“Sins,” Balenger murmured.
At a further table, this one long, he saw men, women, and children seated before plates that might once have held mountains of food. Indistinguishable desiccated masses were all that remained. Bones from what looked like pork ribs and chicken drumsticks crammed their mouths.
On a bed, two naked female mummies lay beneath a naked man. In another bed, a man touched two naked children, male and female. Elsewhere, a naked man lay face down over a table while another naked man lay over him. Further on, a man had congress with a dog.
“It seems Reverend Pentecost had sexual hang-ups,” Amanda said.
A woman sat before a dusty mirror, a hairbrush and containers of dried makeup before her. A man lay face down on a table, a hole in his temple, a revolver in his hand. A mummy played a fiddle while a man and woman danced in a close embrace that seemed impossible until Balenger realized that they were nailed to a board positioned between them and held up by a base of rocks.
Everywhere Amanda turned the flashlight, similar tableaus came into view.
“Music and dancing? Pentecost considered a lot of things to be sins,” Balenger said. The flashlight revealed a camera attached to a wall. Taking angry steps toward it, he asked the Game Master, “Aside from the man with the bullet hole in his head, how did all these people die? What was this, a mass suicide like what happened when Jim Jones made his people drink poisoned Kool-Aid?”
“Flavor Aid,” the Game Master corrected him. “The poison Jones used was cyanide. His church was the People’s Temple. More than nine hundred of his followers committed suicide. At Jones’s urging, they claimed to be protesting ‘the conditions of an inhumane world.’ In recent times, it’s only one of many mass suicides motivated by religion. In the late 1990s, the members of the Order of the Solar Temple Movement killed themselves to escape the evils of this world and find refuge in a heavenly place named after the star Sirius. The Heaven’s Gate cult drank poisoned vodka so they could go to paradise by being transported to a space ship concealed behind the approaching comet Hale-Bopp. But my personal favorite is the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. They had visions of the Virgin Mary and believed that the world was going to end on December 31, 1999, the eve of the recent millennium. When the apocalypse didn’t arrive, they recalculated and decided that March 17 was the true date for the end of the world. More than eight hundred people died in anticipation of what they believed would be the end of worldly time.”
“So I’m right,” Balenger said. “This was a mass suicide.”
“No. Not even the man with the bullet hole in his head is a suicide. The shot was delivered after he died.”
“Then…?”
“A mass murder,” the Game Master said. “Pentecost killed all two hundred and seventeen townspeople, eighty-five of them children. For good measure, he included family pets.”
“So many people against one man.” Balenger could barely speak. “Surely they could have stopped him.”
“They didn’t know it was happening. Pentecost convinced them to come here on New Year’s Eve of 1899 because they believed they were going to be transported to heaven. They believed it so strongly that they braved a storm to get here. The mine, Pentecost assured them, was the appointed place. He needed this cavern. It was the only way he could kill everyone at once.”
“How?” Amanda insisted. “Poison? Was there enough food or water for him to poison all two hundred and seventeen of them? How could he have poisoned it without them noticing?”
“Not in food or water.”
“If he didn’t shoot them, I don’t see how he could have killed so many people at once.”
“Arsenic is an interesting substance. When heated, it doesn’t liquefy but instead transforms directly into a gas.”
“Pentecost gassed them?”
“It smells like garlic. It came from a sealed chamber with hidden air vents, so they couldn’t stop it from filling the mine. After Pentecost started the fire that heated the arsenic and released the gas, he went outside and locked the entrance to the mine. Back then, the buildings at the bottom of the slope were intact. He waited out the storm in one of them. Then he opened the door to the mine and let a ventilation shaft dissipate the gas. Later, he arranged the tableaus. He wanted the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires to be a lesson to the future. When he fulfilled his mission, he arranged his own tableau, then poisoned himself, and went to what he believed was heaven. As you noted earlier, mines and caves don’t have many insects and microbes. Along with the cold, that’s one reason the bodies were mummified. But this mine did have some insects. The reason those few insects couldn’t do their work is that the arsenic on the bodies killed them.”
Balenger surveyed the tableaus in disgust. “While I was on my way here, you told me the Sepulcher would show me the meaning of life. I don’t see what that is, unless the truth is everyone dies.”
“But not us,” Amanda emphasized. “At least, not this evening. We found the Sepulcher before midnight. We won! We get to leave!”
The Game Master didn’t respond to her statement but instead told Balenger, “The meaning of life, the hell of it is that people believe the ideas in their minds. Worse, they act on those ideas. Consider the great mass murderers of the previous century. Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot. Millions and millions of people died because of them. Did those men consider themselves insane? Hardly. They believed that the agony they caused was worth the result of implementing their visions. The ancients thought that the sky was a dome with holes through which celestial light glowed. That was their reality. Later, people believed that the sun revolved around the earth, which they thought was the center of the universe. That was considered reality. Then Copernicus argued that the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun was the center of the universe. That became reality. Reality is in our minds. How else can anyone explain what happened in this cavern? Reverend Pentecost and Jim Jones and the Order of the Solar Temple and the Heaven’s Gate group and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Their thoughts controlled their perceptions. A space ship hiding behind the comet Hale-Bopp? Hey, if you can think it, it’s real. Poison two hundred and seventeen people so they can be a lesson to the future? For Pentecost, that was the most obvious idea imaginable. ‘We create our own reality,’ an aide to the second President Bush once said. The truth of the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires is that ideas control everything, and all of it is virtual.”
“Which means that your idea isn’t any better than anyone else’s!” Balenger’s voice rose in outrage. “Your thinking’s as flawed as Pentecost’s! So is your game! But now it’s over! We won! We’re leaving!”
The Game Master didn’t reply.
Balenger motioned for Amanda to turn the light toward the exit. They stepped toward the other chamber in which Reverend Pentecost had stood for more than a hundred years, waiting to greet the future.
Balenger felt the punch of a shockwave. His muscles compacted as the rumble of an explosion reached him. The walls trembled. Rocks fell. He almost lost his balance.
“No!” he shouted as the reverberation lessened. He and Amanda ran to the tunnel, but thick dust blocked their way. Coughing, they staggered back.
Amanda spun, looking for a camera. “You son of a bitch, you told us you didn’t lie! You swore you never created a dishonest game! You promised we could leave if we won!”
The Game Master remained silent.
Gradually, the dust settled. Balenger and Amanda went cautiously forward, aiming the flashlight toward the continuation of the tunnel. They came to where they’d left Ray’s body. A barrier of fallen rocks now covered him.
“Jonathan must have detonated Ray’s GPS receiver,” Balenger said.
“Don’t call me ‘Jonathan,’” the voice ordered.
“Why not? You’re not playing by the rules anymore. Why the hell should we call you the Game Master?”
“Who said the game is over?”
/> Balenger and Amanda studied each other in the flashlight’s glare.
“I don’t know how long the batteries will last. Did you bring others?” Amanda asked.
“No.”
After a long desperate silence, Amanda said, “Maybe we can make torches from the clothes in the Sepulcher.” She tried to sound optimistic, but her voice dropped. “Bad idea. The flames might ignite combustible gas.”
Balenger grasped at a possibility. “If there was gas, wouldn’t it have overpowered us by now? Wouldn’t the explosion have set it off?”
“Maybe. But now that I think of it, the flames from the torches would use the oxygen in here. We’d suffocate faster than if we waited in the dark.”
Her voice became still.
A growl replaced it. As Balenger and Amanda whirled, the flashlight revealed the two dogs that had stalked Balenger from the creek. They seemed larger. The light made their eyes red. Saliva dripped from their teeth. My God, they followed us inside, Balenger thought.
Snarling, the dogs came forward. Balenger raised the gun, but immediately, they reacted to it. Before he could shoot, they turned and raced into the darkness.
“They’re trapped in here with us. They don’t have anything else to eat. When this flashlight goes out…” Amanda couldn’t finish her sentence.
“Yeah, it’s getting harder to keep a positive attitude.” Balenger kept aiming toward the darkness.
“The lantern,” Amanda said.
“What about it?”
“If it’s a bomb, we could use it to try to blow these rocks out of the way.” The flashlight in Amanda’s hand wavered.
“Maybe. Or else the blast might collapse the tunnel.”
“What about the ventilation shaft the Game Master mentioned?”
“Yeah.” Balenger felt the start of hope. The dust in the flashlight beam seemed to drift, as if responding to a subtle draft.
They inched forward. Amanda shifted the flashlight from one side of the tunnel to the other. Balenger listened for sounds from the dogs. His mouth was dry. He and Amanda made a wide turn at the corner and faced the continuation of the tunnel. It was empty.
“The dogs must have gone into the Sepulcher,” Amanda said.
Aiming, Balenger neared the entrance to the first chamber. Amanda pointed the flashlight. Reverend Pentecost greeted them with his hand on the book on his chest.
Balenger approached the entrance to the Sepulcher. Amanda followed, leaving Pentecost in darkness. At once, a blur leapt from the cavern. Coming under the rifle, the dog struck Balenger’s chest. As the rifle jerked up, Balenger’s finger squeezed the trigger. The sounds of the shot and the ricochet were amplified by the closed space. Chunks of stone flew. The dog’s weight shoved Balenger backward. They struck Pentecost, knocking over the board that supported him. Balenger landed on the mummy, feeling the crack of dry bones.
The dog clawed at Balenger’s jumpsuit while its teeth snapped toward his throat. Balenger let go of the rifle and strained to push the dog away, but it clawed harder. He tried to squeeze its throat, but the dog snapped at his hands, saliva flying. Desperate, Balenger yanked out the knife clipped to his pocket. He pressed his thumb against a knob on the blade that allowed him to open it one-handed. He rammed it into the dog’s side but hit a rib. The dog kept snapping at Balenger’s throat. Striking again, Balenger plunged the knife under the ribs and sliced. Blood cascaded. The blade must have cut something vital. The dog shuddered against him, dying.
Balenger hurled it away and surged to his feet, aiming toward the Sepulcher’s entrance. His racing heart made him nauseous. He shouted, “Watch out for the other dog!” Amanda spun, redirecting the flashlight.
The only sound was Balenger’s frenzied breathing. He glanced down at Pentecost’s corpse, the mummy crushed into fragments. A fetid odor invaded his nostrils.
“Did the dog bite you?” Amanda asked.
“I’d be surprised if it didn’t.” The front of Balenger’s jumpsuit was torn open. The clawed skin throbbed. Blood covered the cuts, some of it from the dog.
“Even if it didn’t bite you, it dripped saliva. You’ll need rabies shots,” Amanda told him.
“Which implies we’ll get out of here. I like your optimism.” Balenger noticed that the dust the fight had raised drifted away. “Does it seem like air is coming from the Sepulcher?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“The ventilation shaft.”
They entered the Sepulcher.
The dog in here is bigger than the other, Balenger thought. If it attacks, it’ll be harder to fight off.
He must have said it out loud, because Amanda responded, “Well, if it’s bigger, it’ll be easier to see. That gives us an advantage.”
“Yeah, a tremendous advantage. The odds are in our favor. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that.” Balenger was amazed by her determination.
She waved the light back and forth, casting shadows from the grotesque tableaus, searching for the dog. When Balenger grabbed dust from the floor and hurled it, the light showed that a subtle draft nudged it past him. They went forward, trying to locate the origin of the draft. All the while, Balenger listened for a snarl or a scrape of claws. He and Amanda passed a mummified man who leaned back in a chair, his hand on his groin.
They came to a wall and searched along it, finding a barrier of rubble.
“Looks like a cave-in,” Balenger said.
Amanda illuminated a hole at the top of the rubble. “That’s where the air’s coming from.”
Uneasy, Balenger turned his back on the cavern and the dog. He set down the rifle and tried to climb the rubble to see what was beyond the hole, but the angle was too steep, and rocks slipped under him. The abrupt movement aggravated the pain of the claw marks on his chest.
“Do you think we can clear this by hand?” he asked.
“Before the batteries on the flashlight die?” Amanda shook her head. “My hands are awfully raw. I’ll work as hard as I can, but it won’t be quick.”
“If we build a platform of rocks, we can stand on it and widen the hole at the top.” Wary of the dog, Balenger picked up a rock to start making the platform. Immediately, he paused. “Do you smell something?”
“Like what?” Amanda stared toward the gap at the top of the rubble. “Now I do. It smells like…”
“Garlic.” Balenger stepped back.
“Arsenic.” Amanda’s voice shook.
As the smell of the gas intensified, Balenger coughed, sick to his stomach. They hurried across the cavern, scanning the tableaus, on guard against the dog. They reached the chamber where Reverend Pentecost no longer greeted his visitors.
Amanda stopped, forced to take a breath.
Balenger tested the air. “I don’t smell the garlic here.”
“That’ll change soon.” Amanda pointed the flashlight toward an area beyond Pentecost’s shattered remains. It showed the lantern, where she’d set it earlier. “If that thing’s a bomb, maybe we can use it to blow away the rubble and get to the chamber. Then we can put out whatever’s heating the arsenic.”
“The same problem as before. The explosion might bring down the roof,” Balenger said.
“I’d sooner die that way. At least, we’ll go out trying.”
Balenger stared at her with admiration. Mustering strength, he used his knife to cut a strip from Pentecost’s coat.
“A fuse?” Amanda asked.
Balenger nodded. He unscrewed the cap to the lantern’s fuel reservoir and shoved the strip of cloth into the opening. “We’ll need to cover this with rocks,” he said. “How long can you hold your breath?”
“As long as it takes to do the job.”
Balenger gave the lantern to Amanda. He inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again, drawing air deep into his lungs. Breath held, he raced into the cavern, ready to shoot if the dog attacked. Amanda charged behind him. They passed the tableaus and reached the wall of rubble. Balenger set down the gun and grabbed rock af
ter rock, making a hole. His chest urged him to breathe. While Amanda directed the flashlight, he cleared more rocks. His lungs cramped, demanding air, but he kept working. When the hole was deep enough to hold the lantern, he set it inside and piled rocks over it, leaving a space for the fuse. Then he pulled out Ray’s lighter and flicked its wheel.
Earlier, he and Amanda had worried that a flame would ignite combustible gas in the tunnel, but the explosion that sealed the mine would probably have set off that kind of gas, Balenger decided. Although “probably” didn’t fill him with confidence, there wasn’t another choice—he was forced to take the risk. When the lighter flamed, he winced, anticipating an explosion. It didn’t happen. He lit the strip of cloth, grabbed the rifle, and hurried with Amanda toward the adjacent chamber.
Pain in his lungs compelled him to breathe before he got there. The smell of garlic made his stomach turn. Sensing the flicker of flame on the cloth behind him, he reached the adjacent chamber, heard Amanda gasp, and pulled her to him, taking shelter around the corner.
“Put your hands over your ears!” he reminded her. “Open your mouth!”
He held his breath again, desperate not to inhale the arsenic. One, two, three. Despite the pounding of his heart, time seemed to go slowly, like a video game in which the minute that elapsed in it was really two minutes in conventional time. Four, five, six.
Did the fuse go out? he wondered in a panic. Did the flame get smothered in the rocks? I don’t know if I can hold my breath long enough to relight it.
Maybe the lantern isn’t a bomb, he worried.
He was about to risk peering into the Sepulcher when a blast sent a concussion that felt like a punch. Dust and rocks fell from the roof. Despite Balenger’s precautions, the roar caused an agonized ringing in his ears. A rumble shook the chamber. It’s going to collapse, he thought, pulling Amanda closer. The rumble persisted, threatening to throw him to the floor. He held Amanda tight, leaning over her, determined to shelter her. Slowly, the vibration died. Rocks stopped falling. Forced to breathe, he tasted dust and garlic. Amanda turned the corner and scanned the flashlight into the Sepulcher.