‘I don’t know, Randy…’
‘Aw, come on!’
Taking a deep breath, I edged myself down into the opening, head first.
It was narrow, all right, and here I was, chunky, awkward, unathletic me, squeezing into a hole which skinny, gangling Randy could make it through with no trouble. I managed to keep from being wedged in there only by keeping my arms straight out in front and inching forward using my elbows, and pushing myself with my feet. Every so often, I’d find a hand-hold on the floor or the walls of the passage and use it to move myself onward. It was slow going. The passage was narrow, sometimes wet. Rocks jutted out from the ceilings and the walls. I had to contort my body in strange and unnatural ways to get past them. Movement was always possible, the twists and turns were gradual, and before long, the passage widened and opened into a larger chamber.
This was where Randy was, squatting on the ground, aiming the flashlight in my direction. When I came through the passage we both stood up and examined our surroundings.
It was a large circular chamber with a diameter of about forty feet. There were stalactites hanging from the ceiling which was about twenty feet high. The walls were covered with smooth, polished flowing shapes which looked like they’d been frozen in mid-flow. Randy nudged me and pointed at something towards the ceiling. At first, I couldn’t see what it was, but then my eye caught movement. There were bats flying around up there. I looked over at Randy and he was grinning big time. I was too.
He was right — this place was awesome!
*
How the cave got there was something we’d never figure out. At first, I thought there might have been some kind of earthquake or maybe some shift in the ground. The shift or earthquake caused this cave, hidden all these years, to open up overnight. Even as it occurred to me, though, I realized how dumb that sounded.
Nor did we ever find out why we were the only ones it appeared to. You better believe that if a cave opened up overnight, out of nowhere, people in Morgan’s Crossing would be talking about it. No one ever did, though, because no one else knew about it, and that’s something else we’d never figure out. Anyway, after a while, familiarity bred contempt, and I stopped being afraid of the cave.
All we knew was we’d been presented with a secret place which was ours, ours alone, for we swore never to tell anyone else about it. Why would we? We were a pair of misfits: gawky, bespectacled Randy with his Dumbo ears, and jowly me, carrying baby fat like it was crazy-glued to me. Taunted by our age-mates and victims of numerous beatings from bullies like Ricky Pulver, Randy and I were bonded to each other, courtesy of the differences which set us apart us from the other kids.
*
There were two more features of this cave I have to tell you about. One, I discovered on my own one day coming home from school. I’d gotten word that Ricky Pulver was looking for me, and I knew what that meant. So instead of going home from school the usual way, I decided to go by way of Morgan’s Bluff.
When I got there, the cave was gone.
It had been there the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and now it was gone. I felt my eyes start to tear, worse than if I’d gotten that beating from Ricky Pulver. I turned and ran in the direction of Randy’s house. I had to let him know.
When I got there and told him, he looked at me like I’d grown two heads. ‘You’re nuts! I was there this morning!’
‘No, it’s gone! I swear!’
‘I’ll betcha!’
‘What?’
‘Ten bucks!’
I’d gotten ten dollars from my grandmother for my birthday. I hadn’t spent it yet; it was still in my dresser drawer. ‘Okay. Ten bucks!’
‘Let’s go!’
I went with Randy back to the bluff, certain that by day’s end, I’d have twenty bucks in my dresser drawer.
I ended up ten dollars poorer.
*
The other discovery came when Randy and I were playing Star Trek in the circular chamber. By this time, we had stashed several flashlights, batteries, and six-packs of Coke which stayed cold in the cool air. Or rather, Randy had stashed all this stuff. I offered to go halves with him on it, but he told me not to worry, it was on him. I shrugged it off, not realizing what we’d have to deal with later on.
But first, I have to tell you about the Klingon.
There was no end of games we played in the narrow passages of our cave or in that big chamber. We were heroes chasing gangsters, super-villains, aliens. We were Frank and Joe Hardy, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Superman, Batman, Spider Man…
The day we saw the Klingon, we were Kirk and Spock again. The chamber was a Klingon outpost, the bats overhead were Klingon starships. We were surrounded by hostile Klingons, blasting them with our flashlights, doubling as phasers, awaiting rescue from the Enterprise. In our scenario, we were trapped, facing certain death, the charges in our phasers all but gone, yet there we were, ready to make our climactic, heroic stand.
We were discussing strategy when we heard something in the direction of the narrow passage leading into our chamber. We froze, listening, and heard it again. There was no mistake; it was a footstep.
We turned our flashlights in the direction of the noise, and I saw it.
A Klingon. Big, muscular, towering, with the furrows in the forehead and the bridge of the nose. Thick black brows forming a sinister V over the eyes. Black bristle-brush hair covering its head, and flowing downward along the cheeks and across the chin. Brown, reptilian skin. Holding a spearlike weapon, facing us, mouth drawn emitting an ominous, guttural snarl. Coming toward us. Mean, ugly, dangerous.
For real.
I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. The chamber was a closed cul-de-sac except for the one passage which led into it, and which was now blocked.
Randy wasn’t scared, though. As soon as the Klingon appeared, Randy aimed his phaser … flashlight … in its direction, yelled ‘Fire!’ and made a ‘Zzzttt’ kind of noise. No sooner had he done so than the Klingon disappeared, just like that.
I stood there for maybe a split-second, shaking, starting to cry, and then I made a beeline for the tunnel. I was getting out of there. Randy came after me. ‘Hey, Denny, what’s the matter?’
‘What do you mean, ‘What’s the matter?’’ I shouted back. ‘This place stinks! We could have been killed! We have no business being here! I’m going!’
Randy grabbed my arm. I pushed him away and shouted, ‘What’s the matter with you? That thing could have killed us!’ and launched into a graphic description of the Klingon, right down to the funky-looking spear it was carrying.
Randy just stared at me, as if I were the alien species. When I was done, he said, ‘You saw it?’
‘Yeah, I saw it! You telling me you didn’t?’
Randy kept staring at me, wide-eyed, unbelieving. ‘You’re not goofing on me? You really saw it?’
‘I saw it, Randy. It was there! Didn’t you?’
‘No. Well, yeah. I mean - I didn’t see him, but - I made him up. I made like he was there just like you said, but he wasn’t really there.’ He paused. ‘You saw him? For real?’
I nodded, and Randy looked even more disbelieving and I guess I did too. Was it possible? Could something you imagined become real in this place? Well, why not? This was a cave that came and went, appearing only to us, with no logical explanation, so couldn’t other fantastic things happen once you were inside it? I was pondering these questions when I realized that Randy was shaking me and saying something.
‘What?’
‘Try it.’
‘Try what?’
‘Make up something. See if we can see it.’
I wanted to refuse, but I couldn’t. Countering my fear was my own curiosity plus the voice and demeanor of my best friend. He wasn’t scared, he was delighted. Everything that was happening was one big, glorious adventure, and he wanted for me to be part of it.
‘Okay,’ I hesitated, and thought back to my favorite Star T
rek episode. It was the one where Kirk is on a hostile planet in a fight to the death with an alien who looks like a lizard. I closed my eyes and pictured the lizard-man, clear and distinct. Big and bulky. Dinosaur head with a scaly horn-thing on top. Mouth and teeth like a tyrannosaurus. Animal skin tunic with a weapons belt, an ugly black knife in his claw.
‘Wow!’
Randy’s voice shook me from my reverie. I looked where he was looking and I almost lost it.
He was there - that image from my mind’s eye was facing us, hissing at us, waving that ugly black knife.
I didn’t stop to think. I did what Randy did before - I aimed my flashlight at it, yelled ‘Fire!’ and went ‘Zzzttt.’
The lizard-man disappeared, just like that, and though I was still scared, I just started laughing. I couldn’t stop.
‘Don’t you see, Denny?’ Randy had to shout to be heard over my hysterics. ‘This place is ours! We’re in charge here! Nothing can hurt us! We can do anything here! Anything!’
It was true. In a world of Bills and Ricky Pulvers, we’d been handed this disappearing, reappearing hole in the ground which followed its own set of rules. Our rules. We could make things happen here. Scary things. Wonderful things. Things we could never enjoy on the outside. Here…
Randy was right. From that day on, our play-acting took on a new freshness and excitement that we’d never experienced before. We were still the good guys, fighting enemy agents, ninjas, monsters, you name it. Only now, they weren’t make-believe phantasms which only existed in our minds; they were real, they were solid, and they were at our mercy. They appeared, and then disappeared at our whim. Randy was right - it was awesome.
Until it started to go bad.
*
Over the next couple of years, we outgrew the play-acting games, but we still enjoyed hanging out in the cave. It wasn’t until one day in my twelfth year, that I got a sense as to how things were starting to change between us.
Randy was waiting for me in the circular chamber drinking something that wasn’t a coke. When I squeezed my way through, he handed me a similar something and said ‘Have one.’
‘What’s this?’
‘Beer.’
‘Where’d you get it?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. Just take it.’
I didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to look bad in Randy’s eyes, so I took it. It tasted horrible, but I managed to finish it. I don’t think I hid my discomfort too well from Randy, though. He seemed pretty amused.
Another time, I got down there, Randy was puffing on a cigarette, in fact, there was a whole carton of them lying on the floor. He offered me one. This time, I did refuse.
Still another time, he was smoking something that didn’t quite smell like a cigarette. Again, he offered, again I refused. Randy didn’t say anything, but I could tell that he was put out because I rebuffed his offer.
It all came to a head one day, when I went by Randy’s house. I rang the doorbell and was answered, not by Randy, but by Bill, looking real ticked off.
‘Come inside, Dennis. I want to talk to you.’
He ushered me into the living room, and I was feeling all nervous and worried. I’d knew about Bill’s temper and how mean he could get when he’d been drinking, which he was. It was pretty obvious.
Randy was sitting on the couch looking sullen, and I guessed that he and Bill were having words before I got there. Bill gestured for me to sit next to Randy, and I wasn’t about to argue.
‘Dennis, I caught Randy taking money out my wallet just now. I’ve also been noticing other things of mine have gone missing around the house. Do you know anything about this?’
I thought of our stash back at the cave, and more recently, about the beer and the smokes. I’d only half wondered where they’d come from, maybe even suspected a little, but now I knew for sure. Randy had been ripping off his stepfather, and things were about to hit the fan.
‘I asked you a question, Dennis,’ Bill said, raising his voice. ‘Do you know anything about this?’
I was pondering whether to speak out of fear or lie out of loyalty, when Randy shouted, ‘Leave him alone! He doesn’t know anything! Yeah, I took the stuff!’
‘Where is it?’ Bill demanded.
Randy sat there, stone-faced and silent.
‘Where is it?’ Bill thundered, and I jumped.
‘I’ll show you where it is,’ Randy answered. ‘I’ll take you there. Just leave Denny out of this.’
Bill turned to me. ‘You’d better be getting on home.’
I got.
*
I’m sure you can guess what happened next. If you think that’s the end of it, though, you’re wrong.
My folks gave me the word the next morning. Randy and his step-dad had gone out the day before. In the late afternoon, Randy had come running home, hysterical, saying that something had attacked his step-dad by Morgan’s Bluff. They tried to get more out of him, but all he could say was that something big had jumped them, and that he had started running, but Bill…
The sheriff and a group of men headed out and found what was left of Bill. Bill’s face wasn’t a face anymore; it was more like bone surrounded by raw hamburger. There was a hole in his chest, or rather, a hole where his chest should have been. Only his right leg was still attached to his torso, his remaining limbs were strewn up to twenty feet away from the body. Except for his left foot. That, they never found.
You can bet that there was talk about what could do this to a man. Some said a bear, some said a big cat, a cougar maybe. One of the old timers, though, claimed that there hadn’t been a bear or a big cat in or around Morgan’s Crossing since he’d been living here, but no one paid him any mind. After all, it had to be some kind of big animal that could do such a world of hurt on a big strapping guy like Bill. Thank God it didn’t get the boy.
Randy was no help. Every time someone asked him about it, he’d get all incoherent and talk about something big, (no, he didn’t get a good look at it, he just ran) start crying, until no one had the heart to put him through any more questions. They just went out and beat the woods behind Morgan’s Bluff and surrounding areas looking for something big enough and mean enough to have done this terrible thing. Of course, they found nothing.
Not even a cave by Morgan’s Bluff.
I knew, though. I knew how much Randy hated Bill. He would often talk about how he’d like to take a baseball bat to Bill while he was asleep. He never did, of course, but even if he had, I don‘t suppose it would have made any difference, not between us.
I also knew, from our role-playing how good an actor Randy could be. It would be no stretch for him to convince the townsfolk that he’d seen something terrible and was too broken up to talk about it.
And I knew something else. Something which saddened me.
Randy had violated our pact; he’d used our private, beautiful place for something terrible. This gift which was inexplicably bestowed upon us for the express purpose of pleasure and enjoyment had been twisted into an instrument of horror. I knew I could never enjoy another minute in that cave and I was angry that something wonderful had been wrested away from me.
There was also something else. I was becoming afraid of Randy. The boy who was once my best friend was changing. It was obvious that he was becoming more disdainful of me because I didn’t like drinking beer or smoking weed. Sure, he and I had always ragged on each other. Friends do that; it’s all good-natured fun, but now, Randy’s gibes seemed less good-natured. When we disagreed on things, which was often, his insults seemed more like true, cruel words spoken in ill-disguised jest. We were drifting apart, not so much friends, as semi-amiable acquaintances, becoming less amiable. I could envision a day where his intolerance might be the match which burned a bridge that could never be rebuilt. What then? After seeing what happened to Bill, what then?
I vowed that I would never go back to the cave with him. That meant we could never be friends again.
*
Fall came, and I entered Middle School in the north end of town. I saw little of Randy; he was in a different school district. Over the next few years, we saw less of each other, but in Morgan’s Crossing, paths cross whether you want them to or not. Because I saw him so infrequently, the changes were striking. He’d lost that gawkiness he’d had as a kid, replaced the skinniness with muscularity and definition. He stopped wearing the glasses and carried himself with an assurance he’d never exhibited while Bill was alive. He paraded with an arrogant cockiness, started hanging with a bad crowd, was never seen without a pack of smokes, or, in later years, the company of some trashy-looking girl.
By the time I entered high school, I’d experienced a growth spurt, dropped twenty pounds, and licked Ricky Pulver once and for all. By my senior year, I filled out a bunch of college applications before deciding on going to State, lost my virginity to Linda Greene (and vice versa), became a star player on my high school softball team with a trophy or two to show for it. I graduated State and married Linda, who helped put me through grad school. I got my Master’s Degree and a good job, and then returned the favor by helping put Linda through law school. By the time we were in our early thirties, I was employed doing computer graphics, happy in my work, and Linda was working in the DA’s office.
Not once in all those years did I revisit Morgan’s Bluff.
*
Linda and I were sitting at home one night, talking about our day, when she asked me if I remembered Randy Hellinger. I said, sure, why?
That’s when Linda brought me up to date. Seems Randy had fallen into some bad company: the Corey brothers. There was a name I hadn’t heard in years. Bad though Bill and Ricky Pulver were, they didn’t come close to the Coreys. Anything dirty that happened in Morgan’s Crossing, you could lay at their door. Maybe you wanted drugs or guns that couldn’t be traced. Maybe you wanted to burn down an old folks’ home for the insurance money. Maybe you wanted someone beaten within an inch of their life or beyond. All you had to do was whisper a word in a Corey ear and lay down some green in a Corey palm, and the deed was done.
Randy Hellinger had gotten in deep with the Coreys. According to Linda, the DA was conducting a major investigation into organized crime in the area. And who do you suppose had been entrapped in a drug deal? None other than my onetime best friend who, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, had agreed to turn state’s evidence against the Coreys.
Kzine Issue 3 Page 5