Ritual (23 page)

Chapter One

Lindy could sense the cave all about her, almost like a malevolent presence, as behind the others she stumbled out into it from the cramped, tortuous passageway. She could hear its echoing vastness in the hollow sounds the men's boots made on the rocky floor. The powerful beams from the miners' lamps in the helmets they wore gave only glimpses of its immensity, and currents of air from other passages and shafts and crevices whispered across her face like some slow, menacing exhalation.

She straightened up painfully, easing her back and neck and rubbing the bruises on her plump arms and legs. Lindy wasn't built for wriggling through confined spaces, not like Doug and Ally, who were thin as whippets and lithe as eels. As was bloody Andrea, who was on her first ever caving outing too, but was loudly loving every minute of it.

Lindy wasn't. She hated the darkness and the clammy damp and the dank smell and the crushing feeling of having hundreds of tons of earth and rocks above her head. She was muddy and wet and cold and here in the main chamber it seemed colder than ever, a deathly ice-house chill that seemed to go right through to her bones.

From the dense shadows above, water dripped through a billion trillion pores in the limestone, a perpetual rain which had formed pale crystalline pillars or was dropping now with a sharp, delicate ringing sound into the clear stream coursing along the channel it had carved out for itself over millions and millions of years. Lindy couldn't get her mind round that sort of time.

Doug and Ally whooped as they reached it, prancing round boulders scattered on the floor like building bricks after a giant toddler's tantrum, their lamps throwing distorted silhouettes on to the craggy walls. Andrea jumped down neatly to join them, and their high excited voices awoke echoes long-dead and better, Lindy thought uneasily, left undisturbed.

She shuddered. Like a cathedral, Doug had told her lyrically when she'd met him at the End of Year Dinner, like some great beautiful temple of nature, where you could feel as if you just might be the first person in the world ever to step into this secret place. Awesome, he had told her as he chatted her into signing up for the University Caving Club the following year. Looking into his bright blue eyes, she had decided there and then that she would follow him, if not to the ends, then certainly to the bottom of the earth. Now she wished she'd gone down whenever term finished and was safely at home in Middlesex instead of in this dreadful place.

She couldn't complain that he'd hyped it. It reminded her more than anything of the description of Hell in
Paradise
Lost
, which she'd done for A level. Something about rocks and caves and shades of death.

Still, here at least you could stand up and walk normally, which was more than you could do in the passage she had just struggled through, where the ground rose and the roof came down without warning and you had to crawl into terrifying narrow funnels through puddles and even little streams. Or else the walls came together so that you were squeezing painfully sideways between rocks greasy with the sweat of damp while cold drips from above landed suddenly on your face like the touch of a clammy finger on your skin, but you couldn't scream, because this was what Doug and Ally had casually described as an afternoon stroll, and bloody Andrea was greeting each new torment with fetching cries of delight.

So, gritting her teeth, she managed to say, 'Brilliant!' when Doug came back to ask her what she thought of it and help her across the stream where she was hesitantly looking for a way to cross. She joined in the laughter when Ally made a joke, but as the laughter reverberated away into the dim recesses it seemed to take on a mocking life of its own. Never, in all her eighteen years, had Lindy felt so coldly and unreasoningly afraid.

The others were moving to the far end of the cave and she hurried clumsily to join them, wincing as she caught her ankle on an unnoticed projection. With his torch, Doug was proprietorially highlighting the curious profiles to be picked out in the chemical streaks on the walls and the hollow straw stalactites hanging like icicles from the roof.

And there, right at the back of the cave was the Cataract. He had told them about it, a sort of petrified waterfall spilling from a hole near the roof, its sculpted folds like crumpled yellowing lace.

Yes, it was awesome, and beautiful too, Lindy acknowledged, in a bleak, inhuman, scary sort of way. She had to compress her lips to trap the wail, 'Can we go back now?' which was threatening to escape.

`God, this is just so, like – well, I don't know. Mind-blowing!' Andrea was squealing. 'It's sensational – how come you didn't tell me it would be like this?'

Lindy could see, even though his helmet shadowed his face, that Doug was beaming fatuously. Ally, showing off, had scaled a rough pile of rocks to shine his torch behind the Cataract. As it sprang into gleaming life, every flow-edge and ripple glistening, even Lindy gasped and Andrea shrieked. A thousand eldritch shrieks chimed a spectral chorus.

Ally had vanished behind the curtain of calcite. 'Hey Doug,' he called, his voice a little muffled, 'have you been up here? Did you know there's a passage behind?'

`Really?' Doug went up the rocks like a Barbary ape, and disappeared too.

`Gosh, isn't this thrilling?' Andrea gave a giggle of excitement, and Lindy repeated hollowly, 'Thrilling!' You didn't need to be reading psychology to work out what would happen next.

When they reappeared, Ally called down, 'We're just going to do a quick recce. There's quite a wide lead-off back here—'

`Of course, it may not go anywhere, or there may be a shaft, or water.' Doug's excitement was obvious. 'We just want to check it out for the Club next year, OK? We won't be long — you two just wait here—'

`Forget it!' Andrea was already nimbly scaling the steep blocks. 'Less of the girlie stuff. Lindy and I are right there with you, aren't we, Lindy?'

Doug, looking down at Lindy standing unhappily below, said doubtfully, 'Well, I don't know — it could get a bit iffy—'

Andrea followed his gaze, then said contemptuously, `Oh, if Lindy doesn't fancy it she can just wait here, can't she?'

Wait alone here, in this sinister temple to who knew what dark deity, with the shadows encroaching on her as the light from the others' lamps disappeared behind the Cataract?

`No, no, I'm coming,' Lindy said hastily.

`Fine, why not?' Ally's tone was a little too hearty, but Doug came down to help her — well, haul her up as she scrabbled awkwardly for footholds.

Once she was up, in fact, it was straightforward enough and the passage which yawned darkly ahead was wider than the one they had come in by. At its mouth Doug paused.

`Now look, we haven't checked this out. Caving can be seriously unpredictable, so don't crowd us, right? And remember what I told you at the start — mind your head, don't get left behind, and don't under any circumstances wander off the main drag, even if you see the Taj Mahal in calcite ten yards down a side passage. OK?'

Lindy was all too ready to promise, and Andrea nodded solemnly. They set off in single file, Ally leading.

They had to splash along through a shallow stream, but otherwise the going was easy. Here and there another opening gave a glimpse of labyrinthine passages, created millennia before, when the rushing waters which had hollowed them out fell again in some later subterranean convulsion. Once Doug shone his torch into a crevice and a miniature cave sprang briefly to light, a tiny fairy cave with pink crystals forming a little forest of stumpy stalagmites. Lindy almost enjoyed that.

`Just think,' Andrea said, 'we could be the first people ever to see that. It's sort of weird, isn't it?'

`Maybe,' Doug said, 'but you can bet people will have gone behind the Cataract before. You more or less have to dive nowadays to find virgin territory.'

The tunnel was getting smaller now, both lower and narrower. Lindy swallowed hard, trying not to think of suffocation and entombment, but even so when Ally stopped suddenly her heart missed a beat.

Ahead, in the light of his miner's lamp, they could see that the floor, which had been sloping gently, started to shelve more steeply and the roof dipped dramatically down. The little rivulets at their feet were running faster now and a loose stone from above, disturbed by their passing, bounced down and clattered on Ally's helmet.

He lowered his voice. 'It looks as if it might be going into a shaft. Doug, you'd better take the girls back while I check to see if it might be worth a proper expedition with ropes. Don't go singing rugby songs at the top of your voice, will you — I don't fancy being under a roof-fall.'

With a wistful glance Doug turned back obediently, shepherding Andrea and Lindy in front of him. Lindy was thankful to turn back; she was shivering now, only partly with cold.

It was even colder when they stopped moving. Neither Lindy nor Andrea had the purpose-made protective clothing the men wore, and now Andrea, annoyed at being sent back, started shivering ostentatiously.

`It's too cold to stand still,' she complained. 'Can't we explore here, just a little bit, while we're waiting?'

`We-e-ell.' Doug hesitated, looking back down the tunnel to where he could still see the light from Ally's lamp receding. 'Oh, he'll be a minute or two yet. I saw a cross-passage just along here, and if we stay in sight of the main passage we won't miss him when he comes back. Lead on, Lindy — maybe we'll find the Taj Mahal after all.'

Stamping to try to bring some feeling back into her numb toes, Lindy walked back to where the passages met, not far from the fairy cave. The other rose sharply, at right angles to the one they were in, and she could see that only a little further on there was a fork.

`In here?'

`Yes, why not? It won't do any harm to sus out this one as well, if we're going to come along here another time.'

At least, at least, he wasn't suggesting they should follow it now, so once Ally rejoined them, surely they would head back. With her spirits lifting just a little, Lindy led the way, her head bent to let the light from her borrowed helmet illuminate the uneven footing. At the fork, she paused.

`Which way?'

Doug peered into both, then considered. 'I don't think the right-hand one goes anywhere, from the feel of the air. Stick your head in there, Lindy, and make sure, and I'll go on a little further down the other one.'

Andrea promptly attached herself to him, and Lindy unwillingly walked a little way into the right-hand opening. She couldn't say she was afraid when she didn't even know herself what she was afraid of.

This hardly seemed more than a deep crevice, with projections and rock buttresses making it narrow, though it was high overhead when she looked up. As Doug had said, the air was very still and without the draughts it wasn't quite so cold. When she looked straight ahead the light from her lamp seemed to bounce off a solid wall of rock.

`I think it's a dead end,' she called, as much for the reassurance of hearing another voice reply as to share information.

`Fine. Come round here, then,' Doug called back. `There's a nice calcite flow you might like to see.'

She turned. The beam from her head light swung in a low arc, picking up a glimpse of something white, down near the ground behind a projecting rock. Stalagmites, perhaps?

She swung back. No, not stalagmites. There seemed to be some rags in the corner there, and—

The terror she had been fighting engulfed her. Her screams, in that confined place, produced echoes which crashed endlessly about her, terrifying her still more with their amplification. Her hands hiding her face in horror, she stumbled blindly out, blundering into Doug who grabbed at her.

`What's happened? What's the matter? Lindy, stop it! You're all right!'

He shook her, but somehow she couldn't make herself stop. Andrea, coming up behind and pale with alarm herself, took in the situation and slapped her face hard. The shock silenced her; Lindy stopped screaming and subsided into hysterical sobs.

Ally's voice came from the outer passage. 'What the hell's going on? Is it Lindy? She could have started a roof-fall, the silly cow.'

Doug had his arm round Lindy's heaving shoulders. `Panic attack,' he said briefly. 'It's OK, Lindy — it affects some people that way. You should have told us you were feeling bad.'

Lindy shook her head vehemently. 'No, no!' she gasped between sobs. 'There, there!'

The beams from the powerful lamps converged as their heads turned to follow her pointing finger, giving a harsh theatricality to the scene.

Lying in the corner formed by the rough buttress, still clad in rags stiff with dirt, still with a pair of rotting sandals grotesquely clinging to its bony feet, its skull empty-eyed and grinning hideously, was a human skeleton.

They did not pause to take in details, did not even speak. With one accord, like the frightened children they so nearly were, they turned and fled.

On the day after Lindy's ordeal, Juliette Darke was lying on a rug in the orchard of her grandmother's house in Ambys, near Limoges, feeling the heat of the sun soak into her, gently loosening all the knots of tension. Already her olive skin — sallow under the cool northern skies — was turning gold.