CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

As Chenoa rose to murky consciousness, she felt only fear like a fist, its long fingers slipping into the space underneath her belly, tightening around the slick muscle of her intestines. She tried to press a hand to her stomach and realized she couldn’t. Panic set in and she thrashed in the darkness, her head smacking against a hard wall of granite as she pushed and pulled, her wrists and ankles meeting resistance. She was bound. And she wasn’t sure where. Or why.

The beetles. There was something about the beetles. She shook her head to clear the fog. Her tiny, scrabbling saviors, the ones that ensured her own escape. Where were the beetles now?

The only sound, once she went still, was the steady drip of condensation from somewhere overhead. She used her fingers to feel the ground where she was propped, the sandy grit moving over solid stone. It was too dark to see clearly, but the smell was…musty and dank, nothing at all like where she’d last been outside. Outside. In the ravine.

The beetles. She’d found a nest in a racoon carcass and had been watching the movements of the beetles under the light of her headlamp. Then there was a man. The man…

“I see you’re awake,” came a voice from the darkness. “Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting for you to rouse yourself.”

That voice. The last thing she remembered was watching the beetles as they emerged. Then she had heard that voice. She recalled it now, the man stepping into the circle of light cast by her headlamp. His outstretched arms, his splayed hands. “It’s okay…” he’d said. “I didn’t mean to spook you….”

Now her head pounded, and her legs ached from being bunched beneath her. Waiting, he’d said. How long had she been out? She tasted cloth, stretched tight across her mouth. Would anyone hear if she screamed?

“I’ve been so patient. Since our unexpected meeting, I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Sleepyhead.”

Chenoa scrabbled away from the sound of his voice.

She heard a click, and the space illuminated. She was in a room, of sorts, with camping supplies. It looked, and smelled, like it was underground. She traced the ceiling, a faint line of moisture seeping to its surface, and thought of the caves she’d marked on her map. Manitou, where porous substrate had been worn down by centuries of dripping spring water and hollowed into a series of caves that ran like veins through the wilderness area. If she was in the Manitou caves, she was still on the reserve, maybe within ten or fifteen miles of her camper van. But who would know to come look for her?

“It’s a pleasure to formally meet you,” said the voice. “Welcome to my home away from home.”