Still Life With Crows p-4 Read online

  Don’t think about it. The important thing is to get out.

  Behind him Cole and Brast, both blind, shuffled and stumbled. Once in a while Larssen would murmur warnings about obstacles, or stop to help the troopers through some tricky place. They moved slowly, and agonizing minutes passed before they reached the next fork in the tunnel.

  Larssen examined the fork, noticed the direction of the bloody paw prints. They set off again, moving a little faster now. The floor was covered in rills and shallow pools, and the sound of their splashing echoed in the cave. The prints grew few and far between here. If they could just find their way back to the big cavern with the limestone pillars, they’d be all right; he was pretty sure he knew the way from there.

  “Are you sure we came this way?” Brast asked, his voice high and tense.

  “Yes,” said Larssen.

  “What the hell attacked us? Did you see it?Did—? ”

  Turning and reaching past Cole, Larssen backhanded Brast sharply across the face.

  “I saw it! I saw it!I saw it! ”

  Larssen didn’t answer. If Brast didn’t shut up soon, he thought he might kill him.

  “It wasn’t human. It was some kind of Neanderthal. With a face like . . . oh, dear God, like a big—”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “Iwon’t shut up. You need to hear this. Whatever we’re up against, it isn’tnatural —”

  “Brast?” It was Cole, speaking through gritted teeth.

  “What?”

  With his good arm Cole aimed his riot gun down the dark tunnel and pulled the trigger. It erupted with a deafening crash. A shower of pebbles dislodged by the vibration danced off their shoulders while the sound echoed and reechoed crazily, rolling back and forth in the deep spaces.

  “Jesus, what the fuck was that!” Brast fairly screamed.

  Cole grabbed for the rope and waited for the echoes to die down. Then he spoke again. “If you don’t shut up, Brast, the next one’s for you.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Come on,” Larssen said. “We’re wasting time.”

  They continued on, stopping briefly at another intersection. The set of bloody dog prints led to the right, and they followed these into another low passageway. A few minutes later the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern, draped on two sides by curtains of limestone and filled with massive pillars. Larssen felt immense relief. They’d found it.

  Cole stumbled, grunted, then half sat in a puddle of water.

  “Don’t stop,” said Larssen, grabbing his good arm and helping him rise. “I know where we are now. We’ve got to keep going until we’re out of here.”

  Cole nodded, coughed, took a step, stumbled, took another.He’s going deep into shock, thought Larssen. They had to get out before he collapsed entirely.

  They made their way through the forestlike cavern. Several tunnels led away from the far wall, looking like yawning mouths in the pink wash of the goggles. Larssen didn’t remember seeing that many tunnels. He looked on the ground for the dog tracks, but the shallow flow of water on the ground here had erased any trace.

  “Wait,” he said abruptly. “Quiet.”

  They stopped. There was a sound of splashing from behind that could not be explained by the echoes of the gallery. After another moment, it, too, stopped.

  “He’s behind us!” said Brast in a loud voice.

  Larssen pulled them behind one of the trunklike pillars, readied his shotgun, then peered out with his goggles. The cavern was empty. Could it have been just an echo, after all?

  Turning back, he saw Cole leaning unsteadily, half conscious, against the limestone pillar.

  “Cole!” He hauled him to his feet. Cole coughed, swayed. Larssen quickly leaned him over, head between his legs.

  Cole vomited.

  Brast said nothing, trembling, his eyes wide with fear, uselessly searching the darkness.

  Larssen reached down, cupped some water, splashed it over Cole’s face. “Cole? Hey, Cole!”

  The man sagged to one side, eyes rolling into the back of his head. He had passed out.

  “Cole!” Larssen patted some more water into his face, gave him a few light slaps.

  Cole coughed, retched again.

  “Cole!”Larssen tried to keep the man on his feet, but his limp form felt like a sack of cement. “Brast, help me, goddammit.”

  “How? I can’t see.”

  “Feel your way along the rope. Do you know the fireman’s carry?”

  “Yeah but—”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “I can’tsee, and besides, we don’t have time. Let’s leave him here and get help from—”

  “I’ll leaveyou here,” said Larssen. “How would you like that?” He found Brast’s hands and locked them together with his in a basket grip. Larssen guiding, they stooped together, embraced Cole’s sagging form, tried to rise again.

  “Christ, he weighs a ton,” Brast said, gasping.

  At that same moment Larssen heard a distinct splash, then another: heavy footfalls in the shallow pools they had come through just moments before.

  “I tell you, there’s something behind us,” Brast said as he strained desperately to lift Cole. “Did you hear it?”

  “Justmove. ”

  Cole slumped backward, threatening to slide out of their grip. They maneuvered him into place again and moved forward painfully.

  The splashing continued from behind.

  Larssen looked back but saw only indistinct washes of pinks and reds. He looked forward again, chose a narrow passage in the far wall that looked like it might be the right one, made doggedly toward it. If he could get to a defensible location, he could hold the thing off with his gun . . .

  “God,” said Brast, his voice breaking. “Oh God, oh God . . .”

  They ducked into the low passage, carrying Cole between them as quickly as they could. Larssen staggered as the rope caught his ankles; he straightened up, went forward again. After a short distance, the ceiling rose toward a weird formation of a thousand needlelike stalactites, some as thin as threads.

  Oh God, I don’t remember that,thought Larssen.

  Another splash from the darkness behind them.

  Suddenly, Brast tripped against a rock. Cole slumped from their grasp and fell heavily onto his broken arm. He groaned loudly, rolled over, and lay still.

  Larssen let him go, fumbling with his gun, aiming into the darkness.

  “What is it?” Brast cried. “What’s there?”

  At that moment a monstrous shape came hurtling out of the darkness. Larssen cried out, firing as he stumbled backward, while Brast stood in terror, feet rooted to the ground, his arms clawing at the darkness. “Jesus, don’t leave me—!”

  Larssen grabbed his hand, yanked him away. As he did so, the shape fell upon the supine form of Cole. The two figures blurred together, a reddish tangle in the goggles. Larssen staggered backward again, tugging at Brast while at the same time struggling to get his gun back up. He heard a rending sound like a drumstick being wrenched off a turkey. Cole screamed abruptly: a terrible falsetto squeak.

  “Help me!” cried Brast, clutching at Larssen like a drowning man, knocking him back and spoiling his aim. Larssen savagely shoved him away while trying to raise the shotgun, but Brast was all over him again, sobbing, clutching at him like a drowning man.

  The gun went off but the shot was wide, sending long needles of limestone crashing to the ground, and then the shape was up and facing them. Larssen froze in horror: it was holding Cole’s severed arm in one fist, the fingers still pulsing spasmodically. Larssen fired again, but he had hesitated too long and the shape was rising toward them, and all he could do was turn and flee down the dank tunnel, Brast yelling incoherently and blindly at his back.

  Farther behind, Cole was still screaming.

  Larssen ran and ran.

  Sixty-Eight

  For a long time Corrie lay in the wet dark, confused and dreamy, wondering where s
he was, what had happened to her room, her bed, her window. And then she sat up, her head pounding, and with the return of the pain came the memory of the cave, the monster . . . and the pit.

  She listened. All was silent save the dripping of water. She finally stood, swaying slightly, the pounding in her head subsiding. She reached out and her hands encountered the slick, smooth wall of the pit.

  She made a circuit, running her hands up and down the wet wall, seeking handholds, cracks, anything she might use to climb out. But the walls were of the slickest stone, smoothed by water, impossible to climb. And what would she do once she got out? Without a light she was as good as trapped.

  It was hopeless. There was no way out. All she could do was wait. Wait for the monster to come back.

  Corrie felt overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and misery so powerful it made her physically sick. Her despair was all the worse for the hope that had been raised in her brief dash to escape. But here, in the pit, there was no hope left. No one knew where she was, that she’d gone into the cave. Eventually the thing would come back. Ready toplay.

  She sobbed at the thought.

  It would be the end of her miserable, useless life.

  Corrie leaned against the slick wall, sank to the ground. She began to cry. Years of bottled-up misery came pouring out. Images flashed through her mind. She remembered coming home from fifth grade, sitting at the kitchen table and watching her mother drink miniature vodka bottles, one after another, wondering why she liked them so much. She remembered, two years ago, her mother coming home at two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, drunk, with some man. No stockings, no presents, nothing that Christmas. It was a late, rise-at-noon, hungover morning like any other. She remembered the triumphant day when she was able to buy her Gremlin with the money she had earned from working at the Book Nook before its demise—and how furious her mother had been when Corrie brought it home. She thought about the sheriff, his son, the smell of the high school halls, the winter snowstorms that covered the stubbled fields in unbroken blankets of white. She thought about reading books under the powerlines in the heat of summer, the snide whispered comments of the jocks passing her in the halls.

  He was going to come back and kill her and it would all be gone, every miserable memory now crowding her head. They’d never find her body. There’d be a halfhearted search and then everyone would forget about her. Her mother would tear apart her room and eventually find the money taped to the underside of her bureau drawers, and then she’d be happy. Happy that it was now all hers.

  She cried freely, the sound echoing and reechoing above her head.

  Now her mind wandered further back, to her early childhood. She remembered one Sunday morning getting up early and making pancakes with her father, carrying the eggs around and chanting like the soldiers inThe Wizard of Oz. All her memories of him seemed to be happy: of him laughing, kidding around, squirting her with the hose on a hot summer day or taking her down to swim in the creek. She remembered him polishing his Mustang convertible, polishing and polishing, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his blue eyes sparkling, holding her up so she could see her reflection in it, then taking her for a ride. She remembered effortlessly, as clear as if it had been last week, how the cornfields parted with their passing; the exhilarating sensation of acceleration, of freedom.

  And now, in the silence, in the absolute final blackness of the pit, she felt all the protective walls she had carefully built for herself over the years start to crumble, one by one. In this moment of extremis, the only questions that remained in her head were the ones she had rarely ever allowed herself to ask: Why had he left? Why had he never come back to visit? What was so wrong with her that he’d never wanted to see her again?

  But the darkness would allow no self-delusion. She had another memory, not all that distant: of coming home and finding her mother burning a letter in the ashtray. Had it been from him? Why hadn’t she confronted her mother? Was it out of fear that the letter wasn’t, in fact, what she hoped it was?

  This last question hung in the blackness, unanswered. There could be no answer, not now. It would soon end, here, in this pit, and the question would be moot. Maybe her father would never even know she was dead . . .

  She thought of Pendergast, the only person who had ever treated her like an adult. And now she’d failed him, too. Stupidly going into the cave without telling anyone. Stupid, stupid,stupid . . .

  She sobbed again, loudly, painfully, giving full vent to her feelings. But the sound echoed so horribly, so mockingly, around and above her that she swallowed, choked, and fell silent.

  “Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she said out loud.

  Her voice echoed and died away and then she caught her breath. There was a distinct whisper in the dark.

  Washe coming back?

  She listened intently. There were more sounds now, faint sounds, so distant and distorted they were impossible to make out. Voices? Yelling? Screaming? She strained, listening.

  And then there was a long, echoing sound, almost like the roar of rolling surf.

  A gunshot.

  And suddenly she was on her feet, crying out,“Here I am! Help me! Over here! Please! Please! Please! Please!”

  Sixty-Nine

  Weeks struggled to keep up with Pendergast as the FBI agent hurried through the cave. The way the man flicked his flashlight around, Weeks wondered if he missed anything. Probably not. It felt a little reassuring.

  The air of purpose that radiated from the agent had helped steady Weeks’s shattered nerves. He even felt some vestiges of his old aggrieved self returning. And yet he could not get out of his mind the image of the dog being ripped limb from limb by that . . .by that . . .

  He stopped.

  “What’s that?” he asked in a high, quavering voice.

  Pendergast spoke without looking back. “Officer Weeks? I expect you to follow my lead.”

  “But I heard something—”

  Pendergast’s slender white hand landed on his shoulder. Weeks was about to say more but fell silent as the pressure on his shoulder grew more intense.

  “This way, Officer.” The voice spoke with a silvery gentleness, but it somehow chilled Weeks to the bone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they proceeded, he heard the sound once again. It seemed to come from ahead, a drawn-out, echoing noise that reverberated back and forth through the endless caverns, impossible to identify. A scream? A shotgun blast? The one thing Weeks felt sure of was that, whatever the sound might be, Pendergast was going to head directly for it.

  He swallowed his protest and followed.

  They moved through a narrow warren of passages whose low ceilings were covered with glistening crystals. Weeks scraped his head against the needle-sharp crystals, cursed, and ducked lower: this wasn’t the way he’d come with the dogs. Pendergast’s light moved back and forth, exposing nests of cave pearls clustered together in chalky pools. The sounds had finally died away, leaving only the faint plash of their own steps.

  Then Pendergast halted suddenly, his light shining steadily on something. Weeks looked. At first he couldn’t make out exactly what it was: an arrangement of objects on a shelf of flat stone, clustered around some larger central object. It looked like a shrine of some kind. Weeks leaned closer. Then his eyes widened with shock and he stepped back. It was an old teddy bear, furred with mold. The bear was arranged as if it were praying: hands clasped before it, one beady black eye staring out from creeping tendrils of fungus.

  “What thehell —?” Weeks began.

  Pendergast’s light shifted to what the bear had been praying to. In the yellow glow of the flashlight, it was little more than a mound of silky mold. Weeks watched as Pendergast bent over and, with a gold pen, carefully pulled away the mold, exposing a tiny skeleton underneath.

  “Rana amaratis,”Pendergast said.

  “What?”

  “A rare species of blind cave frog. You will note the bones were brok
en peri-mortem. This frog was crushed to death in somebody’s fist.”

  Weeks swallowed. “Look,” he ventured one last time, “it’s insane to keep going deeper into the cave like this. We should be getting out of here, getting help.”

  But Pendergast had returned his attention to the objects around the teddy bear. With care he exposed more small skeletons and partially decomposed insect bodies. Then he went back to the teddy bear, picked it up, brushed off the mold, and examined it carefully.

  Weeks looked around nervously. “Come on, comeon. ”

  He shut up as the FBI agent turned toward him. Pendergast’s pale eyes were distant, focusing on some inner thought.

  “What is it?” Weeks breathed. “What does it mean?”

  Pendergast returned the bear to its place and said merely, “Let us go.”

  The FBI agent was moving faster now, stopping only infrequently to check the map he was carrying. The sound of water was louder now, and they were now wading almost constantly. The air was so chill and damp that their breath left trails. Weeks tried to keep up, tried to keep his mind off what he’d seen. This was insane, where the hell were they going? When he got back—ifhe got back—the first thing he’d do was put in for disability leave, because he’d be lucky if post–traumatic stress syndrome was all he got from—

  Then Pendergast halted suddenly. His light disclosed a body lying on the cave floor. The figure lay on its back, eyes wide open, arms and legs flung wide. The head was strangely elongated, like it had expanded and flattened, and the back of the skull had burst open like an overripe pumpkin. The eyes were bugged out, looking in two different directions. The mouth was wide open—toowide. Weeks looked away.

  “What happened?” he managed to say, struggling to hold back the terror.

  Pendergast raised his light toward the ceiling. There was a dark hole in the roof of the cavern. Then he let it fall once again to the body. “Can you identify him, Officer?”