by Sharon Joss
CHAPTER 19
“You have got to be kidding.”
The half-hidden entrance wasn’t much more than a crack in the ground between two rough granite boulders. I’d imagined something grander; more along the lines of an Open Sesame kind of entrance. Anchored to the surrounding rocks, a sturdy grate covered the aperture and must have been in place for a long time. The lock looked shiny new.
Rhys grinned like an idiot as he unlocked the gate and turned on his headlamp. I did the same, my discomfort growing every second.
“Take it slow, mind your head.” He sat down at the fissure opening, dangled his legs, eased the cat carrier through, then lowered his body feet first and disappeared from sight.
I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. What was I doing here, anyway? Crawling into a hole in the ground with a guy I barely knew? Sure, he’s a great kisser and all, but what if I got lost and couldn’t find my way out? What if something happened? Mina would be left at school again, and no one would even know where to look for me. Hell, I could be dead.
“Mattie?” Rhys scraped his way back to the entrance. Things sounded pretty tight inside. I bet Agent Porter wasn’t the only person who couldn’t fit through the entrance. I bet Cavewoman Barbie didn’t fit either.
Rhys’s face popped into view from beneath me. “I thought you weren’t afraid of the dark?”
“I’m not.”
“What’s the problem?”
I didn’t answer.
He hoisted himself out of the entrance with a grunt, and approached me with a small coil of blue nylon cord in his hand.
Instinctively, I backed away. For a half-minute of eternity, I wondered if Rhys could be the Night Shark.
He froze, his green eyes twinkling.
I pointed at him. “Don’t you laugh at me. I just remembered, I need to make a phone call, that’s all. You know, in case I’m late.”
“Cell phone service doesn’t work up here, Mattie. I should have said something earlier. Don’t worry. We’ll be back in time for you to pick up Mina.”
Panic flooded through me. “What’s the rope for?” I thought about running back to the truck, but Rhys had the keys. No one would ever find me.
“Come ‘ere.” He grabbed me by the baggy front of the coveralls, pulled me toward him, and wrapped a length of the nylon cord around my waist before I could react. He tied a fancy knot and gave a it a tug.
“There. Now you can’t get lost or separated from me.” He tied the other end around his own waist, using the same knot. “Better?”
Oh. Good thing I hadn’t made a total fool of myself. What a ninny. “I’m not scared.”
“Most people get scared the first time.” He grinned that bad boy grin again. “This part of the country is riddled with caves. I wish I could take you someplace special for your first time, but as caves go, this one’s not bad. Once we get inside, you’ll be fine. You okay?”
I’d met Rhys less than twenty-four hours ago. I chewed the inside of my lip. “Yeah.”
“Liar.”
I had to do this. I took a deep breath. “No, I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Rhys lowered himself into the darkness. He flashed his light around to show me what it looked like.
“Any bugs in there?”
He gave an encouraging tug to the line around my waist.
“Come on, girlie. Time’s a wasting. Who needs bugs? We’ve got monsters to find.” The little-boy-chasing-pirates look on his face sold me. Plain and simple, this guy loved crawling around in the dark. I’d be as safe with him as anybody. And he was right about the monsters.
I descended into the portal.
The narrow passageway led downward. Loose rocks and scree made the trail dicey, and the low ceiling made forced us to crawl or walk hunched over. Rhys showed me the best handholds, and we made good progress. The cold sank right into my bones, and I wished I’d brought a jacket. I was glad for the rope connecting me to Rhys.
Now that I was down here, the cave didn’t bother me. I couldn’t understand the allure, but I even turned off my headlamp. With Rhys leading the way, and Blix and Larry and the gang bringing up the rear with their eerie eye-glow, I felt like I was part of some strange underground safari. If worst came to worst and the lights went out, there was more than enough light from my weird little herd to guide me back to the entrance. A reassuring thought.
We alternated between creeping, crawling, and sidling our way through the dry tunnels. The few tight spots we encountered had been harder on Rhys than me.
“Sooo. Have you been here with Miss Cavewoman?”
“Why do you ask?” I heard the amusement in his voice.
“Just curious. Based on this custom rig of hers, I wondered if she would have the same problem as agent Porter.”
“This is official business. I wouldn’t bring her here.”
“But if you did. Would she make it past the entrance?”
“You jealous?” He grunted his way through another narrow spot. “Careful, you’ll need to step up to get through here.”
“Not at all. I’m a natural girl. I don’t need any artificial enhancements.” I squeezed through the narrow spot without grunting.
“Okay cave girl. Turn on your headlamp and take a look.”
We reached a spacious chamber, about forty feet across. The cold air sharpened here, and I shivered in the draft.
“I smell licorice,” I said. “Pretty strong.” I had gotten used to the muted scent of my own flock, so I hadn’t noticed the stink had gradually grown stronger as we edged our way along.
A row of cat crates lined up against one wall of the cave, and each one, I assumed, contained a captured djemon made flesh. Rhys set the new crate down next to the others.
“What are they doing here?” I crouched down to get a better look. Five pair of luminous eyes stared back at me from homely faces. Two of them hissed at me.
“This is where they stay. They can’t get out, and no one can get to them so they’re safe.”
“But you can’t leave them here. How can they live?”
“They’re not alive. Not like you think. They don’t eat or sleep. They don’t die. They exist to obey the demon master who named them. Until the government figures out what to do with them officially, they stay here.”
“What if their master calls them?”
Rhys shrugged. “So far, none have escaped. Either he’s forgotten about them, or they’re not strong enough to get out.”
I shivered. “I can’t imagine a worse thing than spending my life locked up in the dark. It seems so wrong.”
“You’re anthropomorphizing. These creatures are eternal, Mattie, like a rock or stone. Whether they’re sealed up in the cavern or in a crate doesn’t matter. And they’re too dangerous to be let loose. Come on, I want to show you something.”
I followed him into the next cavern, and where he pointed out murals of primitive graffiti painted on the walls all around us. In the light from our headlamps, a series of silhouetted figures and creatures danced across the sooty walls of the cavern.
I stared in awe. “Oh wow, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“This one depicts the story of a major battle between the indigenous local spirits and the ancestors of the Senequois people. Here the tribal shamans are driving the spirits into the caves and imprisoning them beneath this hill.”
I sensed the chaos and fear of the tribesmen as they battled the strange spirit figures. The energy of the conflict was palpable. “They’re beautiful.”
We approached the cave wall, but Rhys cautioned me from touching the mural’s surface.
“The images are incredibly fragile. These two here, are the shamans of the village. Medicine men. They’re chasing the djinn back under the hill. This part here depicts the ceremony of celebration, after the tribesmen seal the cave, and to the left here, are warnings not to disturb the spirits within.”
“The color
s are so bright.”
“You’re one of only a half-dozen people on the planet who has seen these images since the ancestors of the Senequois first painted them.”
“So where’s the sealed cave?” The temperature in the caves had to be close to freezing.
“This way,” he said, and headed to the left.
“Wait a second. The djinn smell is coming from over there.” I pointed into the darkness in the other direction.
“I don’t smell anything.” He shrugged. “There’s not much over there. Let’s check the seal first.”
“You go. I want to check this out.” I was already halfway across the cavern when the cord on my waist pulled taut. I started to untie it, but Rhys stopped me.
“Nobody goes exploring alone. That’s rule number one.” He retied the knot I’d undone, and checked it again.
“Yeah, but there’s something over there. I can smell djinn, Rhys. I just want to look.” I felt certain another entrance was close by. “Besides, this place isn’t that big. I won’t get lost.”
“We stick together. There are a few cracks in the wall over there. They lead to the bat cave. You won’t be able to get through, Mattie. The fissure is too small, even for you. Come on. We’ll check the seal first, and we can check those cracks on the way back. That’s what we’re here for, remember?”
Focus, Mattie. “Okay, you’re right. Lead on, captain.”
A short time later, we reached yet another locked grate. Rhys searched his key ring again for the correct key and unlocked the grate, then slipped the lock into his pocket.
“This is the last gate, up ahead.”
“Why are you taking the lock with us?”
“I wouldn’t want to get locked in here by accident.”
After all we’d been through to get here, the thought that we might not be alone worried me. We passed through the entrance and the path widened enough to allow us to walk side-by-side. We arrived at the seal a few minutes later. An irregular chunk of concrete and metal looked to have been poured into a crevice less than a foot wide. Rhys took off his gloves and ran his hands over the rock face, searching for cracks. Rhys grunted, apparently satisfied.
“Is the seal intact?”
“Appears to be. If the seal hasn’t been breached, the influx of djinn into the Shore didn’t come from here. But we are back to square one with where those djinn are coming from.”
“You mean maybe they got kicked out of someplace else and moved here?”
“I don’t think so. This whole area has been a magnet for spirits since before the first humans arrived. It doesn’t make sense to me that a new population would move in. At least without someone noticing. Let’s take a look at what you smelled in the main cavern.”
After re-locking the grate, we returned to the main cavern. I followed my nose to the far wall of the cave, and stopped beneath a fissure some ten inches above my head.
“Here. This is where the odor is most intense. It’s almost overwhelming, really. You can feel a draft blowing through here, too.” I took my glove off, and held my hand in front of the gap. “Can’t you smell it?”
“We can’t get through. I explored this chimney with a scope a few years ago. The crack leads downwards for eight feet or so, and opens into to a fair-sized cavern. Other than a big colony of bats, there’s nothing there. I never found any other exit.”
I was itching to get into that tunnel. “Boost me up, Rhys. Let me try.”
“Nobody goes anywhere alone. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s no rescue crew or cell phone service down here.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I just want to look. I’ve got to, Rhys. Come on, give me a boost.”
I pulled on his collar until he bent down and I stepped into his hands. I gripped the edge of the tunnel as he boosted me up, and brought me high enough to see inside.
The stench of anise, bat urine, and guano smacked me back. Rhys was right about the crevice; the rock floor slanted sharply downwards. The entrance was tight, but definitely doable. Now that I was here, I couldn’t stop myself. I had to see.
“Higher,” I said and he raised me up another half a foot. I leveraged my elbows over the edge of the crack and pulled myself forward far enough to squeeze my shoulders through. “Give me a push. I know I can make it.”
I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to, and I started to wiggle forward on my own. Then strong hands grabbed my legs and pushed my hips through. Blood rushed to my head. I was nearly vertical. I was lying on my stomach in the tunnel, Rhys’s hands on my ankles.
Rhys tugged at the line around my waist. “This cord isn’t strong enough to hold your weight. If you fall, I’m not sure it will hold you.”
“I have to look, Rhys; there is something in here. I have to.”
“I’m serious Mattie. No fooling around.”
“I smell a boatload of djinn in here, Rhys. Of the two of us, I’m the only one that can fit through and see if they’re in here. Isn’t this why you brought me?”
After a long moment, he patted my boots. “You win. Keep three points of your body in contact with the surface at all times.”
As I inched forward, the tension on the cord around my waist increased. The smell of licorice and ammonia was choking. Rhys gripped the sole of one boot, but from my vantage point, I couldn’t see the cave floor. The end of the tunnel was still a foot away. My hands stretched out in front of me, and I figured I would need to get my face close to the entrance in order to see the floor of the cavern. Once I did that, my hands wouldn’t be able to push me back. The light from my head-lamp reflected off the cave wall opposite, some hundred feet away. I noticed a few bats flying around, but unless I inched toward the mouth of the tunnel, I wouldn’t be able to see anything else.
“Let go, Rhys. I need to get closer.”
Instead, his grip on my boot shifted and he began pulling me back.
“If I let go, you’re going to fall. You won’t be able to get back and that cord isn’t going to hold you.”
I had to see what I already knew was inside that cavern waiting for me. I felt an irresistible pull which had nothing to do with gravity, and everything to do with compulsion. I had to scratch that itch.
“No!” I kicked away his hand. Immediately, the startled bats went crazy. They swarmed the cave, seeking to escape; several flew into the tunnel and banged into me. The crevice was too narrow to protect my face with my hands; the best I could do was turn my face into my shoulder until the bats settled down.
Rhys yelled at me, which only made things worse. The stench was awful, but I needed to check out the cavern floor. Without Rhys holding my boot, gravity dragged me closer to the entrance. I was so close.
I inched forward. My hands and elbows cleared the lip of the tunnel, and dangled uselessly into the thin air in front of me. It wasn’t until my chin reached the edge that I could see the bottom. Satisfaction bloomed within me. I knew it. Even through the swarms of bats, the entire floor of the huge cavern was covered with thousands and thousands of djinn.
Ahhh. I knew it. I switched off my headlamp and some thirty feet below me, the glowing eyes of thousands of djinn lit up the blackness. They must have been there for centuries. Like an invisible army. In a far corner, at the very edge of my vision, I spotted two materialized djemons, seated on a small cot next to an old camp stove. I strained forward for a better look, and began to slide forward.
Panic shot through me. “Pull me back, pull me back,” I called to Rhys. I braced my legs against the walls of the tunnel, but the weight of gravity was against me. The pressure from the line around my waist, increased. My useless arms waved helplessly in front of me, unable to help.
“Let go, I’ll pull you up.”
The line bit into me, and I feared it would snap. “I can’t, I’ll fall.”
“I’ve got you. But you’ve got to stop bracing yourself. Make yourself small, and I’ll pull you up. Do it, Matt. Trust me.”
Get a grip Mattie. I took a deep breath, then forced myself go as small and limp as possible.
Steady pressure on the line dug into me as the thin rope took my weight. I tried to tell myself the nylon cord was strong enough to hold me, but worried that the rock could cut right through such a light line in no time.
Inch by scraping inch, Rhys pulled me up the chimney. First my shoulder, then my elbows pulled back up to where they touched inside the walls again, and I was able to help Rhys as he hoisted me back in. My view of the cavern floor disappeared. As soon as my hands were inside, I thrashed about for leverage.
“Damn it, girl, don’t fight me,” Rhys yelled. The bats got riled up again with all the yelling, and I had to force myself to remain limp. Each pull dragged me farther up into the tunnel, and eventually, I sort of reverse caterpillared myself to help. When Rhys grabbed my feet, I sobbed with relief. He dragged me free of the tunnel in one long pull and I fell into his arms.
He hugged me tight, breathing hard and planted a kiss on my forehead.
Shivering with cold and fear, I hugged him back, savoring the heat of his body.
“You had me going there for a minute.”
I couldn’t stop shaking. “I saw hundreds in there, Rhys. Thousands. And someone’s been inside. There’s a chair and camp stove set up. What do we do?”
In the yellow glare of the lamps, his eyes gleamed cold as he considered what I’d said. “There must be another entrance. What did the journal say?”
“What journal?”
“Madame Coumlie’s. What did it say?”
Oops. “I didn’t get a chance to read it. Sorry.”
He gave me a look. “Well, read it. We’ll talk to her tonight and figure out what to do.”
Oh man. I was planning to have my showdown with Lance tonight. “Sorry, no can do. Tonight isn’t good for me. I’ve got something I have to do.”
He put me down. “More important than this?”
There was no way I was going to put off talking to Lance. “Well, no, but it’s something I have to do. Someplace I have to be.”
“All right.” He said it like it wasn’t a problem, but I knew better.
I steeled myself. I could almost feel the doors slamming between us. Rhys picked up his pack without a word and headed back toward the entrance. I followed, and we were silent until we exited the cave and he locked the grate behind us.
After two hours on the cooler, the warmth of the July afternoon felt wonderful. Thunder rumbled around us, and the air smelled strongly of ozone. The storm was breaking right on top of us; quarter-sized splats of rain slapped the trees.
“We’re going to get wet,” I said.
“Looks like.”
I had to run to keep up with him. By the time we made it back, were both soaked to the skin and shivering, and I was shaking with exhaustion. Everything hurt.
“I want to swing by and tell Madame Coumlie what we found,” Rhys said.
My teeth chattered uncontrollably. “I’m dropping Mina off with Lance tonight. That’s why I can’t go with you. I need to talk to him. Why can’t Porter and the FBI handle things from here?”
“Why would you do that?” Rhys kept his eyes on the road as we wound our way back down the hill, the truck in low gear. “I thought she was with you for safekeeping. From what I hear, Lance is in big trouble.”
Why was it that Karen and Bunny and Rhys knew more about my brother than I did? “Why, what have you heard?”
“No more than what was in the paper this morning.”
Here we go again with the paper. I swore I would start reading it every day. “What did it say?” My shivering wasn’t just from the cold any more.
Rhys braked to a stop and turned to face me. “The Sentinel had a huge spread on the Night Shark serial killings this morning. The article showed pictures of the victims and the missing. Lance was identified by name as a person of interest. Everybody is looking for him.”
“Oh crap.”