by Riley Sager
I edge in front of the girls, shielding them from Theo and whatever he might try to do next. I slip a trembling hand through my flashlight’s wrist strap, securing it. Although not much of a weapon, it’ll do in a pinch. If it comes to that. I desperately hope it doesn’t.
“Miranda,” I say with as much calm as I can muster, “there’s a canoe on shore in the same place we landed the other day. Take Sasha and Krystal there as fast you can. If Sasha has trouble, you might need to carry her. Do you think you can do that?”
“Why?” Miranda says. “What’s going on?”
“Just answer the question. Yes or no?”
Miranda’s reply is streaked with fear. “Yes.”
“Good. When you get to the canoe, row across the lake. Don’t wait for me. Not even a second. Just row as fast as you can back to camp.”
Theo aims his flashlight at my face again. “Emma, maybe you should step away from the girls. Let me see if they’re hurt.”
I ignore him. “Miranda, do you understand?”
“Yes,” she says again, more forceful this time, steeling herself for the sprint.
“Good. Now go. Hurry!”
That last word—and the desperate way I say it—gets the girls moving. Miranda bolts away, all but dragging Sasha behind her. Krystal follows, slower but just as determined.
Theo makes a move to stop them, but I lunge forward, flashlight raised, threatening to strike. He freezes when I’m two feet away and drops his flashlight. He raises his hands, palms open. I don’t lower my flashlight. I need to keep him like this. Just long enough to give the girls a head start.
“Don’t you dare go after them,” I warn.
“Emma, I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Stop lying!” I shout. “You know exactly what’s happening. What did you plan to do with those girls?”
Theo’s eyes go wide. “Me? What were you going to do with them? I followed you here, Em. I watched from the Lodge as you got into that canoe and rowed across the lake.”
It’s another lie. It has to be.
“If you thought I was guilty, why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because,” Theo says, “I wanted to be wrong.”
As did I. All that guilt I’d felt about accusing him. All that shame and remorse. It was for nothing.
“I need to know why you did it,” I say. “Both now and back then.”
“I didn’t—”
I lift the flashlight higher. Theo flinches.
“Hey, let’s talk about this,” he says. “Without the flashlight.”
“I think you had the hots for Vivian,” I tell him. “You wanted her, and she rejected you. You got mad. You made her disappear. Natalie and Allison, too.”
“You’re wrong, Emma. About everything.”
Theo takes a step toward me. I stay put, trying not to show my fear. Yet my hand trembles, the flashlight’s beam quivering skyward.
“Since you got away with it once, I guess you thought you could do it again. Only this time you tried to make me look guilty. My bracelet in the canoe was insurance.”
“You’re troubled, Emma,” he says, carefully choosing his words, making sure not to offend me. “You need help. So how about you drop the flashlight and come with me. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
Theo risks another step closer. This time, I take a step back.
“I’m done being lied to by you,” I say.
“It’s not a lie. I want to help you.”
We repeat our steps. Forward for him, backward for me.
“You could have helped me fifteen years ago by admitting what you did.”
If Theo had turned himself in, then maybe I wouldn’t have felt so guilty about what happened.
Maybe I wouldn’t have hallucinated the girls.
Maybe I would have been normal.
“Instead, I spent fifteen years blaming myself for what happened to them,” I say. “And I blamed myself for causing you pain.”
Another step for Theo.
“I don’t blame you, Emma,” he says. “This isn’t your fault. You’re sick.”
Another step for me.
“Stop saying that!”
“But it’s true, Em. You know it is.”
Instead of one step forward, Theo takes two. I move backward, first shuffling then turning around and running. Theo chases after me, catching up within seconds. He grabs my arm and jerks me toward him. I cry out, the sound streaking through the dark woods. I hear its echo as I raise the flashlight and swing it against Theo’s skull.
It’s a weak blow. Just enough to shock him into letting me go.
I give him a shove, knocking him off-balance. Then I run again, this time in the opposite direction. Back the way I came. Toward the lake.
“Emma!” Theo shouts at my back. “Don’t!”
I keep running. Heart pounding. Pulse loud in my ears. Trees and rocks seem to lurch at me from all sides. I dodge some, slam into others. But I don’t stop. I can’t.
Because Theo’s also up and running. His footfalls echo through the woods behind me, outpacing my own. He’ll catch up sooner rather than later. Outrunning him isn’t an option.
I need to hide.
Something suddenly looms before me in the darkness.
The monolith.
I run to it, swerving right until I’m at its northwestern edge. I shine my light over the rock wall, seeing the fissure that opens up a foot from the ground.
The cave Miranda had crawled into.
I drop to my hands and knees in front of it and shine the flashlight inside. I see rock walls, dirt floor, a dark recess that runs at least a few feet into the ground. A shimmer of cool air wafts out of it, and I let out an involuntary shiver.
Theo’s voice rings out from somewhere close. Too close.
“Emma? I know you’re here. Come on out.”
I flick off my light, drop to my stomach, and back into the cave, worried I might not even fit. I do. Barely. There’s roughly six inches of space above me and slightly less on each side.
The sky outside the cave brightens. Theo’s flashlight. He’s reached the rock.
I will myself not to breathe as I slide back even more. The cave floor feels uneven, like I’m on a slant, edging downhill.
A flower of light blooms on the ground near the mouth of the cave. I hear the crunch of Theo’s footsteps, the sound of his labored breaths.
“Emma?” he says. “Are you here?”
I move back even farther, wondering how deep the cave goes, hoping it’s far enough to escape the beam of Theo’s flashlight if he aims it inside.
“Emma, please come out.”
Theo’s right outside the cave now. I see his shoes, his toes pointed in the opposite direction.
I continue to slide backward, faster now, praying he can’t hear me. I feel water dripping down the cave walls. Mud starts to squish beneath me, gurgling up between my fingers.
I’m still sliding, although now it’s not by choice. It’s because of the mud and the tunnel’s slant, which turns sharply steeper. I dig my knees and the heels of my palms into the mud, hoping they’ll act as brakes. It only sends me slipping even more.
Soon I’m sliding fast, out of control, my chin leaving a groove in the mud. When I flick on the flashlight still around my wrist, all I see are gray walls, brown mud, the shockingly long path I’ve just traveled.
Then the ground below me vanishes, and I’m suddenly in midair.
Dropping.
Helpless and flailing.
My screams swallowed by their echoes ringing through the cave as I plummet into nothingness.
39
Water breaks my fall.
I drop right into it, caught by surprise, unable to close my mouth before plunging under. Liquid pours in
, choking me as I keep falling, somersaulting in the depths, the flashlight’s beam streaking through the water, revealing dirt, algae, a darting fish.
When I finally do touch bottom, it’s a gentle bump and not the life-ending crash against hard stone I expected. Still, it’s a shock to my nervous system. I push off from the bottom as water continues to tickle the back of my throat. I gag, coughing air that bubbles past my face. Then I’m at the surface, my head emerging and water unplugging from my nostrils. I cough a few times, spitting up water. Then I breathe. Long and slow inhalations of dank, subterranean air.
With the flashlight miraculously still dangling from my arm, I paddle in place, trying to get a sense of my surroundings. I’m in a cavern roughly the same size as Camp Nightingale’s mess hall. The beam of the flashlight stretches over black water, damp rock, a strip of dryish land surrounding the pool in a crescent shape. The water itself takes up about half the cave, no larger than a backyard swimming pool. When I aim the flashlight upward, I see a dome of rock above me dripping with stalactites. The cavern’s shape makes me think of a stomach. I’ve tumbled into the belly of a beast.
A dark hollow sits in a corner where rock wall meets cave ceiling. The spot from which I fell. I sweep the flashlight up and down, trying to gauge how far I dropped. It looks to be about ten feet.
I swim forward, heading to the land that partially rings the water. The ground there is studded with pebbles, painted pale by the flashlight. I pull myself onto it and collapse, exhausted and aching.
I reach into my pocket and optimistically search for my phone. It’s still there. Even better, it still works. Thank you, waterproof case.
The phone doesn’t have any signal. Not that I was expecting one this far below ground. Still, I try calling 911 in case, by some small miracle, it actually goes through. It doesn’t. I’m not surprised.
I remember what Detective Flynn said about tracking someone’s location using the GPS on their phones. I can’t help but wonder if that still applies when the missing person is underground. I doubt it. Even if it’s possible, such a thing could take hours, maybe even days to pinpoint my location.
If I want to get out of here, I’ll have to do it myself.
I aim the flashlight to the stretch of cave wall rising to the hole above me. It’s steep. Not quite a ninety-degree angle, but mighty close. Before trying to climb it, I scan the rest of the cavern, looking for another way out. I aim the flashlight into every corner and dark cranny I can find, seeing nothing but more water, more rock, more dead ends.
Scaling that wall is my only option.
In desperation, I run to it, not pausing to look for places to grip. Instead, I leap onto the wall, clawing at rock, scrambling for outcroppings. I get about three feet before I lose my grip and fly backward, landing hard on the cave floor.
I try again, this time making it four feet off the ground before getting bucked off. This time I land directly on my tailbone. Sharp pain shoots up my back, momentarily paralyzing me.
Yet I make a third attempt, slowing down a bit, puzzling together the best places to grip and the right direction in which to climb. It works. I find myself rising higher. Six feet. Seven.
When I’m about a foot from the tunnel that leads back outside, I realize there’s nothing left to grasp. I reach up with my right arm, my palm smacking smooth rock that’s cold and slippery. My left arm and shoulder, bearing all that weight, start to give out.
My body droops.
For a second, I dangle against the cave wall. Then I plummet back to earth, landing feetfirst, my right ankle twisting beneath me before buckling. I think I hear something snap. Or maybe it’s my imagination as I collapse into a pained heap.
I scream, hoping it will take the edge off. It doesn’t. The pain continues. So does the screaming. I look at my ankle and my foot, bent in a way it shouldn’t ever be. There’ll be no more climbing for me.
That’s when reality sets in.
I’m trapped here.
No one knows where I am.
I’m now as lost as Vivian, Natalie, and Allison.
40
The flashlight dies shortly after 4:00 a.m. I know the time because I check my phone as soon as the dying beam flickers into nothingness. I regret looking, even as I’m comforted by the blue-white glow of the screen. Time continues to pass at an agonizing pace. It’s as if the minutes last longer down here, stretching themselves until a single hour feels like three.
Wanting to preserve as much battery as possible, I shut off the phone and return it to my pocket. Then I sit in darkness so complete it feels like death. Nothing but black emptiness.
I start to shiver, realizing how alarmingly cold it is down here. The pool of frigid water doesn’t help. Ditto my wet clothes, which cling to my clammy skin. My body trembles. My teeth chatter.
Yet none of that keeps me from dozing off as I huddle against the side of the cave, my knees pulled to my chest. Each blink in the darkness somehow ends with me falling asleep only to bolt awake with a spasm of pain and a startled yelp.
I’m beyond exhausted, if such a thing exists. I can’t remember the last time I slept. I guess it was this morning, when I woke up inside Dogwood. I turn on my phone and do another time check.
Four thirty.
Fuck.
I then look for a signal, once again finding none.
Double fuck.
I turn off the phone and count the passing seconds, saying them aloud in the echo chamber of the cavern.
“One. Two. Three.”
When I blink, my eyes stay closed.
“Four. Five. Six.”
I’m suddenly too tired to speak. But the counting continues, now in my thoughts.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
I sleep after that. For how long, I have no idea. When I awake, it’s with another pain-filled jolt, me still counting, the number flying from my parched lips.
“Ten.”
My eyes snap open, my sleep-blurred gaze landing on Vivian right in front of me. She reclines on the cave floor, her elbow bent, head propped up. It’s how she liked to play Two Truths and a Lie. She claimed the relaxed position made it harder to tell when she was lying.
“You’re awake,” she says. “Finally.”
“How long was I asleep?” I say, now long past trying to cast her away through sheer force of will.
“An hour or so.”
“Have you been here that whole time?”
“Off and on. I guess you thought you were rid of me.”
“I certainly wanted to be.”
There’s no point in lying to her. She’s not real.
“Well, you’re not.” Vivian spreads her arms wide in mock delight. “Surprise!”
“You must find this amusing,” I say as I sit up and roll my neck until it cracks. “I’m a lost girl, too.”
“You think you’re going to die down here?”
“Probably.”
“That sucks,” Vivian says with a sigh. “Although I guess it makes us even, then.”
“I wanted you to come back,” I say. “I didn’t mean it. And I’m sorry. Just like I’m sorry for locking the cabin door. It was a horrible thing to do, and I regret it every day. That’s all truth. No lies.”
“I probably would have done the same thing,” Vivian admits. “That’s why I liked you, Em. We were both bitches when we had to be.”
“Does that mean we still would have been friends if you hadn’t disappeared?”
Vivian twirls a lock of hair around her finger, giving it some thought. “Maybe. There would have been a lot of drama. Lots of driving each other crazy. But there would have been good times, too. You being a bridesmaid at my wedding. Drinking with me after my inevitable divorce.”
She smiles at me. Her kind smile. The one from the Vivian I thought of as a potential big sister. I miss
that Vivian. I mourn her.
“Viv, what happened to you guys that night? Was it Theo?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out yet. I left you so many clues, Em.”
“Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because this is something you have to figure out on your own,” Vivian says. “Your problem is that you’re blinded by the past. Everything you need to know is right there in front of you. All you need to do is look.”
She points to the other side of the cavern, where a snake of light crawls along the rock wall. Several more surround it, undulating like waves, making the dome of the cavern feel like a disco.
Then it hits me. I can see.
The darkness is gone, replaced by a warm light radiating through the entire cave. It comes, quite improbably, from the pool in the middle of the cavern. The light is a rich gold tinged with pink that makes the water glow like a hotel swimming pool. I check my phone, seeing that it’s now six. Sunrise.
The presence of light means one thing—there’s another way out of the cave.
“Vivian, I think I can get out!”
She’s no longer there. Not that she ever truly was. But this time there’s no lingering presence, no sense she could return at any moment.
Vivian might be gone for good.
I stand and limp to the water’s edge. The light seems brightest to my right. Its undiluted glow suggests a straight path from the cave to the outside world. Most likely an underwater tunnel connecting cave to lake.
I slide back into the pool and face the light. Through the water, I see a glowing circle roughly the same size as the tunnel I entered through. If it stays that same width across its entire length, I might be able to swim my way out of the cavern.
I do a few laps around the pool, loosening up while testing out my injured ankle. It hurts, of course. It’s also swollen, which limits movement. I need to fight through both. I have no choice.
Properly warmed up, I line my body up with the tunnel entrance. I start shivering again, this time more from nerves than the chill of the water. I’m scared as hell and long for another way out of here. There isn’t one. The only way out is through.