James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

The B&B’s receptionist dangled a key attached to a thin metal ring from the end of his index finger. Petri failed to take it at first. He just stared at the key like some foreign object, wondering how easily it could have fallen.

They carried their backpacks upstairs. A small nightstand separated the beds in the room. Neither of them suggested moving it out of the way and pushing the beds together. Nina flopped down on the thick mattress with a long sigh.

‘I can’t sleep here,’ she said, finally breaking the silence.

Petri sat down on his bed. When they had stepped into the room, he had switched on the light and seen a cockroach scuttling away under the bathroom door, but that wasn’t worth mentioning.

‘There’s a bar downstairs,’ Petri said. ‘We could get wasted. If you want to.’

Nina thought that was the first good idea in a week.

They chose a table by the window, although they couldn’t see anything outside, only their own reflections in the uneven glass. Darkness had fallen during the thirty minutes they’d spent in their room.

‘Where are we going?’ Nina yawned.

All the other customers at the bar were men. They had barely glanced at Petri, but a few pairs of eyes had lingered on Nina, following her until they reached the table.

‘Pezenas is next,’ Petri said.

Nina did not react to this and only continued to stare at her own reflection in the window. Petri started to suspect that she might have meant something else by her question.

Where were they going? They had never needed to ask things like that before.

Petri watched Nina’s profile. Her face was young, unfamiliar and pale. Petri thought about Pezenas and was terrified that it would not be enough for Nina.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Petri asked. Shame followed right after. That was not a question a grown man would ask.

‘Nothing,’ Nina sighed. ‘My head’s so tired it doesn’t have anything to say.’

The girl brought her pint glass to her lips, quickly, and drank. She drank greedily until she gagged. She made no sound, but a jerk of her shoulders gave her away. Nina let the foam drip back into her glass.

‘Is there something wrong with the beer?’ Petri asked.

Nina wiped her mouth and leaned forward.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she asked.

She had tears in her eyes, but that was because of her gag reflex. Just a reaction without an emotion.

Petri had sacrificed so much for Nina. The kids would soon be at the age where they would know to blame the father who had left instead of themselves. They’d hear phrases like ‘mid-­life crisis’. They would block his calls and tear up all the birthday cards he sent them.

Last night, while waiting for sleep and for Nina to come back from buying a pack of smokes, Petri had realized that one of them had sacrificed nothing. Twenty-­somethings have nothing to sacrifice.

When Petri looked into Nina’s eyes, brimming with griefless tears, he knew that something would soon be said that could never be taken back. Here’s where it would finally happen. In France, near the Spanish border, in some B&B the name of which Petri hadn’t bothered to check.

Nina had just opened her mouth when someone dropped into the chair at the end of their table. The scent of soot, sweat and earth rolled over them.

‘Want to see some cave paintings?’ the man asked in English.

Unfamiliar accent. Matted, rust-­brown beard. Still, the eyes revealed that the man was not that old. Thirty, at most.

‘Fuck. Off.’

Nina’s voice was icy, but the man pretended not to hear. He waved a hand at the bar and lifted up three fingers to the bartender.

‘On me,’ he said and pointed carelessly at Nina’s and Petri’s half-­drunk glasses.

‘Don’t you understand what we’re saying?’

Nina’s eyes stayed on Petri.

‘I’m not some useless tour guide,’ the man said calmly, obviously used to objections. ‘I know caves no one’s ever even heard about. Unique chance. Take it or leave it.’

‘We’ll leave it,’ Nina said. ‘Get lost.’

The man tilted his head and thought for a while.

‘Okay,’ he said and gripped the table for support, about to rise.

‘Wait,’ Petri said.

‘What the hell you are doing?’ Nina whispered in Finnish.

‘Tell us more,’ Petri said.

The man sat down with a wide smile at Nina. The waiter brought their new glasses over and put them on the table.

The man explained that the area had many more prehistoric caves than the official records said. It sounded practiced, a routine speech, but Petri loved to listen. It was music that prevented Nina from saying something irrevocable.

‘I’ve been to Font-­de-­Gaume.’ Petri’s voice was steady; the voice of a grown man who would not break down.

‘Eh,’ the man snorted and waved his hand. ‘Boring. I can show you better ones. Practically untouched.’

The man told them about underground cave networks, hundreds of meters long, of ancient places of worship and ritualistic caves of shamans.

‘Stop that,’ Nina said to Petri in Finnish. ‘We won’t be going into any fucking caves.’

‘I’m Alex,’ the man said happily and offered his hand to Nina. A professional who knew who he needed to charm.

Nina kept her hands tightly under the table at first. She glanced at the man. Petri could tell that Nina wanted to smile. The short eye contact made her cheek muscles twitch slightly underneath her smooth skin. Petri had learned to register these things.

Nina put her hand out.

‘There you go,’ the man laughed. ‘Life’s too short to sulk.’

Petri and Nina told him their names. The man made them clink their glasses together.

‘I’ve spent more time underground than any official guide,’ Alex said and then leaned forward like he was about to share a state secret. ‘A part of me is down there right now.’

The man waited for their reaction.

‘Do you believe me?’ he asked when they did not give him one.

‘Maybe,’ Petri said.

The man pushed his chair back, glanced over his shoulder toward the bar and then bent down to untie his left shoe. His sock came off with a scratching sound, like it had scraped off the man’s leg hair. He looked over his shoulder again and then lifted his bare foot on the table.

The smell was so strong that Petri burst out laughing. Nina followed suit. And then, almost as one, they fell silent. They now saw what was wrong with the man’s foot.

‘What happened?’ Petri asked.

The man’s big toe looked unnaturally large. The hardened skin next to it looked like a yellowish tumor. Still, it was just a regular toe. It only looked huge because all the other toes were gone. The end of his foot was nothing but scarred skin.

‘I don’t know,’ Alex said, obviously enjoying the shock he had caused.

They heard angry yelling from behind the bar. The bartender was waving his arms at them.

Alex threw a lazy apology over his shoulder and slid his foot off the table.

‘I was exploring a cave alone about twenty kilometers from here,’ he said, pulling the sock back on his foot. ‘I slipped, lost consciousness. And when I woke up . . .’

He let out a strange whistling sound.

‘Gone. Bye bye, toes.’

‘Rats?’ Petri suggested.

‘Maybe. In any case, I left that cave faster than ever. Nearly got myself killed in the rush. I forgot the most important rule: never panic. Never.’

‘Horrible,’ Nina mumbled.

‘Not really,’ the man said. ‘I made it to the doctor and shocked a few student nurses. The main thing is that I still have my big toe. That’s the support pillar of the whole leg. Man’s got to have a big toe or he won’t be able to stand. You only need the other toes if you want to climb trees.’