Beneath Page 13

  “He was. But it was really Dad’s dream for him to get an MBA in finance and follow the same career path. Colin stuck with it, but it wasn’t what he really wanted. He wants an electrical engineering degree, but if he switches now it means at least two additional years of school. He told Dad he would pay for it. He’d take out loans–”

  “Wow, he had mentioned something about two majors, but I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, it’s not something that comes up in conversation because we don’t want to rile Dad.”

  “So what’s he going to do? Is he switching?”

  “Yeah,” Jill nodded and looked up to make sure they were alone. “He announced that before we got on the boat.”

  “Whoa. I knew I felt tension when we pulled out. Usually Col and your Dad are all excited about fishing trips.”

  “Yeah. Well, unless we get up to the surface, their argument seems pretty lame now.”

  They finished up and soon the bell rang. Jill searched for Daniel, but finally ducked her head and crawled into the back of their dwelling. She whispered a soft good night and Stella waited for the even sound of her friend’s breathing before attempting to move. She climbed out of the desk chair and peered out into the empty common area. Behind her Jill emitted a soft snore.

  Stella studied the men’s bungalow next-door but all was idle. Finally a shadow emerged from the pointed hull. It hugged the base of the peak and stayed off the main path. She followed its trek until it slipped behind a boulder just outside the café area.

  Glancing over her shoulder she saw that Jill was sound asleep in the hammock with an arm flung over her nose. Stella watched her for a second and then slipped out of the wheelhouse. When she reached the café there was no sign of Colin. The nearby torches cast dancing phantoms across the packed ground. The wide cavern trapped enough of a breeze to stoke the flames into animation.

  “Over here.”

  Stella swirled towards the hushed call and located Colin’s silhouette ahead on the path. He had circled around the base of the pinnacle and was now out of sight of the village.

  Stella jogged a few steps to catch up with him.

  “Everything okay?” he whispered.

  “Yeah. Jill’s asleep. Your Dad?”

  “Yeah.” He stepped away to yank a torch from the ground.

  “Where are we going exactly?”

  Colin held the torch up so that his face glowed. “You’re going to show me where you saw that thing, and I’m going to go investigate.”

  Stella stalked to the nearest torch and used both hands to pull it from the ground. She spun around. “We are.”

  Before he could respond she led the way, losing the sound of his trailing steps in the soft hiss of the waterfall. Once past it she clutched the splintery staff. No one was going to knock this from her grip.

  No one.

  No thing.

  The cascading water grew muffled and the sound of Colin’s steps resumed. She paused until he fell in alongside her, and pointed to the darkness clinging to the arched walls.

  “That’s where I saw him,” she stated in the softest of whispers.

  Colin leaned in to hear her. “Then that is where I am going,” he declared.

  Half of his face was cast in shadow. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay behind?” he added.

  A twist of her lips was his answer.

  “Fine. Then stay close,” he ordered solemnly.

  “That’s a command I’ll obey.”

  Shoulder to shoulder they crept deeper into the darkness. Perspiration beaded on her forehead and her torch revealed that Colin’s t-shirt was stained by sweat as well. Strain as she might to find them, there were no luminous eyes glowering back at her.

  As she and Colin advanced, Stella began to question her own sanity. Had she imagined it? Did the band of bruises on her arm look less like deformed fingers and more like the linear formation of rocks under the water she had fallen into?

  “Careful,” Colin cautioned, “we’ve gone off the path.”

  Stella lowered her torch to view the spongy-looking rocks.

  “Did we reach the end of the trail?”

  “No.” He stretched back and held out his hand to help her negotiate the uneven terrain. “I thought I saw a gap in the wall. We should check it out.”

  Stella grabbed onto his forearm as her toe clipped a boulder. Stable again, she looked up and searched the jagged black wall. Under the glow of the torch the wall wasn’t really black, but rather a deep ginger with rusty rivulets of ancient water tracks–weeping lines from long forgotten tears.

  There was an opening in the palisade, a black scar wide enough to fit your shoulders through.

  Colin stopped before it, jabbing his torch into the gap.

  “Let me get a quick look,” he suggested. “It may be impassible in a few feet.”

  They had traveled deep enough into the abyss to talk above a whisper.

  “No.” Her fingers stiffened around his arm. “If anything happens to you–”

  With the torch extended away from him, it was hard to see Colin’s eyes, but she could feel the weight of his stare.

  “Careful, Stel. I’ll start to believe that you care about me,” he teased.

  Stella dropped her hand and tucked her head. “Too much carbon dioxide,” she muttered.

  There was enough light to catch Colin’s quick grin before he turned into the void.

  Stella switched her torch into her left hand and concentrated on Colin’s back as they advanced deeper into the narrow channel. Gravel crackled beneath their feet, but aside from that persistent crunch, all sound was severed. There were no echoes of vast space. This chasm was only a few feet wide and the ceiling low, swallowing the resonation from the cave. In this tight space her eyes welled from the flames.

  Colin halted.

  Stella was so close on his heel she stumbled into his back, pushing him forward.

  “Whoa, sorry,” she whispered. “Have we reached the end?”

  “No,” he hesitated, “but there is something ahead.”

  He splayed his free hand behind him, holding her at bay.

  “What is it?” she hissed, hiking up onto her toes to try and see over his shoulder.

  “A gate?” he murmured. “No, a cage.” He stepped forward, swinging his torch from side to side.

  “No,” he corrected. “A cell. Cells.”

  Another step and she glimpsed what he saw. A gap in the wall to the left. The hole was about four feet wide, barricaded by a stockade of wooden posts.

  Colin swung his torch to reveal another barred cell on the other side.

  “These aren’t really cells, Col.”

  Colin ran his hand along the end posts, both impaled to the cave wall with crudely formed spikes.

  “You’re right. There are no gates.”

  “Whatever was inside was not supposed to get out.” She stuck her nose between the posts. “Unless there is another exit.”

  Holding the torch as close as possible to the barricade, Stella gasped.

  Colin was at her side immediately.

  “What?”

  “On the wall.” She pointed. “What does that look like?”

  With the flickering light from both torches filling the vault, the craggy walls came into view. She wasn’t a geologist. She didn’t know the rock composition down here. But the slashes carved in the bedrock were not a natural phenomenon. Four parallel gashes, like the mark of bear claws. This grouping was found in multiple spots, the focus mostly towards the front of the cell–the area where the posts were spiked into the bedrock.

  “Whatever–whoever was in here tried to claw their way out,” Colin murmured.

  Stella trembled, but forced herself to look past the frenzied scratches, deeper into the shadows.

  “I don’t see another way out.” Her voice wavered.

  “Me either, but–”

  Col spared stating the obvious. There were no skeletal remains or anything so macab
re. Yet those claw marks reached out and tore at her soul. There was desperation to them. Madness.

  He wrapped his fist around one of the posts and tugged. It didn’t yield. He tested another with the same results.

  “Come on,” he said. “We better get back before anyone notices us missing.”

  It was a wonderful suggestion. Suddenly, her perpetual curiosity was tempered. She had a sick feeling that she didn’t want to learn more about these cells, or their inhabitants.

  “Are you going to ask Etienne about these?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I doubt we’d get the truth from him. He wants us to believe this is paradise.”

  “People don’t claw their way out of paradise.”

  The Underworld was still sleeping when they returned. Preparing to slip back into their respective bungalows, Colin and Stella were startled to see his father emerge from his splintered dwelling. He snapped to attention at their approach. A hasty head to toe scan of their dirty clothes produced a dour look on his pallid face.

  “Where have you two been?”

  The suggestive question brought heat to Stella’s cheeks and a deep frown from Colin.

  “We were investigating,” he whispered, patting the air with his hand, instructing his father to keep it down.

  “Yeah, right.” Don rebuked in full volume.

  “Dad, quiet.” Colin hastily glanced up the trail, but there was no sign of activity. He leaned in so that his mouth was closer to his father’s ear. “We found something,” he declared quietly.

  Don’s eyebrow rose. He looked from Colin to Stella and back again. With a jerk of his head, he motioned them into the inverted boat.

  Stella climbed in behind the two men and caught a pungent whiff. She realized the foul scent came from Don. He hadn’t been too concerned with self-hygiene lately.

  Colin stood just inside the doorway, his arms crossed, his face lost in heavy shadows. He bowed his head to peer back outside and their eyes connected for a heavy second. He gave her an assuring nod.

  Don turned around, his hands on his hips. His shirt was rumpled and draped over a stomach that was once much fuller.

  “What are you two up to? I know you’re both adults, but–”

  “Dad, come on.” Colin shook his head. “I’m serious. We found something. There were cells, like a man-made dungeon far back behind the waterfall. And we saw signs that they were once occupied.”

  “Dungeon cells?” Don repeated. “Take a look at this place. If one of the handful of people acts up I’m pretty sure they’ll just get a strong lecture–not a jail sentence. They don’t seem like barbarians–”

  Even as he made the declaration, Stella could see the wheels of doubt spinning on the elder Wexler’s face. He reached up and scratched the back of his head. “You probably just found more storage facilities. I’m sure things wash up down here that these utilitarians want to regulate. Might as well put the good stuff behind bars.”

  “There was no door, Dad. It was a chamber barricaded with the intent to keep whatever was inside from getting out.”

  Don wiggled his fingers and waved his arm. “Ooooh, scary.” He snorted. “Nothing surprises me down here. We are screwed. Is that what you want to hear from me? We are screwed and we’re all going to die, so what does it matter if you think you found Alcatraz, or you two sneak away for a kissing fest?”

  “Dad,” Colin warned in a gruff voice. “We’re not all going to die. Stella and I are looking for a way out of here. We’re not staying.”

  Don’s lips twisted. “Bravo. Great performance. But the only way out of here is to swim. So help me God, if anything happens to Anne I am going straight to that pool.”

  “You can’t swim to the surface,” Colin argued. “You know that.”

  The glow from the outdoor torches reached through the windows and captured Don Wexler’s eyes. Stella witnessed the first signs of gravity in them. For a moment he was not overcome by grief. Carbon dioxide wasn’t affecting his decision-making. Those eyes were lucid. And they were sad. In that moment he was the surrogate dad she had spent so much time with. The man who picked her up from school when her mother was working late hours. The man who taught her how to parallel park.

  Outside the bell announced a new morning.

  Don’s eyelids dropped closed and pressed deep into his cheeks as if he was in great pain. When they opened again the clarity was gone. The man she knew was gone.

  “I’ll make it,” he vowed. “Whether you come with me or not.”

  “We’re all sticking together. We’re a family.” Colin’s eyes slid to hers. “All of us.”

  Stella swallowed and nodded.

  “Good. Then as a family we can all swim to the surface.”

  The bitterness to his tone was disturbing. This environment was proving toxic to Don, and Stella saw the toll it was taking on Colin as he swung away and placed his hand against the wall and hung his head.

  “I’m going to check on Mom,” he announced.

  He looked at her questioningly. Yes, she would join him. There was no way she was staying here.

  Inside the infirmary they saw Sarah hunched over Anne’s inert figure. The nurse was humming an unrecognizable tune.

  “We’ve got to find a way out of here,” Colin vowed in a whisper before they ducked through the doorway. “Tomorrow night we’ll go past the cells.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  Yes, she repeated in her mind as she watched Sarah Fournier rocking back and forth as she hummed her tune and fingered Anne’s blonde hair.

  Finally sensing their presence, Sarah jerked her head in their direction. Pale eyes rounded, the circles beneath them etched in black. Thin lips sagged and her narrow chin dropped in contrition.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  JILL

  Jill woke abruptly, vaulting into a seated position with her palms splayed flat on the blanket. Disoriented, she glanced around at the heavy shadows which only increased her fear. Finally her lethargic gaze landed on something familiar. The desk. Before she fell asleep Stella was sitting at it. Now it was empty, and the pad that her best friend dawdled in was tucked away from view.

  “Stel?” she called futilely.

  For the past few nights it was always the same schedule. Fall asleep with Stella sitting there. Wake up alone. Today that fact bothered her. Probably a byproduct of the nightmare that she could barely remember.

  She rose, wiping imaginary dirt off her arms. In her mind everything was dirty, but in reality the blanket she slept on was relatively clean. At the window she saw people stirring from their dwellings.

  Loren, with the shiny black hair, was already sitting at the café, reading a book. Jill scanned the basketball court but saw no sign of Daniel. She looked forward to talking to him again. He was everything she wasn’t. Quiet. Dark. Angry. In contrast, she was the one who had to keep the peace during any family arguments. Recently, the arguments between her brother and father had escalated. She understood her brother’s frustrations. He wasn’t wrapped up in finance and the stock market like his father. He had a keen mind for detail and design. As kids, he had constructed their backyard treehouse himself and even rigged a pulley system strong enough to act as an elevator.

  Jill tried to lighten the tension at the family dinners, sometimes at the sake of making herself sound vacuous. Make them laugh. That was her goal. Stella often said she should be a stand-up comedian. Hah. If her father wasn’t happy about Colin’s engineering ambitions, what would he do with a stand-up comedian for a daughter?

  Jill’s glance swung towards the infirmary. Maybe today her mom would wake up. She missed her terribly. She was the other peacekeeper in the house.

  Patting down her long blonde hair, and applying a fingertip full of ancient toothpaste to her teeth, Jill stared into the tarnished mirror over the desk. The once glossy hair looked matted now. The whites of her eyes looked yellow in the tarnished reflection. There was no blush
to enhance her cheeks. No gloss to brighten her lips. No mascara to make her blue eyes pop.

  Make them laugh.

  Arms crossed despite the heat and humidity, Jill started towards the infirmary. A hushed call stopped her. She hesitated, listening.

  “Hey.”

  There, in the shadows at the foot of the spiraling peak stood a familiar lanky profile. She started towards him, still a little uncertain about this brooding stranger.

  “Hi,” she said quietly as she came to a stop a few feet away.

  Daniel inched his chin up, nodding towards the infirmary.

  “You going to see your Mom?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder. “But, I have a few minutes. I think my father and brother are in there now.”

  “I saw them go in. How is she doing?”

  Jill glanced down at her toes. There was a tiny trace of red nail polish still on the tips of the big toes.

  “The same.”

  Daniel crammed his hands into the pockets of his loose jeans and said, “I hope she gets better.” He hesitated and added, “If you have a minute, do you want to see something?”

  She looked up eagerly. “Sure.”

  Yes. Anything. Anything that was a diversion from desperation.

  A thin, but strong shoulder hitched beneath the red and white-striped shirt and she followed his lead. Watching his long back, she guessed him to be at least six inches taller than her. Of course, she was considered pint-sized by many, particularly Stella, the Amazon woman. How she envied her friend’s statuesque good looks. Stella’s legs were endless, while hers were like little pistons, always working harder to catch up. Even now she jogged a few steps to keep up with Daniel’s long stride.

  “We’re heading back towards the pool?” she asked, recognizing the tunnel at the end of the great chamber.

  “Yeah, but not all the way.”

  Their initial approach through this tunnel had been little more than a foggy memory. Nothing had been perceptible outside the scope of the torch. Now that she searched harder she could see formations in the arched shadows. Mineral daggers. Dark fissures in the walls like scars. For the life of her she could never find her way back to the place they emerged from the sea. In some ways she was grateful when Daniel said, but not all the way.