Dylan wasn’t sure. He knew there was something he desperately needed to tell his dad, tell Caitlin. But now he couldn’t remember what it was, and he couldn’t remember where his phone was, either.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, found he was somewhere else entirely. His boots were sliding across the leaf-dampened ground now, his feet entirely numb. He couldn’t feel his arms, either, and when he tried to wiggle his fingers it seemed they weren’t attached to his hands anymore. The sky above had become a vast open mouth framed between the clouds, lowering to swallow him.
“Make it stop!” he thought he cried out, and then realized that something that tasted grimy and grubby, like a sweaty sock, had been stuffed into his mouth.
Dylan heard himself mutter. There was a pressure building behind his eyes, like a vacuum cleaner was pulling air from his skull in a constant hiss, which left him with a fluttery sensation in his ears.
“You have no place here,” said the Lost Boy who’d wedged the dirt-like clump of peyote into Dylan’s mouth. “You should’ve stuck to your own. Now, you go to your grave.”
Fuck you, Dylan thought, but he couldn’t say it.
More time and space had passed than he found himself able to calculate, the world changing entirely in what felt like the length of a breath. Every time he blinked, the world seemed to stay dark longer. And the next time he pried his eyes open, the Lost Boys were lashing him to a tree with what felt like baling wire.
“Now, it comes for you,” the Lost Boy told him.
It, Dylan repeated in his mind.
The tree bark scratched against his flesh, through his shirt, and each breath exaggerated the bonds of the wire further. For a few moments, Dylan actually had to remind himself to breathe. Once, he felt his chin thump to his chest.
Regaining consciousness after however long he’d been out, he saw that the Lost Boys were gone, the oily odor of the paint with which they’d streaked themselves hanging in the stagnant air like a dust cloud. Dylan heard himself breathing, inside his head. His eyes wanted to close again, but he stopped them, keeping his focus straight ahead until he heard something approaching from behind.
Whatever was coming seemed to glide across the brush and earth, rustling them no more than the wind. Dylan tried to turn his head, but his neck wouldn’t budge. Then he realized the footsteps were upon him, in the same moment he heard himself screaming through his gagged mouth.
68
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
The wave of bats descended on them like an unbroken black blanket. Suddenly jittery flashlight beams caught spokes of big eyes and flashing teeth, much bigger than they should have been, in Caitlin’s experience. First backpedaling and then turning to dash out of the chamber, she thought this, too, was an illusion, until one of the bats latched onto her hair with claws that felt more like a raptor’s. And, as she yanked it off, taking a chunk of her scalp with it, Caitlin saw why.
The bat was massive, huge, its wingspan expanding to more than five feet when it came at her again with teeth bared.
Caitlin was going for her gun when Guillermo Paz swatted the bat out of the air with an arm that looked to her like a baseball bat. He whirled and swept another swooping trio aside, muzzle fire from Cort Wesley illuminating the darkness, which was broken only by the flashlight that Paz had managed to hold on to. His beam retraced their route through the cave, heading back to the main chamber and the night beyond.
Afraid to stop moving, Caitlin heard light splashes as the downed bats dropped into the underground river, her eyes adjusting enough now for the luminescent glow off the cave walls to reveal the flight of the bats crisscrossing in the air. They were dive-bombing them, the bats’ collective squeals becoming deafening, all but drowning out the flutter of their wings, which made it seem as if the entire cave was vibrating.
Back in the main chamber of the cave, Caitlin lent her fire to Cort Wesley’s, careful to keep her aim concentrated upward. Instead of spooking the bats, the assault seemed to further enrage them. They renewed their attack, reformed to concentrate from the cave mouth, as if to deny exit to their captives. She had happened upon bats before, but never any this big or violent. Bats were easily spooked, for sure, but they also were shy creatures that normally backed off after making their point.
But this swarm showed no such inclination. The noxious odor she’d detected as soon as Paz had cracked open the secret chamber was clearly bat guano, but even that was different from what she recalled from past experiences. Sharper and more rancid. Maybe it had been creatures like these that had killed John D. Rockefeller’s gunman back in 1874 and had done the same to the work foreman just the other night. Or—
Click.