Bodine explained how the crack went down thirty or forty feet. He laughed and said, “You don’t want to fall down here and get stuck. Though I suppose we could fish you out. I heard about this fat guy who got stuck in a cave near here. They somehow got his clothes off, greased him up with Crisco, tied a rope around him and popped him out like a champagne cork.”
Bodine taught Ray how to “chimney,” to get his knees against one wall and back on the other and sidle along, using the pressure to keep from falling.
Maybe Seth didn’t know how to do it. It must be hard toting the gun and lantern, which was maybe why his sounds were getting fainter. Hopefully it’d get to be too much, and he’d just go back.
Ray stopped. Ten feet in front of him the crack closed up and the passageway abruptly turned into a crawlway. He flashed back to the trip with Bodine.
Bodine pointed ahead. “That, my friend, is the notorious ‘lemon-squeezer.’”
It had made the crawlway that started the cave look like Grand Central Station. A body couldn’t fit in there.
Yet Bodine’s did. He crawled in on his belly until all Ray could see were the soles of his boots. Bodine grunted with the effort. Ray followed. The only way to move forward was a combination of kicking against the walls and slithering. He was hyperventilating but refused to stop and rest until he was through. If he got through. There was a little space above his back, which was good, but his arms were pinned to his sides.
The passage widened a hair. He said with relief. “That was tough. But we’re through.”
“Uh, we aren’t quite there yet. This coming up is the lemon-squeezer. Here’s what you need to do. Breathe out so your chest is smaller, then slide through fast as you can. It’s only a few feet. Then you’ll have room to breathe again.”
Bodine’s boots receded.. Ray swallowed his panic and squirmed through.
It was when he was on the other side, lying on the cold floor, able to breathe again, that it hit him. It had been like being in a coffin, in your grave, unable to breath. Buried alive, as in that old Poe story.
A deafening sound and stinging in his shoulder rocketed Ray back to the present. His knees let go and he fell. How far? It took enough time to think to splay all four limbs against the walls, to stop his descent. He scraped the shit out of his hands and knees and heard his pants tearing, but it slowed him enough so that when his feet hit the floor he didn’t break an ankle. He crumbled in a heap.
A second explosion rang out. The fall had saved his life. There was no third shot. He had his answer—Seth had a lantern and gun. It must be Karl’s, from the closet upstairs. It had had two barrels. Seth needed to reload before shooting again. If Ray was silent, maybe Seth would think he was dead.
Bodine had said there was a passage below, parallel to the one we were in. That was where Ray must be now. He’d dropped his light in the fall. Seth’s flickered above.
There were no sounds of reloading but scraping again. There was less clink and clank. Seth was learning. With the echoes, the sounds could be coming from anywhere, but not the light. It was getting brighter. He was overhead. Ray stopped breathing. Could the kid see down here? If so, Ray was dead.
But he’d fallen some distance. The way the passage was shaped, the upper route was the obvious way to go. The light above moved past him but illuminated the way ahead here below, which must pass under the nasty crawlway that culminated in the lemon squeezer. And there was Ray’s flashlight on the floor, where he’d dropped it. A rush of hope. With luck, it wasn’t broken.
Seth’s light dimmed, then was gone. He was in the crawlway. The question was—had he been in this cave before? If not, would he know how to exhale, get past the lemon-squeezer? He was bigger than Ray, like his father. Maybe he couldn’t fit at all. Another thing– it was hard enough squeezing a body through there. Getting through there with that light and gun would be grueling, perhaps impossible. When Ray had gone through, his hands had been pinned to his sides. Maybe Seth would quit and leave, though good luck to him backing out of that thing.
There was silence. Seth had either suffocated or was heading on.
Ray groped his way to the Mag-Lite, grabbed it and jiggled it. After a few horrible seconds, it came on. He didn’t have to worry about Seth seeing it. Ray’s shoulder was bleeding, but he hadn’t been shot. He’d just gotten nailed by a splinter of stone from the bullet hitting the rock.
Ray was at the bottom of a canyon. Unlike the rest of the cave so far, it was a place where you could stand.
Bodine had said that his chimneying technique worked for going up and down too. If Ray could chimney up where he fell, he could go back out of the cave and escape! He clamped the light in his teeth and tried to climb. But the narrow slot that had broken his fall widened in the last few feet. And the walls were smooth, with no footholds or handholds, no way to get purchase on the rock and propel himself up.
He ran back toward the entrance of the cave, but the crack narrowed, and finally pinched in. He couldn’t squeeze through.
He raced the other way, past where he’d fallen, a couple of hundred feet. He must be past the lemon squeezer above. Seth couldn’t have made it through by now, not with all that baggage. So Ray was ahead of him.
He trained the Mag-Lite up. Here the passage gradually widened the higher it went. He should be able to chimney up. He got his back against one wall, feet against the other, and inched his way up. He finally made it to the top. He stopped—ignoring the fact that he was straddling a forty-foot drop—and listened. There were sounds, very faint. It wasn’t cave rats.
He chimneyed forward. The canyon narrowed, then petered out and for the first time he was walking. But the easy passage only lasted thirty feet. It ended at a place he’d never forget. Again memory froze him.
The floor had been flat, and for the first time in the cave, they could walk. Ray said, “This is more like it.”
Bodine said, “Yeah. The calm before the storm.”
“What storm?”
“We’re almost there.” His last words echoed.
Ray moved up to him and Bodine grabbed his arm. “Watch it.”
They stood on the lip of a chamber that belled out from their perch. It was roughly cylindrical, thirty feet across with sheer walls. Bodine said, “This is called a dome-pit. Here’s the dome.” He shined his flashlight up. Ray couldn’t see a ceiling, only water drops falling, oddly lazy in the light. “And the pit.” Bodine pointed the light down. Ray peered down into blackness. He couldn’t see the bottom, either.
“How deep is this thing?”
“I haven’t been down to measure. There’s an easy way to find out.” Bodine stepped back into the passage and returned with a small rock. He dropped it down the hole.
“One Mississippi, two Mississi…” Boom. “A little less than two seconds. Sixty, seventy feet. You don’t want to fall.”
Funny how that information made the dark below suddenly crawl with malevolence. Ray shrunk back from the edge, almost crashing into Bodine.
He said, “Whoa.”
The walls were vertical. “There’s no way across that.”
“There is.” He trained his flashlight along the left side of the pit, to a ledge about four feet down. “That goes to the other side. It’s solid and flat. The passage continues on past there, and we can easily climb up into it.”
But Ray was pointing his flashlight down past their feet, to a gap in the ledge before it began. “What about that?”
“That’s a little tricky.” He demonstrated. “You can’t see it, but there’s a slot below me where I’m putting my foot. Now I grab this nub of rock on this side and—” He swung a leg over the gap, shifted his weight, let go of the handhold and was on the ledge.
Ray imitated him. It wasn’t so bad. He followed him out onto the ledge. It was solid and flat. But it was ten inches wide at best, so he had to face t
he wall and sidle. It was also muddy. As he shuffled his foot, it slipped. He stopped. His body revolted. “I can’t do this.”
Ray had to hand it to Bodine. He’d heard his voice and knew he was done. Bodine didn’t try to cajole him into continuing. “Go back the way you came. And be careful.” As if Ray needed him to tell him that.
Ray inched back. He was almost there when he saw the problem. “I’m stuck.”
“Yeah, that last bit is harder on the return. Reach your leg across and into the slot. Now you have to kind of lunge for that handhold.”
There was no reason, in theory, he shouldn’t be able to get his foot in that slot, except from this angle he could see the chasm he was about to step over. Before he could second-guess, he rammed his foot across and lunged for the handhold.
He crumpled in a heap on the floor, his body quivering with relief. Until He remembered the lemon-squeezer.
The sounds behind Ray got louder, yanking him back to the present. It had taken him a long time, but Seth had made it through the lemon squeezer. He was coming. And, like it or not, Ray was going.
He set the light in his teeth again. There was that nub of rock. His foot found the invisible slot and before he could think, he was past the gap with his other foot on the ledge. He faced the wall and sidled across. He moved fast, faster than the fearful thoughts. But not too fast. He’d gotten further than he did last time. That’s why he didn’t know how to negotiate this next spot. The wall bulged. He needed to get his right hand on the bulge and crouch down.
He was past it, over halfway across when the shot rang out. It echoed discordantly in the dome-pit. His body spasmed, and he almost lost his footing. He heard little splashes below. The bullet must have knocked mud off the wall. He didn’t remember there being water down there before. But it had been summer. The water must be up now from all the melting snow.
A few steps later came a second shot. Why hadn’t Seth hit him? Ray turned his head back. Seth hadn’t made it to the edge of the pit yet. He’d missed Ray because the pit belled out and he didn’t know it. That suggested he’d never gotten this far in the cave before. He was going to see the pit any second.
Ray heard a metallic snap. Seth was reloading. Ray was less than ten feet from the other side of the dome. The ledge ended at an upward slope—there was no gap on this side—with blackness at the top. It looked like the continuation of the passage before. The slope looked easy.
Except any moment Seth going to reach the edge of the pit and see Ray. And shoot him like a drunken duck, especially if he saw his light. Ray memorized the contours of the slope then turned it off.
He made it to the top, scurried a few feet further from the edge of the pit then lay with his head at the top of the slope. Seth appeared on the other side, his face lit ghostly by the lantern. He waved the light around the dome-pit. He pointed it right at the passage Ray was in but moved it away. Seth could’t see him. Maybe he didn’t know where he was. Seth stared down at his feet, at the gap. If he hadn’t been this far in the cave before, he didn’t know about that handhold and invisible foothold. He couldn’t get across.
Ray was hopeful for the first time in what seemed like hours. He needed to see how the passage continued. He inched back from the pit, turned, and clicked his light on.
The gun boomed, and he dropped to the floor. He wasn’t hit. He scrambled forward, leaving the light on—he didn’t want to be falling into some other pit. With the second boom, he was free. Seth needed to reload, and by that time Ray would be far out of range. There was no pit ahead, just a sewer passage similar to the start of the cave. Which by the standards of the rest of this hellhole was an easy crawlway. He scurried on hands and knees for a couple of hundred feet. It occured to him that he was headed toward that exit.
The floor sloped down, then got gradually steeper. Now it was so steep that he had to creep down on his butt. The rock was muddy, soaking through the back of his pants and making his ass cold.
The incline became even steeper, and he was sliding, out of control. He landed with a big splash on his feet in water above his knees. He was standing in a pool at the bottom of a dome-pit like the previous one. Aside from the slot he’d shot down, this was almost perfectly cylindrical. Water rained down from the ceiling, clattering on the pool.
He splashed around looking for the way on. The only passage was a low crawlway. He leaned down and pointed the flashlight in. It was less than two feet high and half submerged. He crawled in, the flashlight in his mouth. The water struck his chest, so cold that it burned. As he crept forward, the icy liquid hit his diaphragm, and it seized up. He couldn’t breathe! His body squirmed backward involuntarily. A moment later, he was breathing again, though in shallow gasps.
He forced himself forward again. The walls closed in, pressing his arms against his sides. The roof lowered. His mouth was an inch from the surface of the water. His body rebelled and backed out again. He willed it to stop.
He wasn’t going back. Seth was there.
He crawled in once more, and this time got further in. He came around a corner to the left. The crawlway widened into a pool. His movements had roiled the water so that it slapped against the rock with a sickening rhythm. A few feet further in, it was up to the ceiling.
Bodine had told him of cavers “free diving” in spots like this: holding their breath, plunging in, swimming underwater and counting the seconds to half the time they knew they could hold their breath before either popping out into air-filled passage, or returning. It had seemed suicidal. It still did, except it was the only way out.
Was this Mag-Lite waterproof? Ray was about to find out. He sucked in as much air as his lungs would hold and ducked his head under. He shoved forward a couple of feet. He wasn’t swimming but crawling underwater.
He backed out. There was a limit to the craziness his body would take, and he’d reached it.
He was almost certain the exit was flooded. He’d never know, because he wasn’t going in there again.
He stood in the dome, water raining on his head. Was Seth still at the pit? Was he getting reinforcements? Locking Ray in the basement again, for good this time?
Like that, Ray was violently shivering. If he didn’t get out of this waterfall and start moving, it was all going to be moot. He needed to return to the pit and see.
He stared up at the slope he’d come down. It was muddy, and he was wet. He began climbing. A few feet up, and he slipped back into the water. The second time was harder, because his wet clothes had greased the mud incline.
Sheer physical effort wasn’t going to get him up there. He studied the slope. There were no handholds, but the rock sides were solid and close together. He leaned his body in, kicked up a few feet and jammed his elbows against the rock, punching the toes of his boots into the mud. Rinse and repeat. It was exhausting, but there was no resting, or he’d slip back down.
Halfway up, his foot got stuck. He wiggled it until it plopped out with a sucking sound and threw him off balance, but he hung on. Finally, he was past the steepest part. He slithered up to the level passage and collapsed in a heap, panting, like a fish out of water. At least he wasn’t shivering any more.
He crawled on and approached the pit. He clicked his light off and saw faint reflections of Seth’s. Why was he still there? Did he know the exit was flooded? Was he aware that there was an exit at all? It didn’t matter. He was waiting for Ray.
Ray crept up to the edge quietly as he could. But the dome-pit must have amplified his sounds, because they were answered by the boom of the gun. Ray scurried back. A second shot came, then the clatter of Seth reloading. They’d done this before. Only last time Ray thought he had an exit. How was he going to get by him?
Ray needed to think about who Seth was. Based on a short conversation, but that’s all he had. Karl, it seems, had subjected him to a rare form of homeschooling, grooming him as the next in the line
age of teachers. He taught Seth that no one should speak of the teachings, which is why Seth was compelled to stop Ray’s writing.
Despite all the evidence, that doubting part of Ray still wondered whether Karl was a con man or a holy man. And what had Karl believed? It was unknowable. But those were the wrong questions. What Ray needed to know was what Seth believed. He wasn’t slick like his father. He didn’t seem like someone who hid things well. In their brief conversation, Ray had gotten two vibes.
Seth seemed crazy, which Ray already knew from his attacks on him at home. But Seth was also a True Believer. Like Susan. Where the crazy came in was that the person Seth truly believed in was himself. He was on a unique mission on the planet to save the chosen few. Ray hoped he was right. He didn’t know the end point, but he knew the first step of his plan. It sounded like Seth was done reloading, and he hadn’t taken another shot. Ray crept up to the edge again, close enough that he could see Seth, and Seth could see him. Seth was standing there.
Ray started talking before he knew what he was saying. “Seth, please put the gun down and listen.” The echo distorted his words. There was silence, but at least Seth didn’t answer with a shot. Ray spoke more slowly to accommodate the acoustics.
“I was wrong. Wrong to write. And wrong to leave your father.” Silence. “I want to come back. Finish with you what I should have with your father.”
“Why did you come back now? There’s no way out, is there?” The sound of him speaking was even stranger here than it had been in the Meeting Room. Ray was struck by the surreality of the two of them here in the bowels of the earth.
Ray want to laugh. No way out. Seth probably meant the cave. But like his father, everything seemed to have at least two meanings. And it came to Ray with a jolt, along with a flicker of hope—two could play at that.
Ray said, “There is a way out. Which I’ll get to. But the only way out…out of my situation, my suffering, is with you. Traveling the hidden path.”
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 28