Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Below him, Sharise made a muffled sobbing sound; part grief, part relief. She must be petrified that she was about to watch him die.
“It’s okay,” he said. Then, a reminder: “Yell if anything moves.”
With his face pressed against the frigid cliff, Johnny remembered why he had never liked gym climbing walls.
Mild vertigo pattered his temples, inviting the return of his dizziness.
And climbing was hell on muscles that weren’t used to being taxed.
His fingers were trembling at the joints as he clung to the rough, cold ledges scraping his skin.
But he turned his good eye toward finding his next foothold, since his arms were complaining about pulling his weight.
The ledge looked wider than most, but it was a high step above his feet, so Johnny took deep breaths before he raised his boot and used his thigh muscles to hoist his weight up.
He found a single handhold long enough for both hands, but his second foot couldn’t quite reach widely enough for its closest ledge.
Panic clogged Johnny’s throat. He was already up high enough to hurt himself. He felt an almost overpowering urge to try to jump back down to Sharise. His knees shook.
“Use the ball of your foot!” Uncle Ricky called from above. “Don’t matter if there’s no foothold. Use your foot to brace.”
Shit. He should have thought of that. Holding his breath, Johnny planted his free sole against the craggy cliff face while keeping most of his weight on his foot resting on the small ledge.
Brittle rock cracked away beneath his unanchored boot, but his foot stayed planted after a small slide.
He was still hanging on! He exhaled in a sudden pant.
If someone had told him yesterday that he would be climbing this cliff freehand, or any kind of way, he would not have believed it.
He would not have believed a moment of this day.
“Yes,” Sharise said in a whisper full of mingled hope and dread.
“Get your right foot up, see?” Uncle Ricky said, as if he could sense how much Johnny’s knees were trembling from his effort. Johnny glanced to his right and saw a thin wedge of stone. Too thin. “It ain’t big, but it’ll hold you.”
Johnny didn’t quite believe Uncle Ricky, but he decided to trust him.
He shifted his weight to his bracing foot to thrust himself to the higher foothold, grabbing a sharp stone with his right hand that sliced at his half-numbed fingers.
But he was still hanging on. He shifted his right boot sidelong to fit on the narrow ledge.
When he remembered to breathe, he was gasping.
“About ten more feet, Daddy,” Sharise said. “It went to the right.”
“You’ve got a big ol’ crack over on your left,” Uncle Ricky said. “See that? You can get half your boot in there. Then scoot back over to the right like she said.”
“I see it,” Johnny panted to them both.
The gap was luxurious, deep enough for him to wedge in his left boot and relax his right leg for a few breaths. His right quads were tight, roiling with acid. Perspiration stung his eyes. He glanced up and realized he was only a dozen feet from the top of the cliff.
He didn’t dare look down. The notion lurched his stomach.
“I’m coming, baby,” Johnny whispered to the hidden cavern that must have an entrance not far from him.
His whisper was for poor Tasha, whose voice he might never hear again.
And for Imani, whose fire had warmed him enough to keep going—and who’d had the courage to remind him that he could have prevented this living nightmare.
“I promise you—this time I’ll kill it.”
Imani didn’t hear the Beast following her, so she slowed down.
She didn’t want to trip and fall or get lost. (More lost, anyway.) Mom’s calls came from every direction, woven between the passageways, ahead and behind.
She would need to help Mom back out toward the muted light she’d seen, but Imani already wasn’t sure she could find it again herself, even if the Beast weren’t planted in their way.
Imani kneeled to rummage through her backpack again, where she found her survival pack’s four glow sticks she had bound with a rubber band.
These weren’t the twelve-hour lights she could have splurged on for another thirty dollars, but she’d figured she could get away with cheap party glow sticks from a drugstore.
Now she wished she’d bought the real thing, since the green-yellow light was pathetic in darkness.
But at least it glowed a little. She stood the thin glow stick against the cavern wall.
Three more left to mark her path. Or to help Daddy find her.
“Mom, where are you?” Imani raised her voice only slightly. Yelling sounded chaotic, tumbling in the caverns. She had learned it was better to speak softly.
“Why are you in here?” Mom’s voice called. “Where’s your dad?”
Imani didn’t want her reunion with Mom to turn into scolding, so she said, “Just keep talking. I’ll follow your voice.”
“Imani.” Mom’s voice dipped, more urgent. “Please be careful. Where is it?” It was so disorienting that Mom’s voice was in her ear, but Mom wasn’t in sight.
Imani swung her light behind her to reveal the uneven walls she had just passed. Farther back, the dot of light that was her glow stick. She carefully laid down her second glow stick before she rounded a corner. “I don’t know. Somewhere behind me.”
“How did you get in here?”
“It brought me here.”
Mom sobbed, which sounded worse in triple stereo. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Imani said. “Are you?”
Their words collided. Imani thought she had missed her mother’s delayed answer.
“Not too bad,” Mom said finally.
Mom was such a terrible liar; she might be hurt badly. For the first time since she’d heard her mother’s voice, worry stabbed Imani again. “Did it bite you?”
“No,” Mom said. “You?”
“No,” Imani said.
The miracle was so great that they sat in reverence of it for a moment. Imani couldn’t believe it was a coincidence. All those ferocious teeth and piles of bones—but the Beast had never tried to eat them? Not one bite?
Imani was sure that their voices were getting closer; their real voices, not their weird tunnel voices.
She had almost felt Mom’s voice bouncing off the wall beside her, where the cavern forked right.
The walls swallowed sound as the cavern narrowed, stripping away the echoes.
Without the echoes, it was easier to hear the direction.
“Keep talking, Mom,” Imani said. “Where are you hurt?”
“My foot. I kicked out… while it was dragging me.”
They must be close to each other. Mom sounded like she was right in front of her. Dim light glowed from around another corner ahead. Imani laid down a third glow stick.
“The baby’s okay?”
Mom half laughed, half sobbed. “The baby is fine.”
The magic words. As Imani rounded the corner with her powerful flashlight, she came to a dead-end chamber that looked like a real room compared to the rest of the cavern.
No bones were in sight anywhere, just a huge bed of gathered twigs that looked oddly neat, woven with clothing, crumpled papers, and clumps of white fur.
The space smelled musty, like the Beast.
In the very rear, something green sparkled in her light from a shadow—and it was Mom!
She was wrapped in some kind of fancy green gown over her red robe like a shawl.
Mom stood in the shadows at the back of the nook, her face illuminated in her cell phone’s light.
The light was unsteady, trembling in her hands.
“Imani!” Mom gasped out her name.
“Mommy!” Imani hadn’t called her mother Mommy, at least consciously, since she was nine or ten years old, when her classmate Emily said she sounded like a baby—until today.
Imani climbed over the heap of twigs, cracking them beneath her boots’ soles as she ran toward her mother. “I knew you weren’t dead,” she heard herself repeating. “I knew it! I knew you were alive. I could hear your voice in my head.”
Imani half expected her mother to explain how she had sent telepathic messages to her, revealing a gift neither of them had realized she possessed.
Instead, Mom only said, “Shhhhh.” Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
She looked so terrified that Imani looked over her shoulder to see if the Beast was right behind her.
But the passageway was clear. “Come here, baby. Quick. Before it comes back.”
When Imani felt her mother’s arms wrap around her, her embrace was like slipping into a dream.
The sobs Imani had blocked most of the day churned from her throat and chest. For the first time, she fully revisited the horror of seeing Mom yanked out of the car as they drove away from the lodge on that cursed road, her old life whiffing out.
And then the next horror, somehow worse: hearing Mom’s shrieks from the tree, believing the Beast was eating her.
They shook against each other, needing the stony wall to support them.
Mom stroked Imani’s head and kissed her forehead. “Shhhhh,” she said. “I’m here.”
Mom lost her balance beneath Imani’s weight, and they both tumbled off their feet down into the twigs. Mom hissed with pain, but she never let go of Imani.
“My foot,” Mom whispered, not a complaint. A reminder.
“Let me see,” Imani said, moving her flashlight toward her mother’s feet. Mom was wearing one pink sneaker, but her other foot was wrapped in a filthy fabric. Imani started to pull at the knot holding the—old sweater?—in place, but Mom yanked her foot away.
“No,” she said. “Leave it.”
“Mom, I have a kit with alcohol and bandages.”
Mom only shook her head, determined. “No, Imani. I don’t want you to see it.”
“Why not?”
Mom pursed her lips, considering whether to answer. “The bone is showing, baby,” she finally said. “Skin scraped right off. I need more than alcohol. Okay? I don’t want you to see it.”