Gethsemane Hall (15 page)

The light from the rest of the hall barely reached the recess. It died five steps down. The grey light was gone. Perhaps, now that the flies had been lured to the web, its job was done. There were three flashlight beams to light the way. They were strong enough, and even with their jouncing and the seizure dance of shadows, Meacham had no trouble with her footing. It wasn’t the light’s strength that she mistrusted. It was its permanence. It had already been taken away once in the last hour. She didn’t want to lose it again down here.

The walls narrowed, and the staircase twisted, as if they were descending a Gothic cathedral’s tower. Meacham reached out a hand to steady herself. The stairs were becoming thin wedges. If she moved too near the interior wall, there wouldn’t be room to place her feet, and she would fall. The exterior wall was dank. She felt something slick and bristly crumble against her fingers. The brickwork here was very dark, as if soiled by centuries of candle smoke, or as if, given enough time, the darkness had seeped into the stone itself.

Gray’s voice drifted up towards Meacham. He was at the front of the line, hidden from her by twists of the spiral. “The nitre!” he called out. “See, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults.”

Meacham looked back at Crawford. He was bringing up the rear with her and had one of the flashlights. His face, shadowed, twisted in distaste. “Poe,” he said. “‘The Cask of Amontillado.’ He picks his time and place, doesn’t he?”

“He’s enjoying this,” Meacham said.

“I do believe he is.”

Hudson was just ahead of Meacham. His shoulders had slumped when Gray had spoken. “That’s the first time I’ve heard him enjoy anything since his family died,” he said.

“If he’s having this much fun, maybe Kristine is right after all,” Meacham offered. No one took her up on it. She didn’t buy it, either. The words were thin, fragile. The dark snatched them, and they tore, parchment in wind.

The spiral tightened. The walls on both sides whispered against Meacham’s shoulders. She fought against dizziness. They had to be near the bottom, she thought. If the staircase narrowed any further, it would become a dead end. They had to be closing in on the centre of the nautilus shell. But the walls did come closer, and now they weren’t being subtle about it as they rubbed up against her. She heard exclamations coming from below, and braced herself for worse. It came. She had to turn sideways. The stairs became steeper, and she hugged the interior wall as she crab-walked down.

“This is insane,” Crawford complained, and he was right. Meacham couldn’t imagine the madness that would have such a thing built.

“This is wrong,” Hudson moaned, and Meacham knew he was seeing a spiritual cancer. He was right, too.

She tried to keep her face away from the wall, but the space was too tight. Rough brick had turned slime-smooth. It smeared its kisses on her cheek. The stench of old mould and bad growth dug into her nostrils. Her eyes watered. They stung with grit and sweat, but it didn’t matter that she was blind, because Crawford couldn’t aim the flashlight anywhere but up as he scrabbled against the wall himself. There was nothing to see, but plenty to touch and smell as she was digested by the stone intestine. She closed her eyes, trying to squeeze out the dark.

Her right foot dangled over nothing. She gasped, tried to stop herself, but her balance was already gone. She went over, caught in the vertigo of the first moment of a plunge from a cliff. Her heart stammered, and then her foot landed heavily on the ground. She stumbled, windmilling, caught her balance and opened her eyes. The staircase had dropped them into a large, low-ceilinged space. There was no more brickwork. The walls were pure stone but had an odd, chipped look to them. Flashlight beams played over the black mouths of three tunnels.

“Did you know this was here?” Sturghill asked Gray.

He shook his head. Meacham thought there was still a hint of the manic in his eyes, but he seemed more cautious now. At least he wasn’t joking.

Pertwee’s face glowed. “We’ve found it,” she whispered, rapt.

“‘It’?” Meacham asked.

“Saint Rose lived on these grounds, but long before the Hall was built. No one has ever known where. There is no record of an earlier structure, and the Gray family has refused any request for a thorough archaeological search of the grounds.” She shot an accusing glance at Gray. He shrugged. “But here. She must have lived here. I mean, listen.” She held up a hand, and they were all quiet for a moment. The silence was vast. “This would be the perfect place for meditation.”

Or for going quietly out of your mind
, Meacham thought. “You think she died here?” she asked.

“Perhaps.” Pertwee seemed excited by the idea. Meacham hadn’t proposed it as a good thing.

Crawford was examining the cave walls. “This is an odd formation.”

“I don’t think it’s a natural cave,” Corderman said. “I think it’s a mine.”

They all looked at him. Meacham saw the other faces as startled as her own, Pertwee’s most of all. She tried to think of another instance where Corderman had spoken with authority, couldn’t come up with one.

“What makes you say that?” Crawford asked.

“The walls. These are tunnels that were chipped out of the ground. The floor’s the same.”

Meacham looked down. He was right. The floor was level in a way that was unlikely to be naturally occurring, but it had the same pockmarked texture. She could imagine centuries of pickaxes carving out the surface.

“How do you know this?” Sturghill asked.

Corderman blushed. “I do a lot of role-playing games at the Chislehurst Caves. This place looks the same.”

“Let me guess. You play an elf.”

Corderman’s blush, even in the sallow illumination of the flashlights, noticeably turned a deep crimson. “I’m a half-orc,” he muttered.

“He’s right,” Hudson said, and for a lunatic moment, Meacham thought he was approving of Corderman’s choice of fantasy race. “I’ve visited the Caves. This looks exactly the same.”

“I’ve been there too,” Crawford said. “I should have noticed the resemblance.”

Gray approached Corderman. “Tell me about them,” he said, softly.

“They’ve been used for all sorts of things,” Corderman said, perking up. “They were a bomb shelter during the war, they —”

Gray cut him off. “No, no,” he said. “Who made them? How old are they?”

“Oh. They’re really old. The Druids and Saxons worked them. The Romans, too. They were flint and chalk mines. But people lived in them, too. Some sections became places of worship.”

“Where there were sacrifices,” Hudson added, pointedly. “Human ones.”

“Yes, there were,” Corderman admitted.

“There’s no evidence for that,” Crawford objected. “The earliest historical records only date back to 1250.”

“There’s no proof they aren’t older than that,” Corderman replied, offended. “There’s no proof there weren’t sacrifices.” He didn’t want his playground demythologized.

“So?” Pertwee asked. “That doesn’t mean there were here. This is a place of peace,” she insisted, and in the stridency of her claim, Meacham heard how brittle and desperate her faith had become. She looked at Pertwee’s face, as grimed by sweat and wall muck as hers. She nodded to herself.
Coming down here bothered you as much as it did me. You won’t admit it, especially not to yourself, but you’re on the edge, girlfriend. The old certainties just aren’t cutting it anymore. I sympathize. Believe me, I do.

“Let’s see what there is to see,” Gray said. He wasn’t being flip, but there was excitement in his tone. He was alive to the adventure, even as he took it seriously. Meacham glanced at Hudson, saw him staring at his friend in despair.
He wants the adventure to end,
she thought,
while he can still pray.

“Which way?” Sturghill asked, while Crawford shone his light first down one tunnel, then the other.

“Be quiet for a minute,” Gray said. He walked to each of the tunnels and listened. “This one,” he said, standing at the left-hand entrance. “Seems most interesting.”

Once they were all in the passageway, Meacham picked up on what had drawn Gray. There was a faint, cold breath blowing down the tunnel, and she could hear the distant drip of water. After the birth canal constriction of the staircase, the tunnel was spacious. There was room to walk three abreast here.

But the corridor was still a stone snake. Its coils were slow, gradual curves. The snake’s movements were imperceptible. Meacham felt them, though. The same constriction attack as had happened in the staircase was going on here. It was slower, longer, bigger. The snake had all the time in the world as they ventured deeper down its length. Only its breath gave it away, that cold puff of breeze on Meacham’s cheek. It wasn’t constant; it came and went. It had a rhythm. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Meacham held her gait steady. She prevented her teeth from chattering. She thought,
How much of the spook show you’re conjuring do you really believe?
Because she didn’t know, she didn’t answer, and she didn’t scold herself. She was in new territory. For the first time in her life, she was faced with the prospect of actually believing in something. She was frightened.

The sound of dripping water grew louder. Each fall was a
plunk
amplified in an echo chamber. The tunnel dipped gradually, then opened out into a large cavern. Straight ahead was a body of water. It was a tangible darkness. When Gray shone his light over the water, the beam faded before it touched the other wall. No way to tell how big the room was and if the water was a pond or a lake. From somewhere beyond the lake came the drip of the water. Gray aimed his beam up. The cavern ceiling was very high, barely visible. Meacham had been too caught up in the nightmare spiral of the staircase to notice how far they had come down, but she thought the roof of this cave must be close to the surface.

“They can’t have mined this,” Meacham said.

“No,” Gray agreed. “Looks natural.”

Plunk
went the water. A long pause, during which Meacham imagined the next drop falling from the great height, plunging through the lightless void.
Plunk
.

“So peaceful,” Pertwee breathed. “Listen.”

Meacham heard nothing but the toll of emptiness, the monotonous counting off of the centuries drop by endless, tedious, meaningless drop. The water wasn’t peaceful. It was dead. She thought about drowning Pertwee and her optimism once and for all.

Crawford shone his light around and found an exit to the right of where they had come in. This tunnel too was angling downward. The slope was gradual, but it was still a slope. Meacham looked at it, wondered how far down into the snake she was willing to go. Gray had no qualms. He charged ahead. She read his face as he brushed past her. She saw the tension in the set of his jaw and the pinch of his brow. He was scared too, she realized. He wasn’t blithely tripping off to adventure. But there was a desperate eagerness as well. He looked like a man frantic to know the worst and get it done.
He’s dragging you down with him
, she thought. She could ask for one of the flashlights and head back with whoever else also wanted out. She could do that. She could show that leadership. Instead, she followed Gray.
You want to know, too,
said the voice of prosecution.
Yes
, she agreed
. I want to know.

She didn’t want to know the worst as badly as Gray. She was that much warier of it, so she didn’t follow too closely. Pertwee was right on his heels, as desperate to believe in the best of all possible worlds and determined to see proof that she was right. She dragged Corderman in her wake. Hudson followed a few steps behind. Meacham noted that his attention never wavered from Gray. Crawford hung back with her. She squeezed his shoulder. “Sure you want to know?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But I do need to.”

She nodded. “That’s our curse,” she said.

The sound of the water drops followed them down the tunnel. Somehow, the volume grew. The
plunk, plunk, plunk
turned into tick-tock torture, countdown and build-up. Each drop was a reminder of the lake, that huge, black, tangible
nothing
. The hollow echo rang in Meacham’s head like a hammer on a steel drum. The overflow was coming.

Crawford began, “Do you think —” But there was one more
plunk
, and its echo was a cracking rumble, and as Meacham turned to face Crawford, he disappeared.

Meacham threw herself backward, away from the collapsing floor. Dust billowed in the second before Crawford’s light went out and the hungry dark took her. “James!” she yelled. Then she was yelling for the others to come back, calling to them for their help and for their light.

He fell. There was a second of floating plunge. It couldn’t have been longer, but his mind sped up to turn it into an infinity of dreadful anticipation. The landing didn’t disappoint. Rock smashed him. He fell on stone, bounced on a corner that was sharp and punctured something important, fell on more stone, and stone fell on him. Underneath the roar he heard
crack
, and he heard
snap
, and he knew those sounds came from him. The pain was blocked by shock and didn’t kick in right away. He was lying on his back and his back was bent farther than it should have been. His right leg was twisted beneath his body. He knew if he tried to move it, he would regret doing so. His head was stuffed with the darkness. It pressed in through his ears and eyes. It cut him off from the world. He tried to call, and the darkness came in through his mouth, too. He hacked dust but couldn’t hear himself cough. He moaned. Gradually, the darkness in his ears faded, and he could hear the sound of his pain. He began to think about Hell. Then he heard another sound. It was Meacham, calling his name. “Yes!” he cried. “
Yes!
” The word was a spasm, an ecstasy of relief.

“Are you all right?”

Of course she would ask that. He would, too, if positions were reversed. But his reality was so at odds with her question that he started to laugh, even though that wracked pain down his spine. “No,” he said, laughing now to hold off the despair. “I’m bloody well not all right.”