At that point Ben spoke up. “Hey, I think you guys might want to take a look at this.”
They made their way over to where Ben was shining his light on an object wedged in the rocks. Jack bent down for a closer look.
It looked like some type of segmented appendage—almost like a crab leg. But bigger than any crab Jack had ever seen.
Much bigger.
Rudy gently pried it loose and held it up in the light. The smooth, hard claw portion was about twelve inches long, black with a gray underside and curved down to a point like a sword from one of those old Sinbad movies Jack used to watch. The rest of the limb was segmented by two connecting joints and snapped off just past the second joint. Shreds of white tendons and pink muscle tissue dangled out of the jagged end.
Jack straightened up. “I don’t even want to know what that came from.”
Ben grunted. “Looks more like something that belongs at the bottom of the ocean.”
“It’s definitely some kind of arthropod.” Rudy turned the appendage over in his hands. “It’s gotta be at least eighteen or twenty inches long. That’d give this thing—whatever it is—over a three-foot leg span.”
“Probably closer to four,” Ben said. He stood and looked around. Then he pointed his light toward the wall of the cavern. “I say we keep moving. Looks like there’s another tunnel over there.”
“Fine, but I want to take this with me,” Rudy said. He got his wet shirt out of his pack, wrapped the appendage tightly, and stuffed it back inside. Then he produced a small plastic Ziploc bag of peanuts and dumped them into his pack. “I’m going to take a sample of this slime too. Just in case we actually make it out of here alive.”
They made their way through the passage Ben had indicated. The tunnel narrowed quickly and soon the slime had dissipated, leaving them relying again on their flashlights for navigation. The luminescent slime had given Jack a sense of space, but now the darkness seemed to huddle around them, making the tunnel feel even more cramped.
Finally the passage opened onto a wide, oval-shaped cavern. The walls swept upward, nearly vertical, giving the chamber a basin-like shape. This room, however, had no cheerful tendrils of glowing slime. It was completely dark, and the darkness felt even heavier than inside the passage.
Jack swept his light around. Ahead of them, twenty yards or so, the chamber curved slightly and extended out of their line of sight. Jack pointed the light back toward Ben and noticed that he was staring at the wall behind them.
“Jack, you might want to get a shot of this,” he said.
Jack turned to see markings scrawled on the surface of the rock with what looked like white chalk. They consisted of vertical lines with smaller lines protruding out at right angles in varying spots.
Rudy leaned in to view them. “Looks like the same kind of writing from your dad’s drawing.”
“We’re not the first ones here,” Jack said, digging out his camera to take some shots of the wall.
Ben stood with his hands on his hips. “Well, at least we know there’s probably another way out of here. I’m guessing whoever drew these came in by some other entrance.”
Jack zoomed in on the writing. “I wonder if these are the markings that Running Bear’s grandfather saw.”
They checked the wall for additional images but found none. So they spread out to inspect the rest of the chamber. Jack was searching along one wall where he’d discovered several side passages leading away from the main chamber. But they all looked too tight to crawl through. He was crouched down, shining his light into one of the tunnels, when he heard Rudy let out a sort of low groan.
Ben’s voice echoed in the dark. “What’s wrong?”
Rudy replied, “Just tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
Jack scrambled up the rocks to where Ben and Rudy stood with their lights aimed at the ground. “What is it? What happened?”
In the dim circle of light Jack could see what looked like several long sticks lying in the mud and gravel at Rudy’s feet. They had a pale, ashen color that stood in stark contrast to the black rocks. So pale, in fact, that they seemed to glow in the light. Jack tried in vain to suppress a gasp.
“Bones?”
Rudy knelt down for a closer look. “Looks like a couple femurs and maybe some ribs.”
“They’re human, all right.” Ben’s voice sounded distant and detached.
“How do you know that?” Jack said.
“Because here’s the rest of him.” Ben swept his light to the side, where it fell upon a skull perched amid a small pile of other bones. Wide, hollow eye sockets stared back at them, and an open jaw gaped as if frozen in the midst of a silent laugh.
Additional arm and leg bones lay strewn within a ten- or fifteen-foot radius. Jack struggled through his revulsion to maintain a level of professional detachment, but there was something sinister he noticed in the discovery. Something familiar and darkly unsettling that he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with the others.
“He’s, uh…” Jack didn’t know quite how to put it. “He’s sort of… all over the place.”
Ben flicked his light up into Jack’s face, then back down at the skull. “Like the millipede in the tunnel. He’s been torn limb from limb.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Ben turned away as Jack knelt beside the skull and lifted it, inspecting it for gashes or other marks of violence. He saw none. The surface was smooth, free from any bit of flesh. Like it had been picked clean.
“Jack.” Rudy’s voice was so soft that Jack at first didn’t heed it. “Jack.”
Jack looked up and saw Rudy standing on the edge of a rise, shining his flashlight down into the cavern on the other side.
“What?”
Rudy’s voice sounded grim. “I think you should see this.”
Jack drew up beside him. “What is it?”
Rudy pointed down into the cavern. “It looks like there’s more.”
Jack could see more white slivers glowing in the light near the bottom of the pit. He picked his way slowly down the rocky slope as his stomach tightened and his hands grew cold. He had never been this close to death before, and he fought his rising fears. Fear of never finding a way out of this cave and of whatever might be lurking in the stifling blackness. Fear that he would end up like these corpses, lost in the dark and the mud.
And a cold, paralyzing fear that one of them might be the remains of his father.
He reached the bottom and stopped in his tracks. The shapes of white bones littered the ground amid the rocks and mud. Maybe dozens of them. Parts of an arm and a leg, at least two skulls, and what looked like collarbones and more ribs. His jaw tightened as he swept the light across the rocks.
Rudy’s voice came from the top of the rise. “What do you see?”
Jack willed himself to move farther down into the chamber and saw still more pale fragments. More skulls.
“Yeah, there’s more down here,” he heard himself say, like he was having some kind of out-of-body experience. “I’m guessing… maybe a dozen or more.”
Jack’s legs froze and he could go no farther. He moved the light ahead and upward and his eyes widened at what he saw. Then he turned away and retched the contents of his stomach into the mud.
Moments later he could hear Rudy and Ben shuffling down the incline.
“You okay?” Rudy said.
“Not really, no.” Jack wiped a muddied sleeve across his mouth and then pointed his light up again ahead of them. As he did, he could see Rudy take a step backward.