we go now? I don’t like it here.”
“You don’t like it?” Elizabeth said, glancing around at the dimly lit cavern. The flames flickered, and shadows danced evilly on the walls. “It’s my secret place,” Elizabeth went on. “And now it’s yours, too. Only we know about this place.”
Until I get home, Kathy thought. She fought to stay calm, and watched Elizabeth carefully.
Elizabeth was engrossed in the tea party, and was busy pouring for the wreckage that had been her pet, and pretending to pass cakes around. Her eyes fell once more on Kathy.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“Talk to you?” Kathy repeated. “About what?”
“They don’t talk to me, you know. None of them do. They only talk to Sarah, and she can’t answer. So I come here, and my friends talk to me.” She was staring into Kathy’s eyes again, and there was a cold light in her own eyes. “All my friends talk to me here,” she said again. Kathy licked her lips.
“I—I like your secret place,” Kathy said carefully, hoping she was choosing the right words. “I’m glad you brought me here. But, please, I’m going to be awfully late for my job. If I get in trouble, I won’t be able to come here with you again.”
“You will,” Elizabeth said with a smile, but the smile only made Kathy more uncomfortable. “You’ll learn to love this place. You’ll learn to love it as much as I do.”
“Y-yes,” Kathy said. “I suppose I will. But I have to go now. I really do,” she pleaded.
Elizabeth seemed to consider it, then nodded.
“All right,” she said at last. “Help me clear off the table.”
She stood up and began to go through the motions of stacking up all the imaginary dishes. Kathy watched her in silence, but when Elizabeth glared at her she stood up and tried to convince Elizabeth that she was helping. She also tried to move near the shaft, but Elizabeth managed to keep herself between Kathy and the ladder.
“Blow out the lights,” Elizabeth commanded. She stood at the bottom of the ladder, the flashlight in her hand.
“Turn on the flashlight,” Kathy countered. Elizabeth snapped it on.
“Will you hold it while I climb up the ladder?”
Elizabeth nodded. Kathy moved toward the ladder.
“The candles,” Elizabeth said softly. “I told you to blow them out.”
Obediently Kathy turned back to the stone slab. She blew out one of the candles, then stooped over the other one. Just before she blew on its tiny flame, she stared over the flickering light and saw Elizabeth smiling at her. She blew out the candle.
As the flame died, Elizabeth snapped off the flashlight and darted up the rope ladder. Below her she could hear the first scream of terror burst from Kathy’s throat.
“Eliiiiiiiizabeth!” Kathy wailed. “Nooooooo! Oh, God, Elizabeth, don’t leave me here!”
The screams built in intensity, and Elizabeth heard the other child stumbling around in the blackness of the pit, knowing that Kathy was trying to find the end of the rope ladder that should have dangled somewhere in the suffocating darkness. But she had already pulled the rope ladder out of the pit. Kathy’s screams echoed around her, resounding off the walls of the upper chamber, pounding against her eardrums. She coiled the ladder, then moved once more to the top of the shaft. She threw the beam of light downward and watched as Kathy swarmed into it like a moth around a lightbulb.
Kathy’s face tipped up, drained of blood and shining palely in the uncertain light of the electric torch. Her mouth was contorted into the shape of the screams that tore upward from some spot deep in her guts, and her arms were upraised, pleading.
“Noooooo!” she screamed “Pleeeeeaaaase nooooo!”
Elizabeth held the flashlight steady and stared down at her friend.
“You have to be quiet in the secret place,” she said softly. Then she snapped the light off and moved to the entrance of the tunnel by memory, surely, swiftly. She began crawling toward the surface.
By the time she emerged on the embankment, the roaring of the surf drowned out whatever remnants of the screams might have found their way through the tunnel, and Elizabeth was pleased that she no longer heard sounds from the secret place.
She began making her way deftly up the embankment and disappeared into the woods.
15
Marilyn Burton didn’t begin worrying until eight o’clock that night. If she had been home earlier in the day she would have begun worrying then, but, having closed her shop at six as usual, the