“Things blew up, is what happened. Didn’t leak long. Now we’re going to talk straight, just the way you wanted when you came around the first time.”
“I came around then because I was curious if you’d tried to kill me. And you had.”
“Oh, hell, I’ve never been a killing man. Not even a hunter. Kids would make fun of me for that. I just had to pretend I’m a lousy shot. You weren’t going to die down there.”
“The doctor had another perspective on that.”
“Well, you wandered off. Shit, if you’d stayed in one place, you’d have been fine.”
“My apologies. It was inconsiderate of me. What was supposed to happen?”
“I didn’t really have a plan for that. I just thought it was time to send them back in.”
“Send who back in?”
“Police, searchers, the whole damn show, one more time. Encore performance. See if anybody made it through and wait for Cecil to make a decision on pulling your ass out if nobody else did. Far as I know, only Ridley Barnes has made it through, but he doesn’t remember how he did it. Word is he’s taking another run at it right now; is that true?”
“He’s in the cave,” Mark said. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“Then he’s making a run at it. He’s not as young as he was the first time, and he damn near died in there then, so this will be a stretch.”
The snow-covered farmland was falling away at the road’s sides and the interior of the car had warmed and Evan seemed like an almost congenial presence as long as Mark disregarded the gun in his hand.
“Tell me something,” Evan said. “Did you really remember the trailer? If so, I was given some bad advice. You weren’t supposed to remember shit.”
“It came to me,” Mark said.
Evan frowned. He’d pulled the hood down from his jacket, and with his dark hair cropped short, he looked younger than he was; he could have passed for a college student.
“Well, not all of it came to you. So I guess I got my money’s worth. Go on and pull in there now when we get to it.”
“The trailer?”
“Yes. Nobody’s been back since last night. You got ’em all distracted now. Of course, it doesn’t take much in this county, there aren’t that many police. What do you think of our sheriff anyhow?”
“You’ll meet worse.”
“I agree,” Evan said, seeming to miss the predictive quality of the statement. “He’s a good man. He wouldn’t say the same of me, would he?”
“He hasn’t yet.”
“I didn’t think so. You tell him I appreciate him, though. Always did.”
Mark made a left turn and they were now just two miles from Trapdoor. The open fields came into view and with them the snow-covered collapsing trailer that Carson and Evan Borders had once called home, on the last of their family land.
“Almost done with it,” Evan said. “Maybe I’ll think different in a little while, but right now, I’m almost glad you blew into town. The wait has been too long for too many good people. Maybe it worked out well for me these past ten years, maybe not, I could argue either way, but there are too many good people in this place who cared about Sarah. Why in the hell did you come back, though? Close as you came to death down there, why in the hell make a return trip?”
“Somebody tried to kill me.”
“Exactly. That’s the point of leaving for good.”
Mark shook his head. “That’s the point of coming back.”
“You want to die?”
“I’m in no hurry to. But somebody tries to kill me, I’m going to try to find out who he is and why I was worth it to him.”
They reached the trailer and Mark pulled into the drive. There was crime scene tape around the front door and the ramp, and the snow all over was trampled. In the distance police vehicles were visible at Trapdoor.
“Congratulations, then,” Evan said. “You’re about to find out why you were worth it. Now we’ll have to hustle. Only a matter of time before somebody stops in, and I’ll need to be on the road before that. I hope you don’t mind me taking your car. Nothing parties like a rental, right?”
Mark shut off the car and Evan nudged him with the muzzle of the gun. “Be good when you get out, now. You’re close to what you came for.”
64
Ridley walked alone through a forest that was so spectacular he could almost forget the pain.
In a room with a towering ceiling and stalagmites that rose like trees, triple his height or even greater, Ridley stumbled forward, his headlamp beam small in the vastness. The first time he’d been here, he’d hardly believed what he was seeing. The second time, he’d been unable to see and he had the girl over his shoulder.
Now there was no reason to rush ahead because the only cries of pain were his own. He could take his time to savor this place, and so he did, pausing and leaning against a rock formation that was as thick as an oak tree. He gazed around, painting the high domed ceiling with his headlamp beam. He had read about caves in places like Mexico and Russia and Vietnam that held unbelievable wonders — caverns with their own ecosystems, home to animals and trees. Son Doong in Vietnam contained a river and a jungle and even its own cloud system, and it hadn’t been explored until 2010. There were wonders beneath the earth beyond anything most had seen on its surface, but Ridley would take Trapdoor over any of them.
Because he’d been the first one through. Or so he’d always thought. That was becoming hard to believe, though. There were things down here that did not belong.
He was sad about that, because he’d always viewed himself as an explorer of the first order, breaking new ground. But maybe there was always somebody who’d beaten you there. When John Colter returned from the West and reported his discovery of Yellowstone — a discovery for which he’d been mocked, with his outlandish tales of giant, boiling geysers rising from the earth — there had been Indians living there for hundreds of years. Maybe there was always someone ahead of you.
Once, Ridley would have cared about that more. Today, shivering and weak, he could only appreciate that he’d been one of the early ones. That he’d had the chance to see this at all.
The room he was in had ceilings at least ninety feet high that fanned out like a giant dome, vaulted like a holy structure. He considered lying down and soaking in the beauty of it and waiting until his light burned out again.
He couldn’t do that, though. He had a purpose, although it was not as urgent as the one he’d had the first time he’d passed through. He needed to find the place again. Where the dark man had lain in wait for attack and where, just above, Sarah Martin had waited for rescue. They were not places Ridley wished to see again or had ever wished to see — no one had understood that when they refused his requests for a return, over and over again; no one had ever understood that it would be worse for Ridley than anyone else. Ridley had given up on being understood long ago. What he knew now was that he had to keep moving or he was never going to reach those places again, and he had promised himself that he would do that before the end of his life. He had sacrificed much for it and it would do no good to stop here, no matter how beautiful the spot.
He pushed away from the oak-size rock and moved ahead, his steps sluggish. All around him, the massive formations spread their shadows, and Ridley’s own was very small against them. His shadow was the only one moving, though, and he was grateful for that. Trapdoor had turned a benevolent eye on him once more and would not hinder his way through the wilderness. He did not understand the reasons for her choices. She gave and she took and the order of those choices seemed indiscriminate and arbitrary at best and, at worst, cruel.