by Judith Price
He was getting flustered now. He couldn’t get flustered. There was no time. “No, no, no!” He banged his hands against the sides of his temples. He paced back to Jill, looked at her determination, then paced back to his bench of tools. He grabbed the pick and went back to Jill. Just before he reached her, he stopped short, and whirled around when he heard it.
“Matthew. Matthew, young man. What have you gone and done? You’ve been bad, very, very bad!” Matthew looked around the cave. Jill’s head still hung down. He began to fidget, began to sweat. He crushed his fingers together squeezing the pick in his hands. Jill moaned. “Shut up! Shut up!” He spat in her direction.
“Matty?” Matthew stopped moving. “Matty!” The cave spun slowly as if he were in a giant Imax theater. A bellowing bravado echoed throughout the cave … “Matty, my boy. Son!”
“Papa?” Matthew uttered. Jill moaned softly as he spoke. “What do you want? What do you want?” Matthew became frantic now. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” He yelled. “I’ll be a good boy. I promise I will.” The room was spinning rapidly to Matthew and he yelled louder. “Please stop. Please don’t hurt me. Please go away. I’ll be a good boy. I will. I will.” Then Matthew made an indescribable sound. A shrill, scream that echoed loudly as it reverberated off the cave walls.
Matthew was backing up now. He was spinning around in circles. He clutched the pick and jabbed at the air, growling. “No, I won’t let you. I will kill you.” He was backing away from the sounds. Back, back. He stumbled backwards over the stool pushing the rail hard as he tumbled. The large wooden rail swung hard. Matthew scrambled to his feet. He turned towards Jill just as the butt of the rail hit him squarely on the back of his head.
He looked at her and smiled as Jill watched him fall forward onto his knees. His head smacked hard into the stone icicle just below where her hands were clasped. His body descended sideways. He breathed out a grunt as he hit the ground.
Twenty-two
Matthew Age Six
Matthew lay on the bed next to his older brother, Dory McGregor. They played the string game. “Come on, Matty, do it like this.” said Dory, a thin gaunt child who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a few days. But Dory didn’t care about too many things, he just laughed, playfully pinching the strings from Matthew’s spread hands before stretching them, looping them through his fingers into a criss-cross pattern. They didn’t have many toys, but with what they had, they made do. After all, the string game was fun.
Footsteps pounded up the hall towards their room. They both scurried under the covers bringing the bed sheet up to their chins. They closed their eyes and as they had practiced many times before, and they began to breath in unison. Slowing their breath. Young Matthew wasn’t as good as an actor as his eight-year-old brother. His eyes were squeezed shut so tightly, that even a half-blind person could tell that he was faking it. But he was a big boy now and he knew what to do to please his papa.
The door swung open hard, knocking the knob against the wall in the run-down room. The silhouette of a large man stood in the doorway huffing a rage. Matthew squeezed his fists so hard, his hands nearly dug holes in the dirty comforter squashed up to his chin. His toes twitched uncontrollably. His gut filled with fear. He knew the pain would come, but somehow he didn’t seem to understand why. After all he was a good boy.
The large man who said he was their papa towered over the bed, sucking food from his teeth. He grabbed the comforter and yanked it away, exposing the two young boys. A cloud of beer filled the room as he belched. He pulled Dory up off the bed with one hand and flung him over his shoulder like a rag doll. Dory’s eyes, full of fear, full of sadness, looked back at Matthew.
It was the last time he would ever see Dory. Sure, he tried to play with the string himself. Sure he tried to sleep. But the screams kept coming, kept changing in pitch. Matthew played with the strings faster and faster. He was smiling now, for the screaming wasn’t him. This time.
Twenty-three
Jill
The taste of metal trickled down her throat each time she swallowed. She winced when she ran her tongue along the jagged edges of her three broken teeth. Her head was throbbing so bad that she thought it might be breaking apart. Her hair was matted with the blood dripping from the cut on her head. She jerked at her bound wrists until her skin split.
She lifted her head slightly and saw him – the Iceman. Blood pooled around his face. She saw no movement from his chest. Who had he been talking to? Jill tried to look around the room. She couldn’t see past the stalagmite. There was no movement in the room that Jill could hear. He said “papa,” Jill thought. Yes, it was “papa.” Was Matthew’s father here? The horror of this thought gave her the jitters.
“Father,” Jill whispered in a robotic tone. And as if a giant clawed hand grabbed the back of her collar, Jill was thrust into a cave in her mind, pulling her back into evil darkness.
***
“Call me Father,” he grunted in a heavy slur. Little Jill sat on the floor playing with a small empty cardboard box. There were no toys for little Jill. There were never any toys for this bad, bad little girl. Jill slowly raised her head and looked in his direction. Her eyes welled up and a large tear bubble popped down onto her right cheek. She was dressed in dirty pink shorts and her undershirt didn’t look like it had been ever washed. “I said call me father, you little brat or you will have to go back into your house.” He slurred in amusement.
Little Jill looked past the empty scotch bottle, past five squashed beer cans towards the bed. She didn’t want to go back into her house. It was scary in there. She was always alone, always hungry, always afraid. Her mouth dryed up as she said, “Father.”
***
It felt colder in the cave and Jill didn’t know how long she had been crying. It felt as if old threads of a forgotten memory were slowing being snipped open. Memories of a father she never knew she had seethed, rupturing the frail strings. Visions pulsed in and out of her mind as if she were watching her life through a View-Master. There. Gone. There. Gone. Snot dripped from her nose and she tried to wipe it with her shoulder when she heard it.
A panting sound—no, a howling whisper. The smell of putrid stink wafted past her. Jill slowly twisted her head and tried to lean as far back as she could, blinking out the rest of her tears. No one was there. All she could see was the side of the cave lit from the flickering lanterns.
A slight breeze moved through the caves creating an eerie cacophony of ewws and ahhs, as if from spectators watching a daring circus act. Jill sat up straight. Something caught her eye. Something made her look at that goddamn monster on the floor. Was there movement in his eyelids? She studied his head, only two feet away from the stalagmite she was attached to. His leg looked crooked. His khaki pantsuit was dirty. Something gleaned beside her feet. It was a pick, about four inches away from the stone icicle. Jill calculated. If she could scrape her shoe, up the stone, maybe, just maybe, she could bring it close enough to grab it with her hands.
She slowly lifted her leg up, stretched her foot out, and hovered it above Matthew’s torso. Like a Swiss watchman, Jill attempted to twist the heel of her shoe, squeezing it down just enough to drag it to the base of the stalagmite. She turned her ankle as far as she could and rested it between Matthew and the handle of the blade.
She pulled her knee slightly up. It made a slight scraping sound as she lodged the blade at the base of the rock. Jill let out a breath and looked back at Matthew. Something changed. Jill stared at him. Nothing. Then she pulled her knee toward her, but the pick didn’t move the way she calculated. It was stuck. With each pull, it just rolled in one spot. She heard that sound again. She held her breath. Seconds passed before she exhaled. It’s just the wind winding through the cave, she surmised. She looked back at Matthew—first his face, then his chest. She stared watching for movement. Nothing. Then she looked back to his face. Had something changed? The way his lips rested–was he smiling? Without thought, Jill pulled her heel
tight to the base of the pick’s handle, squashed it firm against the stone, and hiccupped the tool past the edge of the rock releasing it from the stone’s grasp. Inch by inch, the tool scraped up the rock. Jill stretched her hips so wide she thought they might pop.
She wrapped her fingers around the cold metal spike. She held the tool by its blade and squished it far enough into the palm of her hand so that a one-inch spike protruded. She began frantically stabbing at her zip-ties. She missed several times and cut into her wrists. She thought she heard a whimper before realizing it was her own voice. She kept jabbing until finally her wrists snapped free. She grabbed the back of the stalagmite and pushed herself away from Matthew. Quickly rolling onto her right hip, she pressed her hands on the cold floor and stood up. She whirled in a complete circle holding the pick firm in her hand before resting her eyes on Matthew.
He didn’t move. He had to be dead, but Jill wasn’t going to wait around to find out. She had to get out, before she lost what was left of her sanity. That sound again. Jill slowly turned around and lifted her head towards the tunnel from where she heard it. She grabbed an oil lamp and a pack of matches from the workbench and lit the lamp. With one last look at Matthew she swiftly headed out of the cave, into the tunnel towards the direction of the sound.
Twenty-four
Jill’s breathing echoed through the dark tunnel. She lifted the oil lamp up high, breathing life into the murky cave. She was moving quickly and slipped several times on the slimy rock. Several yards later, she reached another cave. Stalagmites reflected a bright gold color as she entered. She was huffing now. She needed to figure out where to go. What to do.
To her right, she saw a large rock with a flat surface. She lifted the light up, placed it down, and leaned her back against the rock. The cold stung through her jacket. She spat and wheezed through her missing teeth. She stuck the pick in the back waistband of her pants.
Her head throbbed. Jill reached up and felt the gash on the top of her head. The blood had begun to dry and she was thankful it had stopped bleeding. She felt like someone had chewed her up and spit her out. She knew her brain must be making up visions of her childhood. After all, she had never met her father. Besides, Grandpapa or Grams would have told her. But that viewing, that picture of my mother in that mirror. And for the first time, Jill thought maybe Matthew had drugged her with some sort of hallucinogen. But the evil woman in the mirror was in Jill’s viewing. That didn’t make sense. She looked down at her throbbing wrists. She looked like a suicide victim. Maybe she was going into shock too, like Jake.
Jake. He must be here somewhere. Maybe he was making those sounds. Hope filled Jill as she lifted two fingers to her neck and counted her pulse. Who the hell’s heart rate wouldn’t be high in this nightmare?
Jill scanned her options. There were only two tunnels. A light breeze whaled through them, sounding like children at Halloween. Ewww, Ewww, Ewww.
Enough of the pity-party. Move, Jill. Find Jake and get the hell out of here. Move.
The two tunnels were side by side. She lifted up the lamp and watched the flicker. She took two steps to the left and repeated the gesture. No difference. Before she chose one, a thought crossed her mind: What if I am going further into the cave system? Then, she heard something and whirled around in the direction from where she had just come. She held her breath and listened. Nothing different, just the moaning of the caves as air traveled through it. Then she heard it. It sounded like a woman’s voice. It was coming this way. What did she just say? “You’ve been bad, very very bad,” the low female voice growled.
“Iceman, it has to be the Iceman,” she whispered as she scrambled into the tunnel to the right. The tunnel was low and narrow and Jill had no choice but to duck as she entered it. She held the lamp up with her right hand while she balanced herself with her left, as she crab-walked deeper and deeper. With each turn, Jill held her breath, not knowing what she would see. She felt like she was going nowhere fast when she rounded a left and gasped.
The tall wall looked like a stone waterfall. She had hit a dead end. “Shit,” she yelped. What the hell was she going to do now? What the hell, Jill? She held the lamp up and studied the wall briefly before jerking her hand back in the direction she had come. Maybe he couldn’t fit in this tight tunnel, she thought with a little hope.
She turned back to the stone wall and studied it again. The tunnel had to go somewhere. Otherwise, why was there a tunnel? She leaned forward past the ridge of the tunnel and saw just enough room to stand and turn around. Slowly standing, she ran her fingers up the cold wall as she lifted the light. The ceiling looked like an endless black hole, until she held the light up farther. Hope pulsed through her when she realized that this wasn’t a stalactite coming from the ceiling, but a stalagmite coming from the floor of the cave. Jill turned quickly and held her breath. The goulish ahhhh sounds floated through the tunnel, latched on to the breeze. She turned back to the large stone and studied the jagged stone tooth.
If she could somehow brace her back against the stone … she looked to her right. She jumped for the top of the tunnel ledge, and looked back to the left. She might have enough space to pull herself up. If she could do that, then she could swing her leg around the peak of the stalagmite and hug it. And if she could do that, then surely she could shimmy her body around it and get to the other side. “Bob’s your uncle,” she smiled to herself. Then she realized there was only one tincy-wincy-teeny-tiny problem. The lantern.
There was no way in hell Jill had the strength to do the Olympic gymnastic maneuver with one arm. No way in hell. But before she could contemplate other methods, the sound of a small stone rolling, as if kicked by someone, broke her thought. Jill grabbed the handle of the lantern and shoved it in her mouth, clasping it with her remaining teeth. She planted her back against the slick rock and pushed hard upward with her right foot. She grasped the ledge with her fingertips and winced as her wrists scraped against the rough rock.
She wasn’t strong enough to hold herself up. She needed more leverage. Push your friggin’ ass up, she barked inwardly. She grunted as she attempted to swing her left leg high enough to clear the tip of the stalagmite. The heel of her shoe breezed past it and with momentum on her side, she grabbed the tip of the stalagmite with her left arm. Her right arm followed, and she grabbed on hard. She began to slip and instinctively wrapped her right leg around it, hugging the large stone steeple. But her movement was too quick and Jill smacked her bruised face against the rock. Pain rocketed through her head as the lantern fell and smashed at the base of the cave. In an instant, a brief whoosh of fire lit up the small space before the cave went black.
Twenty-five
The darkness weighed Jill down as she tried to adjust her eyes. That’s a big ass bread crumb, she thought ruefully. Then she pushed past that thought. Go. Move. Jill held out her arm, past the giant spike, hoping to feel something, anything. There was nothing. She began to shimmy her body, inch-by-inch around the stone. She squeezed her taut thighs then released her hug and pulled. Again, she squeezed her thighs then released her hug and pulled. Again and again and again, until she had finally twisted herself around the jagged stone.
She turned her head and blinked into the black abyss and stifled a shallow scream. She had always been afraid of the dark. What was in it. Who was in it. As long as she could remember, Jill always slept with a night-light. Even today, at her age. Stupid, she knew. But there it was: FBI Special Agent Jill Oliver, yes, well … afraid of the dark.
***
Her hands were sore from banging; her throat raw from screaming. How long had she been inside her “house”? She did not know. Her panties were almost dry now, but the smell of urine burnt her nose. But she didn’t mind it, she was used to that smell. But why had he put her back in her house? She was a good girl. She was always a good girl. And why was Mommy so mad? Little four-year-old Jill reached up and felt the lump on her tiny cheek. Her stomach growled for the fifth time. She could count to
five. She knew how.
***
The sound of boots crunching glass brought Jill back to her blackness. She gasped as she blinked back tears. Fear gnawed at her like a wild dog as she punched her right fist in the air behind her. Nothing. She braced herself and punched with her left fist. Nothing. For all Jill knew, an endless bowl of black ink could be surrounding her, pushing her down into a bottomless body of water.
Then a thought occurred to her: Where was the light from her pursuer? She looked past the tip of the glass stone. She saw no light, no light at all. She breathed out a slight breath and listened. She heard no other sounds. No crunching on glass, no crazy-ass Iceman talking to himself. Nothing. Was she being paranoid? No, it was definitely the sound of glass cracking she heard before. Was it crackling or crunching? Think Jill. She supposed crackling could be the sound of the heat of the fire. What the … Suddenly something tapped the bottom of her shoe. Tap, tap, tap.
Jill swiftly splayed her legs backwards around the stalagmite, but her movement was too fast. She couldn’t hold her grip—and had no time for prayer. No time for hope as she fell. A scream ripped past Jill’s lips as she landed hard on her hip. A shoe popped off before her elbow cracked on the hard surface.
“Ouch!” Jill hissed through her broken teeth. She grabbed her arm and held it tight as pain pierced her, reverberating through her arm. She winced as darkness began to suffocate her, totally blind her. She immediately sat up. She didn’t know where she was or what was around her. Her heart raced. She was breathing too fast. Too fast. She was sweating now. Frantically, Jill waved her hands in front of her, finger painting the air, trying to touch something—anything. She whispered a scream. She was losing control. She was loosing goddamn control. And then she heard it. A voice. She flopped her hands down and listened again. The only thing she could hear was her breathing. Listen to your instincts, crossed her mind, zip-lining her across her panic attack. Grams. She slowed her breath and began to inch her hands along the cold cave floor around her body trying to get some semblance of where she was. She breathed a quick sigh when she felt no ledge. She winced as she lifted her right arm to feel for the matches in her breast pocket. Pain jabbed her elbow as she fumbled for the pack, ripped one off, and lit it. The smell of flint tinged her nostrils as she looked around. The flame was no match for the lantern. Its tiny flicker danced in the small dark tunnel that narrowed in the distance. She yelped as the flame reached her finger and dropped the match.
