Because of course I knew the person on the table. Of course, I knew his face and his smile and the way his eyes lit up when he smiled. I knew what his laugh sounded like and I knew what he looked like angry and worried and in pain. I knew his voice and I knew his passions. Because I felt like I knew this person so well, yet for so little time.
For the person in front of me, on the table, with a bloody face and being hooked up to machines, with closed eyes and ripped clothes was Tim.
When I saw him on that table, all lifeless and bloody, I sobbed and almost fell down, my knees felt weak and I probably would fall down if Ethan wasn't holding me up. I couldn't believe it. Of course the thought of not being able to escape or being killed by Eztli was always at the back of my mind, but I still couldn't believe that Tim was cut open and bleeding on the table in front of me, without even knowing if he'll survive.
I was only dimly aware of the fact that I completely spaced out and that Ethan was shaking my shoulders. My mind slowly came back to the real world and I realized that Ethan was trying to tell me something. 'What?', I asked him, with tears chocking my voice. 'I know this is a stupid question to ask but are you okay?', he asked me, his green eyes boring into mine. He ran a hand through his dirty blond hair and looked at me with his eyes full of worry. To be honest, I didn't know what to say. I obviously wasn't ok, but I also knew I had to keep going, I had to, because if I didn't that would mean that I wouldn't be able to help Tim survive, if he could, I couldn't save myself, Ethan and I couldn't stop the madness going on.
'I'm fine.' I replied. 'But we do have to get out of here, or at least call someone to come here and shut down this operation.' I said. 'Well to call someone, we would have to get out of this mine, because there is absolutely no reception in here at all and Eztli doesn't have land line phones here either for the fear of someone using them and calling for help from the inside.' Ethan said. 'Alright well then we'll just have to get to the surface and try to call for help there.' 'We could do that, there's a small store near the entrance of the mine if remember correctly.' offered Ethan.
In that minute we both decided that we would do whatever it took to escape this hellish nightmare. We decided to try to get back to the outside world. I think we both knew that it wouldn't be easy at all, the opposite of that really. It would be a miracle if we could ever get out of here alive. This mine was gigantic and full of criss-crossed passages, most of which weren't even lighted. If I ever got out of this alive, I would have to write a book about it, just to get it all out of my system.
I dug into the pockets of Tim's pants and pulled out his phone, which had photos of the mine that Tim took while in here. The phone was completely useless for calling, because Eztli took out the card and only left the battery in it.
We started on the journey towards the top. I looked at Tim one last time and promised to him in my mind that I would come back for him as soon as I could. I took some of the surgery yarn that I found on the table next to Tim and a scalpel. We could tie the yarn to the walls and that way mark our way to come back later and also to know whether we were walking in circles around the mine.
Ethan and me carefully opened the door and looked down the hallway to see if either Eztli or that women that was with him, were there. Luckily, there was nobody coming towards us, so we started walking down the hallway in the opposite way we came from. We came to a corner and tied the piece of yarn to the iron that was hanging out of the wall. Then after looking around the corner, we continued on our way. We repeated this every time when we came to a corner or a place where more passages met. Until eventually we came to a tunnel that was pitch black. We couldn't see or hear anything except for the water dripping down the walls and falling from the ceilings on the floor.
I was never really afraid of the dark, to be honest I loved the night more than I loved the day, but that tunnel was really scary and just made feel so insecure about myself. I just felt as if though I could just give up then and there and not go on. But then I remembered Tim back in that room, bleeding and barely alive. We had to get out of here, we had to!
So me and Ethan took down the dark tunnel, shadows swallowing us and the light. The tunnel was so long, we couldn't see the end of it. Do you know the saying 'Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel'? Yeah, that phrase would be really useless here, because, well, we couldn't see it.
We kept walking down the dark tunnel when I felt like I stepped on something. I turned the flashlight that we were using to light the way towards the thing on the floor. Me and Tim found the flashlights in Eztli's kitchen and we were using them to light our way.
It was not what I was expecting it to be. I thought it would be a stone or a twig, I was even prepared for a bone. But not this. It was not something that one would usually find on the floor of a dark mine tunnel, then again, since not many people walk through dark mine tunnels, they may not find anything at all. The thing on the floor was a name tag that doctors and nurses pin to their clothes in the hospital. On it was written a name Rachel Davis. It was the name of the woman that was with Eztli. I knew that because that was what Eztli called her when we saw them in the kitchen. I guessed that she was probably the one that was performing surgery on all of these people. After all, with things like that, you had to know what you were doing, or you made one wrong move and the person on the table in front of you wound up dead. And guessing by what Ethan told me about his brother, I strongly doubted that he sent the years of his disappearance a medical education and career. I picked up the name tag and put it in my pocket to show it to the police if we were to ever get out of here, and we carried on.
After what felt like forever, we finally came to the end of the tunnel and to a lighted room. It was nothing special, really. Stone walls, floor and ceiling and at the end the room split again into three passages. The only thing even remotely out of space in this room was a wooden cupboard, placed inside one of the stone walls.
Ethan and I walked over to it and opened it. The doors of the cupboards creaked annoyingly and opened. Inside it, was a single photo album and a green ink ball point pen. I took the album of the shelf of the cupboard and opened it. I could hear Ethan gasp beside me, and I turned to look at him. His face was the color of chalk, his eyes widened in surprise and shock, and his eyebrows furrowed. I looked back at the photo. It had a boy about three years old sitting under a Christmas tree, his face one of delight, with his eyes shining and his mouth pulled up into a smile. In his hands he was holding a present that was being handed to him by the boy sitting next to him. The young boy looked around 20 years old, had green eyes and dirty blond hair, while his brother had shaggy dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. And while he looked beautiful, he also looked sad. His eyes held a kind of sadness that a person at his age shouldn't know. His mouth was turned up into a bitter smile, but you could see that he was faking it for the person taking the picture and for the little boy sitting next to him. I looked at the picture again. More clearly this time. A little boy, with green eyes and dirty blond hair, an older boy sitting next to him, with slightly tan skin, dark hair and bright blue eyes. About 18 years of difference between them... Were those Ethan and Aaron-James-now Eztli- when they were young?
I looked at Ethan again and I could see it in his eyes that I was right even if I didn't say what I was thinking, he knew what was on my mind. He looked at me, those green eyes somehow the same as they were in the picture, yet so different. They were dull now, with no brightness or joy in them anymore. And Aaron-James (I have decided to call him by his real name while talking about past him), was obviously so different as well. Of course, he still looked beautiful, but in the picture, he looked like an almost normal college guy, while now he looked like, well, a crazy sociopath. His blue eyes were still as deep as the sea, his cheek bones still sharp, but while that made him look attractive in the photo, now it just made him look crazier. Before his blue eyes expressed sadness and a little bit of love for his baby brother, but now they shone with anger and craziness.
And it was the same with Ethan, so happy before, so sad and disappointed now. The next picture was taken just a minute after that. In his hands Ethan held a blue and white stuffed elephant with a red collar around its neck.
The next photo was taken probably about a year after that. On it was just Ethan, now four years old, sitting in front of chocolate cake, that looked homemade, it was doused with blue sprinkles and whipped cream and if had to guess, Aaron-James probably made it for his little brother. Ethan was giving a big, toothy smile at the camera as he blew out his four birthday candles, the blue and white elephant sitting in his lap.
I went on in the album, the next few photos were all mostly of Ethan, either at home during the celebrations, or on playgrounds, in the forest, always with the blue and black elephant in tow, sometimes Aaron-James was with him, sometimes he wasn't.
But then came a photo that broke my heart. It was blurry and wrinkled. On it, a six-year-old Ethan was sitting on a bed, that was too big for him, clutching in his hands the blue and white elephant, now worn out. Ethan was looking out of the window, into the rainy day. Infront of the house there was nothing and nobody. No car, nothing. Ethan's face was streaked with tears, yet he tried to look brave. That was probably the day that Aaron-James left.
As I flipped the pages, I found new photos of Ethan. These seemed to be taken with a cell phone, rather than a real camera, as they weren't so clear. On them, Ethan was going to school, playing with his friends, riding a bike. The last photo of him was when he was 13 years old.... But there were no more pictures of him and his blue and white elephant with a red collar.
As I closed the album, I looked at Ethan. His green eyes were watering as he stared at the album, tears silently flowing down his cheeks. I turned around and hugged him. At first, he tried to fight it, but then he hugged me back and started sobbing into my shoulder. The more I found out about him, the more I felt sorry for him and wished that I could help him in some way, but I knew that what happened was in the past and there was no changing the past no matter how hard we tried.
After some time, he straightened up and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 'I can't believe... ', he choked on tears, 'I can't believe he kept all of those photos of when we were kids and even later, I mean it is kind of creepy that he was there when I was growing up with other people, but I thought that he never saw me again after he left. I guess I was wrong. That blue and white elephant, he bought that for me with his own money, our dad was deep in depression at the time, so he didn't really work. Only Aaron-James did. I don't understand, all those photos, he kept them for a reason, and now he just locked me up? I mean where did that come from?' I didn't say anything, only... Considering that the last picture that Aaron-James took of Ethan was when he was 13. That was 4 years before Ethan went looking for Aaron-James and found him as Eztli. Something must have happened in those 4 years that changed Aaron-James so much. What, I didn't know.
Ethan calmed down a bit and he spoke again. 'Come on, we better keep going if we're ever going to get out of this cursed mine.' I wished he took some more time to process it all, but he was right, we had to keep going. There was only a matter of time when Eztli would come after us again. We kept walking and chose the passage to the left and tied the yarn on piece of rock sticking out of the stone wall. Every time we came to a room, we would do the same thing. Cut the yarn with the scalpel, walk through the room to the next passage, tie the yarn next to it and continue on. We always made big knots of yarn and tied them on things next to the passages that we were choosing, for the fear that we would run out of it if we were to untie it the whole way while walking through different passages and rooms.
We kept walking, through lighted and pitch-dark corridors, through stone rooms and cold tunnels with dripping water. Then, when we were both on the edge of giving up, we saw something at the end of the passage. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was little slivers of light passing through the entrance of the mine that was half sealed up with wooden planks that were letting the light through.
I couldn't believe it. After so long of being stuck in this place, of being scared and beaten up and shocked by new discoveries, after being separated from Tim, meeting Ethan, finding Tim again in a state worse than imaginable, the exit was finally here.
We both ran towards it and squirmed through the holes in the entrance into the light of the day. Once we were outside, we were immediately shocked by the brightness of the sun, the blueness of the sky and by just generally everything around us. But we had to hurry up, Tim was still injured, on that table, Eztli and the doctor were still down there...
Ethan pointed to the small store that stood nearby and we both ran towards it. Once we pushed the door of it open all of the eyes turned towards us. Only then did I realize what we had to look like. Dirty and sweaty, with tears streaked faces, our clothes muddy... I decided that now wasn't the time for explaining and we just asked if we could use someone's phone to call the police. The store owner lent us hers and I quickly typed in the number and talked to the policeman on the other side. He was shocked, you could hear it in his voice, even if he did try to keep it professional. I told him everything; where we were, who we were, what happened... He then said that he would send a few men our way and to stay where we were. I hung up and returned the phone.
So, the police were really coming, we were actually finally free. I almost felt happy. Almost.
But this nightmare wasn't over yet.