The Snake Stone

84

Yashim put his hand on a human face.

He sprang away from the corpse, flailing through the water. He was backed into a corner before he remembered that here, in the dark, he could soon lose all sense of direction.

All sense of proportion.

There was no need to guess whose body it was that rolled through the water. The missing man had been found.

Yashim tried not to think about what would happen next. He would grow cold, and weak. In the end he would drown in two feet of water, sharing the Albanian’s liquid grave.

He needed a way out.

Carefully now he felt his way around the pit, searching for anything that could help him climb the slippery walls. The floor was covered in loose stones and fallen bricks: the ceiling, he supposed, was slowly falling in. Once again he brushed against Xani’s corpse. Fighting a wave of nausea, he rolled the body over, feeling for anything the man had carried-a knife, a coil of rope. Something bubbled on the surface of the water, and Yashim gagged at the stench.

He groped at the man’s chest, feeling something hard there, like a chain. On the chain was a crucifix. He pulled hard and the body lurched upward; then the chain broke and he heard the corpse sink back into the water.

He went back to the wall, hoping it was the right one, and scratched at the wall with the end of the cross. It didn’t get him far.

He ran his fingers over the wall, looking for a crack, a projection, anything. The wall was smooth as butter.

He unfastened his cloak and wrung out the water. Holding one end, with his back to the wall, he flicked the cloak up and over his head. The end he was holding went limp for a few seconds, then the cloak tumbled down over his head. The end he had thrown was sopping wet. He thought for a few moments with his eyes shut. Then he shook the cloak out flat on the water’s surface. He started groping on the floor for bricks, lobbing them as best as he could judge toward the center of the cloak. After a minute he gathered the cloak together by its edges and hefted the weight. It was as much as he could do to drag it through the water.

He set the bundle against the wall and tried climbing on it. The stones slithered down under his weight. He stepped off and tried to tie the ends of the cloak together, to make a tighter bundle. After three or four attempts he gave up. He couldn’t get the wet, slopping half knots of the cloak to hold together.

He wasted half an hour using the crucifix and the chain to sew the cloak tight. He floated Xani’s corpse over the bundle of stones and tried to get a footing. The corpse was soft underfoot and would not keep still. He could not reach the opening.

He felt very tired.

He shook the cloak, to dislodge some of the stones, tucked in the corners, and dragged the bundle up to the level of his chest. Water poured from the cloak. He squeezed it, and it grew lighter.

He summoned his strength and tossed the bundle high up against the wall. It dropped back, into his arms. He tried again, taking a step back. When he had thrown it he reached forward to catch it, if it fell. This time he heard a muffled splash. The cloak did not fall back.

Yashim found stones on the floor and began to lob them upward.

The work kept him from feeling the cold.

When he had lobbed a dozen stones into the dark, he stopped and listened. There was a new sound, of gurgling water. He stepped forward and touched the wall. He couldn’t feel anything. He put his lips to the wall and felt the water trickling down.

It was cold as ice.

He went back to lobbing stones, in the dark.

It was only another way to die.