Gunther's Cavern

by Edward Etzkorn

  “June, you don’t think …”

  “I do, Gunth.”

  “That would mean the cavern goes all the way to …”

  “New Calar.”

  His fear of what lay ahead grew larger. “Did Serge chew gum?”

  “He offered me a stick once, back when you and I were in middle school. I hesitated, because you know how Dad always told us that if you chew gum you might as well go out into the field and join the cows. Plus you got detention if you were caught with chewing gum. But he was the big high-schooler. And I had sort of a crush on him.”

  “I didn’t know that.” His mind was working slowly. “So did you?”

  “I had to. That retard Sass came up and said something like, ‘Oh, she can’t chew gum. Her Mommy won’t let her. She might look like a cow.’”

  “So that was the time you got detention. I thought you got it because you didn’t turn in your assignments on time.”

  “That’s what I told Mom and Dad. I couldn’t tell them the real reason.”

  Despite the situation, he laughed. “So you got detention for chewing gum in class.”

  “No, I got detention for punching a girl in the nose. And holy mama, did she bleed!”

  Gunther laughed far longer and louder than the situation called for. “Sweet, harmless June Cowley!”

  They shared a laugh that was more precious because of the situation they now faced.

  Their moment of pleasure ended as fast as it had begun. His mind clicked from the schoolyard to the cave. “So the gum wrapper is Serge’s.”

  “Probably.”

  “Why do you think he tried to find another way out? Do you think the kids couldn’t get out the way they came in?”

  He hung on her answer, hardly daring to breathe. In a week or two, would they look as Serge did now?

  Her fingers pawed his arm, searching for his hand. When she found it, she squeezed tight. “Gunth, you’re missing the point. Serge didn’t put himself in that position.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Serge didn’t walk into the stone arms of the wall. Someone—or some thing—put him there.”

  He shivered. “June, you don’t think …?”

  She didn’t answer. But her body shook with a silent sob.

  “I need to see him again. I’ve got to turn on my headlamp.”

  “Go ahead, Gunth.”

  He aimed the light first at the floor, then at Serge, then back to the floor as he walked the seven or eight meters to where Serge stood. Hating every second of what he had to do, he focused the light first on Serge’s feet, then up over his legs. Careful not to touch the body, he moved the light higher, up over the abdomen, then over the chest and face. The skin appeared sallow, and overly thin and shiny, like animal skin on the covering of a drum. Gunther knew he should touch it, but he couldn’t. Against his will, he let the light linger on Serge’s eyes. They looked odd—sunken, but more than that—as if drained of some vital fluid. Perhaps this was how all human eyes looked in death. He flicked the light off in relief. At least, Serge had not been beaten or bruised, or injured in any way.

  “Looks like he died of natural causes,” Gunther said.

  “Fright?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. He made it all the way here from wherever he started out.”

  June sidled up beside him and flicked on her own light. At once, her light found the stone projections that held Serge’s body upright. Gunther had no doubt the projections were natural, not manmade, but they pinned the body within their grip as effectively as chains. “So he slid himself into the grip of these stone formations so he could enjoy the view without having to worry about keeping himself upright? That’s your studied opinion, Doctor Gunther?”

  Gunther hated it when June became sarcastic. It meant she was overtired, or hungry, or overwrought. All of which were possible in their current circumstances. Her mood usually deteriorated from here.

  “I don’t know, June. What do you think?” Way to go, Gunth—the ultimate strategy. Put the monkey on someone else’s back.

  June backed off. “I don’t know, Gunth. All I know is we’ve got to be really careful from here on in. And I think we’re headed for New Calar.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Although he could not let on to June, some sense within him told him they were missing something. Something they needed to know, but at the same time didn’t want to know. Not just the stone projections. Something to do with the eyes and the face. The face. It tilted to one side, or the skin sagged, or—it had wrinkles. Yes, Serge’s face bore wrinkles, a feature out of place in an eighteen-year-old.

  Turning ahead to his left, he shone his headlamp to where the prehistoric stream had carved out a channel through the limestone. Forcing himself to forget Serge’s presence, he studied the route ahead. Not much different from the route they’d taken this far. And then he saw the footprints.

  Scarcely believing his eyes, he shone the light on the floor just past his feet. An assortment of marks smudged the slick rock. Some looked like footprints, others like the tracks of insects or small mammals. What looked like drag marks, or the marks of a broom, obscured many of the prints and made them unreadable.

  “June, look! Some of them might be Serge’s, but there are more. Like someone … or some thing …”

  June caught her breath. She squatted down to look more closely. “Move the light to the right … No, too far. Back … That’s it.”

  She bounced to her feet, shot a glance at Gunther, then looked back down again.

  “Simon Judaikis,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  She squatted again and with her finger outlined a mark that he could now visualize as a shoe print. “Whoever made this print had a worn-out shoe. Look here—this raggedy circle over the first toe. Like part of the shoe was torn open.”

  For a moment, Gunther could not speak as his brain processed the information and the implications it bore.

  “Simon,” he said at length. “That pathetic little guy that used to stand by and laugh while …”

  “Uh-huh. He always wore a pair of old tennis shoes that should have been burned eons ago. And look up ahead.” She pointed to a spot at the far edge of the headlight’s beam, a similar shoeprint, with a dark spot where the first toe stuck out.

  Without waiting for her to say more, he took a few steps ahead and touched the spot with his finger. “Blood. Still sticky. So Simon was here. Like, yesterday. Or even today.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He disappeared with the New Calar group, too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As his brain’s gears clanked into motion, another mark caught his eye, close to Simon’s bloody print. He focused the spot of light on it. A mark that looked as if it had been left by a paw, but not any paw whose print he recognized. A nearly circular disc, with four fingerlike projections extending from it—perhaps claws, but softer, as if the creature that had made the imprint weighed but a few pounds.

  “June …” He thought he had more to say, but could not speak the words.

  She bent to look, then straightened fast. “Let’s just go, Gunth. We’ve got no choice. Don’t think about it.”

  “Don’t think … June …”

  Again they walked on as close together as possible, for warmth and safety as well as to conserve the battery-life of their headlamps. Rather than following the course of an ancient stream, they now followed footprints and the alien markings that accompanied them. Simon’s footprint, with its bloody signature, occasionally stood out, but most of the prints were obscured by the same strange drag mark, as if someone had pulled a broom behind them in an attempt to hide the evidence of his or her presence. But if concealment had been the intention, the result was certainly the opposite. The drag-marks outlined the route like a series of guide-lamps.

  The “path” ended at the edge of another cliff. So suddenly did it appear, Gunther almost
walked off the edge. June, following blindly behind him, bumped into him, nearly propelling him into the void.

  He stopped short, throwing himself backward and knocking her over.

  She let out a scream. “Gunther!?”

  “June!” Pulling himself to a squatting position, he directed the beam over the chasm that separated them from the next portion of the path.

  She, too, pulled herself up and leaned on his shoulder.

  She found her voice before he did. “Oh, freakin’ folly,” she said.

  He could hardly improve on that. “Skitsop to fro-thee ween,” he added. Welcome to the castle of the devil.

  Directing the light from right to left and back again, he inhaled a few sharp breaths. The chasm below them, rocky and dark, looked like the pit of hell that he’d imagined in Sunday School. Black and bleak, sharp with rocks that could tear a visitor to shreds. Only the fire had burned out.

  Then his light caught the image of a rope—and another rope. He directed the beam on them, and saw that not only two ropes, but four, had been strung between the cliff face where they now squatted to a matching cliff face some thirty meters—ninety-five feet—away.

  Only in a nightmare could such a scene exist. Words from Hamlet invaded his mind, and almost without realizing, he spoke them aloud. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  June did not answer at once. Then she slapped him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”

  “Shakespeare didn’t say that.”

  “I’m not Shakespeare.”

  They squatted without moving for a long time. “Somehow I feel like once we cross this chasm it’s like the point of no return,” he said at length.

  “Didn’t you say that once before?”

  “What will Mom and Dad think when they get home?”

  “They’re probably home already. Mom’s freaking out. Dad’s being philosophical, trying to find a logical explanation.”

  “Do you think they’ll come looking for us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will they look?”

  “They’ll probably call everybody they can think of. Jimmy B will probably sound guilty, so they’ll press him until he says something.”

  “Think he’ll guess where we are?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I hope so, too. He’ll remember we told him we were going to the spring.” He cracked a knuckle. “I think we’ve gone far enough for one day. Let’s just cross this chasm and find a place to sleep. And eat. I’m starved.”

  “Did you bring the sloppy-joe mix?”

  “No.”

  “So what do we have?”

  “Just the nutrition bars.”

  She sighed. “The expired nutrition bars.”

  He made no effort to respond. “Let’s find the sturdiest rope of this bunch.”

  Crossing the chasm proved easier than Gunther had expected. With a carabiner, he locked June into the rope first and watched her cross hand over hand. As soon as she set foot on the other side and gave him a thumbs-up, he locked himself in and crossed the same way. On the far side, the path of footprints continued. They were easy to follow—until they split into four, then five, then six and seven different paths, each wending its way through formations that were more elaborate and bizarre than any they’d encountered so far.

  Feeling utterly exhausted, he plopped down. “Let’s stop, June.”

  Sinking down beside him, she did not argue. “Okay, Gunth.”

  “We can’t eat much. We’ve got to save what we’ve got just in case.”

  “I know.”

  “Half a bar, split between us. A quarter of a bar each.”

  “Got it, Bro.”

  In the past, a quarter of a nutrition bar would have disappeared within seconds. Now a quarter of a nutrition bar had to last for the duration of dinner. Gunther made the meal a game, announcing each bite as their mother might have done, as an incantation in one of her survival lessons.

  “Now we take a bite—small bite.

  Chew, chew, chew—slow chew.

  Let the stomach know—com-ing

  Think, think, think—swal-low.”

  June provided the second verse.

  “Come the second bite—wee bite.

  Chew, chew, chew—sad chew.

  Let the stomach know—give up.

  Think, think, think—sor-ry.”

  She fell asleep with the second bite still in her mouth. Gunther slapped her cheek until her jaw moved and she swallowed.

  Feeling weird, and yet right, he kissed her forehead.

  Lying back against a protruding rock, he imagined his mother’s hands massaging his shoulders.

  The world softened.

  His muscles grew lax.

  He was no longer in the cave—he was flying. A symphony was playing below, guiding his way as he glided above treetops and houses, rivers and deserts. Far above the crazy underground world that had driven his imagination for so long.

  INTERLUDE 1

  Something about the appearance of the house set Dicey on edge. Although she could not put a finger on it, she knew at once that something was amiss. Doors were shut, windows open. No crowbars, hammers or other paraphernalia cluttered the yard. A deer peered at her from the edge of the woods.

  Perhaps it was the presence of the deer. Or perhaps it was the silence.

  Yes, the silence. She never arrived home to a silent house.

  She opened the porch door—unlocked, as always—and entered. She took in the mess on the porch—no notable changes there—and entered the kitchen. As usual, the floor creaked in greeting. But no teen voices begged for food, no rap music grated her eardrums.

  She hesitated before calling. “Gunther?”

  No answer, as she’d feared.

  Please, please, please, please …

  Louder. “June?”

  Again, no answer.

  Her mind raced through the staccato breakfast encounter that morning, and the ridiculous dinner conversation the night before, searching for any indication that something had changed, that her children were up to something. Maybe—they’d been too easy to please. And they’d shared some kind of joke about a pupa. What the heck was a pupa, anyway? Now that she thought about it, she realized it had bothered her all day. All day she’d been cranky, ready to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, and now she realized why.

  The pupa.

  Gunther had always been a bit of a smart aleck, but the pupa bit had been way over the top. She knew he could spend hours by his spring, but he watched frogs and tadpoles, not butterflies. June had shared his stupid lie, and Dicey had let it go. What kind of mother was she, to let something like that go?

  Grabbing her phone, she dialed Gunther’s cell. As usual, it did not ring, but reverted at once to his voice message. “Hey, Guys, you’ve reached Gunther’s phone …”

  Dicey nearly screamed into the phone. “Gunther, where are you? Call me ASAP.”

  She dialed June’s cell phone next, but almost at once heard June’s phone vibrating from her desk upstairs. Wherever she’d gone, June had not brought her phone with her. That meant she had not planned to be gone for long.

  Her fingers tapped the edge of the kitchen table-top. Friends to call, people they might have visited … Her feeling of guilt increased. Her kids had no real friends. They had only each other. Plus Kelila’s pigeons, the salamanders, and the stupid frogs and pollywogs. What had ever possessed her to think she could be a mother? She was a poetess. Relationships were not her cup of tea.

  Hitting the first memory button, she called the Brandows. The Brandows’ property adjoined her own, and Gunther and June occasionally helped Arthur feed his pigs and chickens or milk his two remaining cows. Marge answered on the third ring.

  “Marge, hi. This is Dicey. I was wondering if you’d seen Gunther and June today. I just got home, and they’re not
around.”

  “No, Dicey, I’m sorry.” The gruffness of Marge’s voice belied the gentle spirit that lay inside. The nerve to her vocal cord had been severed when she’d had her cardiac bypass surgery. “Can you hold a minute? Let me check with Arthur.”

  Within twenty seconds she was back on the line. “I’m sorry, Dicey. Arthur hasn’t seen them either. He says you might check with Jimmy B. Arthur was expecting Jimmy to come by yesterday and today to fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen, but he never showed.” Her voice became apologetic. “But, then again—he’s Jimmy B. Plus I gather Luisa Steinmetz has some kind of emergency in her house …”

  “Thank you, Marge.” Dicey knew she should ask how Arthur was doing after his stroke, but that could wait. Luisa and her flies—did anything else matter in this stupid neighborhood?

  Without a pause, she punched in Jimmy B’s number. He answered after about two dozen rings—par for the course—and sounded short of breath.

  “Hi Jimmy, this is Dicey. I was just wondering—well, I just got home, and Gunther and June aren’t here. I was wondering if you might have seen them today.”

  Several breaths preceded Jimmy’s voice. “I ain’t seen them, Dicey. I think … No, they’re okay. I’m sure they’re okay.”

  His words rolled around in Eurydice’s mind, and came back in a ball of confusion. Had the words been come from another person, she would have been sure he was hiding something. But coming from Jimmy B, they could have been “just Jimmy B.”

  “Jimmy, I’m really worried. Did Gunther say anything to you about a pupa, or a butterfly? Or anything about something going on back by the spring?”

  Jimmy took several more rapid breaths. “Dicey, you know … I didn’t talk to him today, but yesterday he told me he and June were taking a walk in the hinterlands. He sounded happy.”

  “The hinterlands? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. He says stuff like that—like he’s taking a walk in the woods, or going to the back stream, or …”

  “The back stream? Did he say anything about a pupa?”

  “A poopa?”

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t … think … so.”