Life Ruins

by Danuta Kot

  Déjà vu twisted his stomach into a knot, taking him back to a deep shaft and a side tunnel, a series of pitches and squeezes and an over-confident twat who thought he knew what he was doing, who was supposed to be in charge as he led his mate to his death.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he said to Becca. She’d been looking uneasy ever since they moved onto the cliff, and her expression was apprehensive as she studied the crumbling face and the half-buried entrance.

  She nodded.

  ‘You don’t have to come. I can go in on my own.’

  ‘I’m coming in.’

  ‘OK. We go in carefully. If I say we’re getting out, we get out. Fast.’

  She nodded again, biting her lip. It was good she was scared. She might listen to him. He checked to make sure her helmet was firmly on and her head torch was working. ‘Wait until I call,’ he said, then switched on his own torch, ducked down to get under the low arch and let himself slide through, controlling his movement with the rope.

  He found himself in a small chamber, roughly hewn out of the rock. He had to stoop, the roof was so low. A black stalactite hung almost to the ground. Jared skirted it. The mine went deeper into the cliff.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Becca was whispering from the entrance.

  ‘Give me a few minutes, and then you can come down.’

  There was a tunnel directly opposite. Jared picked his way across the chamber and shone his light down to the end. It didn’t look promising – either it was blocked by roof fall, or it was a dead end.

  Roof fall. He looked up. Rocks and shale and some brick reinforcement – it didn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

  There was a second tunnel from the chamber, leading off to the left, south-west by Jared’s reckoning. This tunnel looked as if it went somewhere. It was the same height as the chamber to start with, just about, but the roof became lower at the tunnel went on – they’d have to crawl if they wanted to go through. He could see some twisting in the line of the passage that was almost certainly caused by torsion in the unstable cliff – in ten years’ time he doubted this place would be here, but it should stand for a few more years. It would stand today.

  Probably.

  ‘OK,’ he said to Becca. ‘Come on, but it’s a bit tight in places.’

  Charlie. Hating the squeezes.

  He held the rope as she slithered into the tunnel, and soon she appeared in the entrance to the chamber. ‘You do this for fun?’ she asked. But her attempt at bravado failed as her voice cracked on the question.

  ‘Not today.’ Jared directed his head torch so that it illuminated the south tunnel. ‘We need to go that way. We can stand at the beginning, but the roof comes down so we’ll have to crawl eventually. I’m not sure what’s through there.’

  He led the way past some more stalactites – impossibly slender, maybe a metre long or more. For a moment, he forgot why they were there and stopped to look at one. It was formed from some kind of crystal, the same white and brown that had covered the ceiling over the years. There must be iron in the rocks.

  He heard Becca moving behind him. ‘OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The roof came low as he moved into the tunnel. He hunkered down, his back aching at the movement, and said, ‘We crawl from here. We’ll take a rope, let me go first and don’t follow until I signal – three sharp tugs on the rope, and it’s OK to come through.’

  ‘What if . . . never mind.’

  ‘If anything goes wrong, get out of here and get some help. Got it?’

  She nodded, scowling at the passage ahead. She looked scared and he couldn’t blame her.

  Jared went forwards on his hands and knees, and began his crawl through the tunnel. It went round a corner, then opened up into another low chamber, which opened up into . . . something magical.

  The light of his head torch filled the room with a strange, greenish shimmer. For a moment, he didn’t understand what he was seeing, then it came together.

  Water.

  His heart leaped. Flooding. Like the tunnel where he and Charlie . . . but it wasn’t flood water. He was looking at a stone pool that almost filled the width of the chamber. The water reflected the roof and walls, still as glass. It was the pool from the video, and it was beautiful. He dropped a pebble in and ripples spread, making the light on the roof dance. The pebble vanished, and thick mud clouded up from the bottom.

  He could feel a draught blowing on his face from deeper in the mine, on the other side of the pool, but the air smelt thick and sour. They’d have to be careful. Remembering why he was here, he gave the rope three sharp tugs, and in a minute, Becca was crawling through behind him.

  ‘What is it?’ Becca spoke in a whisper that seemed to fill the low, arched space.

  ‘It’s part of an old mine.’ Jared had heard of these pools, even seen images, but he had no idea there was one here. ‘It’s a cistern where they washed the stuff they dug up.’

  ‘There was a flower, a kind of silk flower.’ Becca was looking round her. ‘Remember. On the video. It was in the water.’

  The water stretched from wall to wall, the cistern divided by three bars that were raised about a foot above the surface. It was impossible to tell how deep it was. ‘What are you doing?’ Jared asked.

  Becca had pulled her boots off and was about to slide her foot into the pool.

  ‘We’ve got to go across there, haven’t we? I’m going to wade over and—’

  ‘Hang on. It could be over your head.’

  ‘No it’s shallow—’

  ‘It isn’t. Take my word for it, OK? We agreed – tunnels, my thing. You do it my way.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I thought you were the kind of guy who’s all, you know, let’s go, not oh no, I might hurt myself.’

  ‘I’m all let’s get out of here alive. If you get wet, you’re going to get cold really quickly. Next thing you know, you’ve got hypothermia. We’ve got more to explore – there’s another tunnel the other side of this.’

  He squatted at the side of the water, thinking. Someone must have come through here before them. Someone had filmed it, though whoever it was didn’t seem to have got beyond this point. But there must be something beyond this – or someone thought there was. Otherwise, what was the point of the film? And the flower – what did the flower mean?

  Jared shone his torch around again, aware that Becca was watching him. ‘What are you looking for?’ she said.

  ‘We need to get across,’ he said, more to himself than to Becca. He didn’t trust his own judgement. Twice, three times he’d missed things recently, things that had got them into trouble. He couldn’t afford to do that here.

  He studied the problem. There was a narrow ledge running along the length of the cistern and . . . a rope hugging the wall a few feet above it. Someone had slung a rope along the wall to provide a hand hold. Getting across wouldn’t be difficult. The main danger would be the rope pulling away under their grip and sending them plunging into the water. He nodded towards the ledge.

  ‘We can use that. I’ll go first – I can test it.’ She opened her mouth to object. ‘Don’t be stupid, Becca. I do this. I know about ropes.’

  She nodded.

  He pulled himself up onto the ledge and began edging along above the water, checking the anchors as he went. They all looked secure, but he put some extra ones in anyway – he didn’t want Becca putting her faith in something that would pull away if she needed it.

  When he got to the far end of the cistern, he found a ledge that was wide enough for both of them to stand on, and a low tunnel leading away. Another crawl. He debated checking it out before Becca came across. The sour, heavy smell filled the tunnel. He snapped his lighter on and the flame flickered in the draught, but it burned a clear, bright yellow. The air smelt bad, but it wouldn’t kill them.

  ‘Come over,’ he called. Five minutes later, Becca stepped off the narrow ledge to stand beside him. Her nose wrinkled. ‘Something stinks.’
<
br />   ‘Yeah.’ He wasn’t worried about foul air now. He was worried about the smell and what might be causing it.

  The passage was narrow and, in places, the roof came down low. It was a mining tunnel – they didn’t dig for space, but they must have brought the rock through here. It had been wider once. The roof must have slipped.

  They shouldn’t be here.

  Adrenaline had cleared the withdrawal fuzz from Jared’s head. He felt alert, on edge, watchful, but his sense of direction had gone. Were they heading along the shoreline, or had the tunnel been driven inland? He tried to reorient himself.

  And then he was out of the tunnel. He scrambled to his feet. Above him, way beyond the reach of his outstretched arm, was a crumbling ceiling, crystal formations glittering as the light of his torch swept across them. From the ceiling, slender stalactites hung, some no wider than his finger, ready to break at a touch.

  The smell was stronger here.

  He turned slowly, aware of Becca getting to her feet beside him. She didn’t speak, just turned her head, looking around her. ‘What is it?’ Then she turned sharply, sending the light from her headlamp in a beam across the darkness. Her hand dug into his arm. ‘There’s people!’ she hissed.

  Jared knew there would be. With a sense of inevitability, he turned in the direction she’d been looking and he could see them, two figures slumped against the wall, one half-lying on the ground, one with its head bowed towards drawn-up knees. He kept his light steady on them. They didn’t move.

  Chapter 58

  Two girls alone in the dark. The one against the wall sat with her head resting on her raised knees; the other one lay on her back, her hair a dark mass around her head.

  Jared ran his light across the supine body until it reached her face, then he turned away. Becca, coming up behind him, looked towards them, the light of her head torch holding steady. Her fingers still dug into his arm.

  The face was decayed almost to the bone, but not quite, not enough. There was enough of it left to tell the story of what had happened to her. The teeth were bared, some dark growth of decay crept across the remains of the eyes, but the face itself had been torn away leaving just this death mask framed by long, dark hair. And twined in that hair he could see the remains of a garland of silk flowers – like a bridal headdress. No, more like the crown of flowers you might weave through your hair at a music festival, or for a bridesmaid or a May Queen.

  Jared forced himself to look more closely. Both girls had the remains of ropes around them – as if their wrists and ankles had been tied and the ropes cut but not removed before they were left here.

  Left here dead, or left here to die? He didn’t know.

  Becca held her torch on the second body, the one slumped forward, her head resting on her knees, her arms touching the ground. One leg was bent at an awkward angle – broken, he thought, as if she’d been in a fall. ‘It isn’t Paige.’ She sounded oddly calm and distant. And then her voice broke. ‘I thought it was Paige.’

  He pulled her into his arms and pressed her face against his shoulder. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said gently. They’d found what they’d come looking for. The sooner they got out, the better. In this tunnel – in that silent presence – he couldn’t think. He could barely speak.

  He turned to lead the way out, then checked to make sure Becca was following. They made their way back through the tunnel to the cistern chamber, where they slumped down onto the ledge, knocking loose pebbles into the water as they sat. Becca put her face in her hands, but when she spoke her voice was calm. ‘It doesn’t make any sense – I don’t get it.’

  ‘What’s not to get?’ Jared felt a rage inside him he had never felt before. What had they done to those girls? Used them, ripped their faces off and dumped them like so much rubbish. The crown of flowers was an obscene joke. His fists were clenched, his nails digging into his palms. He wanted to hit someone, pound his fist into flesh again and again and again.

  ‘We need to get out of here. We’ve got to let someone know.’

  ‘Wait. I’ve got to tell you what happened in York.’

  He listened with growing alarm as she told him about her visit to the police. ‘They were OK, until they went out to look some stuff up. When they came back, it was different. They knew about – some stuff, from when I was a kid, and they knew I’d had a fight with Kay. It didn’t mean anything,’ she said as he looked surprised. ‘I always have fights with Kay. And they knew about you. They showed me your website. They said you had pictures of me on it.’

  Jared opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. ‘What?’

  ‘Pictures of me. On your site.’

  ‘Like fuck. Like fuck I do. I haven’t been on my site for a week. You really think . . .?’ Oh, Jesus. He remembered his missing laptop. His website was wide open now.

  ‘It wasn’t you, I already worked that out. Someone’s messing us around and it’s someone who can get into places. It’s someone the police listen to. If we go to them . . . Jared, I’m afraid they’ll . . .’ Her hands picked at her trousers. ‘I won’t let them lock me up.’ For the first time since he’d met her, she couldn’t hide the fear she was feeling.

  ‘They won’t lock us up. Hang on. Wait here.’

  He checked that his camera was still in his pocket, and made his way back into the tunnel. The police couldn’t argue with photographs. He’d go back, get some close-up shots of the bodies in the chamber.

  It only took minutes before he was in the chamber again. This time, the figures evoked pity rather than horror. What had happened to them after the attack? How long before they died?

  Then, as he moved across the rocky floor, reaching for his camera, he heard sounds.

  The scrape of heavy boots on stone. Stertorous breathing from the tunnel, from the cistern chamber.

  Someone was coming.

  Chapter 59

  Jesus Christ! What were the chances? It had to be whoever had put these girls here. Where was Becca? There hadn’t been any sound of trouble. She must have managed to duck out of sight. He looked round – nothing that would make a weapon, just . . . there was a faint glimmer of light in the darkness.

  He extinguished his own light and slid backwards until he was in the shadow between a rock and the wall. It was the only concealment he could find.

  He could hear feet crunching on loose stone as someone emerged from the tunnel. Light shone through the narrow entrance, throwing shadows across the walls.

  The bulky figure of a man, a silhouette behind his torch, moved slowly into the chamber. He stopped in the entrance, frowning like someone who wasn’t sure of his way, looking round. He shone his light up towards the roof where it vanished in the uneven shadows, then moved it slowly around the chamber focusing on the dark recesses and hollows.

  The light fell onto the two girls, and the man nodded, walking across the chamber as if he was suddenly in familiar surroundings. He stood above them, staring down, and then . . .

  One of them moved. The girl who had been slumped with her head on her knees – her head lifted, turning blindly towards the new sound.

  Still alive. One of them was still alive. Oh, Jesus Christ, how could he not have known?

  He heard the man sigh, the impatient, irritated sigh of someone who was being made to wait too long for service. He shoved the torch into his belt, and before Jared could move, grabbed the girl’s hair and put a gun against her head. The sound of the shot filled the chamber, and dust, and then a shower of small stones trickled down from the roof. The torch fell to the ground and began to flicker. Jared’s ears rang. The man straightened up, letting the girl’s body slump back onto the ground, shaking his head in obvious disbelief. ‘Fucking mess,’ he said.

  Then he scooped up the torch and shook it until the flickering stopped. In the jumping light, Jared saw his face.

  Greaseball Harry. GBH. The gun was in his hand, ready to be used. Jared, cold with shock, somehow pressed himself back into the shadow. T
he reverberations of the gunshot had brought down a trickle of shale from the fragile roof. Another one might bury them both alive, and Becca too, in the cistern chamber.

  He tried to project a message to Becca. Get out! Now! It was useless, he knew it was useless but it was all he could do.

  Then GBH left the chamber, passing so close to Jared’s hiding place he could have touched him. He went on down the tunnel, deeper into the mine.

  The scraping sound of movement faded away, leaving darkness and silence.

  Chapter 60

  Kay felt sick, very sick, and her head was aching. She seemed to be coming back from nowhere, from a blackness with no memory to anchor to. Light speared through her closed lids, and she moved her head to try and relieve the pain, but it surged in an agonising pounding.

  Oh, God. What had happened? Where was she?

  Slowly, slowly, it was starting to come back to her. The fire, the hospital, driving back with Shaun . . . then . . .

  She opened her eyes, squinting against the light. She was lying on a bed in a spacious room. It had a slanted ceiling with a skylight that was shaded by a blind. As her eyes adjusted, she realised the light wasn’t really so bright – she was just hypersensitive to it. Everything was pale – the walls, the wood floor, the cushions on the chair by her bed – the kind of impersonal decor you’d find in a hotel, or . . .

  Supporting her aching head, she rolled over and sat up. There was a glass of water beside the bed and she was suddenly aware of a raging thirst. Her instinct was to gulp the water down, but if she did, she’d just bring it back up, so she sipped it cautiously.

  OK, it was time to find out where she was. She was just gathering her resources to stand up – her headache was settling and she knew standing up would send it into a frenzy of pounding – when the door opened slowly, there was a gentle tap and Shaun looked into the room.

  ‘Kay. I’m sorry. I thought you’d still be asleep. Can I come in?’