Michael Koryta - Last Words

The light’s motion stopped and there was a pause before another voice responded. “Indiana State Police. Who are we talking to?”

Cecil stopped moaning. For the first time, he seemed aware of something beyond his wound. Julianne’s face showed no response at all.

Mark said, “You’re talking to Markus Novak. You’re clear to approach. There are two wounded in this room, and there’s one missing somewhere else. There are two weapons that I’m aware of, but they are not in play.”

The light went back into motion and he turned to face Julianne, hoping she understood that rescue was here. She didn’t look relieved, though; she looked concerned.

“We didn’t end trance,” she said. “That... that is dangerous for Ridley now. The worst possible thing. He doesn’t know what is real down here... that could be very bad.”

Ridley embraced the cold water, swam down until his hands touched the bottom, and then pulled himself forward along the rock lining the streambed. Only at the last possible second, when his head had begun to throb and his lips threatened to part despite his will, did he allow himself to break the surface.

The water-table line was high and he struck the limestone ceiling with enough force to snap his teeth together; the impact drove his face back into the water. Choking and sputtering, he rose again and this time he leaned his head back and got a fuller breath.

He treaded water there, in a place where he had anticipated it would be shallow enough for him to stand, and got his breath back as the cold found his bones. He saw motion to the right, perhaps a stalactite relocating from one side of the stream to the next, a process that not even a millennium could bring about in another cave but that could occur within seconds in Trapdoor. She was shifting around him, changing the rules; all night she had been changing the rules, and he was weary of that. What the cave had done tonight revealed her true character.

Something Ridley had always understood about Trapdoor was that she protected the past. The cave wanted to hold her secrets and so she had wiped Ridley’s mind clear with blackness before she sent him back to the surface. Certainly there had been a price to pay for that, not one without pain — the hostile police, hateful neighbors, relentless media. And, of course, what memories the cave had allowed him to keep. Those seemed carefully crafted, snapshots of blood and scrabbling fingers and echoes of screams and then, far worse, echoes of whispers.

Please, stop

He had hoped that with ten years in constant communion with the world below — if not in this place, then close by, close enough that he could feel Trapdoor’s heartbeat and know that his could be felt as well — a mutual understanding might grow. The cave would learn that Ridley wanted to atone for only himself, that he did not blame Trapdoor for what had occurred, and that whatever he might learn about the past, he would answer for on the surface, leaving the cave in peace.

Those hopes had vanished back in the Funnel Room, where Ridley Barnes had once entered the water with rescue on his mind and returned with a dead girl in his arms, and where tonight he had sat with an innocent—

an interloper, an intruder

— at his side. All that had followed had been hostile, and unnecessary. He’d come for the truth, and he deserved it. Instead, the cave had turned on him. He was enraged by that, because his intent had been clear and his respect unquestionable.

“She didn’t belong to you!” he screamed into the blackness. “She belonged up there! And you know it! You fucking know it!”

He was gasping when he finished, the scream spreading pain through him like a fever. All he wanted to do was pass that pain along to the cave, the source of it all. Sarah Martin had belonged on the surface, and she had not deserved harm. Ridley had not deserved harm either, and still the cave had applied her power for vengeance, nothing more. When Trapdoor turned on a good and faithful servant who had sought only the right path, who had honored every request and kept every secret? At that point, even the righteous should be allowed to resist.

He bobbed too high in the water again and his helmet cracked against the stone and he was about to sink lower when he paused to consider his helmet and the potential it carried.

He’d instructed Julianne to join him in total blackness down here because he believed it was what Trapdoor had desired of him. Now he no longer cared what Trapdoor desired.

Problems with the dark man, he thought, and he tried to recall what Julianne had said and what he’d said to her. The words didn’t seem far off, but they were hard to grasp. There was a problem with the dark man.

He found the headlamp switch and pressed it, and the shapeless dark became a tunnel, its outer reaches within the range of Ridley’s spotlight. The last time he’d passed this way, it had been only blackness. Now he could see. He could find his way back to where it had started.

He had to.

The lack of a wetsuit in fifty-eight-degree water put a ticking clock on Ridley, but the light allowed him to beat it. Maybe.

It was a question of preparation and performance now, and Ridley Barnes had been a long ten years in training.

He swam ahead. The light led the way, and Ridley chased behind it.

It snowed all night and then broke off just before dawn, and the clouds pushed east and left a hard, shining sun behind.

All of this happened as Mark sat in the Garrison County Sheriff’s Department. He’d given three interviews to a total of seven police officers and still hadn’t seen Blankenship. He’d asked about him several times but nobody had an answer and finally they’d left him here and told him to wait.

The state police had been the first ones into the cave, and they’d separated Mark from Julianne swiftly and handcuffed everyone, even the kidnapping victim. Mark couldn’t say that he blamed them, though. It was a hell of a strange scene down there. The last he’d heard from Julianne, she was imploring the police to go after Ridley. They promised that they would, but Mark saw the looks in their eyes as they studied the water-filled passage Ridley had vanished into and he knew that nobody was going to be rushing after him. They’d send for experts, people with the right knowledge and equipment, and by then Ridley would have had quite a head start.

He’d been waiting alone for more than an hour when Blankenship finally entered the room. He crossed over to him and pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. Reached into his shirt pocket and removed something and spun it across the table to Mark. The object came to rest just in front of him: the Saba National Marine Park diving permit.

“No prints on it,” Blankenship said. “I thought you should have it back as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

Blankenship nodded and he kept his eyes occupied elsewhere while Mark picked the plastic disk up and put it in his pocket.

“You got one back from him alive,” Blankenship said. “I thank you for that. It could have gone another way. It has before.”

“She’s doing all right?”

“Docs say she’s stable, and she’s talking pretty well now. Same story as you gave me. Says he came to her originally asking for help with memory retrieval and that she heard a confession. Knew it wouldn’t stand up in court and wanted to find help. She says he wouldn’t have taken help from my kind of detective. She thought he would from yours.” Blankenship’s face showed only the sleepless night.

“Did she know what Ridley wanted from her last night? Before they got down there?”