'Did he hurt you?'
'Here and there. I got… poked a couple of times.'
'Stabbed?'
'He had one of those pointed bones. Like the guy who got Beth.'
'Oh Christ. Where'd he get you?'
'It's no big deal,' she said. Her thigh wound didn't hurt much. It felt as if a path had been scraped along her skin. The other wound hurt plenty. It might have had a hot coal stuffed inside it. Her head had a dull ache from striking the dock.
'We'd better get out,' Greg said, 'and patch you up.' Darcy shook her head. 'We've gotta get moving. Those others… they'll reach the group.'
'I didn't bring the pickaxe. I found it, had it in my hands. Then I heard something going on over here. All I could think about was getting to you as fast as I could.'
'As cavalry charging to the rescue,' Darcy said, 'you leave a lot to be desired.'
He laughed softly, then kissed her mouth. 'Thank God you're all right.'
'To the extent that I am.' She eased away from Greg. 'I'll find his weapon. It's down around here someplace.' Holding onto him with one hand, she lifted each of her feet and pulled her shoes off. She gave them to Greg. Then she wandered slowly, searching along the bottom with her feet. She felt sand and gravel through her socks. Stones, slabs of rock.
She heard Greg moving around nearby, and guessed that he had joined in the search.
'A femur?' he asked.
'I didn't see it, but I think so. It was long enough to go through Carol and stab me.'
One of her feet snagged something soft that wrapped around it. Raising her knee, she untangled her foot. The thing was fabric. She explored it with her hands, and moaned.
'What?'
'Carol's dress.' She remembered the splashing she'd heard just after the attack and before the savage came for her. The grunts and hard breathing. He'd stripped the sundress off Carol. What else had he done to her? 'God,' Darcy muttered, and hurled the dress away.
'Maybe we'd better give it…' His words broke off with a gasp.
'What?'
'Another…' Slurps of water. 'Found your… Jesus!'
'What is it?'
'His face, it's…'
'Yeah.'
'You did that?'
Darcy felt heat rush to her face as if Greg had discovered a nasty secret about her. 'He was trying to kill me,' she said.
'You really…'
'Would you stop fooling with him?'
'Sorry. I didn't mean to…'
'Just stop, okay?'
'I want to see if he's got anything that might… Yeeuh.'
'If that's his throat…'
'I tore it out, that's what I did. What was I supposed to do?'
'Hey, it's okay. I'm not… you did great. I'm just glad you were able to do it.'
'Then it'd be nice if you'd quit going yick and yuck.'
'I got a handful of the guy's dick.'
'What?'
'I was trying to check his pockets. Hasn't got any.'
'He's not wearing pants?'
'Or anything else.'
Shouldn't come as any red-hot surprise,
she told herself. Not after finding Carol's dress.
He probably stripped off his clothes before he even attacked.
Naked the whole time because he knew he was going after two women.
Naked when he got Carol, naked when he grabbed Darcy and smashed her head against the dock, when she bit his face and neck, when she straddled him and wrapped her legs around him, when he jerked against her in his death throes.
Standing rigid in the water, she wrapped her arms across her breasts and squeezed her legs together tight.
She heard Greg sloshing around nearby, heard his breathing.
She knew she should keep looking for the weapon, but she couldn't force herself to move.
'I think I've found it,' Greg whispered. A moment later, he said, 'Yeah, here it is. Christ, it's a bone, all right. Ball joint at one end. The other end feels like it's been broken off. Pretty sharp. Darcy?' He waded closer. 'Darcy, you okay?'
She shook her head.
'Darcy?'
'I want it to go away.' Her voice sounded strange to her - high and pinched. 'Greg? I can't… It's… I want it to go away. I want it all to go away.'
***
'Lucky Lynn,' Brad said. 'She got to miss all this.'
'Never seen anything like it,' Hank muttered.
Chris eased away from him, but kept a hand on his arm and stared at his chest. 'Let's get out of here,' she said.
'I'm with you,' Brad told her. He was standing close behind Chris, but she didn't turn around to look at him. If she did that, she would see the sculptures of bone, the ravaged remains of the woman. 'Seemed like a good idea, going through this end, but… this is bad shit. We'd be nuts to go on.'
'I didn't mean leave,' Chris said, keeping her eyes on the front of Hank's warm-up jacket. 'I want to keep going, get away from… If it stops. Maybe it doesn't stop, but…'
'You're kidding, right?'
'I want to get to Ely's Wall.'
'Hank?'
'I'm not turning back. I don't know what's going on down here, but my kid's on the other side.'
'Yeah, okay, but what's on this side? That's what I want to know - what I don't want to know. I mean, some kind of maniac's been messing around down here. I don't want to meet him. Hugh-uh. We're talking real miko. This isn't something you fuck with. You want to end up like these poor stiffs, some kind of cave decorations? Not me.'
'Well, leave me the pickaxe,' Hank said.
'Are you out of your mind? Do you want to get yourself killed? Want to get Chris killed? Come on, man! What about Chris? She won't go on without you.'
'You should go back with Brad,' Hank said. 'He's right. I can go ahead and get to the girls. It doesn't have to be both of us.'
'I'm going with you,' Chris told him. 'And I think we should stop talking about it and get moving.'
'What if I turn back?'
'You won't. But if you do, I'll go on without you.'
'She wouldn't be able to break through the wall by herself,' Brad said.
'Don't count on it,' Chris told him.
'Okay. Well, I'm not going to stand here and argue. You two want to be heroes, fine.'
Chris took the Coleman lantern from Hank. Brad handed the pickaxe to him. 'I'll be waiting outside. Good luck.' He gave Chris's arm a brief squeeze as he stepped past her. She watched him over Hank's shoulder. He was only visible for a moment before vanishing around a bend in the stream. The splashing sounds of his footfalls faded.
'You're sure about this?' Hank asked.
She looked into his eyes, and nodded.
Hank smiled. 'More guts than brains.'
'Goes for both of us.'
Hank lifted the pickaxe. He held it in front of his chest with both hands - as if it were a rifle, Chris thought.
She lowered her gaze to the water in front of her feet, and turned around.
It wasn't good enough. Her peripheral vision picked up the grim sentinals on either side of the stream.
She walked fast. Hank stayed at her side.
'Christ,' Hank muttered. 'They go on.'
She could see that. But the horrors weren't distinct, just vague shapes at the edges of her view.
'Like running a goddamn gauntlet,' Hank said.
'Who could've done this?'
'Nobody in his right mind.'
'Do you think he knows we're here?'
'If he's here, he probably knows. I'm sure he would've heard us pounding to break out the wall. But I can't imagine… Nobody could live in here. There's got to be a hidden entrance. Whoever it is, he probably brings his victims in, does his thing, and leaves.'
'Ethan Mordock?' Chris said.
'My God, of course. If that… mess back there was Amy Lawson…'
'Even if it wasn't. Mordock owned the hotel, the cavern. He had access - not just to the cavern, but to guests at his hotel. And its pretty obvious he was involved in making Amy Lawson disappear.'
'The guests check in,' Hank said, 'but they don't check out. Some of them, anyway.'
'Probably young women who check in alone. And they wind up down here.'
'Could've been going on for years.'
'And Mordock's dead!' Chris clutched Hank's arm and turned her face to him. She saw the same knowledge and relief that he was probably seeing in her eyes. And beyond his head, a fleshless skull wearing a green pillbox hat with a ragged red feather.
She winced and lowered her gaze.
They started walking again.
'If it was Mordock,' Hank said, 'we don't have to worry about getting jumped by some lunatic.'
'Thank God. It's bad enough without that.'
'We'd figured it out a little sooner, Brad might've stuck.'
'Who needs him,' Chris said.
They rounded a bend in the stream.
'Mordock was creepy,' she said. 'I could tell, just the way he'd look at me and Darcy, that he wasn't right. But… God, I never would've guessed he'd be capable of this kind of madness. It's hard to imagine anyone taking bodies and…'
'Speaking of which, I don't see any around. I think we left them behind.'
Chris looked up. The pale glow of the lantern revealed a forest of stalagmites and columns on either side of the stream. Rock, clean and glistening, bare of body parts. She sniffed. The foul odours remained, but seemed less oppressive than before. 'Situation's improving,' she said.
'I think we'll have to reach the wall before long. Which brings up another matter. I'm starting to wonder if we should bring the people out this way.'
Chris had seen them lined up to wait for Darcy's tour to begin. She remembered there had been women, several children. 'There were kids,' she said.
'Mine's one of them. I don't want her to see Mordock's handiwork. My God. She can be a pretty gutsy kid, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. She'd be seeing it the rest of her life.'
'I don't want to see that stuff again, myself.'
'We'd better figure something else.'
'Once we get to them, maybe it won't matter getting them out right away. I mean, the main thing is to get to Darcy and Paula. Once we're with them and know they're all right, maybe we can just wait along with them.'
'Yeah. The fire department'll get everyone out sooner or later.'
'I wouldn't care even if it took a day or two, as long as I'm with Darcy.'
'And we've got the candy bars,' Hank reminded her.
'Yeah. Nobody'll starve.'
Chris suddenly felt as if an awful weight had been lifted.
There was no longer the prospect of the return trip.
She and Hank would stay on the good side of the cavern with their children and the tourists, and eventually be hoisted up the elevator shafts by the fire department or some other rescue agency. She would not have to walk again among Mordock's dead.
'Maybe we can find the other opening,' Hank said. 'The one Mordock used.'
Her relief started to fade.
'I don't want to go exploring, do you?'
'Well-'
'I think we should just join up with the others and…'
'What's that?' Hank nodded to his right.
Chris wasn't sure she wanted to look.
'Over there by that big clump of rock.'
He sounded curious, not disgusted or wary, so Chris looked. Running along the floor of the cave, almost be yond the glow of the lantern, was a slot of darkness that appeared to run parallel to the stream.
'A crevasse?' Chris asked. 'Maybe it's that chasm Elizabeth Mordock fell into.'
'Want to take a look?'
'No. Let's just keep moving, okay?'
'Maybe the hidden entrance…'
'One of us might fall. Besides, I don't care about any hidden entrance. If I see daylight, then I'll care. Otherwise, let's not take any detours, okay?'
'I suppose you're right.'
They kept on walking.
'Since when did you become a cave explorer?' Chris asked. 'And what ever happened to your claustrophobia?'
'Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten all about it.'
'How can you forget to be claustrophobic?'
'I'll ask my shrink if I ever go to one.'
'You're not having any symptoms at all?'
'Very mild, maybe.'
'Must've gotten shocked out of you.'
'Could be.'
'All those awful bodies, and…'
She saw daylight.
'Good Lord,' she whispered.
A pale hazy glow far ahead in the blackness beyond the reach of her lantern's illumination.
'What do you know about that?' Hank muttered. 'You said if you saw daylight…'
'That's what I said. And I meant it. Geez, this is getting better and better.'
They continued to walk in the stream, but Chris kept her eyes on the distant light. It seemed to fill an opening about the size of a doorway in an area she guessed must be near the right-hand wall of the cavern. Sometimes, it vanished as rock forms blocked her view. Then, it would reappear and look closer then before.
She hoped the stream might lead directly to it.
But when they came abreast of the dim glow, it was still off to the right. They stopped and stared at it.
'Do you want to wait here while I check it out?' Hank asked.