by Barry Napier
He put the sledgehammer, axe, and crowbar on the ground after another fifty feet, in a slight bend in the cavern. He kept the shovel in his hand, mainly because it was lighter and he didn’t feel like carrying the extra weight of the sledgehammer and axe through the darkness.
Ahead of him, the passage started to decline a bit more. The flashlight beam revealed the first signs of this place once having been a tourist attraction. There were guardrails bolted into the side of the wall, descending at an angle. There were also metal steps placed strategically to make climbing down the slick cavern floor a bit safer. A small sign had been bolted to the right wall, kindly reminding passersby to Watch Your Step!
Cooper walked down the passage, the flashlight beam etching out the cavern ahead of him. There were more stairs, descending down beyond the light’s reach. To the sides of the stairs and installed along the lower portions of wall beneath the railings, Cooper could see small lights in the shape of black metal boxes. The protective lenses pointed directly up towards the ceiling, casting up nothing more than dust.
He felt like a ghost that was haunting a location the world had forgotten. The silence within the cavern walls was eerie. Even the soft shuffling sound of his footsteps on the stairs seemed muffled, as if the cavern walls were absorbing it.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs, where the passage leveled out once again. Here, the floor was a bit rougher than before but the cavern opened up a bit more. The rails stopped, allowing about five feet of open space in each direction. Cooper traced the walls with the flashlight and saw where bored tourists had taken the time to carve their initials into the wall with pens or coins.
With each step he took forward, the passage seemed to grow wider—so wide that it didn’t seem like an actual passage anymore, but a small kiva. After another fifty feet, he found himself standing in an area that was large enough to be considered a chamber. There were more guardrails bolted into the floor along the right edge. Signs along the bottom of the rails read: Keep Your Children Close!
The thought of kids being here in this dank dark place was unnerving. Cooper found himself constantly moving the path of the flashlight, as it seemed incredibly thin and almost insignificant when he focused it on a single spot. The darkness down here was impenetrable and had a thick feel to it.
The silence of the place once again snuck up on him. He felt like he was in some weird primitive isolation chamber. The only thing that broke this sensation was the sight of the metal rails to the left. Cooper walked in that direction and shone the light over one of the guardrails. He saw a drop-off on the other side that he estimated went down roughly ten feet, although the darkness made it impossible to tell for sure. There were traces of water down there, just enough to make the surface of the floor glimmer and shine in the flashlight beam.
He turned the flashlight to the right and saw more of the same. The guardrails gradually started angling to the right as the chamber started to grow narrow, but Cooper could see where the drop-off wound behind a massive outcropping of rock that merged with the cavern wall.
The ocean is that way, he thought.
That made him realize for the first time that the campgrounds were over his head. If he could manage to continue walking along that drop-off in a search for the water source, he assumed he’d end up walking beneath the roads and, eventually, the beach.
It would be a long walk, but that was where he needed to go. With the flashlight in one hand and the shovel in the other, draped over his shoulder, he carried on into the darkness.
Another one hundred feet or so brought him to a severe shift in the terrain. The large chamber took a harsh right turn and started to grow narrow again. In the beam of the flashlight, it appeared as if the darkness was actually eating the open space of the chamber. It was a dizzying effect that Cooper had to close his eyes against to steady himself.
When he regained his sense of balance, Cooper followed the narrowing chamber into another passage similar to the one near the mouth of the cavern. This one was mostly straight and required no stairs. He came to a curve in the wall as the cavern bended to the left and saw a copper-colored sign that had been placed along the wall. It resembled one of the historical markers up on the trails, but had a more rustic look to it.
Cooper approached it and pointed the flashlight at it. A brief historical account had been engraved into it, reading:
When locals came into the cavern searching for Douglass Pickman, they found two coins, a bandana, and a significant amount of blood at this location. There is no way to tell if any of this belonged to Pickman or his daughter, but local legends claim that the blood was still wet.
“Cheerful,” Cooper said.
His own voice came back to him in what seemed like a thousand whispers. He promptly shut his mouth and vowed to never speak in these dammed caverns again.
He left the marker behind and carried on. The passage ended a few yards ahead, emptying into another kiva-like area. There were two passages to choose from and he selected the one that had a series of steps directly at the opening. The stairs were incredibly necessary, as the passage went up at a harsh angle and then went instantly down. This passage curved almost the entire way down and, again, came to a large chamber.
Cooper didn’t know how far he had walked or how far under the earth he was. He estimated that he had been walking for maybe thirty minutes. He assumed that was pretty accurate; he didn’t see how any sort of tour guide in their right minds would allow a cavern tour to go on any farther.
As if the darkness had read his mind, it revealed a sign against the far cavern wall. It was the only feature Cooper could see. He saw no further passages to take. The caverns had simply dead-ended.
Before he’d allow himself to feel defeated, he shone his light on the sign at the far end of the tunnel. It was just as brief as the one that had come before. In Cooper’s opinion, he imagined that this tour had likely not been very much fun, unless you enjoyed creeping around in the bowels of the earth—which he did not.
This sign read:
Only a few locals made it beyond this point in their search for Douglass Pickman. Those that searched beyond this chamber were never seen again. It is assumed that they either had a confrontation with Pickman or that the passages beyond were incredibly treacherous and they became trapped.
The sign insinuated that there were passages beyond this chamber, but Cooper sure as hell didn’t see any. He slowly traced the flashlight around the room, already furious that he had come all the way down here for nothing.
But then he saw a slight crease in the wall to his left. It was about four feet off of the ground and seemed to create a dip in the rock wall. Cooper trained the flashlight further up and saw that the wall angled back away from the chamber, creating something of a walkway near the ceiling.
Cooper walked towards the area where the slight angle in the wall started and placed the flashlight there. It rolled back a bit and then stopped. He did the same with the shovel and found that there was just enough space on the ledge to hold it. Cooper then reached up and placed his hands on the ledge, pulling himself up.
With the use of his feet, it wasn’t too hard of a climb. There was not enough space on the ledge to properly balance himself, so he had to lean forward against the angled wall. Even then, the heels of his shoes were dangling out over the open air. The walkway he had seen from the floor was about two feet over his head and to the right. He could easily get there by spider-walking across the ledge he was currently on.
He reached down very carefully and retrieved his flashlight. It took a bit more effort to get a grip on the shovel without falling back down to the chamber floor, but he managed to pull it off. With each hand filled, he scaled across the ledge. He let out a sigh of relief when it widened after a few steps, making enough room for the entire length of his feet.
After that, getting to the other ledge was simple. He threw the flashlight and shovel up onto it and then pulled himself up. It took only the sm
allest amount of balance and when he stood up, his head was nearly touching the chamber ceiling. He looked down and realized that if he fell, he’d likely break his neck. It was probably a ten foot drop onto a solid sheet of rock.
Cooper aimed the flashlight ahead and saw that the makeshift walkway widened out and led into a small opening in the cavern wall up ahead. Cooper cringed when he realized that he was going to have to duck down and crawl in order to get through it.
He allowed himself enough time to take another gulp of his water before continuing on. He walked along the top portion of the cavern wall, thankful at least that this ledge was about three feet wide and bordered by the wall to his left.
He approached the small opening and crouched down. The flashlight revealed only blackness ahead.
Cooper slid the shovel inside ahead of him and felt no immediate obstructions; apparently, this this passage was straight. Had it been angled upwards, he had no idea how he’d manage to crawl up it.
With a sigh, he pointed the flashlight ahead and started crawling.
26
He was relieved almost immediately when the small passageway not only began to angle downwards, but started to drastically open up in height and width. It took less than five minutes of crawling before he was able to rise up and amble along in a hunched position. Quickly after that, he was able to stand.
The sense of isolation along this passage was a complete one; he no longer had the railings or historical markers to break the illusion. He didn’t know when he had last felt this alone. He tried recalling the memory he had almost glimpsed on the beach last night, assuming that wherever he had been during his disappearance, he’d probably been just as alone.
He paused for a moment, taking his phone out of the backpack. Its glow in the cavern was like some weird cosmic light, beaming down to suck him up into another world. The clock on it read 7:12. He’d been in the caverns for a little over an hour now.
The current passage he was walking down was much longer than any of the ones he had passed through along the Pickman’s Caverns tour. It seemed to wind on endlessly, not breaking a single time to allow for more tunnels, but opening to chamber length and then narrowing again on numerous occasions.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been walking when he came to the fourth large area along the passage, but he was sure it had been at least a half a mile. This large opening was bigger than the one at the end of the tour trail with the final historical marker. To the right, the floor seemed to slant down and then drop away. To the left, there were two huge openings, one big enough to drive a bulldozer through.
Cooper carefully approached the drop off to the right and looked down. At first, he saw only darkness below. But when he focused, he could just barely make out faint glimmers of light. He watched the murky movements and realized that he was seeing the faint reflections of the flashlight beam off of a body of water. He was sure it was an inaccurate guess, but the water was at least twenty feet below.
The water gave off a stench that seemed to climb the walls of the drop-off and stand directly beside him. It smelled like rotting fish and stagnant salt water. He continued to look down, not sure what he was looking for. He was certainly looking into dark water but he felt instantly that this was not where he needed to be.
He then walked over to the two openings. The larger one revealed a rock ceiling that came down at a harsh angle and almost immediately closed the space off. There was another small opening to the right before the tiny room ended. It was a bit larger than the entrance that Cooper had been forced to crawl through earlier.
He aimed his light into it and saw another small room. In the corner, he saw an unexpected shade of white that made him jump back slightly, dropping the flashlight. He watched the light dance around for a moment before picking it up and once again pointed it into the small room.
There was a skeleton lying against the farthest wall, its tilted slightly towards him. Tattered moth-eaten clothes clung to its form. It was missing several teeth and its right arm was draped across its chest.
Cooper crawled into the opening and, sure that he would regret it, held a shaky hand out and rested it on the fabric of the shirt. He felt the ribcage beneath and shuddered. He did his best to focus, trying to see if contact with it would summon a vision as he had managed to do at the Blackstock’s door and the boarded entrance to Pickman’s Caverns.
It came easily, as if the skeleton had been holding it under its ragged clothes for countless years, ready to give its secrets to anyone that cared.
Cooper saw a man with long black hair crawling through the large opening outside of this small room. He had a gunshot wound in the stomach and he was screaming as blood cascaded down his legs. Someone else stood behind him, running away and firing a gun that flashed blindingly in the darkness.
Cooper tried to hone in on the man’s thoughts but all he could sense was pain and fury. The pain made the connection that Cooper had gathered tenuous, almost like television static in his mind.
He removed his hand from the skeleton when the pain became too prominent and blocked out the vision. Besides, he didn’t need to know anymore. The little bit of information he had gathered was enough.
These were not Pickman’s remains.
Cooper supposed it might have been one of the locals that had come in searching for Pickman and got a bullet to the stomach for his troubles. Knowing that there was no way to get back to the forests through the caverns with such a wound, the man had apparently elected to hole up in this small opening within the cavern wall to die.
Cooper backed out of the small opening and walked back into the larger chamber. If there was a way further into the caverns, it was in the second opening along the left side of the chamber. He pointed his flashlight into it and found more of the same. He took a step towards it and then stopped suddenly.
He’d heard something up ahead.
It had been brief and barely there, but he was certain he had heard it. A low grumble, like a man grunting or clearing his throat. It came whispering through the opening ahead of him, just barely more noticeable than the sound a breeze would make.
Was it a warning? An invitation?
Or was it just the sound of the earth groaning, complaining about the weight and age it carried?
Cooper didn’t know. But he wanted to find out.
With the flashlight beam slicing through the darkness ahead of him, Cooper entered the cavern.
Ahead of him, barely audible but definitely there, he could just make out the low pulsing roar of the ocean.
27
Cooper had been in the new passage for less than two minutes when he realized that he was now gripping the shovel handle anxiously. His muscles were tense, as if waiting to drop the flashlight and use the shovel like a baseball bat if he had to. There was nothing particularly frightening about this passage, but it did feel different.
Upon entering the passage, he had heard the distant drone of the ocean right away. After hearing it, it became all that he was aware of. Underground, it sounded different. It was more mellow and rhythmic than it was in the open air. Cooper wondered if this was what a heartbeat sounded like to a baby in the womb.
He walked towards the sound, unsure of how far he had left to go or where he was even going. The sound of the ocean lured him on and he started to wonder.
He wondered if he was under the highways yet. He wondered how much longer he had to walk. He wondered if he was losing his damned mind for deciding to go exploring these unchartered caverns all by himself.
He stopped long enough to take another sip of water and to check the clock on his phone. It was 8:07…still relatively early, but he had no real sense of where the last two hours had gone. He aimed the flashlight forward and walked on.
Several minutes passed and he realized that the sound of the ocean was incredibly loud now. He could actually hear the crisp and defined sounds of waves breaking along the shore. As the tide was pulled out, the sound within the cavern
walls was like some large beast taking a huge breath underground.
The passage started to descend slightly and then rather dramatically. Cooper nearly lost his footing on two occasions, sparing a spill on his ass the last time only because he was able to use the shovel as a brace against the floor.
He walked down the descending passage and thought he heard someone speaking. It came to him like a whisper and when he stopped to concentrate on it, he was pretty sure it was just some random ambient noise caused by the vast underground spaces and the ocean.
However, less than a minute after hearing the voice-like noises, he felt a slight cramping in his lungs. Slowly, it was getting harder to breathe. The air felt thicker than ever now and he could smell the acrid stench of the ocean. He paused, taking in a few deep breaths as he swept the flashlight beam around the passage.
He took several more steps, now keeping the shovel to the floor in order to support himself, and came to the end of the passage. Instantly, he saw that the rock wall to the right meandered away into the darkness and angled down farther into the earth. He aimed the flashlight down and saw water churning several feet below. Further out, just beyond the reach of the flashlight beam, the water followed the course of a small tunnel that, Cooper assumed, led towards the ocean.
He looked ahead and saw that he was in another chamber, only this one looked different somehow. Everything had a soft golden cast of light to it that didn’t need the assistance of the flashlight. Also, there was another absolute ending several yards in front him, barely illuminated by the flashlight beam. To his left, the rock wall curved upwards and to the left before angling back to the right to create a solid wall in front of him.
He looked up and saw that the ceiling here was fairly high—perhaps thirty feet. He trained his beam of light along the ground in front of him and caught a silver glint in the light just a few steps ahead of him. He walked over to the object on the ground and knelt down to get a closer look.