Noctuidae (9 page)

At home if Sue-Min couldn’t get to sleep she would just

. . . it was the only thing that helped her fall asleep most nights. How long could she go without jilling off? She thought of the Seinfeld episode,
The Contest.
Hadn’t Elaine been the first one out in that?

Pete would want to do the same of course. Would he even make an effort to be discreet?
Ick.
She groaned softly to herself. Once again their situation added levels of complexity to simple quotidian acts.

She shook her head again to clear it then asked Pete —What does your watch say now? She spoke without turning in his direction.

He did not answer immediately, did not turn toward her, did not even look at his watch. Sue-Min kept her peace. It was not as if she had anywhere to go right at the moment.

Finally Pete examined his watch as she observed him. She remembered the device as an old school analog, an inheritance she guessed, his dad’s or his granddad’s originally. He stared a long minute at the face beneath the crystal but neither moved nor spoke. Finally he said to her without turning —Still 9:15. The second hand moves but I don’t think the other hands have even budged from where they were before.

—That’s weird.

—You’re tellin’ me.

His voice was bitter, hopeless, beyond even cynicism. Sue-Min considered how much worse the betrayal of his watch would hurt him if it really were an heirloom. She turned away from him toward the opening and. . .

—Pete! Look! Look outside!

He turned slowly but once he faced the exit she knew he saw what she saw too. The sky
was
lighter now, what she could see of it to either side of the silent immensity at least. No question. The shape of the thing did not resolve itself in relief and continued to defy her efforts to make sense of it overall.

—Do you see it? The sky is definitely getting brighter.

—But that thing is still there.

—Still here
now
. . . We don’t know how it got here. We don’t know how or when it might leave.

—
If
it leaves. How do we know it’s not here to stay?

—Can you be a little less pessimistic? It was your idea anyway about it leaving with the light. Don’t you want to test out that thought, see if you were right?

—I don’t want to know if I was
wrong
. I just want to get out of here. We’ve got to find a way to escape.

—Let’s see how bright it gets and what the monster does. Come on—if it’s really after 9:00 now, we should definitely be getting sunlight down here, even if it’s not direct.

It wasn’t quite sunlight, but something was changing in the sky, a dim glow visible to either side of the enormous entity. It was an unusual brightness, neither the indigo of twilight nor the poet’s rosy fingered dawn. Nor the sun’s normal clean yellow-white. Something
was
wrong with this light. Something was
off
. She couldn’t even put a color to what was more so just less of the dark than any presence of actual light, and offered no direction of origin as far as she could tell. The central bulk that bore the blossom thing grew no clearer, even in contrast at its sides. The blossom itself grew no less bright.

She glanced at Pete again but he remained concentrated on his watch, his left wrist held close to his face, just below the green tube in his right. Without turning away from it he spoke —You really should come see this, Sue.

—I’ll pass.

—Seriously. The hands are all running backwards now. Come see.

Sue-Min didn’t like the sound of that but she was no way going to get close enough to see for herself. She was just going to have to trust him about the watch. She was pretty sure she could grant him that, at least from a distance. Even if what he said were true what the hell did it mean for them? She could see the sickly glimmer from outside spreading into the cave like a thin liquid spill, but it signified nothing to her yet.

Sue-Min watched the slow growing glow and Pete watched his watch. The monster remained shapeless, motionless. She glanced at Pete and back and the monster was gone. Fast as that. She missed whether it sank into the canyon or ascended into space. Or blinked out suddenly, faded away slow. . . No sound marked its departure, no flash of light. No wind. Shouldn’t some kind of sonic boom have erupted as air rushed into the space it left empty?

Pete remained fixated on his watch. She called to him, a little louder than she would’ve dared before.

—Pete. Pete, look!

He looked. Paused.

—What happened? Is it doing something?

—I think it’s
gone
. It was sudden. It just . . . blinked out. Well, I
blinked
and
it
was gone.

Pete scrambled toward her. She felt a fresh rush of adrenalin but held her ground. What could she do if he really came at her? She should’ve already grabbed the knife from her pack for protection, or even better the Glock from Ron’s. Too late.

He passed her without a glance though, arrived at the entrance. From the dripline Pete looked every direction.

—You’re right. Holy shit. It’s gone. Almost like we dreamed it up.

He stood and hurled the glowstick into the void. Its arc quickly dropped it from her sight, but she saw Pete’s chin dip as he followed it down.

—Nothing. It’s really gone.

He turned to Sue-Min. —Are you ready to get outta here? For all we know it might come back. We should make time while we can.

Sue-Min was not so sure they should leave the relative safety of the cave. If such a colossus could vanish with neither warning nor coda, how easily could it reappear, catch them in the open? Perhaps that was its plan.

Yet Pete already had his headlamp on and was over the lip, on his way down.
—C’mon! Let’s go!

She wanted to shout —Wait, call for some discussion of options, seek some consensus, but Pete was on the move and hadn’t given her any chance for talk. And he had the keys to the truck.

She scrambled to the edge, hung over and called to him. —
Wait!
Give me a minute! I at least have to put my boots on.

Already twice her length below he looked up, nodded, said merely —Hurry!

—What about our packs?

—
Leave the packs.
We’ve got to move fast, travel light, get back to the truck as quick as we can. We can pick up our packs when we come back with the cops or whoever. Nobody’s going to touch our stuff here meantime.

She grabbed her own light from where she’d left it by her pack—safe to use it now she guessed, hoped—began lacing her boots, restrapped her bra. Pete was right. Her pack would only overbalance her on the way back down. They had a window of safety and they’d have to hurry through while it stayed open. However briefly it did. They had no way to tell how long that might be.

When she hunched over the edge she found Pete waiting in the same spot below. His presence gave her comfort, a surprise in itself. Her hands dug for purchase among the dusty pebbles but her feet found good holds, and soon she was below the rim, her hands on solid stone, heading for Pete. He didn’t move. As she made her way toward him, he offered encouragement —C’mon, yeah, that’s it. Right this way. His steady voice provided a beacon without her looking down.

Soon she was right above him, and for a moment she feared he might grab her ankle and yank her right off the slope, the last witness to whatever he’d gone and done to Ron. That spasm of terror passed and a fresh impulse seized her, the desire to kick Pete right in the face, send
him
tumbling into the slot below. He would never bother her again if she did. Never bother
anyone
. But the keys. . . How badly broken might his body wind up, wedged in the crack below? Would the keys be accessible? What if they flipped from his pocket into the pitch filthy water? She’d never find them, shuddered at the thought of having to reach into that cold opaque foulness, grope blind amongst the sticks and bones. Even if she made it back to the truck without the keys, what could she do? She had no real idea how to hotwire a vehicle. Seek help from the ranchers? Hike out all the way on her own? What if the police found her bootprint pressed onto Pete’s forehead?

The moment passed. She could not do it. She was no murderer. Her Baptist upbringing on the farm held that far.

Pete continued his descent and she followed. Though she had to feel with her feet for footholds, she found her handholds on the ribbed rock face with relative ease, and descended keeping just above Pete. They shared no more words till they arrived right above the coffee colored creek at the bottom of the crack, where Pete had to comment —Phase One done at least. And we’re making good time I think . . . not that I can tell anymore. . . Now we’ve gotta get up and outta here. Are you ready?

—Yeah.

She was scanning ahead and behind for any remnant of Ron’s broken body, but she saw nothing in her little headlamp’s limited beam beyond the stony V, the stagnant water, the scattered broken ends of branches or bones. No Ron. And still no monster.

Pete began to chimney along the crack back the way they’d come, and two seconds later she followed. He didn’t look back.

As Sue-Min rushed to keep up her left hand slipped and her foot sunk half up her calf in the stagnant ink. Right off she felt the cold and cried out, an exclamation half gasp half yelp. She stopped her fall with her forearm, her submerged foot finding no bottom, and wriggled to brace herself anew, but before she could yank her wet foot free, Pete was there to take her arm, offer support. She would’ve shooed him off but her scraped palm already throbbed and the water was cold and who knew what worse?

—C’mon, he said, —Grab my arm, and she paused only a moment before wrapping first her right hand then her left around his bicep. She could feel the damage to her hand—after everything, she’d forgotten her gloves
again. Damn.
Pete raised her till her boot rose dripping from the black wet and held her in place until she could get her hands back against the sides of the crevice higher up. She shook her foot back and forth, for what little good it did. The water had run down inside her boot.

—You okay? Did you hurt yourself?

—Just wet. And angry at myself for slipping.

—Not your fault. It’s dark and we’re both rushing. Maybe I was rushing too much. Sorry. It must feel gross.

—Don’t make me think about it.

—Yeah. Understood. Let’s keep going then. I want to get up and out of this canyon as quick as we can. If that thing comes back, I figure it will show up here, and I want to be far away by then.

He led on and she followed, taking extra care now to maintain three points of contact with the walls at all times, grimacing each time she moved her left foot and felt her sodden wool sock squish inside her boot.

The limited beam from Sue-Min’s weak LED light fell mainly on Pete’s advancing back, the khaki shirt he wore a broad reflective canvas. As she watched his halting forward motion she considered the exchange they just shared, the way he helped her. He’d been civil, gentlemanly, even compassionate. The same guy who tried to force himself on her only a couple hours ago. Maybe being afraid a monster would eat him brought out the best in his personality. If only a giant monster were chasing him every minute in his life, he might become a decent guy, maybe even pick up where he left off on his theater career, learn to tap dance, acquire an interest in show tunes. . .

She almost laughed at her thoughts but caught the laugh in her throat so only a strangled hiccup emerged.

Pete didn’t stop or turn around but asked —What was that? You okay? You need a break?

—No, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.

Soon they reached a spot Pete identified as where they’d come down before, though it all looked the same to her in the dark. How hard would it be to retrace their route if they didn’t come up in the right place?

But Pete was asking if she was ready, and why argue? They began their ascent, which was shorter and easier than their descent and did not take long.

Once at the top they followed the cliff edge back, scanning for landmarks in what terrain their lights revealed, searching for where they’d first come out on the canyon’s rim, each suggesting this tree might or might not look familiar, that bush, this twisted snag. They could see only hints of the opposite face, and nothing of the chasm now far below. The odd gray light Sue-Min thought might have been dawn had departed, and the moon had set as well. The stars, though bright now, offered very little illumination.

Neither of them spoke about it aloud, but she was certain Pete shared her fear they had come up
past
the point they were seeking, and were now wandering further up Blossom Creek Canyon than they’d been so far—and if they were, how long would it be before they figured it out? They might go a mile if the canyon ran that long before it boxed off.