The sun had continued its slide and the shadow of the canyon’s western wall had crawled three-quarters of the way up the tav by the time he returned to the top with the two flashlights.
He stood there a moment, panting, sweating from the climb, before he realized he was alone on the plateau.
“Carrie?” He dashed toward the rock pile, shouting as he ran. “Carrie!”
“What?”
Her head popped up atop the rock pile, smiling at him, and as he clambered up the boulders he saw her lying on her belly with her legs and pelvis inside the opening. She looked like someone half-swallowed by a stony mouth.
“My God, Carrie, couldn’t you wait? Get out of there!”
“I’m fine.” She reached a hand out to him. “Flashlight please.”
“I’ll go first.”
“No way. You didn’t even want to come.”
Dan was tempted to withhold the flashlight, make her climb out of there and let him shine a beam around inside before she crawled in. But the excitement, the child-like eagerness in her eyes weakened him. And after all, this was her show.
He flicked one on to make sure it worked, then slapped the handle into her waiting palm.
“Be careful. And wait right there. Don’t go anywhere without me.”
“Okay.”
Another smile, so confident looking, but Dan noticed the flashlight shaking in her hand. She pushed herself backward and slipped the rest of the way inside.
A chill of foreboding ran through him as he saw her disappear into that hole, swallowed by the darkness. God knew what could be in there.
“Carrie? You there? You okay?”
Her face floated back into the light. “Of course I’m okay. Kind of cool in here, and dusty, and it looks...empty.”
I could have told you that, Dan thought, but kept it to himself. He’d give anything to make this right for her, but that was impossible. So the least he could do was be there when the hurt hit.
“Stand back a little. I’m coming in.”
Dan slid down onto his back and entered the opening feet first. A tight squeeze but he managed to wriggle through with only a few minor scrapes and scratches.
Carrie stood a few feet away, her back to him, playing her flashlight beam along the walls.
“You’re right,” he said, coughing as he brushed himself off. “A lot cooler in here. Almost cold.”
Quickly he flashed his own beam around. Not a cave so much as a rocky alcove, maybe a dozen feet deep and fifteen wide, with rough, pocked walls. And no doubt about its being empty. Not even a spider. Just dust—dry, powdered rock—layering the floor. Only Carrie’s footprints and his own marred the silky surface.
What do I say? he wondered. Do I say anything—or let Carrie say it first?
As he stepped toward her, Carrie suddenly moved away to the left.
“Look. I think there’s a tunnel here.”
Dan caught up to her, joined his flash beam to hers, and realized that what he had thought to be a pocket recess near the floor of the cave was actually an opening into another chamber.
Carrie dropped to her hands and knees and shone her light through.
“See anything?” Dan said, hovering over her.
“Looks like more of the same. Tunnel’s only a couple of feet long. I’m going in for a look.”
Dan squatted behind her and gently patted her buttocks. “Right behind you.”
Carrie began to crawl, then stopped, freezing like a deer who’s heard a twig break, then quickly scrambled the rest of the way through.
“Oh, Dan,” he heard her say in a hoarse, quavering voice just above a whisper. “Oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan!”
He belly-crawled through as fast as his elbows and knees could propel him and bumped his head on the ceiling as he regained his feet on the other side.
But he instantly forgot the pain when he saw what lay in the wavering beam of Carrie’s flashlight.
A woman.
An elderly woman lying supine in an oblong niche in the wall of the chamber.
“It’s...” Carrie’s voice choked off and she cleared her throat. “It’s her, Dan. It’s really her.”
“Well, it’s somebody.”
A jumble of emotions tumbled through Dan. He was numb, he was exhausted, and he was angry. He’d been preparing himself to comfort Carrie when she discovered she’d been played for a fool. Entering the cave was supposed to be the last step in this trek. Now he had one more thing to explain.
The scroll, the careful and clever descriptions of this area of the Wilderness were one thing, but this was going too far. This was...ghoulish was the most appropriate word that came to mind.
“It’s her. Look at her.”
Dan was doing just that. The woman’s robe was blue, its cowl up and around her head; short, medium build, with thick strands of gray hair poking out from under the cowl. Her wrinkled skin had a sallow, almost waxy look to it. Her eyes and lips were closed, her cheeks slightly sunken, her nose generous without being large. Even in the wavering light of the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome, elderly woman who might have been beautiful in her youth. She looked so peaceful lying there. He noticed her hands were folded between her breasts. Something about those hands...
“Look at her fingernails,” Carrie said, her voice hushed like someone whispering during Benediction. Obviously she shared his feeling that they were trespassing. “They’re so long.”
“I hear they continue to grow...the nails and the hair... after you’re dead.”
Carrie stepped closer but Dan gripped her arm and held her back.
“Don’t. It might be booby-trapped.”
Carrie shook off his hand and whirled to face him. He couldn’t see her face but the anger in her whisper told him all he needed to know about her expression.
“Stop it, Dan! Haven’t you gone far enough with this Doubting Thomas act?”
“It’s not an act, and I wish there was more light.”
“So do I, but there isn’t. I wish we’d brought some sort of lantern but we didn’t. This is all we’ve got.”
“All right. But be careful.”
Dan fought a sick, anxious dread that coiled through his gut as he watched her approach the body. And it was a body. Had to be. Too much detail for it to be anything other than the real thing.
But whose body? What sort of mind would go to such elaborate extremes to pull off a hoax. A sicko like that would be capable of anything, even a booby trap.
Of course, there was the possibility that these actually were the earthly remains of the mother of Jesus Christ.
Dan wanted to believe that. He dearly would have loved to believe that. And probably would be fervently believing that right now if not for the fact that the scroll that had led them here had been proven beyond a doubt to have been written less than a dozen years ago.
So if this wasn’t the Virgin Mary, who was she? And who had hidden her here?
Carrie was standing over her now, staring down at the woman’s lifeless face.
“Dan? Do you notice something strange about her?”
“Besides her fingernails?”
“There’s no dust on her. There’s dust layered everywhere, but not a speck of it on her.”
Dan stepped closer and sniffed. No odor. And Carrie was right about the dust: not a speck. He smiled. The forger had finally made a mistake.
“Doesn’t that indicate to you that she was placed here recently?”
“No. It indicates to me that dirt—and dust is dirt—has no place on the Mother of God.”
As he watched, Carrie sank to her knees, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer with the flashlight clasped between her hands.
This isn’t real, Dan thought. All we need is a ray of light from the ceiling and a hallelujah chorus from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to make this a Cecil B. DeMille epic. This can’t be happening. Not to me. Not to Carrie. We’re two sane people.