SECOND OPINION
Bridget and Milo retreated from the grotto with solemn, deliberate steps. She stopped at every intersecting passageway, rubbing her own chalk marks into nothing with a chafed palm. She didn’t have to explain why, not to Milo. Unlike Duck, they’d left Isabelle’s body untouched, respecting her final gesture. But all the same, it was best to conceal the path to her remains.
They’d left Charlie kneeling in the reflective waters at the edge of the natural pedestal. Milo had asked Charlie if he could find his own way back, if he had enough batteries, enough water. Milo didn’t ask him the only thing that really mattered—whether or not Charlie had enough strength left, if he cared enough to save himself, even if only for a few hours longer. Grief-stricken, Charlie didn’t answer, not even with a ghost of a nod. But Milo and Bridget couldn’t force him to come, nor could they stay.
Joanne was gone by the time they reached the passageway where they’d abandoned her. There was no way to tell how long she’d sat and laughed or cried before vanishing, only a single bloody handprint remaining. Despite the darkness and her sickness, her steps still led in the direction of their emergency camp. She’d somehow found her way back without any light.
Bridget and Milo soon found themselves within familiar passageways, their footsteps echoing as they ascended the anthill. Hours into the trek, they approached a section of incline coated with a thin layer of slippery flowstone. Milo recognized the pattern of fragile calcium clinging to the ceiling. A bit of additional crawling and he was once again suspended atop a land bridge, seeing again the muddy slide.
Milo rolled and dropped over the side, enjoying the fraction of a second of freefall before his boots caught the sharply angled mud below. He slid down the slick surface through the field of broken calcite straws before skidding to a stop at the bottom.
“Slow down,” ordered Bridget, easing down the same route after him on her butt. “You’ll break an ankle or worse.”
“Sorry,” said Milo. He hadn’t even thought about the little stunt. Dropping off the side and sliding down felt so intuitive, as though he’d done it a thousand times before.
Angling their twin headlamps downward, the pair again illuminated the hollow-eyed mummy in harsh yellow light. Milo felt almost amused at the fear he’d first felt staring at the shrunken, gray corpse.
“I’m glad we didn’t bury him like Dale wanted,” said Bridget, scowling as she examined the body. “Digging him up again would have been a giant pain in the ass.”
Milo looked over the mummy, then slowly scanned the length of the room. “So we made it back,” he finally said. “What are we missing?”
“I don’t know,” Bridget answered, crossing her arms and pursing her lips. “I thought we searched the room pretty thoroughly the first time.”
“Maybe an autopsy?” suggested Milo. “Could you do one if you had to?”
Bridget thought for a few moments before answering him. “I could, but it wouldn’t be pretty,” she said. “Not sure what we’d learn given the advanced state of decay.”
“How would we start?” asked Milo. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Internal examination,” stated Bridget without hesitating. “Dissection of the chest, abdominal and pelvic organs. Maybe the skull as well.”
Milo gave the doctor an apologetic smile. Horrified, Bridget glanced between him and the mummified corpse.
“We weren’t speaking hypothetically, were we?” asked Bridget. “Because I’d really rather not.”
Shrugging in resignation, Milo pulled a black garbage bag out of his pack. He used his knife to slice along the seams, spreading the full length of the plastic onto the cave floor like a thin, shimmery blanket before handing the blade to Bridget.
“At least we’ll have a clean place to work.”
“Nothing about this process will be clean,” responded Bridget. “But I’m not walking out of here empty-handed.”
Sighing, Bridget squinted at the body before using both hands to lance the knife into the mummy’s left shoulder joint, severing tendons and fibrous muscle until the entire length of the arm fell free, the limb unclenching from the corpse’s knees for the first time in nearly eighty years. She repeated the action with the other arm before turning her attention to the bare pelvis. Grunting, she held the body for stability as she sawed through the thick groin tendons until the legs popped free with a sickening crack, exposing the pale, sunken abdomen.
Milo and Bridget lowered the body face-up onto the plastic sheet, its arms and legs attached only by a few cracking sections of dry, leathery strips.
“Don’t forget—this was your idea,” said Bridget, pointing to the now broken joints with Milo’s knife. He realized she’d noticed his uncomfortable expression.
“I thought it’d be more . . . precise,” admitted Milo.
“Anyone recovering his body would have chopped it up into pieces anyway,” explained Bridget. “So take comfort wherever you can get it. And believe me, I am not enjoying this either.”
Steeling herself, Bridget carved a Y-shaped incision into the chest, beginning high on each shoulder, meeting just below the sternum and dragging the cut all the way down to the pubic bone.
“They never do this right in the movies,” Bridget muttered. “Have to start the dissection above the armpits, or else the chest won’t open up properly.”
Milo stifled a retch and turned away briefly.
“You and me both,” agreed Bridget. “And by the way, my anatomy professor would freak if she saw the mess we’re making of this poor guy.”
“I suppose we’re doing the best we can under the circumstances,” Milo responded between gags.
Bridget just nodded as she peeled back the skin, revealing the yellowing, discolored ribs below. The sternum cartilage was almost completely gone, and the soft lower organs underneath were decayed to unrecognizability. Milo helped hold the body in place as Bridget individually broke the ribs on either side, yanking them back to expose the mummified internal organs of the upper torso.
“I really wish I had gloves for this,” she complained as she wiped bone fragments off her hands onto her thick pants. “In fact—I wish I had an X-ray machine right now. Or better yet, an MRI. And a shower for afterward.”
Milo winced as he examined the desecrated body. “The anthropologists are going to throw a shit fit when they see this,” he said. “I’m investing in pitchfork polish when we hit topside—those stocks are going to hit the roof.”
Ignoring him, Bridget carefully prodded the body’s shriveled, blackened heart and collapsed lungs. She gently pulled back the paper-thin liver, exposing the stomach and withered intestines below.
“I’m not seeing anything obvious,” said Bridget with another sigh. “We may not learn anything else without medical instrumentation and diagnostic tools.”
“Was he starving?” asked Milo. “Could you tell us that, at least?”
“Probably not,” admitted Bridget. “But I can tell you if he died with anything in his stomach.”
Bridget reached into the mummy’s thorax, knuckles bumping against the sharp-ridged interior of the spinal cord, cradling the stomach in her hand from underneath. Holding the knife like a delicate paintbrush, she gently ran the blade down the length of the stomach twice, drawing an intersecting X. The flaps opened easily, the lining still flexible and pliant despite the many decades of decay.
The headlamps couldn’t quite reach the interior of the organ, leaving Bridget to scrunch her face as she fished inside with bare fingertips. She withdrew two long, slender objects that almost resembled withered, jointed sticks.
“What are those?” asked Milo, thoroughly mystified.
Bridget tilted the find so Milo could see the instantly recognizable nailbeds at the ends—they were severed fingers.
“Are those . . . ?” asked Milo, concern in his voice.
“They are indeed,” Bridget confirmed. “His last meal was two human digits. Not his own of course; he wasn’t missing any.”
“Holy shit,” whispered Milo, grimacing as his eyes took in the blackened skin, the ridged, yellowing nails still held tight within their beds.
“They’re partially digested,” added Bridget. “Whoever killed him didn’t catch him in the act. At least a few hours transpired . . . between the . . . the, uh—”
“The cannibalism and the head wound?” said Milo, completing her sentence.
“Yeah,” said Bridget. “That. Can you help me try to put together what happened? Maybe this is confirmation bias, but I’m completely convinced we’ve found an important clue. Isabelle may well have sacrificed her life to lead us this far.”
Milo nodded, closing his eyes to focus. In moments, a wave of profound giddiness flooded over him as he concentrated. Dizzy at first with intoxicating euphoria, he and Bridget once again locked eyes before his mind took a single stomach-wrenching turn toward oblivion, uncontrollable fear enveloping his perception as the surrounding room shifted, the walls around him freely warping into impossible configurations. Every detail of the chamber took on staggering importance, each scarred rock, footprint, every imperceptible man-made and geological disturbance magnified, his mind running through a thousand parallel scenarios as it recreated the final moments of the dead man’s existence.
“Milo!” shouted the echoing voice, penetrating the depth of his unconscious mind. He slowly came to, as though swimming up through the darkest subterranean lake, each furtive push toward the surface blocked by rocky overhangs and constricting tunnels.
Again the woman’s voice called his name, dragging him upward. He felt a pressure against the side of his face—a slap? There it was; the reflective surface of the imaginary waters, now within tantalizing reach. He kicked at the waters again, lungs bursting as he pushed himself toward—
Milo slowly opened his eyes, groggy and weak, Bridget cradling him in her arms. He unconsciously wiped at his nose, his hand coming back with a thick smear of red blood. Everything hurt, especially his aching head.
“What the fuck just happened?” mumbled Milo, coughing. His lungs burned, like he’d actually been underwater fighting for his life.
“You’ve been out for nearly half an hour,” said Bridget, peeling his eyelids back to check his pupils. “Your nose started gushing blood—Jesus, Milo—at one point, you stopped breathing for almost an entire minute.”
Bridget helped Milo up to a sitting position as he pinched his nose against the last of the dripping blood. The entire front of his shirt was covered in crimson, easily visible even over the weeks’ worth of caked filth.
“Milo!” repeated Bridget, smacking him on the shoulder. “Talk to me—are you okay?”
“The scratches on the wall, the marks on the body . . . it was all so fucking clear.”
As he spoke, his returning headache began to throb, a sharp grinding behind one eye that radiated pain through his jaw and teeth. He winced as a new trickle of blood dripped from his nose as he once again teetered over a vast abyss of limitless information.
“Whoa, whoa,” cautioned Bridget, her voice pulling him back from the edge again and into full, painful wakefulness. “Whatever you’re doing, ease the hell up.”
“What’s happening to me?” croaked Milo.
Bridget shook her head, still taking in Milo’s rambling, nonsensical speech.
“It could be a byproduct of our eidetic memories,” she theorized, her tone betraying her uncertainty. “Maybe a heightened ability to process and evaluate new information, bringing subconscious cues to a higher level of processing . . . I imagine it could become too much for your conscious mind to handle. For the lack of a better word, maybe you short-circuited?”
“That makes sense,” said Milo, more than a little relieved that she hadn’t dismissed him outright. “It was like the glowing golden room with the altar, only I wasn’t drowning in memories, I was drowning in information. I can’t help but feel like the explanation to everything is right under my nose. Every corner of this room screamed out at me at once; begging me to pay attention, put the pieces of the puzzle together.”
“I hesitate to say this,” said Bridget. “But we’ve come this far. Can you try again? Safely, I mean?”
“Maybe,” said Milo. “But I’d need you—your voice was the only thing that kept me from losing myself. You were my anchor.”
Bridget started to speak but stopped herself as she considered the implications.
“I changed my mind,” said Bridget, shaking her head. “I can’t ask you to do this. I can’t lose you.”
Milo buried his hands in his face, teeth chattering. “Like you said—we’ve come this far,” he finally said. “We have to try something. Talk to me. Walk me through it; pretend you’re guiding a meditation.”
Wordlessly, Bridget held one of his hands, using the other to place him in a sitting position next to the mummified body.
“We’ll give it a try,” said Bridget. “But if you start to get into trouble again, I need you to pull back. I don’t care how close to an answer you are. Can you promise me that?”
“I promise,” answered Milo.
“Then start by closing your eyes,” said Bridget, her voice soft but clear. “Visualize the room.”
The chamber instantly sprang into Milo’s mind in incredible detail, every square inch perfectly illuminated by voluminous light. He could see the land bridge over top, the muddy slide where he’d fallen, the mummy returned to where he’d first discovered it.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the room,” confirmed Milo, teeth gritted in concentration. “It’s back to the way we first found it.”
“Empty your mind,” said Bridget. The grinding in his brain faded, pain retreating from his jawline. “Allow your subconscious to evaluate everything that is seen and unseen.”
The room was no longer screaming for his attention. Milo found the stillness within.
“What do you see?” asked Bridget.
“A thousand details—broken stalagmites no thicker than a needle—pebbles disturbed by soft footfalls—even the marks from where his fingernails brushed against the cavern walls.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s a trail, Bridget. And I can follow it.”