Gunther's Cavern

by Edward Etzkorn

Jimmy paused, while Dicey’s brain thumped in agony, trying to think of a question that would make Jimmy reveal the answer that would lead her further.

  “What’s a poopa?” Jimmy replied at length. His voice sank to a hoarse whisper. “Is that a part of a girl’s body?”

  Dicey could barely hold on to the phone. “What? No, no, no! I don’t think so, anyway. Maybe if it’s a girl butterfly!”

  She screamed as she slammed the phone down, huffing like a freight train climbing toward a pass. A freight train climbing toward a pass. Not a very poetic image .

  Calm down, she told herself. They’ll walk in here any minute. She busied herself about the stove, measuring rice into the rice cooker, preparing an omelet chock-full of vegetables, with a few morsels of chicken to let the children think they were getting meat. She flipped the omelet several times, but still burned its edge while she devoted her attention to an article in the newspaper that she had—for some forgotten reason—left lying alongside the stove.

  Why had she left the newspaper lying alongside the stove?

  In case they ran out of toilet paper?

  In case she had a few spare seconds between burning omelets?

  The article referred to the lack of evidence that still surrounded the disappearance of the eleven children from New Calar, now nearly a month ago.

  A smell from the rice cooker drew her attention to the rice.

  Water, she thought. Rice needs water.

  She poured three cups of water into the rice cooker. Might as well burn them in twos. Deaths come in threes—right? No harm burning them in twos.

  The next thought came unbidden, and totally unwanted. Gunther and June have disappeared. Just like the New Calar kids. They’ve disappeared. They won’t come back.

  The porch door creaked, and she nearly bowled Spike over even before he walked in. “Spike, the kids are gone,” she assailed him.

  He stared at her with that vacant stare that always made her want to pounce on him and claw him until he screamed for mercy. Grabbing the dishtowel from the nearby chair, he wiped the sweat from his face. “Got to get air-conditioning for that pickup,” he said.

  Uncontrollably, her fingers curled into tiger claws, and her body tensed, ready to spring. Her voice frightened her by its loudness. “What about my car? It’s okay for me to … No, who cares about the car!? Spike, don’t you hear me? The kids are gone!”

  Spike set the towel back on the chair with agonizing slowness. “They went to stay at someone else’s house?”

  “No! They haven’t come home!”

  “Oh, okay. So where are they?’

  “I don’t know! Am I speaking in Rosetta Stonish?”

  He gripped his pants pocket, then pulled his left hand up and flipped his index finger toward her—his stupid Billy-the-Kid-drawing-his-six-gun imitation. “Gotcha.”

  “Spike! Can you not hear me?” She sputtered as if to say more, but nothing came out. She threw herself down on the chair where Spike had so gently laid the dishtowel.

  He frowned for an instant, then relaxed. She sensed the soft-toe Spike shuffle coming.

  “Good thing Gunther can’t drive yet. At least, we don’t have to worry about …” He stopped as she clenched her jaw. “Did you call Grandma Cowley?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged, reached for his cell phone, and hit the memory button.

  “Smells like something burning.”

  Dicey flared up again. She screamed out the words. “Burn burn burn, I feel my temperature risin’.” The tune was vintage Elvis Presley, but the words could be only Dicey. “Closer, closer, I’m gonna blow him away …”

  She stopped when Spike spoke into the phone.

  “Hey, Mom. Wondered if you’d seen Gunther and June today. Dicey and I just wandered in, and they’re not here.”

  He fell quiet for a moment, then said, “Oh … Uh-huh.” Then laughed. “You’re kidding.” More serious again. “Okay, Mom. Love you, too. Tell Dad they’ll never be as good as men, but they sure got some good moves.”

  He hung up the phone and turned toward Dicey. “Dad pedaled down to the park today and spent the afternoon watching the female softball games.”

  He nearly tripped over a chair as she leaped up and drove him back against the wall.

  “I don’t care about the female softball games! What was the ‘Oh’ and the ‘Uh-huh’? I want to know about my children!”

  “She didn’t see them, but June called her this morning. She told her she and Gunther were having a great summer, and they had to hurry somewhere. She said something about going to the spring, and watching a pupa …”

  “If I hear another thing about a pupa—”

  Spike had discovered the source of the burning odor, and withdrawn two rice bowls from the cabinet above the sink. “Why don’t you call Grandma Stav?”

  “Because I don’t want to be on the phone for the next forty-five minutes.”

  “She’s your mother. Why can’t you just tell her you need to go and please stop talking?”

  “You know why. Because I’d have to spend another forty-five minutes listening to her grieve over how her children ignore her. I’ve watched you eat double portions while you listened to her on the phone and said nothing but ‘Mmm’ and ‘Yeah’.”

  “True enough.” Spike spooned rice into two bowls, then pried the omelet from the frying pan and slid it onto a plate. “Dicey honey, you’re overreacting. It’s not that late. It’s summer. It’s still bright out. Any minute now June and Gunther will walk through that door, unaware of the time, and tell us what a wonderful day they had following sticks in the stream, or waiting for the pupa to …”

  He jumped backward, still managing to fill his mouth with omelet.

  Realizing she did not have the energy to pursue him, she slumped into the chair again. As he tentatively pulled out the chair beside her, she began to cry. “They’re gone,” she sobbed. “Just like the kids in New Calar. They’re gone.”

  Spike’s face broke out in lines of worry, as if displaying a new world view for someone to map. “Honey—”

  “I can’t explain how I know,” Dicey said. “It’s a feeling. I just know.”

  She prodded the bowl of burned rice he set before her with her chopsticks. “Oh, Spike. What would I do without you?”

  “Spontaneously combust, I imagine.”

  She extended her arms toward him, then with a jerky movement stopped and reached for her phone.

  She hit 9-1-1. “My children have disappeared,” she said after a pause. “I need help finding them.”

  Spike ate quickly, as if he knew what was coming.

  “Hello. My children have disappeared. There’s something weird going on. I don’t know why you—”

  “Huh? Oh—Eurydice Cowley.” Pause. “No, they’re very happy kids … Yes, I’m married … No, my husband’s the kindest … Yes, first and only marriage … Yes, we both work.”

  She listened another minute, then slammed the phone down. “Bleep bleep bleep,” she answered Spike’s questioning look. “They think either you abducted them or they ran away from home.”

  Spike looked as if he might reply, then thought better of it and continued eating.

  Dicey banged her fist on the table. “Spike, where is that list of the kids who disappeared from New Calar?”

  “Right here.” Spike rose and stumbled into the living room. He returned to the kitchen holding a newspaper clipping, which she yanked from his hands before he could hand it to her.

  She grabbed the phone again, punched in a number, and waited two or three seconds.

  “Operator, hello. I hope your evening is better than mine.”

  She paused. “Oh, I’m sorry. I really am. No one deserves that… Yes, I need a number. In New Calar. Sheffield … First name? I don’t know. Is there more than one?”

  She pressed the disconnect button on the phone and, after squeezing Spike’s hand for reass
urance, punched in the number the operator had given her.

  “Hello, my name is Euridyce Cowley. Everyone calls me Dicey. I wonder if I could speak with Catherine Sheffield …

  “This is you? … No, I’m not a reporter. I’m a neighbor. I live in Turtle Ridge. My two children didn’t come home today, and I have this terrible feeling … Oh, thank you. You know, I can only begin to tell you … Yes, I can meet you. Anywhere you want … Sisters Pizza, Ventnor. I’ve never been there, but everybody knows where it is. Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Gunther could not tell if it was June’s trembling that awoke him, or his trembling that awoke her. Whichever the case, it was cold. Fifty-two degrees, he was sure, the temperature of all the other caves in upstate New York. The space blanket helped, but it could not match the warmth of a real blanket back home. And even to a teenage back, the rock floor was not comfortable. It could have been midnight, or 6 AM, or noon—the darkness that surrounded them offered no clue.

  Despite the warmth of her arms, her first words did not make him feel warmer. “Oh, Gunth. What are we going to do?”

  She sniffed, and he knew the slightest slip on his part would draw forth a deluge. The lump in his own throat could easily have sprouted into tears if he let it. “What we planned, June. That’s all we can do.”

  “Think Mom and Dad are looking for us yet?”

  He hesitated. No, they don’t act that fast. They’re still trying to figure out where we are, working on a plan. “If they’re not, they will be soon,” he said at length.

  She sniffed again, then forced a laugh. “I want some hash browns.”

  He, too, forced a laugh. “I’d be happy with a plateful of Mom’s lumpy potatoes.”

  “I want a Super Slop Special at Fagan’s Fish Fry. With enough tartar sauce to run down my face and make Mom tell me how unladylike I am.”

  “I want some Sisters Pizza. Bring on The Carnivore Special!”

  “And then a double banana split at Ron’s Dairy Bar!”

  They laughed so hard they nearly forgot about the cold. Gunther pulled himself to a sitting position and picked up his headlamp.

  “Bring on the sun!” he said as he flicked it on.

  Even at the lowest setting, the light caused June to pull the space blanket back over her head. Gunther aimed the light on the stalactites that surrounded them—row after row after row of glossy white formations and silky-black shadows.

  He shifted the light to the rock where they had slept.

  He gasped. Scrambled to his feet.

  June’s head emerged from the blanket, her face frowning. “What is it?”

  “Oh, June …”

  She, too, gasped as she pulled herself up and glanced at the spot illuminated by his headlamp. At least two sets of footprints stood out in the fine grit. They looked like the imprints of running shoes or joggers, but were half-covered by drag marks, the same drag marks they had followed since they’d left Serge’s body. The footprints came to within a half-meter of where they’d slept before retreating into the cave ahead.

  Gunther shone the light to the other side of their sleeping place. Only his and June’s footprints marked the side from which they’d come.

  “Ssh,” Gunther said—more to himself than to June.

  Except for the drip, drip, drip of water somewhere close by, he heard nothing. With an act of will, he suppressed the feeling of panic that tried to tear him apart from within.

  June’s voice was tense with fear. “Think it’s the New Calar kids?”

  “It could be. But I don’t know. If so, why didn’t they wake us up?”

  Setting his headlamp down and aiming it toward the cavern ahead, he sat down on top of the space blanket. “Let’s finish the first nutrition bar.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Breakfast, Ma’m’selle?”

  “Oh, Gunth.”

  “Breakfast.” The confident sound of his voice pleased him. He removed his arm from her shoulder, opened his pack and withdrew the little rectangular package. With their quarter-portions, they toasted each other, but did not go through the rigmarole of the night before. Still, Gunther heard the words in his brain: Now we take a bite—small bite. Chew, chew, chew …”

  He knew she was thinking the words, too. Her eyes flicked back and forth between her nutrition bar and his, monitoring his progress to be sure that she did not eat any faster than he.

  The footprints beside their sleeping area led into what appeared to be the largest of the seven potential routes ahead—second from the right. Deeper and deeper the prints led them, winding lower into the bowels of the cavern, past formations that thousands of tourists would happily have paid fifty dollars apiece to see. Except for a rare print that stood out untouched, the footprints remained vague, smudged by the drag marks. On occasion, the odd claw prints appeared, four fingerlike projections above a concave disc. Had he found the prints in the mountains, he might have thought they’d been made by baby bears. But even for baby bears, they appeared too light, and too small, and they did not possess the rough pad that would have identified them as bear prints.

  Echoes told Gunther they were approaching a different type of area than those they had passed. The steady drip that had accompanied their progress all at once reverberated from all sides. The light from his headlamp reflected off a stream flowing from left to right. He followed it with his light as it dallied through several miniature lakes before wandering among the rocks and disappearing somewhere up ahead.

  From the stream, they drank as much as they could hold, then filled their water bottles. A dozen fish scattered as Gunther’s hand touched the surface. As hungry as he felt, he tried to suck one or two of them into his bottle, but to no avail. They were all blind, he knew. Here, where the year-round temperature varied no more than a degree, the creatures needed no modifications to heat or cold—or sunlight. They’d lost the adaptations their ancestors up above had generated over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. They’d regressed in time, to an earth where nothing changed, where temperature was constant and time stood still.

  June’s voice interrupted his reverie. “If I die of ptomaine poisoning from this water, it’ll be your fault.”

  “There’s no such thing as ptomaine poisoning.”

  “So say you.”

  “So say me.”

  “Scroy-yee stupid-ya dumb smartass fool-yee crunch.” So say the wise-ass mice that gobble up the rat poison.

  He resisted the urge to respond, and felt better for his restraint. “Jerk,” he said to himself, too low for her to hear.

  With the stream now running beside them to their right, the cavern opened into a massive room that could have been a set for some futuristic film. Several pairs of footprints emerged from under the drag marks and ran in three or four directions. Simon’s shoe prints reappeared—now free of blood—and veered off toward the left. The drag marks headed toward the center.

  June’s headlamp flicked on, and all at once she shouted. “Gunther. Gunth! Fenflura so-yee muck!”

  He raised his head, unsure he had understood. “Fenflura so muck yee cha?” A bar of candy in the dirt?

  “Muck. Chewing-gum flura untouched yee muck. Cha day.”

  He leaped to his feet, looking ahead to where her light shone. Up ahead, as clear as a blot of mayonnaise on a blue graduation gown, stood a stick of chewing gum, still in its wrapper—standing upright, glinting in the light of her headlamp.

  “A sign.”

  “I think so.”

  Together they raced toward the arch where the silver package winked. Most, if not all, the footprints here were Simon’s. In unison, the two children gasped as they looked at the package.

  Someone had etched letters into its surface.

  Gunther held it close under the light. The letters had been crafted with a fingernail. “GO BACK,” they read. “GET HELP.”

  He and June looked at each ot
her.

  “It’s new,” she said. “As in, last night.”

  “Uh-huh.” He aimed his headlamp over the floor ahead. Simon’s footprints did not march on ahead, but veered to the right. Here the beam of light picked up other footprints as well. Only these footprints disappeared under the drag marks, whereas Simon’s remained on top.

  Gunther spoke his thoughts aloud. “What does it mean? What kind of help?”

  June returned the words he had expected. “Simon went out of his way to leave us the message. Whoever he was with, he didn’t want them to know.”

  He shuddered at the implications. But, on the positive side, at least some of the kids were still alive. “I guess we’re going to find out why.”

  The path delineated by the drag marks led under one of the lowest arches, requiring Gunther and June to remove their packs and crawl on their bellies. Beyond the arch, the cave opened up enough that they could walk at least partially erect most of the time. To his surprise, the farther they traveled, the lighter the cave grew. Not light enough to see without a headlamp, but light enough that he could make out shadows.

  His imagination must have been playing tricks on him. Was the path perhaps leading them uphill, rather than down? No, the stream flowed in the direction they were traveling, and even in a cave, water could not flow uphill.

  Had his eyes truly adapted to the dark, so he could actually see without light? No, that was not possible. Human eyes could never see in total darkness.

  They pushed each other as far as they could. When at last they reached an area where the ceiling hung so low they would have to slide on their bellies once more, they agreed they had both reached their limits. A stream crossed the path here—a stream perhaps half a meter wide that over the years had cut a channel about that width through the rock. Gunther insisted they walk upstream along it as far as they could go, so whoever had tracked them the previous night would not be able to find them.

  Even crawling, they could go only thirty or forty meters before the walls and ceiling closed in so tight they could go no farther. Beside a miniature waterfall, they bedded down for the night—or what felt like night.