The Anomaly(49)

I called out Feather’s name one more time, very loud. Everybody listened. Nothing came back.

“Who was the last person to talk to her?” Molly asked.

“Me. She fell asleep,” I answered.

“How do you know?”

“She stopped responding.”

Molly looked at me.

“What? What the hell else could have happened to her?”

She shrugged.

“No, seriously, Moll. Nobody else knows this place even exists. What the hell are you suggesting?”

“Easy, Nolan,” Ken said.

I took a deep breath. I hadn’t even realized how I was sounding. “Okay, yeah. Sorry.”

Molly shook her head and smiled to show it didn’t matter. But it kind of did. Not to her, but to me. At that moment Gemma came walking down the passage. We all turned to look at her, wondering how to describe the situation.

“What?” she said. “Oh, for God’s sake. Jesus. Yes, I just took a crap, okay? Women crap, too. Get over it.”

“Feather’s disappeared,” Molly said.

“Oh.”



Back in the main room we appeared to reach a universal unspoken agreement to assume the best. Pierre speculated about whether Feather would go with Dylan to get help, or send him off and come back to reassure us it was in hand. The consensus was she’d likely do the latter. And that if she’d left really early, hopefully there wouldn’t be too long left to wait. We discussed this cheerfully, in quiet, confident voices. Everything was cool. Nobody was starting to panic. Not a bit.

Most took a bite of what remained of their sandwich. Ken offered me some of his, but I shook my head. “I almost never eat before lunchtime, so I won’t miss it. Save it for later.”

There was a sudden tiny but sharp point of pain on my left arm, and I swung my hand and slapped. When I lifted it there was a little splotch of blood. “Mosquito.”

“Hell is a mosquito doing here?”

“They’re everywhere, dude.”

“No, but seriously. What’s it doing here? Until yesterday there was fuck-all here for it to eat.”

“Could have come up the same shaft as us. Maybe on our clothes. Or there’s a tiny gap somewhere.”

“Gap to where, Nolan? There’s at least a quarter mile of rock in every direction.”

“Ken, I don’t know. It’s dead now anyway.”

“I saw a bug,” Pierre said. “In the night. I was lying awake and after a while I wanted to know what time it was so I turned on my phone. There was a bug on the screen.”

“A mosquito?”

“No. Little buggy thing.”

I looked at Gemma. “You’re smart. What do bugs eat?”

“I don’t know. Plants. Smaller bugs. Bug food.”

Ken was looking at me. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “But. Yesterday afternoon Pierre showed me a room up that passage over there. It smells bad. I mean, really rank.”

“Sorry to have missed it.”

“We got pulled away because you called when Feather arrived back. But thinking about it—what makes a room smell like that?”

“Like what?”

“Dry and fusty but with a kick to it, a kind of meaty undertone.”

“Sounds like half the Merlots I’ve ever drunk.”

“It’s an organic smell, is my point. I just realized—maybe it’s something rotting. Or something that rotted a very long time ago, and the smell hasn’t had a chance to escape. Could just be some plants. Or maybe…a small animal.”

“And you’re speculating that if it’s animal, then in order for it to die there, it had to get in from the outside somehow.”

“That is precisely my thinking. And I don’t see an animal climbing all the way up that shaft like we did.”

“Could it be something that got in here through that opening in the wall that’s now bricked up? How long do smells last in confined conditions?”

“I have no idea. But Kincaid talked about a bad-smelling room. And that’s a hundred years ago. It can’t have lasted that long. And he talked about the smell being so bad, and the room so dark, that they didn’t explore it further.”

“And you’re hoping there’s some shaft or tunnel in the back and once in a while a coyote or something falls down it, and we might be able to get out that way?”

“I don’t have anything else. Do you?”





Chapter

29



We left Pierre and Gemma with our phones and with instructions to come running if Feather reappeared, took the biggest flashlight, and headed up the passage.

“Whoa,” Molly said as we entered the room. “You’re right. That’s skanky.”

“I kinda like it,” Ken said.

“That’s because you’re a disturbing human being with no redeeming features.”

“There’s some truth in that.”

We walked in together, Molly in the middle, directing the light. The room was reminiscent of the one with the end wall covered in symbols, in that it had been cut as a precise oblong, right angles between floor and walls and ceiling. These walls were bare, however.