Ruby falls, p.15
Ruby Falls, page 15
Since he appeared in his swirl of light, he’s sounded furious in a way that promises thrown punches or broken china. It’s not temper in his voice now, though, but panic.
“This isn’t the way to change his mind,” Quinton says.
Talmadge switches his flashlight to his other hand. “I don’t think I can change it,” he says.
“Sit down,” Quinton says, and the way he says it makes Ada wonder if he has children. If he might even have a wife. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but she’s never thought to ask.
“Sit down,” he says again.
Talmadge sinks to the ground, legs folding under him like a pocketknife. He is all soot and shadow except for the whites of his eyes.
“Catch your breath,” Ada says. “Take a minute.”
He’s still squeezing that flashlight. It’s the only thing he has with him—no pack, no canteen—and either he wasn’t serious about leaving or he was so frantic that he wasn’t thinking straight.
“What am I doing I here?” he asks, staring at the dirt.
Ada has never had patience for people who wallow. You can never solve anything if you’re busy wallowing.
“You’re here because Leo asked you,” she says. “Because it’s your job.”
He looks surprised. He’s looked surprised every time she’s spoken. Maybe exhaustion is softening her, but her annoyance gives way to a wisp of sympathy. He’s so young. At his age she still believed—
She doesn’t know what she believed. She can’t get close to slipping back inside that girl.
“Leo asked you because you’re the best,” she adds. “You’re good at what you do. Everyone knows that.”
“I’m not the best,” Talmadge says, turning to Quinton. “He is. And he said no.”
When Ada turns to Quinton, he’s in profile, like a president’s face on a coin. The candlelight lengthens his eyebrows.
“You’re the one who was stupid enough to say yes,” he says to Talmadge. “No one made you.”
“You said you’re not a guide,” Ada says to Quinton, who’s not looking at her.
“I’m not. But I know the caves.”
“Leo asked you to lead Hagathorn’s group?” she prompts.
“He did.”
“And you said no?”
Finally Quinton turns to her, and his look says Can you blame me? She supposes she can’t. He reaches for Talmadge, stopping short, his hand hovering over the younger man’s forearm.
“What’s your bunch of ducklings doing at the moment?” Quinton asks.
“Resting,” Talmadge answers. He nods toward the candle. “Great minds think alike—I got them down to a candle to save our light. Gave them the last couple of cans of beans and told them to close their eyes.”
“They going to wonder where you are?” Quinton asks.
“I think they all passed out before I left.”
Ada believes it. She’s used to these caves, but ten straight hours of them have taken a toll. There comes a point where sleep is no longer a choice.
“So you’ll take a few minutes, too,” Quinton says. “Then you go back and handle whatever comes next. It might still work out fine, and it might not. But I guarantee if you storm out of here now, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.”
Talmadge taps his flashlight against his heel. “You know we’re not going to make it out in two hours.”
“I also know,” Quinton says, “that I’ve got an extra cartridge of carbide for everybody. We’ve got four hours of leeway for this to come together.”
“If I go back to them.”
“If you go back,” Quinton agrees. “Which you are going to do. But for now, push them out of your head. Relax. If they call for you, we’ll hear. I’ll make sure we’re up and moving in half an hour either way.”
Talmadge turns off his flashlight, which Ada takes as agreement. He unfastens his helmet and watches the ground. What was it Quinton said about him? Better with rocks than people? It occurs to her that maybe he was so quick to spout tour guide jargon because otherwise he’d have needed to come up with his own words. He doesn’t seem to have a reservoir.
She forgives him entirely for snubbing her on the staircase as she rests her head in the crook of her elbow. The candle wavers as Quinton shoves himself against the wall a few feet away.
“I heard the magic man drove a horse to death not long ago,” he says into the silence. “He pushed it so hard the animal keeled over and died on the road. And Ed Lacey said he pulled a razor on them in the hotel yesterday.”
“That doesn’t even sound real,” Ada says. “It sounds like a made-up story.”
“He’s real,” Talmadge huffs out.
Ada closes her eyes. She wishes she could hear crickets or cicadas or bullfrogs. She’s imagining train whistles when she feels a fluttering against her face like eyelashes; she slaps at the darkness and feels the soft brush of wings.
“What?” Quinton whispers.
“Moth, maybe,” she says.
“The harebrained ones still find their way inside sometimes,” he says, but she drifts to sleep thinking she felt the spiny wings of a bat.
9:25 p.m.
“God help me!” a man calls, so loudly that Ada thinks a stranger is in the chamber with them.
She sits up before she’s fully conscious, arm over her head, ready to block a blow, absorbing the fear in the voice like it’s her own. She scrambles, jamming on her boots by candlelight, and she sees Quinton already on his feet, boots on. They both grab for flashlights, which come to life faster than headlamps.
She is all movement and no thought as Quinton’s flashlight goes rolling and he lunges for it. She yanks out her pocket watch, wrestling with the clasp one-handed, sacrificing a precious second to see that not half an hour has passed since she closed her eyes.
Someone down the passageway screams Talmadge’s name once. Twice. Quinton spins, flashlight back in his hand, beam sweeping across the ground. Ada finally notices that Talmadge isn’t in the chamber with them, and of course he’s not. He could have gone back to the group while they were asleep, or even if he didn’t, he’s younger and faster and could be halfway down the passageway.
She scrambles toward the opening to the lower level, dropping to her knees and tucking the flashlight into her waistband so she can navigate the wall. She mostly slides down it, falling forward onto her hands when she reaches the lower chamber. She realizes she’s forgotten her gloves when the gravel bites into her palms, but she’s already standing before the pain sinks in.
Quinton lands next to her. They head down the corridor, the ceiling expanding in ripples as she arcs her flashlight across the path. Quinton’s boot catches her heel, and they both lose a step.
They make one turn and then another, and they must be close now. Very close. Ada turns her ankle on a loose stone but barely slows down. She’s not even sure why they’re rushing—the voices ahead of them have gone silent. The commotion was likely a nightmare or another fit from Hagathorn, but the fear is still rushing through her, pushing her forward.
But something’s wrong—something other than the scream—and she slows as she realizes that she should be seeing light by now. They must have taken a wrong turn because it’s still pitch-dark, no sign of human life. Quinton is passing her, though, speeding up, more concerned instead of less. He comes to a stop in a few yards at the opening to a small chamber, and she smacks a hand against his shoulder blade to keep from running into him.
They are not in the wrong place.
Quinton’s flashlight—and now hers—catches the silhouettes of two men sitting, hunchbacked. Between them, someone is still sleeping. Someone else in the room whimpers like a puppy. Ada sees a hint of movement and swings her Eveready until the beam lands on Editha, who’s inching forward on her knees, loose hair falling around her shoulders.
The whimpering has stopped, and now there’s only breathing, too loud. Ada tells herself that she was right—the mind reader has had another fit—but where is the candle Talmadge left burning? Why is everyone sitting in the dark? The two men sitting on the ground turn to face her, squinting at the light: It’s Morris Efrom and Tom, the manager.
“We’re here to help,” Ada says, and only then does a second level of panic hit her. She and Quinton have given up the game. They were supposed to stay hidden and now they are here, and she doesn’t know if this was a reasonable response or a terrible mistake.
Jeremiah Hagathorn runs a hand over his head, blinking. Only the newspaperman is still lying down, showing no signs of stirring, and he must be a deep sleeper.
Ada tells herself that, even when she knows it’s not true.
She remembers this same feeling when she walked into her mother’s bedroom that last time, a cup filled with ice chips in her hand, and she knew even before she touched her mother’s shoulder.
She knew.
Morris’s face confirms it—she can see his throat working, like he might vomit. He’s got a hand on Howard’s sleeve. So young is Ada’s first thought. Maybe his heart. And then Morris is taking hold of the newspaperman’s shoulders and turning him over, and all the shadows ringing the room recoil.
“Shit,” Hagathorn says.
Ada turns away, not out of emotion but because it’s her flashlight that’s casting the worst shadow of all, catching the spike driven into the man’s neck, only, no it’s not a spike. It’s rock. A stalactite gone right through the Adam’s apple. She touches the same spot on her own throat, feeling the thinness of the skin, just as Quinton steps in front of her, his broad back blocking her view entirely. She assumes the gesture is meant to be considerate, but she sidesteps him, annoyed because does he think she’ll get an attack of the vapors? She has buried not only her mother and her father but her baby and her husband, and it is always the women who handle the bodies, arranging hair and hands and collars. She is well-acquainted with the look and feel of death.
She listens to the whisper of water through the walls. It’s amazing how long people can stay quiet with a dead man between them. She looks from face to face. The mind reader is balding more than she realized, and the wife is so small, smaller than Ruby. Morris seems a decade older than he did this morning, with dirt caked in the lines of his forehead. He pushes to his feet, swaying, and Ada wonders if he’s hobbled himself or if he’s only exhausted.
“Who are you?” Tom asks, voice hoarse.
“Rescue crew,” Quinton says immediately. “Things were running late down here, and Leo Lambert wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
No one seems to question it. Morris has found his helmet and headlamp, and he fumbles with a box of matches. Tom pulls his glasses out of his jacket pocket and settles them on his ears. He grabs at a stump of a candle near his feet.
“We had this going,” he says. He lifts it as if he’s making a toast. “Not sure what happened.”
“I closed my eyes,” Morris says, still trying to strike a match. “I didn’t think—”
“I didn’t intend to close them,” Tom says over him. “I never thought I’d sleep, but I must have. When I woke up, I thought I’d gone blind, and I was trying to get my bearings, and when I reached out, I touched him. I didn’t know—I wasn’t sure—I lay my hand in blood. I felt him, and it was all in the dark and I—I lost my head.”
He’s embarrassed about screaming, Ada realizes. The things that go through men’s minds are incomprehensible.
“I woke up when you yelled,” Morris says. The match in his hand flames and then dies.
“Same here,” Hagathorn says. “Couldn’t see a thing.”
Ada can’t look away from the newspaperman. It’s different with a stranger: She can feel the emptiness of him, as she did that day with her mother, but at a distance. It’s like a math problem she cannot quite grasp, how the shape in front of her is no longer a person but a carcass, like a plucked chicken on her counter. The carcass has a rolled-up jacket under his head, and she can picture him tucking in the sleeves and folding over the collar, trying to smooth the wrinkles out, and maybe somebody taught him—the carcass—to do that, roll a jacket up good and tight so it would make a good pillow, like her father taught her, and maybe he thought of that person as he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep and maybe he played through a thousand other memories that no one will ever know because those memories have blinked out of existence.
Without anyone appearing to move, the gap between the carcass and the others has widened. Since Morris rolled the man over, no one has touched him, although no one can look away for long.
The ceiling is smooth other than one ripple over their heads that droops down like the tongue of a dog.
“His eyes are still closed,” Tom says, the unlit candle still in his hand.
“And his head still on his coat,” Morris says. “It must have been fast.”
The stalactite is over a foot long, thicker than a broom handle. The top is flat, snapped-off, and the point is embedded in the man’s throat. When her flashlight was focused on him, Ada caught the spill of blood, but it was less than she’d expect. She thinks again of a chicken and how you can plunge in the butcher knife, but the blood only flows when you pull it out.
Someone in this room killed him.
Somehow that detail strikes her only now: The stalactite did not fall from the ceiling. It did not magically appear. One of these people broke off that spear of rock and stabbed it through the man’s neck.
“So no one heard anything?” Ada says. “Footsteps? A scuffle?”
It doesn’t seem possible that this happened in silence, but as if the same string is tugging at all of them, everyone shakes their head.
“He must have been asleep,” Quinton says. “To not put up a fight at all.”
“Wouldn’t have been able to scream, I imagine,” Tom says.
Editha inches forward on her hands and knees, edging around her husband’s manager. Her hair blocks her face. She rests a hand on the newspaperman’s ankle, tugging at a wrinkle in the hem of his pants. She holds completely still for what feels like a full minute to Ada.
Shell-shocked, she thinks. They are all shell-shocked, and they’re acting aimless as sheep.
Editha sits back on her heels, pale and wild-haired.
“Where’s Talmadge gone?” she asks.
When Ada looks to Quinton, he’s already looking back at her. Shell-shocked. Somewhere between skittering down that wall and discovering a dead man, they forgot about Talmadge entirely.
“Y’all haven’t seen him?” Ada says.
“Not since I woke up,” Editha says.
Quinton gives one small shake of his head, his eyes still on Ada.
“Stay here,” he says to her, and he’s headed out of the chamber before she can answer.
She watches as he disappears down the passageway back the way they came, calling Talmadge’s name in two quick barks. She tells herself to do something. Say something. Only as Quinton’s footsteps fade does it occurs to her that she could have—should have?—gone with him, no matter what orders he gave.
His voice echoes down the passage, muted, as he calls for Talmadge again.
“We saw him not long ago,” she says to the others. The room is twice as dark now that she has the only flashlight. “Talmadge. He came across us while you were resting. He can’t be far.”
She looks around her at the circle of white-eyed faces and realizes Quinton was right. She needed to stay here. These people need a steady hand, and she can, at least, pretend steadiness.
“Where’d he go?” Hagathorn asks.
“For help, most likely,” Ada says.
It’s the most comforting of answers, and these people have no reason not to believe her. But if it’s true, why didn’t Talmadge inform someone before he headed back to the elevator? And if he never came back to this chamber, how would he have known they needed help?
I’m done, he said, and then he agreed so easily to Quinton’s request that he sit down and reconsider. She closed her eyes and likely Quinton closed his eyes and she assumed Talmadge closed his eyes, but maybe he did not. If he did not rest at all, by this stage he’s had nearly an hour to head toward the elevator or anywhere else.
Morris has finally gotten his headlamp burning, and the beam brightens the center of the room. He lights the chunk of candle, too, keeping his head turned from the newspaperman the entire time.
Hagathorn stretches forward and lays his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “So someone extinguished the candle and then stabbed a man in the dark,” he says.
It changes the air in the room when he speaks it aloud. If the rest of them have been circling around the idea of murder, he’s driven straight through the center.
“We can’t know that,” Tom says.
“We do, I think,” the mind reader says. “And now our guide has hurried out of here, in an interesting convergence of events.”
He is not wrong. Ada wonders how far Quinton has gotten and whether he’s found Talmadge, and she pictures the chamber where they last saw him, their blankets and packs shoved against the wall.
The extra canteens. The carbide cartridges. They left all their extra light and water back there, free for the taking. If Talmadge did want to punish this group, she and Quinton have made it easy for him.
“You need to wait here for me,” she tells the others, but she’s not as fast at exiting as Quinton was.
Morris grabs at the hem of her jacket.
“You’re going to leave us, too?” he asks, and if it’s not panic in his voice, it’s something close.
Ada does not want to acknowledge her fears about Talmadge, but she needs to hold those cartridges in her hands. She remembers the solid blackness when the candle blew out. Darkness upon the face of the deep.
