Chapter Three
       page 13

      With ‘Bob's’ gun in hand, she climbed down the creek bank on the downstream side of the culvert. The pipe was about twenty-five feet long and it was quite dark in the middle. Holding the gun vaguely in front of her, she waded through the shallow water into the shadows. About four feet before she reached the other side she saw a hole halfway up the side. The metal piece that had been there was lying half submerged at her feet. She judged she was clear of the road and was now standing under the bank on the far side of the road with the mountain rising steeply from the stream bed ahead. Getting the flashlight from her pocket, she shined the light inside.
      The hole was fairly wide but only about two feet in height. It angled steeply away from the road toward the mountain. After roughly twenty feet it hooked sharply left. There was a faint light visible at the end but because of the curve in the tunnel, she could not see what was there. She wavered. Nothing could be heard except the rushing of the water. Finally, she climbed in.
      Halfway along she was nearly overcome by panic when she found she could not go backwards and could only move ahead with great difficulty. She thought of what would happen if there was not room enough to turn around at the end. Then she closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing at all as she inched forward in the damp dirt.
      When she came around the corner she found that there was quite a large chamber, though the ceiling was only about four feet high. There was a cot, a table, a little stool and a camper's light hanging overhead. All Henry's favorite junk foods were heaped against one wall. There was a cell phone lying on the table and Henry's laptop computer was on the bed. There were electronic gadgets that she could not identify stacked at the foot of the bed. He had two cans of Lysol and a jumbo can of bug spray.
      A very narrow passage, much smaller than the one she had come in by, exited the rear of the hole, sloping upwards and curling sharply left. After all the excitement with ‘Bob’, she had forgotten to check for a back door. Apparently, Henry had gone.
      She could stand in a semi-crouch. He certainly had plenty of food. The cell phone was dead. She stuck her head in the tunnel in back. There was a faint glimmer of light visible at the end. As she turned back into the chamber, she felt a little tap on the back of her neck and glimpsed a flicker of motion above her head. Something large was clinging bat-like in a narrow crack in the ceiling. Then everything went black.

dna dreamed she was at the rocky outcropping where she had watched the sun set with the dogs a few weeks before. However, she was in the shadows at the edge of the forest, not out in the open on the rocks. She felt afraid and hungry. As the sun went down, the sky was filled with thousands of birds and she could see bears and animals of all kinds moving around on the rocks. With the low sun gilding the mountaintops, leaving the valleys deep in shadow, the wilderness before her seemed to stretch on forever. In the dream, when night had fallen, she did not know the way home.
cont. on page fourteen

Copyright © 2000 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved.
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