"We've got torches," he went on, "two each. One for us to pocket, the other to tie around our necks. We couldn't find much in the way of protective headgear; we'll just have to make do with knitted hats. We've got gloves, some boots, two sweaters and two pairs of socks for everyone. Let's get to it."
They carried the gear through the trees to the clearing, and there kitted up. The woods were as silent now as they'd been in the early morning. The sun that beat so strongly on their backs, bringing them out into sweat as soon as they put on the extra layers of clothing, could not coax a single bird to song. Once dressed, they roped themselves together, about ten feet apart. Hotchkiss the theoretician knew his knots, and made play with the fact, tying them, particularly Tesla's, with a theatrical casualness. Grillo was the last to be added to the chain. He was sweating more heavily than anyone else, and the veins at his temples were almost as fat as the rope round his waist.
"Are you OK?" Tesla asked him as Hotchkiss sat on the edge of the fissure and swung his feet into the hole.
"I'm fine," Grillo replied.
"Never a great liar," she replied.
Hotchkiss had one last instruction.
"When we're down there," he said, "let's keep the chatter to the minimum, huh? We've got to preserve our energy. Remember, getting down's only half the trip."
"It's always faster on the way home," Tesla said.
Hotchkiss gave her a disparaging look, and began the descent.
The first few feet were relatively easy, but the privations began no more than ten feet down, when, maneuvering themselves through a space that only just allowed access, the sunlight disappeared so suddenly and so totally it was as if it had never existed. Their torches were feeble substitutes.
"We'll wait here a moment," Hotchkiss called back up. "Let's get our eyes accustomed to the dark."
Tesla could hear Grillo breathing hard behind her; almost panting.
"Grillo," she murmured.
"I'm OK. I'm OK."
It was easily said, but it was very far from the way he felt. The symptoms were familiar from previous attacks: in elevators stuck between floors, or a crowded subway. His heart was working up a sweat in his chest, and it felt like a wire was tightening around his throat. But these were just externalizations. The real fear was of a panic that would rise to such an unbearable pitch that his sanity would simply switch off like a lamp, and darkness become a continuum, outside and in. He had a regime of remedies—pills, deep breathing; in extremis, prayer—none of which were the least use to him now. All he could do was endure. He said the word to himself. Tesla heard.
"Did you say enjoy?" she said. "Some pleasure trip."
"Keep it quiet back there," Hotchkiss hollered from the front. "We're going to move off again."
They continued, in a silence broken only by grunts, and a single call from Hotchkiss warning that progress ahead was going to get steeper. What had been a zig-zag descent, squeezing between rocks thrown up by the rush of water when the Nunciates had escaped, now became a straight climb down a shaft whose bottom was untouched by their torch-beams. It was deadly cold, and they were glad of the layers of clothing Hotchkiss had demanded they wear, though their bulk impeded easy movement. The rock beneath their gloves was wet in places, and twice sprays of water, hitting a shelf on the opposite side of the shaft, caught them.
The sum of discomforts left Tesla wondering what bizarre imperative drove men (surely they were all men: women wouldn't be so perverse) to pursue this as recreation. Was it, as Hotchkiss had said when she and Witt had first got to his house, that all the great secrets were underground? If so, she was keeping good company. Three men who could not have had stronger reasons for wanting to see those secrets and maybe haul one of them up into the light. Grillo, with his passion to tell the whole story to the world. Hotchkiss, still haunted by the memory of his daughter, who'd died because of events here. And Witt, who'd known the Grove to its length and breadth, but never to its depth, and was getting here a fundamental vision of the town he'd loved like a wife. There was another call from Hotchkiss, this one more welcome.
"There's a ledge down here," he said. "We can rest up a while." One by one they climbed down to join him. The ledge was wet, and narrow, only just affording space to accommodate them all. They perched there in silence. Grillo pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, and lit up.
"Thought you'd given up," Tesla remarked.
"So did I," he said. He passed the cigarette over to her. She took a lungful, savoring it, then passed it back to Grillo.
"Do we have any idea of how far down we have to go?" Witt asked.
Hotchkiss shook his head.
"But there is a bottom down there somewhere."
"Can't even say that."
Witt went down on his haunches and scrabbled around on the ledge.
"What are you looking for?" Tesla said.
He stood up again with the answer. A piece of rock the size of a tennis ball, which he tossed out into the darkness. There was silence for several seconds, then the sound of it striking the rock face below, shattering, and its pieces rattling away in all directions. It took a long time for the echoes to die, making it near impossible to tell anything about the distance below them.
"Good try," Grillo said. "It works in the movies."
"Wait up," Tesla said, "I hear water."
In the silence that followed her claim was verified. Water was running close by.
"Is that below us, or behind one of those walls?" Witt said. "I can't make it out."
"Could be both," Hotchkiss said. "There's two things that can stop us getting all the way down. A simple blockage, and water. If the system becomes flooded there's no way we can go on."
"Let's not get pessimistic," Tesla said. "Let's just go on."
"We already seem to have been here hours," Witt remarked.
"Time's different down here," Hotchkiss said. "We don't have the usual signals. Sun passing overhead."
"I don't tell the time by the sun."
"Your body does."
Grillo started to light up his second cigarette, but Hotchkiss said: "No time," and started to ease himself over the lip of the shelf. The drop was by no means straight down. Had it been, their lack of experience and equipment would have thrown them down the shaft after a few feet of the descent. But it was steep enough, and got steadily steeper, some stretches offering cracks and handholds that made for relatively easy progress, other stretches sheer, slippery and treacherous. These they descended almost inch by inch, Hotchkiss signalling to Witt where the best opportunities lay, Witt passing the message on to Tesla, and so on to Grillo. They kept such comments terse: breath and concentration were now at a premium.
They were just reaching the end of one such stretch when Hotchkiss called a halt.
"What is it?" Tesla said, looking down at him. The answer was one grim word.
"Vance," he said.
She heard Witt say oh Jesus in the darkness.
"We're at the bottom then," Grillo said.
"No," came the reply, "just another ledge."
"Shit."
"Is there a way around it?" Tesla called.
"Give me time," Hotchkiss snapped back, his voice betraying the shock he felt.
There was what seemed to be several minutes (but was probably less than one) during which they clung to whatever handhold they had while Hotchkiss surveyed the routes available to them. With one selected, he called them to begin the descent afresh.
The lack of light the torches offered had been galling, but now they offered too much. As the other three climbed past the ledge it was impossible not to look its way. There, sprawled on the glistening rock, was a bundle of dead meat. The man's head had cracked on the rock like a dropped egg. His limbs were bent back on themselves every which way, the bones surely broken from joint to joint. One hand was laid on the nape of his neck, palm up. The other was just in front of his face, its fingers a little open, as though he was playing hide and seek.