Inhabited (21 page)

“You can’t go in there,” Kristin said. “There’s something terrible happening in there. I’m not going to let you stop me from getting help for Joy and Carlos.”

Ryan fired up the light and loosened the helmet so it would fit his head. He put his hand in front of the acetylene flame and smiled when it burned his fingers.
 

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Where are they hiding?”

“Just think about this,” Kristin said. “If it were a joke, why would I want you to drive
away
from those guys. I would be trying to lure you in. This isn’t a joke. We’ll go right to a phone and call the cops, or an ambulance.”

“Right, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I know how those guys think. They’re not going to get me that easily.” Ryan turned towards the cave and started walking.

Kristin stood next to the Jeep, stunned as Ryan walked away. She couldn’t let him go. She needed the key.

“Just give me the key, Ryan,” she said.

He made a dismissive wave over his shoulder.

Kristin felt cold desperation settling into her chest. She had been so close to salvation, and now the key was walking right back into danger.
 

She couldn’t let him go.

Kristin searched around for something appropriate. Her eyes landed on a rock that was about the size of a brick. With no more warning, she picked it up and ran at Ryan. She prayed that the helmet would do its job. She brought the rock down on the back of his head.

He tripped and then splayed out on the ground. The headlamp went out as he hit. Kristin fell on him and jammed her hand into his pocket.
 

He moaned as she pulled out the key.

“Sorry,” she said. She ran back to the Jeep.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Kristin hauled the wheel to the side and then reached over to lock the doors. Her eyes tried to find Ryan in the dark, but he was just a dark shape on the ground. The Jeep’s headlights didn’t extend to where he had collapsed.

She kept a firm foot on the gas and let out the clutch slowly. The Jeep started forward smoothly, but it picked up speed too quick. Kristin wasn’t ready for it. The vehicle started to buck and she slammed down on the clutch. She rolled back to the narrow access road.

As her speed began to wane, Kristin tried the clutch again. This time was even worse. When the clutch began to engage, the jerking motion made her foot slip off the pedal. She lurched forward and stomped on the accelerator. The engine whined and the Jeep sounded strained. When she pulled her foot from the gas, the vehicle began to buck again.

Ryan appeared at the window. He banged.

“Stop!” he shouted.
 

Kristin gave it gas again. The road took a sharp left. Kristin didn’t. The front wheels spilled over the edge of the road and hit a patch of loose rocks on the sharp descent. She forgot about the clutch and the gas and slammed both feet down on the brake pedal.

The Jeep stalled.

The steering wheel stiffened in her grip.
 

The Jeep began to tip.

Before she could straighten the wheel or let up on the brakes, the Jeep was on two wheels. It slammed down on the passenger’s door and began to slide. Kristin hadn’t buckled in. She was tossed to the side.

The Jeep slid to a stop.

Kristin was pressed against the passenger’s door and was looking at a sideways world lit up by the headlights. She heard Ryan’s feet as he jumped on top of the vehicle and ripped open the driver’s door. He stood above her and reached down into the vehicle.

“Grab my hand,” he said.

She slapped his hand away.

“This is your fault,” she said.

“
My
fault? You just crushed me with a rock and then flipped Joy’s Jeep. How the fuck is it my fault?”

Kristin pushed herself up.

T
RAVIS
FELT
NUMB
EVERY
time he looked back to Miguel. He wanted to go back and verify that there was no pulse. He wanted to shake him and listen for breathing. He knew it was no use. It was easier to not think about it as soon as he got far enough away that his light didn’t reach Miguel’s form.

Travis inched his way towards the outlet of the giant bowl. The walls were nearly vertical. There was no way to leave the big room in that direction without descending to the white floor. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed safe to assume that the white floor was responsible for Miguel’s death. It was some kind of poison.
 

Travis looked around for another solution. Up the wall, he saw a few more holes like the one they had dropped through. Those were too high up to reach. He made a run at one. As soon as he lost his footing, he slipped back down the rock and barely caught himself before he slid right into the white part of the floor. He wasn’t going to try that again.

“Shit,” he whispered.
 

There was a spot of Miguel’s blood on the strap of the backpack. His eyes kept returning to it.

“Okay. Fuck,” he said. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go up. The only direction left was to follow the curve of the room back to where he’d left Miguel. He could only hope that there was some other exit around the other side of the room.
 

Travis turned and started walking. As soon as the dark shape of Miguel appeared in the reaches of his light, Travis crossed his arms. He didn’t want to look at Miguel’s eyes—he was sure they would be open. He swung high up the sloped wall. He climbed until his feet slipped with each step and ached from the angle. He gave Miguel a wide berth and tried to not look at his friend’s face.
 

Travis slipped and came down on his ass. He slid a few feet closer to Miguel. When he came to a stop, he sat there. His light was trained on Miguel’s helmet.
 

Travis sat in silence.

“I’m sorry, man,” Travis said to the body. “I’m sorry there was nothing I could do to help you. This whole trip was a stupid idea.”

Thinking about the beginning of the evening reminded Travis of the map. He rooted around in the bag until he found it. He took his first good look at the document. The paper was grade school notebook paper. The lines were drawn in pencil and ballpoint pen. The annotations were “Muerte,” and “Peligro.” It seemed less like a map and more like a written warning to stay away from the mine.

Travis shook his head and stowed the map. He pulled out the biggest chunk of ore they had found. It really did look like gold embedded in the rock. Travis was amazed at how shiny it looked. It wasn’t hard to imagine how the element had become so valued. Anything that was so beautiful in its natural state would surely be refined and coveted.

He spun the rock and admired the sparkle of the quartz crystal as well.

“It really is beautiful,” he whispered to Miguel.

One part of the quartz sparkled more than the rest. It seemed to pick up the light from his headlamp, twist it and split it, and send it back to his eyes in a million little stars. Travis pulled Miguel’s knife from the bag and used the blade to chip off part of the crystal. He wanted to see if the illusion would be diminished or enhanced.

Travis stared at the rock for a full minute, trying to figure out what he was looking at. Embedded in the quartz and rock, he was looking at faceted stone. He chipped away a little more of the quartz and the stone fell out. It landed in the palm of his hand.

“What?” he whispered. He took the little stone between two fingers and held it up to the light. The cut was simple, but it looked like a gemstone. Travis tilted his head and puzzled over the thing.
 

“They don’t just grow like this. Someone has to cut them,” he said to himself. It was too symmetrical and too perfect to be an accident. Travis looked back to the chunk of ore. He spun the thing, looking at the stripes of gold in the rock. It took a second, but he found another unnatural feature in the ore. There was a graceful curve embedded in one of the gold stripes. Travis angled the stone and his light caught the edges of one cursive word.

“Eternity.”

“How did a goddamn ring get into a rock in the wall of a cave?” he asked the stone.

Travis looked up at Miguel. He scrambled backwards, nearly dropping the diamond and the ore.

Miguel had moved.

J
USTIN
FLIPPED
THROUGH
THE
rest of the diary, looking for more information. He had read all the text. The binding creaked as he closed it and stuffed it into his bag. He kicked the metal box and the sound echoed through the cave.

He stood up and shouldered the pack. Justin walked along the dry riverbed and thought about this new information.

As he paced, he whispered to himself. “Darkness swallows people. Bones end up in those powder pods. How do they get there?”

He had forgotten about his experiment with the paperback books until his light picked one up on the trail ahead. Justin had arranged them in a line at different elevations in the cave. They weren’t in a line anymore. The one at his feet was several feet down-cave from the others. The higher the elevation, the less each book had moved.

“Some kind of force moves things through the cave,” he said. “Like a giant, glacial digestive system.”

He looked down at the sand beneath his feet. Suddenly, he wasn’t thrilled to be standing there. He climbed the rocks at his side until he was standing on the ledge with the book that had moved the smallest distance. The cave seemed different with his fresh perspective. His notion of an enormous digestive system didn’t match the horror portrayed in the journal.
 

The darkness swallowed them whole. Cracks appeared and then closed on their own.

Justin stopped. His eyes grew wide.

He was in one of the cracks. What if it closed and he was trapped? Justin didn’t waste any more time. He began to run towards where Miguel and Travis had left him.

Justin pulled up short when he got to where the ledge ended. His desperation cast a new light on the passage. The ledge had rounded a corner where it broke away. That’s what made it so difficult to try to leap across. He could barely see the spot where he would need to reach. But jumping wasn’t the only way across the gap. The walls weren’t that far apart. Justin began to wonder if he could put his hands on one and stretch his legs over to the other.
 

He would have to try the technique in a safe place, just to try.
 

Justin retreated to the dry riverbed. He found a spot where rocks were similarly spaced. He put his hands on one and tested his foot against the other. He fell immediately to the sandy floor. Remembering his theory about the digestive nature of the cave, he jumped up and brushed himself off immediately. He thought about his failure for a second and thought he knew the answer. He had been trying to hold his body in a straight line. Architecturally, an arch was much stronger. He found rocks closer together and tested his theory.

It wasn’t easy to walk his hands and feet along opposite walls, but it was possible. He broke off his practice with the idea to save his strength for the real test.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Back at the fissure, Justin examined the walls. He looked for a spot where the gap was manageable. He would have to climb down, below the ledge, to find a place where he could execute his plan.

Justin puffed out his cheeks with a sigh.
 

This was a bad idea. The only sane thing to do was to stay put and wait for help. With the supplies he had found, he had carbide and water, which meant he had light. And he could drink the water to stay hydrated. That should give him more than enough time to wait for help.

On the other hand, there was a chance that help wasn’t coming. If his fissure was like the one from the journal, it might close at any second, trapping him inside. Or, the darkness might come and swallow him whole, like the people from the story.

Justin’s eyes darted back and forth—what if the story was fiction? What if someone had made it up just to mess with explorers?

He shook his head.

“It was too well hidden,” he whispered. “Can’t be fake.”

Yes, he could wait. He could also explore the hall of painted faces more thoroughly. The place had creeped him out, so he had given up on it, but it might also offer a way out. But the crack was known. That’s how he had gotten in.

Justin decided.

He lowered himself to the ledge and hung his feet over.

This had to go perfectly on the first try.

Justin put his feet against the left wall. After a big inhale, he shifted his weight and braced his hands against the opposite wall. He began to shuffle.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Sweat dripped down his nose. Every time he turned his head to see where to put his hand, he burned his arm with the lamp. The helmet threatened to fall off when he looked down. Justin grunted and slid his hand. His abdomen pulled and strained. It felt like the muscles were tearing apart, and he was only a third of the way across.
 

Justin glanced back. He debated turning back.

The mental image of the trapped miners kept him going.

It was easier to move his feet. He could shift his weight between his heel and toe so he didn’t ever lose contact with the wall. His hands were harder. For those he had to temporarily take all the burden with one arm while the other moved.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Justin’s arms vibrated with the effort.

He shifted his weight and one foot slipped. Stretching out his toe, he finally caught an edge. He was at the far end of the gap, but he didn’t know how to make the transition. The ledge was above the level of his shoulder, and the fissure was too wide to climb higher.
 

Justin had no choice. There wasn’t enough strength in his body to attempt the climb back. He was well beyond the point of no return. With one big push, Justin thrust his hands away from the wall and twisted to his left. He caught the lip. For a second, it seemed like the climb would be easy.