FIFTY

Mason could not climb down from his ledge, but he could climb back to the top, where he’d dropped the rope bridge.

He kept his mind on the physical labor of pulling himself up. His cast rasped against the rope, and he welcomed the sensation as a distraction. He knew if he allowed himself to think of his position—in the dark, hanging on a rope ladder hundreds of feet above the bottom of a chasm—he’d go insane.

There was no hope downward, unless he jumped too.

That only left up.

He was panting when he reached the upper ledge. Slowly, he crawled forward. For a dizzying moment, his hand reached into the void, and his entire body shook with the adrenaline of his fear of heights.

He shuffled back, away from the drop-off, until his feet hit the rock wall behind him.

Like an old man, he rose on weak legs. He faced the rock wall and shuffled sideways, toward the waterfall. Maybe there was a way behind it, a place were the limestone had worn away, like behind the waterfall where he first believed he’d captured Caitlyn.

A few steps later, he slid his foot into air and nearly toppled into the abyss.

With a sob, he pulled his foot back. Then crumpled to the ground in relief that he hadn’t fallen. A snake wrapped itself around his thigh. He pushed it away but felt nothing in his fingers. He realized it had been a product of his fear, as if his nightmares were coming to life at the realization that he’d die on this ledge. It would be thirst that took him, and the thought of it made him lick his lips.

The waterfall was so close that mist hit his face. Yet he was unable to reach across the last few feet to that water.

He crawled back to the rope ladder. He found the two iron hooks, the two loops.

Then a thought hit him and jolted him with hope.

He could cut the ladder in half! He’d leave one loop on this hook, and with the matching half coiled around his body, he’d slide to the ledge below. He’d loop the other half at the hook below and slide down again. Then he’d be at the next ladder, and he could climb all the way down.

It would work!

He slapped his hip for his knife.

Gone.

He felt a snake curl around his belly. He screamed, pulled at it, but found nothing. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to hold on to his sanity, and whimpered with frustration, remembering what hope had caused him to forget. He’d thrown the knife at Caitlyn.

All that remained was his backpack, holding the canister he’d intended to use for the harvest of eggs from her body. There was nothing to cut rope.

After the exertion of climbing the rope ladder, thirst had intensified to torment him. Now there was something else to torture him.

The offer that echoed in his mind. Life for a life, or death for a death.

If he hadn’t been so determined to kill her, the knife would be in his hands. He’d be able to escape this horror of slow death, alone in the absolute black of hell.

Easy death was a mere step or two away, into the void. But he was too much of a coward for that.

He thought of hanging himself and had a vision of climbing back down the ladder and trying to wrap one of the rope rungs around his neck and letting go. But the fear of heights was too overwhelming.

If only he had kept his knife.

Snakes of terror seemed to crawl over his body. He imagined tiny snakes, worming into his ears, pushing at his brain.

He began whimpering again, almost reduced to catatonic fear.

The rope, the rope, the rope. If only he could find a way to cut it.

Crying, he began pulling the rope ladder up until there was enough of it to rest on the ledge beside him.

Whimpering, he lifted one of the rungs to his mouth.

He clamped his teeth on the rope. His mouth could barely get around it, and immediately the coarse strands cut through the edges of his lips and the taste of copper streamed onto his tongue.

Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. He was an animal. He would gnaw through it. This rung. The next. And dozens and dozens more. Yes. Yes.

More tendrils of terror and insanity curled through his brain. He fell on his side and curled into a ball, rope in his mouth.

Chewing. Chewing. Chewing.