The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Thirteen: We Should Have Brought More Flashlights

    The green that Ez had attempted to explain to her parents over the phone was vivid and streaked through the rock formations that led into the mouth of the cave. Not even the smartest among them could name the mineral that deposited such beauty but Ez stopped to take a few photos with Mitchell's phone once they were sure their parents were not calling them back.
    "So are they coming to get us, or...?" Declan asked as he watched his three siblings pass him by and climb over a boulder.
    "I doubt it. Dad still sounded sick, right?" Ez asked Callum.
    He shrugged.
    Ez noticed he had checked the pocket of his jeans for his phone and then cursed when he remembered he hadn't brought it. Their mother was notoriously stringent about their cellphone bill but not because of Callum, Ez, or Mitchell. If any of them had been allowed to bring their phones, Declan would have insisted on his—then, later at home, their mother would have to murder him for over the bill. Ez knew that Callum was dying to share his exploration skills with his not-girlfriend back home. She was the one who'd dared him to come here, she might as well be informed of his every step of progress, shouldn't she?
    "What, did you promise to bring her back something?" Ez asked her brother.
    He'd started walking ahead of them, carrying one of the flashlights and leaving Ez and Mitchell at the mercy of Declan who had taken control of the other. Callum stuttered for a moment and they could hear him muttering to himself that Ez always seemed to know everything.
    "You know there's nothing here, right? It probably even dead-ends and we just have to come back the same way."
    Moans of protest from Declan came up from behind. "Are you serious? This is such a waste of time!"
    "What else would we be doing, Declan? We've been over this," Ez punctuated her speech with snaps of her head, still not looking back at her twin but ensuring he understood her annoyance with him.
    Ahead of them and only a few yards into the cave entrance, Callum halted, mid-stride, and his sneaker scuffed over some of the loose pebbles on top of the hard rock below their feet.
    "Did you hear that?"
    "Oh man, if something flies at me right now? I'm out," Declan responded defiantly. He flashed his light up at the ceiling which wasn't that far above them. But there wasn't a creature in sight and they could see only a gentle glistening of condensation on the rock face.
    "I thought I heard a voice," Callum whispered.
    "What?" Ez said as she continued forward and saddled up beside Callum. "Are you sure?"
    Ez could see the frown on his face as he shone the light onto hers and the light reflected back.
    "No, I'm not sure," he said. He pulled the light away from her squinting eyes and illuminated the path ahead again. The beam got lost in the darkness and the quiet of the close space enveloped them with only Declan's noisy mouth-breathing and the hands on Mitchell's analog watch breaking it. "Never mind," Callum announced finally, after nearly a minute.
    "So we're going...yep, I guess we are," Declan complained as his siblings moved all at once down the cave's entrance tunnel.
    "There!" Callum said, suddenly stopping again and freezing still. "Did you hear that?"
    "Ca-aaa-llll," Mitchell whined. "Stop it. I'm gonna go back."
    "Stop acting like such a baby, Michelle," Declan was quick to answer. Declan's feet, however, were turned in the direction of where they'd come, as if he'd had the same thought.
    A short sound, like a squeak, came from somewhere above them.
    "That's a bat," Ez said confidently.
    Callum's face was shadowed but a look of concern washed over his features. "That's not what I heard." He pointed the flashlight at the ceiling and around them, at any strange shape that he could find. "Are you serious? You didn't hear anything that sounded like a voice?"
    "And you did?" Ez sounded incredulous and almost angry.
    A faint sound, like a low-tone wind chime dancing in a breeze, bounced off the walls and then ceased as if it had never existed.
    "I wouldn't call that a voice, but I heard that," Ez said. A shiver pulsed through her shoulders.
    "I vote we go back now," Declan announced.
    "Me too." Mitchell never agreed with Declan.
    "Call mom and dad, pick up some more tacos, have a nice afternoon in. Not here. In the sun. Where there's light. Lots of light."
    Declan was slowly backing down the tunnel but all at once, his brother, the oldest and supposedly the wisest, bolted from his frozen spot.
    "Callum!" Ez cried, stunned to be left in the dark and that her uptight, straight-As, would-rather-study-than-do-anything-fun brother just...ran. Down a dark and unfamiliar tunnel. Through possibly (she now believed) haunted territory. Into the unknown. Into danger.
    "Nope! Nope, nope-nope-nope-nope-nope," Declan began sputtering. "That idiot can screw for all I care. Nope." He was closest to the entrance but was still covered on all sides in darkness, and he was shining the flashlight beam at the ground at Mitchell's feet. His sister was barely visible at all and stood frozen.
    "Did he just...run away?" she asked, aghast. "Callum! Callum you get back here right NOW...THIS ISN'T FUNNY! ...CALLUM!"
    For a few moments they could definitely hear their brother's rapid footfalls as they grew fainter and fainter. If they'd counted the ticks of Mitchell's watch, they'd have realized that Callum had gained over a two-minute lead if they were to attempt to follow him. But then a crunching sound echoed from up ahead in the tunnel paired with a cry of pain—Callum's pain. Then there was the hollow crack of tumbling rock. Ez called his name again and Declan let out a groan of annoyance.
    "Seriously?"
    "Come on! Or give me the flashlight!" Ez was waving to Declan in the dark even though it was pointless—not only could Declan not see her, he obviously didn't care if his brother was in mortal peril or not. Mitchell was closer to her but he'd closed down and was shaking. "Declan, you know I will tell mom and dad EXACTLY what you're doing right now AS SOON AS I GET THE CHANCE!" Her words echoed off the tunnel walls and drowned out what sounded like another cry from their misplaced sibling.
    "Fine! Here, take it." Declan moved to chuck the flashlight overhead but a realization came over him before Ez could yell at him. He sighed and pushed past Mitchell to walk toward his sister. Mitchell whimpered but it seemed to break him of his fright.
    "Do you think he's ok?" Mitchell asked Ez (of course).
"I don't know, Mitchell. But I guess we have to find out," she replied, her words gaining speed and aggravation as she continued. Declan had passed the flashlight to her, beam-first, and she fumbled for a second, nearly dropping it. She called for Callum again but he wouldn't respond.
    "If we die in here, I am going to KILL Cal," Declan warned.
    Ez huffed a response and took her first steps forward toward Callum, her other brothers following, reluctantly but closely behind.
    "Callum?" Ez called his name every few seconds or about every five steps. No response.
    Declan tried.
    Mitchell tried to try. His voice caught in a squeak in his throat.
    Ez tried again to estimate the distance Callum would have travelled: running, in the dark, for approximately two minutes (she guessed). He should be close. If he wasn't covered in thousands of pounds of rock.
    "Let's just go back," Declan whispered—mostly because if Callum could hear him, he didn't want to be the voice behind the decision to abandon him (if Callum DID get out of this alive, he'd never let Declan hear the end of it). "They've got to have some search and rescue thing like back home. They'll find him."
    The sound from before—the wind chime—floated through the thin air, but this time the sound was more identifiable. Ez could recognize it as a howling. Like a dog that'd lost its master.
    "What was that?" Declan asked with a small voice.
    "Deck?" Callum's voice called from nearby.
    Ez spun with the flashlight and pointed it at every nook she could find. They hadn't been able to see that a cloud of dust hung in the air and Ez's flashlight beam glinted upon the crushed remains of Callum's at the foot of a pile of rock.
"Callum!" Ez cried without actually seeing her brother. The part of the rock wall that had fallen had broken into smaller pieces, but the various sizes of debris were still big enough to crush a human.
    "Over here," Callum's voice called again.
    Ez lifted the flashlight beam up the rock pile and found that there was a cavern beyond it. The rocks fell away from it in a sweeping incline and at the peak of this new hill, Ez found the caramel eyes of her brother squinting down at her.
"Oh!" Ez's cry was more of relief at first, but she repeated it and added a tone of anger. "Are you okay or what?"
    Callum coughed and waved dust away from his face. "Yeah," he said, blinking hard. "Got a little dust in my eyes, but I'm good."
    "THEN GET DOWN HERE SO I CAN KILL YOU!" Ez screamed, once she was satisfied with Callum's answer.
    "Relax!" Callum said at once.
    "Relax?" Declan challenged this time. "Relax?"
    He was in the dark behind Ez and Mitchell could be heard panting somewhere behind them all. Ez shone the light back at her twin and youngest brother and found that Declan's features, often praised for their symmetry and sculpture, were twisted into a scowl and his eyes were tightly fixed (holding back tears, perhaps). Mitchell hadn't had a panic attack in years but looked close to breaking down.
    "You just pulled us into the middle of a death trap for what? So some chick in your chess club will show her boobs?"
    It was the cleverest quip Ez had ever heard Declan use and she let out a cackle (which she tried to cover with the cough while pointing to the dust in the air—no one could see her). But Declan wasn't wrong. Callum had just put them all in danger.
    "Just...just come up here. If you can. It's not too slippery," Callum insisted.
    "Come...UP...there. Come up THERE. COME UP THERE," Declan repeated. "Are you freaking nuts?"
    "Mitchell, you like history, right?" Callum ignored Ez's twin. "Maybe a little conquistador history?"
    Ez's head tilted (again, no one could see her, as the light shone away from her) in interest. "Conquistadors?"
    She was the one who'd chosen culture over surfing and swimming at the beach for this vacation. She was the one who didn't want the hundreds—thousands by now—of hours spent studying Spanish language and history to go to waste. She was the one who longed for adventure, substance, significance. Before she knew it, she was the one who began climbing up the rock pile first.