***
It was the tenth mile that did it, I lamented later, dropping to the hard ground and trying in vain to stretch the ache out of my legs. I was tired, hungry, and in pain, and very certain that if I took another step, my feet were going to fall off. The cold sandwich was fished out of my pack and ravaged in record time before being washed down with the last of my now warm water. Was it too much to hope that wherever I ended up had water? Alternate universes had water, didn’t they? Maybe there would be a Starbucks. A nice hotel and a bubble bath would be welcomed too.
Rocky hills surrounded me as my back twisted from side to side. The cave had to be close. I took the maps out, unfolded one, and spread it over my lap. The light breeze in the night air rustled the thin paper, and I took the smaller of the two flashlights and put it between my teeth in order to see. Tracing the path I’d been walking, my fingernail tapped the spot marked as the general ending area. Yes, I was getting close…very close.
I folded the map and tucked it between my leg and the ground. The other two maps were more detailed. One was about three years old, while the other had been torn from a book. It was a copy of an old sketch of the area; I’d found it with the rest of Mike’s things. Once again, I marveled at how similar the images were to one another.
“Amazing,” I breathed. “Truly amazing.” I clicked the switch on the small penlight to ‘off’ and stood up. According to the maps, I had a mile, if that, to go. I scanned the horizon carefully. There, just over that ridge. I hastily gathered the rest of my gear and started off at a brisk pace.
An hour later, my lungs were protesting and my previous aches—plus several new ones—were making themselves known again. But every discomfort was swiftly forgotten when I reached the top of the hill. The scene that stood tall and majestic before me was breathtakingly beautiful. I braced my hands on my thighs and leaned over, catching my breath and laughing at the same time. God, I made it and I’m here, was all I could think for a triumphant moment, grinning like a fool. Checking the map would have been unnecessary. There was no mistaking the formation of rock in front of me.
The openings cut deep into the mountain ridge. They were several feet apart and very wide. Jagged stone that looked to be quartz rimmed the edges. It caught the moonlight and sparkled before me like three diamond-rimmed doorways.
I stood there for a few more minutes before reality edged in and I realized that those gorgeous doorways were very dark. And which one did I need to take? I looked up at the stars and frowned as I tried to concentrate and find the pattern. The cluster of stars that marked the path was supposed to have the shape of a torch. I stared hard, focusing my eyes, then unfocused them again.
“Ah! There!” I exclaimed, pointing to the right.
My voice echoed in the darkness and I felt strange for a minute. Personally, I thought it was a stretch to call it a torch. But then again, I had never been any good at stargazing. Some people could look at the sky and immediately identify a particular star or constellation. I was not one of those people. But the more I eyed the group of stars that hung over the opening to my right, the more certain I became. That was definitely the one.
“A flame to light the path,” I murmured in awe, reciting the literature.
Taking a step forward, I quietly eased the gun from my pack, removing the safety. Loaded and ready, I thought grimly. Hopefully, there would be no need to use it, but it had occurred to me the day before that anyone John sent after me was more likely to wait until I had led them to the cave to attack. I didn’t think that I had been followed, but you could never be too careful. The ambush in my backyard was still all too fresh in my mind. I would not take my well-being for granted, I vowed.
I edged closer to the dark opening and bit my lip when I realized my latest dilemma. I would need light, and lots of it, to navigate the cave. The small penlight would be of no use to me now. I crouched down low and carefully lay the gun between my feet so that I could safely reach into my bag for the heavy-duty steel flashlight I carried.
I would have to hold the gun one handed—maybe even use it that way, too, depending on what I found inside the cave. Now there’s a scary thought, I considered. A nervous woman trying to hit a moving target in the dark, one handed, while aiming a flashlight. Thank God I had a steady hand…usually, I amended. Working in a lab was one thing. Being forced to defend your life in a matter of shaky seconds was something else entirely. Briefly, I wondered about that. In a life or death situation, would a skilled brain surgeon have an advantage over, say, a designer? What about an executive and an engineer? You would think that training made a difference. I, for one, was banking on the theory that training made all the difference in the world. Still, I hoped I didn’t do something stupid like try and spot with the gun while pulling the trigger on my flashlight.
The cave was smaller than I had expected. I brushed at what I could only assume were cobwebs. My mind registered this fact, but it didn’t make it any more believable. Good God, those had to be the thickest spider webs I had ever seen. They literally hung from the corners and roof of the cave, weaving a ceiling above me. One of the thick tendrils caught my cheek and I shoved it away with my gun hand…probably not the brightest thing I had ever done. I was pretty sure if there was one thing on the list of ‘stupid things to do’ that could top shooting with a flashlight, shooting yourself in the face was it.
My cheek stung where the section of web had been and I was sure I would have a small scratch from it. The heavy strand was as coarse as wire. Normally, I was not the least bit scared of spiders. I didn’t exactly like them, but neither did they bother me. I spared what I swore would be my last glance at the ceiling and tried not to think about what kind of spider had made a web like that. I could only hope I never had to find out, even though a part of me was morbidly curious.
“All in the name of science,” I muttered, crouching lower in the narrow space. I was really starting to wonder about that motto, I reflected bitterly.
Maybe half a mile into the cave, the path split into a wide fork. “Well, this wasn’t in the notes,” I murmured, surprised. So which fork did I need to take? I swung the flashlight beam in a slow, wide arc. The right side was a narrow doorway a little smaller than the tunnel around me. The left was a three-by-three opening cut low to the floor of the cave. My, wasn’t that a tough choice? I turned toward the passage to my right. No way in hell was I crawling on my hands and knees through an abandoned tunnel that was home to mutant spiders—unless I absolutely had to. The thought of that narrow, crude passage was like a lead weight in my stomach. The odds were not in my favor, I conceded. If I really wanted to hide something…well, the choice was obvious. A narrow tunnel that you were forced to crawl through made more sense. Then again, I reasoned as I stepped through the taller doorway, what better place to hide than in plain sight.
After the narrow tunnel I had been walking through, the scene that stretched out before me was pure heaven. The doorway that I cautiously stepped through opened to a gigantic bowl of a room. Granted, it was cold and dark—it was still a cave. But the space was positively huge. I dragged in several deep breaths, feeling greedy. I couldn’t be sure if it was the cobwebs, the thoughts of killer arachnids, or the small space, but I realized I had been taking small, shallow breaths for the past hour. It felt great to relax for a minute and have nothing more to do than consume oxygen.
The flashlight moved in a wide sweep, quickly taking in each wall of the space before moving on. I checked the high ceiling, too, for good measure. “Oh, thank you Lord,” I whispered. The webs above me were sparse and mostly confined to the corners.
My attention shifted back to the walls, starting with my left side. This was the plainest of the rough walls, I had noticed. Rather than an intricate design, this wall was home to a variety of lines. Some were long, but most were reasonably short, at what looked to be less than a foot apiece. They were thin and grouped together in clusters of three. They were also etched deep into
the face of the rock. The only difference between the symbols was the direction. Some were vertical, while others ran horizontal. I took a step back and tried to discern a pattern among the clusters. Squares maybe, I thought. I wondered what it meant and wished that I had been traveling to this place under different circumstances, like with a guide and two solid weeks of free time on my hands. At the very least, I wished I had been able to better research the area and culture. I was sure the etchings were important; maybe not to my quest in particular, but they were obviously very old, and someone had taken a lot of time in their creation. More than anything, I wanted to know if they told a story or conveyed a message—or had they served a strictly decorative purpose?
“Fascinating,” I whispered, unsure why I bothered to lower my volume. The light would give away my location just as easily as my voice would. It just felt like the kind of place that commanded a more reverent tone. I reached out to touch the stone, marveling at the cool and solid weight. I very nearly had to drag myself away to move to the next wall. As interesting as the symmetrical carvings were, they did not hold what I had to find and I knew it.
The wall that had been directly in front of me when I entered the cave beckoned. I stopped in front of it and gasped in delight. It was beautiful. These etchings were done with a lighter hand that had somehow managed to pull off graceful. I shook my head and looked up and down the wall. I could not imagine the level of skill it would take to create such intricate beauty, much less the hours involved.
Suns and stars and tiny people blended harmoniously among curly, curvy designs. The surface stone was a bit smoother here, I noticed. It took another ten minutes and some very judicious use of the flashlight to determine that this was not the wall I needed. I exhaled loudly and frowned as I turned to the last wall in the room, only to find that it was a mirror image of the opposite wall, containing the more symmetrical lines.
It occurred to me that the task would be easier if I knew what to look for, although I was reasonably sure I was searching for a big keyhole. After all, what else did you do with a key? Then again, there was always the possibility that my key was not an actual key in the literal sense of the word. I supposed a remote possibility existed that the key in my bag only revealed the correct design or emblem, in which case I would have to match the emblem on the key to its corresponding emblem or design in the cave. Or, maybe the emblem on the key pointed to a set in some hieroglyphic sequence. I unconsciously began to rub my eyes at the possibilities.
No way, I told myself. That was not possible. Mike would have mentioned something. He would not have left me without the tools I needed to get to him unless he meant business when he said not to follow him and meant to force me to destroy the key. No, I vowed in the cold darkness of the chamber, there was always a choice. I would destroy the key only after Mike was home safe, not before. If that meant going somewhere to research the information I needed to make that happen, then I was fully prepared to do so. And until then, for the sake of my own sanity, I was going to assume the key belonged to an actual keyhole.
My eyebrows rose as yet another possibility occurred to me. Who said a key hole had to be in a wall? Couldn’t it also be in the floor? I didn’t see why not, so I did a thorough check of the dusty floor before I left the room and ventured back into the tunnel to find nothing. Of course, I didn’t get down on my hands and knees to feel every inch of the cave floor.
Staring down the tiny box-like opening of the tunnel I was about to enter, I wondered if perhaps I should go back to the large room and cover every inch of the floor.
“Quit stalling, Claire,” I ordered myself in a resigned tone.
I took a deep breath and dropped into a crouching stance. Before I could give mutant spiders and asphyxiation another thought, I plunged into the darkness, only to be brought up short when my pack hit the tunnel’s low ceiling and refused to budge. Backing up and climbing to my feet, I quickly shifted the pack to my front, then tried again. The tunnel really was as cramped as it looked, I noted. The gun was a heavy steel weight in the waistband of my jeans and my pack dragged the ground underneath me. The flashlight bounced slightly with my awkward crawling movements. Somehow, the light made the situation worse for my nerves. Webs brushed my face and tangled in my hair. They were not as thick and painful as the ones that occupied the main tunnel, but there is something very unsettling about cobwebs covering your face. I expected to feel the sharp sting of a bite at any moment. And I sure as hell hoped I wouldn’t need to use the gun, because I didn’t think I could even reach the thing.
Something crawled across my left ear and slithered into my hair. I bit my lip and tried not to scream or whine. I was not a woman who whined, I reminded myself. I was a woman who got the job done. Forward, forward, I urged myself. Besides, if I opened my mouth to scream, I would end up eating the cobwebs and spiders instead of just wearing them, and wearing them was bad enough.
At any rate, the only thing that stopped me from bolting at that moment was the fear that I would piss off whatever was currently nesting in my hair. Then again, jumping up would surely mean hitting my head on the rock above me. Maybe I would get lucky and kill the damn thing. I closed my eyes and tried not to feel like a hundred bugs were crawling over me.
Relief was sweet when I felt the first rush of cold air. The flashlight thudded lightly on the ground and the sound echoed faintly throughout the chamber. My eyes went wide and I stopped in my tracks. Nothing should echo in such a confined space. I reached a hand out into the blackness. Tentatively, I groped for the ceiling and felt only thin air. I scooted forward on my hands and knees and slowly eased into a sitting position. My first instinct was to leap to my feet and claw at my hair.
Two things prevented me from doing so. I was cramped and sore from the long crawl through the tunnel, and I did not want to scare whatever was on my head. Scared animals tended to bite, if you could call a spider an animal… Pest from hell was more like it. I very carefully shook my head and tried not to cringe. I couldn’t tell if it worked, but I didn’t feel anything, so I shrugged off the fear. It was too dark to be certain that my head was bug free, and there wasn’t time to sit and worry about it all night.
Stiffly and by small degrees, I rose to my feet. I was in a room that made the first cave feel like a dollhouse. In fact, ‘cave’ did not suit this place at all. Cavern seemed a more appropriate term.
Light cut through the dark in wide patches, illuminating the space around me. Turning, I stared down at the tiny hole I’d emerged from only moments before and felt a strange chill come over me. Calm down… The silent warning played through the darkest corners of my mind. If I was not careful, I’d be jumping at every little noise, or worse. Curling up in a corner until help arrived sounded very appealing; except no help was coming. No one was even aware of my location. There was only me…I was the help, and not just for myself, but for Mike. Neither one of us could afford for me to have a meltdown.
The air around me was cool and musty. The walls here were crammed full on the left and right sides with so many symbols it was overwhelming. Judging by the repetition of many of the symbols and the pattern, I could only assume they were letters. I hurriedly turned my attention to the closest wall before I really cracked, imagining crayoning a face onto my purse and calling it Wilson for company. Of course that could never happen, I reasoned…I didn’t have a crayon.
I turned to the center wall and froze. There it was: the key hole. For a moment I could barely breathe, so strong was the temptation to shout and do a victory dance. All of the miles and the fatigue had paid off. I dropped my pack and rushed to touch what I had so desperately sought after.
The light revealed a more sinister image. The wall that housed the keyhole was mostly bare. Long, harsh looking lines had been carved into the rock in a circle formation. The carvings were so deep it looked as though the rock had been viciously slashed over and over again. I felt the chill and held it firmly at bay. There was a deep gash i
n the smooth center of the carving, and above that was a tiny picture. Someone had carved what looked to be a coffin. A single long, straight line slashed the rock above the carving of the coffin, and a crude sun gouged the stone several inches above that. A representation of the ground, I assumed. A spiral cut through the line and into the coffin.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. The message was clear enough, despite the language barrier. It was a warning. I ran a finger lightly over the large hole directly below the disturbing image, the key hole, and wondered what to expect. I would have been more curious to know if it was safe, or at least reasonably so. In fact, that would have been my number one priority had there been any choice for me. But there wasn’t, so I decided not to waste time with worry. I had a job to do. I darted over to the tunnel’s opening and bent to grab the pack that held the key.
“Please don’t be broken,” I whispered fervently to the pack, addressing the key. Under normal circumstances it would have been safe, but having been dragged through a two-mile long tunnel…well, its condition remained to be seen. I did not want to begin to think about what I would do if it was broken. Gluing it back together was probably not an option.
There was barely time to turn toward the wall again when the first faint rustling sound filtered through the cave. I froze, looking down at the opening near my feet. Was it an animal? I stood still and quiet, listening, relaxing a bit when nothing happened, but it had sounded so close. Logic dictated that it must have been an animal, or more likely a very large bug. I grimaced at the thought. Anything larger than that—like a person— would have been detected long before now. There was no way to be silent in that tunnel.
Unless…unless you crawled on your stomach. My eyes widened before my shaking hands went for the gun at the small of my back, and in the next instant rough hands grabbed my ankles, pulling hard, knocking me down onto the cold stone floor. I screamed as my back connected with the rock and bounced hard. Instinct took over and I managed to hold my head above the floor. I looked at my right hand as if it belonged to someone else, and dimly realized that I had not dropped the gun.
There was no time to get up as a large man in a mask loomed over me in the dark. Without stopping to look at him, I pointed my gun and fired three times. The shot he got off before he fell on me dug deep into the rock next to my head, sending sharp splinters of rock flying into the side of my face. The heat and the sting barely registered.
It took a long minute that felt like an eternity to shove the dead—literally—weight off me. I got to my feet, unsteady, and looked down at my clothing in horror. There was so much blood…it was all over me. I pressed my hands to my midsection and felt the red sticky mess in disgust. Not mine, thank God. I felt weak and could hear the blood rushing through my head, then shouting and several curses joined the fray.
“Craig! You got her?”
“Screw you!” I yelled back. Not a smart move, I know. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I moaned. There were more of them and they were coming quick. I dug through the pack and clutched the key like the lifeline it had just become. The men were getting closer, and the threats were getting louder.
I held my breath and stuck the key into the hole, swearing when I missed the narrow slot.
“Come here!” a voice roared from somewhere behind me. It sounded like it had come from inside the tunnel, but it was loud. They were getting closer.
I shoved it in one more time, not daring to look behind me. There was a faint click as it slid home, and a trap door in the rock slid open with a loud groan. I eyed the scene with surprise. “Well, that was anticlimactic…”
“There she is!” One of the men yelled from the entrance of the rock. I shrieked and took off into the doorway, turning around to shove at the stone door with everything I had. I need not have bothered. Luck was with me once again as the door shut on its own, leaving me shrouded in darkness once again.
Leaning against the wall with my eyes closed, I willed my heart to stop pounding and return to a semi-normal rhythm. That had been too damn close. One hand ran through my hair and felt the wetness against my skin, reminding me that I was still covered in blood. My lip caught between my teeth, I struggled for control while searching for the flashlight. Five minutes later I gave up, remembering that it had been dropped on the other side of the door.
I took a step forward, then another, praying that I wasn’t near stairs and wondering what was going on. If this was another dimension, it left a lot to be desired. A loud swooshing noise in front of me caused me to stop in my tracks, and the last thing I remember was seeing a blinding flash of light.