Michael Koryta - Last Words

He clicked off the flashlight, sure that they were speaking of him and were aware of his arrival. The instant the light was gone he had no idea where he was. The totality of the darkness was like a physical thing. His thumb moved toward the switch again but he willed it down and did not touch it. Instead, he crept forward slowly, moving as quietly as possible. He no longer believed the distance on Ridley’s map. It had to be a lie. Mark had been crawling for more than a hundred yards. A half a mile at least. Two miles. The distance was as endless as the darkness.

The words became clear just as the walls widened and the ceiling lifted. Julianne and Ridley were speaking, and they were not far from him. It seemed they were in a room just around the bend, but that meant they were in total darkness. All that existed of them was their voices. It gave the situation an eerie quality of unreality. Ridley’s voice had been low and sluggish when it first became audible but now it was sharp, his words racing.

“She’s there and I can hear her and I know that I can’t go back because it sounds as if she’s hurting. Hurting and afraid but so close. She is so close and that means I can’t go back, I have to go forward or I might lose her. And it’s a problem because the light is getting dim; it’s getting dark and so I have to hurry.”

Mark shifted his hand so he could reach the rifle’s trigger. Then he heard Julianne.

“Why is the light getting dim?” she asked, but there was no light in their room, and Mark finally understood what was happening. Ridley’s rapid account was being spoken in the present tense but the story came from the past. He was talking about Sarah Martin.

Ridley said, “Batteries, batteries, I’ve been running this lamp too long, the whole time down here, and there’s another one behind me but I can’t go back for it now because I can hear her and I can’t lose her, this is why I’m in the cave, I came for her, right? I came for her. The crawl is tight, very narrow, squeezes the shoulders, and I can’t believe she came this way. I can’t believe it. She was not skilled enough to get here, but she is here. No one else has been here, so how did she make it? Just a scared girl in the dark. How did she make it? She couldn’t have made it.”

“If you didn’t believe you would find her in this place, what led you to it?”

“I take what the cave gives me. It’s one of the only rules.”

“Who makes those rules?”

“The cave. The rules have always been here, but you understand them better in the dark.”

Mark was relieved that he’d turned off his light. He hadn’t wanted to go dark in this place ever again, but if Ridley believed these were the rules, it was better not to disturb him. He wasn’t sure whether to advance or wait. Without being able to see what was before him, he couldn’t make a call on how to proceed. It seemed to be just the two of them, no demonstrated danger, but Cecil Buckner was circling from the other side.

“Continue along the journey,” Julianne said.

“It’s dark by the time I make the top of the crawl. Battery’s done, it’s dead, I’ve made it all the way now but I don’t have light and I can’t go back because she’s so close. So I shout.”

Mark didn’t like the use of the present tense. It suggested Ridley wasn’t recalling the past as much as reliving it. Still, he was entranced by it, because what Ridley was telling Julianne now was the thing he’d refused to share for ten years.

“What do you shout at her?” Julianne asked.

“That I’m coming for her. That she will be safe.”

“Does she answer?”

“Yes. She asks me to stop. She says, ‘Please, stop.’ But that doesn’t make any sense because she’s lost and she’s hurt and she needs help. So I keep climbing, and she says, ‘Please, stop,’ and I think that she is talking to me but it’s to the cave.”

“Why do you think it’s to the cave?”

“Because the cave tries to kill me. And then I do the wrong thing. I fight it.”

“How do you fight it?”

“With my knife. The dark man, he has me by the throat. I have no lights anymore but I still have the knife.”

“Who is the dark man?”

“He belongs to the cave. He’s always been here.”

Mark thought, Here we go, here we lose him, any chance of getting the truth dies with the madness of the dark man, but Julianne countered Ridley beautifully.

“How can you fight someone who has always been here?” she asked.

“With my knife. I grab it and I slam the blade backward, again and again, and he’s screaming now.”

“Screaming because you are causing him pain?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s always been in the cave?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see how these things might create a problem when considered together?”

There was a long pause. Finally, Ridley’s voice returned: “He should be hard to hurt. Impossible to hurt.”

She was getting him to confront his own fiction or hallucination or whatever it was. Mark could hardly breathe. There was no police interview that could have delivered this. No interrogation. He wouldn’t have believed that before, but he was sure of it now.

“If he is eternal, it seems he should be difficult to hurt, yes,” Julianne said. “But you’re certain you hurt him?”

“Yes. I am certain. And then I have to make him stop. I have to silence him.”

“Why?”

“Because when he screams, she screams, and so I need him to stop, I have to make him stop. So I do. It’s a mistake, though. It is a terrible mistake. Because now he can’t tell me where she is, and he’s the one who knows. Who knew. I should have stopped when he screamed.”

Mark could hear Ridley sobbing between the words now.

“I should have let him keep screaming, that is better than the way it is now, because he can’t talk, and he’s the one who knows where she is. And now I can’t see and I don’t know where to go. It’s dark all around but I can still hear her. She’s so close, but I can’t see! And I think... I think he was providing for her, maybe? At least he knew how to find her. But now he can’t go back. Because of me. So I’m going to have to find her in the dark and I will have to find her fast, because if I don’t, if I don’t...”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“She dies,” Ridley said, his voice dipping. “I need to find her before she dies.”

Mark thought of that first confession — I think I killed her. This version had another layer: he’d removed her lifeline. She’d died because of his actions but not at his hand in this scenario. If it was true, if any of it was true, that meant someone else had died in Trapdoor too.

“Let’s consider the dark man again, if you wish. Tell me what he sounded like, what he smelled like, what he felt like. Use all the senses. They have their own memories, as you know. Use them now.”

“Blood,” Ridley said.

“What?”

“He smells of blood. Then Sarah does. And then I do the wrong thing.”

“What wrong thing?”

“I take her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She belongs to the cave. She was never supposed to leave. That’s why so much pain came. It’s a penance. She wasn’t supposed to go.”

He sounded like a child now, his voice high and needy and desperate: Understand me. Mark shifted forward, trying to hear, because Ridley’s voice had grown very soft. Mark had no idea when he should act. He didn’t know where Cecil was, wasn’t even certain that Cecil was a threat. Without any view of the room or sense of where Ridley and Julianne were, Mark could put her in more danger by entering the room. He thought of the scope on the .22 then, the cheap infrared. He could project a red dot into the room, but they’d see that. Useless. He needed to commit to the light at some point.