The Anomaly(26)

“Yeah—and you know I think it’s a crap idea. It’s hard enough getting people to believe in this stuff without handing them proof of absence on a plate.”

“Nolan’s right,” Feather said. We turned to see her standing a little way behind us.

Ken shrugged. “It’s your money, love.”

“Not really,” she said. “I don’t get to make the big calls. But I can tell you what I think. I was a psych major and one thing I learned is you’re never going to change some people’s minds. Some are born cynical and suspicious. They don’t need our help to carry on being deaf and dumb. Nuts to the disbelievers, is what I say. The point of a charity like Palinhem is to make a difference.”

“Fighting talk,” Ken said. “I like it. But so what now?”

“You don’t show weakness,” she said resolutely, “and you never give up.”

“Right on, sister,” Ken said, and I nodded, but all I’d heard was the word “charity.”



Half an hour later I was by myself having a cigarette before it was time for us all to climb back down the wall. By then I was in less of a snit. It’s not like I’d disproved the existence of aliens or shown that the Knights Templar were only ever a Little League team. Mainly I was just tired and looking forward to a night in a hotel and several beers and sincerely hoping we were leaving in time to make these things possible. I was nearly done with the smoke when Molly crouched beside me.

“We’re good,” I said. “Seriously. You don’t like tunnels. It’s no big deal.”

“It is to me. I am not a girl who bails. And to make up for it, I may have something for you.”

“What?”

“Don’t you like surprises?”

“Depends what they are.”

“Just come.”

She led me toward the back of the cavern. Ken watched us as we passed. “What are you up to?”

“Dunno,” I said.

“Well, don’t be long. There is a shower, much alcohol, and a cheeseburger the size of my head waiting for me back at the hotel. All of these things are critical to my future well-being, and you fuck with the prospect at your peril.”

“Yes, boss.”

Molly led me right to the back, and spoke in a low tone. “After I did my bugging out thing—” she started.

“Which I’ve just told you is totall—”

“Shh, Nolan.”

“Do you get to tell me to shh like that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“After that, I did what you asked. Faded back, took a bunch of pictures. Which I’ll sling in the production Dropbox when we return to the wonderful world of Wi-Fi. Then I shot some video of you all heading off into the fissure. I’m no Pierre, but it’s HD and usable.”

“Great. So…”

“Then you all came back, turned around, and tried again. I was going to stop filming but, you know, always worth having take two, and all that. So I kept going, and came closer to the passage the second time. I even went a little way down. And…well, I’m just going to show it to you.”

I waited as she navigated on her phone and pressed the button. Murky footage of us all heading into the inner crevice for the second time. “I’d already covered the basics, so I waved the camera around a little more,” she said. “And I was looking through it a couple minutes ago, and…there.”

“What?”

“I’ll play it again.” She held the phone up closer.

“What am I looking for?”

“You’ll see Ken pointing the light around all over this place, trying to get you a look at each bit of the walls on either side. In typically chaotic fashion. But what I’m talking about…Look carefully at the end part.”

It was hard to make out what I was seeing. The backs of the line of people who’d been behind me. Unpredictable slashes of light and dark as Ken and Gemma waved flashlights around, and we got farther and farther from the camera. But then…

“What was that?”

She rewound, pressed PLAY again, then PAUSE. “That is what I’m talking about.”

The freeze frame caught us at the far end of the crevice, a collection of shoulders and backs of heads, quite some distance from the camera. The phone wasn’t dealing well with the low light conditions, and the image was blocky. Toward the top, however, Ken’s light had wandered well above head height—and the area captured in the beam was sharper.

And for just a moment, it caught something. Three little outcrops, each about the size of a brick, the last directly above the first, the middle one offset, in a left-right-left pattern. We hadn’t been looking up, and so hadn’t noticed them.

“Don’t those look kind of regular? As if someone at least finished them off a little?”

“Could be,” I said dubiously. “Though to be honest, Moll…could just be a foreshortening effect. They’re a long way from the camera. This…is all you’ve got?”

“Yes,” she said. “And probably it’s nothing, I know. But if someone way back did smarten up a few little nodules in the rock—that’s something, at least, isn’t it?”