The smell wouldn't bother her, not for the short duration it would take
for me to find her. The darkness, the smell, the fear- all that would
make it more attractive. You fool, I thought. You damned idiot.
Make me mistaken.
I lit a match. I examined the opening. It was a tunnel cut or scraped
through the foundation. The clock was angled in such a way that,
standing, that and a pile of newspapers hid it partially from view.
Lying to one side was the old metal bucket. Was that what Casey had
tripped over the sound I'd heard upstairs? I pushed way the papers and
leaned inside.
I looked more closely. I saw broken concrete heaped to one side. As
though the hole had been dug from inside the tunnel.
Beyond the foundation work the tunnel led back a few feet through solid
rock and then turned a corner, so that the rest of it was blind, its
depth unknowable.
IV
I didn't want to go in there.
I seemed to know two things about it instinctively. There was
something dead in there and something else alive. I could smell the
death. Whoever or whatever was alive, it wasn't just Casey. I don't
know how I knew that, but I did.
The match went out. I lit another, cupping it against the breeze.
'Case?'
Holding the match in front of me, I took a deep breath and held it in
my lungs and worked my way carefully into the hole. It died before I'd
gone two feet. I lit three of them together and got almost to the
corner before they died too. The wind was stronger now. In the dark
it seemed thicker, seawater damp. The rocks above and below me
breathed moisture. My throat was bone-dry.
I lit up the rest of the pack and lurched ahead, holding the matches
like a torch in front of me, and rounded the corner. It illuminated
only three feet or so of what appeared to be a long tunnel, utterly
black beyond the glow. But it was enough. Enough to see.
The green book bag lay almost beneath my hand.
I reached for it, gripping the tough cloth, something clean and fresh
in that foul place, and dragged it toward me. I heard a rattle of
lightweight metal. I reached inside. Two of the flashlights were
still there.
I pulled one out and turned it on and threw its beam down the tunnel.
Like a child I wanted very much to cry.
The third flashlight lay five feet away from me, abandoned.
Beyond it I could see nothing but emptiness and sweating gleaming rock.
Twenty feet on there was another blind turn. I listened.
There was something alive out there.
Something alive on the wind beyond my beam of light.
I listened to it. And I knew it was listening to me.
It wasn't that there was any sound, just a presence. But a powerful
one. Something that told me I dared not call out to her again, dared
not move forward or even back. I froze. Whatever it was, it would be
happy to kill me. I knew that. I knew it on some basic animal level
where we all are hunters and hunted, where there are
still savannas and jungle moonlight. It was there, just around the
corner. An intelligence that was not the same as mine. Measuring
me.
I did something purely instinctive. I think it saved my life. I
doused the light.
And waited. The smell of death in the air, mine or Casey's or perhaps
its own. I would meet it in a matter of seconds now, and then one of
us would see.
I waited. And for a longtime I didn't move at all. I tried to breathe
evenly, quietly, calmly. And still I felt it measuring me, testing the
air for the shrill scent of fear in me. I tried to shepherd the fear
back to some deep place inside where calm could protect and shield me
and maybe breed an uncertainty of its own. Moments passed.
While I waited, Casey could be dying.
There was no choice. I knew what I knew.
I heard it breathing. Shallow, moist and heavy. As though through
clotted blood.
It was possible to imagine anything in there.
In the dark.
For a long while I was only a heartbeat. Then I sensed a change.
I waited to be sure.
Whatever it was, it was gone.
I didn't even bother turning on the light. I backed out the way I'd
come. Fast.
With the flashlight in one hand and her book bag in the other, ran for
the stairs. I sprinted them two at a time.
I remember only silence from this. Not the sounds of my own footsteps
not the sounds of my own heavy breathing. Only silence. My own
strange motion through the hall and up the second flight of stairs.
Down the corridor to Steve.
I think he must have taken one look at me and known everything.
With badly fumbling fingers I untied his wrists. It was no surprise
that he'd already rid himself of the rope around his ankles. I blurted
out the story. I watched his eyes get wider and wider.
'This is no joke?'
'Do I look like I'm joking?'
'Let's get Kim.'
I handed him a flashlight and we ran down the hall. Our feet sounded
heavy on the old rough floorboards. Beams of light swooped and
skittered along the walls.
Kim was exactly as I'd left her. Except now she looked scared. I went
after the rope around her wrists and Steve freed her legs.
