“Get her!” Colin commanded as he stooped to blow air into his father’s lungs.
Stella scrambled on her knees, feeling the crusty surface dig into her flesh. She leaned over the ledge, but the dark water had reclaimed any sign of life.
“I don’t see her,” she whispered, knowing what she had to do, and trembling at the thought.
She had recognized Jill’s braided leather bracelet, a gift Stella had given her on her birthday. Anger suddenly infused her. She was not going to let this ocean claim her best friend.
Stella dove into the pool and surfaced quickly to get her bearings. The waning glow of the flashlight cast Colin as an eerie hunched eclipse, like a gargoyle perched on a rooftop. She tucked her head back under the water, but a few inches down all traces of light vanished, leaving only harrowing blackness. She splayed her arms out and kicked her legs widely, hoping to connect with something. Eventually the plan worked. Her foot brushed against an object. Not rock. Something malleable.
Stella spun in that direction and nearly sucked in the entire ocean when a manacle snatched her calf. Instinct was to jerk away, but she groped down her leg until she felt Jill’s hand and latched onto it, pulling for all she was worth. As they rose she felt the lithe form pull up alongside her and together they reached for the ledge, erupting with a fierce cough.
Scrambling up onto the rock shelf, Stella immediately spun around, grabbing Jill under her armpits, trying to hoist the young woman from the sea. Frustrated by her waning strength, Stella growled. Aid came quickly in the form of two powerful arms that paralleled hers. Colin reached in, and together they hauled Jill from the depths.
Jill’s stark coughs echoed under the low ceiling. Her wet ponytail clung to the back of her neck as she struggled onto her hands and knees. Dark blue eyes ringed with red spokes climbed up to meet their gaze.
“You–you’re alive,” she choked out. “Mom? Dad?”
Colin reached to help her to her feet. “Dad is here. He’s breathing now.”
Jill searched behind her brother. Some of the tension left her face when she spotted her father reclined against a boulder, methodically rubbing his chest. She went to him, collapsing onto her knees at his side.
“Dad, are you all right?”
Don patted her arm and nodded, though he still looked pale and puffy.
“Mom?” she asked in desperation, her head swinging in search.
Stella saw the same disbelief register on Jill’s face that she had experienced on first view of their surroundings.
“Colin,” Don’s voice cracked. “Have you seen her?
Colin was standing beside Stella. She could feel his tension–his desolation. He had already saved two people, and yet he must have felt it was not enough.
“No,” his tone was husky. “But, it took a while for Jill to surface, and she is safe–”
Jill huddled with her father, reverting from an eighteen-year-old young woman to a child seeking the protection of her parents.
Stella took a retreating step. She was uncomfortable under this raw display of family anguish. Even now she felt as if Colin was staring at her. What was he thinking?
It should have been you instead of our mother.
Stumbling back another step, she found a spot to sit removed from the grieving family.
What was her own mother thinking? Caroline Gullaksen didn’t even know that her daughter was missing yet. These fishing trips with the Wexlers had become so commonplace over the years that Stella merely texted her mom when she left the pier and texted when she returned the next day. There was no cell coverage out at sea, and her mother was working anyway.
There were so few similarities between the Wexlers and the Gullaksens. The Wexlers were a semi-affluent, whole family. Stella was an only child. Her parents had divorced when she was thirteen. Initially, she spent her summers with her father as part of the custody settlement, but then he had remarried and his priorities…shifted.
Stella’s mom worked for a pharmaceutical company. Her evenings were spent running an online ceramic shop–pieces she crafted in their garage, sometimes in the middle of the night. Caroline Gullaksen was a busy woman, there was no doubt about that. Her priorities weren’t skewed like Stella’s father’s. Caroline’s ferocious attack on life was intended to keep them settled in the house that Tom Gullaksen purchased and could not afford. His income as a real estate agent was minimal, a loophole that greatly reduced his responsibilities towards Stella’s welfare.
Stella’s academic scholarship eased some of the financial burden on her mother, but still the woman was possessed with never making them feel like they were treading water.
Stella snorted at the pun.
“It must have been a rogue current,” Don pondered from his reclined position against a boulder, “but one with such force and speed to take us down to such a depth that we’re–we’re,” he looked around, confused, “below the ocean floor? We were over a canyon.” He tipped his head back, inspecting their seeping den. “But, if we went into that–”
“Yeah,” Colin interrupted. “I’ve tried to work out the math. The minimum I could calculate would be well over a thousand feet. More like two.”
His father mulled that over. “If it was a thousand–well, there have been fantasy stories about men free-diving that far. Fantasies, though. Most professional divers can’t go further than 400 feet. How we didn’t crush our lungs–”
His eyes teared up and his throat locked. Jill linked her arms around her father’s neck and wept into his shoulder.
“There’s still a chance,” Colin whispered, futilely staring at the black pool. His eyes swerved, spanning the low ceiling. “Maybe there is another entrance. Maybe Mom got pulled in through another vent.”
Don shook his head.
“The more entrances there are, the less likely this pocket of air could have formed.”
Colin considered that, but his dark eyebrows dipped. “It’s still worth exploring.”
“I’ll go!” Stella sprang to her feet, eager to do something–anything–but wait.
“Not alone,” Colin commanded.
As much as she wanted to give this family their privacy, she was still human. Fear of the unknown nipped at her stomach. Having Colin at her side would ease some of those nerves.
“I’ll be fine.” There was an emptiness to her declaration.
Colin reached down and touched his sister’s shoulder. “Stay here with Dad until we return.”
Troubled eyes looked up at him. “And if you don’t?”
“I don’t think they can go far,” Don assured, patting his daughter’s arm. He nodded at Colin. “Seriously, son. Don’t go beyond yelling distance. Wait until I can join you.”
“We won’t go far because we’re leaving the flashlight with you,” he paused. “Just in case.”
Stella wrapped her arms around herself. What would happen when that light failed? They would be trapped in an obscure coffin two thousand feet under the ocean surface. Could there be a more horrific plight? The most dreadful nightmare could not do this crisis justice.
Colin stirred, shaking her from her panic.
“Come on. Stay close,” he instructed.
Close. There was no problem with that command. There was no way she was being left behind in this subterranean abyss.
As they started forward, her toe clipped Colin’s heel causing her to stumble and plant a palm on his back for support.
“A little too close,” Colin muttered over his shoulder.
Stella’s hand snapped back. It wasn’t the first time she had inadvertently touched her best friend’s older brother.
In high school, she had taken many fishing trips with the Wexlers. It was common for them to spend the night out at sea so that Jill’s dad could reach the best fishing spot. The cabin was tight on the STARKISSED, and normally Colin would sleep on the bench seat beside the kitchen table while the three females monopolized the V-shaped bed.
On one occasion
she, Jill, and Anne Wexler retired into the cabin for the night, while Colin and his father remained up on deck. Stella and Jill took the bunk on one side of the V, and Anne slept on the other. At some point the boat pitched slightly on a wave and Stella rolled off her tight perch into the gap between the mattresses. Expecting to hit the floor she instead landed on something pliant–something strong–something that smelled like the sea and Irish Spring.
Stella was a junior at the time. She had already been kissed and maybe pawed a little, but she still had very little knowledge of what a man felt like. Now she was pinned to a wide chest with her legs twined between his. Planting her palms on the carpet, she clambered for balance. Heat rushed to her cheeks and it seemed every move she made to dislodge herself only made matters worse.
Colin didn’t say a word. Powerful arms hefted her back onto the mattress and just like that, his silhouette climbed through the hatch and back onto the deck.
Ever since that incident she had a tough time looking him in the eye. It wasn’t just because of the awkwardness of the situation. The truth she concealed was that she had a big-time crush on her best friend’s brother.
The first time she had met Colin Wexler she was just a freshman in high school. He was a junior. The age difference seemed astronomical at the time. It wasn’t until Colin started college that she came to grips with the fact that he was way out of her league. He was an adult now. He was working towards a career. He brought a girlfriend home over spring break. A mad, hot one.
Yeah, Colin Wexler was beyond her reach. But, heck, it had been fun fantasizing. Especially after that incident in the middle of the night.
Once Colin started his junior year in college he rarely had the time for the bi-monthly trips in the summer. He was taking summer classes in order to graduate with two degrees. There was little opportunity for her to see him anymore, let alone avoid eye contact.
And now, here she was, standing close enough to feel the heat of his body. It was all so surreal. Colin had been right, though. They had received a temporary stay of execution. Instead of dying quickly in the ocean, their death would be slow and agonizing. This futile attempt to search the cave–it was a distraction–hope to counter the despair in Don and Jill’s eyes.
As they moved deeper into the cave, Stella explored the undulating ceiling. In some parts the roof arced high and was lost in shadow. In others it dipped low enough that they had to hunch over.
“Careful,” Colin warned. “There’s a row of rocks up ahead that we’re going to have to climb over. I think there is a chamber beyond them.”
The flashlight’s glow was waning behind them. Stella glanced down at the rocks only to find that her feet had surrendered to the shadows already. How could they climb something they couldn’t even see?
Colin turned around. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her forehead. She nearly leaned into it.
“Put your hand on my shoulder and climb on top of this boulder. It’s pretty level and wide enough for us both to fit. Don’t jump off of it. Wait for me.”
Stella nodded numbly. She curled her fingers around his shoulder and used the leverage to heft onto the three-foot-high boulder. Instinctively, she crouched, expecting to collide with the ceiling, but the shadows had claimed it as well. It could be an inch above her head, or several yards for all she knew.
Colin scrambled up next to her, and for a moment they paused to listen. Stella heard his rugged breath. She heard a slight wheeze in her lungs. She heard her friend’s whimpers and the low, assuring murmurs of her father. She heard the blood thumping in her ears and the monotonous drip, drip, drip–a cadence of death.
“Col,” Jill called from behind them. “The flashlight–it’s going out.”
Sure enough, Stella noticed it with dread. The beam offered a rusty yellow glow, its circumference half the size of what it was a few moments ago. She looked ahead, thinking that any chance of searching the far end of the cave was futile. Even now she could feel Colin shift, ready to leap back down.
“Colin, wait.” She touched his arm. “Do you see something ahead?” She squinted, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her. Maybe she was having a stroke. Narcosis.
The tall body beside her moved. He didn’t say anything, but she could sense his focus.
“Light?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah. I keep thinking I’m imagining it, or its some reflection from our beam. I mean, the walls are moist, right?”
Colin’s silence troubled her. Finally, he said, “You’re probably right.”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Jill asked over a cough.
“Nothing. Just stay right there. If the light goes out we need to know you’re in the same spot. We’ll find you.” Colin looked back into the void. “Just give us a couple more minutes–”
Crouching, and blindly dropping down to the cave floor, Colin reached up to give Stella a hand. Unsure of the distance down, she relied heavily on his grip.
“The way the light is intersected, it appears to be around a bend,” he suggested.
With the glimmer still in the distance and the boulders now blocking out what little glow remained from the flashlight behind them, they progressed blindly. Stella nudged her toes out before her, testing the terrain for obstacles, but found this portion of the floor to be smooth and slippery.
“Maybe it’s some sort of phosphorescence,” she offered, careful to duck as the ceiling dipped.
“A pool of bioluminescent plankton,” Colin considered. “Maybe. I can see where the passage turns now. It looks very narrow.”
Narrow didn’t concern her. What was there to be afraid of, claustrophobia? If she suffered from claustrophobia she would have been a catatonic pretzel by now.
“What if we get disoriented and can’t find our way back?”
They had progressed enough that Jill and her father were no longer in view. Along with the flashlight, they had been an anchor of sorts.
Now, Stella wanted nothing more than to link her arm through Colin’s. Not because of a childhood attraction, but for the connection of another human being. If she lost him, she didn’t want to die down here alone.
“We’ll find our way back,” he assured. “Just stay close behind me.”
Oh, I can do close. No problem.
They moved in tandem, their fingers dragging along the moist wall for leverage. As they curled around the bend Stella noticed a crack in the wall across from them. Not a crack so much as a fissure, possibly even another chute, another avenue to pursue. The ambient glow barely reached into its obscurity. She was about to return her gaze to the path ahead when a shadow passed through that chasm. A phantom cloud. There, and then gone.
Straining to distinguish anything in the blackened chute, she lifted her hand to tap Colin on the shoulder. Stopping just short of touching him, she shook her head and dismissed the vision as a byproduct of the creepy environment.
Cautiously negotiating the path, careful to emulate Col’s steps, she cast one last glimpse back at the fissure.
Luminous eyes stared back at her from its depths.
Stella screamed.
CHAPTER 3
“What the hell?” Colin swung around.
Stella barely heard him over her thumping heart.
“Stel?”
Wraithlike spirals of condensation twisted through the cave, like the diaphanous gown of a banshee.
“Stella, dammit, what is it?”
“I–I–” Her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists. “I saw a face.”
“A face?”
He followed her gaze to the crack on the other side of the cave. Awareness snapped his body as large hands clasped her shoulders and swung her towards him.
“Mom?”
The desperation in that plea tugged at her heart. But no, what she saw looked nothing like the vivacious Anne Wexler. In that split second that she even now suspected was a delusion, she had witnessed a gaunt face, ashen with deep black s
hadows carved around shimmering eyes.
“No,” she choked.
The mist continued its nebulous trek through the cave. It must have been an effect of this natural phenomena that had deceived her.
Colin stared at her, his eyes barely visible in the waning light. If she could hardly see his face how could she have witnessed that visage so clearly?
Simple. She imagined it.
“I’m just edgy,” she explained. “I’m sorry.”
The fingers on her shoulders relaxed slightly, but he still held onto her.
“This place–” his chin lifted as he searched the ceiling, “–will destroy our minds if we let it.”
Stella almost sagged with relief. He understood. He understood that the fear of dying in this deep tomb far outweighed the actual fear of death.
“We should get back to Dad and Jill.”
Yes. Strength in numbers.
“But,” her cursed curiosity decided to intercede, “there is still light up ahead.”
Even now she could see the glow beyond Colin’s shoulder. It is what enabled her to see the clouds of condensation undulating in the humid tomb. Gleaming eyes had reflected off of it.
“Maybe I saw some sort of deep sea creature,” she whispered, still searching for an explanation.
“Maybe,” he agreed without conviction.
Nonetheless, Colin had turned back towards the light, his wide shoulders nearly obscuring it.
“But, you’re right, ” he agreed. “The only way we’re going to get out of this place is to keep searching. There has to be–”
He didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need. What else could there be? An elevator? They were over a 1000 feet under the ocean surface, at least. It was physically impossible to swim. Their fate was sealed. Curling up into a four-person ball didn’t seem like a viable alternative yet. As long as there was still air in her lungs and power in her legs, she was going to explore this cave of damnation.
“Let’s just make it around this bend,” she suggested.
The truth was that she was actually looking forward to college. This year she started in on her path towards a BA in Journalism with classes like Media Law and Ethics, and the Culture of Journalism. Being a journalist was a childhood dream of hers. She was the editor of her first newspaper at the ripe old age of 9. It was a hand-typed periodical, chronicling her friends’ activities, which she printed out three copies of, stapled them together, and handed them to the three subscribers, her mother, her father, and the next-door neighbor.
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