She tried to think through the likely scenarios that would make her daughter hide. Purposely, she threw up a mental wall to block out the image of her little girl being abducted, giving other possibilities top priority. But no matter how thick and high she built the wall to block out the thoughts, she felt them building force inside her mind. Kidnapped. Molested. Murdered. It seemed so unlikely, though. There were people everywhere in the hospital. Someone would have to be crazy to try to take her here.
“Ned!” she called out, running down the hall until she caught up with the old orderly. “Ned, can we put someone at every door. You know, in case—”
“Already done it, ma’am,” he said, his eyes showing none of their usual good humor. It was obvious he was taking Sarah’s disappearance seriously. “I locked some ’a the doors an’ put nurses at the other ones. Jus’ being careful, you know. Don’t think anything like that happened, you know. Lotsa good people ’round here to look out fo’ her.”
Lauren smiled. She appreciated his calmness. It was exactly what she needed. “You’re probably right. Thank you, though. For the doors.”
Ned nodded and continued his walk down the hall calling out Sarah’s name. Lauren headed the other direction and did the same. She’d go floor by floor. She knew by now there were nurses on every floor looking for Sarah, but she wondered if so many people calling out her name would just scare her and make her hide. Maybe she thought she was in trouble. Maybe she had wet herself and was embarrassed to come out.
She fixed on the idea. She had told her sister she had to go to the bathroom. If she couldn’t find one, or didn’t make it in time, that would explain why she might not come out from wherever she was hiding.
Lauren felt herself calm down. The more she thought about it, the more rational it seemed. Once Sarah heard her mother’s voice, she’d come out, all red-faced about having an accident. It was just a matter of getting within hearing distance of wherever she was hiding.
Lauren set off down the hall, struggling to hold on to her confidence that it would be a short search.
FIFTY-ONE
The squeeze hole was worse than Jack imagined. Much worse. Ten minutes to move less than twelve feet, his flesh crammed into any pocket of space available, his breathing made shallow as the rock coffin around him pressed hard on his ribs. Finally, he heard Lonetree’s voice urging him on, giving him instructions. Then a hand grabbed his boot and Lonetree pulled him through the last section.
He sensed that this new cavern was larger than anything they had yet seen. The acoustics were different. The air moved to its own current. Water dripped in the distance sending echoes bouncing off the rock walls. It was a hollow sound, as if time in this place was measured by its disjointed rhythm. It sounded far away but reached them clearly through the dead air. He strained to see into the void in front of him but their helmet lights did little to push back the dark. He tilted his head back until his light pointed straight up. Again, the light was too weak to show anything except the wall stretching up behind them out of sight.
“I can’t see anything” Jack said, not quite sure why he was whispering. “What is this place?” He started to take a step forward but was jerked back by a tug on his overalls.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Lonetree said. He pointed his light toward where Jack had been about to step. They were on a platform of some kind, a ledge on the side of a cliff that dropped straight off only feet from where they stood. One step forward and Jack would have tumbled down into the abyss. “Watch your eyes,” Lonetree warned, holding up what looked like a stick of dynamite.
With a twist, the end of the stick erupted into a brilliant white phosphorus light. Jack could feel the heat from the flare even though he stood several steps away from it. With a grunt Lonetree chucked the flare up into the black void in front of them. It sailed through the air, so bright that it created an eerie after-effect in their eyes, a long tail that tracked its trajectory, as if the light burned a hole in the air as it traveled.
Jack stared at the light tumbling end-over-end through the air. He thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him because at the peak of its arc, high above the platform where they stood, the flare slowed in mid-flight and slowly righted itself, a candle held upright in the air by an invisible hand.
The slight side-to-side sway of the light’s descent gave away the secret. The flare was attached to a parachute, designed to deploy at the peak of its arc. Jack tore his eyes away from the flare and surveyed the chamber now lit for them to see.
It was larger than he suspected. Even with the light of the flare, the far wall of the cavern remained hidden in shadows. What he could see was immense. The rock platform they were on was twenty or thirty feet above the floor of the chamber and the roof soared at least three times that distance above them. Gigantic stalactites hung from the top of the cavern like an inverted forest of dead trees, glistening from moisture still seeping through the rock. Some reached down to meet their stalagmite siblings, looking like giant redwoods, or like ornate columns holding up the roof. The bright light of the flare reflected off of crystal structures embedded in the rock walls and brought out the brilliant reds and browns of the formations.
After absorbing the dimensions of the chamber, Jack turned his attention to the floor of the cavern. The slow sway of the flare as it descended cast long moving shadows across the floor, making it hard to discern the structures spread out beneath him. As the flare closed the space between it and the floor, the light revealed more of what was beneath it. Then the air around the flare grew still and in that moment the cavern revealed its secret.
Jack took a step back, reaching behind him to find the rock wall. “My God. What is this place?” he muttered.
Lonetree didn’t hear him. It was his fourth time to the cave, but the scene still robbed him of his breath. Each time the terror of what he saw turned his blood cold. He lit another flare once the parachute hit the ground, this one less intense. He held it in front of him like a torch. “Follow me. And stay close.”
Jack forced himself to look away from the scene laid out below him. He turned to watch Lonetree disappear down the side on the ledge. At first inspection, it looked like the rock ledge dropped off at a ninety degree angle, straight down to the cluster of stalagmites below. Now that he stood looking down at the edge of the platform he saw that there was a slight slope. Lonetree was making good time down the rock face aided by the hand and foot holds carved into the smooth rock. Obviously, they weren’t the first to use this entrance.
Jack descended the rock ladder, testing each handhold before shifting his weight to it. The grooves carved into the rock were rough and uneven, as if hacked out by a pickax or a crude chisel.
Jack jumped the last few feet and landed next to Lonetree. His light wobbled through the air until he steadied himself. But once he shone his light on the stalagmites rising from the ground in front of him, he wished he’d been a little more careful coming down the ladder. The limestone pillars were chiseled to a point, arrayed along the base of the ledge like an animal trap. Jack suddenly felt very unwelcome. They were the animals the sharpened stone spikes were meant to kill.
“Step where I step,” Lonetree said. “I’ve found some nasty traps down here, things you definitely want to avoid.”