Michael Koryta - Last Words

Back then, he hadn’t understood that people might do strange things in Trapdoor simply because the cave coerced them.

They walked in silence, and Julianne was honoring his demand not to assault his mind with words. The tape had been a valuable teacher. Perhaps she was even savvier than that, though, and knew that what Ridley needed from the cave was found in trapped whispers that came from beneath the water and behind the walls and out beyond the black.

The boat tours — fifteen dollars a pop in the old days, and ten for kids — had gone three-quarters of a mile back into the cave, a mere taste of what the Greenglass had to offer. Still, it was fascinating to have the experience of floating along beneath the earth, watching that green water reflect the light, seeing the dips and darts of the blind cave fish, listening to the slow, steady drips of stalactites — all of that was a new world to most.

It was also a world that extended far beyond what anyone understood. During the summer of 2004 Ridley had believed he’d learned most of what the cave had to offer, but at some point in the search for Sarah Martin, after the food went but before the batteries did, he’d found himself in spectacular new territory. Afterward, in total blackness, carrying a handcuffed corpse, he couldn’t say what he had passed through.

When they reached a wide chamber where the ceiling climbed to forty feet and rock formations jutted out of the water like abandoned pilings from a collapsed dock, he nudged Julianne to the right and into the walking passage that led to the Chapel Room. The Chapel Room was the first grand feature of Trapdoor, with a high domed ceiling and gorgeous stalactites that hung like prehistoric icicles over a series of descending rock ledges that had once been the ground formation of a waterfall but now, left high and dry, resembled empty church pews. Ridley paused when they entered the room, considering stopping there and sitting and taking this spot to engage Julianne in the talk that must begin soon, but he shook that off and led her deeper.

“There are passages all around us,” he said, breaking the silence. “Above and below and on each side. Some are navigable, some aren’t. Some go places, some don’t. Picture a bowl of spaghetti, and each strand is a passage. That’s what it’s like down here.”

Julianne said, “May I speak now?”

“Not yet. Thank you.”

The simplest route out of the Chapel Room led to the right. The fastest was straight ahead, the crawling passage that had given Blankenship so much trouble. You could get to the same place in far less time through the crawler. Ridley was impressed by the way Julianne forged ahead once they were inside, the walls squeezing, the ceiling lowering. She was much smaller than Blankenship but size didn’t necessarily affect claustrophobia. There was much ahead that she would not be capable of doing, though, passages that required technical expertise, but he was counting on Trapdoor to cooperate once his mission was clear. Trapdoor would simply have to. Not only was Julianne incapable of following him as far as he’d gone on that last trip; he was incapable of guiding her. He didn’t remember the turns he’d made, the paths he’d chosen. After he’d pulled on his wetsuit and slipped into the water, things had gotten away from him fast, and now that trip existed only in splashes — of water and of blood — and in whispers. Oh, maybe some screams too. Yes, there had been some screams.

Once, he thought he heard something and came to a stop. Killed his light and listened. All he could hear was Julianne’s breathing and, up ahead, the soft sounds of moving water. He turned the light back on and kept crawling.

They came out of the crawling passage into the Funnel Room and Ridley guided Julianne away from the basin and toward a high ledge at the far wall. The stalagmites here were taller than a man. Where the floor and ceiling sloped steeply toward an angled meeting point there was a shallow stream that bubbled up at one end and had carved a small portal through the wall at the other.

The only sound beyond his own breathing came from echoing drips of water that were carving new crevices that would later become new passages and, later still, spectacular chambers. The drips had a leisurely pace as they went about their work, and why not? They had literally all the time in the world.

Julianne disobeyed the order of silence to say, “It really is incredible.”

Ridley didn’t answer. He was looking at the stalagmites and remembering when they had started to move. There had been a time, in a room not so far from here, when the rocks had begun to move around him. At first he’d believed it was a trick of shadow, but then the rocks had grown hungrier and he could hear them sliding in from behind and cutting him off up ahead, circling him, drawing ever closer. He’d taken to the water then in a hurry — in a panic, fine, he would admit that. He had panicked when the formations moved; who wouldn’t?

It was then, entering the water in the panic, that he’d lost his first light.

He wiped sweat from his face. He was sweating freely, though not due to either temperature or exertion, and his mouth was so damn dry. “Yes, it is a special place,” he said.

Up ahead, the stream trickled through an opening in the wall about the size of a truck tire. Ridley pointed at it.

“That’s where I went into the water for Sarah Martin. It’s where I came back from the water with Mark Novak.”

“They were found in the same place?”

“No. She didn’t want me to go that way for Novak. It was too easy. She wanted to have some fun with me. She made me earn him. I had to climb up and crawl down, that was all she would give me, but once I got to him, she gave me an easier out. She was done with Novak by then, I guess.”

“When you went in after Sarah, this is where you left the group?” Julianne was ignoring the directive of silence, but he didn’t care to stop her. It was time to begin.

“Yes,” he said. “This is where I left the group.”

Julianne stared at the opening. “It’s tight. And the water doesn’t look deep.”

“Not here, but you crawl through for about fifty feet, and it gets much deeper. Crawl a little farther than that, and you begin to swim. When the water table is high, you’re bouncing right off the ceiling. The best way to explore this section is with diving equipment.”

“What’s that in the water?”

He followed her gaze and, sure enough, saw something floating. That was odd. He walked closer, with Julianne trailing, and trapped the object in the beam from his headlamp: it was a remnant of crime scene tape. The rest had been torn free when they cleared out of the cave ten years ago, but this short length had been missed, and now it undulated slowly in the water, like a dying snake. Or a long strand of a girl’s blond hair.

“A welcome mat,” he said. “She knows we’re here. I think maybe she even knows why.”

Julianne had taken a few steps back, but she said, “This is good. This is perfect. I hadn’t dared hope for anything so perfect.”

“Why so pleased?”

“It’s ideal visualization. That narrow opening is a literal portal.”

Her voice was natural again, just as if they were inside her living room for a scheduled appointment. As if she’d never had a knife at her throat and tape over her mouth. He was both pleased by that and disarmed by it. He needed her to be a willing, focused participant, but her calm suggested that she believed she could gain control again. She simply had to learn that down here, neither of them would have control.

“A portal is exactly what it is,” he said. He thought he saw one of the rock formations moving, shifting as if leaning down to overhear them, but he didn’t turn toward it. He knew better. “This is where your work begins.”