“Why would she have done that?”
“To back up the story that had brought us there in the first place,” Sarah says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “That seems like a little far to go.”
“Well.” Sarah brings the movie ahead another ten minutes, hurrying the crew through a pair of large spaces whose flat ceilings rest on rock columns the girth of large trees. In the second chamber, their flashlights pick out a shape to the right, a dark mound like a heap of rugs. Flashlights trained on the thing, they cross the space towards it. As they approach, the mound gains definition, resolving into the carcass of a large animal. When they reach it, Sarah returns the film to normal speed.
“—is it?” Chad is saying.
“I think it’s a bear,” Sarah says.
“No way,” Kristi says.
“There are bears here?” Priya says.
“Yes,” George says, “black bears.” He steps away from the group to circle the remains.
“Be careful,” Priya says.
“Yeah, George,” Chad says, “watch yourself.”
“Relax,” George says, “this fellow’s been dead a long time.” He crouches next to the bear’s blunt head, playing his light back and forth over it. His eyes narrow. “What the hell?”
“What?” Sarah says.
“What is it?” Priya says.
“From the looks of things,” George says, “something tore out Gentle Ben here’s throat.”
“Is that strange?” Chad says.
“What could do that?” Kristi says.
“I have no idea,” George says. “Another bear, maybe. A mountain lion, I guess.”
“Hang on—I want to see this,” Kristi says. The camera moves around the animal’s prostrate form to where George sits on his heels, his flashlight directed at the bear’s head. Its eyes are sunken, shriveled, its teeth bared in a final snarl. The right canine is missing, the socket ragged, black with blood long-crusted. What should be the animal’s thick neck is a mess of skin torn into leathery ribbon and flaps, laying bare dried muscle and dull bone. “Jesus,” Kristi says.
“Should be more blood,” George says. He sweeps his flashlight over the floor around them, whose dust and rock are unstained. “Huh.”
“What does that mean?” Priya says.
“Could it be, I don’t know, poachers?” Chad says.
“Black bear isn’t protected like that,” George says. “You’re supposed to have a license, but if you shot one by mistake, you wouldn’t need to go to this amount of trouble to hide it. Not to mention, I don’t know what gun would inflict this type of wound.”
“Maybe it was shot,” Chad says, “came in here to escape, and another bear got it.”
George shrugs. “Anything’s possible. Doesn’t explain the lack of blood, though.”
“I do not like this,” Kristi says.
“Hey,” Priya says, “where’s Isabelle?”
Sarah pauses the movie.
“What happened to Isabelle?” I say.
“She… wandered off,” Sarah says.
“In a mine?”
“Yeah,” Sarah says, “that was what the rest of us thought.”
“Where did she go?”
“All the way to the end of the mine, and then further. There’s a network of caves the mine connects to. We spent most of the shoot searching for her—about fifteen hours.” The next twenty minutes of the film advance in a succession of scenes, each of which leaps ahead another half hour to hour and a half. The expression on the crew’s faces oscillate between irritation and worry, with intermittent stops at fatigue and unease. Sarah says, “We hadn’t brought much in the way of food or drink; we hadn’t expected to be down there for more than a couple of hours. We ran out of both pretty quickly. Not long after, Chad floated the idea of turning around, heading for the surface, where we could call for help, bring in some professionals to find Isabelle. Kristi was aghast at the thought of abandoning her here. The others agreed. We kept on moving further underground. Isabelle had left enough of a trail for us to follow; although there were a couple of times we really had to search for it. Finally, we arrived at this spot.”
She taps the touchpad. The screen shows the tunnel dead-ending in a shallow chamber filled with junk: rows of rusted barrels, any identifying marks long flaked off; cardboard boxes in various stages of mildewed collapse; shovels and pickaxes, mummified in dusty cobwebs; a stack of eight or nine safety helmets leaning to one side.
“Shit,” Sarah says.
“What do we do now?” Chad says.
“Go back,” George says, “see if we can pick up the trail again at that last fork.”
“Hang on,” Kristi says. The view moves behind the row of barrels closest to the wall. As the camera’s light shifts, so do the barrels’ shadows, swinging away from the rock to reveal a short opening in it. “Guys,” Kristi says, bringing the camera level with her discovery. Manhole-sized and-shaped, the aperture admits to a brief passage, which ends in darkness.
“What is it?” Sarah says.
“Some kind of tunnel,” Kristi says. The opening swims closer.
“What are you doing?” Sarah says.
“Wait,” Kristi says. The screen rocks wildly as she crawls through the passage.
“Hey!” George calls.
Kristi emerges into a larger space. Curved walls expand to a wider exit. The camera scans the floor, which is strewn with an assortment of stones. A rough path pushes through them. “Guys!” Kristi shouts.
The film jumps to Priya scrambling out of the tunnel. Chad helps her to her feet. To the left, George says, “Is everyone sure about this?”
“No,” Chad says.
“I don’t know,” Priya says.
“Do you want to abandon Isabelle down here,” Kristi says, “in the dark?”
“It’s worth checking out,” Sarah says. “We’ll go a little way. If we don’t see any sign of her, we’ll turn around.”
“What the fuck is she doing here?” Priya says.
“When we find Isabelle,” Sarah says, “we’ll ask her.”
Another cut, and the crew is standing in blackness that extends beyond the limits of their flashlights. Ceiling, walls are out of view; only the rock on which they’re standing is visible. Chad and Kristi shout, “Hello!” and, “Isabelle!” but any echo is at best faint. “Where are we?” Priya says. No one answers.
In the following scene, an object shines in the distance, on the very right edge of the screen. “Hey,” Kristi says, turning the camera to center the thing, “look.” The rest of the crew’s lights converge on it.
“What…?” Priya says.
“It looks like a tooth,” Sarah says.
“It’s a stalagmite,” George says. “Or stalactite. I get the two confused. Either way, it isn’t a tooth.”
“It’s not a stalagmite,” Chad says. “The surface texture’s wrong. Besides, you usually find stalagmites and stalactites in pairs, groups, even. Where are the others?”
“So what is it, Mr. Geologist?” George says.
“It’s a rock,” Kristi says.
It is; though both Sarah and George’s identifications are understandable. Composed of some type of white, pearlescent mineral, it stands upright, three and a half, four feet tall, tapering from a narrow base to a flattened top the width of a tea saucer. Halfway down it, there’s a decoration, which, when the camera zooms in on it, resolves into a picture. Executed in what might be charcoal, it’s a face, the features rendered simply, crudely. In the scribble of black hair, the black hole of the left eye, it isn’t hard to recognize the repetition of the portrait near the mine’s entrance. “What the fuck?” Kristi says.
“What is this?” Priya says. “What is happening here?”
“Um,” Chad says. The view draws back from the face to show Chad standing beside the stone, in the process of picking up something from its flattened top. Frowning, he raises a thin, shriveled item to view. “I think this is a finger.”