Mystery Noir

Down Below Part 8

As cool as the desert was at night, it made up for it with heat in the day. My shirt, borrowed from Laura after discovering mine was ripped up pretty badly, was soaked through with sweat a couple hours into our trek.

We paused to consider the spot where Rick and I had fallen into the crag, though the bottom was obscured by shadows. The side of the cliff was coated in a scattering of those black jelly balls, clinging to the rocks where there were shadows left. Where the sun hit them, they shriveled and oozed black puss that dripped and sizzled downwards.

I shuddered before we moved on, watching the tracking dog pick up a scent and lead us along through the winding trails. Still, where the dog chose to go, we could already see a trail of the black splattering Caddaja drool, though in the full sunshine, there were none of those globules. It merely looked like a black paint stain on the rocks.

I found myself wondering, if now that we knew the direction and possible cause of Bonnie's disappearance, what use I would be. The team was composed of trained military professionals that seemed to be proficient in tracking, combat and survival. I also wondered about Rick's questions the night before, about what I would be looking for if it wasn't about the monsters. Was it innocent curiosity, or a sign of a guilty conscience? I also cursed myself for my inability to trust anyone, knowing that with the Caddaja in the mix, suspecting humans should be the last thing on my list.

Then the trail led us straight to a cliff wall, with no realistic way to get over or around it. The dog paced along the wall, sniffing before turning and starting back the way we had come, though the handler pulled the dog back and gave it a chew toy. I watched the expressions around me fall as people turned to look at the cliff and the steep sides of the path that fell away from us, searching.

Silence stretched as everyone slowly came to realize that despite our progress, we had still lost Bonnie's trail once more.

"Fuck!" Matt cursed and stalked back down the path, trailing Rick and Laura behind him.

I looked to Penny, who frowned softly and stepped up to me. "She would have turned around and started back from here..."

"I would assume so." I glanced around, looking up at the cliff, then down over the sides of the hill we were on.

On one side, there was a slight ditch that ended in the hillside that towered up above us, a sheer cliff that had been at our left through the entire walk. And on our right, the same steep decline and cliff of the gorge I had fallen down the night before.

Penny started down into the ditch, her eyes scanning the cliffside as she picked her way over the rubble of rocks and gravel. The woman Penny had been spending most of her time with stepped up beside me and offered. "I'm Mo, by the way. I know we kind of met, but you seemed exhausted last night."

"Nina." I offered her a smile before following Penny, noticing a thoughtful, considering look on my partner's face. I half jogged, half slid through the rocks, doing my best not to send myself tumbling head over heels due to my own clumsiness.

Once I got to more solid ground, I looked up toward Penny and lengthened my stride. "What has your at-"

My foot caught in something unexpected, pitching me forward with an odd rattle of metal and plastic. Mo caught me by one arm and kept me from eating dirt as I cursed and righted myself. I turned to look at what I had tripped over just as Mo let out a curse that sent the three of us to our hands and knees to start digging through the rocks.

Buried under the rubble, there was a piece of metal that curved kind of like a handle of something. It was coated in a rubberized foam material, that wasn't exceptionally weather worn, meaning it had not been out here long.

"There was a landslide recently, you can see it in the settling of the rocks." Penny nodded to the cliff as she moved a large boulder out of the way.

Mo turned and yelled for the group as we uncovered what gradually took the shape of a broken stroller. Matt and Rick joined us, both men moving frantically as they hauled boulders and dug through stones and shale around where the stroller had been. Matt was calling out for his wife and daughter, though after an hour of moving earth, we only found a soother and the smashed remnants of a smartphone.

A shared glance with Penny, while the rest of the group continued to dig for more clues, told me that she had the same thoughts I was. The missing mother and daughter were not there. I turned to the stroller and inspected every minute detail, thankful that the fabric was a light grey. It showed dirt and grime, a couple stains from what was probably milk or food, but there wasn't a drop of blood on the fabric.

I paused and fingered the restraints, lifting up two ends that appeared to have been sliced through by some sort of sharp blade. "Matt, did your wife run with a rescue tool?"

Matt made a noise of distress, though his expression told me that he wasn't impressed with the realization I was no longer helping dig for his wife and child. "What? Yeah... knife. Had a seat belt cutter on one end."

"She's not there." I offered, nodding to the ground they had cleared, though I was somewhat impressed about how much they had managed to move in a short period of time.

I shivered then, glancing around us and noticing that the sun had moved, creating a shadow that began to stretch out over the ditch. Within a few hours, the whole path would be shaded from the sun, shortening the day because of the cliffs around us.

Were shadows enough for the Caddaja? Bonnie had been running in the afternoon, meaning that most of this trail would have been out of direct sunlight.

"How do you know she's not here?" Rick snapped, repeating what Matt must've said when I was not paying attention.

I looked back to the group of them, seeing them paused, though they were drinking water and resting with the break. Then I nodded to the stroller. "There's no blood. And the restraints were cut. There's a bit of fraying, but it's relatively clean. I think she needed to remove your daughter from the stroller quickly."

I turned slowly, raising a brow as I saw Penny standing against the cliff, ear pressed to the stone and slowly walking along it. The woman trailed her fingers ahead and behind her as she moved, her face tilted up as if she were trying to feel a slight breeze. I stared for a moment, before letting out a curse and jogging toward the wall and my partner as she shifted around behind a large leaning boulder.

"Nina!" Penny yelled, causing my adrenaline to spike before I recognized that there was no panic in the other woman's voice.

I was still pulling out my gun as I rounded the corner, my reflexes far quicker than my brain was. I was thrown into dark shadows as I skidded to a halt. There, standing in front of what appeared to be a fissure in the cliff and perfectly safe and sound, was Penny. She smirked at me when her eyes lowered to my gun and I returned a relieved grin, sliding my pistol into the holster and approaching.

"It goes pretty deep, further back then my flashlight." Penny offered softly, her eyes back on the entrance of what I hoped was a large, roomy cave.

I nodded and reached up to run my fingers over large indentations that were gouged into the rock face. They looked like claw marks, as if something had been digging and trying to pull the slim crack open wider. There was a slick, scaled skin that was clinging, amongst black glob balls on the edges as well, telling me exactly what had tried to dig through the rock.

I frowned at it, whispering softly out of concern more than a need to not be heard. "It looks like it rubbed off its own skin trying to push itself in."

Around us, the rest of the group piled in, though I noticed the dog handler and Rick standing off, facing away from us, holding their guns and searching the cliffs around us. Matt ran up to the crack, dropping his bag and tried to fit himself in, shining a flashlight into the darkness as he called out in a terse whisper for his wife and daughter.

It became rapidly clear, however, that even with packs and weapons dropped, the only three people who were getting through that entrance were Penny, Mo, and me.

My stomach roiled as I peered into the darkness from behind the others who were calling in and trying to see anything. Even glow sticks tossed into the cave revealed nothing but further darkness. Lady Luck, it would seem, was not on my side.