Connor looked back at his friend. “You're gonna be right behind me, right?”
“Right behind ya.”
“Well, let's get this over with. You never can tell when that thing will get tired a waiting.” And he crawled through the tight crease in the wall. The first ten or fifteen feet weren't so bad, but he saw right off they'd misjudged the extent of this crumpled section. Soon, the boys were a good twenty feet into the passage and it didn't show any signs of widening. They were squeezing through like sausage in a skin and both prayed it wouldn't get any smaller. Getting stuck here would be the end. The bird couldn't help them and neither could the weird mist. The story of the rat came back in force, stuck there in the darkness until its skin fell away. The thought brought Connor to an abrupt stop and Ian bumped into his feet from behind. “Hey!” Connor called over his shoulder, trying to keep his adrenaline in check. “I'm gonna try and scrape some a this dirt away from the side. Hold on a sec.”
“Okay,” came the muffled reply. “Just hurry.” A half-beat of silence followed. Then, “Man, it's dark back here!”
“I'm on it,” Connor said, scraping away at the closest side of the tunnel with the butt of the flashlight. In fact, so engrossed in the job, he didn't recognize the sound for what it was at first. But when he did, fear froze him up inside. He almost dropped the flashlight. The steady, grumbling purr was unmistakable. He thought of the club he'd left behind to cart the light. He whispered frantically over his shoulder. “I think something's in here!”
“Like what?” Ian's muffled voice wasn't close enough to make anything any better.
“I'm thinking that cat!”
“Great! But I'm telling you, we can't go back! It's pitch black back here!”
“Yeah...you said...look, pass me the club.” Several seconds later Connor felt the weapon digging in under a rib. He moved over so Ian could finish pushing it through. The strangled purring was now clearing coming from the end where the mist waited. And adding to his fear, the strange, green light appeared to pulse more rhythmically now, almost as if demanding the boys speed up.
So with one hand gripping the club and the other scrabbling for purchase in the tight chamber, Connor pushed ahead. He managed to get the palm of his right hand cupped around the club for no better reason than it was the easiest place to grab it. The passage was even tighter now and every inch was like pushing through a sewer pipe. No more than five feet from the end and he did get stuck for several fright-filled minutes until Ian was eventually able to push him free from behind. Connor was calling his thanks when the attack came. Luckily, Ian didn't hear him and never quit pushing.
Connor jerked his head back in the direction of the blood-curdling scream that had assailed him, his arm involuntarily flexing, thrusting the club forward like a projectile. What greeted him as both he and the club popped out of the tight passage was nothing he'd ever encountered before. The cat had grown ragged and mad over the long course of centuries. Its wild, bloodshot eyes burned red flames into the tunnel and Connor saw it had long ago given up its ancestry. Now it was no more than a ghoul, its mangy fur grown so old and thin it did little to hide the leathery skin stretched tight across bone, pocked and blown through with holes as if someone had long ago blasted the creature with a shotgun. The eyes were testimony of disease, caked with a green gunk that leaked from their corners. Its teeth were blackened stubs, jutting from the crooked mouth. And it was coming for him.
He flinched tight and the club went sailing right in front of his nose, his hand actually slapping him a lick across the chin right before the cat's wail went high and wild. And because his eyes were closed he had no idea what was going on. Oddly, he heard screams coming up from behind, and upon opening his eyes, noticed the green mist was still there.
The cat, however, was gone.
Ian came railing through, crash-landing on his shoulder. He groaned, rolled over, and faced the rough-hewn ceiling above. And he began to shout. “Where Is It! What's Goin On!” rolling back to his stomach and elbow-crawling out to where Connor was. His eyes frantically darted about the chamber.
“The cat! It was the cat!” Connor managed.
“I doan see it! Where'd it go? You think it's gone?”
“I doan know, maybe.” Then a pause. “You notice something...?”
Ian raised up and squatted on one knee. “Yeah, we're not in the time knot anymore.” They looked at one another with unspoken dread. “But it's still so quiet...”
They both peered into the darkness. “Yeah,” Connor said. “And getting darker.”
Immediately Ian was up and helping his friend to his feet in the bigger tunnel. “Okay,” he said. “We gotta go! Wherever that's headed,” he said pointing at the mist, “has gotta be better than here!”
“You got that right,” Connor said. He saw the club lying by his left foot. Even in the dim light there was no mistaking the mat of dirty hair caught along one splintered side. He snatched it up and banged in against the wall. The hair remained entrenched. But without another word they rushed into the receding shadows, chasing down what little remained of the mysterious, guiding glow.
Chapter 25: The Bone Cell
With the time knot gone their panted breaths and pounding feet within the dripping corridors was actually worse than the silence. The claustrophobia had been bad before, but nothing like this. Now they could hear the things trapped underground with them, all the scratching and slithering things just out of their range of sight. The eerie, pulsing light made constant switchbacks, darting in and out of corridors not much bigger than the one they'd just fought their way through. And now they had Time racing along beside them with all its added sounds and sensations.
Then the mist stopped. It was hard to say exactly how they knew, but it did, throbbing frantically within what appeared to be the oldest corridor yet. And the boys could see the reason. This end of the tunnel system had obviously been built for entirely different purposes than the ones before. A single, narrow artery reached away to lose itself in the far reaches of the mist. The walls on both sides were pocked with the rusted and rotted remains of countless heavy, dungeon-like doors. The closest were sealed tight. No windows, no doorknobs, just huge, heavy doors crammed tightly into the rock walls. However, a single door, in the heart of the glow, yawned open on a complete darkness of which the mist held no sway.
The boys turned and looked at one another.
“What d'ya wanna bet that's where they kept the magician,” Ian whispered, moving forward.
Connor followed, zombie-like. They moved up to the door. The light in the passage was still strong but the chamber itself seemed to choke off most of its power. The cell was not much bigger than a walk-in closet. The floor was dirt, the walls and ceiling granite. Rusted chains hung from the back wall, and along the side wall nearest the door were the remnants of metal brackets and all that remained of a bench. Ian stepped inside, his eyes darting about the space. In the far right corner was a pile of old tools. Or, at least, what was left of them. Shovels and picks, mostly, although hardly a handle remained in the lot. Most were worm-eaten to drifts of dust.
The light from the corridor pulsed faster, almost as if trying to voice what it was incapable of speaking. Connor joined Ian inside, pushed a loose stone into the space between door frame and floor. You could never be too safe...
“This is where it happened,” Ian said. “Just like it was that night in the dream...the men down here in the darkness. They were digging here!” He turned to face Connor and his eyes danced with the knowledge they now held. “They killed the magician and buried him here, his daughter too.” He pointed to the corner. “There's the picks and shovels they used,” he added matter-of-factly. He gripped his club tighter and walked across the dirt floor, trying not to disturb the phantoms that didn't seem so far out of reach. The mist became like a strobe. Connor looked down at his own club with the cat hair buried in its side and nodded his head. He could see it too. He watched as Ian poked among the
old tools, watched also as his friend slid one end of his club into the empty socket of a crude shovel head. He jammed it in tight, banged it once on the floor, and threw it down. Put out his hand for Connor's. Connor tossed it over and bent down to pick up the shovel while Ian fashioned a pick.
Because it was suddenly clear, the reason they were down here.
And without another word they began to dig, all the while enveloped in the wild, pulsing glow that burned in the corridor outside like a well-stocked bonfire. No more than two feet down they hit the first root. Initially, they thought it was just more stones, but after clearing the dirt away the root was obvious. An oak root, too. They'd seen enough of them. They looked at one another in wonder.
“You doan think...” Ian began, his eyes begging the other to tell him different.
“I think so.”
“But how? This deep down? With all this rock?”
“I doan know. How far have we come?” Connor asked. “We've been twisting around the whole time. Maybe we're not that far out!”
“Maybe, but that still doesn't explain that chamber we came through on the way here. Man, we couldn't even see the ceiling!” Ian scratched at his forehead, the dirty hand leaving a trail of shadow across his face, rendering him savage in the ghostly light. Connor just shrugged.
They went back to it and, in fact, made pretty good progress at first, despite the roots. But there were more and more the deeper they went, even if they did become more web-like. And still a little deeper down the webbing of roots seemed to have somehow displaced the very soil itself, leaving behind something very much like a shroud or fishing net. Only when the gleam of dirty yellowed bone showed pale withing the net did both boys immediately pull back.
At that moment the Glance took full possession of both, their eyes glazing as the vision raced through their heads. The as-of-yet hidden details of the crow's story were suddenly clear: the magician taking the clutch of acorns from the crow and swallowing them one by one, then a vast turn of years as the tree grew larger and deeper, searching out the essence of the man, its master, and finally, the touch in the underground darkness of root to bone, and last, the agony of the tree's find.
They were indeed bound together, this magician and the oak. After all these long years they had finally joined. To share the same fate, it seemed. And somehow it was up to the two, sweating, dirty boys knee-deep in the hole to put things to rights. It didn't make sense, but there was nothing left to do except dig in and finish the work they now knew had gone so long undone.
No doubt more than one person was down there, even though both were now no more than a jumble of loose bones bound up in the strange root-netting. The outside lining which sealed the grave pulled away relatively easy, but as they dug deeper it became harder and harder to separate the tough fibers from the bones. They to on a fury of manic energy, clearing out the space around the clutch of bones, shoveling frantically at the rock and dirt, tearing through tangles of lesser roots as they went.
When they were finally able to extract the bundle (it was in fact too much like a cocoon to be denied) they laid it just inside the doorway and collapsed against the walls, breathing heavily as they reclaimed their senses. The mist's ghostly pulse slowed now, drawing back the glow to a constant, but much lighter, bruise upon the walls.
“So this is it?” Ian said looking at the bundle of bones. “This is what the crow sent us down here for? To rescue this bag a bones?”
Connor was opening his mouth to reply at the very instant the glow winked out entirely, leaving them in total, utter darkness.
Chapter 26: Finishing the Job
There is a funny thing about absolute darkness. It is complete. It is not nearly the same as being shut up inside a closet or other small room with the lights out, trembling among shadowed furniture or hanging clothes. No, it is different. It is suffocating. The closest either had come before was when they'd both gone on a vacation to Arkansas several years before with Connor's parents. On the way a sign had proclaimed them within five miles of Carlsbad Caverns. That had been enough.
The sole entrance to the wild, snaking nest of tunnels happened to lie in a rift between two huge rocks set at the very foot of a two-mile bend in the Smokey Mountains. The shaft dropped seventy feet straight down, accessible only by way of a long spiral staircase. Once at the bottom, the tour guide had pointed out a running stream which slipped through a crack in the wall. He said the fish had been tested and all were blind. The darkness here would do that to you, to anything, or anyone, left down here, given time.
Then he'd turned out the lights.
It was still easy to recall the collective gasp that had gone up among the group. There were no shapes or shadows, not even one's own hand pressed flat to the bridge of the nose. There was simply nothing except the pressure of the touch. That was the moment terror had begun to build, threatening to break out of their chests and bound loose among the rock walls.
Then the guide had snapped the switch back to life, engulfing them once again in welcoming light. The next several minutes had been spent in laughter and good-natured ribbing of the other's cowardice in the dark. But they'd sure been glad the lights were on.
Now, here they were again, with that old monster, only this time it was far past the moment when the terror froze to stone in the back of their throats. They were fast edging into the territory of true panic. And here there was no guide to casually snap the lights back on.
“Connor...?”
“I'm here,” came the voice, disembodied in the darkness.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I doan know. Let me think...”
“Well, you better think fast,” the words so soon swallowed alive by the monstrous dark.
Seconds ticked off to minutes, minutes raced away to—and they found the Glance worked better now, seemed to reach its fulfillment. It was as if each were peering directly into the other's mind, as if, in fact, they were merely peering into their own inner thoughts. This revelation, and the Idea, flashed into being at the same exact instant.
“Connor?” Ian said, leading his friend.
“Yeah, I know.”
The sound of fumbling around in the darkness reached Ian's silky black corner. A second later a loud metallic click ran a smooth beam of light strongly against the granite ceiling. The other end of the flashlight gravely shone encompassed in Connor's hand. And even in the shadows, the smile that crept to the corners of the boys' cheeks was like the first welcome thing that had ever shone its face to the light of day.
“OOHHH YEAH!!!” Ian shouted, clapping his hands and doing an intricate jig in the gloom. It didn't take long for their new reality to set in. “Good thing we're not in the time knot anymore,” Connor said in a somewhat more somber tone. “Let's not get too excited. We still don't know how to get out of here.” This spoken fact brought them both to silence. They glanced down at the root-net of bones.
“Well, there's got to be a way,” Ian said, pointing down. “Otherwise what's the point of us getting that?”
Connor ran the beam of light upon the pick and shovel, then crossed over so that it fell upon the bones. Something began to come together in their minds, almost as if a bridge were slowly being crossed. And though they could not see the other side, they could almost feel it. “Ohhhhhhhh!” both muttered in unison. The revelation, although momentarily mind-numbing, made their escape suddenly clear. Connor brought the light up to Ian's face. “There is a way, doan you feel it?”
“I do.”
Without another word Ian gathered up the shovel and pick from the floor as Connor moved toward the bones. “How long you figure it took us ta get down here?” he threw back over his shoulder.
“Doan know. Couldn'a been more'n an hour or two.” The rusty tools clanked together in the darkness. “What you figure?”
“Bout the same. Still a long way to drag this thing,” because suddenly that much had come undeniably clear. They had to take the bones with them. And
the tight spot? They'd dig through, by God.
“Right,” Ian said aloud. “And then we walk right outta here.” He bent down. “Grab that end and I'll get this one.” They needed to get moving. The time knot was gone and that meant Time was running as always. The woods would be no easy go in the darkness. And of course the cat was still down here with them...somewhere...waiting. Connor heaved up his end of the burden.
And so for the next long while they plodded through the tunnels (the 'tight spot' handled quickly with the shovel and pick; they'd simply pushed the bundle through with one pulling while the other pushed from behind), almost supernaturally aware of each and every turn, sometimes before the approaching passage was even visible in the gloom. The Glance set deeply within their minds and after the first little bit it actually felt like they could have turned off the flashlight and still found their way out.
They felt more than saw the monstrous chamber from what must have been fifty crooked yards and two corridors away. By that time the bundle of bones had become as light as an infant. No word was passed, but the complete telepathic link they'd somehow achieved down here in the dark filled their heads with much more than words could provide. They knew each step before they made it. The stifling dark was now no more than a mild nuisance to be calmly endured.
By the time they reached the familiarity of the tiled floors they were not even breathing hard. The fear they'd felt that day in the cave was now an alien thing they could hardly understand at all. Then they rounded the last corner and Connor switched off the flashlight. Their mutual sigh of relief was very loud in the quiet corridor. They could make out rails of sunlight through the open cavern door. It was still daylight!
They hauled the bundle the remaining short distance to the doorway, and set it just inside the Church entrance. Then they paused for a moment just inside to let their eyes adjust to the new light, though it was hardly needed. Light, dark, nothing seemed to matter that much now, not with this new Sense. Talking was also mostly a waste of time. They both knew what needed to be done.
The Bone Cell Page 8
