Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Larssen looked back but saw only indistinct washes of pinks and reds. He looked forward again, chose a narrow passage in the far wall that looked like it might be the right one, made doggedly toward it. If he could get to a defensible location, he could hold the thing off with his gun . . .

“God,” said Brast, his voice breaking. “Oh God, oh God . . .”

They ducked into the low passage, carrying Cole between them as quickly as they could. Larssen staggered as the rope caught his ankles; he straightened up, went forward again. After a short distance, the ceiling rose toward a weird formation of a thousand needlelike stalactites, some as thin as threads.

Oh God, I don’t remember that, thought Larssen.

Another splash from the darkness behind them.

Suddenly, Brast tripped against a rock. Cole slumped from their grasp and fell heavily onto his broken arm. He groaned loudly, rolled over, and lay still.

Larssen let him go, fumbling with his gun, aiming into the darkness.

“What is it?” Brast cried. “What’s there?”

At that moment a monstrous shape came hurtling out of the darkness. Larssen cried out, firing as he stumbled backward, while Brast stood in terror, feet rooted to the ground, his arms clawing at the darkness. “Jesus, don’t leave me—!”

Larssen grabbed his hand, yanked him away. As he did so, the shape fell upon the supine form of Cole. The two figures blurred together, a reddish tangle in the goggles. Larssen staggered backward again, tugging at Brast while at the same time struggling to get his gun back up. He heard a rending sound like a drumstick being wrenched off a turkey. Cole screamed abruptly: a terrible falsetto squeak.

“Help me!” cried Brast, clutching at Larssen like a drowning man, knocking him back and spoiling his aim. Larssen savagely shoved him away while trying to raise the shotgun, but Brast was all over him again, sobbing, clutching at him like a drowning man.

The gun went off but the shot was wide, sending long needles of limestone crashing to the ground, and then the shape was up and facing them. Larssen froze in horror: it was holding Cole’s severed arm in one fist, the fingers still pulsing spasmodically. Larssen fired again, but he had hesitated too long and the shape was rising toward them, and all he could do was turn and flee down the dank tunnel, Brast yelling incoherently and blindly at his back.

Farther behind, Cole was still screaming.

Larssen ran and ran.

Sixty-Eight

F or a long time Corrie lay in the wet dark, confused and dreamy, wondering where she was, what had happened to her room, her bed, her window. And then she sat up, her head pounding, and with the return of the pain came the memory of the cave, the monster . . . and the pit.

She listened. All was silent save the dripping of water. She finally stood, swaying slightly, the pounding in her head subsiding. She reached out and her hands encountered the slick, smooth wall of the pit.

She made a circuit, running her hands up and down the wet wall, seeking handholds, cracks, anything she might use to climb out. But the walls were of the slickest stone, smoothed by water, impossible to climb. And what would she do once she got out? Without a light she was as good as trapped.

It was hopeless. There was no way out. All she could do was wait. Wait for the monster to come back.

Corrie felt overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and misery so powerful it made her physically sick. Her despair was all the worse for the hope that had been raised in her brief dash to escape. But here, in the pit, there was no hope left. No one knew where she was, that she’d gone into the cave. Eventually the thing would come back. Ready to play.

She sobbed at the thought.

It would be the end of her miserable, useless life.

Corrie leaned against the slick wall, sank to the ground. She began to cry. Years of bottled-up misery came pouring out. Images flashed through her mind. She remembered coming home from fifth grade, sitting at the kitchen table and watching her mother drink miniature vodka bottles, one after another, wondering why she liked them so much. She remembered, two years ago, her mother coming home at two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, drunk, with some man. No stockings, no presents, nothing that Christmas. It was a late, rise-at-noon, hungover morning like any other. She remembered the triumphant day when she was able to buy her Gremlin with the money she had earned from working at the Book Nook before its demise—and how furious her mother had been when Corrie brought it home. She thought about the sheriff, his son, the smell of the high school halls, the winter snowstorms that covered the stubbled fields in unbroken blankets of white. She thought about reading books under the powerlines in the heat of summer, the snide whispered comments of the jocks passing her in the halls.

He was going to come back and kill her and it would all be gone, every miserable memory now crowding her head. They’d never find her body. There’d be a halfhearted search and then everyone would forget about her. Her mother would tear apart her room and eventually find the money taped to the underside of her bureau drawers, and then she’d be happy. Happy that it was now all hers.

She cried freely, the sound echoing and reechoing above her head.

Now her mind wandered further back, to her early childhood. She remembered one Sunday morning getting up early and making pancakes with her father, carrying the eggs around and chanting like the soldiers in The Wizard of Oz. All her memories of him seemed to be happy: of him laughing, kidding around, squirting her with the hose on a hot summer day or taking her down to swim in the creek. She remembered him polishing his Mustang convertible, polishing and polishing, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his blue eyes sparkling, holding her up so she could see her reflection in it, then taking her for a ride. She remembered effortlessly, as clear as if it had been last week, how the cornfields parted with their passing; the exhilarating sensation of acceleration, of freedom.

And now, in the silence, in the absolute final blackness of the pit, she felt all the protective walls she had carefully built for herself over the years start to crumble, one by one. In this moment of extremis, the only questions that remained in her head were the ones she had rarely ever allowed herself to ask: Why had he left? Why had he never come back to visit? What was so wrong with her that he’d never wanted to see her again?

But the darkness would allow no self-delusion. She had another memory, not all that distant: of coming home and finding her mother burning a letter in the ashtray. Had it been from him? Why hadn’t she confronted her mother? Was it out of fear that the letter wasn’t, in fact, what she hoped it was?

This last question hung in the blackness, unanswered. There could be no answer, not now. It would soon end, here, in this pit, and the question would be moot. Maybe her father would never even know she was dead . . .

She thought of Pendergast, the only person who had ever treated her like an adult. And now she’d failed him, too. Stupidly going into the cave without telling anyone. Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

She sobbed again, loudly, painfully, giving full vent to her feelings. But the sound echoed so horribly, so mockingly, around and above her that she swallowed, choked, and fell silent.

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she said out loud.

Her voice echoed and died away and then she caught her breath. There was a distinct whisper in the dark.

Was he coming back?

She listened intently. There were more sounds now, faint sounds, so distant and distorted they were impossible to make out. Voices? Yelling? Screaming? She strained, listening.