The Travelers 1

by Lee Hunnicutt

  Jack screamed or thought he screamed. He knew that his mouth flew open and he thought sound came out of it but he was drowned out by the lightning crash. He couldn’t hear his own voice.

  They had instinctively grabbed each other. Beth was in the center and Sonny and Jack were glued to her. She had trouble breathing. It took her a few seconds to realize that the boys were crushing her. She shoved them away and took a deep breath.

  After they had quit shaking, Sonny said, “Wow”

  The crevice was now about thirty feet wide and the mouth of the cave spanned the width of the crevice. The upper lip of the cave’s mouth was about fourteen feet high and protruded out from the end of the crevice. The protrusion was covered in thick vegetation. A large tree grew out of the lip and roots and vines hung down over the mouth giving the appearance of ragged teeth.

  This area of Panama was honeycombed with caves and Frank had taken them into caves many times before. But there was something different about this cave. Maybe they felt guilty about disobeying Frank and following him into the bush or maybe it was the ominous weather or most of all maybe it was the sight last night of the giant Indian.

  There was something frightening about the whole situation.

  Jack started to say something but all he could do was squeak.

  The other two turned and looked at him.

  He shrugged his shoulders, gave an embarrassed look and another squeak. He cleared his throat and tried to speak again but nothing came out.

  Sonny said, “Well?”

  “Well what?” said Beth.

  “Well what do we do now?” said Sonny.

  Beth looked at Jack and said, “What do you think?”

  Jack swallowed hard and squeaked, “I think” his voice now returned to its normal pitch “that we” he gave a surprised look, paused, and said, “should go on. We’ve come this far. Let’s finish it out to the end.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Sonny “The end.”

  “I’m with Jack,” said Beth. “let’s get goin’.”

  As they entered into the cave through the roots and vines the sky was lit up once more by a huge sheet of lightning. The crash that followed shook the ground.

  The interior of the cave was lit up, the walls given an eerie light and then immediately plunged into darkness.

  A sustained blast of cold air from the bowels of the cave blew by them blowing the roots and vines at the cave’s mouth outward. Outside of the cave they had been miserably hot. Their cloths were soaked in sweat and this wind cut them to the bone. But it was what accompanied the wind that chilled them more than the cold.

  A howl emanated from the depths of the cave. It had the sound of a multitudinous babble of tormented voices, loud, mournful but mixed and indistinct. It froze the children in their tracks.

  After a pause of several seconds, Jack and Beth began frantically searching their packs for their flashlights when Sonny turned his light on.

  Jack said, “How did you get that thing on so fast?”

  Sonny smiled and said, “I’m smarter than I look. While you and Beth were fixed on the cave I reached back and pulled my light out. I knew it was going to be dark in here. Didn’t you two?” he smirked.

  Each of their flashlights had a four-foot nylon cord tied to the hole in the base of the light case. As soon as they got their flashlights out, they tied the end of the cord to one of the D rings on their web gear.

  Frank early on had taught them to do this. He had said, “If you fall in the dark, you won’t be separated from your flashlight and it will be easy to find your body in the dark.”

  The same had been done with their compasses. Each of them had their own compass that they kept in one of their shirt pockets and the compass was tied to the pocket’s buttonhole with a four-foot length of nylon cord.

  As they were tying the cords to their packs, Beth said, “Did you hear that sound? It’s the most sorrowful sound I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s just the wind blowing through the cave Beth,” said Jack

  “Do you think that this is the cave Frank told us about, The Cave of Lost Souls or Cave of Talking Winds?” said Sonny.

  Jack paused from what he was doing and looked at Sonny and said, “Come on Sonny, that’s just a legend. Don’t try to scare us anymore than we already are.”

  “I’m not trying to scare anyone. I’m just asking.”

  “Well don’t ask,” said Beth with more bravado than she felt. “Let’s just keep our minds on what we’re doing and not try and scare the hell out of each other. OK?”

  As soon as they had secured their flashlights Jack and Beth turned their lights on and began exploring their surroundings.

  They pointed their lights at the walls, the ceiling and into the interior of the cave. So far besides being a large cave, from what they could see there was nothing unusual about the cave. As they walked into the cave the ceiling rose sharply to a dome that was about forty feet high. They played their lights on the ceiling. Their three lights lit up a large area of the ceiling. In contrast to the walls, which were an off white, the ceiling surface was brown and seemed to move, to undulate in waves.

  The children realized immediately what it was, bats, thousands of bats. They now could hear the nervous squeaks from the little creatures. They moved their lights away from the ceiling so as not to startle the bats and get them stirred up. The last thing they wanted was to be walking through a cloud of bats.

  They weren’t afraid of the bats. They had been in caves before with them. But they sure didn’t want them flying all around.

  “Yuck,” said Beth. Her light was pointing at the cave floor. “We’re going to have to walk through that.”

  The boys followed her gaze. The floor was covered in at least ten feet of guano. They knew from experience that all but the first top couple of inches would be dry but still it was slippery and yucky. They began to make their way across this first antechamber. The room was about fifty feet wide and eighty feet from front to rear. At the edges of the room the guano tapered up to the mean level of the guano, which was ten feet. The trick was to negotiate the inclines without slipping and falling.

  They made it up the incline and across the pile without mishap but as they were going down the incline to exit the room, Beth’s feet shot out from under her and she slid down to the bottom of the guano pile. She landed on her butt and back and slid with her legs open. The guano not only covered the back part of her body but it had accumulated in the V of her legs. It was so thick that it looked like her legs and waist were buried in the stuff.

  Not a word or a sound came out of her. Her face said it all.

  The boys who had made it down ahead of her just stood there looking at her.

  “Well just don’t stand there!” she said, “Help me up!”

  She was embarrassed, disgusted and very angry.

  Neither boy moved.

  “Well!?”

  Jack was the first to speak. “You’re gonna have to work this one out by yourself, Beth.” His voice was strangled from trying to keep from laughing. He made several snorting sounds as air from suppressed laughter escape through his nose.

  Sonny had to turn away and was making high pitched noises from trying to keep from laughing.

  Beth was furious, not only was she furious at herself for falling but furious at the boys because they hadn’t fallen and weren’t covered in bat crap like she was. And worst of all they were laughing.

  She clenched her fists and stood up quickly. She was going to lay into the boys but she no sooner got to her feet than she slipped and fell back into the guano.

  It was more than the boys could stand. The dam broke. They were now laughing uncontrollably. All thought of Frank and stealth had left them. They were howling, their laughter echoing off the walls.

  Beth just sat there and glared at them.

  The boys were holding their sides. They had run out of air and were now gasping laughter. Jack pointed at Beth with one han
d. His other hand clutched his belly. He was trying to say something to her but the words wouldn’t come out. All he could utter was sputtering, laughing gibberish.

  Finally, he got out “You should see yourself.”

  Beth took his advice and looked at herself and started laughing.

  All three were laughing uncontrollably.

  Beth still laughing held out her hand for one of the boys to take.

  Jack grabbed her hand and instead of Beth letting him help her to her feet she gave his hand a vicious tug. It caught Jack off guard and he fell face first into the guano pile.

  It became very quiet.

  Both Sonny and Beth looked at Jack.

  Slowly he pushed himself out of the guano and got to his feet. He wiped his hands on the sides of his shirt, cleaned the guano out of his eyes and nose and began to spit it out of his mouth.

  Sonny started laughing first and then Beth.

  Jack just stood there, snickered, shook his head and once again offered his hand to Beth.

  This time she took it and carefully got to her feet.

  Jack put his arm around her. They both turned towards Sonny.

  “Just call us the stink twins.” he said. He looked over to Beth and said, “What do you think?”

  She said, “I think it’s a pretty crappy name but it fits.”

  They then turned and walked arm in arm down a narrow corridor away from the guano pit.

  Sonny gave them a puzzled look, took three quick steps and caught up with them.

  The ceiling began to lower until it dropped sharply so that it was only about three feet high. They were going to have to crawl on their hands and knees if they were to go any further.

  Sonny said quickly “I’ll go first.” It was obvious that he didn’t want to crawl after Jack or Beth and have to crawl through their guano laden tracks.

  As he passed Beth in the narrow passageway to take the lead she said, “What’s wrong Sonny? Don’t you want to give your sister a hug and a kiss?” and she reached for him.

  He made a face and gave a quick side step, evading her outstretched arms.

  She gave a chuckle.

  Sonny dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled under the ceiling, Beth followed and then Jack.

  They crawled for about thirty feet when the ceiling rose almost perpendicularly to a huge room with a vaulting ceiling. The floor of the room was covered in what appeared to be a large shallow lake. The room was about five hundred feet wide. The ceiling was at least eighty to one hundred feet high covered in magnificent stalactites, stalagmites rose out of the islands in the lake and in the dry areas of the floor. It was hard to tell how long the room was because beams of their lights ended in darkness.

  As spectacular as the room was the only thing that attracted Beth was the water.

  “Water!” she said. “Water!”

  “Huh?” said Sonny looking questioningly at his sister.

  “Water!” she said again.

  “Yeah water, so what?”

  “You’re not covered in bat shit, idiot. I am.”

  “Oh. Yes, I guess you have a point.”

  Beth took off her backpack, pulled out a bar of soap and waded into the shallow lake and sat down. She began to scrub the exterior of the pack. When she was finished, she stood up and threw the pack at her brother.

  “Hang on to that for me please.”

  As he had fallen on his face, his pack wasn’t dirty. Jack set his pack on the ground and followed Beth into the lake. He started to rub the guano off of his shirt and pants.

  When Beth had thrown her pack to her brother, Jack took the bar of soap from her and began to soap up the back of her shirt and pants.

  When he had finished he said, “You’re all soaped up. You might want to move off to the right a little. There is no current in these waters and all of this yuck is just pooled around you.”

  She did as he said, moved away about ten feet, then lay down on her back in the water and began to swish around.

  Jack used the soap to wash off his front.

  When they were finished they got out of the water and put their packs back on.

  They were wet and uncomfortable but at least they were at little cleaner. They knew that they would become accustom to being wet and the discomfort would pass.

  “Well,” said Sonny “while you to were frolicking in the lake I looked things over.

  It appears to me that there is a wide shelf of dry land around the lake to the right.”

  Jack and Beth moved their lights around the room.

  Beth said, “You’re right. Jack take the lead. Let’s go.”

  “Well, after that little demonstration you two put on back at the guano baths and after all of your splashing around in the lake, I think that just maybe we have lost any element of stealth. By now Frank and everybody else in the Canal Zone knows we’re here.

  Do you still think it’s wise that we go on?”

  “We can’t stop now,” said Beth. “Besides what’s Frank going to do if he finds us? He’ll be pissed off and he’ll give us a good chewing out.

  Look, I feel guilty about disobeying him but this is just too great. Look at all of this.”

  She played her light all around the large room and up at the ceiling.

  “I would regret for the rest of my life not coming here and seeing this. It’s just too fantastic. It’s worth a chewing out.”

  Sonny looked at her for a few seconds before he spoke. He too moved his light around the room and said, “You’re right this is too fantastic to pass up. Let’s go.”

  Jack took the lead.

  Just then another blast of cold air rushed through the cave. As with the first time a frightening moan accompanied the wind. But this time, instead of what sounded like a jumble of indistinct words, it seemed to them that they could actually pick out words. It was in a language that they didn’t understand but it sure sounded like words.

  They walked for about three quarters of a mile. The lake was on their left and the room dimensions stayed about the same. There was only one way for them to go.

  The scenes in the room were spectacular. Chambers opened up on their right and across the lake they could see large rooms branching off of the lake. Even though there were large rooms opening off to their right, the terrain forced them to stay their path.

  The lake was now behind them. They were still on the right side of the cave walking next to the cave wall when they saw the limestone had petroglyphs carved into it.

  The children stopped to look at the glyphs. They had seen petroglyphs many times before but the ones that they were used to had been rather primitive. These, on the other hand, had an elegance and sophistication in the carvings. They weren’t just stick figures and crude designs scratched into the wall. These cravings were the carvings of master stone cutters that would have rivaled the carvings of ancient Egypt or Greece. Normally, in this part of the world, Indian petroglyphs were carved into the raw stone facings. Another thing that was strange about these stone pictures was, the facing of the wall had been carved flat and then the craved designs and figures were added.

  They could see what appeared to be priests performing religious ceremonies. There were pictures in stone of figures of men worshipping in front of what seemed to be a large spiral design. Then there was another picture of a man ascending into the spiral.

  The wall was covered with carvings of men and women and of complicated designs. They could make neither heads nor tails out of them. They continued for another two hundred feet. The designs continued alongside them. Up ahead of them they could see that the room was coming to an end. They began to move toward the center of the room.

  At first the wall at the end of the room was indistinct but as they came closer they were able to bathe the wall in their lights. The face of the wall had been dressed. Someone or something had carved the wall away so the wall facing was smoothed to a very large perfectly formed rectangle some four hundred feet across and two hundred fe
et high.

  In the center of the wall, a two-hundred-foot spiral was carved into the rock. The inside edges of each circle of the spiral had been subtly painted. The outer most circle was black, the next red. They alternated black/red all the way to the center of the spiral. It gave the illusion of movement. It was a dizzying effect. At first they didn’t notice it but each spiral was recessed into the stone so that the center of the spiral fell away into the rock. This added to the effect of the feeling of motion to the carving.

  In the dead center of the spiral was darkness. It seemed that their lights could not penetrate it.

  The floor in front of the wall had been carved flat so that it made a long platform, about thirty feet wide running the length of the wall. A large stairway fifty feet wide was carved out of the rock running from the platform down to the floor of the cave. The floor on either side of the staircase had been carved flat.

  Jack said, “Look at that. Whoever made this had to cut and remove thousands of tons of stone to make the platform and staircase, not to mention the wall cravings.”

  “Where did they put the spill?” said Sonny.

  There was none. They moved their lights over the floor around the platform. Not a single stone chip could be found and there was no evidence of the removal of large quantities of rock, no drag marks, nothing.

  Beth said, “Whoever did this had to carry any waste stone out on their backs. Amazing!”

  They moved closer to the stairs. The platform was about fourteen feet high.

  They climbed the stairs and stood on the platform. They were directly in front of the large spiral carving.

  It was only now that they were this close that they could see why the spiral had the illusion of circular motion. They now could see why their lights couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the spiral’s center. The center was a hole in the rock.

  Now the petroglyph of the priest ascending the spiral made sense. The priest was walking into the spiral, like climbing a stairway to the center.

  “Well?” said Beth.

  Jack swallowed hard and began to climb into the spiral.