Douglas Preston - Riptide

Hatch drew his face away from the wall, listening now.

The voice came again.

"Hello?" he called back tentatively.

"Where are you?" came the muffled cry.

Hatch turned, felt the walls, trying to orient himself. The sound seemed to be coming from behind the stone that pressed his brother's bones into the stone floor.

"Are you all right?" it asked.

"No!" cried Hatch. "No! I'm trapped!"

The voice seemed to fade in and out of hearing. Perhaps, Hatch thought, it was himself, coming in and out of consciousness.

"How can I help?" he realized the voice was asking.

Hatch rested, thinking how he should reply.

"Where are you?" he asked at last. The rush of adrenaline had brought back a modicum of alertness; it would not last long.

"In a tunnel," the voice said.

"Which tunnel?"

"I don't know. It leads in from the shore. My boat was wrecked, but I was saved. Saved by a miracle."

Hatch rested for a moment, trying to suck in whatever air was left. There was only one possible tunnel the voice could mean: Johnny's tunnel.

"Where are you stuck?" the voice continued.

"Wait!" Hatch cried, breathing heavily, forcing himself to relive the old memories. What had he seen?

. . . There'd been a door, a door with a seal in front of it. Johnny had broken the seal and stepped through. A puff of wind from the tunnel beyond, blowing out the light. . . Johnny had cried out in surprise and pain . . . there'd been a kind of heavy dragging sound. . . he'd fumbled for a new match, lit it, seen the implacable stone wall before him, thick streaks of blood along its base and the joint where it met the left wall. The blood had seemed to almost weep from the cracks, rushing out and down like the leading edge of a red wave to creep around his knees and his sneakers.

Hatch wiped his face with a trembling hand, overwhelmed by the force of the memories.

A puff of wind had come down the tunnel when Johnny opened the door. Yet when Hatch had lit another match, there had been only a stone wall in front of him, and Johnny was gone. So the tunnel must have continued beyond the stone. Stepping into the room, or opening the door, or breaking the seal—something—had triggered Macallan's trap. A massive slab of stone moved across the tunnel, dragging Johnny with it, crushing him beneath, forcing his body into this hollow space, sealing off the rest of the watertight tunnel. There was no other explanation. The well, the chamber Hatch was trapped in, the vault room above, must all be part of the support mechanism for the trap.

And Macallan—or perhaps Red Ned Ockham—hadn't wanted anybody interfering with the trap. So the vault room itself had been booby-trapped. As Wopner had learned at the cost of his life.

"Are you still there?" came the voice.

"Please wait," Hatch gasped, trying to follow the train of thought to its conclusion. The tunnel he and Johnny discovered must have been Red Ockham's secret entrance, the one Macallan had constructed for him—the back door to the treasure. But if a treasure hunter were to find the shore tunnel, Macallan needed a way to stop them. The trap that killed Johnny was obviously his answer. A massive piece of dressed stone, rolling in from one side, crushing any intruder who did not know how to disarm the trap. The stone was so expertly fashioned that, once in place, it would look like the end wall of the tunnel, preventing further exploration . . .

Hatch struggled to keep his mind focused. That meant once the Pit was drained, Ockham would have needed a way to reset the trap, to roll the stone back, and continue down the tunnel to reclaim his loot. Of course, Macallan had his own plans for Ockham once he reached the Pit itself. But the pirate had to believe he had a back door to the treasure.

So the trap had to work on a simple fulcrum mechanism, the stone delicately poised so that the slightest pressure would cause it to move . . . the pressure of a child's weight. . .

. . . But why, then, had nobody stumbled on the way to reset the trap, in that frantic search for Johnny, thirty-one years before—?

"Hey!" he cried out suddenly. "Are you still there?"

"I'm here. How can I help?"

"Do you have a light?" Hatch called.

"A flashlight, yes."

"Look around. Tell me what you see."

There was a pause. "I'm at the end of a tunnel. There's solid stone on all three sides."

Hatch opened his mouth, coughed, breathed more shallowly. "Tell me about the stone." Another pause. "Big slabs."

"On all three sides."

"Yes."

"Any chinks or depressions? Anything?" "No, nothing."

Hatch tried to think. "How about the ceiling?" he asked. "There's a large stone lintel, some old oaken beams." "Test the beams. Are they solid?" "I think so."

There was a silence while Hatch strained to draw in more air. "What about the floor?"

"It's covered in mud. Can't see it all that well."

"Clear it away."

Hatch waited, willing his mind not to slip back into unconsciousness.

"It's tiled in stone," came the voice.

A faint glimmer of hope rose within Hatch. "Small pieces of stone?"

"Yes."

The glimmer became stronger. "Look closely. Does any piece look different from the rest?"

"No."

Hope slipped away. Hatch held his head in his hands, jaws agape, fighting for breath.

"Wait. There is something. There's a stone in the center, here, that's not square. It's tapered slightly, almost like a keyhole. At least, I think it is. There's not much of a difference."

Hatch looked up. "Can you lift it away from the others?"

"Let me try." There was a brief silence. "No, it's wedged in tight, and the soil around it is hard as concrete."

"Do you have a knife?"

"No. But wait, wait a moment, let me try something else." Very faintly, Hatch thought he could hear the sound of scratching.

"Okay!" the voice said, a thin tone of excitement carrying through the intervening rock. "I'm lifting it now." A pause. "There's some kind of mechanism in a cavity underneath, a wooden stick, almost like a lever or something."

That must be the fulcrum handle, Hatch thought drowsily. "Can you pull it up? Reset it?"

"No," came the voice after a moment. "It's stuck fast."

"Try again!" Hatch called out with the last of his breath. In the silence that followed, the buzzing returned, louder and louder in his ears; he leaned on the cold stone, trying to prop himself up, until at last he slipped away into unconsciousness.

. . . Then there was a light, and a voice, and Hatch felt himself coming back from a long distance. He reached up to the light, then slipped and fell, sending one of Johnny's bones spinning away. He breathed in the air, no longer stuffy and poisonous, faintly perfumed with the smell of the sea. He seemed to have fallen into a larger tunnel as the slab that crushed his brother had rolled back.

Hatch tried to speak but could only croak. He gazed up into the light again, trying to focus his blurry eyes on who was behind it. Raising himself on shaky knees, he blinked and saw Reverend Clay staring back at him, dried blood caked around his nose, flashlight in hand.

"You!" said Clay, disappointment huge in his voice. A large, thin cross of bright metal hung from his neck, one sharp edge covered in mud.

Hatch swayed, still breathing the delicious air. Strength was returning, but he could not yet muster the energy to speak.

Clay replaced the cross within his shirt and stepped closer, standing in the low doorway that Hatch himself had once stood in, more than twenty-five years before. "I took shelter near the mouth of the tunnel, and I heard your cries," the minister said. "On the third try I was able to shift the lever, and the end wall of the tunnel came away, opening this hole. What is this place? And what are you doing here?" He peered closer, shining the light into the chamber. "And what are all these bones that fell out with you?"