Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (18 page)

"Maybe I didn't say it right," Doug said.

"Or she hasn't got as much of a vocabulary as we have," Pris suggested.

Ray had found the whole performance disconcerting—the remote imitation of Doug's words, the female voice that seemed intrusive, too bright for the gloom that had gathered in the chapel—and now he saw that it had prevented him from wondering why the motto was inside the doorway rather than outside, as though it denoted the entrance to somewhere other than the chapel. He was on the edge of raising the question when Julian said "Perhaps you can't expect your phone to speak better English than the natives do."

"Don't call them that," Natalie said. "Say local people, William."

"So who's coming downstairs with me?" Pris said. William glanced at his parents, but before they could speak he said "Who's living down there?"

"Nobody lives here," Natalie said. "I'm surprised anybody ever did."

"Someone does, mummy. I heard them."

"William, please don't continue with this nonsense," Julian said. "What did you imagine you heard?"

"They ran away down there when we all went to look."

"I thought I heard that too. Give me a moment, Julian," Ray said as the boy's father parted his displeased lips. "I was going to say, William, that was just us making a noise. There are lots of echoes here."

"So who's in the exploration party?" Pris said.

"I shall be," Julian said. "I'd like to see exactly what's there."

"Can I come, daddy?"

"As long as you stay with me I think you should."

"Then I will too," Natalie said.

"Anybody not?" Doug said. "Remember however far down it goes, that's how far we'll have to climb back up."

Ray could have imagined Sandra had been waiting for the excuse. "I'll sit this out if everybody doesn't mind."

Over a supportive murmur Jonquil said "I'll stay with you, gran."

"I will too," said Tim.

Ray had been about to offer, but the cousins seemed anxious to remain. "I'll have a look," he told Sandra. "If there's anything you would have liked I'll bring you back a photograph."

Pris and Doug were already leading everybody else to the far end of the corridor. As he followed them Ray had a sense of advancing into darkness—because the view beyond the windows off the corridor was as black as the walls, he told himself. Julian switched on his flashlight before Pris activated hers. "Stay behind me, William," he said, "and watch where I step."

As Pris and Doug started downwards the steps and walls and sharply sloping roof framed them with light. It seemed not to reach very far. Ray could have thought the darkness was absorbing some of it, or the rock was. Julian's flashlight beam jerked after it, intermittently overlapping it without appearing to increase the brightness. Two lights should be enough for now, and Ray resolved to conserve his. When Natalie followed William, one hand hovering close to his shoulder in case she needed to steady him, Ray stepped down into the dark.

He felt as if blackness hadn't merely closed around him but was weighing on him. The lights lurched ahead of him, and he had to remind himself that the passage wasn't as unstable as it looked, even if he might easily be. At every step the low roof shuddered while the walls wobbled from side to side, which made them seem close to collapsing, and Ray clutched at spiky lumps of wall, bruising his hands. His ankles had begun to ache from stepping down and further down by the time Pris's flashlight beam grew steadier. "Well," she said, "maybe upstairs was too comfy for them."

She'd reached a corridor hacked out of the rock. On both sides were narrow archways, crudely formed and unevenly spaced. As everyone else descended into the corridor she shone her flashlight through the nearest arch. "Maybe these were for meditating."

The hollow that had been carved out of the rock, if it hadn't just been broken into from the corridor, didn't have much of a shape. Except for the ledge chipped out of one wall, Ray mightn't have taken it for a cell. "Maybe you were meant to come down here if you were feeling sinful," Doug said.

Ray saw the corridor sloped downwards, as if the builders had been seeking the depths of the darkness. It seemed clear that they'd incorporated spaces already present in the rock. Beyond a line of cells, none of which appeared ever to have had doors, a hollow several times the size of any of them was littered with remnants of wood. Had the monks brought down furniture from the dining hall? As Ray tried to identify the blackened debris Julian's light swung towards William. "What's that mean?" the boy had said.

Pris was illuminating words scraped on the wall of a cramped cell across the corridor. Doug stepped through the lopsided archway for a closer look and then a frown. With deliberation not unlike reluctance he said "We feed him."

"Is that it, Doug?" Pris said. "I thought—"

"Surely not another argument," Julian complained. "Can't you two agree before you tell the rest of us?"

"We aren't machines, Jules. You're getting the personal touch. What were you going to say it was, Pris?"

"We feed for him."

"Now you say, it could mean either."

"They were religious people, William," Natalie said. "They must have believed they fed God with their prayers, and I expect they gave people food on God's behalf."

Ray thought this was at odds with the way the monks appeared to have retreated into the dark. The lights were moving onwards, and he limped rapidly after them. Presumably the monks had carried torches—the members of the order would have died long before electricity was harnessed, let alone brought here—though he'd seen nothing like a bracket on any of the walls. Pris shone her flashlight into the next cell and halted in the doorway. "Poor feller, whoever he was," Doug said. "His life must have felt like a sentence."

Ray peered between the two of them to see that the far wall of the windowless cell was covered with scratches—upright lines in groups of four, crossed out by a fifth. "What are they, Uncle Doug?" William said.

"They're how people mark the time off." At once Doug added "Mark the days."

"But in Greece do they count—" Having glanced at her brother's face, Natalie said "No, you're right. I see."

Ray had to step into the cell before he grasped what they'd left unremarked. For some reason the occupant had counted days in hundreds, adding an extra horizontal line whenever one came to an end. Three of those were followed by several smaller groups. The lines highest on the wall, and indeed for some way down it, looked disconcertingly faint with age. Pris moved onwards, but Ray was still searching for an explanation when Julian said from the corridor "Will you use your own light there, Raymond? I need to keep up with my son."

Ray couldn't have explained why he preferred not to be left behind. At least walking helped fend off the stony subterranean chill. Pris was sending her flashlight beam into cell after anonymous cell, and Julian's confirmed that there was nothing to be seen in them except inhospitable bare rock. The supine shape that reared up from slumbering in a cell was just the shadow of the ledge that would once have held a mattress—at least, Ray hoped so. How far did Pris mean to venture into the depths? His eyesight and even the air he was breathing seemed clogged with darkness. While the explorers had almost reached the end of the corridor, he was troubled to see that it wasn't a dead end. Beyond it the slope of the roof grew steeper, and as Ray peered between Doug and Pris he thought he glimpsed something else that unsettled him—marks on the floor. Could they be footprints leading further downwards? He was making for them when William said "Daddy, that's what I heard."

Julian held up a hand peremptory enough to halt Ray. "I'm hearing nothing, William."

As the boy sidled between his aunt and uncle Natalie hastened to capture his hand. Before Ray could protest they'd scuffed away any marks he might have seen. "Now then," Natalie said, "what are we supposed to hear?"

Beyond the corridor rough steps descended further than both flashlight beams could reach. Natalie was holding William back from leaning too far towards the dark when he cried "There it is."

Ray saw a dark form leap up the steps towards the boy. It was William's shadow, jerking at his cry as his aunt's flashlight had. As Ray's heartbeat set about calming down, Julian said "That's just water, William."

Now that it had been put into words Ray heard a faint sound of lapping in the depths. "I think this as far as we should go," Natalie said.

"I wouldn't mind seeing what's down there," Pris said.

"I'll come with you," Doug said.

"Then somebody ought to wait here," Natalie said without enthusiasm, "in case anyone's needed."

Ray saw she was concerned about her brother. Perhaps she meant Julian to stay while she took their son back to the daylight, but Julian was busy saying "Are you satisfied now, William? As your mother told you, nobody lives here any more."

"Suppose."

"If you've any reason to disagree then please let us hear. Otherwise you really must accept that people who are older than you know best."

Ray was holding back from mentioning the tracks he thought he'd seen. He could have felt addressed as Julian said "Nothing more to say? Then let's mark the subject dealt with and shut the drawer."

Doug was already following Pris and her flashlight beam into the depths. Ray watched their silhouettes and the frame of illuminated rock shrink downwards step by tentative step, and then the light jerked askew and vanished. He was on the edge of calling out when he grasped that Pris and Doug had disappeared around a bend in the sloping passage. The darkness engulfed their cautious footsteps, after which Ray could hear nothing except a restless movement somewhere behind him. Perhaps he'd heard William, since the boy was gazing back along the corridor.

Voices rose from the depths beyond Julian's flashlight—Doug and Pris in some discussion, so muffled that Ray would have found them no less comprehensible if they had been talking Greek. Some development was growing close to visible down there, a shifting of the rock or some other activity. That was an effect of the light that was groping upwards around the bend. A shape as black as the walls climbed ahead of it and spoke. "Looks like it's just caves now," Doug said. "That's why we could hear water."

"They must have tunnelled down to them," Pris said, appearing at his back. "We don't know if they meant to."

Ray wondered what the builders might have hoped to find. "We'll see you in the open," Natalie said. "Come and get some fresh air, William."

Ray stood aside for Pris before trailing her and Doug up the corridor. Her flashlight beam snagged on the entrance to each cell, releasing a shadow that fled into its lair. Shadows swarmed away like vermin from the debris in the largest space, and at last the beam reached the foot of the steps, up which Natalie was urging William after Julian. As Pris began to climb, Ray switched on his own flashlight for a last look along the corridor. He hadn't turned when he heard movement behind him—the restlessness he'd heard earlier. He swung around to see a shape emerging from the furthest cell.

The legs came first—eight of them creeping around the far edge of the entrance to the cell. In a moment, though by no means a reassuring one, Ray saw they weren't legs at all; they were scrawny fingers clutching at the rock. As he struggled to breathe they brought their owner forth into the corridor. It was bent low with age or stealth, and entirely bald. Although it was naked, the whitish body was so withered that he couldn't guess at its sex. It twisted its thin head towards the light, and Ray glimpsed a face like a flimsy paper mask moulded to a skull. Were the eyes as entirely black as the rock? Even so, they gleamed with a life so fierce that it seemed to be concentrated in them, draining the ribbed torso of substance, shrivelling the crippled limbs. It bared its teeth at the light and stayed in its spidery crouch as it scuttled on all fours to the steps beyond the corridor. Before Ray could suck in a laboured breath it vanished into the dark.

He staggered around to find he was alone in the corridor. Even the other lights were no longer to be seen. He was shivering from head to foot, and not just with the underground chill. As he fought to recapture enough breath to call out or to set about climbing the steps he heard Doug, altogether too far away. "Is my dad behind you?"

"I don't see him," Pris said as a faint glow found a single step high above.

"Dad, are you all right down there?"

"Where are you, grandad?" William contributed.

While the voices were closer than Ray had feared, that meant William was too close for Ray to mention what he'd seen. Surely it had only been someone who had taken refuge. Wasn't that what even derelict monasteries were for? "I'm coming," he managed to gasp.

He didn't switch the flashlight off until he'd toiled more than halfway up the steps, where he had to rest while the pounding of his heart relented somewhat and the aches in his legs grew dormant. He shone the beam downwards as long as he stayed there, to convince himself that he wasn't being followed out of the dark. When at last he stumbled into the upper corridor he saw Sandra and the teenagers emerging from the chapel, a sight that left him more confused than ever. "Haven't you been outside?"

"It got a bit much for us," Sandra said. "Too much blackness, so we came back in."

How did this make sense? It was blacker still inside the monastery. Ray could only think one or more of them hadn't liked the sight of so many dead trees, but his thoughts troubled him as everyone made for the cars. Of course it was darkest underground, but even at ground level the interior seemed darker than the surrounding devastation. It was as though rather than reaching the monastery from the trees, the blackness had spread from it to the forest like a stain. "Shall we go somewhere brighter now?" Natalie said, and the image of voracious darkness was just one of the thoughts Ray was glad to leave behind.

***

"Was that worth waiting for, William?" Sandra said.

"It was good." Apparently in case he seemed ungrateful the boy added "It was best."