“Mom, I—” Ruthie began, about to suggest that they double back, try to find their way back to the first room, go out the way they’d come in.
“Shh! Let me think,” her mother snapped.
Ruthie’s clothes were sweat-soaked, and she was chilled to the bone. Her teeth chattered, her body ached. Her brain felt scrubbed and fuzzy, and there was only one thing she knew for sure: she had to get the hell out of this cave.
“I think I feel a breeze,” Katherine said, suddenly looking to the left and walking a few paces in that direction.
“We’ve already been that way,” Ruthie said.
“No, I don’t think so,” Katherine called back. She was moving more quickly, almost running, jumping over rocks, bumping against the jagged rock walls like a pinball. Soon she turned a corner and was out of sight; Ruthie and Fawn followed, their mother a few steps behind.
“Katherine!” Ruthie called. “Wait!”
“Oh my God!” Katherine screamed from up ahead, voice high-pitched and frightened. “No!”
As they rounded the corner, Ruthie caught a glimpse of what Katherine’s flashlight was illuminating. She stopped running; her body stiffened. She leaned down and scooped up her sister, to hold her tight.
“Close your eyes, Fawn,” Ruthie said, and her little sister pressed her forehead against Ruthie’s shoulder. “Keep them closed until I say to open them, okay?”
“Okay,” Fawn murmured.
“Promise?”
“Swear,” Fawn said, gripping Ruthie’s shoulders tightly.
Ruthie moved forward slowly.
Katherine was standing over Candace, who was on the floor of the passage. She lay on her back, eyes open. The gun was on the ground beside her, as was the flashlight, still turned on, its beam illuminating the floor. Her throat had been opened up. In her right hand were a jumble of yellowed pages covered with neat cursive: Sara’s missing diary pages.
“She got what she came for,” Ruthie said, without meaning to say it out loud.
“Jesus,” Katherine said, pale and shaky. She took a step back.
“What is it?” Fawn whispered, her little fingers kneading Ruthie’s shoulders, pinching and twisting the skin through layers of clothing.
“Don’t worry, Little Deer,” Ruthie said. “Just keep your eyes closed.”
Ruthie’s mother caught up with them.
“It looks like an animal chewed on her neck,” Katherine whispered, leaning in closer and aiming the beam of her flashlight at Candace’s ravaged throat.
“Not an animal,” Ruthie’s mom said quietly. She knelt down and grabbed the diary pages, which were splattered with blood. “We have to keep moving.”
“Do you feel that?” Katherine asked. “There’s definitely a breeze coming from down there.” She stepped around Candace’s body and hurried down the passageway, without looking back.
Ruthie followed, Fawn clinging to her front like a baby monkey. Yes, there was a breeze, a change in the air. She didn’t look back, either, but was sure she felt eyes watching them from the shadows.
Ruthie
Ruthie sat with her mother, Fawn, and Katherine at the kitchen table. Mom had made coffee and warmed up banana bread from the freezer; the smell should have comforted Ruthie, but her stomach turned. To go from the dark, airless silence of the cave to this world full of light and color, smells and sound—it was all too much. The cups of coffee and plates of banana bread sat untouched.
Mom had given Fawn Tylenol and a cup of herbal tea and tried to put her to bed, but Fawn protested, not wanting to miss anything. She sat slumped on Mom’s lap, Mimi in her arms, doing her best to stay awake.
Katherine had been pestering Ruthie’s mother with nonstop questions about Gary, and Fawn had asked over and over how she had gotten to the caves and why they had found her tied up. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning,” Mom promised. And now, at last, she had begun.
“Your father and I came here sixteen years ago. Our friends Tom and Bridget called us and said they’d come into possession of something that was going to change the world, going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If we helped them, they’d share the wealth with us. It seemed so exciting—a great call to adventure.”
The lights in the kitchen felt too bright and seemed to pulsate, to throb along with the pain in Ruthie’s head. She wanted to go up to her room, get into bed, put her head under the covers, and try to forget everything that had happened over these last three days.
Mom, sensing Ruthie’s misery in that special mom way she had, reached out to take Ruthie’s hand. Ruthie gave her mother’s hand a weak squeeze, but then she pulled her own hand away and set it on her lap, where it looked waxy and useless. A mannequin hand.