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Itwasa cave, about forty feet deep, and looked like something from another planet. Stalactites hung down from the roof of the cave, while stalagmites rose from the floor. The roar of the waterfall was deafening in here, and as he moved farther inside, he walked into tiny droplets coming down like rain from above.
As he moved forward, the others entered behind him.
“Holy crap,” Louis said, and then realized he couldn’t hear his own voice above the roar, and went quiet.
Cameron moved forward carefully, looking for any sign of a large chest or box, but saw nothing to indicate skeletal remains or even animal bones, which indicated an unlikely lair for any animal. The roar alone would be enough to put them off, not to mention the water. It would be like sleeping in constant rain.
After a thorough search of the entire area and finding no tunnels branching off in other directions, they retraced their steps out.
“That was creepy as hell,” Darren said.
“Agreed. Even the animals seem to be giving that a wide berth,” Cameron said.
“Back to the drawing board,” Louis said.
Unaware of Wade Morgan’s baptism, or that Darren had actually found a cave behind the falls, the men in the woods were still eyes to the ground, looking for signs of anything resembling a crumbling fireplace or pieces of foundation.
It was nearing noon.
Aaron heard men’s voices in the distance from time to time, but they were somewhere behind them or to the south, and he and B.J. were still making their way west. He noticed B.J. had paused about seventy-five yards ahead and was digging at something in the ground.
Aaron paused to take a drink of water when he heard B.J. yelp and then call out. He looked up.
B.J. was standing with one arm in the air, waving wildly. “Aaron! Aaron! This way! I think I found something!”
Aaron lifted his arm in response and then watched in horror as B.J. suddenly dropped out of sight, disappearing before his eyes.
Aaron groaned. “Oh hell, no!” he muttered, and leaped forward in an all-out sprint, calling Cameron’s phone as he ran.
Cameron answered. “Hello.”
“This is Aaron. I need help. B.J. just fell into some kind of hole south and west of the falls. One minute he was waving at me, shouting that he’d found something, and then the ground went out from under him and he disappeared.” Then he dropped his phone into his pocket and kept running.
B.J. hit solid ground feet first in a jarring thud. He bit his tongue as he landed, then fell backward onto his backpack. His side was burning, and when he touched it, it felt wet. At best guess, he was at least fourteen feet below ground level, and the daylight shining down into this hole had suddenly become his North Star.
“Jesus,” he moaned, spitting out blood and wiping the blood from his hands onto his jeans.
His ears were still ringing from impact as he managed to slip off the backpack before fumbling inside it, trying to find his flashlight. His heart was pounding, and despite the chill below ground, he was sweating.
Damn the dark. Damn the dark. You’re not a kid anymore. Get over it.
When his fingers finally curled around the handle of his LED lantern, he breathed a quick sigh of relief and turned it on.
But relief soon turned to shock and then full-on panic at the web of dangling grass roots above his head, as well as the tree roots that had followed the walls down and onto the dirt floor on which he was standing. It was a shocking version of a haunted house at Halloween, and he’d arrived here without having to pay a gate fee to get in.
There were remnants of a decaying staircase on the ground around him, and a large iron box nearbycovered in a thick layer of dirt and roots. But it was the little skeleton lying beside it that rendered him speechless.
Meg.
He rolled over onto his hands and knees and began to inch toward it, keeping the light directly on the path in front of him. The last thing he wanted was to get snakebit and die down here, too.
When he finally reached her, he rocked back on his knees and flashed his light, eyeing the way she’d died—on her side, arms curled upward, hands together against her chest in a gesture of prayer.
In this dark ungodly hole, he’d never seen anything more holy. His hands were shaking as he reached toward her, feeling the need to make contact to assure himself and her that they were no longer alone.
“Meg, I’m Brendan, one of your grandsons from this time. We’ve been looking for you.”
Suddenly there was a swirl of air around him and the faint sound of what sounded like laughter. The hair stood up on the back of his neck as he went quiet, then jumped when he heard a voice shouting his name.
