Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Eight
JOHNNY WRAPPED HIS RIGHT ARM around the jagged boulder above him and clung the way he would if he were drowning, panting for breath.
The top of the cliff still loomed ten feet above him, but he had found a snowy shelf large enough to support him.
He hadn’t been able to see the shelf until his last crawl upward, when it had appeared like a wish fulfilled. (Thank you, God.)
“Almost there, Daddy!” Sharise called from below. Too far below.
Johnny didn’t have the breath to answer.
His legs swung when he released his footholds to try to lift himself up, momentarily loosening his grip, and in his white sheet of panic he was sure he felt himself falling thirty feet down.
But he now instinctively knew how to plant his sole against the volcanic rock, and he pushed past the complaints of his weary calf muscles to hoist his legs and torso onto the ledge, displacing a shower of snow in his wake.
Shit. Shit. Shit. He had done it. He wasn’t dead and broken at Sharise’s feet at the base of the cliff.
The dizziness he had staved off during the climb flared with his sudden motion to lie on his back, the gray sky careening above.
The back of his head throbbed. He shifted when the rifle dug into his shoulder blade, reminding him to unstrap it and hold it ready. He wasn’t here to rest.
After a few more pants to clear his dizziness, Johnny sat up, patting the rock shelf to make sure it wouldn’t crumble under his weight.
Mishaps during his climb had taught him that it was probably brittle, with a tendency to break away.
He glanced at the formations behind him, but there was still no sign of a cave entrance, at least from where he sat.
“Dad, are you okay?” Sharise called.
“I’m good!” he called back. “I need to be quiet now. Go on back to the tree.”
“Do you see where it lives?” Sharise whisper-shouted. “What if you have to go higher?”
The idea was horrifying, but Sharise was right. Uncle Ricky wasn’t visible to guide him anymore, but Johnny was almost directly below where his visage had appeared. So why couldn’t he see the entrance to the monster’s lair?
When he looked behind him, he spotted the tracks, a dead giveaway. Snow skewed from side to side in the familiar pattern, stopping at a boulder that looked flush against the cliffside. Had the thing only climbed higher from here?
But no. As Johnny crawled on all fours on the ledge to follow the tracks, he found the passageway dug into the rock beyond the boulder. At first glance, it could be a shadow, as if the boulder were a bookcase concealing a library passage. The gap was as wide as the boulder that shrouded it.
His doubts dissolved when a lighter flicked on from the maw, near the mouth.
He was about to scream Imani’s name when he saw Uncle Ricky’s face in the orange glow as he leaned close to light another hand-rolled joint identical to the one he had smoked while he was driving Johnny to Bear Creek Lodge from the airport.
(He’d planned to report that to his mother, before he had so many other testimonies.) Of course he was a stoner even in death.
If only it could have been Imani—a sign of life instead of stubborn evidence of death. Johnny’s bitter disappointment tore at his throat, but he tried to swallow it down. Uncle Ricky’s spirit guiding him had saved his life more than once. Maybe he could save them all.
“Thanks,” Johnny whispered, but the light, and Uncle Ricky, were gone. Still, he added, “I forgive you. You didn’t know.” And his throat’s contraction relaxed. His breathing steadied. He couldn’t carry useless rage with him into this cavern.
And he wasn’t talking to Uncle Ricky anymore. He was talking to himself. Already, he wondered if he had been talking to himself all day. (Just like you wondered if that little creature in Mazelle’s window was real. Like that?)
But that was speculation about a future he might not have. Depending on what happened inside this cavern—or what he would see—he might never have a future. Yesterday’s version of him was long dead, and he didn’t want to imagine who he might be tomorrow—if he lived through this day.
Johnny thought of his last video call with his high school friend Brian, who’d been waiting out his tour in Afghanistan by playing with a stray dog and composing songs on his guitar.
Johnny had asked him how it felt knowing that he might get blown up any day, and Brian had said his job was to protect his friends. Then he’d shrugged and said, I’m ready.
Back then, Johnny had thought it was bravado. Not anymore. When you had to face it, you got ready. That had been the secret all along.
Moving at a snail’s pace on the narrow surface, he scooted back to the edge to peer down at Sharise, who was looking anxiously upward.
She clapped her helmet with relief when she saw him reappear, although her shattered face didn’t look like she would smile again.
The child Sharise had been yesterday was dead now too.
But, God, please let Sharise and Imani have a tomorrow. Let them live to become new.
“Hey, I found the hole,” he whisper-called. “Just like you said. I’m sure of it.”
Sharise’s palms slipped from the top of her helmet to cover her mouth, probably to stanch a sob. The outcome they had both prayed for was also the most terrifying. Her shoulders shook. He wished he had time to comfort her or even think of how, but comfort was long behind them.
“Sharise… I need you to go to the tree.”
Sharise didn’t answer or move, a statue vowing to Speak No Evil. He heard her sniffle.
“You guided me up here… and I didn’t fall. We did that. But the rest is up to me.”
“But I can—”
“You can stay safe,” he said. “That’s all that’s left, honey.”
This time, he heard the sob she was trying so hard not to burden him with. The sound of his daughter weeping—mourning all of them—wrung Johnny’s stomach. He felt like a ghost watching his own funeral; past his own pain, but boiling in hers.
“We can’t all be here,” he said. “Someone has to get away. Just… in case.” Sharise had seen enough of his movies to know what a Final Girl looked like, even if she never expected to be one.
Everyone ended up in their own personal horror movie eventually.
He’d been preparing for this day with every script he wrote, without ever knowing it.
If he lived, he would write a movie about today.
Instead of crying harder, Sharise lowered her hands from her mouth.
“Then… not the tree,” Sharise said, her voice thin but steady. “I’ll head back while you’re in there—like you wanted to. I see the ski pole. I’ll walk back and drive that Jeep to town. I’ll find it, Dad. I’ll get help. I promise.”
If she didn’t get lost, she might be in McCloud within an hour.
Only one hour might separate them from rescue and civilization, but Johnny felt like he was on the sands of the moon. He could not spend another hour wondering if Imani and Tasha were alive. They might not have another hour. None of them might.
“Yes,” Johnny said. “Go. We’ll be waiting.” Hot breath almost swallowed his words.
“Love you, Dad,” Sharise whisper-mouthed.
“Love you more. We’ll be okay.”
Sharise turned away first, knowing that he would yearn to see her walking back toward safety in her new ski jacket.
He would sustain himself with the memory of her jacket in Bruins blue, easy to spot from a distance.
(She was only fooling herself if she thought she was going anywhere except UCLA, he thought, craving normalcy.) After ten yards, as promised, Sharise picked up the ski pole and waved it toward him. He waved back.
Good. She had gear. She had a weapon. She could find her way to safety, he convinced himself. He refused to entertain any other scenarios. Nothing else was possible.
Johnny turned back toward the cavern’s mouth—an agonized pose in brittle basalt, as if the stone were moaning.
The opening was dark, but daylight showed him that he wouldn’t need a rope to climb in.
A tall mound of sharp, brown-gray rocks and boulders lay spilled inside the cavern entrance as if a colossus had punched his way through from outside.
Less than five feet to the sandy floor. Johnny steadied himself with one arm on the mouth’s wall as he ducked to climb in and sink his boots against loose, craggy stones.
As he expected, his boots slid, but the stones were packed enough to keep him from sliding far. He stayed upright.
Johnny jumped the last foot to solid ground, noting that his thump was louder than expected. The sound of his arrival echoed in the chambers right and left, amplified. He smelled the dust he’d stirred up, like a burnt match head tingling in his nostrils.
He readied his rifle, expecting a response to his intrusion. He only heard his breathing, but he smelled the monster’s settled stink here. He was in the right place.
But he couldn’t see a damn thing beyond the light from the gap. He angled his cell phone toward the light. His battery was still at sixty percent, he read through the cracked screen. No signal, of course. But after a couple of tries, he was able to trigger the flashlight icon.
His phone flashlight seemed obnoxiously bright when he flicked it on at home, but in nature it was a toy.
He’d hoped to light up the interior passageways and see if the monster was hiding in his path, but he could barely see a few steps ahead with his flashlight trained to the cavern’s rock-littered floor.
Slowly, with his right hand on the rifle’s trigger while he balanced his light against the barrel with his left, Johnny walked away from the gap’s maternal light.