These memories should have made him even more grateful for the light, but instead he found a strange resentment of it. He maneuvered through the tunnel without needing to make any effort or even give any thought to avoiding the walls and the rocks, and he felt almost outraged by how simple it seemed. He knew what he’d earned in the dark, he knew how hard it had come, how much it had taken from both mind and body. That anything so arduous could be made so easy felt almost insulting, a mocking of what he had achieved.
The tunnel opened up, and the flashlight exposed a wide chamber with high ceilings and an odd, staggered floor that looked almost like bleachers, as if the water had carved seating for some grand performance. The Chapel Room, he assumed. There was no trace of Ridley or Julianne, but there was blood from Cecil. Less of it now, spaced out by larger distances.
Mark set down the rifle and withdrew Ridley’s map once more and checked. Yes, this was the Chapel Room. Here again he had options — three passages, one that went up to a second level of the cave, one that went straight ahead, and one that curled to the right. The passages both directly ahead and to the right took you to the Funnel Room, the place where they had first heard Mark’s voice. According to the dimensions on the map, the passage to the right was much larger, a walking passage with a twelve-foot ceiling. The passage ahead was labeled in Ridley’s scrawl — belly crawl, very tight. The wider passage was a much longer trip toward the same destination, a distance of a quarter of a mile to achieve what the belly crawl would do in three hundred feet.
He stepped back and moved the light around and saw that what looked like one rock angled in front of another was actually a gap in the wall. The obvious opening was a dead end, but the hidden one led on. There was blood on the floor here. Cecil had taken the walking passage.
Mark hesitated and looked back at Ridley’s map. For ease of access, he should follow Cecil’s route. If he took the crawl, though, and he moved fast enough, he could pull ahead of Cecil.
He turned from the open passage and walked back to the crawl without allowing any pause for reflection. When he saw the opening, it did not look so bad: a gap at least three feet high and equally wide. Easy going. He dropped back down to his hands and knees then and shone the light into the tunnel and saw a shelf of rock ceiling so low that it didn’t look as if a basketball could roll through.
“No,” he whispered. “Not worth it.”
That was when he heard a voice. Too soft to be understood but undeniably human. He ducked lower, listened. Heard the voice again and this time he recognized it: Julianne’s.
She was alive, and she was speaking. Cecil Buckner, who had left behind a gruesome scene that made no sense to Mark, was heading toward her. How close Cecil was to her, Mark didn’t know, but thanks to Ridley’s map, Mark knew exactly how close he was — three hundred feet. One football field, that was all.
One football field that he would have to crawl over on his belly, his shoulders squeezed on each side, the ceiling brushing his head.
He lowered himself onto his stomach and crawled forward, once more pushing the .22 ahead of him with his left hand while holding the flashlight in his right. Five feet in, then ten, and he was feeling fine, he believed that the visual intimidation of the crawl was harder than the process.
Then his shoulders brushed the walls. No big deal. Just wriggle forward. He lifted his head so he could extend his elbows.
His head cracked off the stone ceiling, and when he lowered it, his chin bounced off the floor.
Terror now. A flood of it. Not even fifteen feet in and he felt trapped, felt as if he should scramble backward.
He closed his eyes. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and over his eyelid and across his lips. He licked it away, tasting the salt. Opened his eyes.
Everything ahead of him was blurred. The passage was too low, too narrow, too dark.
But he could breathe. He could breathe and he could move.
He also knew where it led. He knew that because Ridley Barnes had passed through here before. More than once. He’d passed through it with enough calm and composure to not only see where it led but chart its dimensions. Belly crawl, very tight.
A voice became audible again. Julianne’s. Soothing, composed. What she’d endured to this point Mark had no idea, but he’d seen Danielle MacAlister’s corpse. He knew what waited ahead for her.
We’ll all end up here, he thought. It’s just a matter of time. I’ll join them all down here. Sarah Martin. Diane Martin. Lauren.
He crawled ahead. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty. His breathing came too fast and his heart thundered. For the second time in this cave, he thought that he heard snakes, but there weren’t any. This time he had the light to prove it. He paused for a few seconds and steadied himself and then pushed on. Again he tried to look up and banged his head and felt a shudder of pain all the way along his spine. There was a reason you were supposed to wear a helmet. He crawled on, shoving the rifle in front of him, and he was cursing his slow progress when he heard two voices, a man’s voice joining Julianne’s, and this time he could understand the words, and the first one that registered was light.
He clicked off the flashlight, sure that they were speaking of him and were aware of his arrival. The instant the light was gone he had no idea where he was. The totality of the darkness was like a physical thing. His thumb moved toward the switch again but he willed it down and did not touch it. Instead, he crept forward slowly, moving as quietly as possible. He no longer believed the distance on Ridley’s map. It had to be a lie. Mark had been crawling for more than a hundred yards. A half a mile at least. Two miles. The distance was as endless as the darkness.
The words became clear just as the walls widened and the ceiling lifted. Julianne and Ridley were speaking, and they were not far from him. It seemed they were in a room just around the bend, but that meant they were in total darkness. All that existed of them was their voices. It gave the situation an eerie quality of unreality. Ridley’s voice had been low and sluggish when it first became audible but now it was sharp, his words racing.
“She’s there and I can hear her and I know that I can’t go back because it sounds as if she’s hurting. Hurting and afraid but so close. She is so close and that means I can’t go back, I have to go forward or I might lose her. And it’s a problem because the light is getting dim; it’s getting dark and so I have to hurry.”
Mark shifted his hand so he could reach the rifle’s trigger. Then he heard Julianne.
“Why is the light getting dim?” she asked, but there was no light in their room, and Mark finally understood what was happening. Ridley’s rapid account was being spoken in the present tense but the story came from the past. He was talking about Sarah Martin.
Ridley said, “Batteries, batteries, I’ve been running this lamp too long, the whole time down here, and there’s another one behind me but I can’t go back for it now because I can hear her and I can’t lose her, this is why I’m in the cave, I came for her, right? I came for her. The crawl is tight, very narrow, squeezes the shoulders, and I can’t believe she came this way. I can’t believe it. She was not skilled enough to get here, but she is here. No one else has been here, so how did she make it? Just a scared girl in the dark. How did she make it? She couldn’t have made it.”
“If you didn’t believe you would find her in this place, what led you to it?”