I remembered the washtub. It had been propped up right beside the
clock. Now it was down, resting on its base. But that meant the
Right here.
I could even see its outlines now. I reached for it.
The cabinet doors were open.
Inside, it was empty.
Something sour started happening in my stomach, and it wanted out of
me. There was too much darkness. It was making me dizzy, the way you
feel after a night with too much beer and nothing to eat when you lie
down in bed and close your eyes and everything starts to move on you,
swirling, rolling like film badly sprocketed in a projector. I
couldn't understand it. Where was she? Incomprehension buckled half
my brain, and what was left was instinct, and instinct told me the
appropriate emotion was fear. I needed badly to sit down, to stop the
sudden sweating, the cold sweats that had come on with the urge to
vomit. Because if she was not here.
She was nowhere.
Not possible
There was a trick somewhere. Had to be. Remember Kim at the window?
Something fishy. Hoaxing the local kid.
Not nice, Casey. Cut it out. I will wet my drawers if you don't.
"Casey! Goddamn you, Casey! Get the fuck out here, right
NOW!"
You are roaring, son. Like a lunatic. And not a thing has come of it.
Nobody home. No results to your inquiry. Inefficacy. Failure.
"Please!"
You are whistling, so to speak, in the dark.
That part of my mind that was still working told me to get the others,
fast, that this was not for me alone anymore and no game. So I turned
for the stairs. And forgot the clutter.
I don't know what tripped me. A rake, maybe, a hoe--something with a
long wooden handle. But I went down like a sack of flour, flat down on
my chest, stomach and thighs, feet flying out behind me. I heard two
sounds simultaneously: the thunk of my forehead against concrete and
the woosh of air out of my lungs. Then a moment of pain and a slow
struggle with unconsciousness. At first strictly touch and go. Out of
one blackness into another. I fought it. It cost me a massive effort
of will just to sit up, another to check for damages.
There was a wet spot on my forehead high up near the hairline, chilly
in the cold draft across the floor. And that was all. I figured I'd
gotten off easy.
I was aware of a strong, fetid odor. The smell of old meat
spoiling.
I'd smelled it before but it was much stronger now, infecting the cool
summer breeze. I thought of death. I thought of a stale shallow tide
pool of sea water and rotted bivalves. I thought of skeletons
scattered throughout the litter of pots, pans, pitchforks and knives
around me. Not the skeletons of mice, either. I saw Ben and Mary
crawling out from under. The skeletons of cannibalized dogs.
The floor was wet, slick to the touch. I pushed myself up. I reached
into my pocket for a match. The game was over. I lit one and held it
in front of me. I cupped the match in my hands and stared into the
breeze. I thought of what Rafferty had told me about long ago, a quiet
warning none of us had heeded.
I moved along on hands and knees. There was no sound but my own
scraping sounds and the relentless gentle wind breathing at me. I
crawled in the dark. No more falling. In the match light I had seen
it well enough- a rough circular hole broken through the wall, no more
than two or three feet in diameter. Room to crawl through, or out of,
but no more. I followed the current of air, the damp scent of it,
slowly.
I approached it like the doorway to hell.
I knew she'd gone inside.
The smell wouldn't bother her, not for the short duration it would take
for me to find her. The darkness, the smell, the fear- all that would
make it more attractive. You fool, I thought. You damned idiot.
Make me mistaken.
I lit a match. I examined the opening. It was a tunnel cut or scraped
through the foundation. The clock was angled in such a way that,
standing, that and a pile of newspapers hid it partially from view.
Lying to one side was the old metal bucket. Was that what Casey had
tripped over the sound I'd heard upstairs? I pushed way the papers and
leaned inside.
I looked more closely. I saw broken concrete heaped to one side. As
though the hole had been dug from inside the tunnel.
Beyond the foundation work the tunnel led back a few feet through solid
rock and then turned a corner, so that the rest of it was blind, its
depth unknowable.
IV
I didn't want to go in there.
I seemed to know two things about it instinctively. There was
something dead in there and something else alive. I could smell the
death. Whoever or whatever was alive, it wasn't just Casey. I don't
know how I knew that, but I did.
The match went out. I lit another, cupping it against the breeze.
"Case?"
Holding the match in front of me, I took a deep breath and held it in
my lungs and worked my way carefully into the hole. It died before I'd
gone two feet. I lit three of them together and got almost to the
corner before they died too. The wind was stronger now. In the dark
it seemed thicker, seawater damp. The rocks above and below me
breathed moisture. My throat was bone-dry.
I lit up the rest of the pack and lurched ahead, holding the matches
like a torch in front of me, and rounded the corner. It illuminated
only three feet or so of what appeared to be a long tunnel, utterly
black beyond the glow. But it was enough. Enough to see.
The green book bag lay almost beneath my hand.
I reached for it, gripping the tough cloth, something clean and fresh
in that foul place, and dragged it toward me. I heard a rattle of
lightweight metal. I reached inside. Two of the flashlights were
still there.
I pulled one out and turned it on and threw its beam down the tunnel.
Like a child I wanted very much to cry.
The third flashlight lay five feet away from me, abandoned.
Beyond it I could see nothing but emptiness and sweating gleaming rock.
Twenty feet on there was another blind turn. I listened.
There was something alive out there.
Something alive on the wind beyond my beam of light.
I listened to it. And I knew it was listening to me.
It wasn't that there was any sound, just a presence. But a powerful
one. Something that told me I dared not call out to her again, dared
not move forward or even back. I froze. Whatever it was, it would be
happy to kill me. I knew that. I knew it on some basic animal level
where we all are hunters and hunted, where there are
still savannas and jungle moonlight. It was there, just around the
corner. An intelligence that was not the same as mine. Measuring
me.
I did something purely instinctive. I think it saved my life. I
doused the light.
And waited. The smell of death in the air, mine or Casey's or perhaps
its own. I would meet it in a matter of seconds now, and then one of
us would see.
I waited. And for a longtime I didn't move at all. I tried to breathe