Duma Key

He missed the rung. The ladder shifted. For a moment I was sure he was going to come down on top of me, on top of the upheld flashlight. The water would spill out, she would spill out, and it all would have been for nothing.

"What's happening?" Wireman shouted from above us. "What the fuck's happening?"

Jack settled back against the wall, one hand gripping a lucky chunk of coral that he happened to find at the last crucial second. I could see one of his legs plunged down like a piston to the next intact rung, and there was a healthy ripping sound. "Man," he whispered. "Man oh man oh fucking man."

"What's happening?" Wireman nearly roared.

"Jack Cantori ripped out the seat of his pants," I said. "Now shut up a minute. Jack, you're almost there. She's in the flashlight, but I've only got the one hand and I can't pick up the cap. You have to come down and find it. I don't care if you step on me, just don't bump the flashlight. Okay?"

"O- Okay. Jesus, Edgar, I thought I was gonna go ass over teapot."

"So did I. Come down now. But slowly."

He came down, first stepping on my thigh - it hurt - and then putting his foot on one of the empty Evian bottles. It crackled. Then he stepped on something that broke with a damp pop, like a defective noisemaker.

"Edgar, what was that?" He sounded on the verge of tears. "What-"

"Nothing." I was pretty sure it had been Adie's skull. His hip thumped the flashlight. Cold water slopped over my wrist. Inside the metal sleeve, something bumped and turned. Inside my head, a terrible black-green eye - the color of water at the depth just before all light fails - also turned. It looked at my most secret thoughts, at the place where anger surpasses rage and becomes homicide. It saw... then bit down. The way a woman would bite into a plum. I will never forget the sensation.

"Watch it, Jack - close quarters. Like a midget submarine. Careful as you can."

"I'm freaking out, boss. Little touch of claustrophobia."

"Take a deep breath. You can do this. We'll be out soon. Do you have matches?"

He didn't. Nor a lighter. Jack might not be averse to six beers on a Saturday night, but his lungs were smoke-free. Thus there ensued a long, nightmarish space of minutes - Wireman says no more than four, but to me it seemed thirty, thirty at least - during which Jack knelt, felt among the bones, stood, moved a little, knelt again, felt again. My arm was getting tired. My hand was going numb. Blood continued to run from the wounds on my chest, either because they were slow in clotting or because they weren't clotting at all. But my hand was the worst. All feeling was leaving it, and soon I began to believe I was no longer holding the flashlight sleeve at all, because I couldn't see it and I was losing the sense of it against my skin. The feeling of weight in my hand had been swallowed by the tired throb of my muscles. I had to fight the urge to rap the metal sleeve against the side of the cistern to make sure I still had it, even though I knew if I did, I might drop it. I began to think that the cap must be lost in the maze of bones and bone fragments, and Jack would never find it without a light.

"What's happening?" Wireman called.

"Getting there!" I called back. Blood dribbled into my left eye, stinging, and I blinked it away. I tried to think of Illy, my If-So-Girl, and was horrified to realize I couldn't remember her face. "Little slag, little horrock, we're working it out."

"What?"

" Snag! Little snag, little hold-up! You fucking deaf, Wearman?"

Was the flashlight sleeve tilting? I feared it was. Water could be running over my hand and I might now be too numb to feel it. But if the sleeve wasn't tilting and I tried to correct, I'd make matters worse.

If water's running out, her head will be above the surface again in a matter of seconds. And then it'll be all over. You know that, right?

I knew. I sat in the dark with my arm up, afraid to do anything. Bleeding and waiting. Time had been cancelled and memory was a ghost.

"Here it is," Jack said at last. "It's caught in someone's ribs. Wait... got it."

"Thank God," I said. "Thank Christ." I could see him in front of me, a dim shape with one knee between my awkwardly bent legs, planted in the litter of disarranged bones that had once been part of John Eastlake's eldest daughter. I held the flashlight sleeve out. "Screw it on. Gently does it, because I can't hold it straight much longer."

"Luckily," he said, "I have two hands." And he put one of his over mine, steadying the water-filled flashlight as he began screwing the cap back on. He paused only once, to ask me why I was crying.

"Relief," I said. "Go on. Finish. Hurry."

When it was done, I took the capped flashlight from him. It wasn't as heavy as when it had been filled with D-cells, but I didn't care about that. What I cared about was making sure that the lid was screwed down tight. It seemed to be. I told Jack to have Wireman check it again when he got back up.

"Will do," he said.