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Follow me.
 Bad idea, Dylan murmured, eyeing the tricky slope. The grade was fierce, the
path uncertain at best. And even though the view from up there was probably
spectacular, she really had no desire to join her ghostly new friend on the
Other Side.
Please& help him.
Help him?
 Help who? she asked, knowing the spirit couldn t hear her.
They never could. Communication with her kind was always a one-way street.
They simply appeared when they wished, and said what they wished if they spoke
at all. Then, when it became too hard for them to hold their visible form,
they just faded away.
Help him.
The woman in white started going transparent up on the mountainside. Dylan
shielded her eyes from the hazy light pouring down through the trees, trying
to keep her in sight. With a bit of apprehension, she began the trudge upward,
using the tight growth of pines and beech to help her over the roughest of the
terrain.
By the time she clambered up onto the ridge where the apparition had been
standing, the woman was gone. Dylan carefully walked the ledge of rock, and
found that it was wider than it appeared from below. The sandstone was
weathered dark from the elements, dark enough that a deep vertical slit in the
rock had been invisible to her until now.
It was from within that narrow wedge of lightless space that Dylan heard the
detached, ghostly whisper once again.
Save him.
She looked around her and saw only wilderness and rock. There was no one up
here. Now not even a trace of the ethereal figure, who lured her this far up
the mountain alone.
Dylan turned her head to look into the gloom of the rock s crevice. She put
her hand into the space and felt cool, damp air skate over her skin.
Inside that deep black cleft, it was still and quiet.
As quiet as a tomb.
If Dylan was the type to believe in creepy folklore monsters, she might have
imagined one could live in a hidden spot like this. But she didn t believe in
monsters, never had. Aside from seeing the occasional dead person, who d never
caused her any harm, Dylan was about as practical even cynical as could be.
It was the reporter in her that made her curious to know what she might truly
find inside the rock. Assuming you could trust the word of a dead woman, who
did she think needed help? Was someone injured in there? Could someone have
gotten lost way up here on this steep crag?
Dylan grabbed a small flashlight from an outer pocket of her backpack. She
shined it into the opening, noticing just then that there were vague chisel
marks around and within the crevice, as if someone had worked to widen it.
Although not anytime recently, based on the weathered edges of the tool marks.
 Hello? she called into the darkness.  Is anyone in here?
Nothing but silence answered.
Dylan pulled off her backpack and carried it in one hand, her other hand
wrapped around the slim barrel of her flashlight. Walking forward she could
barely fit through the crevice; anyone larger would have been forced to go in
sideways.
The tight squeeze only lasted a short distance before the space angled around
and began to open up. Suddenly she was inside the thick rock of the mountain,
her light beam bouncing off smooth, rounded walls. It was a cave an empty one,
except for some bats rustling out of a disturbed sleep overhead.
And from the look of it, the space was mostly manmade. The ceiling rose at
least twenty feet over Dylan s head. Interesting symbols were painted on each
wall of the small cavern. They looked like some odd sort of hieroglyphics: a
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cross between bold, tribal markings and gracefully geometric patterns.
Dylan walked closer to one of the walls, mesmerized by the beauty of the
strange artwork. She panned the small beam of her flashlight to the right,
breath-taken to find the elaborate decoration continuing all around her. She
took a step toward the center of the cave. The toe of her hiking boot knocked
into something on the earthen floor. Whatever it was clattered hollowly as it
rolled away. Dylan swept her light over the ground and gasped.
Oh, shit.
It was a skull. White bone glowed against the darkness, the human head staring
up at her with sightless, vacant sockets.
If this was the him the dead woman wanted Dylan to help out, it looked like
she got there about a few hundred years too late.
Dylan moved the light farther into the gloom, unsure what she was searching
for, but too fascinated to leave just yet. The beam skidded over another set
of bones Jesus, more human remains scattered on the floor of the cave.
Goose bumps prickled on Dylan s arms from a draft that seemed to rise out of
nowhere.
And that s when she saw it.
A large rectangular block of stone sat on the other side of the darkness. More
markings like the ones covering the walls were painted onto the carved bulk of
the object.
Dylan didn t have to move closer to realize that what she was looking at was a
crypt. A thick slab had been placed over the top of the tomb. It was moved
aside, skewed slightly off the stone crypt as if pushed away by incredibly
strong hands.
Was someone or something laid to rest in there?
Dylan had to know.
She crept forward, flashlight gripped in suddenly perspiring fingers. A few
paces away now, Dylan angled the beam into the opening of the tomb.
It was empty.
And for reasons she couldn t explain, that thought chilled her even more than
if she d found some hideous corpse turning to dust inside.
Over her head, the cave s nocturnal residents were getting restless. The bats
stirred, then bolted past her in a hurried rush of motion. Dylan ducked to let
them pass, figuring she d better get the hell out of there too.
As she pivoted to find the crevice exit, she heard another rustle of movement.
This one was bigger than bats, a low snarl of sound followed by a disturbance
of loose rock somewhere in the cave.
Oh, God.
Maybe she wasn t alone in here after all.
The hairs at the back of her neck tingled and before she could remind herself
that she didn t believe in monsters, her heart started beating in overdrive.
She fumbled around for the way out of the cave, her pulse jackhammering in her
ears. By the time she found daylight, she was gasping for air. Her legs felt
rubbery as she scrambled back down the ridge, then raced to rejoin her friends
in the safety of the bright midday sun below. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]