The Other Side of Midnight

"What's the matter?"

"I think we took the wrong turn back there."

Catherine nodded. "All right. Let's go back."

"Let me make sure. You stay here."

She looked at him in surprise. "Where are you going?"

"Just a few feet. Back to that entrance." His voice sounded strained and unnatural.

"I'll come with you."

"I can do it faster alone, Catherine. I just want to check the fork where we made the last turn." He sounded impatient. "I'll be back in ten seconds."

"All right," she said, uneasily.

Catherine stood there watching as Larry turned away from her and walked back into the dark from which they had come, enclosed in a halo of light like a moving angel in the bowels of the earth. A moment later the light disappeared, and she was plunged into the deepest blackness she had ever known. She stood there, shivering, counting off the seconds in her mind. And then the minutes.

Larry did not return.

Catherine waited, feeling the blackness lapping around her like malicious invisible waves. She called out, "Larry?" and her voice was hoarse and uncertain, and she cleared her throat and tried again louder. "Larry?" She could hear the sound dying a few feet away from her, murdered by the darkness. It was as though nothing could live in this place, and Catherine began to feel the first tendrils of terror. Of course Larry will be right back, she told herself. All I have to do is stay where I am and remain calm.

The black minutes dragged by, and she began to face the fact that something had gone terribly wrong. Larry could have had an accident, he could have slipped on the loose stones and hit his head on the sharp sides of the cave. Perhaps at this moment he was lying just a few feet away from her, bleeding to death. Or perhaps he was lost. His flashlight could have gone out and he might be somewhere in the bowels of this cave trapped, as she was trapped.

A feeling of suffocation began to close in on Catherine, choking her, filling her with a mindless panic. She turned and began to walk slowly in the direction from which she had come. The tunnel was narrow, and if Larry was lying on the ground, helpless and hurt, she had a good chance of finding him. Soon she would come to the place where the passage had divided. She moved cautiously, the loose stones rolling beneath her feet. She thought she heard a distant sound and stopped to listen. Larry? It was gone, and she began to move again, and then she heard it once more. It was a whirring sound, as though someone were running a tape recorder. There was someone down here!

Catherine yelled aloud and then listened as the sound of her voice drowned in the silence. There it was again! The whirring noise. It was coming this way. It grew louder, racing toward her in a great screaming rush of wind. It was getting closer and closer. Suddenly it leaped on her in the dark; cold and clammy skin brushed against her cheeks and kissed her lips and she felt something crawling on her head and sharp claws in her hair and her face was smothered by the mad beating of wings of some nameless horror attacking her in the blackness.

She fainted.

She was lying on a sharp spike of stone and the discomfort of it brought her back to consciousness. Her cheek was warm and sticky, and it was a minute before Catherine realized that it was her blood. She remembered the wings and the claws that had attacked her in the dark and she began to shiver.

There were bats in the cave.

She tried to recall what she knew about bats. She had read somewhere that they were flying rats and that they congregated by the thousands. The only other information she could conjure up from her memory was that there were vampire bats, and she quickly dropped that thought. Reluctantly Catherine sat up, the palms of her hands stinging from being scraped on the sharp stones.

You can't just sit here, she told herself. You've got to get up and do something. Painfully she dragged herself to her feet. She had lost a shoe somehow and her dress was torn, but Larry would buy her a new one tomorrow. She pictured the two of them going into a little shop in the village, laughing and happy and buying a white summer dress for her, but somehow the dress became a shroud and her mind began to fill with panic again. She must keep thinking about tomorrow, not the nightmare she was engulfed in now. She must keep walking. But which way? She was turned around. If she walked the wrong way, she would be going deeper into the cave, and yet she knew she could not stay here. Catherine tried to estimate how much time had elapsed since they had entered the cave. It must have been an hour, possibly two. There was no way of knowing how long she had been unconscious. Surely they would be looking for Larry and her. But what if no one missed them? There was no check on who went in or out of the caves. She could be down here forever.

She took off her other shoe and began to walk, taking slow, careful steps, holding her burning hands out to avoid bumping into the rough sides of the tunnel. The longest journey begins with but a single step, Catherine told herself. The Chinese said that and look how smart they are. They invented firecrackers and chop suey, and they were too clever to get caught in some dark hole in the ground where no one could find them. If I keep walking, I'm going to bump into Larry or some tourists and we'll go back to the hotel and have a drink and laugh about all this. All I have to do is keep walking.

She stopped suddenly. In the distance she could hear the whirring sound again, moving toward her like some ghostly, phantom express train, and her body began to tremble uncontrollably, and she began to scream. An instant later, they were on her, hundreds of them, swarming over her, beating at her with their cold, clammy wings and smothering her with their furry rodent bodies in a nightmare of unspeakable horror.

The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was calling Larry's name.

She was lying on the cold, damp floor of the cave. Her eyes were closed, but her mind had suddenly awakened, and she thought, Larry wants to kill me. It was as thoug

h her subconscious had put the idea there intact. In a series of kaleidoscopic flashes she heard Larry saying, I'm in love with someone else...I want a divorce...and Larry moving toward her through the cloud on the mountaintop, his hands reaching for her...She remembered looking down the steep mountain and saying, It will take a long time to get down, and Larry saying, No, it won't...and Larry saying, We don't need a guide...I think we took the wrong turn. Wait here...I'll be back in ten seconds...And then the terrifying blackness.

Larry had never intended to return for her. The reconciliation, the honeymoon...it was all pretense, part of a plan to murder her. All the time she had been smugly thanking God for giving her a second chance, Larry was plotting to kill her. And he had succeeded, for Catherine knew she would never get out of here. She was buried alive in a black tomb of horror. The bats had gone, but she could feel and smell the filthy slime they had left all over her face and body, and she knew that they would be back for her. She did not know if she could keep her sanity through another attack. The thought of them made her begin to tremble again, and she forced herself to take slow, deep breaths.

And then Catherine heard it again and knew she could not stand it another time. It started as a low humming, and then a louder wave of sound, moving toward her. There was a sudden, anguished scream, and it rang out into the darkness over and over, and the other sound kept coming louder and louder, and out of the black tunnel a light appeared, and she heard voices calling out and hands began to reach for her and lift her and she wanted to warn them about the bats, but she was unable to stop screaming.

NOELLE AND CATHERINE

Athens: 1946

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