The floor beneath her started to tremble.
Suddenly, the floor dropped from under her feet, throwing her off balance. The floor rose back up with a jerk. The elevator bucked wildly, as if it were a wild horse trying to shake a rider. The lights flashed off and on. Gears squealed, metal on metal. A howl like angry wind through a tunnel filled the compartment. The noise rose until it was so loud that Sarah covered her ears.
Sarah screamed and ran to get out of the elevator, squeezing her eyes shut as she approached the door. She lost her balance as the bucking elevator floor dropped out from beneath her. She fell forward onto the floor outside the elevator, landing hard on her knees, scraping them both. Just as she cleared the door, the elevator slammed shut with a crash and the noise was gone.
Sarah picked herself up off the floor. She whimpered from fear, too scared to cry. Blood trickled from her knees and small droplets splattered on the floor, bright red against the green linoleum. Once she steadied herself, she ran to the nurse’s station hoping that someone would be there to help her. The desk was empty.
She called out in the loudest voice she could manage, “Hello. Is anyone here?” No answer.
Then she saw the phone.
She ran behind the desk and picked up the receiver, relief beating back her fear. Help was only a phone call away.
She held the phone to her ear and heard the dial tone. She typed ‘0’ for the operator, but nothing happened. The dial tone blared dully in her ear. She hung up and then tried punching some of the other numbers. Each time she pressed a button she heard the beep on the line, but the dial tone hummed over it. Frustrated, she put the phone back on the hook and slouched in the chair.
The silence made Sarah nervous. It was weird that no grown-ups were around. She couldn’t remember the hospital ever being so empty. The whole thing was spooky. She started to cry softly, too scared to make much noise. She never should have left her sister.
The phone rang. The bright peal of sound seemed to shatter the air around her. She jumped in the chair with a high pitched squeal. She stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring again. Nothing. The same eerie silence returned.
Tentatively, as if it were a hot iron she might burn herself on, she reached out for the phone. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. There was no dial tone.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“Hello,” the voice said.
Sarah swallowed hard. “This is Sarah Tremont,” she said, managing to stop crying and use the polite tone she always used with adults she didn’t know. “I’m looking for my mom.”
“Where are you, darlin’?”
“I don’t know.” She started to cry.
“Shhh now, sugar. Don’t you cry. Look around you, what do you see?”
Sarah did as she was told. “I’m at a nurse’s station on the top floor.”
“Good. That’s good,” the voice flowed in soft tones. “Look at the doors, now. What numbers do you see?”
She leaned to the right to see around the desk. “I see room number 311.”
The voice chuckled. “Well, sugar. You’re just down the hall from your mommy. Only a few doors down.”
“Really? Where’s she at?” She felt like she might cry again, from relief this time. She didn’t care if she got in trouble. All she could think about was getting a big hug from her mom.
“You know the room you saw?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Go on over there and turn to the right. You know your left and right don’t you, sugar?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s real good. Go to the right and keep watching the numbers on the doors. They should be getting bigger.”
“What number is my mom in?”
“Room 320, sugar,” Nate Huckley whispered through the phone. “Hurry now. We’re waitin’ for you.”
FORTY-NINE
Jack heard the rushing water even before he cleared the tight passage leading into the next gallery. The cave was wider than some of the others they had passed through, a good ten yards across. Jack noticed the water with interest, but the enormous missing section of the cave floor was what really caught his attention.
“Step to the side there,” Lonetree instructed. “The middle of the floor could collapse with too much weight.”
Jack nodded and crept along the wall to where the underground river came out of the rock. The water was moving deceptively fast. Shining his lamp on the surface it looked like a giant black snake sliding lazily past him, but reaching down and sticking a finger in the river let him know there was nothing lazy about the flow. Water splashed at him and his hands was knocked away by the force of the current.
“Hey, the water’s warm,” Jack called out.
“A natural hot spring feeds into it. Keeps it a reasonable temperature. You can smell the sulfur.”
The river was only about twenty feet wide, but it transected the passage they were in. Jack looked over to Lonetree.
“It’s moving too fast to swim, how do we get around this? Swing over like Indiana Jones?”
“You got it.”
“I was kidding.”
Lonetree angled his light up to the rock ceiling over the center of the river. There was a metal hook embedded into to the face and a black nylon rope extended to the wall next to Lonetree.
“Isn’t that rust on that hook up there?”
“Yeah, don’t worry though. It held me so it’ll probably hold you too.”
“Probably?”
“Well, you never know about the longevity of these things. It might just give way one day. Just fall out.”
“Great,” Jack said. He shone his light down the length of the river until it disappeared into the opposite wall. “So if I fall in, where does this thing take me?”
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On your religious beliefs. Because if you fall in, you’re dead.” He held out the rope. “You want to go first?”
“No, why don’t you go ahead.”
Lonetree nodded. He removed his backpack and secured all the latches. Satisfied everything was intact, he tossed it across the river, easily clearing it by several feet. “There’s a smaller rope attached to the main rope. It’s there so we could still retrieve it if one of us accidentally let go of the rope after we cross,.” Jack understood that when Lonetree said ‘one of us’ he really meant him. “Just make sure it’s not tangled on anything before you swing across.”
“Check.”
No sooner was the word out of Jack’s mouth than Lonetree was airborne. He kicked his legs out at the lowest part of the arc and arched his back just in time for a perfect landing on the other side. Jack clapped softly for the acrobatics.
“Here, grab the rope,” Lonetree said.
Jack reached out as Lonetree sent the rope back over the river. He grabbed on to it with both hands. “Got it.”
“All right. Now, try to swing at an angle. The floor is weakest in the middle.”
Jack nodded. He tugged on the rope to test his grip, shining his headlamp at the metal ring in the rock roof. He rocked back on his heels and, not wanting to give himself time to change his mind, leapt forward over the water.
The rope had more give than he thought and he had to lift his feet up to keep from dragging them through the river. He tried to swing his momentum forward, aiming toward Lonetree’s light on the far side, but he could tell he was going to come up short. An image flashed in his mind of being swept away in the black waters beneath him. Down through the earth to God knew where. With a cry, he arched his back and stretched his feet out to the rock floor on the other side.
His feet hit solid rock but he was too horizontal. Momentum gone, he started to fall backward.
Lonetree grabbed his waist and pulled him forward. Jack let go of the rope and fell safely to the floor of the cave.