Chapter 21 (21!)
Kate frowned and walked forward the few steps to the base of the cliff. She cast about for several seconds trying to see if the path veered off in any other direction, but came back to Sawyer, her frown deepening in worry. "It just stops. I don't understand. There's no way Shannon climbed this wall, I couldn't even climb it. But there's no other path, no other direction she could've gone." As she thought about all of this she put her hand to her forhead and then brushed some lose curls out of her face.
Sawyer watched her with an incredulous look on his face like he'd never seen this side of her before. But he stood silently, waiting to see what would happen.
"The trail doesn't end here," everyone looked up in shock at Locke who was squatted down at the base of the cliff. "They've hidden it well, but there's a door. Right here, in the rock. It's small. Come here Kate." He motioned her over to him and pointed at the ground to Shannon's last footprint. "You see how the front of the print is deeper, more defined?" Kate nodded. "That indicates that she pushed off with that foot as if to start climbing, but as you said, there's no way she could've climbed this cliff. So there must be a door. But it's not close to the ground or she wouldn't have had to push off to get into it. And it's got to be at least semi-small because it would be impossible to cut a large door out of solid rock without causing a sort of landslide."
As he said all of this Kate just nodded while her eyes search the rock for what she knew must be there. And then she saw it. About four feet up, a crack in the rock. But it wasn't a normal crack. She stood and touched it with her fingers. It was odd because it didn't go anywhere. It wasn't quite a straight line, and it stopped abruptly only to be joined by another such crack.
She traced the perimeter of the doorway with her fingers. "This is it."
Sawyer rolled his eyes. "Looks like a crack in the wall to me."
Kate glanced at him but ignored the comment. "You can see light scuff marks here...and here." She pointed to small white lines. "And the moss has been disturbed...here."
Now Sawyer could see it. It was like suddenly a door popped out of the wall, where none had been before. "Ok. So how do we open it?"
"Over here." The three standing next to the wall turned and saw Jack standing next to what appeared to be just a tree stump. But he had cleared away what leaves and moss there were covering the top and it revealed a metal disk.
Kate walked over to stand across the stump from him, peering at the disk. "How did you find this?" But without waiting for a reply she reached out to touch the odd plate.
Jack grabbed her wrist just before her fingers came into contact with the metal. His grip was firm, but not unkind. "Don't. We don't know what it does yet." He slowly, almost reluctantly let go of her. Pointing to the strange markings covering the disk he said, "We don't know what these mean. It could be anything. This could have nothing to do with that door for all we know."
Kate's brow furrowed a little, but she lifted one eyebrow and looked at Jack comically. "Come here." He looked up at her, a little surprised, but did what she said. When he reached the other side of the stump and was standing next to Kate she pointed to the markings again. "Do the markings look strange now?"
Jack blushed as he realised what he'd done. The 'strange markings' from the opposite side of the stump now turned into writing scratched haphazzardly into metal that was quite readable. The letters were square-ish and each line seperated, but he could now read it easily.
