Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

Instinctively, I shoved myself even farther underneath the rock-and to my immense relief I felt cool, damp air on the fingertips of my right hand. I pushed my hand up and wiggled my fingers. There was nothing above them. There was a way out from underneath the wall. The gap went straight through. There was another opening, up where my hand was, above my head. If I could edge up a little, I might be able to fit through it. It was worth a try anyway, better than getting caught in here.

Above and behind me, the dog let out a series of frantic barks. I could hear the scraping and grunting and cursing-a lot of cursing-as the one guard started his climb down into the sinkhole after me. With the flashlight to guide him, he’d be down in a second. Then all he’d have to do was follow the path of the water like I did. He’d lie down on the rock and see me under there. Then, if I refused to come out, he’d just poke in the muzzle of his AK-47 and blow me to kingdom come.

So I had to move-now. Crawling on my belly, I inched my way under the wall, toward the opening. I was moving away from the sinkhole light and the flashlight light too. The darkness closed over me like a steel trap until I couldn’t see a thing-not a thing-it was absolute, pitch black. I squirmed up farther along the narrow passage. My arm was free of the wall. Then my head popped out into that dank air. Then I got my shoulder out. Clawed my way over the stone, pulling my legs after me into the open.

Then I was free. I let out a gasping breath of relief. I turned over.

And I fell off the edge of rock.

The next moment I was rolling down and down and down. Bouncing hard off the stone, feeling it scrape pieces of flesh away from my face and arms. I couldn’t see. I was completely blind. There was nothing but motion and rock and pain, and I had no idea whether I was about to plunge off another edge and just drop straight down…

But no. No, I hit bottom. I felt the jar of the impact go through my entire body so that my bones ached. The breath was knocked out of me in a loud grunt. I lay stunned in a darkness so complete that when I lifted my hand in front of me, I literally could not see my fingers an inch in front of my eyes.

I lay still, aching, gasping for breath, staring up at nothingness.

Then the nothingness was broken. The pale, pale out-glow of a flashlight’s beam appeared overhead for a single moment, then was gone. It was the guard. Obviously, he was lying down, poking his flashlight into the gap in the wall, looking for me.

I held my breath, watching as the dim glow appeared again, then faded.

Then the guard shouted, “He’s not here!”

He couldn’t see the opening I’d fallen through. It was out of his sightline.

The shout came back to him from above. “What do you mean he’s not there! Listen to this dog. He’s going crazy!”

As if in agreement, Hunter the dog sent up a fresh chorus of ferocious barking.

“I’m telling you,” shouted the guard above me, “there’s nothing down here. There’s nowhere for him to hide! Idiot dog must be after a squirrel or something.”

He sighed again. Cursed again. The next time he spoke, his voice sounded farther away. “Throw me a rope, man. This place is giving me the creeps. Probably bats down here and everything.”

I heard him grunt again and go through another long series of curses as he retreated, as he climbed back up the wall, back through the sinkhole into the upper world. I heard his voice again as he reached the top.

“Let’s get out of here.”

I heard his footsteps receding. The dog’s wild and argumentative barks grew dimmer as the men dragged him away from the sinkhole.

Finally, silence. I couldn’t hear any of them anymore.

Still, I didn’t move. I lay a long time in the absolute darkness, absolutely still. Trying to think. Trying to make sense out of what was happening to me. Looking for an answer.

Sensei Mike What happened next? I asked myself. After the karate demonstration in school, I mean. After Beth came to the cafeteria and wrote her number on my hand. What happened after that? There was nothing. Nothing special, I mean. Nothing I could remember, anyway.

It was just a day. Just an ordinary day.

The truth is, after that talk with Beth, I guess I got a little blissed out, a little-how can I put it?-goofy. I remember going from class to class, doing my work and everything. But I don’t remember too many of the details. I guess it was mostly me sitting in my seat, sort of looking at my hand, sort of turning my hand this way and that, admiring the phone number written on it. Goofy, like I said.

After school, I went home for a while and did some homework. Then, just like every other Wednesday, I took my mom’s car-the Ford Explorer-and drove out to the Eastfield Mall for my karate lesson with Sensei Mike.

The karate school isn’t much to look at. It’s just a small storefront in the mall. There’s a sign over the window that says Karate Studio in black letters. That’s the only name it has.

It’s a simple set-up inside too. There’s a small anteroom where you come in and take off your shoes-there are no shoes allowed in the dojo itself. There’s a small office next to the anteroom with a desk and a computer and a phone and all that. And there’s the dojo-an open carpeted space for practicing-with a punching bag hanging in one corner, a big American flag hanging on one wall, and a wall of mirrors opposite that. Also, wherever there’s space, there’s a lot of cool swords and axes and other weapons hanging on pegs.

Sensei Mike owned the place and ran it. There were three or four other teachers who worked there, but Sensei Mike was the best. He was the coolest too. In fact, Sensei Mike was probably the coolest person I knew. He was-I don’t know-maybe thirty-five years old or something. He stood about six feet tall, slim but with broad shoulders. He had a lot of neatly combed black hair that always seemed to stay in place even when he was sparring or working out. His face was long and lean, with a lot of lines chiseled into it. He had a mustache, a real big soup-strainer that hung down over the sides of his mouth. Under the mustache, you could see there was always a sort of smile playing at the corners of his lips. The smile was in his brown eyes too. He always seemed to be laughing about something to himself.

Sensei Mike had been in the Army for a long time. He’d been in the War against Terror, fighting against the Islamic extremists both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

“I’d still be over there,” he liked to tell us, “but I had to come back and knock some sense into all you chuckleheads.”

Actually, the truth was more complicated than that. I knew this because I looked Mike up on the Internet once and found some news stories about him. The truth was: Mike came home because he was wounded in action and had to have a piece of titanium put in his leg. The news stories said he’d been working with a task force that was helping to build a school in Afghanistan. The task force came under attack by more than a hundred Taliban fighters. Mike had to battle his way to a big.50-caliber machine gun that was mounted on an armored truck. He was wounded and surrounded by the enemy on three sides, but he used the big gun to hold them off, and the task force was saved. The president gave him a medal for it and everything-I mean, the actual president, as in the President of the United States. It was a pretty cool story. I couldn’t get Mike to talk about it, though. I tried to once. I asked him about it, but he just shrugged and said, “There’s not a soldier out there who wouldn’t do what I did and better. I just happened to be the first chuckle-head to get to the gun.”