The Hiding Place(67)

A slow smile spread across Hurst’s face: “Give me your backpack.”

Without waiting for a reply, he yanked it from my back and threw it to Fletch.

“Let’s grab some booty. We can stick some candles in these and scare the shit out of people on Halloween.”

Fletch caught the bag and knelt to gather up some more skulls. Hurst returned to the wall and began hacking at it with the crowbar, gouging out bones in a frenzy.

Annie clutched my arm. “Abbie-Eyes doesn’t like it down here.”

“Tell Abbie-Eyes it’s okay. We’re going, soon.”

She shivered against me. “Abbie-Eyes says it’s not okay. She says it’s the shadows; the shadows are moving.” She turned sharply. “What’s that noise?”

There was no mistaking that skittering, chittering now. It was all around us. Not rats. Or bats. They were both too large. Too cumbersome. This was a brittle, busy sound. The sound of something small but multitudinous. A mass of bristling shells and scuttling legs.

I understood a moment before it happened. Insects, I thought. Insects.

Hurst stuck the crowbar into the rock, gouging at a stubborn bit of bone. “Gotcha!”

The wall exploded in a mass of shiny black bodies.

“Fuck!!”

Beetles poured out in a glistening wave, like living oil. Hundreds of them. They swarmed out of the hole and down to the floor. Some scurried along the crowbar and up Hurst’s arms. He dropped the bar and started shaking himself, like he was doing some kind of crazy dance.

On the other side of the cave Fletch yelped. The skull he was holding swiveled in his hand and more beetles poured from the eye sockets and gaping mouth. The skulls on the ground shifted, pushed around by thousands of tiny insect legs.

Fletch threw the skull to one side and scrambled to his feet. In his haste to get up he dropped the flashlight. It hit the floor and went out, plunging half of the cave into darkness.

Marie screamed, shrill and hysterical. “I can’t see. Shit, shit, shit. They’re all over me. Help me. Help me!”

A scream welled in my own throat but I needed to think about Annie. She clung to me, paralyzed into silence. I wrapped my arms around her, whispered into her hair.

“It’s okay. They’re just beetles. We’re going to get out of here.”

I tried to shuffle us backward, toward the steps, where Chris still stood, flashlight hanging uselessly from his hand, illuminating a small patch of moving ground. Beetles cracked and crunched under our feet. Snap, crackle and pop. I felt glad of my heavy boots, jeans tucked in the top, even though I could feel my swollen ankle pressing painfully against the leather. Annie whimpered beside me like a scared animal.

We were almost there when a figure charged out of the darkness. Hurst. In the glow of the miner’s light his face was sallow and slick with sweat. Panicked. And that scared me more than anything.

“Give me your helmet.”

He grabbed for it, knocking me back into the wall. I lost my grip on Annie.

“Get off me!”

“Give me the light.”

He shoved me hard, smashing my head back against the rock. My skull clunked inside the helmet. I heard something crack. The light wavered, clung on tentatively and then faded to nothing. Blackness enveloped us in a dank cloak.

“You fucking moron!” I shoved Hurst away. Desperation clawed at my throat. We needed to get out of here. Now. “Annie?”

“Joey? I can’t see you.” Her voice was full of held-back tears. Still trying so hard to be brave.

I limped in the direction of her voice. “I’m right here. Turn on your flashlight.”

“I can’t. I’ve lost it.”

“It’s okay—” I reached out my hand; my fingers glanced hers.

From the darkness, Marie screamed: “Nooooo!”

I felt a whoosh of air as something sliced past my face. I dived to the floor, landing hard on my elbow. The helmet flew off my head. Pain tore up my arm. But I didn’t have time to focus on it because right then I heard another scream, high-pitched, agonizing, terrible.

“ANNIE?!!”

I scrambled across the ground, scrabbling among the hard shells and scurrying legs. My fingers brushed metal. Annie’s flashlight. I grabbed it, realized a battery was hanging out of the back. I shoved it in, flicked the switch and pointed the light around.

My mind went into free-fall. My heart seemed to fold and expand and shatter all at once. Annie lay on the ground in a small, crumpled heap, still clutching Abbie-Eyes. Her pajamas had ridden up, revealing thin, dirt-smeared legs. Her face and hair were both covered with something dark, red and sticky.

I crawled over to my sister and gathered her awkwardly in my arms. She felt so bony, all angles. She smelled of shampoo and cheese-and-onion chips. Around us, the beetles that had been swarming everywhere had started to retreat, to dissipate and melt back into the walls, their work here finished.

“It was an accident…”

I raised the flashlight. Hurst stood a few feet away, Marie clinging to his arm. The crowbar lay at his feet. I remembered the whoosh past my face. I looked back down at Annie, blood seeping from her head.

“What the fuck have you done?”

Rage rose like burning black bile in my throat. I wanted to charge at him and smash his head into the rock until it was nothing but splintered bone and jelly. I wanted to take the crowbar and drive it into his guts.