Primal Fear (16 page)

This time, when Harry looked back, John had come to a complete stop just off the path they’d been following.  His face was turned downward, towards the earth between his feet.  He pulled off his gloves and began to dig something out of his pocket.

Harry signaled with his flashlight, but got no response.  “John,” he called out, “what the hell are you doing?  Let’s go.”

John didn’t even look up, his eyes remaining stubbornly fixed to the same spot on the ground, as if he’d become rooted there.

When Harry approached him, he still didn’t move, his attention riveted now on something in his hands, something Harry couldn’t quite make out.  He shined his flashlight on it, but John’s hands had encircled the object and its shape remained a mystery.

“What are you doing?” Harry asked.  “We have to head back.”

John shook his head, not bothering to meet Harry’s gaze.

Harry tried again.  “Put your gloves back on.  You’re going to get frostbite.  Jesus, what’s wrong with—”

“Right here,” John said, his voice filled with sudden enthusiasm.  “It’s right here.  I can feel it.”  He raised his head, facing Harry at last, and the look in his eyes was completely unsettling.  He looked like a man who’d just glimpsed the impossible, his face flushed and his eyes shining.

“What are you talking about?”

“This is it.  This is where they buried it.”

Harry stepped in closer, dropping the beam of his flashlight to inspect the ground at their feet.  There was a slight depression but nothing more, hardly an indication that something had been tucked away beneath the surface.

“The ground’s frozen solid, John.  Nobody buried anything here, at least not recently.”

Again, John shook his head.  “No, it’s here.  I’m positive.”

“One of the kids?  Are you sure?”

“Not one of the kids, no.  But they’re connected to this spot somehow.  I don’t know how, but they’re definitely—” 

He broke off, his head suddenly turning to the right, his eyes scanning the dense woods that surrounded them.

It had finally occurred to Harry to ask John how he knew that someone—or something, as he’d said—had been buried there.  But before he could pose the question John was moving again.

“There’s another way in,” John said and headed off to the right, into the woods.

Harry reached out to stop him, his gloved hand slipping off of John’s coat before he could get a firm grip.  By the time he turned to try again, John was off and running, rushing blindly into the forest.

It only took Harry a second to assess John’s direction.

In just under half a mile, if John didn’t alter his course, he would run straight off the edge of the granite quarry and into the pit itself.

Steeling his nerve, Harry went after him.

Chapter Fourteen

“He’s heading due west, straight toward the quarry,” Harry shouted, thumbing the walkie-talkie’s send button as he ran head-long through the woods.

The chase had been on for only ninety seconds, but in that short time, John had managed to open up a serious lead between them, even without the benefit of a flashlight.  He sprinted wildly through the dark forest, choosing a path seemingly at random, avoiding trees and deadfalls through blind luck or exceptional reflexes.

Harry cursed himself for sending Charlie and Blackwell on ahead without a radio of their own.  One of them, younger and faster, might have been able to head John off by now.  It was taking everything Harry had just to keep the fleeing Eskimo in sight.  Only by maintaining radio contact with the other members of the search team could he hope to have any chance of stopping John in time.

The radio crackled in his hand, a sudden burst of static followed by Brochu’s hoarse voice.  “How far out are you along the path?  We need to know where he’s going to come out of the woods.”

Harry thought it out before replying, struggling to get his bearings.  He had a general idea of the layout of the quarry property, and he knew when they’d left the path he and John were headed due west.  But he was still unsure of how deep into the woods they were, how much further they would have had to walk along the path to meet up with Brochu and the rest of the party.

“Maybe a mile or two,” he answered.  “I can’t be sure.  Just start fanning some men out along the edge of the woods.”

“Got it.” 

John widened the gap between them once more, and now it was only through a series of quick glimpses that Harry managed to keep him in view at all.  In the darkness, in the thickness of the woods, it was impossible to judge their progress.  But it wasn’t long before Harry realized just how poorly he’d estimated the distance to the quarry.

Ahead of him, he caught sight of John again, this time breaking free from the stand of trees and into an open clearing.  He was perhaps fifteen yards away, picking up the pace now that he’d reached open ground.  Moments later, Harry reached the same point and discovered that the clearing was in fact the wide field that bordered the quarry on its eastern edge.  If he didn’t catch John soon, or if John didn’t watch where he was going, the young man would almost certainly find the edge of the quarry in less than a minute’s time.

Harry picked up the pace, less concerned now with keeping John in full view than with somehow narrowing the distance between them.  He pushed his legs as fast as they would go, conscious of the fact that at any given moment he could step on a rock or into a hole, but doing his best to ignore the likelihood of it.  A spill like that would only end in injury; if he couldn’t stop John’s run, it would end in the young man’s death.

A sudden gust of wind blew up around him, sweeping the falling snow into his exposed face, into his eyes, destroying his visibility.  He turned his face downward, keeping John’s footprints in view as best he could.  They were all he had to go by, all he had to keep him in line with John’s trail.

The seconds ticked by, each one adding to his fatigue, every step bringing him closer to the drop-off at the edge of the granite pit.  He tried to gauge the remaining distance, but the driving snow made a visual confirmation impossible.  He made a rough estimate, hoping it was more accurate than the one he’d made on their position in the woods when John had first run off.

His radio crackled to life in his hand.  He’d almost forgotten it was there.

“Nothing yet, Harry,” Brochu reported.  “We’re still fanning out.”

Harry didn’t reply; it would only slow him down.  The other men were spread out too far down along the rim of the quarry to do him any good.  The message had distracted him, however; he couldn’t recall how far he’d come since leaving the woods, couldn’t make a new calculation on his proximity to the pit.

It could still be another fifty yards away, or it could be the very next step he took.

The thought frightened him, slowed him down.  He fell into a fast jog, concentrating now on following John’s trail through the snow.

The wind was beginning to die down, at least for the moment, and Harry seized the opportunity to examine the surrounding area as quickly as he could.  His eyes scanned the darkness at the borders of this new field of visibility as he swept his flashlight back and forth through the falling snow.

At first he couldn’t make out anything at all, but then he spotted John no more than ten feet away.  The young man had come to a complete stop.  Beyond him, Harry could see the great yawning mouth of the quarry, its edge less than three feet away from the spot where John now stood.

Harry stopped short, still unclear on John’s intentions.  He was about to use the radio, to relay his position to Brochu, but then he thought better of it.  If John had suicide on his mind, any sudden move on Harry’s part might cause him to jump.  He clipped his radio back onto his belt.

“John,” he said, “what are you doing?”  He started to move towards the young man, moving as smoothly and quietly as he could.

John didn’t answer.  He only stared out into the blackness of the pit, as if mesmerized with the riddle of its depth.  He’d dug the mysterious object out of his pocket again and clasped it tightly between his palms.

“John?  Answer me.  What’s going on?”

Further along the rim of the quarry, far off to Harry’s left and perhaps a half mile away, Harry spotted the floating points of a pair of flashlights.  Two of the men from the search team, closing steadily on their position.  Harry lifted his own flashlight and waved it in their direction. 

“I found it,” John said.  “It’s right here.”  All at once he seemed alert and coherent again, as if whatever madness had gripped him earlier had suddenly left him.  “Harry, I need your flashlight.”  He held out his hand.  “Quickly.”

Harry stepped closer, lifting his flashlight as though he was about to hand it over.  But when John moved to reach for it, Harry seized the young man’s wrist in his free hand, tugging him away from the quarry’s edge.

John blinked at him amid the falling snow.  “What are you doing?”

“That’s what I’m about to ask you.”

“It’s here, right in the face of the quarry.  I can feel it.”

“What’s here, John?  Jesus, try to make some sense.”

“Let go of my arm and I’ll show you.”

“You’ll tell me.  Now.”

“Do you think I’m going to jump?  Is that it?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

To his left, Harry could see the bobbing points of light growing closer as they moved in his direction.  Three more lights had joined them and their pace had increased considerably. 

John sighed.  “The spot I stood over before, in the woods, I could feel something buried there.  I could sense it, the same way . . . it’s the same way you feel when you know when you’re being watched.  And I knew there was another way in, a second way to reach that point.  It’s here, I know it.  It’s a tunnel entrance, a cave, and it’s just over the edge of the quarry.”

Harry glanced towards the pit.  “You’re crazy.”

“I’m not.  I know it’s there.”

“How can you know something like that?  It’s a—”

“Let me show you.  Give me your flashlight.”

Harry debated it, finally deciding that John wasn’t about to give up on this strange notion of his.  He seemed so sure of himself, completely positive his senses weren’t deceiving him.  Harry nodded, handing over the light.

“Do you trust me?”

“I’m trying to, John.  I really am.”

They moved forward, coming within a few feet of the pit.  Harry could hear the wind whistling over its edge, sucking the snow down into the blackness.  He came to a stop.

“This is close enough for me.”

John shook his head.  “Not for me.  I have to see the rock face.”  He dropped to his knees, and then laid himself out flat, belly down in the snow.  He began to crawl carefully closer to the edge.  “I have to get as close as I can.”

Harry thought about grabbing him again, pulling him back.  And yet something kept him from it, something inside he could barely acknowledge, let alone identify.  He’d felt something when he’d grabbed John’s wrist, like a secondary jolt from a bare wire, leaping through John and into his own hand.

It was an odd feeling, a sense of proximity, of closeness, as if the face of the truth was just around the next corner.  Even now, a dim echo of the feeling remained, an enigmatic vibration among his thoughts.

Finally coming to a decision, Harry spread himself flat on the ground beside John, crawling on his elbows and knees towards the drop-off.  He was grateful for the darkness, pleased that it disguised the true depth of the quarry.  There was only an interminable sea of blackness stretching out below them, and it was almost easy to imagine it was only ten or twelve feet deep.  Had it been daylight, with the bottom of the pit clearly visible far below, Harry was certain he would have been unable to bring himself so close to the edge.

John swung his right arm over the edge, training the beam of the flashlight on the bare rock face.  At first Harry couldn’t make out anything that resembled an opening.  There were hundreds of cracks and fissures along the jagged rock face, but none of them looked particularly revealing.

And then the wavering beam of the flashlight swept back over the rock to betray a patch of blackness at the very limits of the light’s effectiveness.  Studying it carefully, Harry could see that it wasn’t a shadow, as he’d had first assumed from the sharp ledge of rock that jutted out just beside it.  There was no mistaking the fact that it was an opening, one more than large enough to accept a man.

“Holy shit,” whispered Harry.  “I don’t believe it.”

In the darkness, with the wind whipping the snow through the beam of the flashlight, it was difficult to judge just how far down the opening was.  It appeared to be about twenty or thirty feet below them, but Harry wouldn’t have put money on that estimation.

“I told you,” John said, “I knew it was here.  Can’t you feel it?  Don’t you feel something strange here?”

Harry nodded.  “I feel . . . I feel something, but I don’t know—”

“Like some kind of contact, right?  Is that what you feel?  Like something pulling at you?”

“Yeah, exactly.”  That was precisely what it felt like, a dim sense of attraction to this spot, the sort of instinctive feeling he imagined a migratory bird must feel when it came time to fly south for the winter.

They climbed to their feet and stepped away from the edge.

“Take off your gloves,” John instructed.

“What?”

“Just do it.”

He complied, and John pushed something into his hand.  In the darkness, Harry couldn’t make out what it was, but its shape was long and slender, curved inward with a jagged, pointed tip.  Its texture was peculiar, impossible to identify with only the sense of touch.

“Hold onto that,” John said.  “Tell me what you feel.  And whatever you do, please don’t drop it.  It’s very important.”

“What is it?”

John ignored the question.  “Just tell me what you feel.”

Harry closed his fist tightly around the object.  Almost immediately he felt the strange feelings of contact intensify within him.  They blossomed among his thoughts, overwhelming his own sensations like the shadow of a cloud blotting out the sun’s light as it passes overhead.

He could no longer feel the bite of the cold against his skin, could no longer hear the restless howl of the wind as it swept past his ears.  Even the hard ground beneath his body might have disappeared for all he knew, the lack of every other contact being so utterly absorbed by the object in his hands.

And the pull on his senses grew stronger still, given free reign now in this sudden void.  All at once, he felt an almost overwhelming urge to scramble down the cliff face, to leap blindly into the cave and search out whatever force awaited him.  After all, how could he ignore something that could hold such immense power over his thoughts and senses?

He felt no fear, no sense of caution; he felt only an influential certainty that the solutions to all his problems lay waiting just out of his reach, the answers to all of his questions just beyond his grasp.  And they could all be his, if only he’d be bold enough to make a positive and decisive move in their direction.

From far below this certainty, another voice reached his thoughts, riding the intricate network of his nervous system like a gentle current.

“. . . Atae,” the voice whispered, so softly he couldn’t be certain he’d even heard it.  It came again, this time more forcefully, “Atae,” like a beacon in the darkness of his senses.

He pushed the voice away, a touch of fear rising within him each time it whispered that single cryptic word.

“. . . Atae . . .”

It began to die away, and he centered his thoughts on the call of the tunnel’s secret before the mysterious voice could return.

He took a step towards it.

And suddenly it was ripped away.  His consciousness returned immediately, an instant awareness of his surroundings, of the cold blackness around him.