The Devil's Cauldron

by Michael Wallace

  “Forget about Davis for now,” she said. “What about Eric?”

  “I bet he forgot. I bet he spaced out why he’s there and what he’s supposed to be doing.”

  “We drilled it a million times. His memory isn’t that bad.”

  “Sometimes it is.”

  “He gave me a blow-by-blow description of The Hound of the Baskervilles,” she said. “How bad could it be?”

  “That’s different. That’s a story. He can remember stories.”

  “Hmm.” She frowned and closed her laptop. “My guess is he almost has it. If we could find a different way to get him the information, instead of making him memorize and repeat it back.”

  “Good idea. I could get him out of there and try again.” He gestured at the laptop. “Pass it over. I’ll send admin an email and tell them I want to see my brother one last time before I fly home to the States.”

  “They told you no,” Becca said. “Zero contact in the first two weeks.”

  “I don’t care, he’s my brother.”

  “That place has so many rules and regulations. What if you piss this Usher guy off and he gives Eric the boot? Then how do we get to Meggie?”

  “We’ll think of something. Becca, please!”

  Frowning, she slid the laptop across the table. He pulled up his email and sent a quick message. It said that Wes would be coming for his brother at five-thirty that evening. No need to save dinner—Wes would feed Eric before he brought him back. He apologized for the inconvenience, but didn’t make it sound like it was up for negotiation.

  The answer came back from Jerry Usher less than five minutes later. A visit was against the rules, it being within the first two weeks of Eric’s residency at Colina Nublosa, so reluctantly, Usher would have to decline the request. Also, all visitations must be scheduled at least forty-eight hours in advance. But he sincerely hoped that Wes had a safe trip back to the United States, with no travel delays or other annoyances.

  Becca sighed when Wes read her Usher’s response. She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “You signed papers, right?”

  “And what if I show up anyway? I’ll tell him I left my hotel after sending that and never saw his answer. Will they turn me away at the gates?”

  “Probably. And then it will make them suspicious. They might even keep a closer eye on Eric, and that won’t help anything.”

  “This was all a mistake,” he said. “I shouldn’t have put him in there.”

  “Maybe not. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “That’s generous,” she said. “It was my idea.”

  Wes had plenty to feel guilty about. Becca had had more faith in Eric than he had. And maybe she was right; maybe Wes was overplaying his brother’s handicap. Eric had enough challenges without people holding him down when he had a chance to do some genuine good. Why shouldn’t he be able to rise above his limitations? Eric certainly wanted to help. He looked up to his brother and his uncle and adored Becca.

  Wes even suspected that Eric’s obsession with Sherlock Holmes was because of their investigations. Holmes was like the super-hero version of their team, using his powers of deduction to force open the dark corners of criminal minds and bring in light and justice.

  “Are you angry with me?” Becca asked in a soft voice.

  “No, with myself. I shouldn’t have let him go.”

  Wes felt guilty for holding his brother back, and guilty for letting him go. For ignoring his misgivings. He wished more than anything they hadn’t proven justified. He realized glumly that Eric simply didn’t have the tools to do the job.

  “Give him a chance,” she said.

  “He had a chance. Time to end this. I’ll go up this afternoon and yank him out of there.”

  “There has to be another way,” Becca said. “What if we give him more instructions? Eric has an email account, right?”

  “Which he never checks unless someone tells him to. And his reading comprehension sucks. Whatever I said, he wouldn’t get. Besides, what if someone is looking over his shoulder while he puzzles over my message? Do they monitor email up there? Does he even have computer access yet? Who knows?”

  “I’m just trying to think of something. If only we could get to him outside the facility somehow. Wait a second,” she added. “I saw something on their site about field trips. What about that?”

  Wes was still sitting at the computer and pulled up Colina Nublosa’s web page. Yes, there was a big page about field trips, with pictures and flowery prose. One photo showed older people on a boat cruise on the lake, and others showed the younger, higher-functioning residents doing things like canopy walks and even zip lines. According to the site, all residents left the facility once a week, generally with their team of residents at a similar ability level.

  “Except there’s no calendar,” Wes said. “I could call and ask what Eric is going to do this week.”

  “Right after you got an email denying your request to visit him? Sure, they’d never guess you were up to something.”

  “Crap.”

  “Hold on.” She was looking over his shoulder and took the computer away and scrolled down. A grin broke across her face. “Check this out.”

  Frowning, Wes scanned to the bottom of the page, where she’d put her finger. He’d been skimming quickly looking for a link to a schedule and had missed it the first time. But there it was at the bottom, clear as anything.

  Every Sunday afternoon the staff takes residents to hike to the hot springs at Devil’s Cauldron. All residents who are ambulatory and not on behavior restriction are invited to attend.

  “And Eric loved the hot springs,” Becca said. “He’ll be sure to go.”

  “The springs are open to the public. Anyone could be there.”

  He sat back and stared at the birds fussing over the fruit plate. A black squirrel scrambled down from a vine and chased them away so he could steal in peace. At breakfast, one of the other guests, a backpacker from Seattle, had watched the same squirrel scampering in the branches high overhead and excitedly called his buddies out to look at the “monkey.” When the squirrel came lower, the others had a laugh at his expense.

  Wes imagined how Eric’s visit to the Devil’s Cauldron would play out. Both he and Becca had worked in care centers; field trips challenged the staff. The mentally handicapped residents, like Eric, were like children in adult bodies. Easy to find trouble up there—boiling water, falls, getting lost in the forest—and Eric would be on a tight leash.

  But what about after a half-hour or so? They’d relax their vigil. Sooner or later, he’d wander around with little supervision, much like he’d almost stumbled into Wes and Becca’s lovemaking the previous week. If they positioned themselves well, it would only be a matter of time before they could make contact. And then what? Debrief him? Give further instructions? Maybe nothing more than verify that he was okay, that they could leave him in there until he completed his mission.

  “Okay,” Wes said at last. “But if he doesn’t show, or if we see him and anything seems off, that’s it. He’s my brother, so I make the call. I’ll pull the plug.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Meggie stepped uneasily to the edge of the cave where it dropped into the hillside. Behind her, Benjamin tied the 150-foot rope to a boulder, while Kaitlyn spread a tarp and laid out their gear for one last check. An hour had passed since they’d abandoned the two sick men at the truck. For a cave so nearly unexplored, it was easy to find with the GPS. A few minutes wandering around, calling out numbers, and then Meggie saw it yawning black and round in front of her, a mouth opening into the mountain.

  The sun had climbed into the sky as they picked their way up the brush-covered, rock-strewn foothills of Nevada’s Snake Range. Glaring down from a brilliant blue sky, it sent heat shimmering from the desert floor far below them. But instead of shedding layers, they were pulling on long-sleeved cotton shirts in prepar
ation for the subterranean chill. Night and day, summer and winter had little meaning two hundred feet underground. They put on tight-fitting leather rappelling gloves.

  Meggie lay on her belly and crawled the last few feet to the hole, then shone a flashlight into its depths. The entrance was about ten feet across and dropped straight down like a well. Only the first fifteen feet lay exposed to daylight, before the shaft bent behind a jutting boulder that obscured the rest of the drop. In spite of the dry climate, water seeped from the cave walls a few feet below the surface, then dripped onto the boulder, which sprouted moss until it looked like a fuzzy green skull.

  Benjamin crawled to her side and peered down. “Watch that boulder—that’ll be slick. Don’t stop there to rest, not unless you want to slip free and bash your head.”

  “Not to mention dropping rocks down on whoever is below,” Kaitlyn said. She stood above them. “There’s loose rubble on that rock.”

  Meggie, still on her belly, glanced up, surprised to see the other woman leaning over the edge with no fear. The sky framed her body and shifting clouds made it look like she was moving. Meggie’s head swam with vertigo. She scooted back from the edge.

  According to notes from the only other cavers who had made the descent, the initial drop was 120 feet, where they would land on a rocky ledge wide enough for several people to bivouac, while they prepared ropes for a second descent, this one a shade under 80 feet, taking them to the bottom. Once at the bottom, they’d find the tunnels and caverns that were their primary goal.

  There were so many things to fear about caving: that frightening moment when you first leaned back into the hole and trusted the rope, the tight squeeze through a passageway that felt like getting extruded from a birth canal, and the exhausting ascent back to the surface with vertical ascenders, a punishing, inch-by-inch climb that turned leg muscles to jelly. But trusting your companions shouldn’t be one of them.

  Yet that was where Meggie was at. She wanted Duperre here, confident and mature. An experienced trip leader. Not lying, conniving Kaitlyn and the cousin she bullied around. And not when Meggie couldn’t shake the feeling that the other woman had something to do with the sick men back at the truck.

  Get over it. She has to rely on you, too. She’s not going to drop a rock on your head. And those guys ate something weird at the diner, that’s all.

  They put on the rest of their gear, double-checking the most critical things—helmet and lights, spare batteries, and water supply. They tested each other’s harnesses, then Meggie and Benjamin each gave a tug to the rope Kaitlyn had tied for the descent. It was secure on the boulder, and the knot tied correctly.

  “All right,” Kaitlyn said. “Let’s stop sweating around and get down there.”

  “Who’s first on the rope, oh fearless trip leader?” Benjamin asked.

  Kaitlyn shrugged. “How about Meggie?”

  “I don’t want to go first,” Meggie said, a little too quickly.

  “Fine, I’ll go,” Benjamin said. “Then you, then Kaitlyn.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Kaitlyn said.

  Moments later, Benjamin was roped in, fully decked out in gear, his pack on his back, the extra ropes secured around his waist. He fixed the descending rope in the figure-eight descender to his harness with a locking carabiner, then backed his way to the edge of the drop. A moment of hesitation as he leaned his weight experimentally back into the rope, and then he was hanging over the edge. He let the rope slip between his dominant hand and at the same time gave a little jump backward. A second later and he’d disappeared into the hole.

  Meggie didn’t watch him go down. Kaitlyn was busy going through her pack, but Meggie kept her in sight at all times.

  “Off rope!” Benjamin called from below. His voice came up hollow and distant.

  Meggie hooked herself to the rope and backed toward the cave. When she got to the edge, she took a deep breath and leaned her weight back, then gave a jump while releasing the rope through the figure-eight descender.

  Her boot caught some loose dirt and gravel at the first stop, sending it showering down the shaft. It bounced against the walls as it fell.

  “Rock!” she called. Then, when the shower of pebbles stopped, “Sorry!”

  “No worries,” he called up. “I’m clear.”

  She kicked off again, dropped another five feet, then did it again. She had barely reached the mossy boulder when Kaitlyn was following her down.

  Meggie looked up at the other woman’s silhouette against the sky. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “The rope is rated over a thousand pounds. Don’t worry.”

  “The plan says one at a time.”

  “Only to watch for rockfall. He’s already down—he didn’t call a warning.”

  Meggie was irritated to be sharing the rope, and worse, Kaitlyn was moving too quickly for her taste. By the time she was halfway down, the other woman was practically on top of her.

  “Give me some space, will you?” Meggie told Kaitlyn.

  “Don’t be so timid. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a total newbie.”

  Meggie had a hard time catching her breath. She was too wired. The key to rappelling around all these obstacles was to keep calm, just release and bounce, release and bounce. Having Kaitlyn breathing down her neck wasn’t helping. Every time she looked up, the woman’s cave lamp was right in her face. Cave Etiquette 101. Sheesh!

  “Come on,” Kaitlyn said. “We’ve got a lot of cave to go.”

  “Hold up, we’ll get there soon enough.”

  They reached the bottom of the first drop to find that Benjamin had already tied off the second rope to a pair of anchors he secured in the rock, and was marking his cave journal. “122.5 feet to the first landing,” he said, “The previous group was a little off in their notes.”

  The ledge wasn’t flat, except right up against the wall, and if Duperre and HalfOrc had made it down, it would have been a tight fit for all of them. It had also collected a fair amount of rock and gravel, fallen from above and collected here in a loose, hazardous scree.

  Once he’d marked the journal, Benjamin hooked himself onto the second rope, and then he was testing the new rope and lowering himself again. Moments later, he’d disappeared.

  “Maybe you should go first,” Meggie told Kaitlyn, who was unhooking herself from the upper rope.

  “Oh my God, you’re not going to freak out on us, are you?”

  Meggie flushed. “I’m not freaking out.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Why, are you freaking out?”

  Kaitlyn snorted. “Should I be?”

  “Yeah, maybe you should. I see what you’re doing here.”

  “And what is that, Megs? Why don’t you tell me?”

  Inside, something was telling her to shut up. Keep her mouth closed and remember the main reason she’d proposed the trip to Benjamin in the first place, so that she could get him away from this poisonous woman.

  “Back off,” Meggie said. “You’re acting like a jealous ex-girlfriend, you know that?”

  Kaitlyn laughed. “You don’t get it, Megs. We have a deep connection you couldn’t begin to understand.”

  Meggie wanted to stop, but couldn’t. Her emotions were on edge and all her frustrations were boiling out now.

  “Right, because I’m only going to be his wife. Nothing deep about that.”

  “Like I said, you don’t get it.”

  “You mean the company? Because your grandpa started it and you think you’re in charge?”

  Kaitlyn didn’t answer. Her helmet light pointed over Meggie’s shoulder, but the contrast was such that her face was invisible in the shadows.

  Now, too late, Meggie knew she’d pushed too far. This was not the time or the place. She softened her tone. Alone with Kaitlyn on this ledge, she needed to shut her mouth and get on with the expedition.

  “Listen,” she said, “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m not
trying to wreck your friendship, and I don’t want to run the company. You want to pick a fight, worry about Benjamin’s brothers. If anything, they’re the ones who will try to force you out, not me.”

  Not entirely true. Not when Meggie’s entire plan had been to bring Kaitlyn’s theft to her fiancé’s attention.

  Benjamin called from below. “Are you guys arguing up there? Come on, get down here. You’ll want to check this out.”

  Kaitlyn clipped herself onto the lower rope. Then she leaned backward over the ledge and rappelled out of sight.

  Meggie took a deep breath. “Nice, Megs. Way to go.”

  She clipped herself to the new rope, swearing to herself that she would keep her stupid yapper shut. She’d address Kaitlyn only when absolutely necessary. Exchange technical information only.

  Freshly resolved, she leaned back into the hole and followed the other two down.

  #

  Challenges greeted them at the bottom of the central shaft. After finding themselves in a narrow, rubble-strewn room with a muddy floor, they eyed the three side passages branching off in various directions. One was high up the wall about a dozen feet and cut at a sharp angle back toward the surface. A second corkscrewed into the ground behind Benjamin, and the third opened directly into a wider room beyond. But it was so narrow they would struggle to get through to the other side.

  Benjamin poked his head into the narrow hole to shine a flashlight through. He pulled out a moment later, and let out a low whistle.

  “Wow. Check it out.”

  Kaitlyn looked first, holding the spot for a good thirty seconds while Meggie waited behind, remembering her earlier promise and resisting the urge to nudge the other woman out of the way so she could see. At last Kaitlyn stepped aside and gave a dramatic wave of the hand.

  Meggie stuck her flashlight up to the hole and shone it through and into the room on the other side. She caught her breath as her light penetrated the gloom. The light flickered across columns and stalagmites and other speleothems glistening with water. What little she could see was stunning. Peering through the hole was like holding a long cardboard tube to one eye without the ability to move the tube. She was only seeing a fraction of what lay on the other side.