Hallowed (42 page)

Letting go, I dropped to the floor and grabbed manically at the emergency kit, unzipping it and ripping out one of the apples I had put aside.  Without calculation, I tossed the apple through the slowly diminishing entrance, hearing it roll and bounce against the back wall of the car.

At least, they’d know, I’d been there.

I was left with an empty shaft with no apparent way to climb back up.  There seemed to be no choice but to go forward.

Finding the remains of a small animal, I wedged the false stone wall open with a bone, for whoever might follow, and looked back up the elevator shaft one last time.  It was deep, probably forty or fifty feet by my estimate.

Snapping off my flashlight, I noticed that the only source of light, however dim, came from the elevator shaft behind me.

I checked my watch, committing the time to memory.

One thirty seven PM.

Trying to conserve my batteries, I started forward, walking as far as I could get with the light from the elevator, but it didn’t take long for the darkness to swallow me.

I shined what was left of my light along the floor and followed the pre-determined path that had been laid out, I assumed, by whoever had installed the elevator.  The path rose and the ceiling dipped, until I was walking through a narrow passage.  Occasionally, I would run across the bones of some small animal—possibly a bat, possibly something bigger—that had taken its last breath down here in the gloom.

Besides a constant wail of wind, I could hear a steady drip-drip-drip of water in the distance.  I tried to orient myself according to that sound by giving it the arbitrary direction of north.  When the path shifted to the right and I began to hear the sound coming from my left, I called that direction east.  When the sound started to fade behind me, I called the direction I was headed south.

Then the dripping sound disappeared altogether and once again I was walking directionless in the darkness, a slave to Folliott or whoever had constructed this place.  Were these paths here thirty-five years ago when Dad, Uncle Hank, and Ronnie Wicke had first come?  And what about the elevator?  If it had been constructed only recently, how had they managed to enter before?  I had no way of knowing.

I removed an apple from the emergency kit.  Instead of leaving the whole thing behind on the path as I’d planned, I bit into it and spit a portion of it behind me. The white center will be easier to pick up in the darkness anyway.  I had no choice but to conserve, as I had no idea how far I had yet to travel.

I watched with dread as the bulb on my flashlight wavered sickly.  Focusing the dim pool of orange light on my wrist, I squinted down at my watch face.  For nearly an hour now, I had been walking from one seemingly identical chamber to the other.  The only sign that I was going in the right direction was the steady upward climb and the protesting of my calves.

About fifteen minutes ago, a loose orange rope border had appeared threading its way from one metal rod to another, an attempt to keep those adventurous explorers who might be tempted to stray from the path on the straight and narrow.  I shined the light down over the ledge to my right and saw that like a spiral stairway, I could see the lower portion of the path that I had already covered looping below me in the distance.

What an idiot I had been for not investing in a book of matches or even a lighter!

In my experience, something as simple as switching the batteries around could squeeze a little more juice out of them.  Figured it was worth a try.

I knelt on the cold stone floor, set the emergency kit aside, and snapped the flashlight off.  Instantly, I was cast into true and complete darkness, so much so that I couldn’t even detect my hand an inch from my face.

Carefully, I unscrewed the base and slid the first battery into my palm, placing it deliberately down against my shoe and marking its place in my memory.  Removing the second one, I rubbed it briskly against my shirt and returned it to the flashlight, reaching down for the first one against my shoe.

A sharp wail tore through the cave directly in front of me.

Instinctively, I jerked and felt my foot kick the battery.  It clattered and came to rest somewhere in the impenetrable darkness.

Cursing myself, I reached out palms flattened, groping blindly across the cold stone floor.  Remembering the elevator and its conspicuous lack of an “up” button, my ears became keenly aware of every little sound, my nerve-endings tuned to every change in the air flow around me.

Dammit!  Where was that battery?

My hand fell on something warm.  I felt whatever it was pull away beneath my palm.  I shoved myself backwards in utter terror, feeling the flashlight case strike the stone floor beneath my hand, not caring for the moment whether or not I had lost the remaining battery from inside it.

What the hell been that been?

Then I heard a girl’s voice break the silence beside me.

“Hello?”

It was the high-pitched sound that only the very young can produce.  She must have been barely a foot away from me.

Then piercing the darkness, I heard that wail again in the distance.  It was plaintive and devoid of all humanity.  Yet, it was the sort of sound an animal could never have made.  Only a soul in indescribable pain could have produced it.

There was a whimper beside me, once again sounding like a young girl.

“Are you lost too?” the tiny voice asked.

“Don’t worry,” I heard myself saying.  “I’m going to help you.”

“Do you know the way out?”  I could hear the aching hope in the child’s voice and the hunger for reassurance.

I spoke into the darkness.  “Yes,” I lied to her.  Then, before I could consider the consequences of a response, I heard myself ask the question: “What’s your name?”

“Tracy.”  My heart momentarily skipped a beat.

I found myself saying: “Tracy, my name is Paul.”

Then she began to cry, but it was a sound of great relief, no longer of fear.

“You’re going to be safe,” I told her.  “Hold on while I turn on this light.”

The next time I heard the tiny questioning voice, it was starting to fade, almost as if her body was being whisked away from me at a great distance and speed.  “Paul?  Are you still there?  Paul?” By the time she uttered my name for the last time, her voice had faded totally below my range of hearing.

I reached out instinctively toward the sound, and my hand closed around the cold tubular shape of the “C” cell battery.  I yanked the flashlight case up, slid the battery back in with its brother, and firmly tightened the cap back down on the base.

I had light again.

Panting in an attempt to catch my breath, I turned the wavering beam first one way, then the other.  The chamber was exactly as it had been before I’d turned off the light.

“Tracy?”

My god!  What had just happened, I asked myself

All the muscles that I had involuntarily kept tense the last few minutes, loosened all at once.  I began to quiver uncontrollably.

How long had the experience actually lasted?

I stood and trained the flashlight down at my wrist.  The beam was consistent this time, though not any brighter than it had been.  I knew it would die very soon, this time permanently.  I had to find my way out of here now.

I peered down at my watch, then did a double take. 

It read two-forty.  Had nearly thirty minutes just passed?

How was that possible?

Time… had a funny way of slipping past in the darkness,
I recalled Tracy saying
.

I looked down at the empty stone floor beside me, searching for any evidence of a small child.  There was no footprint smaller than my own in the dust.

“Hello?” I called tentatively.  Then after a few moments, I tried a much louder, “Hello, Tracy!”

No response, beyond my own echo.

And what about the scream, I asked myself.  One thing I knew; it hadn’t been Claudia.  It couldn’t have been human.  What sort of creature could produce a sound like that?  An owl, I told myself.  A screech owl can sound like a screaming kid.

That was no screech owl, the reasonable part of my nature interjected.

I reached into my pocket and opened the blade of my knife, tucking it into the hand that held the emergency kit.  Taking a deep breath, I started forward again along the path with the kit and knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

Less than thirty minutes later, the light once again began to waver.

I knew without a doubt that it was going out for good this time.

I rushed forward in a heated attempt to get as far as possible on the last bit of juice that was left in those “C” cells.  The last thing I saw just before the light gave out completely was the next big open chamber.  I skidded to a stop just inside as the light finally flickered out. I put the useless flashlight back into the emergency kit--somehow resisting the urge to hurl it as hard as I could against the nearest wall.  Hesitantly, I closed the knife and pocketed it.  I didn’t need the added aggravation of a stab wound.

My hands held out before me, I marched blindly ahead into the darkness, my arms weaving back and forth before me, my legs rigid and robotic.

Hurry
, I heard a voice distinctly say. 
She needs your help
.

My confidence level rising with the success I’d had so far, I shuffled quicker.

Run, Paul.  Run.

I had actually begun to trot, when the toe of my sneaker struck what felt like a raised ridge, and I fell forward wildly off balance, my hands shooting out in front of me in an effort to fall on something other than my face.  My arms fell completely into empty space.  I felt my chest strike the ridge I had just tripped over, momentarily knocking the wind out of me.  For an instant, I grasped at the hope that I could see light, realizing a moment later, that I was witnessing neural fireworks thanks to the lack of oxygen.

I rolled over onto my back and lay there gasping for air, feeling the tinkling of a thousand small cuts on my palms and eventually regaining enough motor control to crawl to my knees.  The ridge I had tripped over was the border of the path.

I hawked as much saliva as I could into my mouth and shot it out in front of me with as much force as I could manage.  I cocked my ear and listened for the silence to break.  I had counted to ten before I heard a splat far, far below.

Taking a deep breath, I rolled again onto my back and squeezed my eyes shut.

I had nearly walked off into a dead drop.

At some point, the rope border had completely disappeared.

I groped about and found the emergency roadside kit.  Well, there’s something approximating good luck, I thought.  At least I hadn’t hurled that accidentally over the edge.

Unzipping it, I found the bottled water and poured a handful into my stinging palms, then took a small sip, reminding myself that I must conserve.  No telling how long I might be down here.

Come to us.

The voice had come from a few yards to the left in the empty darkness of the void, but this voice was distinctly different than the one that had called my name just before I had fallen.

I rolled from my knees to my feet and took a few steps away before I realized that I heard laughter.  The sound was warm and welcoming, at odds with the very nature of the environment that enveloped me.

It sounded like other people.

Then I stared up into the darkness and realized that I was seeing browns instead of blacks.  I squeezed my eyes shut then ventured another look.  Now I was definitely seeing the thinnest suggestion of light coming from somewhere below.

“Hello!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

There was silence, followed by two dim voices answering simultaneously.

“Hey,” the distant voices answered from far below.

“It’s me,” I bellowed, crawling to the edge and hanging my head over.

“Hank!  That you?”

Was that Dad, I asked myself?

“Up here!”

“Ronnie, shine it that way!”

Ronnie?  Why would they be calling
that
name?

I heard a dim response that ended with, “… a flare?”

Flare?  Waitaminute!  There
was
a flare in my kit.

“Stay there,” a second distinctly different voice answered.  This one was a voice I definitely did not recognize.  In fact, he sounded like a teenager.

Then, the first one again.  “Call out!”

“Who are you?” I yelled down to them.

There was momentary silence, then: “Friends!”

A strange thought occurred to me then, one that I instantly dismissed.

I gave another yell.  “Hello! You still there?”

Silence.

I peered down into complete darkness.  Even the light had disappeared.

My blood ran cold.

I pulled the emergency kit into my lap and began rummaging.

“HELL-OOO,” I screamed with as much intensity as I could manage.

My hand brushed against a long tubular object inside the kit and lost it again.

Dimly, distantly, there was almost a shadow of a sound: “Paul!”  Then a second “Paul.”  And a third voice calling, “Paul!”

It was them!  I knew it this time.  Dad, Uncle Hank, and a third voice, female, which sounded as if it could be Tracy Tatum.  The voices were coming from a much greater distance away than the ones I had heard previously and those had been completely different.

Then just behind me, I heard a scuffle of a shoe.  I turned.

Dad stood before me holding a flashlight and smiling.

“Dad,” I screamed in joy and rushed toward him, dropping the kit behind me.

Before I could register what was happening, I felt a sudden searing pain against my cheek and was falling backwards over my own feet, the contents of the emergency kit scattering across the cave floor in the darkness.

My father had just slapped me.

I looked up in wounded disbelief.

“You worthless son of a bitch,” I heard him hiss.

I could only stare, immobile at this man, who by all appearances was my father, but at the same time, could not be.

“Why couldn’t you have waited for us,” he shouted, a thin stream of foam dribbling from the corner of his mouth.  “We’re all as good as dead because of you!”

He rushed at me, his one free hand clenching and unclenching, close enough for me to see the wild rolling of his eyes.  Then I felt him strike me again and again in a flurry of blows.  He was panting like an animal.

“No!  You’re not my father!” I screamed from beneath the protective cradle of my arms, and suddenly, the blows stopped.

I opened my eyes.  The world had returned to complete darkness.

My muscles rung with the pain of the blows as once again I heard my name drifting up from somewhere down below.  It was a taunting whisper, mocking me.  I cringed in the darkness, struggling beneath my shirt and finally touching with my index finger the crucifix my uncle had given me.

What had just happened, I asked myself.

Suddenly, another voice broke through from the darkness below.  It too called my name, but this one more passionately.  I could feel the flesh and bone and blood behind the sound.  For several indecisive moments, I hesitated to answer.  Was this another trick?

The second time I heard my name, I knew it was truly my father this time.