The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Seventeen: Those Rocks Are Killer, Man

They each rationalized that taking just one object from the cave would be fine. Not only had the cavern been unused and undiscovered in at least five decades, they'd been brought by some kind of fate to its dark secrets. And, Callum secretly remembered, he'd promised a certain girl back home something shiny. He hoped that the dagger was shiny enough because his little brother would no longer relinquish the coin he'd shown him.
"Just take another one," Declan urged him as he rifled through the crate where he'd found the painting.
There was what appeared to be an entire crate or several with hundreds of coins inside and the barrel that hugged close to the crate of weapons seemed to contain something other than smuggled rum, if the tinkling contents could be trusted.
"We agreed on one thing," Callum corrected.
"Yeah...uh, one thing..." Declan said with some trepidation.
Ez stopped what she was doing and glared across the cavern at Declan. "One thing, Deck. Do you think we'll actually make it through customs with a bunch of stolen property that definitely belongs to the people here?"
"People take things all the time from places they go. Shells and stuff."
"Oh, like taking rocks from Hawaii or petrified wood? That always ends well," Mitchell piped up, his hands buried in the weapons crate. His face dropped and he appeared to be considering something. "People send that stuff back when they realize they're cursed."
Declan scoffed. He held up a gold chain and examined the small pendant that hung from it. "There's no such thing as curses, idiot."
"We'll see," Ez warned. She drifted across the cavern from crate to crate but hadn't selected anything to keep.
Callum rotated the blade over in his hand and thought about what he would say to the girl who'd remained the object of his affection for the last three years.
"Mitchell, I can't give her this," he complained at once. "Trade?"
"No way, you said I could—" Mitchell protested at once but caught himself. He looked embarrassed.
"Please, buddy?" Callum batted his eyes pleadingly.
"Ok, you can have this one. But we need to take a couple of things too...so we can turn them in or whatever. So they know what's up here."
"Turn them into who, Michelle?" Declan laughed. "Oh here, Mr. Mexican cop guy, we found this stuff just up there. We swear we didn't keep anything else."
Callum, to his surprise, knew that Declan had a point. They would have to be clever and careful if they wanted to keep any souvenirs and do the right thing. However, he doubted that doing the right thing was the most forefront thing on Declan's mind. He'd rolled up the painting and had it stuffed into his back pocket like it was where it had always belonged.
"I'm taking this too," Declan declared of the necklace with the pendant.
Ez hung by her twin's shoulder and found among the remains of the things that Declan had pulled out of the crates he examined a collection of small jewels that were each the size of a dime. Picking them up one at a time from the loose dirt of the cavern floor, Ez spat insults at her brother.
"You keep the creepy old picture of the Saint that talks about curses, but the jewels here, you just throw them on the ground?"
"They're fake, duh," Declan said.
"Fake?" Ez stopped to glare quizzically at him.
Callum and Mitchell had been stuffing coins and the vase that Ez had discarded into Mitchell's backpack and they both looked up at their other two siblings.
"What makes you think that these are fake?" Ez asked, slowly absorbing just what Declan might be thinking and the fact that they were definitely blood-related.
"Look at 'em. They're all gluey on the back and scratched up. You can't scratch jewels. They're like really hard. Those are fake."
"Diamonds can't be scratched, Declan. They're too hard. Compressed carbon," Callum offered. "Other jewels though. They're essentially mineral deposits. They can be broken and damaged. Even diamonds can be cut."
"These aren't diamonds, Callum," Ez said, holding up a red jewel in the light. "He's right, there is something on the back, like they were attached to something. Like gold, maybe?" Her voice trailed slightly and she seemed drawn into thought.
"Well give them here, then. I found them," Declan said as he thrust out his hand.
"No," Ez said. "But let me see that picture again."
"Picture? You mean my painting?"
Ez rolled her eyes and repeated the question but asked for the painting instead. It was always best to cater to Declan's stubborn stupidity.
Convening once again near the fire which was on its last bit of fuel once more, the siblings watched as Declan unrolled the painting and angled it so they could all see.
"There!" Ez said, pointing to the statue's forehead. A jewel just like the one in Ez's hand was depicted there. "They were attached to something, Deck."
"I told you," he said.
"But that means they're definitely not fake, Deck," Callum reminded him.
Clarity, this time including on Declan's face, dominated the room and the siblings realized that the jewels themselves may be the most valuable take among the goods.
"Come on, we have to get back," Callum insisted as he sensed a brawl growing between the twins. Declan would insist that he be the one to keep the jewels, but perhaps he could be distracted.
"Mom and Dad are probably freaking out," Mitchell admitted. He had replaced the backpack over his shoulders, the coins, the vase, and the knife inside it.
"Here, why don't we have Mitchell carry everything, so it's all in one place?"
"Hell no. I'm keeping this with me," Declan said as he once again rolled up the poor painting. The repeated abuse was likely devaluing the art, but keeping Declan from the painting would, no doubt, result in some intense fighting.
Ez squished her face in revolt but ultimately relented and poured the jewels—six in all—into the outer pocket of Mitchell's backpack. Declan, to his word, refused to add the painting to their loot and stuffed it into his back pocket again.
The four of them pulled apart the embers of the fire with their feet and ensured that there was nothing that could catch near it. Ez suggested using their bottles of water to further extinguish the fire, but she was voted down by her suddenly thirsty brothers. Climbing up the slope proved a bit harder with only one dimming flashlight and more than once Declan offered to light something else on fire to give them more light.
"Less fire is better, Deck," Callum said through heaving breaths as he reached the top of the slope and pulled Mitchell next to him.
"That's not what you said before," Declan argued.
Callum, in charge of the light, shone it down the heap and just happened to see Ez pick up a loose rock the size of her palm and lob it over her shoulder at Declan. It hit his left forearm and bounced down the slide to the bottom.
"Ow!" Declan slipped down a bit but didn't seem to have seen who'd thrown the rock. "Watch what you're doing up there. I just got hit by something."
"Oh. Oops. If only we had more light, I could see where I was going," Ez gibed.
"Exactly!"
"Declan, just climb. There's plenty of light. Although, we should hurry. The flashlight's not as bright as it was." Callum shook the handle of the MagLite and the yellow beam turned a slightly brighter shade of white before dimming back to yellow.
That put a fire in Declan despite his desire to light one, and within a minute both Ez and Declan had joined Callum and Mitchell at the top. The four of them looked down the heap on the other side and each groaned. This side was steeper. Nonetheless, they each shimmied down with their own strategy—Callum's was to walk forward down the heap while Mitchell opted for a backwards approach; each of the twins tried a mixture of both methods and Declan was the only one to endure an injury when he slipped near the bottom and shaved a few layers of skin from the palms of both hands.
"This is your fault," Declan said to Callum.
"You're welcome," Callum replied. If it weren't for his accidental discovery, there'd be no valuables in Mitchell's bag and no creepy old painting in Declan's pocket.
They knew which way to head and after a break for water, they headed back town the tunnel toward the entrance. According to Mitchell's phone (still no signal of course), another hour had passed, but it had taken them some time to reach the cave in the first place, so they'd have plenty of time to catch the returning truck at five o'clock.
"As soon as you can...you have battery left, right?" Callum started to ask Mitchell about his phone.
"Yeah. It's at like seventy because I haven't used it," Mitchell confirmed.
"Good. Well as soon as you can, get a signal and call Mom or Dad. Just in case they're worried."
"They should be," Ez said. She tapped Callum on the shoulder and when he stopped to shine the light toward her, she pointed at her own face and then at his. Her face was streaked with soot and dirt and he imagined his own was no better.
"Okay. So we won't be able to explain that away, but we're all okay, so no harm, no foul. Fowl. Foul?" Callum wasn't good with sports analogies but from the look on her amused face, Ez was and knew what he meant regardless.
She smiled and gestured for him to continue. Declan had gone on ahead without any light to guide him and had walked face-first into an outcropping at eye level.
"Declan, you're going to make this a lot harder if you don't stop hurting yourself," Callum laughed as the three of them passed by Declan once again and left him to hold his bruised eye.
The daylight wasn't as severe as it had been that morning, but it was still a stark and unwelcome surprise to their eyes when they finally emerged from the cave. Squinting and panting from the last stretch of the tunnel that they'd practically scurried through once they knew that it was the last stretch, the Stirlings stopped for a moment and tried to allow their eyes to adjust.
"Mitchell, hold on," Callum said when he noticed his brother stumbling forward toward the edge of the path. The way down wasn't a steep drop, but it was probably better that Mitchell remain upright. "There's a knife in your backpack, remember?"
"Right."
"Do you hear that?" Ez asked.
"Not that again," Callum chided.
"No, that was your craziness last time. It's something...there!"
"Oh, I heard it too," Mitchell confirmed. "That was a voice."
"And...calling my name," Callum said with a small amount of dread. "And yours. And Ez's. And now..."
The voice was close enough that they could each easily identify it as their father's.
"Dad!" Callum called. "Dad, we're over here!"
"We're fine, we're fine," Ez adopted the same mothering tone she used when she was trying to get something from Declan without argument.
Their mother's voice joined in with their father's and Ez stepped out onto the trail to look down where their parents must be. Callum turned back to the cave with a sudden realization and was overcome with a paralyzing fear.
"We are so dead," Mitchell said. "You can hear it in his voice. It's not worry. It's...Cal? What's wrong?"
Callum was focused on the cave entrance. He clicked the flashlight on again, but the battery was officially too dead to offer more than a soft glow that failed to shine further than a few inches.
As Ez greeted their exhausted and worried parents down the trail, Mitchell came to the same startling conclusion that had caused Callum to freeze. They'd entered as a party of four but exited with only three in their number. Mitchell asked the question their parents would later repeat over and over.
"Where's Declan?"