Michael Koryta - Last Words

Ridley leaned forward, out over the lip, and studied the bolts. They were not the kind he used for the etriers. They were open U-bolts and there were only two of them, set eighteen inches apart and just below the cliff edge. Ridley was no stranger to visions, so he reached out and touched one of the bolts, feeling the steel under his fingertips. Very real. The steel was scraped, the base of the U-shaped portion nicked. Ropes would not do that. Metal would. He looked at the open bolts again and now he thought he understood. A quick scan of the room confirmed it — a caving ladder rested in the rocks just beside him, coiled up and tossed aside, waiting for someone’s return.

Ridley had been using single-rope techniques for so long that the possibility of the ladder had not come to him as swiftly as it should have. The ladder was made of aluminum steps with strands of cable for the side supports so that it could be rolled up.

Ridley unfurled the ladder slowly and the feeling that descended upon him then was one he’d always feared he’d encounter in a cave, although he’d expected it would come from a roof collapse, a rock slide, something that left him trapped and hopeless. He hadn’t expected it to come in the form of a ladder.

Police searchers could not have left this behind ten years ago. They hadn’t made it this far. No one had. This was the province of the dark man, the heart of Trapdoor, and nobody but Ridley — and Sarah Martin — had ever passed this way.

None of this made any sense. The cave had created the dark man, and the dark man did not require ladders.

Ridley hung the ladder through the bolts, giving him a method of descending the wall, but he was so tired after that small bit of effort that he sat on the cliff with his feet dangling off the edge as he fought to catch his breath. He stared at the ladder as he breathed, so focused that his peripheral vision began to blur, almost as it did during visualization just before trance.

Look at it from above, and then from below. What do you notice about it now that you did not notice before?

There was blood on the rocks. These were old stains, streaks of dusty red that might have belonged to an ancient people. Ridley had shed no blood here.

The only thing that seemed less likely than the dark man requiring ladders was the dark man bleeding.

What do you understand now that you did not understand before?

The light was bothering him now and he wanted to reach up and turn the headlamp off and be soothed by the dark. He squeezed his hands into fists to still them. He needed to keep the light on, whether it was pleasant or not. He had to remember the things Julianne had taught him.

“What did you do, Ridley?”

He breathed the words into the emptiness, a question so familiar it seemed like part of his name now. It was the wrong question. He thought that he knew what he had done and that he always had. That meant he needed to ask a different question.

Why had he done it?

Mark’s rental car was in the police impound lot in an alley across from the sheriff’s department. Blankenship opened it for him and then said he was going back to talk to Cecil Buckner.

“You hang around town for me, okay? We’ll need to talk again.”

“I’ve got no place to go,” Mark said. They had just returned his phone to him. The battery was dead, so he couldn’t see how many calls from Jeff London had stacked up. By now the board of directors had already met. He wondered if they had any idea what was going on in Indiana at the moment. He had trouble bringing himself to care. What had once seemed paramount — appeasing the people in that room — now seemed inconsequential, with Julianne in the hospital and Ridley Barnes still belowground and the dark man with him in mind if not in body.

Mark pulled out of the impound lot and went through the alley and came out on a street that ran toward the downtown square and the courthouse where once Ridley Barnes had walked in with a few questions and a fake deed. What exactly had that day done to this town? What had that decision by Pershing MacAlister done?

“Never count out your sins,” Mark’s uncle had told him the night they had Mark drive them through the snow to find the poker cheat. There had been blood on Larry’s jeans by then, and they weren’t even through with the search.

He started toward Trapdoor even though he’d been told to stay away. The town fell behind him and the fields opened ahead and he’d gone no more than half a mile before he saw the white truck approaching in his rearview mirror. He reached for the brake but just as he hit it, the truck turned off the road and the exhaust growled as it headed south, away from Mark and out of sight. He watched the mirror for a few seconds anyway, but the road behind him was empty now, and then he let up on the brake and continued out of town.

The next time, he heard the exhaust before he saw the truck. It came from his right, where a four-way stop loomed, woods on the right-hand side and fields and two pole barns on the left. The barns were closed and no one was in sight. By the time Mark reached the stop sign, he could see the truck tear-assing up the road in an effort to beat him to the intersection.

He brought the car to a stop and put it in park. Watched as the white Silverado fishtailed into the middle of the intersection, black smoke bubbling from the worn-out muffler. Mark opened the door and got out of his car and walked toward the truck with his hands in his pockets and his head high as Evan Borders fumbled out of the driver’s seat with a gun in hand.

“No mask today,” Mark said. “And no friends?”

Borders looked at him and then glanced at his gun as if confused by it, because it now appeared to be an unnecessary tool. “You were a long time with the police,” he said.

“Lots to talk about. People keep dying in this town. They’d like that to stop.”

“You’re pretty relaxed for a guy without a gun.”

“I’m getting used to the role.”

Evan Borders nodded, looking over Mark’s shoulder and back toward town. No traffic was coming from that way, but it was bound to eventually.

“You stay relaxed, then,” he said. “We’re going to take a little trip. You can drive.”

“I’m not real interested in a trip right now.”

“Bullshit you aren’t. You want to know if Ridley makes it through. So do I. Why don’t we take your ride? Police have eyes for mine. I’ll leave it here where it’s convenient for them.”

The gun was pointed down. A car had appeared far off down the road, heading toward town, and Evan pressed the handgun into the pocket of the oversize farm jacket he wore and said, “Just get back behind the wheel and keep it in park.”

He climbed into his own truck and pulled out of the intersection and onto the side of the road as the car came by. Mark gave the driver a nod and a wave as he passed, casual. By the time the car was gone, Evan was out of the truck and jogging toward him, the gun still hidden in his coat.

“All right,” Mark said. “I’ll drive.”

“There ya go!”

Evan walked around the front of the car with a cheerful, buoyant stride, went to the passenger door, opened it, and fell into the seat.

“ Cold today!” he said. “My goodness, the sun comes out and it gets colder? Crazy.”

The muzzle of the gun was showing again, pointed at Mark, and Evan had a strange false smile, like a department-store greeter.

“Where are we going?” Mark said.

“Just drive toward Trapdoor for now.”

“Bad location if you’re hoping to avoid police.”

“Why don’t you let me give the tour?”

The route took them across the intersection and back into the winding hills. Evan watched it all as if he were seeing the place for the first time.