“Susan, we’re going to let go of your hands. We can’t stand here holding hands all evening.” Elaine looked into Susan’s eyes. “You’re going to promise to listen to what we have to say and not put your hands over your ears. It’s not nice to be talking to someone who’s not listening. In fact, it’s kind of rude.” Elaine slowly released Susan’s hand, and Miriam also did the same. Susan’s hands remained at her sides.
“Tell us the reasons you have a problem sleeping in there.” Elaine pointed at the cave but kept her eyes on Susan’s tear-stained face.
Susan didn’t speak immediately. She daubed at her face, smearing the tears. “I don’t like those drawings,” she finally said, “all those things could be in there.”
“You mean half-human and half-animal creatures?” Elaine asked.
“Yes, and if we touch the pictures, that’s how they come out.”
Kimberly laughed loudly and rolled her eyes.
“You think you’re going to release some Indians by touching a cave? Okay, you think that if they came they would be taking you alone? You’re special, but probably not enough to be the sole person taken. They would take all four of us.” Miriam waved her finger around in a circle and laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “So you would have company. Or maybe they would only take the person who touched the drawings. In that case, all you have to do is not touch!”
“Let’s not joke about this, Miriam,” Elaine said. “She really believes what she’s saying and has real fears. Susan, remember what they taught us in school about this?”
Susan shook her head. She only had an obscure memory of even studying the history of the first people. But she had recalled something about releasing sacred energy and power by touching the depictions.
“These cave paintings and carvings were just two of the ways that the Indians communicated their religion, laws and history. It’s just like right now. Art is for enjoyment and self-expression, but it’s also a means of passing on ideas and values. There’s no reincarnated person or half human inside the cave, and we can’t release anything by touching a picture. If you went to the AGO, would you go in or would you think that some of the art is going to come to life and attack you if you go into the gallery and touch something?”
“It’s not dark in the AGO. And they say not to touch the artwork.”
“She has a point there,” Kimberly said.
“Not touching is for preservation. It’s not because some ancient power will be released. We’ll find some way to get some light in there. That’s the only way we’re going to see where to put the bed. I have a lighter and Kimberly has a cell phone and an iPod.”
“What do my Storm and iPod have to do with anything?”
“You won’t be listening to music, and there’s no signal out here, so we may as well use them for something like light.”
“You’re just going to kill the bloody batteries!”
“We’re just going to use them to survive.” Elaine looked at Susan. “What else?”
Kimberly pouted but said nothing more.
“There may be bears and other animals in there. Animals are smart and know caves are good places to hide out and seek shelter. They live out here, so they probably know this better than us.”
“Okay, okay.” Elaine nodded. “That’s a really valid point. It’s a great place for us to sleep if it’s safe, but we don’t know what’s in there. So we’re going to check it out.”
Susan literally jumped back. “I can’t check it out!”
Elaine held up her open palms. “I meant me and Miriam. You and Kimberly will stay here until we give the all clear.”
Kimberly was still pouting about her electronics being used as a source of light in the cave. “You volunteer me to stay here; how do you know I want to stay out here? I might want to look in the cave.”
“I’m not staying here alone,” Susan said.
“Kimberly, do you want to accompany Elaine inside instead of me?”
“No, I don’t want to. I just want you guys to ask my permission for me to stay or go.”
“Of course.” Miriam tilted her head back, looked at the orange sky and took a deep gulp of cold air. “You’re the focus of our entire existence. You’re not helping with solutions, but you will not just go along with the plan that is made. You know what, give us the phone and the iPod.”
Miriam held out a hand. Kimberly obviously didn’t like Miriam’s tone, so she refused to hand over the gadgets.
“I could take them out of your pockets, and I would so enjoy it.” Miriam rubbed her hands together in anticipation. Kimberly stepped back. She almost stepped back into Elaine. With Kimberly directly in front of her, Elaine said, “Just give me the things so we won’t have another silly cat fight.”
Kimberly reached into her pockets and handed the phone and iPod to Elaine.
“She robs me of all joy.” Miriam spoke to Kimberly but referred to Elaine. “She saved you from a good smack-down, UFC style.”
Elaine searched through her bag, found the lighter and then walked toward the cave with Miriam, who carried the Storm and the iPod.
Susan and Kimberly sat on a rock. Susan rummaged through her bag, found more chocolate bars and ate another two. It felt good to have this comfort when she felt so fearful and even terrified.
“She’s a big bully! That’s what she is. Don’t you think so?”
“No.”
“How could you not? She’s quarrelsome and overbearing and tries to intimidate me.”
“Are you intimidated?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a bully.”
“She’s just mad.”
“About what?”
“How would I know? Maybe you rub her the wrong way.”
“Why would I rub her the wrong way? Why not you or Elaine?”
Susan ate her chocolate bar and thought about the faded native pictographs. Whatever Kimberly’s beef with Miriam was, it was secondary in her thoughts. What if the cave collapsed inward?
“Want some chocolate?” Susan asked to divert her thoughts from the collapsing cave.
“No, too many calories.” Kimberly picked up dried twigs, which she snapped apart at intervals. The snapping sound perforated the cool, silent air and created a false rhythm of normalcy. “She’s probably just hating on my looks.”
“What?”
“Miriam, she’s a hater.”
What was Kimberly’s ongoing obsession with Miriam’s motives? They were going to sleep in a place where they couldn’t even tell night from day. It would be a whole new world inside there. Susan was still afraid of whatever was inside. Why would that dark hole be any different from everything else? The lawns of Anne Beaumont were pristine. The school was on an estate filled with trees. It was gated, and it all gave an impression that high scholastic achievement was going on inside. It all screamed social prestige. And that was exactly what you would find on the inside. The school had a pass rate in the high nineties. There wasn’t a lack of resources either, as the school had many affluent donors. So it was either brains or wealth or both. This was obvious on the outside and further cemented on the inside.
Elaine and Miriam entered the dark cave to dead calm. Elaine turned the wheels on the lighter and hoped there was enough fuel to last the night and get them through whatever else they may need a lighter for. She felt the fast pace of her heart and hoped they would see any danger before the danger could get to them. The orange and blue flame on the lighter danced up, the darkness melted a little and their eyes adjusted somewhat to the dim light. Miriam slipped the Storm into one of her army-green cargo pants pockets and turned on the iPod for added light.
“ Oh crap!” Miriam jumped.
“What is it?”
“I thought I saw something move.” Miriam held the iPo
d higher and moved it around to get a better look.
“It’s just our shadows on the walls. It’s hard for our eyes to adjust to what’s real and what’s not.”
“Great, I’m jumping from my own self.”
The first things they saw were icicle-like cones that jutted out of the ceiling. They complemented the strange, twisted rock formations that surrounded them.
The calm was broken by a steady drip of water that sounded like coffee seeping through a filter into a full pot.
“Hear that?” Miriam asked.
“Yes, it sounds like water dripping somewhere in the distance.”
“I think that’s how these stalactites over our heads started,” Elaine said, “the dripping water.”
“They’re going to freak Susan out, the stalactites and the dripping. It’s the perfect storm.” Miriam looked at the rock icicles and wondered how long they took to form.
“It doesn’t take much for that to happen with her.” Elaine allowed the flame to go out for a second, which left only the small light of the iPod.
“What happened?”
“The flame was a little too close to my thumb.”
Elaine turned the lighter on again and tried to take a closer stock of their surroundings. As they got closer to the walls, their eyes barely made out more faded carvings and pictures. In a few more years, maybe all of them would be destroyed by water. It was only a matter of time. There were more moose, people dancing, teepees and an oversized picture of a deer that seemed to take up the entire area. A dancing human figure, its hands resembling claws, had a head that sprouted the sensory appendages that insects might have.
“Eww,” Miriam said, “gross. Protruding icicles and strange insect humans. She’s really going to lose it.”
The antennae were not just the normal ones seen on insects. There was something abstract and confusing about their arrangements, because they were twisted into a whirlwind of disorder. It was like a ball of yarn that had unraveled but had not come back together in the same way.
“We’re either going to tell her what’s in here before she comes in so she’s prepared, or we’re going to have to try and hide everything from her .” Elaine moved deeper into the cave and looked to see where it ended. “Frankly, I think we should just tell her; it’s no good for her to be in the dark about things, and we’ll never be able to steer her away from everything.”
“I don’t know,” Miriam said. “She freaked out about things she saw on the outside. What’s she going to do when we tell her about the stuff on the inside? I don’t know which is better. If she sees, she freaks; if she imagines, she freaks.”
“That’s why we should just tell her. It’s better for her to get hysterical about something real than something imagined. Or we could just leave her to discover things on her own. It’s totally scary being in a place like this, just the four of us, but Susan is either in total despair about something or she doesn’t want to take action. We could stay outside all night without finding a place to sleep, and that would be all right with her. It’s true that something could be in here, but there are a lot more things out there.”
It wasn’t a very large cave. They had walked in under the arch in only a slight crouch, which had led them to believe it was roomier on the inside. It was about three midsized rooms put together. The wall at the back wasn’t fully closed in. Small gaps in the wall seemed to lead to narrow openings.
“Where do you suppose those lead to?” Miriam asked.
“Maybe to more caves. Or a water source. Who knows? They’re not very large fissures, so that’s good. There won’t be any large, unfriendly animals coming through any of them. Let’s look on the ground to see where we can make a bed.”
The ground was rugged and lumpy with formations of small craggy water-formed rocks and stalagmites. It would have to do because, as people said, necessity was the mother of invention.
“The surface is uneven,” Miriam commented, “but we should try to make the bed in the middle away from the walls and closer to the front of the cave.”
“You’re really concerned about her, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but when she gets the way she gets, it’s a little contagious. It gets you to that place where you think about what can really happen. Laughter is contagious, but so are other things. I don’t want her freaking me out.”
Elaine put the lighter out, leaving only the light of the iPod to cast strange shadows in their soon-to-be room.
“Turn the iPod off for a sec.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just see what it looks like inside here with no lights.”
Miriam turned the iPod off and plunged the cave in complete darkness. The drip-drop of the water became apparent again.
“We need to conserve the fuel in the lighter. We may need it for something else,” Elaine said into the blackness. “Hey, try closing your eyes for about ten seconds, and then open them.”
Ten seconds later, Miriam whispered, “I can see better.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“It just seems like that’s what I should do in the dark.”
With their eyes now adjusted, they could make out obscure shapes and abstract spaces.
“Okay, bed in the middle to the front,” Elaine agreed. “Let’s take one last look around before we make the bed.”
The lighter and the iPod came back on. Elaine and Miriam inched closer to the back wall to take a closer look. They heard the squeaking sounds first and then in the glow of the lighter and the iPod they saw what looked like an army of bats coming toward them. They had no idea where they’d come from—maybe the narrow opening or maybe the roof. Neither Elaine nor Miriam stuck around to investigate. With hands over their heads like protective helmets, they ran from the cave with only the two-inch square screen of video iPod flashing as they ran the short distance to the mouth of the cave. Elaine had long ago taken her thumb off the wheel of the lighter.
Kimberly and Susan, who had been looking toward the mouth of the cave for Elaine and Miriam’s appearance, suddenly saw the two girls bolting from the cave. Over their heads and following them out of the cave a multitude of dark wings rushed up into the darkening burnt-orange sky. Kimberly and Susan were already off the rock with bags on backs by the time Miriam and Elaine were stooping breathlessly in front of them.
“Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, why are we running from a flock of birds?” Kimberly asked.
“Those are not birds,” Elaine said, trying to catch her breath, “those are bats!”
“What! I told you there might be something in there.” Susan was animated. “And now we know it’s vampire bats. Those things feed on blood.”
Elaine stood up straight. “Listen, we don’t know what kinds of bats they were. It’s not as if we had time to inspect and scrutinize them. They came at us so fast, the only thing we could do was run. They’re all gone now, so none of us need to let our imagination run wild. Let’s just take the branches inside. It’s good to go.”
“Then why were they coming at you?” Susan insisted.
“They weren’t coming at us. They were in their natural habitat, and we disturbed them, and what do things and people do when they are disturbed?” Elaine let the question hang. “Sometimes they run way, get scared and move. That’s all. Let’s not make this anything more than it is.”
They moved toward the yawning mouth of the cave. Elaine and Miriam were at the front, the other two following. The sky was now a mixture of yellow, orange and splashes of red but still weirdly bright.
“Those bats might be back to drain our blood.”
“Hey, stop that!” Elaine turned to Susan. “Why do you insist on making mountains out of molehills? Every little thing is Armageddon. They’re not coming back. Bats don’t feed on human blood, and those bats that you’re ta
lking about live only in Central and South America. We are in Canada, for Pete’s sake. Get a grip!”
“How do you know this?” Susan sounded skeptical.
“From books.”
“Books …” Susan repeated the word as if she wasn’t sure any reliable information could come from such a source. As they approached the cave, she adjusted her eyes to avoid contact with the drawings. Of course when she did this all that was left to look at was the darkness of the cave or the darkening sky.
Elaine held the lighter again as they entered the cave, each dragging branches behind her. Miriam still had the iPod but Kimberly said nothing. Susan, as was now the custom, was the last one to enter the cave and drop her branch on the growing bed. They went in and out of the cave until the “mattress” was finished. They stood over the bed and looked down at the thing they had constructed. The flame of the lighter and the small square light of the iPod cast lights and shadows over the odd installation piece.
They left the thing there to the front and centre of the cave and sat on the rocks just outside the cave. They would pass the time until night fell and were forced inside.
“We have nothing to cover with.” Elaine took a scarf from her bag and tied it over her cornrows. She made a triangle first, placed it on her head, felt with her hands that it was on right and then made a knot at the back.
“What’s with the scarf?” Miriam asked.
“I have kinky hair. If I don’t tie this thing down”—Elaine pointed a finger at her head—“it will be sticking up all over the place tomorrow. And now that we’re out here, it’s come in handy because it will protect my head against the cold.”
“Lucky you.” Susan would have appreciated the cool air earlier in the day, but now it was unwanted.
“So back to the cover situation,” Elaine said. “We could make a cover from leaves, but that’s too much to think about, much less to do right now. I have a sweater; does anyone else?”
“Why would you have a sweater?” Miriam asked.
“Because I heard that temperature varies in these parts even in the day. So anyone else have one?”
Lost at Running Brook Trail Page 6