The Red Hunter(87)

She nodded again. He lifted his hand from her mouth. She couldn’t believe how helpless, powerless she felt. Her whole body was shaking. Those classes. It was just theater.

“Good girl,” he said.

There was something about the phrase, about the way he said it. It was like a match to a gas leak, lighting her up inside. Something pushed up through the fear that had paralyzed her, hot and red. Rage.

“Just stay down,” he said. “Five minutes, not even. We never see each other again.”

He backed away, watching her. When he turned to the workbench, she pushed herself up. There was a hammer lying on the ground, rusted, dirty. She was going to pick it up and bash his fucking head in. She reached for it, his back to her as he worked the key into the lock. Josh stirred, issuing a low groan, and their eyes met.

“No,” he croaked.

Rhett spun on them, saw her hand on the hammer. She was only aware of his fist coming at her like a freight train. She felt her neck snap back with the impact. Then it was dark.





thirty-three


Raven used to dream about tunnels. A long, twisting network of blue tubes that connected all the places in the world. You just stepped through a door in your bedroom, hopped in a cozy pod, and zipped to school, or to Aunt Martha’s in New Mexico, or Dylan’s Candy Bar—wherever you wanted to be. It only took a few seconds. Step through one door and out another—in your pajamas. No need to get dressed, to go out in the cold or the rain, hail a cab, or wait miserable on a crowded subway platform for a train that may or may not come. This tunnel, the one they were in, was not like the tunnels of her childhood fantasies. It was cold, dark, scary; the rough-hewn walls were damp, only pitch-blackness ahead.

Troy pressed up behind her, shining the flashlight beam onto the ground in front of them. When he held the beam up, it seemed to get sucked up by the darkness, no end to the tunnel in sight. A few feet in front of them was an abyss, emptiness.

“We’re heading back toward the house, right?” said Raven. “This tunnel? It must connect the house to the barn.” Troy didn’t say anything, his breathing shallow. Raven was scared, too, wanted to turn around, the faint light from the opening above shining behind them. They were crouched low, hands nearly touching the ground.

“This is such a bad idea,” said Troy. “Let’s go back.”

“It can’t be far, right?” said Raven, pressing ahead. There was a faint dripping sound. Then something else, a distant knock or a crash. She stopped short, and Troy bumped into her, lifted the flashlight.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Did you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear anything. What did you hear?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing, I guess.”

She kept moving, but this time Troy stayed behind.

“Let’s go back,” he said, for the twentieth time. “I don’t have a signal down here. We can’t call for help.”

Raven pressed her hands against the walls, reached up to the low ceiling. Everything was damp, but the structure felt solid. It couldn’t just crumble around them, right? Even though she wanted to go back, too, and she could see why it was a good idea, she just couldn’t do it. The tug, the wanting to know, the potential of it—it was too great. In the light, up in the barn, in the house, doing the right thing, it was all known. Dull. Nothing. Just like any other day.

Another thump; Troy lifted the light toward it. Again. Maybe her mom was banging on the door from the other side, trying to get in with a hammer or a crowbar or something. She talked about getting the drill, though she didn’t think the bits she had were strong enough to drill through metal.

Raven kept moving, coming to a stop at the curved edge of light cast by Troy. She stepped into the dark. He followed, and the light kept moving ahead of her and she stayed in it, blackness a wall all around them. Then Troy tripped.

Whatever he caught his foot on (probably his other foot, or the too-long frayed bottom of his jeans), he went flying into Raven. The flashlight and the phone sailing up ahead of him. Crack. Crack. The light went out. A wash of darkness, the light from the opening above and behind them shone like a beacon in the distance.

“Oh, shit,” said Troy. He was heavy, lying on top of her. “My glasses.”

“Ugh,” she said, rolling out from under him.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I hurt my knee.” She could just make him out. He rubbed it gingerly. She sighed; he was such a baby.

Raven got on all fours, feeling around on the grit of the ground, and found the flashlight first, finally feeling the cold cylinder beneath her fingers. She pressed the button, a couple of times. Nothing. Then it flickered to life. She shone it on him, on the ground behind them. There wasn’t anything to trip on. He shrugged as though his clumsiness were a long acknowledged factor in all endeavors. Which it was.

His glasses were a little bent when she found them, but the lenses were intact. He slipped them on. She found the phone next. It was cracked, the screen just a spiderweb of thick white lines. She handed it to him, and he bent his head over it as if it were an injured pet. He cradled it, prodded it with his thumb. It didn’t come on when he pressed the center button, once, twice, three times.

“It’s dead,” he said, bereft.