Mark lay flat on his back, holding out his hands. An especially low section of ceiling scraped across his forehead and he felt a warm trickle of blood run down his temple. He tried to push against the rock, an impossible bench press, to force the raft down into the water and make room for his body to pass beneath the granite just scant inches above his face. Terrified, he held his breath and waited for Steven to summon the staff’s magic and carry them back upstream.
A mantra ran through his mind: What if it didn’t work? It had failed that day on the riverbed; what if that happened again? Why was Steven hesitating – was he trying to summon the magic now, and was it ignoring him? He had agreed to take them back to the cavern mouth, but he hadn’t said a word since, and still they were inching their way forward. Where was he? Mark could hear the river rushing by beneath them; he wondered why the current was suddenly moving so quickly. ‘Steven,’ he cried, a muffled plea, ‘are you still there?’
Get overboard. That was Mark’s only option. He had to get overboard and maybe find a hand or foothold in the wall so he could stop the raft’s progress long enough for the others to roll off into the water as well. Push and slide. That’s it. Push and slide. One leg down. Push and slide. Both legs.
Mark relaxed the pressure he had been putting against the ceiling with his arms for a moment to adjust his grip, and in that instant, the Capina Fair buoyed upward forcing the granite down on his chest. Get a breath in. Get a breath in, shit. He tried to roll to one side, to inch one hand, one finger up between his chest and the rock ceiling, but he couldn’t. Desperate, he tried to push with his forehead. Not much, I don’t need much, just enough to get a breath in. Breathe. Get a breath in.
Behind him he heard Brynne scream; beside him he could feel Garec kicking violently to free himself from the bone-crushing pressure.
Suddenly everything erupted in a blinding flash. Water splashed over the sides of the Capina Fair, and Mark felt his lungs fill with welcome air. His hands free, he reached upwards for the granite ceiling, but found nothing there. He tried to roll, expecting the stone to hold his shoulders down, but a moment later he tumbled from the deck into the frigid water.
The cold cleared his head and as he kicked towards the surface, he saw light once again, a bright light that sliced through the darkness.
Mark broke the surface of the water in a rage. ‘Steven, you stupid sonofabitch! What in the seven shades of Hell were you waiting for?’ His voice echoed back in huge, swollen waves, the inane mimicry of an irritating lesser god. Stunned silent by the din, Mark took in their surroundings. The Capina Fair, now about twenty yards ahead of him, drifted on an underground lake. Garec and Steven stood staring into the distance while Brynne reached out to him with one of the poles. He swam towards the raft. Behind them, he could see the impossibly narrow opening through which Steven had forced the raft only seconds before. There would be no going back that way. The river pushed through a hairline crack in the granite wall with tremendous force, and Mark marvelled at how they had managed to get through without losing their packs or supplies – or one another – in the narrow passage.
In the air above the raft hovered an enormous ball of fire – no, as Mark peered upwards at it, he realised that it was somehow more than fire. It was blinding, a brighter, more intense flame, like something that might have come from a chemistry set, or maybe a magic stick.
Around them, the lake stretched out to fill the gigantic cavern. Mark could still hear his voice, booming back from what felt like miles away: Sonofabitch… Sonofabitch… Sonofabitch…
High above, the granite ceiling had retreated to its original position. It looked different now, flecked with iridescent minerals; odd colours sparkling in the magical light. Getting chilly now the fear had worn off, Mark drew his lungs full of air and dropped beneath the surface, allowing the cold to sink in and further clear his mind.
He felt better. They were still alive. Steven’s fire could ensure they were warm and dry, and after a good night’s sleep, they could put their minds to finding a way out.
When Mark resurfaced, he caught sight of Brynne, who was still holding the wooden pole out to him and staring grimly.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, more quietly this time.
She pointed towards the shoreline, and the grotesque discovery that had his friends silenced.
Bones. Thousands – no, millions of bones. Human bones: skulls, femurs, ribs, some still held together in partial cage shapes by strands of rotten cartilage, radii, jawbones, and an apparently endless array of tiny hand and foot bones scattered about: a charnel-house to rival the largest mass grave ever by ten thousand times.
‘Good Christ,’ he whispered.
‘Mark,’ Steven called, ‘you’d better get up here.’
The shoreline sloped gradually down to the water; as far as Mark could see the angle and depth remained the same in any direction. The only break in the shore was the forbidding edifice that rose up behind them, a huge granite monolith. Mark wondered if that wall was devoid of a shoreline because the river that burst from it had washed the shore away eons ago. Instead of sand, the shore was made up of small round pebbles mixed with the ubiquitous bone fragments; the way the light glinted from the stones made it look as if they were diamonds. Mark dreaded the moment when he would have to step ashore, for there would be no way to avoid feeling the bones crunch and shatter underfoot.
He pulled himself up onto the deck and stood beside Steven. Clapping his friend on the back, he said, ‘What a lovely place you have here. How are you getting along with the neighbours?’
‘Mark, be serious,’ Brynne scolded.
‘Serious? I’m not the one who wanted to go into the cavern in the first place, let me remind you.’
Steven shushed him. ‘Listen, I really did see something.’
‘Something?’
‘A light. It flickered for a moment, and then it went out. There’s someone down here.’
Mark stared at him incredulously. ‘Someone down here? Have you not noticed that the entire population of Uruguay appears to have their bones stacked against that wall? Of course there’s someone down here, but I’m not certain he’s setting out a warm welcome and a nice dinner for us right now.’
Steven ignored him. ‘What do you suppose it was? A plague? A war?’
‘It couldn’t have been,’ Garec replied.
‘Why not?’ Brynne asked.
‘Look at the bones. They’re not jumbled together like they would be in a mass grave.’
Mark exhaled. ‘Holy mother, he’s right.’
Garec summed up what each of them was thinking. ‘Those bones were collected here, organised carefully into similar stacks, skulls here, legs there, arms across the way.’
Brynne looked like she was about to dive into the water and risk the swim back upstream. ‘Who could have done this?’
‘Or what?’ Mark looked puzzled, as if trying to remember something. Grimacing, he turned to Steven. ‘Can you move the stafflight nearer the ceiling?’
‘Why?’
‘I hope it’s nothing, but send it up anyway.’
Mark’s fears were confirmed: through the hazy, half-light they could see the ceiling had been decorated with bones. Some dangled downwards from the rocky roof while others lay flat, displayed against the dark surface of the stone, as if to enhance their ivory colour with a black backdrop. These bones were obviously prized. Skulls were hanging everywhere, ogling the trespassers through long-empty eye sockets.
His mouth agape, Steven stared solemnly upwards, mute with stupefaction. His mind raced, but the image of what might have committed such a gruesome act made him close his eyes; he pictured some creature, nefarious, and crafty, with an almost human capacity for understanding, but with spindly legs like a spider’s, or perhaps thick membranous wings and wickedly clawed talons.