She felt along the damp stone wall, found the light switch, flicked it on.
It had been years since she’d been in the cave. Her father had taken her there once, when she was six or seven, not long before he’d run off. For another moment she remained still, looking down into the yawning tunnel. Then she began to descend the limestone steps, her waffle-stompers echoing against the stone.
After a long descent, the staircase gave onto a wooden boardwalk that disappeared between stalagmites and stalactites. Corrie had forgotten just how strange the place was. As a kid going there, she’d been surrounded by adults. Now she was alone in the silence. She walked forward hesitantly, wishing her shoes didn’t make such a hollow sound against the walkway. Bare bulbs, hanging from the uneven ceiling far overhead, threw spectral shadows against the walls. A forest of stalagmites, like jagged, giant spears, rose on both sides. There was no sound in the vast empty space but her footsteps and the distant drip of water.
Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea.
She shook off the feeling of dread. There was no one here. The puddles on the wooden walkway had a skimming of silt that registered her footprints. It was clear—just as it had been outside the iron door—that no one had walked through in days. The last person in here was most likely Pendergast himself being dragged through the tour.
Corrie hastened through the first cavern, ducked under a narrow opening, and entered the second cavern. Immediately, she remembered what it was called: the Giant’s Library. She remembered that, as a kid, she’d thought the place really wasa giant’s library. Even now, she had to admit that the rock formations looked amazingly real.
But always, the silence felt watchful, somehow, and the dim light oppressive, and she hurried on. She passed the Bottomless Pit and reached the Infinity Pool, which glowed a strange green in the light. This was the farthest point of the tour; here the walkway looped back toward the Krystal Kathedral. Beyond lay only darkness.
Corrie turned on her flashlight and probed the darkness beyond the boardwalk, but could see nothing.
She climbed over the wooden rail and stood at the edge of the pool. The walls of the caverns she’d passed through had been devoid of any passageway or portal. If anything lay beyond, she’d have to go through the pool to find it.
Corrie sat on the rail and unlaced her shoes, took them off, pulled off the socks and stuffed them into her shoes, and tied the laces together. Holding the shoes in one hand, she stuck a toe in the pool. The water was shockingly cold and deeper than it looked. She waded across as quickly as she could and pulled herself out the other side. Now her legs were wet, damn it. Barefooted, she clambered down the far side of the pool and shone her light into the darkness at its base. Here she could see a low tunnel going off to the right. The ground was soft limestone, well worn down by old comings and goings. She was on the right track.
She sat on a hump of limestone and pulled her socks over her wet feet, then laced up the heavy waffle-stompers. She should’ve thought to wear old sneakers.
She stood up and approached the tunnel. She had to duck—it was about five feet high—and as she progressed the ceiling got lower. Water trickled along the bottom. Then the ceiling rose again and the tunnel bent sharply to the right.
Her light shone on an iron door, padlocked just like the one at the front of the cave.
This is it, then. This must lead to the old still.
Once again, she took out her lock-picking tools and went to work. For some reason—perhaps because of the poor light, perhaps because her fingers felt unaccountably thick and uncoordinated—this lock took much longer. But after several minutes, she felt the unmistakable give as the driver pin set. Silently, she placed the lock to one side and swung the door open.
She paused in the entranceway, shining her light around cautiously. Ahead, a dark passageway cored through the living rock of the cave, its walls smooth and faintly phosphorescent. She started forward, following it for perhaps a hundred feet, flashlight playing around the walls, until it suddenly widened into a chamber. But this space had none of the vastness or majesty of the earlier caverns, just a few stubbly stalagmites rising from the rough uneven floor. The air was chill and close, and there was a smell, an unusual smelclass="underline" smoke. Old smoke, and something else. Something foul. She could feel the cool flow of air coming from the open door, stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck.
This had to be it: the old moonshine still.
She advanced into the gloom, and as she did so her flashlight picked up something at the far end—a dull gleam of metal. She took another step, then another. There it was: an old pot still, an almost cartoonlike relic from a vanished era, with an enormous copper cauldron sitting on a tripod stand and the ashes of an old fire underneath. Stacked on a shelf above the floor were some split logs. The top of the cauldron, with its long coil of copper tubing, had been removed and now lay on the floor, partially crushed. There were several smaller pots and cauldrons scattered about.
She paused to sweep the room with her light. Off to one side was a table with a couple of glasses on it, one broken. Pieces of a chair lay on the floor beside a rotting playing card; an ace, Corrie noticed. In one corner stood a pile of broken bottles and jugs of all kinds: wine bottles, mason jars, clay jugs, amidst moldy trash. She could just imagine the men tending the fire, playing cards, drinking, smoking.
Now she shone her light upward. At first she could see nothing, the ceiling was so black. But then she was able to make out some broken stalactites and a honeycomb of cracks that, apparently, had drawn off the smoke. Even so, they couldn’t have drawn it off very fast: her breath was condensing in the air, surrounding her with a fog that the flashlight set aglow.
She approached the cauldron set upon its iron tripod. It was certainly big enough to boil a human being. It was hard to tell, with all the dampness, if it had been used recently. Would the place still smell of smoke from the long-ago days of the still? She wasn’t sure. And then there was that other smelclass="underline" the bad one. Not rotten, exactly; it was even worse than rot. It was that same smell of spoiled ham as at the crime scene.
Corrie stopped, feeling suddenly frightened. She’d come to see if the still was there. Well, it wasthere. She should turn around and get out. In fact, coming here at all now seemed like a really, really bad idea.
She swallowed. Once again, she reminded herself that she’d already come this far. Might as well take five more seconds to finish the reconnoiter.
She tiptoed up and looked inside the cauldron. A smell of rancid grease hit her as she shone her light inside.
At the bottom was something pale, almost transparent, like a pearly seashell. A human ear.
She gagged and staggered back, dropping her flashlight. It struck the hard limestone floor and rolled away toward a dark corner, beam revolving lazily across the floor and ceiling, finally coming to rest against a far wall with a heavy thud.
A second later, it went out, and the cavern was thrown into utter blackness.
Shit,Corrie thought. Shit, shit.
Carefully, she got down on her hands and knees and, moving slowly, feeling along the ground with her hands, crawled in the direction it had rolled. Within a minute her hands brushed the rock wall of the cave. She began to feel along it, looking for the flashlight.
It wasn’t there.
She swallowed again, sitting up on her haunches. For a minute, she thought about trying to find her way out in absolute darkness. But the way back down was so long, it would be easy to get disoriented. She fought down a feeling of panic. She would find the flashlight. It must have gone off in the collision with the wall. She’d find it, shake the light back into it, and get the hell out of there.
She moved along the wall, first to the left, then to the right, feeling with her hands.
No flashlight.
Maybe she’d taken the wrong tack. Carefully, she crawled back to where she thought she’d started, and then tried again, crawling in the direction she remembered the light had rolled. Still, no matter how far she went along the wall, sweeping the ground with her hands, she could not find the flashlight.