Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

And then I broke through. Just like that. I squeezed past the narrow spot and the rock tomb seemed to open and release me. The breath came rushing back into my lungs. I stumbled once-and I was out of the corridor.

Relief made my legs go weak. I sank to one knee on the stone. Shivering uncontrollably, I tried to get my hand into my pocket, to get the flashlight, but I couldn’t do it. I kept missing the pocket, my hand snaking out of control.

I put my hands under my arms to warm them. I knelt there like that, breathing hard, staring into the blackness.

And I saw something!

At first, I wasn’t sure it was real. Even when I was sure, I could hardly believe it. I stared and blinked and stared again and there, for sure, it was. A patch of gray. A faint patch of gray in the near distance.

I swallowed hard. I tried to stay calm. I tried not to get my hopes up too much. I told myself: Even if there’s an opening, I might not be able to reach it. It might not be large enough for me to get through.

But all the same, my heart was hammering as I climbed back to my feet. This time, I willed my hands steady. I went into my pocket and found the flashlight. I brought it out.

The thin beam of white light picked out an open chamber. There were rocks strewn here and there, but the passage across looked fairly easy. Even the chamber’s ceiling was high, high enough so that I could walk without stooping. I jumped a little at a sudden fluttering noise. A bat had broken from its perch and flown to another. The beam picked out a whole cluster of the little creatures hanging up there in the dark.

I began to move again. Slow again. Preserving the flashlight battery. Picking out my path with the beam. Edging over the rock floor in the dark. I crossed the chamber. As I did, the patch of gray light on the far side grew nearer. As it grew nearer, it grew clearer and brighter, but still I couldn’t see its source.

I kept moving toward it, inch by inch. My flashlight now picked out a jutting boulder. I put my hands on it and felt my way around it.

I don’t think I have ever seen anything as beautiful as what I saw then. That circle of sunlight and blue sky. I thought it must’ve been something like what Lazarus saw when Death lost its hold on him. It felt like that to me, anyway. Like seeing a world of Life I thought I’d never see again.

It was another sinkhole in the cave ceiling, this one bigger than the one through which I’d come. A thin trickle of water was spilling over the edge of the gap. The droplets caught the light and twinkled as they fell. The sight of them was like visible music, like a song that you could see instead of hear. I laughed out loud at the sight. Or maybe I was weeping. I’m not really sure.

And the best thing-the best thing of all-was that the water was pouring down on what was almost a natural stairway formed by ledges and stones.

I moved toward that stairway wearily and began to climb up into the light.

Angeline

“Angeline!”

A clear, sweet woman’s voice came to me as if through a mist.

“Angeline! Where are you?”

I was lying with my face planted in a thin carpet of damp leaves. I had climbed out of the cave-I don’t know-maybe fifteen minutes before. I was conscious, I guess, if you can call it that, but it was an awfully dim consciousness. Cold, exhausted, hungry-so hungry it was like a high, annoying siren going off in my brain. I couldn’t seem to muster the energy to move anymore. I felt empty, as if I’d been hollowed out, as if there were no more muscle or bone or sinew inside me to give me the strength I needed.

“Angeline, sweetheart!”

I couldn’t tell at first if that voice was real or something in my imagination. It was all mixed up with the other things swirling around in my brain: memories of the karate demonstration and the talk with Beth and the argument with Alex and then the rest: going home to dinner, writing my paper, IM’ing with Josh, and talking on the phone with Rick and then going to bed, my own bed, for the last time…

“Angeline! Where’d you go to, you mouse?”

For another few seconds, I lay half-awake and confused. I guess there was a part of me sort of hoping that voice was my mother’s voice. Maybe she was calling my sister, Amy, and soon she’d call me to wake me up for another day at school.

“Wow,” I’d tell her. “I had the weirdest dream…”

But then I took a deep breath and lifted my head out of the leaves and looked around me.

I was still in the forest, but it was different here. The trees were farther apart. They were mostly birch trees with peeling white bark. The underbrush was not as dense. There were open spaces covered with leaves. I could hear a brook bubbling happily nearby and birds chirping. The sun was low, but it wasn’t blocked out of sight like it was before. I could see it clearly through the branches, a reddening ball among the clouds.

I turned my head to scan the area-and stopped.

There was a little girl standing there, gazing down at me.

She looked like she was about five years old. A solemn little creature with a pink woolen cap pulled down over her brown hair. She had a pink Windbreaker on and purple leggings marked with patches of dirt. She was holding a small ball in her hand. She was sort of turning the upper half of her body this way and that. She seemed mesmerized by the sight of me.

I stared at her as if she were a vision. I was half-afraid she was. Slowly, I pushed myself up onto my knees. I reached out to her. I wanted to touch her, to make sure she was real.

She just stood there, turning this way and that. She moved her gaze from my face and gazed at my reaching hand. She seemed fascinated by it, hypnotized.

I let my hand fall. I didn’t want to frighten her. I didn’t want her to run away. I tried to smile. It wasn’t easy. My face felt encrusted in dirt and pain.

“Hello,” I managed to say. My voice sounded hoarse and rasping. “My name is Charlie. Charlie West. What’s yours?”

The little girl hugged her ball tighter. She tucked her chin down as if she wanted to shrink up and hide behind the ball. She swiveled her body this way and that.

I kept staring at her. She was real, all right. She was really real. And if there was a little girl here, there must be an adult nearby, someone who could help me.

“Is someone with you?” I asked her, unable to keep my voice from trembling with hope. “Is your mother here… or someone?”

The little girl didn’t answer. Only now did it occur to my muddled brain that the voice I’d heard, the woman calling, must be…

“Angeline! There you are!”

I followed the sound of her voice and saw her. A tall, slender lady in her thirties. A kind, pretty face with pretty red hair falling to her shoulders. She was wearing a navy-blue overcoat and jeans. Having finally found her daughter, she was stepping toward her. She hadn’t seen me yet.

Then she did. She spotted me. She froze in her tracks. She stared at me with wide blue eyes.

She looked at her daughter again. Very quickly, she said, “Angeline! Angeline, come here right now. Come to Mommy right now!”

That broke the spell. Angeline turned away from me and ran to her mother, her pink sneakers crunching on the dead leaves. Clutching her ball in one hand, she clung to her mother’s overcoat with the other and tried to hide in the folds of it.

The red-haired lady licked her lips. Staring at me, she began to back away. She was leaving me! She was going to leave me here!

“No! No, wait!” I said.

I managed to get to my feet, reaching out a hand to her. The mother took another step away, pulling her child with her.

I called out, more harshly than I meant to: “No! Stop! Don’t go!”