Chapter 23 #3
Cassidy tapped Edie’s knee under the table, and Edie slowly slid her hand out of view of the others to clasp Cassidy’s shaking fingers.
“Okay, sorry,” Cassidy agreed.
A tense moment passed and no one moved. The room was silent, as though there wasn’t a single living breathing creature in it, though she still felt the eyes of the dark figures around them. Apricot and Rose fixed their gazes on Cassidy and Edie, while Daisy stared ahead, still as a statue.
Edie cleared her throat, but she could not get it to loosen up. It remained as tense as every other muscle in her body. “So, what have you all been doing down here?”
Cassidy squirmed in her seat and Edie squeezed her fingers tighter.
“Yeah, is there live music or something?” Cassidy asked, her voice strained.
No one responded. Edie held her breath and heard her pulse shake in her head.
“We can show you,” Apricot said after a moment. Edie and Cassidy jumped in their seats.
Apricot and Rose stood and paused. Slowly, Edie and Cassidy unclasped their hands and stood, which made the feeling of being watched worse.
Now Edie felt like she was on stage without knowing her cues.
When Rose moved, she followed. They weaved between tables of silent onlookers, and Edie kept her arms pressed close to her body, her vision fixed on the back of Rose’s head.
The back corner of the room had a low platform with a drum set pushed into the corner and a line of empty microphone stands, like many small nightclubs Edie frequented.
However, unlike a regular club, the basement lacked any décor.
The concrete walls didn’t have plush drapes to absorb sound—not that there was any to be absorbed at the moment—but there were also no posters, photos, or light fixtures other than the string LEDs.
As Edie approached the back wall, she saw that the only thing disrupting the stark surface was a wooden door, which Rose reached out her hand and opened.
A gust of cold wind blew into the room from the dark chasm beyond the door, and Edie crossed her arms and curled into them for protection against the chill. The earthy smell of wet stones and mildew crept into the room and reminded Edie of caves, or crypts.
“Where does it go?” Cassidy asked, peering into the darkness.
“Find out for yourself,” Daisy said, and it sounded to Edie like a schoolyard taunt.
Edie shook her head. “I’m okay.”
Rose grabbed her roughly by the upper arm, the edges of her French manicure digging into Edie’s flesh.
“Go on, it’s what you came to see.” She pushed her into the darkness and Edie’s knees threatened to give out.
Her feet felt heavy as lead weights and tripped over one another.
She started to fall and reached out a hand to catch herself and found the cold, sweating surface of a walled tunnel.
Edie turned, wanting to run or beg. The dim light from the blue room was a beacon of bleak hope that she wished to return to compared to this.
She couldn’t run, though, because Cassidy was pushed in behind her.
Apricot, Daisy, and Rose stepped into the tunnel and nodded for Edie to keep walking.
The light ran out quickly, and Edie could only orient herself in the dark by placing her hand on the wall, which began as something akin to concrete but soon enough Edie thought her fingers felt hard packed dirt.
They walked in silence, save for the sounds of their footsteps echoing off the walls and giving the impression of a whole crowd walking with them.
Cassidy said Edie’s name and Edie felt her fingers against her arm.
She took Cassidy’s hand and they walked together, slowly.
Cassidy’s hand sweat and shook into her palm and squeezed hard when their footsteps splashed into something wet in the corridor.
Edie thought the air in her mouth was thicker and warmer now, or perhaps she was breathing too rapidly into the thick cloud of air around her and warming it herself.
In the dark, Edie couldn’t tell how far they’d gone or how much time passed.
Her Hokas and socks were completely soaked now from dragging her feet through the shallow water.
She knew that extended time in the dark caused people to hallucinate, but she never saw lights or fairies, only endless darkness.
“How much farther is it?” she asked. Her voice echoed in front of her, but no reply came from behind.
She stopped. Cassidy took another wet step, but with her hand in Edie’s she could go no further.
There were no other footsteps, but the sound of running water far off in the distance.
“Hello?” Edie turned and called behind her.
“Apricot?” Cassidy asked.
Edie’s weary heart started at a full gallop in her chest. She let go of Cassidy’s hand and took small uncertain steps toward where Rose and the other two should have been, her arms held out in front of her like a cursed monster.
Her feet splashed through the water, obscuring the other sounds she sought, but her fingers made no purchase onto skin or clothing.
She waved her hands wildly in a panic and began to run in the dark in a hopeless search for the others but couldn’t find them.
“Rose!” she screamed, and her terror echoed on and on and on in the tunnel, dampened by nothing and no one in front of her.
“Apricot! Daisy!” Cassidy called from behind her. It sounded like she’d stayed in place.
“What the fuck!” Edie shouted. “What the fuck!” Her voice cracked and she tasted blood as she panted and turned, hands swiping for anything. She felt the rock again but now was unsure which direction she was facing. “Cassidy?” she called, on the verge of tears.
“Edie!” Cassidy called back. She was behind her now, so Edie turned, keeping her fingers on the dirt, and following the sound of Cassidy’s footsteps. “Edie? Are they gone?”
Edie felt hands against her torso and neck. She let go of the wall and both her arms found Cassidy’s, and the two women embraced, seeking something more solid than the tunnel walls.
“I couldn’t find them,” Edie said, her throat resting on Cassidy’s shoulder.
“Oh my god. Should we turn back?” Cassidy asked. She pressed her cheek into Edie’s collarbone and faced away from her. Her whole body shook against Edie’s quaking bones.
“I don’t know. I don’t know which way is back.”
“What is this place?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“What do we do?”
Edie pulled her body away but found Cassidy’s hands and held onto them. “Let me think.”
What was the point of this? Was it a test? What if they did turn around, then what? The blue room again? That was hardly better than this, and they might send them back, or do something worse.
Edie inhaled deeply. Cassidy’s hands still shook in hers, in rhythm with her ragged, nervous breaths. Just below the sound of their breathing, Edie heard the far away rush of running water again.
“We have to keep going forward. Maybe wherever this water is coming from is a way out. It’s not a big island, so it can’t be that far.”
She didn’t consider that they didn’t know how far they’d already gone or how long it had taken. Rather, she worried about if they didn’t find an exit and they had to turn around, but she didn’t want to voice those concerns to Cassidy.
Cassidy sniffled. “Okay,” she said in a small voice. “Let’s keep going.”
Edie returned to her side of the tunnel, left hand on the wall and right in Cassidy’s.
She focused on the sound of running water between their splashing steps and tried to find a good pace that didn’t seem too slow but also wasn’t so fast that they’d run into something.
The tunnel continued on, and Edie wondered if it was as perfectly straight as it felt or if it gently curved and wound around wide corners that she couldn’t perceive in the dark.
It felt like they walked for hours without the sound of running water getting any louder, and Edie thought that she’d made a mistake.
Maybe the tunnel connected with an underground stream and didn’t offer a way out, but it was too late to turn back now. They had to get to the end.
Hunger pains knotted in Edie’s stomach, and she tried to remember the last time she’d eaten. Had it been that morning in the villa, or last night with Rose? She struggled to recall, and the effort made her head hurt. She needed to focus.
“Is that …?” Cassidy asked and trailed off.
“What?” Edie asked.
“I dunno. I thought I saw a light.”
Edie picked up the pace ever so slightly and focused ahead of her to try to pick out anything in the dark. She thought she saw something, as well, but it could have been a mutual hallucination.
No, there was definitely something ahead. A pinprick of light in the darkness, light-years away from where they stood, but still visible.
“I see it, too,” Edie said, her relief audible. They both started walking even faster, and Edie felt the water splash onto her bare legs.
Their breathing grew louder as they continued down the tunnel, still hand in hand, but now Edie let her fingers lightly trail along the damp surface of the wall.
The sound of the running water grew louder and the tiny spec of light they’d first seen came into greater focus.
It became a lone star in the endless night and rose in height as they approached and grew to the size of a port window.
The rushing water echoed loudly as they approached, and never louder than the volume of a running bathtub spigot.
Edie’s heart dropped into her stomach when she realized they reached the end.
It came much sooner than she expected because she thought the water ran more vigorously from how loud the echoes were farther down the tunnel, and she’d hoped the source of light would be bigger.
Instead, it stayed the size of a cruise boat porthole that she could reach up and touch.
The water poured in a wide arc steadily down into the tunnel from the hole, distorting its light and size, and Edie couldn’t see beyond it.