“I take what the cave gives me. It’s one of the only rules.”
“Who makes those rules?”
“The cave. The rules have always been here, but you understand them better in the dark.”
Mark was relieved that he’d turned off his light. He hadn’t wanted to go dark in this place ever again, but if Ridley believed these were the rules, it was better not to disturb him. He wasn’t sure whether to advance or wait. Without being able to see what was before him, he couldn’t make a call on how to proceed. It seemed to be just the two of them, no demonstrated danger, but Cecil Buckner was circling from the other side.
“Continue along the journey,” Julianne said.
“It’s dark by the time I make the top of the crawl. Battery’s done, it’s dead, I’ve made it all the way now but I don’t have light and I can’t go back because she’s so close. So I shout.”
Mark didn’t like the use of the present tense. It suggested Ridley wasn’t recalling the past as much as reliving it. Still, he was entranced by it, because what Ridley was telling Julianne now was the thing he’d refused to share for ten years.
“What do you shout at her?” Julianne asked.
“That I’m coming for her. That she will be safe.”
“Does she answer?”
“Yes. She asks me to stop. She says, ‘Please, stop.’ But that doesn’t make any sense because she’s lost and she’s hurt and she needs help. So I keep climbing, and she says, ‘Please, stop,’ and I think that she is talking to me but it’s to the cave.”
“Why do you think it’s to the cave?”
“Because the cave tries to kill me. And then I do the wrong thing. I fight it.”
“How do you fight it?”
“With my knife. The dark man, he has me by the throat. I have no lights anymore but I still have the knife.”
“Who is the dark man?”
“He belongs to the cave. He’s always been here.”
Mark thought, Here we go, here we lose him, any chance of getting the truth dies with the madness of the dark man, but Julianne countered Ridley beautifully.
“How can you fight someone who has always been here?” she asked.
“With my knife. I grab it and I slam the blade backward, again and again, and he’s screaming now.”
“Screaming because you are causing him pain?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s always been in the cave?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see how these things might create a problem when considered together?”
There was a long pause. Finally, Ridley’s voice returned: “He should be hard to hurt. Impossible to hurt.”
She was getting him to confront his own fiction or hallucination or whatever it was. Mark could hardly breathe. There was no police interview that could have delivered this. No interrogation. He wouldn’t have believed that before, but he was sure of it now.
“If he is eternal, it seems he should be difficult to hurt, yes,” Julianne said. “But you’re certain you hurt him?”
“Yes. I am certain. And then I have to make him stop. I have to silence him.”
“Why?”
“Because when he screams, she screams, and so I need him to stop, I have to make him stop. So I do. It’s a mistake, though. It is a terrible mistake. Because now he can’t tell me where she is, and he’s the one who knows. Who knew. I should have stopped when he screamed.”
Mark could hear Ridley sobbing between the words now.
“I should have let him keep screaming, that is better than the way it is now, because he can’t talk, and he’s the one who knows where she is. And now I can’t see and I don’t know where to go. It’s dark all around but I can still hear her. She’s so close, but I can’t see! And I think... I think he was providing for her, maybe? At least he knew how to find her. But now he can’t go back. Because of me. So I’m going to have to find her in the dark and I will have to find her fast, because if I don’t, if I don’t...”
“What happens if you don’t?”
“She dies,” Ridley said, his voice dipping. “I need to find her before she dies.”
Mark thought of that first confession — I think I killed her. This version had another layer: he’d removed her lifeline. She’d died because of his actions but not at his hand in this scenario. If it was true, if any of it was true, that meant someone else had died in Trapdoor too.
“Let’s consider the dark man again, if you wish. Tell me what he sounded like, what he smelled like, what he felt like. Use all the senses. They have their own memories, as you know. Use them now.”
“Blood,” Ridley said.
“What?”
“He smells of blood. Then Sarah does. And then I do the wrong thing.”
“What wrong thing?”
“I take her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She belongs to the cave. She was never supposed to leave. That’s why so much pain came. It’s a penance. She wasn’t supposed to go.”
He sounded like a child now, his voice high and needy and desperate: Understand me. Mark shifted forward, trying to hear, because Ridley’s voice had grown very soft. Mark had no idea when he should act. He didn’t know where Cecil was, wasn’t even certain that Cecil was a threat. Without any view of the room or sense of where Ridley and Julianne were, Mark could put her in more danger by entering the room. He thought of the scope on the .22 then, the cheap infrared. He could project a red dot into the room, but they’d see that. Useless. He needed to commit to the light at some point.
“You wanted to talk about the necklace,” Julianne said. “You wanted to know how it found its way into your hand. Think of the necklace now. What is your first memory of the necklace?”
“She dies,” Ridley said as if he hadn’t heard the question. “I need to find her before she dies. I can hear her and I know that she is alive and I am supposed to find her. I am supposed to save her. It’s why I’m here. The only reason.”
There was silence from them, and Mark wondered if it was because Julianne was as stunned as he was, if she was beginning to fumble for the next question, the next bit of guidance. That didn’t seem like her, though. She understood how to take things home. Why the silence?
When she spoke again, the trance cadence was gone from her voice, and sharpness had replaced it.
“Ridley, I am going to count to five. When we reach five, you will be gone from the past, you will be feeling so good, relieved of your burdens and so good, you will feel safe and” — What in the hell is she doing? Mark thought, and that was when he saw a faint light on the wall up ahead — “at peace. One. Feeling energized now, feeling good energy spreading through you. Two.”
She was panicking, rushing through. That light bothered her, which meant it didn’t come from the two of them. They were no longer alone. Someone had joined them in the cave; someone was approaching.
The caretaker had arrived.
Mark got to his feet as she said “Three” and then Ridley spoke for the first time in several seconds.
“Here he comes. I knew that he would. She’s sent him to stop us.”
The pale light intensified then and the world of stone lit up before Mark. He was facing a chamber with an angled roof and he could see Ridley clearly, Ridley with one arm wrapped around Julianne Grossman’s throat, pulling her backward, stumbling among the rock formations, trying to clear the two of them away from the white light that was emerging from a tunnel twenty feet ahead. Ridley fell and Julianne fell with him and her skull smacked the stone with a crack that hurt just to hear. Ridley froze and looked at her in horror as blood spread through her blond hair. His attention belonged entirely to her and he didn’t even turn to face the light when Cecil Buckner stepped out from the tunnel, wearing a caving helmet and holding a shotgun belt-high.