red glow of its taillights pointing toward the sky. Now the ice beneath the rear wheels snapped, disintegrated, and the car splashed through. The headlights died, the circuits shorted out.
The end was played out in the glow of moonlight, in a landscape silvered by the luminous whiteness of snow, the car bobbing for a moment, engine flooding, the water dragging it down, claiming it as its own. Now the sound of splashing, the liquid turmoil as the car slipped deeper and began to turn over, rotated by the buoyancy of the tires. It sank upside down, its roof settling into the mud, and he imagined the swirl of dark sediment, blacking out the watery moonlight filtering from above.
Tomorrow, thought Groome, someone will spot the break in the ice and will put two and two together. Poor tired Dr. Effiot, driving home in the dark, missed the curve in the road and veered onto the boat ramp instead. A tragedy.
He heard the distant wail of a police siren and he turned, his pulse suddenly racing. Only when the siren passed and then faded did he allow himself to breathe easier. The police had been called elsewhere; no one had witnessed his crime.
He turned and began to walk at a brisk pace up the road, toward the blackness of Beech Hill. It was a three- mile hike back to the cave, and he still had work to do.
25
She felt the darkness lurch around her, felt the shocking embrace of icy water as it engulfed her body, and she jolted awake into a reality far more horrifying than any nightmare could be.
She was trapped in blackness, in a coffinlike space, and was so disoriented she had no sense of up or down. All she knew was that water was creeping up around her in a numbing flood, lapping at her waist, now her chest. She flailed out in panic, instinctively craning her neck to keep her head above it, but found her body was strapped in. She tore at the restraints but could not free herself. The water was licking at her neck, now. Her breathing turned to frantic gasps and half-sobs of panic.
Then it all turned upside down.
She had time for one deep breath before she felt herself rolling sideways, before the water rushed over her head, flooding into her nostrils.
The darkness that swallowed her was total, a world of liquid blackness. She thrashed, trapped head-down underwater. Her lungs ached, straining to hold on to that final breath.
Again she clawed at the strap across her chest, but it would not loosen, would not release her. Air. I need air! Her pulse roared in her ears and streaks of light exploded in her brain, the warning flashes of oxygen depletion. Already she was losing strength in her limbs, her efforts reduced to tugging uselessly at the restraint. Through thickening layers of confusion, she realized she was grasping something hard in her hand, something she recognized by its contours. A seat belt buckle. She was in her car. Strapped in her car.
Thousands of times before she had unbuckled that belt and now her fingers automatically found the release button. The strap fell away from her chest.
She kicked, limbs thrashing, battering against the inside of the car. Blinded by water, disoriented in the darkness, she could not even tell which way was up.
Her frantically clawing fingers brushed against the steering wheel, the dashboard.
I need AIR!
She felt her lungs rebel and begin to draw in a fatal breath of water when she suddenly twisted around, and her face popped through the surface, into an air pocket. She gasped in a breath, then another, and another. There were only a few inches of air, and even that was rapidly filling with water. A few more gasps, and there would be nothing left to breathe.
With the fresh inrush of oxygen, her brain was functioning again. She forced back the panic, forced herself to think. The car was upside down. She had to find the latch-had to get the door open.
She held her breath and plunged into the water. Quickly she located the door release and gave it a tug. She felt the latch pop free, but the door wouldn’t swing open. The roof of the vehicle was sunk too deeply in mud, miring the door shut.
Out of breath!
She surfaced back in the air pocket and found it reduced to a bare six inches.
As she gasped in the last of the oxygen, she desperately tried to reorient herself to an upside-clown world. The window. Roll open the window.
Last breath, last chance.
She sank back underwater, feeling frantically for the window crank. By now her fingers were so deadened from the cold, she could barely feel the handle, even when she finally managed to grasp it. Each revolution seemed to take an eternity but she could feel the glass slide open, the gap widen. By the time she had cranked it all the way open, her hunger for air was growing desperate. She wriggled her head and shoulders through the opening, and suddenly could go no farther.
Her jacket! It was snagged!
She thrashed, trying to squeeze all the way through, but her body was trapped, half in, half out of the car. She reached for the zipper, loosened the jacket.
All at once she slithered free, and suddenly she was shooting toward the surface, toward the faint glow of light far above.
She burst through into the air, water splashing like a million diamonds in the moonlight, and grasped the nearest broken edge of ice. There she clung for a moment, shaking and wheezing in the frigid night. Already she’d lost feeling in her legs, and her hands were so numb she could barely grasp the ice.
She tried to pull herself out, managed to lift her shoulders a few inches, but immediately fell back into the water. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to pull against, only slick ice covered with powdery snow. Scrabbling uselessly at the ice, she found no purchase.
Again she tried to lift herself out; again she slid back with a splash, sinking in over her head. She resurfaced, sputtering, coughing, her legs almost paralyzed.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pull herself out.
Half a dozen times more she struggled to climb out, but her clothes were soaked, dragging her down, and she was shaking so hard she could not even hold on to the ice. A profound lethargy was taking hold of her limbs, turning them wooden.
Dead. She felt herself go under again, the blackness sucking her down, welcoming her into a cold sleep. All her energy was spent. Nothing was left.
She sank, drifting deeper, exhaustion claiming her body. Looking up, she saw with strange detachment the shimmer of moonlight above, and felt the darkness pull her down into its embrace. She no longer felt the cold; she felt only a weary sense of inevitability Noah.
In the shimmering circle of light above, she imagined she saw his face, as he was when he was a child. Calling to her, reaching for her with needy arms. The circle of light seemed to fracture into fragments of silver.
Noah. Think of Noah.
Though she had no strength left, she reached up toward that phantom hand. It dissolved like liquid in her grasp. You are too far away. I can’t reach you.
She felt herself sliding downward again, dragged into the murk. Noah’s arms receded, but his voice continued to call to her. She reached up to him again, and saw the circle of light grow brighter, a halo of silver just within reach.
If I can touch it, she thought, I will reach heaven. I will reach my baby.
She struggled toward it, limbs thrashing against the pull of darkness, every muscle straining toward the light.
Her arm broke through the surface, shattering it to ripples, her head bursting through for one gasp of air. She caught a glimpse of the moon, so beautiful and brilliant it hurt her eyes, and she felt herself sink for the last time, her arm still outstretched toward heaven.
