Beckon

ledge, convulsing in choked sobs. Rudy had been the only real friend he’d ever had. The only one he’d ever trusted. They’d been a pair of outcasts in school. A couple of geeks with only each other for company.

And now, just like that, he was gone.

Jack felt Ben’s hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

He choked back his tears and wiped his mouth. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t get bit too, did you?”

Jack scooted himself away from the ledge and sat up. “No… sorry, I just lost it there.”

In the darkness, Ben’s voice replied, “I’m sorry about Rudy.”

“He was my best friend,” Jack said. “My only friend. He didn’t even want to come on this trip, but I talked him into it. I put a guilt trip on him.”

“This wasn’t your fault.”

Jack wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yes, it was. If I wouldn’t have made him come along, he’d still be alive.”

Below them, he could still hear the noises of the spiders feeding. He shook his head, dazed. “He seemed fine. You bandaged his leg…. He was okay.”

“It must’ve been some kind of venom. But it was so fast-acting.”

“What did his wound look like? When you were cleaning it, was there any discoloration or swelling?”

Ben paused before answering. “There were two puncture marks on his calf. Big ones. And the area was pretty red and swollen. I cleaned it as best I could with antibacterial ointment and wrapped it up. It didn’t seem to bother him that much.”

Jack just stared into the dark and shuddered.

“Bottom line is, we need to avoid getting bit at all costs,” Ben said with a grim tone.

Jack rubbed his eyes as a rush of frustration and anger ran through him. “This whole trip was a bad idea.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said again. “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.”

Jack fell silent for a moment as his thoughts returned to Rudy. “How am I gonna tell his parents? What do I even say to them?”

“Let’s just make sure we get out alive so we can tell them,” Ben said. “We should get going. I don’t want to take the chance those things will find us up here.”

After several more minutes the frenzy below seemed to die down. Jack gathered his mental courage enough to take one more look through the camera. All was dark and quiet and the ground was still littered with bones. But Jack couldn’t tell which ones had belonged to his friend.

Ben clicked on a flashlight and scanned the pit below them. He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. They came out of nowhere, and now they just disappeared again.”

“Probably in one of those side passages,” Jack said, reeling with disgust. “Off digesting their meal.”

They inspected the ledge, which turned out to be larger than they’d originally thought. They had been sitting off to one side where it was only a few feet wide, but to their right, the ledge widened further into what appeared to be a sort of natural parapet or balcony overlooking the entire pit below. And behind them a tunnel led off into darkness. It was wide and relatively level, but it twisted and turned completely out of sight.

Ben pointed down the passage. “I guess we follow this tunnel to see where it leads.”

Jack felt numb and sick, and his mind was still in a fog of sorrow. “Let’s go.”

Ben stuck out an arm. “Hold up.” He peered into the tunnel.

“Now what?” Jack said.

“Turn off your light.”

Jack’s arms and neck bristled as he shut off his flashlight. Inside the tunnel he could see a dim yellow light flitting erratically across the rock walls.

Ben spoke in a tight whisper. “Someone’s coming!”

Chapter 11

“Get back against the side,” Ben said, herding Jack along the ledge.

Jack’s throat was dry with fear as he flattened himself against the rock wall. His head was still spinning from witnessing Rudy’s death. And now, when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, they had. The day had begun so innocuously but had suddenly turned into a nightmare of epic proportions.

He could hear voices echoing faintly down the passage—deep and guttural sounds, but distinctly human. And there were more than one. Jack could tell some sort of conversation was taking place, though he couldn’t discern anything specific. No recognizable words. And in moments he understood why.

They weren’t speaking English. In fact, it didn’t sound like any language he’d ever heard before.

The light coming down the tunnel was growing brighter and the voices more distinct. Jack’s heart pounded, and he fought every instinct inside him that screamed for him to run. It was an unnerving experience to feel so trapped, yet so completely exposed to whoever—or whatever—was approaching through the tunnel.

Ben tapped Jack’s shoulder and made some gesture, though Jack could barely see him against the glow emanating from the passage beyond. Jack shook his head, trying to indicate he didn’t understand what Ben was trying to communicate.

Ben pointed over the ledge into the pit and whispered, “We have to hide.”

“What? I’m not going back down there.” Not with those spiders lurking about. Not where what little was left of Rudy’s body lay torn to pieces.

The voices were growing steadily louder.

Ben moved to the rim of the ledge and pointed straight down. “We can hide in the bones.”

The bones? Jack blinked. The bones? He wondered now whether this whole situation had caused Ben to completely lose touch with reality. But before he could say anything further, Ben crouched down and slipped over the edge, disappearing into the darkness. Jack could hear the clack and rattle of bones below him. He pressed one hand to his eyes, grimacing with frustration. Now he really was alone.

He leaned his head back against the rock and tried to slow his breathing. He had to control his thoughts and analyze the situation. It might be possible that the men in the tunnel weren’t even dangerous, though his gut told him that was extremely unlikely. Everything he had witnessed—everything he had learned about this place—told him otherwise. Whoever was approaching most likely knew their way around these caves well enough. And the watch Rudy had discovered earlier seemed proof that whatever horrific events had led to this chamber of corpses were still going on to this day.

In any case, the spiders appeared to have departed, and the men in the tunnel would surely find him if he stayed where he was. So Jack knew with a sickening realization that Ben’s plan—as crazy as it seemed—had actually been the best course all along. Jack scooped up the backpacks and paused a moment to gather his courage. Then he lowered himself over the edge.

He landed in the pile of bones, sinking to his waist in human remains. Fighting back his nausea again—which was easier now since he no longer had anything left in his stomach anyway—Jack rolled slowly to the bottom of the pile and burrowed underneath a mass of skeletal pieces. The stench was overwhelming, reminding him of a time he’d gone to the beach with his father as a boy and discovered that the tide had deposited a horde of dead fish onto the sand. He had all he could do to keep from gagging in the darkness.

He couldn’t see anything but utter blackness and hoped desperately that he was buried far enough to remain hidden from whatever might be coming along. He wondered again if some of these could be his own father’s bones. If his dad had met this kind of horrible death alone in these caves twelve years ago. But Jack pushed away those thoughts, determined to keep his wits about him. He had to keep still and stay quiet.

The voices continued in a stilted, halting conversation above him. Jack couldn’t tell how many men there were. At least three, he guessed. Maybe four. And the words themselves were a guttural, throaty dialect.

Jack wondered if it was possible that a remnant of an ancient tribe could still be living in these caves. Had they remained concealed from all modern knowledge? Or was it merely some bizarre cult that was using a hidden