He eyed me with seeming distrust. "You found a note with my name on it?"
"I just chalked it up to not eating properly. Truthfully, it wasn't the only time that I thought I saw your name or what looked like your coat of the corner of my eye."
"Sounds like someone wanted us to meet..." Thorn said quietly.
It probably wasn’t the right time for a discussion in the dark cave, but I prodded, "Someone like who?"
"That I do not know," Thorn said thoughtfully, shining his flashlight around the cave to illuminate our surroundings. The conversation then fell into silence as we explored the cave.
We found an entrance to another chamber with a bit of searching. This one was smaller. We had to take our packs off and wiggle through, but we made it. "I'm starting to feel claustrophobic," I admitted.
"We won't go much deeper," Thorn promised. "Not many come past the easily accessible chambers, so we have a better chance of finding stuff back here. If the missing people came in this way, something might still be here, even after all this time."
"It's still a long shot," I said. "I saw caves in my dream last night. I feel like there's something here, but I don't know where—or what—the hell it is."
He turned and gave me a serious look. "You should trust your gifts more."
"Says you." I felt too naked and exposed talking about my powers openly; yet at the same time, it was somewhat comforting.
His blond hair stuck out from under his black cap, and his gray eyes were bright even in the dim light of the cave. "My grandmother always said those with the most powerful gifts tend to not use them."
"Why’s that?" I asked with honest curiosity.
His flashlight moved as he took a sip from his canteen. "Fear. It's difficult to look at something that isn't supposed to exist and to admit that it’s there." With that, he was moving out into the chamber we’d entered. I kept quiet, simply following him.
Our flashlight beams showed the chamber to be smaller than the previous two. It was only about six feet wide and maybe seven feet tall. I definitely sensed a claustrophobic tightening in my chest, but I fought it off. While I’d never been fond of small spaces, I had never been deathly afraid of them, either.
As I panned my flashlight beam around, I spotted something and froze. I reached out and smacked Thorn on the shoulder. He swung around, and I knew the moment he saw it too. There was something against the wall. I couldn’t tell whether it was a person or something else, but we made our way toward it slowly.
I saw a glint and realized Thorn had pulled a knife out of his pocket just to be on the safe side. I crept toward the form, and when I finally got close enough to get a good look at it, I saw that it was a piece of clothing. Thorn put the knife away and picked up the cloth. "It's got flowers on it," he said.
"Flowers?" I asked back. "I don't recall what Caroline was wearing. Does it look old?"
"It's been in a cave. It looks dirty," Thorn replied in irritation.
I pulled out my phone and soon was flipping through the images that I’d taken of the articles. Nowhere did it mention her shirt. I snapped a photo of the garment just in case it was important before Thorn deposited it back in the dust of the cave floor.
I was putting my phone away when I heard a sound. I looked about in confusion, and Thorn asked me what I was doing. "Don't you hear that?"
"Hear what?" he asked grumpily.
"Uh...it's kind of like music."
"We should go," he said quickly, pushing me back toward the chamber entrance.
"What the hell?" I blurted indignantly. He was a lot stronger than he looked, and I wasn’t exactly a weakling myself.
He shoved me back toward the chamber opening and muttered under his breath, "Remember when I told you about Singer Cave's legend?"
I shut up and started back toward the entrance, and we made record time. Before long, we were crawling out into the cool air on the side of the mountain.
"Still hear it?" Thorn asked as he dusted himself off. I shook my head while we trudged off through the dimming light. "Sun's about set," he added over his shoulder. Our flashlight beams spilled onto the trees as we passed by them.
"What's that light?" I inquired as another light came over a hilltop ahead of us.
Thorn cursed and shut his light off, grabbing my jacket and tugging me down right beside him. "Get down," he ordered in a harsh whisper as I also shut my light off. My dream came to mind, but I pushed it away.
The flashlight beam bobbed as the person walked—not in our direction but off toward the east, away from the road. Once the beam disappeared, we made our way toward the truck as quickly as we could. When we got back to the road, we found no other vehicles. We scrambled swiftly into the truck, depositing our packs in the back seat.
Once we were driving back down the road, Thorn finally spoke. "I don't know who that was. No one goes to Maiden's Peak after dark. It's too dangerous."
I said thoughtfully, "Especially without a vehicle!"
His jaw clenched. "It has to be someone who lives nearby."
"So, who does that put on the list?" I asked with genuine curiosity.
Thorn sighed. "Pretty much just my family and the Mullen clan over the hill to the west. We’re the only ones who live within what you'd consider walking distance, even if it is inadvisable in the dead of winter."
When the truck came to a halt, it was outside the cabin that belonged to the Durant household. I reluctantly got out. Thorn was already striding through the snow toward the door, intent on whatever was on his mind. We hadn’t spoken more on the way back down from Maiden's Peak.
At the cabin door, he pulled out a key and stepped inside swiftly, with me following behind as closely as I could. The house was warm, and I breathed sweet relief after the day on the mountain. He motioned toward the kitchen. "Feel free to get some food. I'll be right back." With that, he headed upstairs.
In the kitchen, I found some sliced ham and sat at the kitchen table, eating it absentmindedly. I had not realized how hungry I was until Thorn mentioned food. I was still sitting there when he appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Mom and Oliver are upstairs," he said.
"I don't suppose it matters who it was," I said quietly. "I'm no closer to sorting this out than I was, and my time in town is about up."
Thorn plopped down and picked up a piece of ham, which he took a large bite out of. We ate in silence for a few minutes before he spoke. "How much longer do you have?"
"I have to check out of the bed and breakfast tomorrow," I informed him.
Thorn nodded. "Have a family to get back to?"
"Not your friend, remember?" The words came out harsher than intended. Yet Thorn didn’t take offense to it; he merely continued eating. "No. I just told my job that I’d only be gone a week."
"One must do what one must do," he said simply.
I eyed him. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine," he replied and then countered, "How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight." There was no need to hide that fact. I was surprised we were close in age, to be honest. He'd certainly taken a different path than I had.
"Tell me about your dream," he urged.
I cleared my throat and felt my face flush with embarrassment as I told him about the dream as best I could. He listened quietly. I could see his mind working behind his gray eyes as I spoke. When I’d rambled myself out, he nodded slowly. I expected ridicule, but I could see none.
Then again, I shouldn’t have expected it from the serious young man who had spoken of dreams and fortune-telling. He was definitely more open about it than I had ever managed to be. Besides, I had been more open about it with the blond than I had with anyone else.
"That's a lot of information, but at least some of it is probably just your mind working through things. Symbols, ya know?" he offered reasonably.
"It had occurred to me," I said. "I especially thought that might be the case when parts of it changed after I bumped into you the first time."
&n
bsp; "We need to visit the places in your dream, and since you only have tonight..."
"You want to go back?" I asked incredulously.
Thorn rubbed his face, appearing older when he spoke. "Want is a subjective word. I think the only way to figure this out is to get you to the places in your dream. If we can do that, either the dream will become clearer, or we'll find whatever it is we’re supposed to find."
"But tonight?" I asked.
"You have limited time," Thorn reminded me.
I nodded and then said, "I’ll stay one more night. You look tired, and frankly, it's dangerous up there."
"What if we don't find anything tomorrow, though? If we go tonight, we'd still have another night if we came up empty." Thorn sounded logical, speaking again before I could. "Get a couple hours’ sleep. The night is plenty long enough to leave us a fair amount of dark to fumble around in."
Before long, I had collapsed on the couch, with Thorn asleep in an armchair near the fire that he'd stoked back to life. The dreams might have proved helpful, but they stayed away this time, allowing me some blissful sleep. When I was awakened by Thorn's hand on my shoulder, I felt better than I had in days.
We locked up the cabin as we left, and Thorn checked our packs when we got out to the truck. I found it hard to think about going back into dark caves, so I thought of anything but.
As we drove up the mountain once more, I studied my phone and the article. "Your grandmother was sure Caroline had gone up the mountain?" I asked as Thorn nodded. "And did she ever mention what she saw in her vision?"
Thorn's jaw worked a bit before he spoke as he fought with the slippery road. "She said that she saw her deep in the mountain..."
I shivered, and the dream flashed before my mind's eye. "I dream about falling down into the darkness. It's how the nightmare always starts."
"Still think it's the future?" Thorn asked.
I shrugged. "I’ve never dreamed about the past."
Thorn pulled off the road where the truck wouldn’t readily be seen if someone drove up, shutting off the engine. "Now we just have to decide where to go."
"What do you think?"
He looked at me. "You’re the one with the dream!"
"I don't know this mountain. I fall in a deep chasm. There's a man with a gun. There are people in caves." I felt exasperated and overwhelmed. It was nice to have someone believe in my dreams, but it was also infuriating because my dreams had severe limitations and were not 100% reliable.
"I'd say Desa's Pass is a good bet. We found very little in the caves—"
"Other than some singing," I interjected.
He amended, "Yeah. Other than some singing. Come on; let's get some distance in before we sit here until dawn debating all four directions' merits." He opened the truck door, and a blast of icy wind blew in.
When I hopped out of the truck, I noticed how dark it was. I looked up. "There's no moon," Thorn grunted, and I turned around to look at him.
"There was no moon in one part of my dream," I said. He met my eyes, and we fell silent as we got our packs out of the truck.
The flashlights illuminated the snow as we trudged off toward Desa's Pass. Thorn explained along the way that it had been named after an old miner who staked a claim there. He did not sound too pleasant, but Thorn said he was a local legend, as such characters normally are.
When we got to the pass, it was a low, narrow passage between Maiden's Peak and another mountain peak I didn’t know the name of. We stepped hesitantly on the snow. Thorn said, "There're old mine shafts and sinkholes somewhere in this area. No one goes here because of it."
"Good thing we came here," I said sarcastically while we progressed through the seemingly flat pass. The sides of the two peaks loomed, and the shadows were complete blackness where the flashlights weren’t illuminating the snow. The snow crackled and groaned but held as I took another step. Thorn also froze as we listened to the snow under our feet. That was when we saw it.
There was light under the snow. Thorn backed up. I backed up. The glow moved along, as if someone were walking under us with a light of some kind. It passed right under our feet. We looked at each other, quickly turning to follow the light. It was all we could do to keep up with it.
I was in front, scrambling as quietly as I could along the icy snow. The light flickered and winked out at the edge of the pass. "What the hell was that?" I asked in a low voice as soon as I dared.
Thorn looked contemplative. "Tunnels, maybe? Old mining tunnels?" He paced over to where I was. "Maybe someone’s up here mining."
"In the dark?" I asked, as if he was insane.
He shrugged. "Why do you ask me things?"
I sighed. "Okay, so, where would they come out?" We turned and followed the general direction that the light had taken. "Besides..." I said as we trekked across the snow in the dark, "There had to be solid ground under us, or the snow would’ve given way." Just as I was speaking, my foot sank into the snow. "Oh no," I muttered. The next instant, there was a cracking sound, and I was falling. The blackness appeared below me. I was floating. No. I looked up and realized Thorn had grabbed my arm. He strained, managing to pull me up slowly. We both collapsed onto the snow, panting heavily. "Okay, okay," I said, out of breath, "I'm a believer."
"Shut up," Thorn panted.
FOUR
After we’d recovered, we made our way—very carefully—back out of the pass. As we trudged through the snow, I came to a rash decision. "I'm staying."
Thorn seemed surprised. "That was sudden. What about your job?"
"Well, I'm sure they can get someone else to walk the dogs," I said with a laugh.
He eyed me curiously, then shrugged. "We can find somewhere for you to stay."
"I didn’t ask for that," I said firmly.
"I know."
I looked at the trees, and my dream flashed in front of my eyes. I started walking quickly toward the tree line. "Where are you going?" Thorn asked as he hurried to catch up to me.
I answered honestly, "I don’t know." I decided to just trust where I was going and stop trying to force my dream to fit into the facts that I'd found. I followed the gentle nudge of it.
An owl hooted somewhere nearby. As I slipped between the trees, I felt cold snow fly off of the branches and into my face. My feet sank into the drifts, making the going slow and tedious. We finally clamored out of the bank and onto more densely packed snow that was easier to walk on.
I was shivering from the dampness of my pant legs. Thorn followed me silently, and eventually, I stopped. I was breathing hard from the effort it had taken to get to this spot, wherever it was.
I looked around. My flashlight shined on a black opening, and I startled, then chided myself. This cave entrance was far larger than the Singer's Cave. "What is this place?" I asked Thorn over my shoulder.
"Judging by the fact that we’re due east of Maiden's Peak, it could be part of the Devil's Cauldron caves," he said.
"That's where the other flashlight went, right?" I asked, walking reluctantly toward the opening.
Thorn spoke with equal enthusiasm. "Yes."
"Let's go, then," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
Thorn walked up beside me, and we entered the cave together. Inside, the darkness was almost impenetrable. Our flashlights seemed like they were doing little good. I heard a cracking sound, and a green glow flared to life. Thorn threw the glow stick on the ground.
"To find our way back out..." he explained. I nodded while we inched forward cautiously, as we could barely see anything.
Our flashlight beams finally met the far wall. It was not that big a room, but the air seemed dense with vapor that reflected our beams back at us. Thorn motioned with his flashlight to let me know that he'd found the opening to the next chamber.
The opening turned out to be a narrow passageway. I tried to count the steps as we squeezed through. It was tall enough to walk upright but so narrow that at times we had to turn sideways a
nd inch along. I was grateful Thorn had gone first. My pack swung against my leg as I made slow progress.
I looked back but couldn’t even make out the glow stick lying on the ground. I focused again on counting. I mentally noted the steps at 42 as Thorn walked out of the tunnel ahead of me. I took a deep breath as I stepped free of the confined space. The chamber before us was much larger, and—thankfully—warmer, which likely explained the vapor in the air.
He turned back toward me. "My dad used to bring me to the Devil's Cauldron, but I don't remember this chamber. The air, though, and the warmth…if it isn't connected to the Devil's Cauldron, I'd be shocked!"
I filed that information away but wasn’t sure how it helped us. The chamber was not large, but much larger than the one on the other side of the tunnel. Right away, I noted something disconcerting. "There's more than one opening," I said, pointing my flashlight toward one of the tunnels and then the other.
"Two of us, two of them," Thorn said.
I stared at him blankly. "You are not seriously suggesting we split up."
He shrugged. "It’d be faster, but if not, then we'd best make a decision quickly so we can save time."
"We’re going down this one," I said and walked toward the one on to my left.
"I love it when you take charge."
I must have been tired, because I laughed deliriously, and he laughed with me as we made our way down our chosen passageway. We were now met with a new cavern.
This one was a genuine cavern, complete with vaulted ceilings. There was a huge formation in the center of the room. I froze. Something moved behind the formation. A chill spread over me and I shivered. "Something’s over there..." I whispered. Thorn was already moving forward with his knife drawn. When he reached the formation, I edged closer. He walked around behind it. "What is it?" I asked in trepidation.
He came back over, twirling the knife as he put it away. "It's nothing. Literally. There was nothing there."
"It must have a way out back there. Something moved," I said resolutely, walking around the large stone formation and also finding nothing. My heart slowed its pace a bit. I turned around and shined my light on the wall. A few feet back, there was a small child-sized opening. "Oh, no," I grumbled.
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