forgotten her gloves again. Damn. Pete raised her till her boot rose dripping from the black wet and held her in place until she could get her hands back against the sides of the crevice higher up. She shook her foot back and forth, for what little good it did. The water had run down inside her boot.
—You okay? Did you hurt yourself?
—Just wet. And angry at myself for slipping.
—Not your fault. It’s dark and we’re both rushing. Maybe I was rushing too much. Sorry. It must feel gross.
—Don’t make me think about it.
—Yeah. Understood. Let’s keep going then. I want to get up and out of this canyon as quick as we can. If that thing comes back, I figure it will show up here, and I want to be far away by then.
He led on and she followed, taking extra care now to maintain three points of contact with the walls at all times, grimacing each time she moved her left foot and felt her sodden wool sock squish inside her boot.
The limited beam from Sue-Min’s weak LED light fell mainly on Pete’s advancing back, the khaki shirt he wore a broad reflective canvas. As she watched his halting forward motion she considered the exchange they just shared, the way he helped her. He’d been civil, gentlemanly, even compassionate. The same guy who tried to force himself on her only a couple hours ago. Maybe being afraid a monster would eat him brought out the best in his personality. If only a giant monster were chasing him every minute in his life, he might become a decent guy, maybe even pick up where he left off on his theater career, learn to tap dance, acquire an interest in show tunes. . .
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