9 #2
The walls began to undulate strangely. At first I thought that I was getting dizzy, but no, the outer wall actually swept in and then back out every few feet, so keeping my shoulder to the wall made me feel like I was wobbling downward.
The alternative was to abandon the wall, though, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
I kept going. The stone had bands of color, long horizontal bands.
Strata, I think Ingold had called them. We were climbing down through strata.
I could see Denton’s heels as he crawled down in front of me.
Why was he going so slowly? He’d been down here once already, he said that it was safe, but I was practically on top of him now and how much air was there in the shaft, really?
Was it getting stale or was I panicking?
Blessed Virgin , I prayed, if I’m going to die down here, let my last view not be Denton’s arse .
I closed my eyes. That meant that I couldn’t see how narrow the space was.
I just had to keep my shoulder against the left wall.
If I didn’t touch the right one, I wouldn’t have to know how close it was.
I kept crawling, around and around, boring into the earth.
Who had made a tunnel like this? It couldn’t be natural.
The floor felt smooth, almost polished. Christ’s blood, why couldn’t they have just made a hole straight down and run a ladder instead?
It occurred to me that if you were a low, fleshy horizontal thing that glowed redly in the dark, maybe this was just the sort of tunnel you’d make.
It had fled from us before, and this winding hole seemed like the only place it could have disappeared into.
Maybe it was waiting at the bottom, or maybe it was even now creeping in after us and soon we would hear the wet echoes of its passage trapping us in from behind . ..
My foot banged into the right-hand wall and it was so close, closer than I’d thought. I couldn’t get enough air. Had I stopped moving? No, Angus would have thumped me. I must still be moving. I could hear the harsh echoes of my breathing in a space that I didn’t dare look at again.
When the wall fell away from my left shoulder, I almost didn’t notice.
I kept crawling forward, eyes squeezed shut, even though the ground was no longer sloping, even though the echoes were suddenly different and part of me knew that I was in a much larger space but the rest of me was still crawling downward and would be forever, world without end, amen.
Denton said, “Easton?” and my eyes snapped open.
I was out. I was through. The walls were far away. I had nearly run into Denton, who was standing. I stood up too, feeling my hips and back scream at me, but I barely noticed. Our hellish descent was almost forgotten.
We stood inside a chamber made of pearl and glory.
***
The floor of the chamber was slick and shiny, a highly polished sheet of ... something. It shimmered with iridescent rainbows, like a vast sheet of pearl. Either the floor was translucent and there was light somewhere under it, or it glowed very faintly in the dark.
Have you ever seen an abalone shell? They’re not terribly common in Europe, I don’t think.
I’ve mostly seen them used as jewelry. This surface reminded me of those shells, only softer, more pinks and purples than blues and greens.
The walls were white limestone, hung with stalag .
.. stalac ... the ones that hang down, okay?
The pale glow of the floor reflected off the bottom few inches of the white walls, giving the farthest reaches of the cave a hazy look.
“Good lord,” said Denton softly.
“It’s beautiful,” said Ingold, lifting his lantern.
I put my hand to the floor, half expecting it to feel warm, but it felt like cold glass. Perhaps there was some kind of clear glaze over the surface. Even in the lamplight, I could see my hand reflecting faintly in the glaze. The pearlescent surface edged the shadow with rainbow reflections.
“Can you imagine what people would pay for this stuff?” asked Denton. “To use in place of marble?”
“Spoken like a true industrialist,” said Ingold dryly.
“Someone’s tried,” Angus said, pointing.
Off to one side, a rusted hand drill lay discarded on the floor.
I ambled over, knelt down, and ran my hand over the floor.
I couldn’t see anything, but my fingertips picked up the tiniest scuff mark on the surface.
I wondered how long it had taken to drill that much.
I sat back, watching the others survey the chamber.
Ingold was peering closely at the floor.
Denton was walking back and forth, as if trying to take in all that he was seeing.
Angus completed a circuit of the perimeter and returned.
“No other way in, unless you’re a bat,” he said, to no one in particular.
I nodded anyway. I could see a few dark cracks in the stone roof.
That must be the cause of the mine breathing , I thought, and then felt rather smug that I’d internalized that much of Ingold’s lectures on caverns.
The glassy surface, though beautiful, was punishingly hard on my knees. I met my own reflection’s gaze and snorted. I looked like hell.
I turned my head to speak to Angus and my reflection turned the other direction.
What I was seeing in my peripheral vision was so impossible that for a moment I didn’t recognize what had happened.
My eyes reported that something was wrong and I jerked my head back, expecting to see something terrible and concrete—the reflection of a monster bearing down on me, perhaps, or a crack in the floor that threatened to tumble me down into the depths of the mine.
Only my own face looked back, pearly with rainbows. But when I turned my head to the right, it shifted left. A reversed image, but not a mirrored one.
Dread slid cool fingers up my spine.
I turned my head again, very slowly, and the reflection mimicked me in reverse. Its expression was a perfect match for my own, assuming that I was currently slack-jawed, which I’m pretty sure I was.
I slid my hand upward along the floor and my reflection’s hand moved with it. I jerked it free suddenly, and for an instant, I looked down on my reflection’s palm pressed against the glass before it caught up.
“Angus,” I said. I sounded remarkably calm. “Angus, please come and tell me that you see what I see.”
Angus stomped over and looked over my shoulder. “What? I don’t see ...”
He trailed off. I moved back and forth and the reflection moved with me, as if I had an identical twin beneath the surface of the floor.
Angus went down on his knees next to me, and I saw his face join mine. When we looked at each other, our reflections gazed off to the corners of the room. When we looked over our shoulders, our reflections locked eyes with each other.
“What is it?” he said softly.
“Damned if I know.” I sat back on my heels.
Our reflections didn’t vanish. They stayed where they had been, gazing up at us. As I watched, my face opened its mouth, revealing rows of pearl teeth, in a silent scream of horror.