Still Life With Crows

by Douglas Preston

  Once again, he heard faint sounds. The rush of water, overlaid by a human voice. At least, it appeared to be human, and yet it was so distorted that it was impossible to make out any wordsif indeed there were any.

  Shining his light on the ground before his feet, he noticed that he was not the first person to have taken this shortcut.

  He edged into the crack, which soon widened enough for him to walk normally. Gradually the bottom of the crack dropped away and a crevasse opened below; yet the walls remained narrow enough that he could continue forward, one foot on either side of the crevasse, squeezing his torso through a narrow slot. It was a position that gave, strangely, the sensations of both claustrophobia and acrophobia at the same time.

  Ahead, the crack opened into the blackness of space. He was standing on a narrow ledge almost a hundred feet up the wall of a domelike cavity. A stream of water plunged from above and feathered down toward the base far beneath his feet, filling the cavern with the echoing splash of water. A billion winking lightsreflections of feathery gypsum crystalsfilled the cavern like fireflies.

  Pendergasts flashlight beam could only barely reach the bottom.

  There had been footprints at the entrance to the crack: that meant there must be a way down.

  Below the lip of rock on which he stood, his light caught a series of hand- and footholds. Intermittent sounds came from below, clearer now.

  Had Hazen and the troopers reached the killer and Corrie? The thought was almost too unpleasant to contemplate.

  Pendergast crouched on the narrow ledge, shining his light into the blackness below. He could see nothing but a massive jumble of fallen stalactites, torn from the ceiling by some long-ago earthquake.

  He took off his shoes and socks, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck. He turned off his flashlight and slipped it into a pocket: it would be of no help now. Then, reaching down into the darkness, he grabbed the first handhold again and swung out into space, his bare feet finding slippery purchase. Five minutes of cautious climbing brought him to the bottom. He put on his shoes in complete darkness, listening.

  The noise was coming from the blackness at the far end of the cavern. Whoever was making that sound had no light. It rose and fell in a strange, babbling way, but there could be no mistake: it was a man, and he sounded injured.

  Turning on the flashlight again and pulling out his handgun, Pendergast moved forward swiftly.

  A flash of color, and something flickered across the dim cone of light; he swung the beam around and saw something yellow on the ground, behind a fractured boulder.

  He leapt catlike onto the rock, gun and light pointing downward together. He peered into the cavity beneath the boulder. And then, after staring for a moment, he holstered the gun, dropped down the far side, and laid a hand on the man who was curled in a fetal position in the lee of the rock. He was a small man, soaking wet, gibbering to himself. Lying next to him was a regulation-issue set of night-vision goggles and a helmet with an infrared spotter.

  At the touch of Pendergasts hand the man crouched farther, covered his head, and squealed.

  FBI, said Pendergast quietly. Where are you hurt?

  The man shivered at the sound of his voice, then looked up. Two red eyes peered uncomprehendingly out of a face completely covered with blood. The mans black jacket sported the yellow insignia of the Kansas State Police K-9 squad. His lips trembled above a wispy goatee, but the only sound that emerged was more incoherent sobbing. His pale eyelashes trembled.

  Pendergast performed a quick examination. It seems youre unhurt, he said.

  The stammering reply did not succeed in reaching the level of intelligibility.

  They were wasting time. Pendergast grabbed the man by the collar of his K-9 suit and hauled him to his feet. Get a grip on yourself, Officer. Whats your name?

  The sharp tone seemed to stun the man into sensibility.

  Weeks. Lefty Weeks. Robert Weeks. His teeth chattered.

  Pendergast released his hold; Weeks staggered but managed to stay upright.

  Where did the blood come from, Officer Weeks?

  I dont know.

  Officer, Pendergast said, I dont have a lot of time. Theres a killer in here whos kidnapped a girl. It is vital that I find herbefore your friends get her killed.

  Right, said Weeks, swallowing.

  Pendergast retrieved the night-vision goggles, found them broken and inoperative, dropped them again. Youre coming with me.

  No! No, please

  Pendergast grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. Mr. Weeks, youwill conduct yourself like a police officer. Is that clear?

  Weeks swallowed again, struggled to master himself. Yes, sir.

  Stay behind, follow my lead, and keep quiet.

  My God, no! No, dont go that way . . . please, sir.Its there.

  Pendergast turned and looked carefully into the mans face. He looked traumatized, ruined. It?

  It. That, thatman.

  Describe him.

  I cant, Icant! Weeks buried his face in his hands as if to blot out the image. White. Huge. All bunched up, like. Cloudy, cloudy eyes. Big feet and handsAnd . . .and the face!

  What about the face?

  Oh, lord Jesus, the face

  Pendergast slapped the man. What about the face?

  The face of a . . . oh, God, of ababy, so . . . so

  Pendergast cut him off. Lets go.

  No!Please, not that way!

  Suit yourself. Pendergast turned and strode off. With a yelp, the man scrambled to follow.

  Leaving the tumult of broken columns, Pendergast moved into a broad limestone tunnel littered with huge yellow mounds of dripstone. Weeks stayed behind, cringing and whimpering to himself, afraid to follow Pendergast, but still more afraid to remain alone. Pendergasts light roamed from dripstone to dripstone, once again following a trail.

  And then he stopped. His light remained fixed on one mound that looked strikingly different from the others. Its deep yellow was heavily streaked with red, and at its base lay a pool of bright red water. Something was floating in the water: about the size of a human, but the shape was all wrong.

  Weeks had fallen silent.

  Pendergast played his light around the cavern wall that rose behind the dripstone mound. The dark rock was decorated in arcs of crimson, and gobbets of white, red, and yellow hung dripping here and there. His light finally came to rest on the giant forelimb of what could only be a dog, lodged in a crack about halfway up the wall. A piece of a lower jaw was wedged nearby, and something that might have been part of a muzzle had struck the sloping wall with enough violence to stick.

  One of yours? Pendergast asked.

  The man nodded dumbly.

  Did you see this happen?

  The man nodded again.

  Pendergast turned, raising his light to the mans face. What, precisely, did you see?

  Officer Weeks choked, stammered, and finally got the words out. Hedid it. He paused, swallowed. And then his voice broke.He did it with his bare hands!

  Sixty-Three

  At a nexus of branching tunnels, Hazen waited for the state troopers and Larssen to catch up. Five minutes passed, then ten, as his labored breathing returned to normal. It seemed that either they hadnt followed the sound of his voice, or theyd taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  Hazen swore, spat. Raskovich was gone, bolted like a rabbit. Although Hazen had briefly given chase, hed been unable to find the guy. The way the man had been running, he was probably halfway back to KSU already.

  Hell.If he couldnt regroup with Larssen and the troopers, hed have to go after Lefty and the dogs alone. And that meant returning to the limestone forest, for a start.

  But now, as Hazen looked back the way he had come, he wasnt sure just which of the branching tunnels hed come out of. He thought it was the one on the right. But he wasnt sure.

  Hazen swallowed, cleared his throat. Lefty?

  Silence.

  Larssen?

/>   He cupped his hands in the direction of his backtrail and bellowed, Hey! Anybody! If you can hear me, sing out!

  Silence.

  Anybody there? Respond!

  Despite the chilly air and the incessant wetness, Hazen felt a prickly sensation along his spine. He looked back the way he had come; looked around; looked ahead. The night-vision goggles gave everything a pale, reddish, unreal look, like he was on Mars. He checked his belt and confirmed what he already feared: hed lost his flashlight during the chase.

  The whole operation was fucked up. Theyd gotten separated. Raskovich was lost, the whereabouts of Larssen unknown, the condition of Lefty and the dogs uncertain. At the very least, McFelty knew they were there. If he was dead, or injured . . . Hazen figured he had enough to deal with without dreaming up a lot of hypotheticals.

  The thing to do was to get everyone back together, get a situation report, take stock.

  Shit, it was hard to remember which of those holes he had come outof. . .

  He examined the cave floor for footprints or marks, but it seemed as if each of the tunnels had been heavily trafficked. And that alone was very strange.

  He ran over what had happened in his mind, trying to recall landmarks. It was all vague; hed been concentrating on catching the fleeing Raskovich. Still, on balance it seemed to him that hed most likely come from that passage on the right.

  He walked down it about fifty feet. There were some broken stalactite pieces scattered here, like teeth. He didnt remember those. Had he just run past them too fast?

  Son of a bitch.

  He went farther, but still nothing looked familiar. With a curse he returned to the pillared cave and took one of the other tunnels. He proceeded slowly, straining to remember, feeling his heart starting to beat a little fast. Nothing looked familiar. The dripping rocks, the feathery crystals, the banded, glossy humpsit all looked strange.

  And then he heard a sound. Someone up ahead, humming.

  Hey! He broke into a trot, turned a corner, paused at a fork in the passage.

  The humming had stopped.

  Hazen spun around, calling out. Larssen? Cole?

  Still no sound.

  Answer me, goddamn it!

  He waited. Couldnt they hear him? Hed heard the sound as clear as a bell; why couldnt they hear him?

  More humming, high-pitched and farther away, coming out of the left tunnel.

  Larssen? He unshouldered his shotgun and walked down the left tunnel. The sound was louder, higher, closer. He moved more cautiously now, his senses on alert, trying to control his heart, which seemed to be pounding way too hard in his chest.

  There was a flash of something at the periphery of his vision and he stopped and spun around. Hey!

  He got just the briefest look before it darted away into the blackness. Brief as the glance was, it was enough to leave no doubt at all that it wasnt one of his team.

  And it sure as hell wasnt McFelty.

  Sixty-Four

  Chester Raskovich turned a corner and stopped, the grotesque sight before him arresting his headlong flight. He stared, his mind reeling. Crouching in front of him, blocking his path, was a ragged, wispy-haired figure, staring up at him with hollow eyes, mouth yawning open as if to bite, teeth drawn back.

  Raskovich leaned back with a neigh of terror, wanting to run and yet unable to do so, waiting for the thing to leap up and pounce on him. It was like a nightmare: his feet frozen to the ground, paralyzed, unable to flee.

  He gulped in airagain, and then againand, gradually, paralysis and fright ebbed and reason began to return. He leaned closer. It was nothing more than the mummified body of an Indian, sitting on the floor, bony knees drawn up, mouth open, shriveled lips drawn back from an enormous row of brown teeth. Placed around him was a semicircle of pots, each with a stone arrowhead in it. The mummy was wrapped in stringy rags that at one time might have been buckskin.

  He looked away, swallowed, looked back again, and let his breathing slow to a semblance of normality. What he was looking at was a prehistoric Indian burial. He could see the remains of beaded moccasins on the twisted feet, next to a painted parfleche and some tattered feathers.

  Fuck, said Raskovich out loud, ashamed at his panic, just now realizing what hed done. Hed blown it. His first job as a real cop and hed lost it completely, right in front of Sheriff Hazen. Running like a rabbit. And now here he was, lost in a cave, with a killer on the loose, and no idea which way to go. He felt a wave of shame and despair: he shouldve stayed at KSU, keeping kids off the water tower and giving out parking tickets.

  Suddenly, he lashed out in rage and frustration, aiming a savage kick at the mummy. His foot connected with a hollowthock and the top of the head exploded in a ball of brown dust. A boiling stream of white insects came skittering outthey looked like albino roachesand the mummy toppled sideways, the jaw coming loose and rolling a few turns across the ground before coming to a halt among broken pieces of skull. An ivory snake, hidden beneath the rags, uncoiled with a flash and shot off into the darkness like a thin ghost.

  Oh,shit! Raskovich shouted, skipping back. Goddamn it!

  He stood there, breathing hard, hearing the sound of air rattling in his throat. He had no idea where he was, how far he had run, where he should go.

  Think.

  He looked around, shining his infrared lamp around the damp surfaces of rock. He had been running through a narrow, tall crack with a sandy floor. The crack was so high he could not even make out the top. He could see his own footprints in the sand. He listened: no sound, not even water.

  Retrace your steps.

  Giving one last glance at the now-desecrated burial, Raskovich turned and walked back along the crack, keeping his eyes on the ground. Now he noticed what had been ignored in his headlong flight: almost every niche and shelf on both sides of the crack was piled with bones and other objects: painted pots, quivers full of arrows, hollow skulls rustling with cave life. It was a mausoleum, an Indian catacomb.

  He shivered.

  To his relief, he soon left the burials behind. The crack widened and the ceiling came down, and he could make out cruel-looking stalactites overhead. The sandy bottom gave way to shallow terraces of water, layered in strange accretions like rice paddies. As the sand fell behind, so did the trace of his footsteps.

  Ahead were two openings, one tall and partly blocked with fallen limestone blocks, the other open. Which way now?

  Think, asshole. Remember.

  But for the life of him Raskovich could not remember which way he had come.

  He thought of shouting, then decided against it. Why attract attention? The thing the dogs had found might still be around somewhere, looking for him. The cave was far bigger than it was supposed to be, but he could still find his way out if he took his time and didnt panic again. They would be looking for him, too. He had to remember that.

  He chose the larger opening and felt reassured by the long tunnel ahead of him. It looked familiar somehow. And now he could see something else, an indistinct reddish blur in the goggles, up on a shelf of rock beside a dark hole. An arrangement of objects. Another burial?

  He approached. There was another Indian skull, some feathers and arrowheads and bones. But these were arranged in a very unusual pattern on the shelf of rock. It was disquieting, somehow, like nothing hed seen in books or museum displays. There were non-Indian objects, too: strange little figures made of string and twine; a broken pencil; a rotting wooden alphabet block; the fragmented head of a porcelain doll.

  Jesus Christ, the little arrangement gave him the creeps. He backed away.This wasnt old. Somebody had taken the old bones and rearranged them with these other things. Raskovich felt a shiver convulse his back.

  There was a grunt from the darkness over his shoulder.

  Raskovich did not move. There were no more sounds: the silence that descended again was complete. A minute went by, then two, while Raskovich remained frozen, as the uncertainty and terror continued to mount with
in him.

  And then the moment came when he was unable to stop himself from turning. Slowlyvery slowlyhe twisted around until he saw what had made the noise.

  Raskovich fell still, paralyzed once again, not even a whisper of breath escaping his lips.It stood there, grotesque, misshapen, hideous. The sight was so terrible that every detail etched itself into his brain. Was that really a pair of handmade shorts and suspenders on those giant, twisted legs: suspenders decorated with rocking horses? Was that shirt, hanging in tatters from the roped and matted chest, really patterned with comets and rocket ships? And, above them, was that face really,really, so very . . .

  The horrible figure took a step forward. Raskovich stared, unable to move. A meaty arm lashed out and swatted him. He fell to the cave floor, the night-vision goggles flying.

  The blow broke the spell of terror, and now, finally, he was able to move his limbs. He scrambled backward, blind, a loud keening sound issuing from his throat. He could hear the monster shuffling toward him, making sucking noises with his mouth. He managed to get to his feet and retreated a few steps, the final step dropping into nothingness. He lost his balance and toppled backward, tensing, expecting to land heavily against the hard stone floor of the cave, but there was nothing, nothing at all, just a great rush of wind as he hurtled into a dark void, endlessly down, down

  Sixty-Five

  Hank Larssen turned to face Cole and Brast. The troopers looked like goggle-eyed monsters in the reddish light.

  I really dont think this is the way they went, Larssen said.

  The sentence fell away into silence.

  Well? Larssen looked from Cole to Brast. The two state troopers almost looked like twins: fit, wiry, crew-cut, taut jawlines, steely eyes. Or rather, once-steely eyes. Now, even in the pale wash of the night-vision goggles they looked confused and uncertain. It had been a mistake, he realized, to leave the huge cavern of limestone pillars looking for Hazen. The barking of the dogs had gone suddenly silent, and theyd taken off down one of the countless side passages in what seemed like the direction of retreating footsteps. But the passage had divided, once, then twice, before turning into a confusing welter of crisscrossing tunnels. Once he thought hed heard Hazen calling out his name. But there had been no more sounds for the last ten minutes, at least. It was going to be a real chore just to find their way back out.