Arlis replied, “Okay, okay. I’m glad one of you has some brains.” He focused the light on the little pool, and he also got a good grip on the tire iron, as he said, “I’m all set. Stick your head under and tell me what you see.”
Will Chaser said, “Now?”
“Hell yes, now. What are you waiting for?”
The kid sounded miffed when he answered, “Jesus Christ, that’s not going to tell us anything. Crawl over there and stick the light down in the hole. Aim it in our direction. That’s the only way we’re gonna see anything.”
Arlis could feel the pressure in his head building, the blood moving through his damaged brain like sandspurs, but the boy was right, and he said, “Hold your horses, that’s what I was planning to do, anyway. Goddamn, you are one bossy kid.”
He put the flashlight in his teeth, grimacing at the sulfuric taste of mud, and crawled toward the pool. A chunk of cow skull was in his path, as well as more bones and tree roots, and he had to use the iron to clear a path.
Behind him, he heard Tomlinson saying, “Why don’t you leave the crowbar with us? I can start digging while you and Will experiment.”
Before he could think, Arlis snapped, “You can kiss my ass in the county square if you think I’m doing this without a weapon,” and immediately regretted the sharpness of his tone. Tomlinson and the boy had been through enough without giving them cause to suspect they weren’t as safe as they thought they were—which they weren’t, not by a long shot.
Tomlinson said, “A weapon? Why would you need to use a crowbar as a weapon?” He paused, thinking about it, then said, “Hey, man, there’s something you haven’t told us. Arlis? Arlis? What’s wrong? Did something happen to Doc?” After another pause, he added, “What really happened to your face?”
Arlis was at the edge of the limestone pool now, where water was lapping from side to side, splashing up over the rim like water in a bowl that was being tilted back and forth. Something was definitely down there causing the water to move. He didn’t want to risk making more noise, but he had to answer Tomlinson, so he did, saying, “This is a tire iron, not a crowbar, you cotton-headed hippie. You being a damn sailor, I reckon that’s reason enough for you not to know the difference.”
Slowly, Arlis leaned his head over the pool. He could see his own reflection in the black water. His skin was caked with blood from the beating Perry had given him and it was like seeing the face of a stranger. A tired old man stared up at him, a man who was shrunken by age and fear, and it caused Arlis to feel a jolt of sadness that was soon displaced by annoyance, and he thought, Screw it. I’d rather die here from a snakebite than die in a bed with tubes up me, and he plunged the flashlight down into the pool until water was up to his shoulder.
After a couple of seconds, he yelled, “See anything?,” as he aimed the light toward the breathing hole. He forced himself to reach deep, and Arlis knew in that instant what it would be like to stick his arm into boiling water and hold it there.
After several seconds, he heard a sputtering sound and then Will Chaser’s voice say, “Are you sure the light’s on? Move the damn thing around. I didn’t see anything.”
“It’s on, by God,” Arlis hollered. “But if you didn’t see anything, then there must be nothing to see. So I guess maybe Tomlinson was right, this is a waste of time.” He began to pull his arm out of the water.
“No, stay where you are!” the boy ordered. “I’ll try again. Could be the limestone’s thick there. Can you reach any deeper? Give me thirty seconds or so and I’ll try to work my way closer.”
Arlis said, “Well, hurry up—while I’m still young!,” trying to make a joke, but his voice broke.
He heard another splash and he knew the teenager was underwater again, so he began to wave the light back and forth. To get the light even deeper, he used his boots to feel around until he felt a tree root and hooked an ankle around it. Slowly, he inched his body forward into the pool until his ear was suspended over the surface. The water felt cool against the side of his damaged face and he could taste sulfur and iron on his lips.
Arlis hadn’t looked down into the water since he’d seen his own reflection, but he decided to look now. And what he saw caused him to almost drop the flashlight.
The water was black and clear. The pool was deep enough to show bands of light piercing the darkness forty feet below, where there were boulders and more bones. Moving from beneath one of the boulders, Arlis saw a head appear, then a thick reptilian body.
Frozen, that’s how Arlis felt seeing something so strange, and he continued to watch as if hypnotized.
The animal turned and began swimming upward, and Arlis could now see two pale orange coals, which he knew were the eyes of the reptile. The eyes weren’t bright because he wasn’t pointing the light directly at the thing, but the animal was there, ascending toward the surface, swimming snakelike, the orange eyes swaying back and forth, the snake’s eyes getting bigger because the animal was gaining speed, coming fast toward the surface.
Arlis thought, God Aw’mighty! I gotta move!, and he did. As he struggled to pull his body away from the hole, he focused the light directly downward and saw, full-on, a massive reptilian head swimming toward him that was unlike any snake he had ever seen. The damn thing looked like the head of a dinosaur, its grim mouth sealed tight against the force of water, its eyes two luminous balls that flared into explosions of gold as if detonated by the flashlight.
Arlis rolled away from the hole, yelling, “Sweet Jesus, where’s the boy? Is he still underwater?” He had to feel around for the tire iron because he couldn’t take his eyes off the pool, where the surface was bubbling like a cauldron now—the animal was releasing air as it swam, Arlis realized.
Behind him, Tomlinson was yelling, “What’s wrong? What did you see?,” as Arlis tried to get to his knees, but his boot was still wedged in the roots. He had the iron in his right fist, the flashlight in his left, and he finally had to put both on the ground to use his hands to pull his foot free of the boot.
He yelled again, “Where’s the boy?,” and was relieved to hear Will Chaser’s voice answer, “How am I supposed to see the goddamn light if you’re sitting on your ass tying your shoes? Let me know when you’re ready, ’cause I’m not gonna waste my time—”
Arlis didn’t hear the rest because the head of an animal bigger than any gator he had ever killed burst through the surface of the pool, throwing a wave of water that soaked him. The animal bobbed under briefly, then appeared to slow itself when it resurfaced, its head turning like a robot’s as Arlis tried to scooch himself backward, but tree roots blocked his retreat.
When the animal saw Arlis, its mouth hinged open wide. A yard-long ribbon of tongue squirted toward him, flinging saliva as the animal made a raspy hiss that filled the room with a clouding stench of carrion. Its teeth were jagged rows of brown, its mouth frothy with something that looked as black as blood.
Will Chaser saw the reptile, too, because he was suddenly yelling, “Get out of here, Arlis! Run for it!,” but Arlis couldn’t move because of the roots and also because his body felt frozen, like in some slow-motion nightmare, as he watched the reptile’s head lean toward him, its goat-bright pupils constricting even though the flashlight lay in the mud pointed toward the wall.
Arlis was trying to thread his body through the roots as he screamed at the thing, “Get out of here! Git!,” which had worked temporarily with the three little lizards that had been tracking him, but this one didn’t budge.