Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  The air of purpose that radiated from the agent had helped steady Weeks’s shattered nerves. He even felt some vestiges of his old aggrieved self returning. And yet he could not get out of his mind the image of the dog being ripped limb from limb by that . . .by that . . .

  He stopped.

  “What’s that?” he asked in a high, quavering voice.

  Pendergast spoke without looking back. “Officer Weeks? I expect you to follow my lead.”

  “But I heard something—”

  Pendergast’s slender white hand landed on his shoulder. Weeks was about to say more but fell silent as the pressure on his shoulder grew more intense.

  “This way, Officer.” The voice spoke with a silvery gentleness, but it somehow chilled Weeks to the bone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they proceeded, he heard the sound once again. It seemed to come from ahead, a drawn-out, echoing noise that reverberated back and forth through the endless caverns, impossible to identify. A scream? A shotgun blast? The one thing Weeks felt sure of was that, whatever the sound might be, Pendergast was going to head directly for it.

  He swallowed his protest and followed.

  They moved through a narrow warren of passages whose low ceilings were covered with glistening crystals. Weeks scraped his head against the needle-sharp crystals, cursed, and ducked lower: this wasn’t the way he’d come with the dogs. Pendergast’s light moved back and forth, exposing nests of cave pearls clustered together in chalky pools. The sounds had finally died away, leaving only the faint plash of their own steps.

  Then Pendergast halted suddenly, his light shining steadily on something. Weeks looked. At first he couldn’t make out exactly what it was: an arrangement of objects on a shelf of flat stone, clustered around some larger central object. It looked like a shrine of some kind. Weeks leaned closer. Then his eyes widened with shock and he stepped back. It was an old teddy bear, furred with mold. The bear was arranged as if it were praying: hands clasped before it, one beady black eye staring out from creeping tendrils of fungus.

  “What thehell —?” Weeks began.

  Pendergast’s light shifted to what the bear had been praying to. In the yellow glow of the flashlight, it was little more than a mound of silky mold. Weeks watched as Pendergast bent over and, with a gold pen, carefully pulled away the mold, exposing a tiny skeleton underneath.

  “Rana amaratis,”Pendergast said.

  “What?”

  “A rare species of blind cave frog. You will note the bones were broken peri-mortem. This frog was crushed to death in somebody’s fist.”

  Weeks swallowed. “Look,” he ventured one last time, “it’s insane to keep going deeper into the cave like this. We should be getting out of here, getting help.”

  But Pendergast had returned his attention to the objects around the teddy bear. With care he exposed more small skeletons and partially decomposed insect bodies. Then he went back to the teddy bear, picked it up, brushed off the mold, and examined it carefully.

  Weeks looked around nervously. “Come on, comeon. ”

  He shut up as the FBI agent turned toward him. Pendergast’s pale eyes were distant, focusing on some inner thought.

  “What is it?” Weeks breathed. “What does it mean?”

  Pendergast returned the bear to its place and said merely, “Let us go.”

  The FBI agent was moving faster now, stopping only infrequently to check the map he was carrying. The sound of water was louder now, and they were now wading almost constantly. The air was so chill and damp that their breath left trails. Weeks tried to keep up, tried to keep his mind off what he’d seen. This was insane, where the hell were they going? When he got back—ifhe got back—the first thing he’d do was put in for disability leave, because he’d be lucky if post–traumatic stress syndrome was all he got from—

  Then Pendergast halted suddenly. His light disclosed a body lying on the cave floor. The figure lay on its back, eyes wide open, arms and legs flung wide. The head was strangely elongated, like it had expanded and flattened, and the back of the skull had burst open like an overripe pumpkin. The eyes were bugged out, looking in two different directions. The mouth was wide open—toowide. Weeks looked away.

  “What happened?” he managed to say, struggling to hold back the terror.

  Pendergast raised his light toward the ceiling. There was a dark hole in the roof of the cavern. Then he let it fall once again to the body. “Can you identify him, Officer?”

  “Raskovich. The campus security guy from Kansas State.”

  Pendergast nodded and looked back up into the narrow hole overhead. “It would seem Mr. Raskovich had a great fall,” he murmured, almost to himself.

  Weeks shut his eyes. “Oh, my God.”

  Pendergast motioned him forward. “We must go on.”

  But Weeks had had enough. “I’m not going one step more. Just what do you think you’re doing, anyway?” The panic elevated his voice louder and louder. “The dog’s dead, Raskovich is dead. You’ve seen them both. There’s a monster down here. What more do you want?I’m the one that’s still alive.I’m the one you should be worrying about right now.I’m —”

  Pendergast turned back. And Weeks stopped in mid-rant, involuntarily, at the steady, contemptuous gaze of the FBI agent.

  After a moment, Weeks averted his eyes. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, we’re wasting our time.” His voice cracked. “What makes you so sure this girl is still alive, anyway?”

  As if in answer, he heard a response: faint, distorted, and yet unmistakable. It was the sound of someone crying for help.

  Seventy

  Larssen ran like hell, Brast behind him, holding on to the rope, careering from rock wall to rock wall, somehow managing in his blindness to keep up. It had been a couple of minutes since the screaming had stopped but Larssen could still hear it in his mind, playing over and over again like some infernal recording: the final scream of Cole ending abruptly in the sound of cracking bones. Whatever had done that—whatever was pursuing them now—wasn’t completely human. It really was some kind of monster.

  It couldn’t be true. But he’d seen it. He’dseen it.

  He paid no attention to where he was going, what tunnel he was in, whether he was heading back toward the surface or deeper into the caverns. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was put distance between himself and thething.

  They came to a pool, pale, shimmering red in the goggles, and Larssen waded in without hesitation, the icy water eventually reaching his bare chest before shoaling. Brast followed blindly, as best he could. On the far side, the ceiling of the cave became very low. Larssen moved forward more slowly, sweeping his gun back and forth, breaking off the sharp stalactites that hung before his face. The ceiling dropped still farther, and there was an ugly noise, followed by a desperate curse, as Brast hit his head against it.

  Then the ceiling rose again, revealing an odd, broken room with cracks leading off in myriad directions. Larssen stopped, looking up and down and sideways, and felt the scrabbling Brast blunder into his back.

  “Larssen?Larssen? ” Brast clutched at him as if to make sure he was real.

  “Quiet.” Larssen listened carefully. There was no sound of splashing behind them. The thing was not following.

  Had they gotten away?

  He checked his watch: almost midnight. God knows how long they had been running.

  “Brast,” he whispered. “Listen to me. We’ve got to hide until we can be rescued. We’ll never find our way out, and if we keep wandering around we’ll just run into that thing again.”

  Brast nodded. His face was scratched, his clothes muddy; his eyes were dumb, blank with terror. Blood was running freely from a nasty gash in his crew-cut scalp.

  Larssen looked forward again, shining his infrared headlamp around. There was a crack high up on the wall, larger than the others, vomiting a frozen river of limestone. It looked just big enough to admit a person.

  “I’m going to chec
k something. Give me a hand up.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  “Keep your voice down. I’ll only be gone a minute.”

  Brast gave him a fumbling hand up, and within moments Larssen was into the high crack. He looked around, bare arms shivering in the chill air. Then he untied the rope from around his waist and dropped one end back down to Brast and hissed for him to climb up.

  Brast fumbled and pulled his way up the slippery rock wall.

  Larssen led them deeper into the crack. The floor was rough and strewn with large rocks. After a few yards, it became a tunnel that opened up enough for them to proceed in a crouched position.

  “Let’s see where it leads,” Larssen whispered.

  Another minute of crawling brought them to the edge of blackness. The tunnel simply ended in a sheer drop.

  Larssen put a steadying hand on Brast. “Stay there.”

  He peered carefully out over the edge of the hole but could see no bottom. He reached for a pebble, lobbed it in, and began to count. When he reached thirty, he gave up.

  Overhead was a sheer chimney, with a thin thread of water spiraling down at them through space. There was no way the thing could come at them from that direction. He could come up only from the crack through which they’d just come.

  Perfect.

  “Stay here,” he whispered to Brast. “Don’t go any farther, there’s a pit.”

  “A pit? How deep?”

  “As far as you’re concerned it’s bottomless. Just stay put. I’ll be right back.”

  He returned to the crack’s entrance and, lying on his stomach, began dragging over the surrounding rocks and fitting them into the hole. In five minutes he had piled the rocks high enough to completely seal off the crack. The killer, if he even got to the broken-up cavern below, would see only rock. No opening. They had found the perfect hiding place.

  He turned to Brast, speaking very quietly. “Listen to me. No sound, no movement. Nothing that could betray us. We’ll wait here for a real SWAT team to come down and clear that bastard out of the cave. In the meantime, we stay put, and keep quiet.”

  Brast nodded. “But are we safe? Are you sure we’re safe?”

  “As long as you keep your mouth shut.”

  They waited, the silence and darkness growing ever more oppressive. Larssen leaned back against the wall, shutting his eyes and listening to his own breathing, trying not to dwell on the madman roaming the caverns beyond.

  He heard Brast next to him, restless, shifting. He felt irritated: even the smallest noise might betray them. He opened his eyes, adjusted the goggles, and looked over.

  “Brast! No!”

  It was too late; there was a briefscritch and a match flared into light. Larssen smacked it out of his hand, and it dropped to the ground with a hiss. The sulfurous smell of the match lingered in the darkness.

  “What the hell—?”

  “You son of a bitch,” Larssen hissed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I found matches.” Brast was weeping openly now. “In my pocket. You said we were safe, that he couldn’t find us. I can’t take this darkness any longer.I can’t. ”

  There was a faint scratching noise, then another match flared into light. Brast sobbed with relief, his eyes wide and staring.

  And suddenly, Larssen, half-naked and shivering, realized he didn’t have the will to douse the friendly yellow glow anymore. Besides, he had piled the rocks pretty deep. The feeble light from a tiny match surely wouldn’t leak out into the cave beyond.

  He pushed the goggles onto his forehead and looked around, blinking his eyes. For the first time, he could see things in crisp, clear detail. Tiny as it was, the flame gave out a welcome glow of warmth in this awful place.

  They were in a small, compartmentlike space. Five or six feet beyond, the sheer drop began. Behind them and past the low ceiling was their exit, blocked with rubble. They were safe.

  “Maybe I can find something we can burn,” Brast was saying. “Something to give a little warmth.”

  Larssen watched as the state trooper felt among his pockets. At least it kept Brast quiet.

  Brast cursed under his breath as the match burnt his fingers. As he lit a third, there was a faint sound from behind Larssen: the clink of a rock being moved. Then the sound of falling, rolling; first one rock, then another.

  “Put it out, Brast!” he hissed.

  But Brast had turned and risen with the match in his hand, and was now looking behind Larssen, his face slackening with fear. For a terrible moment, Brast did not move. And then, very suddenly, he turned and ran blindly, mindlessly, off the edge into the pit.

  “Noooo—!” Larssen cried.

  But Brast was already gone, into the abyss, the burning match that had been in his hand dancing and flickering on an updraft before winking out.

  Larssen waited for what seemed forever, heart hammering, listening in the pitch blackness to the rough breathing that echoed his own. And then, with numb fingers, he slowly put his goggles on and turned inexorably to stare, himself, into the face of nightmare.

  Seventy-One

  Rheinbeck sat in the darkened parlor, rocking back and forth, back and forth in the old, straight-backed chair. He was almost glad the house was so dark because he felt ridiculous: sitting here in his blacked-out raid wear, Kevlar vest, and bloused BDU pants, surrounded by lace antimacassars, crochet work, and frilly doilies. Assignment: little old lady.

  Shit.

  The big old house still groaned and creaked under the howling of the storm outside, but at least the shrieks of the old lady from the basement tornado shelter had subsided. He had double-locked the massive storm door and it was pretty clear she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be safe down there, a lot safer than him if a tornado came along.

  It was well past midnight. What the hell were they doing down there? He watched the feeble glow of the propane lantern, turning over various scenarios in his mind. They probably had the guy trapped and were negotiating him out. Rheinbeck had seen a couple of hostage negotiations in his time and they sometimes went on forever. Communications were down, trees lay across most of the roads, and nobody was going to respond to his call for an ambulance and doctor for the old lady: not with Deeper shredded and the whole county under a Force-3 tornado alert. This was a medical situation, not a law enforcement one; and damned awkward at that.

  Jesus God, what a shitty assignment.

  There was a shriek and the sudden pop of glass. Rheinbeck sprang to his feet, chair tilting crazily behind him, before he realized it was just whipsawing tree branches and another window getting blown out by the wind. Just what the place needed: more ventilation. Now that the cold front had passed over, it was remarkable how chilly the air had grown. The rain was already pouring in one broken window, puddles running across the floor. He righted the chair and sat back down. The boys back at HQ would never let him live this one down.

  The propane lantern guttered and he looked over at it, scowling. It figured: some jackass hadn’t bothered to screw in a fresh canister, and now the thing was about to go out. He shook his head, rose, and went to the fireplace. A fire was laid and ready to go; above the hearth, on the stone mantelpiece, he noticed an old box of kitchen matches.

  He stood for a minute, thinking.Hell with it, he decided. As long as he was stuck in this creepy old place, he might as well make himself comfortable.

  He ducked his head into the fireplace and made sure the flue was open. Then he reached for the box, removed a match, struck it, and lit the fire. The flames licked up the newspaper and immediately he felt better: there was something reassuring about the warm glow of a fire. As it took, it threw a nice yellow light into the parlor, reflecting off the framed embroidery, the glass and porcelain knickknacks. Rheinbeck went and turned off the propane lantern. Might as well conserve its last few minutes of light.

  Rheinbeck felt a little sorry for the old lady. It was tough having to lock her in the basement. But there was
a major tornado warning out, and she’d been uncooperative, to say the least. He settled back in the rocker. It couldn’t be easy for an old woman, having a bunch of strangers with guns and dogs descending on your property in the middle of the night, in a terrible storm. It would be a shock for anybody, especially a shut-in like old Miss Kraus.

  He leaned back in the rocker, enjoying the warmth of the flickering firelight. He was reminded of the Sunday afternoons he and the wife occasionally spent visiting his mother. In the winter, she’d make a pot of tea and serve it by a fire just like this one. And with the tea would always come cookies: she had an old family recipe for ginger snaps she kept promising to give his wife, but somehow never did.

  It occurred to him that the old lady had been down in the cellar for almost three hours without any kind of nourishment. Now that she’d calmed down, he should bring her something. Nobody could accuse him later of having starved the old woman or allowing her to dehydrate. He could make a pot of tea. There was no power, but he could boil the tea water over the fire. In fact, he wished he’d thought of it earlier.

  He roused himself from the chair, turned on his flashlight, and went into the kitchen. The place was remarkably well stocked. There were boxes of funny-looking dry goods stacked up along the walls: herbs and spices he’d never heard of, exotic vinegars, pickled vegetables in jars. On the counters were silver canisters covered with Japanese lettering, or maybe Chinese, he wasn’t sure which. Finally he found the teakettle, set near the stove between a pasta maker and some contraption like an oversized steel funnel with a crank. He rummaged in the cabinets, located some good old-fashioned tea bags. He hung the kettle on a hook above the fire, then returned to the kitchen. The refrigerator was also well stocked, and it was the work of a few minutes to arrange a little tray with cream and sugar, tea cakes, jam, marmalade, and bread. A lace doily and linen napkin with spoon and knife completed the refreshment. Soon the tea was ready, and he put the kettle on the tray and started down the stairs.