by Diane Hoh
But it was late March, and although some of the early-blooming trees had new, small leaves or blossoms, most of them were still only in bud and provided a clear view of the blackened acres.
It was horrible. Awful. We stood at the edge of the forest, Eli and I, staring at the result of our carelessness. I’d seen a picture of Mount Saint Helens once, after the volcano erupted. Nothing but gray ash for miles, and miles. The part of the park ravaged by fire looked like that picture. Barren, empty, with only jagged stumps of trees sticking up out of the ground and piles of blackened branches and burned leaves carpeting the ground.
“Oh, Eli,” I whispered. “It’s terrible!”
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and tugging. “We have to find that key chain. While we’re standing here feeling guilty, a cop guarding the park could be picking it up and slipping it into a plastic bag as evidence. Hurry up!” Then, when I held back, he turned and said, “Look, Tory, I’m really sorry I have to ask you to do this. It’s rotten, I know. I don’t want to go in there, either. But I can’t do it by myself.”
“I’m coming, Eli. I know you’d do the same for me.”
That was true. He would have. He’d defended me to Nat, hadn’t he? I owed him for that.
We left the river path and entered the woods.
When we reached the burned area, it felt like we had just stepped into a graveyard. There was nothing left alive where we were standing. I could remember clearly the tall pine trees, the thick bushes, the wildflowers just beginning to bloom. Gone now, all gone. Nothing but blackened stumps, and a thick dusting of water-soaked ash and soot underfoot.
I was so shocked by the devastation that when Eli said, “Tory?” and pointed, it took me a few seconds to realize what he was pointing at.
It was a long, wide white ribbon, trailing along the ground in a curving path, beginning a few yards away from where we were standing, and leading in the opposite direction.
I frowned down at it. What was that nice, clean white ribbon doing in the middle of all that soggy debris? “What’s that?” I asked.
Eli shook his head. “Beats me.” But he walked over to where the white ribbon began and bent to lift the end of it with one hand. He fingered it for a moment and then lifted his head to look at me with uncomprehending eyes. “It’s gauze.”
I stayed where I was. “Gauze? You mean, like bandages?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Like bandages.”
Every nerve in my body snapped to attention. Gauze? There was a roll of bandage trailing through the burned woods?
“Eli!” My voice echoed hollowly in the empty woods. “Can we please get out of here? Now? This is too weird. Eli, there’s something wrong. Come on!”
But Eli, inquisitive human being that he was, was already following the white gauze path and urging me to join him.
I didn’t know what to do. Every one of my senses warned me that the gauze path meant trouble. But I didn’t want to run back through the woods alone, and I didn’t want to abandon Eli, either. “Eli, please!” I called, glancing around nervously. “Don’t follow that path!”
But he was already almost out of sight, steadily marching along the curving white gauze trail.
Since my greater terror was of being left there alone, I ran after him, slipping and sliding on the wet ash beneath my feet.
I caught up with him in a small, dark clearing heavy with the smell of smoke and covered with a thick layer of soggy, semiburned twigs and leaves, in the middle of which the white gauze ended. I recognized the spot as being very close to where we’d had our campfire. I did not want to be there!
I had just reached out to tug at Eli’s sweatshirt sleeve, determined to make him turn around and go back, when he bent to pick up the trailing end of the gauze.
The minute he touched the ground, it disappeared beneath him. As I watched in horror, Eli tumbled, headfirst, in a shower of wet leaves, twigs and earth, into the hole that had opened up at his touch.
He was so startled, he never made a sound.
But I did. I screamed his name, a sound that echoed eerily in the smoky, soggy woods. Impulsively, as Eli disappeared from sight, I lunged forward, my arms reaching out in a desperate attempt to pull him back to safety.
Too late. I couldn’t reach him. He was gone.
I stepped back from the dangerous opening in the ground, my hands flying to my mouth, whispering Eli’s name.
And in the next second, although I had heard no sound behind me, heard no rustling of leaves or footsteps on the path, hadn’t once had that creepy feeling of being watched, there were suddenly rough hands on my shoulder, pushing, pushing hard.
Crying out, I fought to maintain my footing. If I fell into the hole, who would help Eli get out? I beat the air around me with my fists, hoping to land a blow somewhere on my attacker, but in vain. My feet slipped, slid on the treacherous carpet of wet leaves, and my legs betrayed me.
Screaming in fear, I plunged after Eli into the deep, dark hole.
Chapter 14
I LANDED ON MY back on something cool and slippery. It took me a moment to realize what it was. The tarp. The tarp that Nat had folded up and flipped under her head the night of the fire. We’d brought it to sit under in case it rained, although there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky.
What was it doing down in this dark, narrow hole?
Beneath the tarp, I could feel that the earth was hard and dry. Water from the fire hoses hadn’t penetrated this far beneath the surface. My neck and back hurt from the fall.
Eli was already standing, which told me that he hadn’t been seriously injured by his fall. I was so glad that he wasn’t unconscious that I forgot I was angry with him for following the gauze trail when I’d begged him not to. I could barely see him. The mouth of the pit was so small that it allowed in very little light from above.
And very little air. This far beneath the surface, the smell of dank earth overpowered the fainter smell of smoke and burned wood. I immediately thought of a grave.
Eli reached down to help me up. “It was the tarp,” he said. “It was stretched across this hole and then covered with leaves. Someone set this up on purpose, Tory.” He pulled me to my feet. “You could have gotten me out of here. Why weren’t you more careful? Now we’re both stuck!”
“I didn’t fall in, Eli,” I hissed, standing up. “I was pushed. There’s someone up there.”
He tilted his head, straining to see above him. “Up there? Who is it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
The shaft was so narrow, there was barely enough room for the two of us to stand face-to-face. And I realized quickly that one person couldn’t possibly have dug the hole by himself, not quickly, anyway. Eli was six feet two inches tall, and there was probably another six inches of earth above his head. Too deep for one person to dig.
“He couldn’t have dug this pit all by himself,” I whispered to Eli. “Impossible.”
“It’s not freshly dug,” Eli said emphatically. “Must have already been here.” He was still struggling to see who, if anyone, was standing above us. “Maybe it’s an old well or the entrance to a cave or something. These woods are full of caves.”
“Tory,” a voice hissed into our pit, “so nice of you to drop by. And you brought a friend with you.”
Eli and I fell silent. We stood close together at the bottom of the pit, our heads upraised, listening.
“Can you see anything?” Eli whispered.
“No. Can you?”
He shook his head no.
“This lovely hole you’ve fallen into,” the voice said then, “would make a great barbecue pit, don’t you think?”
I gasped, and Eli grabbed my hand.
“Once upon a time, they roasted whole pigs in pits like this one.” Soft, evil laughter drifted down from above.
I was speechless with fear. Above us, footsteps slithered softly back and forth in the wet debris from the fire. We couldn’t tell what was going on up
there.
Then, Eli and I both smelled something at the same time. I could tell by the way we simultaneously drew in our breath sharply as the odor hit our nostrils.
“Lighter fluid,” Eli said softly. “That’s lighter fluid.”
I refused to think about what that might mean. “But the woods have already burned,” I whispered. “There’s nothing left up there to set fire to.”
“No,” Eli whispered back, “but there is down here. Us.”
“Oh, Tory,” the voice singsonged, “aren’t you cold down there? I wouldn’t want my guests getting chilled. You could catch pneumonia.” The voice changed, became heavier, more ominous. “And die.”
There was a pause. “Maybe I can warm you up a little. It’s the least I can do for guests who drop in.”
I was cold now. Icy from head to toe. Still, I craned my neck, straining desperately to see straight up into the mouth of the hole, trying to catch a glimpse of our tormentor.
When I finally did, I wished I hadn’t.
Because all I saw was white. Strips of white, wound tightly around a pair of legs striding back and forth above us.
“It’s him,” I cried softly, sagging against the wall. “It’s that … thing from last night. All wrapped up like a mummy. Just like Hoop.”
“People do still die of pneumonia, you know,” the voice droned on, speaking softly, as if he were murmuring to himself. “Everyone thinks they don’t, in these days of modern medicine, but that’s not true. Burn victims, especially, often die of pneumonia.”
“Are you sure?” Eli asked, peering upward. “It’s the same thing you saw last night?”
The smell of lighter fluid was stronger now, bringing tears to my eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Of course I’m sure. Eli, it’s … he’s going to do something terrible, I can feel it!”
“But pneumonia is the least of a burn victim’s problems,” we heard then. “You know, you don’t feel any pain at first. Shock takes over, and you don’t even know how terrible the burns are, how layers and layers of your skin have been destroyed, until later when the pain sets in. And I’ve read that if infection or pneumonia doesn’t get you and you do recover, you wish a thousand times that you hadn’t. They have to scrub off the dead skin, you know. One of the most agonizing medical procedures ever.”
Eli moved away from me, bent down, looked into the darkness behind us. Suddenly, he disappeared, and I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
“There’s something here. An opening.”
A sudden surge of hope sent me in the direction of his voice. I had thought the shaft we were trapped in was narrow from top to bottom and that the walls were solidly packed dirt and rock. But at the bottom of the wall behind the spot where Eli and I had stood face-to-face, the space suddenly widened, and it was there that Eli had found the opening. Terribly small and dark, but still …
“This must have been an animal burrow,” Eli remarked, dropping to his hands and knees to explore the opening. “That could mean there’s another entrance. Exit. A way out. I wonder if our friend upstairs knows that?”
We were both peering into the darkness behind the opening when the voice above us called out, “Look out be-loh-ow!” and liquid began dripping into the mouth of the pit.
The smell was unmistakable. It really was lighter fluid. Not a lot of it. It wasn’t pouring in, or cascading in. Just a steady drip. Still, if we hadn’t already moved from our original positions, it would have hit us, landing on our hair and clothes.
The lighter fluid began to pool on the ground in the center of the hole. I moved to cover it with the tarp, but Eli stopped me. “Grab it,” he ordered. “We might need it.”
I obeyed, darting quickly away from the opening, the tarp in my hands. “He’s planning on burning us alive,” I whispered in horror into Eli’s right ear. “If this opening isn’t really a tunnel, if it really doesn’t lead anywhere, we’re dead.” My voice rose. “We’ll burn to death, Eli! Or suffocate from the smoke!”
“Matchmaker, matchmaker, light me a match,” the voice sang, and we heard the match striking.
“Eli!” I screamed, glancing frantically over my shoulder, expecting to see an explosion of flame behind us.
Not yet. The mummy-figure was still singing away, reluctant to stop terrorizing us just yet. He was enjoying himself. Then the first match must have burned out, because I heard him strike another. Any second now, any instant, the pit would explode in flames.
Eli got down on his hands and knees, told me to do the same, and then said, “Throw that tarp over us. If there’s smoke, maybe it’ll help.”
Then we were crawling forward, the tarp draped over us.
That narrow black tunnel wasn’t someplace I wanted to go. I don’t like narrow, enclosed spaces, I’m not wild about pitch-blackness, and it occurred to me as I began crawling that there were probably slimy, crawling things in there.
But anything was better than burning alive.
It was impossible to see anything but the outline of Eli’s sneaker soles, just ahead of me. The tunnel smelled dank, a little sour, and I wondered if something had died in there. Had something been trapped because there was no way out … and died?
The space was so narrow, Eli had to crawl on his belly, pushing through the dirt with his elbows and knees and the toes of his sneakers. I did the same. The tarp scraped along the ceiling of the tunnel, and I had to keep pushing it back into place. It was the only protection we had if the tunnel began filling with smoke.
“Pray!” Eli demanded over his shoulder. “Pray, Tory!”
I knew what he meant. For all we knew, this tunnel led nowhere. When a lit match was finally dropped into that pool of lighter fluid, this narrow passageway would quickly fill up with smoke and we would suffocate.
Still, when the explosion behind us finally came and we heard the sound of flames licking at our heels, we crawled faster, even though we knew that we might well be headed toward a dead end. Literally.
Chapter 15
THE TUNNEL BEGAN FILLING with gray, acrid smoke. As if that weren’t bad enough, the passageway quickly grew even narrower. We could barely lift our heads as we pushed with our knees and elbows as fast as we could over the damp earth. It had been hard to breathe before; it was quickly becoming impossible.
My chest and head ached, my knees, hands, and elbows were rubbed raw, and I could feel myself losing hope. We weren’t going to get out of this alive. If the passage had begun to widen, if we could have seen a patch of light ahead of us, it wouldn’t have seemed so hopeless. But there was nothing ahead of us in the narrow tunnel but darkness.
“Eli,” I whispered, slowing down. “Eli, I can’t …”
“Yes, you can!” he barked angrily, and then got caught up in a coughing spasm. When it had passed, he repeated, “You keep going, Tory, you hear me? You keep going!”
I tried. I tried so hard. I didn’t want to die. I still had so many things I wanted to do. If I was going to die, I didn’t want it to be in this damp, dark hole so far beneath the surface of the earth. As if I were already buried.
But I was closer to the smoke than Eli was. The tears pouring down my face now were involuntary and had nothing to do with sadness. They were from the smoke assaulting my eyes. And I simply could not breathe. I tried. But the smoke was gobbling up what little precious air there was.
I didn’t call Eli’s name again. I knew if I did, he’d turn back to help me, and then we’d both die. Maybe at least he would make it out safely. I felt sad … so very, very sad, knowing I would never see anything above-ground again.
When my nose and mouth had filled with the thick, pungent smoke, and there was no way at all for me to take another breath, I just stopped crawling, lay my head down on my arms and closed my eyes.
And the minute I did, the heavy, hurting sadness was replaced. It became instead a fierce, hot anger toward the person who had done this to me. He was probably even now standing up there la
ughing, believing that Eli and I had burned to death.
No!
From a thousand miles away, I heard Eli calling my name. He said something else, too, but in my half-conscious fog, I couldn’t tell what it was.
I don’t remember crawling the rest of the way. I don’t know how I did it, or how long it took, or how much it hurt. I only remember lying on the ground out in the open, the wonderful, glorious open. I remember opening my eyes and looking up to see blue sky overhead. Then I saw Eli next to me, his glasses gone and tears streaming down his face, maybe from the smoke or maybe not, and I remember him swiping at those tears with one dirty, filthy hand, and I knew he was embarrassed.
And I reached up with my own dirty, filthy hand, to gently wipe from his face a few tears that Eli had missed.
Then we both began coughing our lungs out.
We coughed for a long time.
When the spasms had finally passed, I lifted my head and glanced around. What I saw was nothing but ugly, fire-ravaged woods. But to me, it was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
Eli, thinking maybe that I was looking for our attacker, said hoarsely, “He’s gone. I guess he thought, mission accomplished, and split. We’re safe, Tory.”
For the moment. As grateful as I was to be alive, it would have been stupid and foolish of me to think it was over. It wasn’t. Not as long as he … it … was out there.
“Isn’t it weird,” I said, my voice as raw and husky as Eli’s, “that the sun is still shining, and it’s still Sunday afternoon? I mean, don’t you feel like a whole lifetime passed by while we were in there?”
I could tell by the look on his filthy, streaked face that he knew exactly what I meant.
I sat up, painfully aware that every inch of me hurt. My palms, knees, and elbows were bloody and raw, my neck and back hurt, and my chest ached.
Exhausted, I leaned back, against Eli. He felt very safe and comfortable.
