Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

Why’d You Bring Me Here? by Stanley Cohen

Stanley Cohen’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories and World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories. In 2002, one of his tales appeared in the Mystery Writers of America’s collection Murder in the Family, edited by Lawrence Block. He joins us here with a tale of pure suspense.

Soaking wet, he emerged from the mouth of the cave into the chill air. Nothing looked familiar. After hesitating a moment, he broke into an exhausting dead run, straight ahead, through the snagging underbrush. His feet were cold and leaden in his waterlogged shoes. He had to get help and get back to the cave. He had to get her out of there, if possible before nightfall. The sun was already down into the tree line, dusk less than an hour away.

“There’s just one way out of here,” he’d told her. “And that’s by swimming. Underwater. We’ve got to dive in and swim underwater toward that spot of light, and when we come up on the other side of that big rock, we can walk right out.”

“Why’d you bring me here?” she’d said.

“It was a mistake. But that’s not what’s important now. What’s important is that there’s only one way out: by diving right toward that spot of light and coming up on the other side of the rock.”

“You know I can’t swim.”

“You’ve got to. Don’t you understand?”

“I can’t.”

“But we don’t have a chance of getting out any other way. Don’t you understand? It’s the only way out. There’s no use trying to get back out the way we came.”

“I can’t swim.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“It’s no use. I can’t swim at all, much less dive down there. You knew that.”

“We’ve got to. It’s the only way. I’ll help you. I’ll pull you through it. But we’ve got to.” He’d turned the flashlight into her face briefly at that point and, seeing her expression, knew she’d never make it. For a moment he’d pictured in his mind trying to pull her down through it. And as he did, he experienced the kind of panic he knew must have gripped her. She was right. It was hopeless. You can help a nonswimmer on the surface of water but never, never downward through water. He’d imagined the two of them underwater, upside down, trying to move downward, deeper, toward nothing more than a glow of light, she desperately clutching at him and drowning and he losing control and feeling the cold underground water flowing into his own mouth and nose.

He’d had to give up the idea. It couldn’t be done. How deep was the pool? How far down was the pass-through? How large was the pass-through? Could he make it himself? Alone? He thought about getting stuck in it and thrashing helplessly until dead. He imagined her watching his legs as he’d start through, stop, and then kick until he stopped kicking. But that wouldn’t happen. Others had made it. Lots of them. He’d make it. But only alone. There was no other way.

He took her into his arms. “Here’s what we’ll have to do,” he’d said, “I’ll have to go out through there and go for help.”

“Why did you bring me in here? You could have come alone.”

“There’s no use in talking about that now. Don’t you understand? There’s no point in talking about anything except getting out.”

She remained silent.

“It’s the only choice we’ve got.” He knew she was thinking about being left alone in the cave. “There’s nothing in here that’ll bother you. I’ll get back with help as quickly as I can.”

She still didn’t speak.

He had run probably a hundred yards from the mouth of the cave, ripping and stumbling through the coarse underbrush. He had run hard, which he realized was stupid because he was already exhausted in the wet clothes and shoes. And he’d run straight ahead, which was also stupid, hoping in his desperation for a miracle, someone standing there, waiting to help him. He stopped, turned, and started back toward the cave, jogging. He passed the mouth of the cave, cringed, and started up the side of the hill toward the other entrance, the “lock” through which they’d entered. It wasn’t far. The chamber was much shorter on the outside than it seemed within.

He stopped at the lock, leaned against the sign, and looked in. Nothing. Darkness. He shouted down the hole, “Sweetheart, are you all right?” No answer. “I’m out safely. Be back soon with help.” No answer. “Sweetheart? Take it easy, now. I’ll be right back.” Silence. “Sweetheart? Are you okay?” Nothing. She couldn’t possibly hear him. It was too far down the sheer, vertical, convoluted drop of the lock, through the twisting passageways, to the gravel beach by the pool with the emerald light source at the bottom.

He glanced around. The sun had set and night was coming on fast. Night would snuff out the emerald glow, the only source of light in the cave where he had left her. Had he made a mistake? A really stupid mistake? He should have stayed there with her all night and left at the first sign of light in the pool. He should have left her alone during daylight, with at least the little green glow in the water. He’d figured wrong again. Stumbled ahead without planning, just the way she said he always did. Should he drop back down through the lock and wait with her until morning? He was already out. The dive had been tough. Real tough. His lungs and ears had nearly exploded. The water was deep. Maybe he’d get lucky and get back with help in a hurry.

He pushed away from the opening and broke into a run, toward the road, he hoped. He had found the cave from the road. He should be able to find the road again. But it was rapidly getting dark.

She was alone in darkness now. She had the flashlight but he had cautioned her against burning it continuously. “It won’t last too long,” he had said. “I’ll probably be back long before it’d burn out, but we’d better not take any chances. Best thing to do is just turn it on for a minute or two and take a quick look around every once in a while. Or if you hear something.” What a stupid thing to have said! He’d realized it as soon as he’d gotten it out. “But you won’t hear anything because there’s nothing to hear. There’s nothing down here. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“Why did you bring me here?” she’d asked again.

He came to the road. Right at the place where they’d left it, right by the landmark for finding the cave, the big white boulder shaped like a cow’s head with one horn. At least he still had his sense of direction.

He looked up and down the desolate road, trying to decide which direction would bring the quickest help. He couldn’t see any lights in either direction. It was a cloudy night and was going to get good and dark. To the right was back toward town. He vaguely remembered seeing a few little houses somewhere back that way. To the left was unknown. Just around the curve could be help. Maybe he’d get lucky.

He started down the road to the left, running, but not fast. His clothes were nearly dry but the wet shoes burned his feet. As he rounded the curve in the road, he could make out that the road went straight for a long stretch and there wasn’t a light of any kind in sight. This stopped him. He’d be better off going back toward town.

He stopped and started back in the opposite direction, running slowly, more of a trot, hardly faster than a walk. He passed the cow-head rock and headed into another curve. He slowed to a walk because he couldn’t run anymore. It was extremely dark. He began to realize that a lot of time had passed since he left the cave. He thought of her alone in total blackness on the rocky beach by the pool, bruised and skinned from the descent through the moss-slicked lock. He walked a little faster for a while and then he saw the pinpoint of light ahead.

The light spurred him into a dead run, and as he pounded toward it, he realized it was much farther away than it had looked. He finally had to stop running and walk because of the pain in his sides. When the pain had let up, he started running again and reached the little frame house with the wooden porch. He ran across the yard, walked up onto the porch, and rapped on the screen door.

The lights went out in the house and then he heard a slide latch on the inside of the front door. “Hey, please,” he shouted. He slapped the screen door against the jamb several more times. “You gotta help me. My wife’s in the bottom of the cave back down the road.” He paused. Hearing no sound within, he hit the screen door again. “Hey, please, help me. Just let me use your phone.” He waited again. Still no signs of response. “Call the police,” he shouted. “At least do that. Will you do that?”

He looked at the window that had gone dark after his first knock. He thought about kicking it out and going in and getting them to help him. But they might have a gun and decide to shoot him. That’s what he’d probably do if he was in the house and somebody came busting in.

He rattled the screen one more time. “Aren’t you going to help me? Please! My wife’s in the bottom of that cave up the road. Just call the cops for me.”

He paused again. They obviously weren’t going to do anything. He turned and sat down on the porch step. She was alone in that black cave. How was he going to get her out? He’d really done it this time.

He loved her. He really did. Loved her more than he thought possible. She was so great to him. She put up with so much. Sometimes he wondered why she did. He didn’t drink and he didn’t chase around after other girls. That was probably part of it. And he loved her and she knew it.

But he had to do things. That was the way he was. He heard about things and just had to do them. That was why they didn’t have anything. She often said they probably never would. But he couldn’t help it. Once he got a bug up his ass, he was off and running. The sky-diving lessons. The flying lessons. That stuff cost big money. And the automatic rifle with the scope. That had cost all of both their take-home pay from the mill for a week.

They didn’t need that rifle. But once he’d made up his mind, she went along with it. They’d taken it and hiked out to the old quarry a couple of times and floated bottles and beer cans on the water and sat up on the rim of the quarry and used up a couple of boxes of shells potting away at the stuff, taking turns. Then she’d heard the ricochet. Since that time, the rifle just hung on the wall in their apartment.

He thought about their apartment. She called it their rat’s nest and that was just about right. But he couldn’t help it. He’d rather do things than have things. They didn’t even have a car. Not even an old one. They walked to the mill and they hitched most everywhere else. They’d had a bike for a while, a Harley, a real beauty, but he’d wiped it out trying to learn to hill-climb. He’d had to let it go and he got off just in time, then sat there watching it head back down alone, end over end, just flying. They made payments for eight more months on something they couldn’t ride. Salvage parts covered one payment.

He heard about the cave and how the light coming up through the water was the most fantastic sight anybody ever saw and he had to see it. Clearest and greenest water anywhere, glowing green in the middle of a black cave. A giant emerald. A giant green light. He hadn’t listened too carefully to the part about getting out. He remembered that you had to get wet, but he figured you just got down on your belly and crawled through. He didn’t get the message that you had to swim straight down maybe fifteen feet. After he decided that he had to see it, he talked her into going with him, told her that it was something he wanted to do bad and it wouldn’t even cost anything. He’d said they’d just wear old clothes and she’d said that was all they had. And she’d finally agreed to go on a pretty Saturday afternoon when there really wasn’t much else to do.

And now it was a black Saturday night and she was in there alone. He wondered if there were any bears in that cave. Or snakes or waterdogs or rats. Or spiders. She was deathly afraid of spiders. Or bats that could see in the dark and fly down and get tangled in her beautiful long brown hair. What if there was another person in there? Maybe somebody hiding out? He had to get her out of there. He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The lights were still out.

He got up and went back to the door and tapped lightly on the screen. Maybe he’d been too rough before. “Please listen,” he said in a pleading voice. “I’ve got to get help and get back to that cave back down the road and get my wife out of there. I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just want to get help. Can I just use your phone? Or could you just call the highway patrol? Please, won’t you help me?” He waited several minutes. “Please? Can’t you see I’m in trouble and need help?”

When he saw they weren’t going to answer, he became enraged. “Goddammit! Open the door! Help me! I need help.” He waited again. It was useless. He slammed the screen once more and then turned, left the porch, went across the yard and back onto the dark road. He could just make out objects near the road in the darkness. He thought about the level of blackness in the cave and wondered how much she’d used the flashlight. As he did, he tried to figure back how long he’d been gone from inside the cave.

Having rested on the porch, he started running again, his footsteps on the pavement producing the only sound anywhere in the vacuum of the black, windless night. He glanced back over his shoulder and the lights were on again in the window.

He kept moving, and in a few minutes the sounds of his heavy breathing fell around his footfalls as he concentrated on finding a pace he could maintain for a while. How far had he run? How far was he from the big cow-head rock? Two, three miles? That’s how far it seemed. Maybe four. The rock was around twenty-six miles from the edge of town. Would he have to get close to town to come to any more houses? He couldn’t remember.

Suddenly he saw some light. A car coming toward him. The first one he’d seen since he’d been on the road. It was coming pretty fast. He stepped out into the road in the path of the car and began to wave his arms up and down. The car approached, slowed down as it got near him, steered carefully around him as if he were an obstacle, and then accelerated back up to speed.

He turned and watched it disappear and then dropped to the surface of the road, flat on his back with his knees up, resting, waiting for his body to stop throbbing. He wanted to sleep and closed his eyes for a moment. He thought about his wife in the blackness of the cave and wondered if somehow she might have been able to sleep, or at least rest. Probably not. How would anybody be able to? He had to get help and get back there. Suddenly feeling very rested, he hustled to his feet and started off again, first walking and then in a slow run.

The road curved sharply and he saw another light in the distance. Remembering how he had been fooled before, he didn’t rush at the light but held his pace, watching it slowly approach him with each heavy jogging stride. The little house was very reminiscent of the first one — same distance from the road, same setting, same porch on the front with the light coming through the window. The house was on the right-hand side of the road instead of the left. Could it be the same house? Could he have started off in the wrong direction when he got up off the road? Maybe he had slept a minute or two and had gotten up all turned around. This possibility made him feel weak for a moment, but he figured he’d find out as soon as he knocked on the door. He slapped the screen three times and waited.

The lights went out and a strong voice said, “Git going!”

“You gotta help me. I gotta get help. My wife’s in the bottom of a cave back down the road and I gotta get help getting her out.”

“Git going. Git off the porch and off this land. Git going.”

“Please help me. I mean no harm. Let me just use your phone. I’m telling the truth. My wife’s in that crazy cave down the road. I gotta get help.”

“If I open the door I’m gonna be shootin’ to kill. Now, git!”

“Please! You gotta help me. Just let me use your phone. Call the cops. Anything. Please help me.”

“Got no phone. Now git moving.”

He hesitated a moment. “How far to the next house?”

After a prolonged silence, “A mile toward town.”

“Tell me something else,” he said to the closed door. “Was I here banging on your door a little while ago?”

A foot kicked the other side of the door and the voice shouted, “Git! Git moving!”

The kick startled him and he ran off the porch into the yard. He stopped, turned, and stared at the house. There was a white earthenware pot with something growing in it on the porch step which looked familiar. He had gotten turned around. He had to get moving toward town. One mile to the next house. He could get there in ten minutes. He was going to get lucky at the next one. He felt assured and took off running down the road.

Another car approached him from behind and this time he was determined to stop it. He turned and stayed in the middle of the road, flagging wildly with his arms. When it became apparent that the car would hit him if he didn’t move, he leaped out of the way and watched the red taillights fade.

He started running renewed. Help was a few minutes away. This time he was sure. He was going to get help and get on back and get her out of that black hole. The next house was the one.

He came up over a little rise and the lights appeared, right on schedule. He pounded harder, down the hill, feeling much stronger. Second wind. As he came upon the house, he could see it was much larger than the other one, set farther back from the road, painted white, lots of lights, a nice house, one like she often said she wished someday she could have.

He slowed down as he reached the corner of the yard and then noticed an old pickup truck, a small one with an open bed, parked heading out. He studied the house. They couldn’t see him. They were inside in the light. He was outside in the dark and already had eyes like an owl’s, used to the dark.

He moved across the yard to the truck, stepped up on the running board, and reached through the open window. The key was in the ignition with a heavy piece of cotton string hanging from it. After surveying the house again, he silently eased the truck door open and slid into it. He clutched, twisted the key, and the old clunker exploded into life. He was on his way to get help.

As he approached the town, things finally started looking familiar. Once in the town he began to realize that a lot of time had passed. Everything seemed quiet, deserted, asleep, even for Saturday night. He went straight for the highway patrol station and as he pulled up to it to park, two troopers got out of a car where they had been sitting and walked over to him.

“Where’d you get the truck?” one of them said.

“You gotta help me. My wife’s in the bottom of the cave and we gotta get her out. She’s alone out there.”

“Where’d you get the truck?”

“This is the fastest one yet,” the other trooper said. “We get the call fifteen minutes ago and here he comes, driving right up to us.”

“Please, you’ve got to help me get her out of that cave.”

“Taking trucks is serious business, friend. You’d better come inside.”

“Please listen to me. My wife’s in the bottom of that crazy cave about twenty-five miles out on Fifty-eight. You guys gotta help me. We gotta get her out.”

“You want to call a lawyer?”

“I don’t need a lawyer. I need help getting my wife out of that cave.”

They kept him in a cell for what seemed an endless period of time until they could get the sheriff up and in to see him. He lay on the cot and fidgeted, thinking about her out there in that black hole. He began to think about how much he really did care about her, how much he liked just touching her, seeing her at lunch at the mill, having her go with him when he was off doing something, watching her give in when there was some new wild-ass thing he just had to do.

“How’d you get out there?”

“We hitched.”

“What’d you go out there for?”

“I had to see it.”

“See what?”

“The green light.”

“What green light?”

“The light that comes in through the water under the rock. Some of the guys at the mill told me about it and I had to see it.”

“Didn’t they tell you about getting out of there after you got in?”

“I guess I didn’t figure the water was so deep.”

“Didn’t you read the sign on the lock, telling you to stay the hell out of there?”

“They went in and saw it and got out okay. I figured I could, too. And I did.”

“Why didn’t you leave your wife outside?”

“Anything I want to do that bad I like her to get to do, too. Can’t we go get her out?”

“In a little while. We need a little more light. We got to get a wrecker over to the hole. We’ve had to do this a time or two before. You’re lucky. We drop a chain down with a little harness on it and strap it around her and snake her back up out of there. We need a little more light to get the wrecker down the hill to the lock.”

They dropped off the pickup truck on the way back out to the cave. And he studied the little house with the porch as they passed it. Not much of a place.

He read the sign carefully for the first time as he watched them set up to drop the harness down through the lock. “Warning! Stay out! Do not enter. Once down inside, impossible to get back out.” He wanted to be the one who went in to help her out, using the harness. He wanted to be the first to see her. And he wanted just a little bit to see the green light once more. But he was relieved when the sheriff said no, that the man who’d designed the harness and handled the other rescues would go. He was relieved because he wasn’t sure what to expect.

She appeared at the mouth of the pit, both feet wedged into the little stirrup and a wide leather strap around her hips, binding her to the chain. She clung to the chain with one arm and held the other arm tightly over her eyes to protect them from the gray morning light and she was sobbing convulsively. They helped her off the chain and onto the ground and she sat, her face against her knees, closed in by her arms, her whole body shuddering. He wanted to go over to her but he was afraid and so he stood back and watched. He felt his own eyes fill up and start sending water down his face. He watched her and he watched as they dropped the chain back in and easily brought out the other man.

A trooper gave her a pair of sunglasses. She walked next to the sheriff back up the hill to the road and he lagged a little behind the two of them. When they reached the sheriff’s car, she began to get in front, doing so in such a way that it was clear he was to sit in back. As she was getting in, he finally said, very softly, “You all right, sweetheart?”

She glanced quickly at him. “I’m fine,” she said. And as she closed the door, he knew that she would never look directly at him or speak to him again.

She had been moved out for two weeks. He kept watching for her around the mill but she avoided him. He missed her, wanted her back, couldn’t get used to being without her. Everything seemed to be falling apart.

Since it was Saturday, he slept an hour or so later. When he woke up, he lay there, thinking about her and also about the fact that he’d have to make some changes. He couldn’t afford even their “rat’s nest” without her paycheck coming in, helping to carry it. He’d have to find something cheaper. Lots of things were going to be different.

He got up and looked outside. Pretty day. After some cereal and milk, he left the place, walked to where 58 came through town, and started hitching. The first lift took him all the way. When they reached the cow’s-head rock, he got out, hiked into the thicket to the lock, and lowered himself down to the floor of the cave. He made his way to the gravel beach and sat down, rubbing a freshly skinned elbow, to stare at the beautiful green glow and think about how it all had happened.

Copyright © 2005 by Stanley Cohen.