The Glittering World (37 page)

He couldn’t tread forever. So he dragged the body toward the side of the pit and attempted to find a handhold, some way of keeping his head above the surface. The effort had exhausted him, and he struggled to open his sodden pack. Once he grasped his flashlight, he held his breath, wiped a sleeve of sludge from his eyes, and turned on the beam.

As soon as he saw the bright red color of her hair, he knew it wasn’t Elisa. It was a woman, yes, but one who had surely been dead for some time. Her columnar neck was marbleized and distended, flesh a fishy blue-gray gone white where Gabe’s forearm bore down beneath her chin. A necklace was stretched to near breaking against her rubbery skin, the slender chain intertwined with a tangle of eely red hair. Delicate gold links shimmered under the flashlight’s watchful beam, which lit up a dangling charm on a penny-size loop. An angel pendant, hovering upon the surface
of the amber ooze like its own drowned corpse, the W shape of its wingspan depressed into her swollen cheek like a brand.

Tanya.

Gabe let go of her and swallowed the bile rising from his stomach. The dead woman floated lazily across the pit, her bulging eyes pitched up at the black void above. His legs were tiring, and if he didn’t get out of there in the next few minutes, he would meet the same bleak fate.
Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

He fumbled inside his pack for the climbing spurs, fitted them to his hands like brass knuckles, and plunged the metal spikes into the siding above his head.
Spirits of the North, Spirits of Elemental Earth, give my body the strength of a scarab, for we are kith and kin
. The spurs carved out a notch in which to dig in his fingers, and his grip held. Embedding the other spur a foot higher, he hauled himself from the sludge, arms quivering until he could properly tense them. He used Tanya’s body for leverage to gain ground against the wall of the pit, and he rose. Soon the notches left by the spurs above became footholds below, and in this way he began to make real progress.
The earth. It
’s holding firm for me! This dark and merciful land, it wants me to survive.
He continued to climb in gratitude, humming a little tune as he went; though it felt like his larynx was going to rip open, he’d heard enough of the silence.

A few minutes later he had climbed out of the fluid. He clung to a fossilized tree root, his arm crooked around its knotted length, and he rested for a while. Then he continued to climb. When he finally reached the top of the hole and hoisted himself out, he was more tired than he’d ever been, and knelt in the wet muck of the tunnel. He placed his pack and flashlight beside him and swallowed air in great big lungfuls.

His adrenaline began to subside, and soon the welts on his neck began to tingle. He grew light-headed and unsteady, and the hair stood up on the backs of his arms and legs, as if he’d passed through a field of static electricity. He was standing now.
But why don’t I remember getting to my feet?
His lips stung, the inside of his mouth heavy with the taste of the honeyed biofluid he swallowed in the pit, and he licked his shirtsleeve to try to rid himself of it. But the tarry liquid had already leached into him, penetrating his consciousness. In a newly perceptible light, a procession of volatile shadows appeared to march across the cavern ceiling; the sound of skittering legs filled the air; the earth bubbled like lava beneath his feet, though there had been nothing but firm ground a moment before.
Am I losing my mind?

But that wasn’t it. The land was changing, him along with it. He was sensing things differently, yes, but his perceptions were no less accurate than before. He was feeling the new frequency, indeed he was swimming in it, its current stronger now than he had ever known. He was becoming magical himself, and wasn’t that what he had wanted all along? To be part of the swirling life force that was the frequency, the numinous current threaded through every magical thing that bound them together in a golden glow? And yet. He clicked on the flashlight, his only remaining source of illumination outside his own visions.

I’ll never really be part of it, though, will I?

Gabe shined the beam down into the pit. Tanya watched him from below, her wide eyes reflective and shocked bleach white, in awe. He wondered if, in her final moments, the poor woman had drowned in fear, or rather felt something closer to grace. Whether she finally got to see the heralding angels she believed so strongly were with her all along, and only just out of
reach.
Maybe at the end she felt the frequency too
, and he switched off the flashlight. Godfather Death had snuffed her candle out.

Gabe said a wordless prayer and turned toward his destination.

After some time—three hours, or maybe five—there was a faint suggestion of brightness ahead of him. Daylight? Starlight? His imagination? But no, it was none of those things. An internal radiance flickered from the cavern walls, shining with bioluminescence as if he were approaching the innards of a massive glowworm. All was calm, nothing bright save the iridescent pulsation from the walls and floor and roof of the tunnel, bearded with moss. Gabe reached out his hands and placed them against the opposing walls, his fingers ablaze with green and yellow phosphorescence. An electric thrill surged through him, the same thrill he had felt that first night outside the ceilidh, when he came upon Blue staring into the night forest.

Gabe had stood watching him for what felt like forever, but must have only been a few minutes. He tried to see what Blue saw, to glimpse whatever profound vision his friend was experiencing, so they could share it together as one. It was only meant for Blue, though, and perhaps those of his own kind. Still, Gabe could feel the energy coursing out of the forest, out of his friend and the cove and the verdant life all around them, the dark sky and wet ground and the very air itself. All of it humming. After, Blue rubbed Gabe’s head, and it had felt like a holy hand, his touch so powerfully charged that Gabe had to pull away. They headed up the hill to Elisa and Jason, the four of them laughing as they ascended, their own different kind of happy family. The vivifying flow in the air that night, it wasn’t just the singular
frequency he had sought for so long; it was also the feeling of requited love.

Another mile down the curling passageway and Gabe reached a narrow cavity, a hollowed-out spiral like the inside of an ammonite shell that echoed with rising sound, the roar of air or water and punctuated by a steady dripping. The trail constricted and wound further, a maze of wet dirt and rock and puddled fluid that stank of secreted life.

He moved through the attenuated gap, forced to push his backpack and flashlight ahead of him and slide in a commando crawl. As he progressed, the tunnel altered around him, the walls fleshing from hard earth into the supple texture of sweat-soaked cotton or foam. It became harder to gain traction, and he had to shimmy along the newly padded surface, the hidden depths of which appeared to roil from within. Soon the tissued lining of the canal began to tug at him with what felt like tiny mouths, nickel-size pockmarks ringed with thorny protrusions. Each time he made progress, his movements seemed to tear a new rend, in either his clothes or the flesh beneath.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
He stifled his cries of pain.

His backpack dropped down ahead of him. He edged forward and became a lowly worm, crawling its way through the earth.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . .
He pushed himself from the barbed duct and landed before a slim cleft in the stone that throbbed with light. He saw it as a shimmering doorway, an invitation to an enchanted realm that had appeared only for him. He gathered his pack and wriggled forward, slithering through the new opening.
A big green worm with rolling eyes crawls in your stomach and out your eyes.
After negotiating walls coated with gypsum and barite crusts slicked with mucus,
he found himself inside a wider channel, the walls backlit by a series of irregular pulsations. Gabe fell silent, only to hear a wailing cry in the distance, like that of a demented loon. He shuddered.

“Elisa?” he called out. “Elisa, can you hear me? Blue?” He slipped out of the passageway and into a dim chamber within the mountain’s immense black heart. His spirits began to soar, he’d made it so far! He was almost there, almost there, the last hour of school before summer vacation and Christmas Eve and next in line for the Ferris wheel, all at once. He risked a smile, and straightened to his full height.

In a fluttering of what sounded like torn sails, something dropped from the ceiling. It landed behind him with a wet squelch, its faint shadow rising as the figure lengthened and extended. Before Gabe could react, a cold hand sheathed his mouth, its touch as forceful and damp as the flowstone of the cave. His vision went black, then white, then black again, and he dropped the flashlight. A strobe of liquid sensation washed through him, over him, pleasure, pain, satiety, ecstasy, more. He felt everything.

An icy respiration drew across his ravaged neck, a fast-spreading rash accompanied by the scent of the sea, rolling in, out, in.
For God’s sake, don’t let them lay a finger on you. They’re not to be touched.
His panic mounted, and he feared he was breathing his last breath.
Help me!
he wanted to cry out.
God in Heaven above or benevolent spirits below, fearsome creatures of the land and air, angels or demons or anyone listening, I beg of you!

But all was silence. The hand’s firm grip upon him began to slacken, and soon it fell away altogether. Gabe slowly turned.

It was like looking at a ceramic mask made to resemble
Blue. Or more like a mask of Blue’s face that had shattered and been reassembled, something approximate but skewed. Its limbs were Blue’s limbs, though somewhat elongated; its wide eyes enlarged, then shrunk, the bridge of its nose knotting before straightening. All of its features appeared to twinkle and alter, along with the wavering curl of a familiar and ambivalent smile. He could tell it was trying to appeal to him, to give him what he wanted to see. But he knew.

“You’re not him,” Gabe said, his voice coarse. He shook his head in disappointment, if not outright rebuke, anger flaring through his fear. He hadn’t searched these many days and weeks to settle for a substitute. “You’re not Blue.”

The creature shook its head. For a moment Gabe thought it was answering but it was only mimicking him, and once Gabe stilled it did too. Its green eyes brightened and dulled, then brightened and dulled once more, a reflection of the throbbing catacomb walls that was the only light by which to see.

This place,
Gabe thought.
It’s lit from within.

The cavern walls, the smell of the sea, the syrupy trickle of biofilm bubbling up from the rock bed: all of it pulsed with mesmeric luminescence. There was no such thing as true darkness down here.

He had reached the place below the world.

Gabe waited for the simulacrum of Blue to say something, or even just to move, but when it failed to do anything he spoke again. “Where is he?” Gabe demanded. “Where’s Blue?”

The creature cocked its head as if awaiting a distant command, no longer occupied with Gabe’s presence. Something else had its attention, an event of great importance taking place deeper inside the warrens.
If I follow this one, it will lead me where I need to go.
He didn’t know how he knew this, only that he did.
It will show me the way. And I will find you.
He felt it beneath his skin.

The creature backed away. Its movements were herky-jerky yet deliberate, and as it receded Blue’s features evaporated, leaving only shadow and leafage and the suggestion of domed eyes. It crept toward a crack in the stone wall no wider than a foot and poured itself through the breach, disappearing like an envelope passed through a mail slot. Even with his pack in front of him Gabe could just barely fit. He shuffled along the strip of uneven rock between the cave walls, expected the encroaching rock to be damp and cold but instead he found it warm to the touch, almost like flesh. There were places where he felt his way forward that his fingers sunk into the stone. The modest pressure shaped the rock as if it were made of sponge, the walls organic and pliable.

He continued after the creature, waded across the unbalanced topography and into the broad gap of a crevasse until he was almost entirely submerged in brackish fluid, the smell of which was both repulsive and alluring. Jagged ridges stung Gabe’s feet through his soaked sneakers, but they enabled him to scale high enough that he was nearly out of the muck altogether.
All shall be well
, he prayed.
All shall be well.

A labyrinth of passages led him higher, then deeper underground once again, to an unnervingly humid area within the caverns. There was something wrong here, very wrong. And it was only once he stepped down into a papery puddle of ash that Gabe caught the pungent scent of scorched earth and meat. The warrens beneath the mountain had burned through. The signs of fire were everywhere here, seared across flame-licked granite and soot-caked limestone. He was perspiring profusely, the heat beginning to overwhelm him, and he stopped to breathe next
to a thin seam in the wall. An arid wind issued from the gap, as well as an unsteady light, sparkling like a candle’s flame.
Godfather Death, stay away a little while yet. I need just a little more time
.