Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

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 smell: 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 was there. 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.

Her breath began to come faster as she returned to the middle of the room. At least, she thought it was the middle of the room: she was quickly becoming disoriented in the utter blackness.

Okay, she thought. Stop moving, breathe a little slower, get a grip. Okay, so it was really stupid to come in here with one flashlight and no matches. But the cavern she was in was small and there was only one opening—wasn’t there? She hadn’t remembered any passageways going off, but then again, she hadn’t really checked.

Her heart was beating so fast that she could barely breathe. Just slow down, she thought. Time to forget about the flashlight. It was probably busted, anyway. The important thing now was to get out, to keep moving; otherwise, she’d freeze up. She’d left the door unlocked, thank God, and the lights were still on back in the Kaverns. All she had to do was get out of this back room and down the passageway.

Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

Carefully, she oriented herself toward where she thought the exit would be. Then, just as carefully, she began crawling forward. The floor of the cave was cold, rough, uneven, covered with greasy pebbles and puddles of water. It was absolutely terrifying, the pitch blackness. Corrie wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a place completely without light. Even on the darkest night, there was some trace of starshine or moonlight . . . She felt her heart begin to beat even faster than before.

Then her head bumped painfully into something. She reached up, felt: the iron cauldron. She had crawled right into the dead coals.

Okay, so she’d gone in precisely the opposite direction. But at least now she had her bearings. She’d crawl along the wall until she reached the passage out. Once in the passage, she’d keep crawling, one hand on the wall, until she reached the iron door. From there, she could reach the pool, she felt sure—even in utter darkness. And in any case, on the far side of the pool lay light and the boardwalk. It’s not so far, she repeated, not so far at all . . .

Forcing herself to relax, she began crawling forward, sliding her left hand along the wall: slide, stop, slide, stop again, three, four, five. Her heart began to slow. She bumped into a stalagmite, tried to visualize its orientation in the room. With relief she realized the exit should be straight ahead.

She kept on crawling, one hand on the floor, the other on the wall.

Six, seven, eight . . .

In the dark, her hand touched something warm.

She instinctively snatched back her hand. The rush of fear and surprise came a moment later. Was it some cave-dwelling creature—a rat or a bat, perhaps? Her imagination, working overtime in the blackness?

She waited. There was no sound or movement. Then she carefully reached out, felt again.

It was warm, naked, hairless, and wet.

She shrank back, a sob rising involuntarily to her throat. The smell of something dirty, something indescribably foul, seemed to rise and envelop her. Was that noise she heard really the sound of her own breathing? It was: she was gasping with fear.

She gritted her teeth, blinked her eyes against the darkness, tried to regain control of her wildly beating heart.

The thing she had touched hadn’t moved. It was probably just another bump or ridge in the floor. If she stopped in horror at every little thing she touched, she’d never make it out of the cave.

She reached out to move forward, and brushed against it again. It was warm, there was no imagining that: but it must be some freakish thing, volcanic or something. She felt it again, lightly, letting her hand brush here, there . . .

She realized she was touching a naked foot, with long broken toenails.

Ever so slowly, she withdrew her hand. It was shaking uncontrollably and her breath came as a rasp, completely beyond her control to silence it. She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry.