Still Life With Crows

She listened. All was silent save the dripping of water. She finally stood, swaying slightly, the pounding in her head subsiding. She reached out and her hands encountered the slick, smooth wall of the pit.

She made a circuit, running her hands up and down the wet wall, seeking handholds, cracks, anything she might use to climb out. But the walls were of the slickest stone, smoothed by water, impossible to climb. And what would she do once she got out? Without a light she was as good as trapped.

It was hopeless. There was no way out. All she could do was wait. Wait for the monster to come back.

Corrie felt overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and misery so powerful it made her physically sick. Her despair was all the worse for the hope that had been raised in her brief dash to escape. But here, in the pit, there was no hope left. No one knew where she was, that she’d gone into the cave. Eventually the thing would come back. Ready toplay.

She sobbed at the thought.

It would be the end of her miserable, useless life.

Corrie leaned against the slick wall, sank to the ground. She began to cry. Years of bottled-up misery came pouring out. Images flashed through her mind. She remembered coming home from fifth grade, sitting at the kitchen table and watching her mother drink miniature vodka bottles, one after another, wondering why she liked them so much. She remembered, two years ago, her mother coming home at two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, drunk, with some man. No stockings, no presents, nothing that Christmas. It was a late, rise-at-noon, hungover morning like any other. She remembered the triumphant day when she was able to buy her Gremlin with the money she had earned from working at the Book Nook before its demise—and how furious her mother had been when Corrie brought it home. She thought about the sheriff, his son, the smell of the high school halls, the winter snowstorms that covered the stubbled fields in unbroken blankets of white. She thought about reading books under the powerlines in the heat of summer, the snide whispered comments of the jocks passing her in the halls.

He was going to come back and kill her and it would all be gone, every miserable memory now crowding her head. They’d never find her body. There’d be a halfhearted search and then everyone would forget about her. Her mother would tear apart her room and eventually find the money taped to the underside of her bureau drawers, and then she’d be happy. Happy that it was now all hers.

She cried freely, the sound echoing and reechoing above her head.

Now her mind wandered further back, to her early childhood. She remembered one Sunday morning getting up early and making pancakes with her father, carrying the eggs around and chanting like the soldiers inThe Wizard of Oz. All her memories of him seemed to be happy: of him laughing, kidding around, squirting her with the hose on a hot summer day or taking her down to swim in the creek. She remembered him polishing his Mustang convertible, polishing and polishing, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his blue eyes sparkling, holding her up so she could see her reflection in it, then taking her for a ride. She remembered effortlessly, as clear as if it had been last week, how the cornfields parted with their passing; the exhilarating sensation of acceleration, of freedom.

And now, in the silence, in the absolute final blackness of the pit, she felt all the protective walls she had carefully built for herself over the years start to crumble, one by one. In this moment of extremis, the only questions that remained in her head were the ones she had rarely ever allowed herself to ask: Why had he left? Why had he never come back to visit? What was so wrong with her that he’d never wanted to see her again?

But the darkness would allow no self-delusion. She had another memory, not all that distant: of coming home and finding her mother burning a letter in the ashtray. Had it been from him? Why hadn’t she confronted her mother? Was it out of fear that the letter wasn’t, in fact, what she hoped it was?

This last question hung in the blackness, unanswered. There could be no answer, not now. It would soon end, here, in this pit, and the question would be moot. Maybe her father would never even know she was dead . . .

She thought of Pendergast, the only person who had ever treated her like an adult. And now she’d failed him, too. Stupidly going into the cave without telling anyone. Stupid, stupid,stupid  . . .

She sobbed again, loudly, painfully, giving full vent to her feelings. But the sound echoed so horribly, so mockingly, around and above her that she swallowed, choked, and fell silent.

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she said out loud.

Her voice echoed and died away and then she caught her breath. There was a distinct whisper in the dark.

Washe coming back?

She listened intently. There were more sounds now, faint sounds, so distant and distorted they were impossible to make out. Voices? Yelling? Screaming? She strained, listening.

And then there was a long, echoing sound, almost like the roar of rolling surf.

A gunshot.

And suddenly she was on her feet, crying out,“Here I am! Help me! Over here! Please! Please! Please! Please!”

Sixty-Nine

 

Weeks struggled to keep up with Pendergast as the FBI agent hurried through the cave. The way the man flicked his flashlight around, Weeks wondered if he missed anything. Probably not. It felt a little reassuring.

The air of purpose that radiated from the agent had helped steady Weeks’s shattered nerves. He even felt some vestiges of his old aggrieved self returning. And yet he could not get out of his mind the image of the dog being ripped limb from limb by that . . .by that  . . .

He stopped.

“What’s that?” he asked in a high, quavering voice.

Pendergast spoke without looking back. “Officer Weeks? I expect you to follow my lead.”