Chapter 28 - The Girl in Green

“What is this place?” Madison whispered.

“It’s an old supply tunnel,” I whispered back. “Back from when this was a mental hospital.”

I tried to keep my voice low. Our whispers hissed strangely through the tunnel, the enclosed flat surface echoing even the smallest step.

She would hear us.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Star told me,” I whispered.

I thought about Star. She was up there, in the school somewhere. I hoped she was safe. Star had a habit of saying exactly what she thought about everything, not a good habit around here.

When I got out of here, I would have so much to tell her.

If I got out.

I waved the beam of the flashlight around the sides of the tunnel, wondering if the light alone was enough to bring the monster. My left hand went reflexively to my chest, and I felt something hard.

Barlow’s knife.

I had a weapon.

“Hold this for a moment,” I whispered.

I handed Madison my flashlight and dug one hand deep into my shirt.

“What are you doing?” Madison asked, too loud.

“I have a knife.”

I pulled out the knife and felt along the tucked-in dull edge of the blade. I found the groove, got it between my finger and thumb, and pulled it open. Madison shined her light on the knife and the blade glinted in the dark.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked.

“Barlow gave it to me.”

I thought about Barlow. He was somewhere above me too, most likely still in the dark. He wouldn’t know that I was gone. Kenzie was probably sleeping off the drug somewhere.

If the electricity stayed off, it could be at least a day before anyone noticed that Madison and I were missing.

A day down here was a lifetime.

A cold breeze wafted through the tunnel, and with it, the damp smell of rotten flesh. I held my hand over my nose, and breathed through my mouth, suppressing an instinctive urge to run away from the scent of death, to run back up the slope toward the old hospital.

There was nothing for us there.

“You said you know a way out of here,” Madison asked. “Somewhere that isn’t . . . down there.”

Madison pointed her flashlight straight down the tunnel. Her beam disappeared into the blackness, as the sides of the tunnel appeared to telescope down into the blackness, giving the claustrophobic optical illusion that the walls were closing in.

“There is a way out through the school,” I said. “But it’s blocked.”

I had thought about the medical waste incinerator when I first woke up. Barlow had pulled the door shut and fitted the handle into the slot. There was no way to get out with that door shut.

What would he do when it was clear that I was gone? Would he leave the door open, and risk the entire school?

Star had insisted there was another way into the old hospital. She had been right. There was a staircase that led directly into the operating room, but Coach Mullins had pulled the metal staircase up after himself.

“Then why did you say there was a way out?” Madison asked angrily, her voice rising above a whisper.

“Shhhhh,” I hissed. “You don’t want to bring it to us.”

Madison lowered her voice.

“But you told me that you knew another way. . . .”

“I was groggy,” I said. “That way is closed.”

We descended into the unknown, flashlights on, making all the noise. Three steps forward, three steps down.

We had to be smarter than this.

“So where does this tunnel go?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be closed off. Coach said they’d closed some of the entrances.”

“Do you think Layla got out?” she said.

Layla was dead, but I didn’t want to tell Madison that. I didn’t want to discourage her.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But if she did, they would have blocked that entrance.”

I shined the flashlight down the slope. The squared tunnel continued on, taking a slow turn to the right. About twenty yards down to the left, the wall gave way to darkness and another tunnel. In front of the tunnel were three old yellow poles, meant to keep a vehicle out.

As we drew closer, we could see that this branch of the tunnel was not cement. Instead, the square sides of the tunnel were carved into stone. I directed my light into the hole. It looked like a man-made cave. Coach Mullins had said that there were mineshafts and caves everywhere. He’d said they’d managed to close off six entrances to the mountain. I wanted to believe there were more and we could find a way out. I had to believe that.

I stepped past the poles into the mouth of the cave. My flashlight revealed a tunnel big enough to stand in—just barely. It split into two, with one path curving down into the dark, out of reach of my flashlight, and the other straight on for as far as my flashlight would reach. A slight breeze, cold and damp, came from the cave.

It could be a way out, a way that didn’t take us to the mouth of the mortuary tunnel and the monster. But the mountain was riddled with caves, twisting paths, and dead ends.

“I think we should go this way,” I whispered.

Madison made a dismissive noise. Even in the dark I could feel her impatience.

“Coach Mullins said we should just keep to the tunnel,” Madison said. “How long could it be? We just keep going and then we’re out.”

“I don’t think he said that,” I whispered. I was pretty sure Coach Mullins told us to find our own way out.

“It’s the quickest way out,” she said. “If it’s just eaten, maybe it’s sleeping.”

You’re overfeeding it.

The nurse’s words echoed uncomfortably in my brain. The monster had eaten recently. I didn’t want to think about its previous meal, but maybe it was holed up somewhere, sleeping off . . . Ava.

I shuddered. Just the thought of Ava brought panic to the center of my chest. I’d seen what the monster could do—had done—to Ava. We didn’t stand a chance.

No.

At least I had a knife.

“Let’s go,” Madison said.

She tilted her head toward the black hole of the service tunnel that seemed to stretch limitlessly down. My skin crawled from the weight of all the rock overhead, the feeling of being buried alive.

I hesitated at the mouth of the cave. A cool breeze came from the cave, damp and earthy but clean.

The smell of rot came from the tunnel.

Madison turned and started down the tunnel.

“Do what you want,” Madison said. “I’m getting out of here.”

I hesitated. I knew in the pit of my stomach, in the fear that clutched at my chest and refused to let go, that she was going the wrong way. More than anything in the world, I didn’t want to go down the tunnel. The cave felt like a lifeline.

But I couldn’t let her go. I had the knife and she had nothing. Alone, we both stood less of a chance.

I started after her.

We walked down the ramp, my one hand on the hilt of the knife, the flashlight clutched tightly in my other hand.

The dank rotten smell increased. Madison shined her light along the walls, revealing dark smears.

“It stinks like death,” Madison said.

The smell sent my pulse racing, slowing my steps.

“This is fresh,” I said. “We should go back.”

“Back where?” Madison said. “You don’t even know if there is a way out through the caves. We could get trapped.”

We passed a pile of rocks on the floor that, on closer inspection, looked like animal bones.

“God, what do you think that was?” I said.

“Maybe it was a deer?” Madison said hopefully. “Whatever it was, it was too small to be human.”

“Maybe there’s a mountain lion?” I said.

She attempted a small laugh but it didn’t come across. She was terrified too, and the idea of confronting a mountain lion in the dark was hardly reassuring, even if we did have a knife.

But it was better than a monster.

The tunnel took a steeper drop and we descended into the smell, so strong here that we both coughed and choked.

My flashlight shuddered across the walls and caught a bright and shining object. Ahead of me, Madison focused her flashlight on the shine.

An eye, poking out from a curtain of dark hair.

A flash of dark green, an oversized and loose-fitting hospital gown.

She blinked as a beam from one of our flashlights fell directly on her. A too-large mouth filled with jagged teeth, the lower half of her face covered in blood.

A horrible shriek echoed through the walls. My own voice. I was screaming.

I turned and ran up the ramp, Madison pounding behind me, but she caught up quickly and passed me on the ramp.

“Did you see that?” she gasped, half crying. “What the fuck!”

Behind me the thing made a horrible shriek, an echo of my earlier shriek. Ahead, Madison reached the cave.

She veered into the cave and I followed. I jogged down the side tunnel, tripping on the uneven rock surface of the cave. Ahead of me, Madison’s shaky light headed to the smaller right tunnel and receded into the distance.

I turned a corner. Up ahead, the light had stopped moving. Madison had reached a small cave opening. She stood in the middle of the room, waiting.

I cleared the opening of the room as that horrible wail came from behind us again, in a terrible game of Marco Polo.

Maybe it had to follow our sound to find us.

I held my finger up to my lips to shush Madison.

And then I turned off my light. She did the same.

I leaned my back to the wall of the cave, knife in hand, and waited.