Michael Koryta - Last Words

“You wanted to talk about the necklace,” Julianne said. “You wanted to know how it found its way into your hand. Think of the necklace now. What is your first memory of the necklace?”

“She dies,” Ridley said as if he hadn’t heard the question. “I need to find her before she dies. I can hear her and I know that she is alive and I am supposed to find her. I am supposed to save her. It’s why I’m here. The only reason.”

There was silence from them, and Mark wondered if it was because Julianne was as stunned as he was, if she was beginning to fumble for the next question, the next bit of guidance. That didn’t seem like her, though. She understood how to take things home. Why the silence?

When she spoke again, the trance cadence was gone from her voice, and sharpness had replaced it.

“Ridley, I am going to count to five. When we reach five, you will be gone from the past, you will be feeling so good, relieved of your burdens and so good, you will feel safe and” — What in the hell is she doing? Mark thought, and that was when he saw a faint light on the wall up ahead — “at peace. One. Feeling energized now, feeling good energy spreading through you. Two.”

She was panicking, rushing through. That light bothered her, which meant it didn’t come from the two of them. They were no longer alone. Someone had joined them in the cave; someone was approaching.

The caretaker had arrived.

Mark got to his feet as she said “Three” and then Ridley spoke for the first time in several seconds.

“Here he comes. I knew that he would. She’s sent him to stop us.”

The pale light intensified then and the world of stone lit up before Mark. He was facing a chamber with an angled roof and he could see Ridley clearly, Ridley with one arm wrapped around Julianne Grossman’s throat, pulling her backward, stumbling among the rock formations, trying to clear the two of them away from the white light that was emerging from a tunnel twenty feet ahead. Ridley fell and Julianne fell with him and her skull smacked the stone with a crack that hurt just to hear. Ridley froze and looked at her in horror as blood spread through her blond hair. His attention belonged entirely to her and he didn’t even turn to face the light when Cecil Buckner stepped out from the tunnel, wearing a caving helmet and holding a shotgun belt-high.

Mark flicked the switch on the infrared scope and put a red dot on the center of Cecil’s chest.

“Put the gun down!” he shouted.

Cecil spun toward his voice, but Mark was on the ground, below the light. Cecil couldn’t see him, but that didn’t stop him from shooting.

The sound was enormously loud in the trapped space, like a mortar round. Rock fragments exploded into the air, and needles of pain found Mark’s cheek and neck as he pulled the trigger on the .22 and shot Cecil in the chest.

Cecil rocked back and fired the shotgun once more as he fell, this blast connecting with the ceiling, and then he was down on his back and the shotgun clattered over the stone and into the water. He sat up and fumbled for it. Mark worked the lever action on the rifle as he rose to his feet, and this time he put the red dot on Cecil’s eye.

Cecil stopped searching for the shotgun. He moaned in pain as he put a hand to his chest and found it wet with blood, but he wasn’t going to die from the wound. Not from the .22, which had hit low, missing his heart. The killing gun in play was still the shotgun, and Mark needed to claim it.

Ridley had been silent and motionless until Mark was almost to Cecil. Then he spun with such speed and agility that Mark nearly shot him out of surprise. But Ridley ignored him, splashed into the water beside Cecil, and came up with the shotgun. He pivoted toward Mark, his finger drifting to the trigger.

“Don’t,” Mark began, but he didn’t need to bother with instruction, because Ridley simply threw the gun onto the rocks.

“Those don’t belong here,” he said. He sounded groggy, distant and uninterested. He stared at Mark as if he did not recognize him or even understand what he was.

“Same team, Ridley,” Mark said. “I’m here to help you. And Julianne. Let me help you.”

“You’re not here for her,” Ridley said.

“Yes, I am,” Mark said, though he had no idea whom Ridley meant by her. Julianne, Sarah Martin, the cave? All of them? “Step back,” Mark said. “Ridley, just step back.”

“None of you belong here,” Ridley said. “She doesn’t want any of you.” He stepped over Cecil and moved through the water, heading deeper into the cave.

“Ridley! Stop moving!”

Ridley ignored him. He dropped to his hands and knees in the water and crawled toward a narrow gap in the wall. Mark had the choice to shoot him in the back to stop him or let him go.

He let him go. Ridley crawled through the gap and vanished into the darkness. Then it was just Mark, rifle in hands, and two people on the ground in front of him, bleeding into the rocks.

Cecil was terrified of his wound, pressing on it with both hands and giving a high, strange moan that echoed around the room. His eyes were wide and panicked as he watched the blood flow through his fingers.

“Help,” Cecil said. He looked from the wound to Mark, his face desperate. Taking blood was one thing to him; watching it leave his own body another. “I’m dying. Don’t let me die!”

Mark ignored him, set the .22 beside the shotgun, both weapons well out of Cecil’s reach, and turned to Julianne. She was facedown, and blood ran through her hair and joined the water on its slow journey deeper into the cave, chasing after Ridley Barnes.

Her wrist showed a pulse, and her breathing seemed steady. The blood loss was the only immediate threat, or at least the only one Mark was qualified to do anything about. He removed his jacket to serve as a compress but he needed something to secure it. Ridley surely had brought rope with him, and his caving pack was still here.

There was rope, but once Mark had the pack open, he realized he didn’t need it. Before Ridley Barnes had decided to try to kill Julianne Grossman, he had packed a first-aid kit for her. There was a packet of pads coated with a clotting agent, and there was a roll of three-inch-wide gauze. Mark took both of them and left the rest of the kit. All he was concerned with right now was stopping that bleeding as fast as possible. He pushed her hair out of the way as best he could and applied two of the sterile pads. When they contacted the blood, a sticky gel formed. He wrapped the roll of gauze around her head, keeping it tight. Blood stained the first layers but did not continue to soak through.

Through it all, Cecil had moaned and called for help, and Mark hadn’t responded. When Julianne spoke, he almost dropped her head onto the rocks again.

“Worked,” she said. Her voice was as thick as if her mouth were packed with cotton. “Worked.”

He moved so he could see her face, and her eyes tracked him but they had a foggy look.

“Julianne? Julianne, do you understand where you are?”

“It worked,” she said. “Detail. He gave... detail.” She put together sentences like a climber clawing toward an icy summit.

“Just rest,” he said. “Rest for now. We’ll talk about it. But right now we need to get you out of here. That’s the—”

Light splashed over the wall behind them then and Mark whirled and reached for the shotgun. He realized quickly that the light was coming from the tunnel that led back to the Chapel Room and not the one Ridley had vanished into, but that didn’t mean a whole lot; Ridley was capable of circling back in ways no one else understood.

“Who’s there?” Mark shouted.