about fifty feet up. Do you really think there is an entrance down there somewhere?”
“I really don’t know; God, I hope. For all I know, this could be it,” Ethan said, the glimmer of hope waning in his voice.
“How would they get supplies all the way up here?” Abby asked sarcastically, trying to reignite both of their hope.
“I don’t know. It does not seem like it would work, I guess. However, there had to be a way to get people up here in secret and supplies to the jail that would not go the same way as the house, if this place was supposed to be so secret. We will find it.”
“I think we will, but not sitting here,” Abby said longingly, taking in the sky and the faint warmth of the sun.
They sat together for a short while, the sun growing warmer and more intense as the time slipped by. Neither cared to abandon the outside, the smell of pine, the still remaining splashes of fall color, but both knew they were not to be rescued from there and must make their own way out. Still, it was some time before Ethan nudged her.
“Come on, let’s get moving. The exit won’t come to us.”
They stood together, Abby still hindered by her ankle, but not so much so as yesterday. The cane, even with its off-balance center and crude handle, had become more comfortable, easier for her to manage. It thumped rhythmically with her footsteps as they headed back toward the main passage.
They made the left as they should and worked themselves deeper into the unending darkness. After some time, the floor of the passage became naked rock, the sand behind them scattered to the sides where it made tiny drifts like snow. The walls as well became rough, more like a mining tunnel than a proper passage. The ceiling had become rougher still, a frozen undulation of rock, like the tide of a never moving ocean frozen in its rush toward a missing shore.
“Maybe this had started as a mining project…” Abby mused quietly.
“If it did, dear Abby, then they had to have begun digging at the base of the mountain.”
“That means there is a way out of here!”
Ethan could hear the smile on her face.
“Unless they had not finished construction…”
“Shut up,” Abby said lightly as they continued down the now-curving passage.
The faint sound of dripping water came to them, sharp and echoed, but certainly distant. It was the sound of many drops of water falling into a body of itself, a musical tinkling that for whatever reason inspired an even greater hope. Water—one of the primary staples of life—was somewhere inside this hellish place. It was proof that God had not abandoned them entirely, that even the evil here could not stop the gentle persistent hand of nature.
They decided not to stop for a rest but to push on to the water. Abby longed to wash her face, wash the filth of the dirty passages, the collapsed floor, and the bones she had touched from her hands. Ethan hoped that the water had found its own way out, possibly running to the outside and the lake below. The tunnel they were in was descending in a slope, and it was very possible they had gone down the fifty feet and they were that much closer to being free.
They began to find old wooden supports along the passage, shoring up the ceiling where rubble had fallen and left gapping openings in the ceiling above. Thick lengths of timber were fixed together with the same large iron nails, their heads pounded and misshapen. It reminded Ethan of a Wild West tour he had taken as a child, one that included a manufactured gold mine.
Abby suddenly stumbled, her feet troubled by something on the floor of the passage. She caught herself by way of Ethan’s shoulder. She turned quickly to see what had tripped her, and her flashlight fell upon a ravaged corpse of some animal, some creature, about the size of a small dog, left heaped in the corner, useless. Its coat was torn and laid open from the thin white bones now poking through. Whatever it had been, it was unconsumed.
“What is it, Ethan?”
“It looks like a dog, but it’s hard to tell…about the size of one anyway.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“You missed something, Abs. If it got in here, we can get out, right?”
“Oh, that’s right! Let’s keep going.”
She turned and headed down the passage, her light illuminating the floor, his the roof. More and more of the torn corpses littered the ground as they continued, each ravaged but seemingly unconsumed. It began to disturb them. Neither were naturalists, but Ethan was sure that man was the only animal that hunted for the pleasure of it. He wondered if perhaps these were digested creatures, swallowed without chewing and defecated whole. He wondered if it were perhaps a large snake; he was sure they swallowed their food whole, but what did it look like coming out the other end? Then they found the deer carcass.
It was broken, the bones pulverized in many places, and its hide bore large, gaping claw marks on its flank, one of its legs cleanly cleaved away. The savagery of its death upset Abby greatly, but what bothered Ethan was the fact that the meat had just barely begun to swell with rot and the blood around it was still red, the deep red of dried blood not yet oxidized.
He drew out his revolver and replaced the spent cartridges with fresh ones. He did not know what would take such morbid pleasure in the rending of forest animals but he did not care to be the next one.
They continued along until the tunnel suddenly opened into a large cavern, a sizeable lake in its center reflected their lights in a dead sort of way. The explosion of open space was disorientating, as if they had just fallen into open air and had begun to float. It took them many moments to orientate themselves. The room was chill, but the air was fresher and once more pine-scented, but something else infected the air: the stench of rotting flesh. Ethan was not surprised considering the murdered animals that had begun to choke the passage.
They approached the water’s edge together and looked into its midnight depths. It was still with the exception of the randomly falling droplets from above, which sent ripples rushing across the surface. It would then settle to an inky black, concealing its depths, hiding its contents. For some unspoken reason, the lake filled them both with an uneasy apprehension, a building desire to be away from it. It was a simple mockery of how pooled water should be and completely unnatural.
Abby seemed transfixed on the surface, looking deeply for an answer to some question she had yet to ask. Ethan began to look around the cavern with his light, finding a number of passages leading away again. There were too many for him to consider, and he hung his head in defeat. It was a dangerous emotion for him to have, but why should he be that bastion of hope for others? Why could no other give him an anchor in the storm of life’s unfairness?
He battled shortly with the emotion and defeated it with sheer willpower, a raw and ancient desire to survive. If not for him, he would push on for Abby and see her back to the true and good sunlight.
When he brought his head back up, he caught sight of a faint glow within one of the numerous passages leading away from the lake. “Abby, turn off your light,” he instructed quickly as he switched his off.
“Why?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Turn it off and look,” he said as they were plunged into darkness.
It took Abby a few moments to adjust to the darkness, but faintly, a whisper of light came from the passage on the other side of the lake, the true white light of the day’s sky.
“Oh, thank you, God! Let’s go; I want to see the sky!” she shouted in exuberance and turned her light back on.
Ethan helped her rise again, and they began the lengthy trip around to the other side of the lake. It was difficult going—spilled boulders slippery with a colorless moss or slime in some places; dangerously narrow strips of ground in others. They navigated all of this while desperately trying not to touch the black water of the lake.
When they had worked their way around to the far side, they heard the water moved by something but they could not locate it with their lights, just telltale ripples across the water’s surface. Being this close to their freedom, fear began to rise but more as desperation, and Ethan began to rush Abby toward the dimly glowing passage ahead.
Something was building, growing, and becoming a threat to them, as it had the forest creatures. It was a hideous thing, and it pleasured itself by rending flesh. Whatever it was, Ethan refused to see it. He pushed Abby
