Hide and Seek

I didn't want to go in there.

I seemed to know two things about it instinctively. There was

something dead in there and something else alive. I could smell the

death. Whoever or whatever was alive, it wasn't just Casey. I don't

know how I knew that, but I did.

The match went out. I lit another, cupping it against the breeze.

"Case?"

Holding the match in front of me, I took a deep breath and held it in

my lungs and worked my way carefully into the hole. It died before I'd

gone two feet. I lit three of them together and got almost to the

corner before they died too. The wind was stronger now. In the dark

it seemed thicker, seawater damp. The rocks above and below me

breathed moisture. My throat was bone-dry.

I lit up the rest of the pack and lurched ahead, holding the matches

like a torch in front of me, and rounded the corner. It illuminated

only three feet or so of what appeared to be a long tunnel, utterly

black beyond the glow. But it was enough. Enough to see.

The green book bag lay almost beneath my hand.

I reached for it, gripping the tough cloth, something clean and fresh

in that foul place, and dragged it toward me. I heard a rattle of

lightweight metal. I reached inside. Two of the flashlights were

still there.

I pulled one out and turned it on and threw its beam down the tunnel.

Like a child I wanted very much to cry.

The third flashlight lay five feet away from me, abandoned.

Beyond it I could see nothing but emptiness and sweating gleaming rock.

Twenty feet on there was another blind turn. I listened.

There was something alive out there.

Something alive on the wind beyond my beam of light.

I listened to it. And I knew it was listening to me.

It wasn't that there was any sound, just a presence. But a powerful

one. Something that told me I dared not call out to her again, dared

not move forward or even back. I froze. Whatever it was, it would be

happy to kill me. I knew that. I knew it on some basic animal level

where we all are hunters and hunted, where there are