When Esther got to the office, the parking lot was gone. It was as if some great machine had carved all the asphalt out of the ground and lifted it away, leaving behind a dark fish bowl-shaped crater. Esther would have driven her car right in if Greg hadn’t run out in front of her.

Esther hit the brakes so hard her chin bounced off the steering wheel. “I almost killed you,” she told Greg after she rolled the window down.

“You almost killed yourself,” Greg said. Then Esther noticed that the parking lot’s lights were off. She thought it might have been a power outage, until she realized that the streetlights weren’t off. They were gone. The whole parking lot was gone. Just a foot away from her front tires the ground fell away into a sheer drop.

“A sinkhole,” Greg called it. He directed her to angle her car to block the way in from the street. Esther wasn’t sure why. He and she were the only two scheduled for the night shift.

With all the parking lot lights gone, the only illumination came from their headlights. Esther peered over the edge of the hole. It was all black. “How deep do you think it goes?”

Greg shrugged. “We should call the police or the fire department or something.”

“What’s that smell?”

From the sinkhole, a faint smell like old milk wafted up.

“Sewage, maybe,” Greg guessed.

Esther imagined herself in her car, driving into work. Then her car pointed straight down, her purse and loose change and old trash lifted off the seats and floor and falling up, her body falling upside down into void. If Greg hadn’t arrived at the office before her, she’d have driven straight into outer space.

“Should we be standing this close to the edge?” Esther asked.

“Probably not. I think I might have some flashlights.” Greg walked to his car, parked in the grass beside hers.

Esther stepped back from the edge. She stared down, trying to make out any shapes below. It was all black, and smelled terrible. Esther felt a chill. She wished Greg would hurry up. She didn’t like standing by herself beside an apparent gateway to hell. Luckily, she heard footsteps behind her. “This is crazy,” she said to Greg.

“My little doggy,” a harsh voice behind her said, and it wasn’t Greg’s.

Esther spun around. In glare from the headlights, all she could make out was a person-shaped shadow. Whoever it was, they were big. At least two heads taller than Esther. And they were coming closer.

“My little doggy,” the voice said again. A man’s voice. It was hoarse and ugly.

“What?” Esther backed up. Her heel stepped over the edge of the sinkhole. Esther could feel her heartbeat in her eye sockets.

“A little girl,” the voice said, sounding surprised. “You’re a little girl.”

Esther was not a little girl. She was a twenty-two year old woman who had just graduated from college. She was barely over five feet tall, though, and everyone thought she was younger. She tried to shout at the stranger to stay back, tried to sound threatening and scrappy, but her throat choked.

The figure moved closer. The man who moved out of the glare of the headlights was hideous.

He was tall but skinny. Too skinny. His skin was pale as moonlight. His skin looked thin as a sheet wrapped tight round a cadaver. The shapes of pointed bones stuck out all over him. His dirty clothes hung loose off his arms and legs. He stared down at Esther, wide-eyed. He had hollow, sunken, skull-like eyes. He didn’t blink. He gaped at her like he’d never seen another living person before. In the dark, his pupils were black.

Greg appeared beside him, holding two flashlights and saying, “What’s going on?”

Esther had never felt so relieved in her life. She rushed to Greg’s side. The man’s eyes followed her.

“My little doggy fell in,” the man said. When he opened his mouth, she saw that his teeth were rotten brown.

“Did you climb out of there?” Greg asked, looking the man up and down.

The man was covered in dirt. Splotches of dried black mud darkened his skin like bruises. Mud fell out of his hair, blackened his fingernails, even his teeth. And he was shaking.

“No, no, no, not me,” the man said, drawing his shivering arms around himself. He never looked away from Esther. “My little doggy, Rupert, ran right in. I tried to stop him, but he ran right in. Please get him out. He’s all I have.”

Greg turned around, and Esther almost screamed at him for turning his back on the zomboid freak from nowhere. But Greg didn’t seem perturbed at all. He pointed his flashlight into the hole and clicked it on. “Look at this,” he said.

Esther pulled her eyes off the man and stepped around Greg so that he was between her and the stranger. The little beam of Greg’s flashlight shone all the way to the bottom.

“Looks about ten or fifteen feet down,” Greg said. “What a mess.”

On the floor of the crater, cracked pieces of pavement lay in a crooked jumble, interspersed with bent metal light poles and and shattered concrete barriers. Esther didn’t see any dog.

“My little doggy fell in,” the man said, just behind Esther.

Esther turned slowly this time. She wasn’t surprised to find him standing right behind her, looking down, eyes wide.

“Please help,” he said, his chest and arms trembling. “Please get him out. Rupert’s all I have.”

Greg didn’t even turn around, kept pointing his flashlight down there. Esther hated him for being so useless.

“Oh my gosh,” Greg said. “I think I see him.”

Esther watched the man. For the first time since he’d shown up, he moved his eyes off her. He shuffled past her and kneeled down over the edge. Esther followed. Sure enough, in the gleam of the flashlight, at the bottom of the sinkhole, a little mangy dog stood among the rubble. It’s nose pointed up at them. In the light, the dog’s eyes glowed green.

“Rupert,” the man called hoarsely. “Rupert come back here.” The dog stayed put, and the man turned to Esther again, his eyes were wide and scared. “Please, you have to get him out.”

“We’ll have to wait for the police to get here,” Greg said casually.

“No, no, no,” the man shrieked. He was shaking more than ever. “I can’t wait. He could be hurt. You have to get him out. Please, please, please. He’s all I have.”

The man started to sob, and even Esther started to feel sorry for him. But there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d go down there.

“All right,” Greg said.

Esther was certain she must have misheard until Greg stooped over the edge and started looking for footholds. “You can’t be serious,” she said.

“I am,” he said. “It’ll only take a second to grab the dog and carry it back up.”

“You’re literally crazy.”

Greg shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Besides getting swallowed up by the earth and transported to hell, you mean? Like, is this a joke?” Esther’s voice started to break. Greg had lost his mind. He was going to go down into a cave of horrors and leaving her alone with the wonder freak.

Greg had already started lowering himself down. “I’ll be fine.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the man was saying.

Esther crouched next to Greg and whispered, “Please don’t leave me alone up here. This guy is weirding me out.”

“Then go wait in your car.” Greg’s head disappeared below the ledge.

Esther could have screamed. She turned to run to her car.

The man stood between her and the car.

“Little girl,” he said, staring again. “You have silver hair.”

Esther smiled as politely as she could and said thank you. She tried to keep her breathing steady.

“Little girl,” the man said, coming closer. “Little girl, do the butterflies love you? Your hair smells like nectar. Do the butterflies flutter in your hair?”

Esther turned back to the hole, grabbed the ledge, and lowered herself down. She didn’t give herself even a moment to freak out or talk herself out of it. Anything would be better than staying up there alone with a real life boogeyman. “I’m coming too,” she called to Greg, who was already halfway down, hanging off the wall of the sinkhole below her.

“Whatever,” he called back.

The last Esther saw of the man as she went below the ledge was rotten teeth and a freakish crooked grin. Once she started down, Esther realized how stupid this decision had been. The side of the sinkhole was slick mud. There were enough roots and stones to use as footholds, but half the time she took a step, the mud beneath her gave way. She almost fell half a dozen times. She hated herself. She hated that weirdo. She hated his dog. And she especially hated Greg for making her do this.

Something moved by her hand. Esther froze, watching. It moved again, a little quick shadowy skitter, just by her fingers. “Greg,” she practically screeched. “There are things in the dirt!”

“They’re bugs,” he said, as if that made it any better.

Centipedes. Millipedes. Spiders. Beetles. Of course there were. Creeping, crawling, skittering, hairy miniature horrors lived in the damp dirt, probably losing their minds over the great chalupa of an idiot disturbing their muddy home.

Esther felt something crawl up her pants. Something quick and small with too many legs tickled the hairs on her calf. Esther gasped and violently kicked her leg to shake it off. She lost her grip on the root she’d been holding. Esther fell. She tried to grasp another root, a rock, anything, but her hand filled with mud. The side of the sinkhole rushed by.

The back of her head hit something hard. A ringing pounding screech filled her ears. Her whole body felt numb.

Esther blinked. Greg was shining a flashlight in her face.

“You okay,” he asked.

Slowly, the screaming in her ears faded to a dull ring, replaced by splitting pain. “No, you idiot,” she mumbled, running her tongue along her teeth to check if they were all still there. “I hit my head.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

Esther touched the back of her head. It felt warm and slick. “Oh my God, I’m actually gonna die down here.”

“Probably not.” Greg sounded way too calm about all this. He examined her head with the flashlight. “Looks like it’s just a scrape. Can you stand up?”

Esther lifted herself up. The screaming in her head came roaring back. The ground somersaulted under her feet. She sat back down. She looked up at the wall of the sinkhole. “I’m not gonna be able to climb back up,” she said, and the realization made her feel terrible and stupid. She was stuck.

“I’ll call EMS.” Greg reached into his pockets. “Oh no.”

“What’s wrong,” Esther asked, checking her legs and arms and ribs to see if anything was broken. Besides a lot of mud and some scrapes and the fact that she was living in a Twilight Zone-style nightmare, she seemed to be fine.

“I must have left my phone in my car,” Greg said, not even bothering to sound embarrassed.

Jeez, he really was useless. Esther reached into her own pockets. They were empty. Esther nearly threw up. She was stuck in a hole in the middle of the night with a concussion, an idiot, and a probable serial killer, and had no way of calling for help. She couldn’t believe it. She’d had her phone in her jeans’ pocket. She’d never taken it out.

“That guy took it,” she said, remembering his bizarre grin as she’d descended into the sinkhole. No wonder he’d been so happy. He’d stumbled on a buy-one-get-one-free serial killer special, no extra cost, this night only. Two chumps ready to rock climb into hell at nothing more than a half-assed sob story and a passing mention of a lost dog.

“No, he didn’t,” Greg said. “You probably just left it in your car.”

“I didn’t,” Esther swore. “That guy’s a weirdo. He probably lifted it right out of our pockets while we were looking down at the dog. Sleight of hand. I bet he put the dog down here on purpose.”

“You’re acting crazy,” Greg said. “He’s just some homeless guy. He’s lived around here for years. He’s never bothered anybody. I think his name is Mikolaj or something.”

“I don’t care what his name is,” Esther whispered, trying to keep her voice quiet so Mikolaj or something wouldn’t hear. “I know I had my phone. Now it’s gone.”

“Hey, up there!” Greg shouted, his voice echoing off the sinkhole walls.

For a second, Esther was so shocked by the noise that she didn’t know how to react. After Greg started shouting again, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him down. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Asking Mikolaj for help.” Greg wrenched his shirt out of her grip. “He’s the only other person around. You feel like sitting down here all night?”

“Are you crazy? He’s the one who put us down here!”

Greg ignored her and kept shouting. The screaming in Esther’s head came back. It sounded like somebody had packed a clothes washer into her head and set it to heavy load. She held her hands over her ears to drown out Greg’s voice.

The idiot kept at it for a few minutes before giving up. “I guess he must have wandered off.”

Esther didn’t know if she should be grateful or terrified for that.

Greg handed her a flashlight. “I carried two down. I’m not sure how much battery they have left. These have been sitting in my glove compartment for years.”

Esther couldn’t help but laugh. It was so perfect it might as well have been a sitcom. Not just injured and stuck in a hole in the ground with a klepto psycho lurking nearby, but without any light. She imagined a studio audience losing their minds with laughter.

“The dog’s gone, too,” Greg said, sweeping his flashlight’s beam across the ground. “Probably spooked it when you fell.”

Esther started to say she didn’t care about some stupid dog, but then Greg walked away from her. “Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m gonna look around,” he said without stopping.

“Are you seriously leaving me by myself right now?” Esther couldn’t believe anyone could be such an ass. “I’m hurt.”

“Don’t be a baby.” Greg didn’t even slow down. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

Esther could have screamed. Again. She pushed herself up onto her feet. The sinkhole spun around her, and the ringing exploded in her ears. She shut her eyes and took a few deep breaths to settle herself, then followed after him.

She scrambled over a pile of broken concrete and felt like the survivor of an apocalypse. It was like something out of a movie. Shattered asphalt, street lights split in half like toothpicks, all of it darker than night. Everything smelled like mud and rotten egg.

When she caught up to Greg, he said, “It’s a cave.”

He was right. It wasn’t just a sinkhole. Beneath the edge of the hole, a cavern continued beneath the ground. Esther shone her flashlight into the dark, but couldn’t find the end of the cave. It must have gone pretty far in.

“I think this goes underneath our building,” Greg said. He started forward again, and Esther had no choice but to follow. As they went further, the walls slowly closed in. It was a tunnel. The floor was sloped down. They were going deeper into the ground. It got darker the farther they moved from the sinkhole.

Esther had forgotten about the old milk smell, but it got worse the deeper they went. It was coming from the other end of the tunnel. It smelled old, stale. It smelled like fruit left in the back of the fridge too long, fruit leaking brown liquid and sprouting malignant hairs.

The tunnel widened into an open space. It was black as pitch in there. Esther pointed her flashlight inside, and the dim cone of the beam looked impotent and useless against the black of the cave. Greg marched obliviously forward. In the dirt and the rocks on the floor of the cave, bits of silver sparkled in the glow of the flashlights, like gemstones. Esther leaned down to examine one.

Tin cans. There were dozens of tin cans lying all over the floor of the cave. Esther reached to pick one up, and her head nearly exploded when she reached down too quick. The can was empty. They all were empty. The metal was rusted and the labels faded. They had pictures of beans and fruits on their sides, all turned brown.

“Was someone living down here?” Esther asked.

“Obviously,” Greg said, already moving away from her.

Next they found a couch. It sagged in the dirt, its deflated cushions stamped with a damp bleached floral design. A dark ugly yellow color stained the seat.

Greg sat down, put his feet up.

“How the heck does something like that end up somewhere like here?” Esther asked, not sure why she bothered.

“I dunno,” Greg said, enjoying himself. “Hey, do you hear something?”

Past the now constant ringing in her ears, Esther did hear something. A growl bled out from somewhere deeper in the cave. Not an animalistic growl. More like machinery. There was crunching and crackling too, as if great metal teeth were grinding up animal bones. Esther vaguely hoped those bones were the dog’s.

Around the couch lay a bunch of doll-like figures made out of twigs and string. Greg picked one up in the shape of a person, except in place of a head, a twisted sharp three-pronged sliver of metal stuck up between its shoulders. Esther imagined dead body sprouting a fig tree out of its neck.

She picked up a pair of twig-figures that had been tied together. Their arms and legs and necks were twisted, looped, and bent at bizarre angles. They looked like they were supposed to be embracing. This time Esther imagines a couple run through a taffy candy machine. The whole place was like something out of a serial killer’s arts and crafts project.

Esther thought about the rotten-toothed weirdo up top who had mysteriously disappeared after stealing their phones and tricking them into climbing down here.

“I think we need to get away from here,” she told Greg.

“Stop acting weird,” he said, not going anywhere. “You’re making me nervous.”

Esther traced the zigzagged broken necks of the figures in her hand. The ringing in her head got louder and louder, till it sounded like screaming, like the twig figures were screaming. And that ugly rotten smell, and the sound like chewing, and it started to seem like they weren’t embracing, but strangling each other. Looking at it made Esther so nauseous that she flung it away from herself as hard as she could.

Breathing heavily, trying to keep the contents of her stomach down, Esther followed the path of the thrown twig figures with her flashlight. Beside where it had landed, a man was standing.

Esther froze. She gripped the flashlight in both hands to keep from dropping it. She tried to scream, but nothing came out.

The man stood across from her. She couldn’t see his face. He didn’t move, and Esther couldn’t pull her eyes away. It felt like a lifetime before she finally managed to squeak, “Greg, for God’s sake, help me.”

Greg was beside her in a moment. Without speaking, he walked cautiously towards the man. “It’s just some clothes,” he said when he reached where the man was standing.

Esther let herself breathe. On trembling legs, she followed Greg. A set of clothes had been laid out on floor of the cave. A button up business casual shirt, a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, even a pair of socks and shoes, all arranged in the shape of a person, all faded and brown.

And that wasn’t the only one. Esther shined her flashlight around. She saw other sets of clothes, a woman’s dress and necklace and high heel shoes, a child’s pajama onesie, a mailman’s uniform with a mail bag. About nine outfits in all, placed in a circle around each other.

Greg reached into the one the pants’ pockets. “There’s a wallet in here,” he said. He opened it. “Wow, there’s even money inside.”

The ringing in Esther’s head was getting louder again. Pounding, thumping, like her brain was knocking on the inside of her skull, begging to be let out. “We need to get away from here,” she said again.

Greg didn’t say anything. He took the money out of the wallet and stuck it in his pocket.

“I’m serious,” Esther insisted, backing away. “Do you think this is a dry cleaner’s run by spiders? No one just leaves their clothes in a place like this. No one just leaves their wallet behind.”

Greg stooped down and checked the other clothes.

“Are you listening to me?” Esther considered slapping him. “We are in a seriously fucked situation right now. How can you not see that?”

Greg finally looked up at her, then past her, eyes widening. “Hey, the dog’s back.”

Esther spun around. The dog stood a ways off. It’s fur was dirty and tangled. Its eyes glowed green in the flashlight. The dog looked right at her, but didn’t move at all. It didn’t even look like it was breathing.

“Rupert,” Greg called, sounding friendly. “Hey, Rupert. Hey, buddy boy. Hey, good boy.”

The dog didn’t respond. It stood as still as a dead pet after a trip to the taxidermist.

Greg walked past her and towards the dog. Esther refused to follow him this time. Esther refused to be reeled into obvious danger like a fish on a hook. Especially when the an idiot like Greg was handling the line.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as Greg neared, the dog bolted. It silently sprinted deeper into the cave. Even less surprisingly, Greg followed without hesitation. Esther watched the dim glow of his flashlight disappear around a corner.

Best case scenario, the psycho who’d been living down here might be so busy scooping out Greg’s insides like spaghettios out of a tub that she could slip by unnoticed.

Esther waited. She expected to hear a scream, or sounds of a fight, or of Greg running scared back the way he’d come. Instead, all she heard was the ringing in her ears and the sound of those chewing machines. The machinery rattled and scraped, growing louder and quieter in turn, as if they were moving closer and then further away. Esther couldn’t imagine what kind of machine could make that noise, or why it would be down here.

“Hey, hey, Esther!” Greg finally shouted from somewhere far away. “Hey, come here.”

Esther stayed put. She had no interest in peeling back whatever new layer of hell Greg had managed to stumble on this time.

“Esther, come on!” Greg continued. “I found a way out.”

Esther doubted it, but she didn’t have much a choice. She followed the sound of Greg’s voice deeper into the cave. The sound of machinery grew louder, and the rotten egg smell grew stronger, and was joined by a new smell. Gasoline.

She found Greg standing next to a crack in the floor. A dull yellow light shone from underneath the crack. Greg folded his arms over his chest, a smug look on his face. “The dog went under there. It’s too tight for me, but I think you’re small enough to squeeze through.”

Esther kneeled down next to the crack. It was only a couple feet wide and only a few inches tall. If she hugged her arms to her sides and flopped on her belly like a worm, she might be able to make it. The sound of machinery could clearly be heard on just the other side, and the smell of egg and gasoline was so strong by the opening it made her gag.

“No way,” she said.

“Esther, come on,” Greg pleaded. “This is the only way out, unless you want to sit down here all night.”

“What if I get stuck?”

“I can pull you back out,” Greg said. “You’ll be fine.”

Esther cursed and got down on her belly. She put her straight ahead and pulled herself into the opening. There was so little space, she had to hold her head at an awkward angle. Her cheek pressed against the floor and her ear opposite scraped the opening’s ceiling. If she had to get out of there quick, like say if a rabid dog or subterranean freak showed up on the other side, she’d be in trouble.

She was moving painfully slowly with just her arms. “Push me,” she told Greg.

Greg put his hands on the back of her shoes and pushed. Esther slid across the ground slow as a snail with a sprained ankle. She face belly and arms scraped against little rocks. Her body felt like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed. She tried not think about how many miles of rock she was sandwiched between. Just as she thought the pressure was going to pop her like a zit, her arms went out the other side. She dragged herself forward and out of the crack.

“I made it!”

“Awesome,” Greg called back. “What do you see?”

Esther was standing in another open cavern like the last, but this one had strings of dim yellow lights hung along the sides. For a moment, she just enjoyed being in the light, dim as it was. She swore then and there that she’d never go out at night again, never turn off all the lights at home.

She could hear the machinery, louder than ever, but the only one nearby was small yellow truck, like you’d see at a construction site. It wasn’t moving. It had black tread tires and a long mechanical arm stuck out from its from its front, at the end of which hung a drill longer than she was tall, half buried in rubble. The cab had been crushed by rocks the size of her head.

“There’s some sort of digging machine,” she told Greg.

“That probably explains the cave in,” he said, “ Anything else? A way out?”

Esther examined the crushed cab. Protruding from underneath the rocks, long and limp and pale, was a human arm.

“Oh, God,” Esther said.

She smacked the arm to make sure it was dead. It felt stiff and cold.

The floor of the cave somersaulted under her feet. At first Esther thought it was her head again, until the rocks started moving too. The whole cave shook. Aftershock, she realized. Earthquakes always had aftershocks. You were never supposed to go in buildings after an earthquake until you were sure the aftershocks were done, and she and Greg had dove right in as soon as the first cave in was done.

The lights on the cave wall flickered and went out. The sound of the machinery sputtered, grinded, and stopped. The smell got suddenly worse. Esther curled up on the ground and prayed.

When the shaking stopped, Esther was alone in the dark again. The machinery had stopped, but a new sound had begun. It was a wet gurgling sound, like blowing bubbles into a milkshake with a straw.

For a long time, Esther crouched in the dark and listened to that freakish wet sound, too scared to move. Finally, she called out, “Greg, what the hell is that?”

A long wheeze emerged in the gurgling, like someone was trying to say something but couldn’t catch their breath.

“Oh no,” Esther said. “Greg, is that you?”

The gurgling quieted, grew louder, quieter again, like breathing.

Esther crawled to the opening. In the aftershock, the rock had shifted, lowered. She could barely reach her arm through now. She could see the light of Greg’s flashlight on the other side, and what looked like his leg, spasming violently, as if he were having a seizure.

“Greg!” she yelled. “What do you need? What can I do for you? Please answer.”

The gurgling erupted into an abrupt mucousy gasp, and then there was a sound like breaking a stick of celery in half, and then silence.

“Greg, please!” Esther cried. “Please don’t leave me. Greg, please don’t leave. Greg, please don’t leave me alone down here. Greg, you stupid ass, please. Oh, please answer. Please don’t leave me. I hate you. Please don’t leave me. I hate you. I hate you. Please don’t leave me.”

Silence. All was silence except for Esther’s sobs. The lights on the walls flickered. Went out. Flickered again. Went out again. Esther saw the cave in flashes of lightning. The sounds of machinery sputtered to life again.

Esther pressed her hands to her mouth to muffle her sobs. She wasn’t alone down here. Someone was operating that equipment. She had to move. Something had killed Greg. Someone had killed Greg. That someone knew where she was.

In the lightning yellow flashes, Esther got up. She hugged the wall of the cave. She followed the sound of machinery.

Esther found a door. From behind the door, she heard the ripping and gnashing of metal teeth, louder than ever. The ground around the door shook with mechanical rhythms. Esther grabbed the door handle with two hands and jerked it open. She ran inside.

Esther slipped. Her shin slammed into something hard. She yelled out, but couldn’t even hear her own voice over the sound of pounding, scraping, grinding machines. Something thick and slick coated the floor, like cold pancake syrup. It smelled rotten. The room was black except the occasional flash from the cavern’s malfunctioning lights. In the flashes, she saw moving shapes of monstrous machinery, whole assembly lines, shuddering, stopping, starting again.

Esther tried to stand, slipped again. She cut her hand on something sharp. In the lightning flashes, she saw tools. Screws, knives in bizarre twisted shapes, three pronged forks just like the one that’d been sticking out of the twig and string figure’s head. She grabbed one.

Eyes. Eyes were looking out at her from the dark, low to the ground. Esther raised the sharpened tool and in the air and ran at the eyes. She stopped, slipped, stayed on her feet.

It was the dog. He’d tucked himself into a corner. He watched her.

“Your fault,” Esther said, her voice lost in the cracking of machinery. She swung the tool at the dog, but he backed away from her. “You little shit,” Esther said, and stumbled after him. She swung again, and this time she hit. She swung again and again. “You little ugly shit. You piece of shit.”

When she’d finished, Esther staggered back out of the room and closed the door behind her.

“Rupert,” a voice called from the dark. “Rupert, where did you go?”

Esther covered her mouth with her hands. It was him. It was that freak from outside.

“Rupert, please,” the hoarse voice called, nearby. “Rupert, please come back. It’s dangerous here. They eat little boys and girls here, Rupert.”

Esther crouched close to the ground. He’d followed her. How did he get in here? The opening had been too small for anyone but her or the dog.

“Rupert, if they eat little boys and girls, what do you think they’ll do to little doggies?”

The voice was coming closer. Esther held the sharp tool tight in her fist. Esther waited until the voice got close. Esther jumped out. The lights along the walls flashed like lightning. Esther saw the man’s face, saw his gaping sunken eyes.

“Little girl,” he said, staring. “What have you done? You had butterflies in your hair, but where did they go?”

Esther shoved the tool in his chest. All at once, the screaming in her head came roaring back. But it wasn’t screaming this time. It was laughing. It was ugly, piggish, shrieking laughter. She wrenched the tool free and ran.

“But why?” he was saying behind her. “What did I do?”

Then came the wet gurgling again, the same as Greg. The man’s lungs made the same echoing wet gurgle. The sound bounced off the cave walls, followed Esther deeper and deeper, haunted her steps.

Esther ran, tripped, crawled, ran. Esther fell in mud, swam, swallowed mud, coughed, ran. Esther shoved herself in little holes, tucked herself into impossible corners, ran. The man’s cries followed her all the way.

---

Two teenagers stepped into the cavern, a girl with a lit cigarette between her lips and a boy trailing behind holding a six pack of cheap beer.

“It was about ten years ago,” the girl was saying. “I was in grade school and all the parents and teachers tried not let us hear anything about it, but we could tell all the adults were shook.”

“Christ,” the boy said. He was from out of town, didn’t know anything of the local history. “And how many victims?”

“They never found out,” the girl said. “The caves around their workshop were so unstable, it was never safe enough to do a full investigation, but the police said they were going back over a decade of missing persons cases.”

The boy stopped. “The caves are unstable?”

“What are you, scared?” The girl turned and winked at him. “Don’t worry, those ones are way over on the other side of the cave system from where we came in. They’re miles from here.”

The boy’s name was Eli. He watched the girl, her blue hair, the nonchalant confidence with which she walked. He regretted coming here more every second, but he thought he might be in love with the girl, so he kept going. “And nobody would have ever known anything about it if it hadn’t been for the cave in?”

“Nope,” she said. “And they never found the girl. They sent search and rescue teams in the same way we came. But three of the rescue workers died and they called the search off.”

“Died how?”

The girl’s name was Sasha. Everytime she spoke, a fog of smoke trailed from her lips. “They said the one guy was an accident, but nobody believed it. The other two disappeared.”

“What do you mean ‘disappeared?’”

“One of them, they found some clothes. A shoe, a scrap of shirt, that sort of thing. But the clothes were scattered all over a bunch of different caves and they never found him. The other one was just gone, no trace. I guess that happens in caves sometimes. Take a wrong turn and never find your way back out.”

Eli shuddered. “And what are we doing in here then?”

Sasha grinned at him. “We’re drinking with the dead and the ghosts and the murderers. Then we can fool around.”

Eli couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he shut up. If he had known about any of that stuff, he never would have followed Sasha into these caves. He didn’t like any part of this. Except the girl. And he liked her a lot, so he kept going.

Until he stumbled into her back. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked, stepping around her.

Sasha’s cigarette fell limp out of her mouth. She pointed her flashlight forwards. “There’s a body,” she whispered.

Eli followed her flashlight and saw it. Crouched in the dirt, facing the wall, was a pale little shape. At first he wasn’t sure it was human, but he saw the trail of a spine, and shoulder blades, and a head. His first thought was one of the missing rescuers, or maybe one of the kidnapping victims, escaped from those psychos’ human playpen but not from the caves.

“It’s moving,” he said. Almost imperceptibly, the shoulders rose and fell, as if with very shallow breaths.

“Holy shit,” Sasha said, all bravado gone. “What do we do?”

“Hey, uh, are you okay?” Eli called.

The body stretched. The body stood. It was a woman, Eli realized. Not wearing any clothes. He had never seen a naked woman before. She was as skinny as a skeleton. Her skin was the color of milk. Her hair was long and gray. Her spine was warped, and she stood at an angle.

Eli set the beer down. “Do you need help? Are you hurt?”

The woman faced the wall. Her shoulder rose and fell, rose and fell.

Eli stepped towards her, slowly.

“What’s that in her hand?” Sasha asked.

The woman gripped something sharp and small and rusted in her left hand. The woman faced the wall.

Eli moved towards her. “Miss?” he said.

Eli held out his hand. He touched her shoulder.

The woman turned. The woman screamed. Her hair was silver.