by Lin Oliver
The warm water instantly seeped through my safari pants, and when my foot hit the ground, it sunk several inches deep into the squishy mud. Leaning heavily on my staff, I brought my other foot in and started across. I could feel the river bottom sucking against my shoe as I tried to lift my leg. It was about forty feet to the other side, and though each step brought a feeling of utter disgust, I eventually made it without getting bitten by a snake or falling into the slimy liquid.
I took off my mud-caked, stinking shoes and socks, and waited. Everyone followed, one at a time, each groaning and complaining and gagging from the hideous stench — everyone except Dmitri and Klevko, who thought it was funny to splash each other. As Hollis came across, he took off his shoes, plopped down next to me, and wallowed in the misery of having forded the most disgusting body of water on Earth.
Klevko opened Crane’s collapsible stool, and Crane took a seat while Klevko cleaned his shoes and socks. With his legs spread wide and pants rolled up, his bare disgusting feet and hairless white calves almost glowed in the moonlight. Hollis and I sat with him as he spread out some packets of veal jerky and exotic nuts, and poured us some hot cider from his thermos. The rest of the crew was still wallowing, but Mr. Singh was up and walking haphazardly across the almost Martian terrain. He was limping again with his cane, but every few seconds he would stop, tap the cane on the ground a few times, pause, and then continue on. He was a white speck in the distance, the steam between us making him seem to go in and out of focus.
“What’s Mr. Singh doing?” I asked Crane.
“He’s tapping the ground with his cane, trying to detect any cavernous regions beneath our feet. Go catch up with him while Klevko tends to my shoes and feet.”
“Come on, chief — I mean, Hollis, let’s see what Mr. Singh’s up to.”
I got up and headed over to Mr. Singh. Hollis followed me for just a little bit, then stopped in his tracks.
“I don’t want to, Leo,” he said. “I’m really worried about Dr. Reed. Maybe we should head back and see if she’s okay. Maybe she has some exotic stomach virus or something — she could be dying, Leo.”
“She’s not dying, she just ate something rotten. Bad river fish or something.”
“But maybe we should check on her anyway — I think it’d be easy to find our way back.”
“There’s no going back.”
“I don’t want to go any nearer to the Land of the Dead. What if it’s like that cave? Or worse? I should never have gone in there. A toh followed me from that cave, and it’s cursing us. What if I didn’t make the black sooty mark right? What if —”
“Hollis, stop.”
“No. What if the toh follows me home? What if we go to the Land of the Dead, and even worse tohs are there? Mom and Dad are just tohs now. They don’t have bones or a coffin. What if they’ve just transformed into evil tohs and are going to follow us our whole lives? What if you get hurt —”
“There’s no going back,” I said as Hollis’s forehead scrunched up.
“Why?” he said.
“Because,” I blurted out, “because if I go back then there’s no fact-finding mission to Antarctica.”
“Leo? What are you talking about?”
“Mom and Dad aren’t tohs, Hollis. I have to get that mask to prove it to you.”
“Then where are they? Where are their bones?”
“I don’t know where they are, but I think they’re alive. I heard something on that card in Jeremy’s record shop, the one from the Belgian diplomat. None of it makes sense yet, but if I help Crane find the mask, then he’s going to fund a fact-finding mission to Antarctica. A hundred-thousand-dollar fact-finding mission. And then maybe we can learn what really happened to Mom and Dad and get to the bottom of this, once and for all.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Hollis. Now pull it together.”
“I don’t believe you, Leo.”
“Ask Crane. Go ahead, he’ll confirm I’m telling the truth. I have a signed contract with him. Hollis, listen to me, I think there’s a chance Mom and Dad might still be alive. You can come with me or not, but I’m going after Mr. Singh. I’m going to the Land of the Dead. I’m going to find that mask, and I’m going to bring our parents back.”
My heart was beating out of my chest, about to explode as I sprinted after Mr. Singh’s blurry silhouette in the distance, without even putting my shoes back on. The soles of my feet stung on the rocks, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to run. Run anywhere. Run away. Run away from it all. Sweat was pouring down my face.
Right before I reached Mr. Singh, he hoisted his knotted old cane into the air and twirled it.
“Mr. Singh!” I cried. “Have you found something? You’ve found it? I know you did!”
I ran all the way over to him, and when I stopped, pain seared across my chest and I bent over, coughing hoarsely until I caught my breath.
“Leo, your feet!” Mr. Singh gasped, the first hint of emotion I’d ever heard in his voice.
My bare feet were streaked in blood. That’s when it started to hurt. I sat down on the hard rocky ground and stared at my soles. They were grated with hundreds of cuts. Some were minor scratches, but some were worse looking.
“Your feet are badly damaged,” Mr. Singh said, taking off his thin outer jacket and handing it to me. “Are you in pain?”
“Yeah, but I don’t care,” I said. I took my kirpan dagger out of my backpack and sliced up the coat into shreds, then wrapped the bandages around my feet, adding more and more layers to soak up the blood.
“Apply pressure,” he said, removing his laces from his shoes. “Wrap them tight.”
“You found the entrance?”
“Leo concentrate on —”
“On what, the pain? No. Did you find the entrance to the underground?”
“Much of the surrounding area appears to be cavernous, hollow. There is a crevice over by those shrubs,” he said. “If you listen, you can hear the water trickling down.”
“I hear it,” I said. I bounced to my feet and gasped in pain. “I need to get down there, now.”
I walked to the shrubs and saw a small crevice in the earth, a thin black crescent in the brown rocks. It was a narrow fissure — only a kid could fit. I took a few pebbles and chucked them in. They took much longer than I expected to reach the ground, and their echoes were deep and hollow.
“This is it,” I said to Mr. Singh.
He nodded.
“Okay, I’m going in,” I said, sitting on the edge of the crevice and dangling my legs inside. I couldn’t see the bottom.
“Leo, even if you had blind sight, you’d be foolish not to prepare for the darkness,” Mr. Singh said. He scooped a huge handful of gravel and placed it in my hand. “Leave a trail so you may find your way back.” I shoved the gravel in my pockets as Mr. Singh placed his flashlight in my bag and extra water.
I slid myself down even farther, my legs fully below ground, my feet searching for a ledge. As I began to lower my torso in, I stopped and looked at Mr. Singh. “You’ll tell them I went in already?”
“Yes. Now remember, Leo. All is Mind,” he said, and placed his finger to my forehead, between my eyes. “I’ll be watching you.”
Before I could lower myself in, though, a booming voice echoed in the darkness.
“You’ve found it!” Crane’s voice filled the air. I pivoted to see Crane and the rest of his shadow crew jogging up to us. “I knew it, I knew it. What a remarkable team we make, eh? They’ll never doubt me again.”
I didn’t want to talk with Crane. I just wanted to get down there and find the mask. I lowered my feet farther in, searching for a ledge.
“Now wait a minute, Leo,” Crane gasped. “Don’t be rash.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Crane,” I barked, pivoting aggressively, but my weight shifted, and I lost my grip on the ledge. I started to slide, losing traction with the stone, my hands scraping against rough edges. My trembling arms were th
e only things holding me above ground.
“Leo,” Crane cried as I scrambled madly for a ledge in the darkness. There was none. My muscles were burning; my elbows felt about to rupture. I stared into the depths below, and felt its pull.
I let go of the surface of the world and slipped into the darkness.
I fell down the narrow shaft, my hands and legs skidding and scraping along the rocky cavern walls, until my backpack broke my fall. As I landed, I heard something crunch. I thought I’d broken my tailbone. In the darkness, I patted my body checking for damage. There were a few scrapes on my hands and forearms, but nothing major. No fresh gaping wounds. I could move all of my appendages. Above me, I heard everyone screaming into the dark hole.
“I’m okay,” I called up. “I’m not hurt.”
“Just stay where you are, Leo,” Crane said. “We’ll get you out.”
“I will.”
I groped through my backpack for my flashlights. The first one I found rattled when I pulled it out. As I clutched it, I felt pointy broken plastic. I tried the power switch, but it was busted to pieces. The other flashlight, my Mini Maglite, was undamaged and functional. I turned it on and shined it up the shaft to let them know I had light. But looking up the shaft was a depressing sight. In the light, I could see that there was no way to get up on my own — no ledges or footholds, only smooth rock. It was at least twenty feet up.
“Tell Hollis I’m okay,” I shouted, my voice echoing wildly.
“He’s not here, Leo,” Dr. Haga shouted down. “He was with us only a few minutes ago. He couldn’t have gotten far.”
“What? You’ve got to find him!” I shouted.
“I’ll have Kavi and Cyril track him,” Dr. Haga answered. “They’ll have no problem finding him.”
“Leo!” This time the voice was Crane’s. “You just worry about your own neck. We’ll take care of Hollis. Now, Dr. Haga, which of your men has the rope?”
“The rope? No one. I did not know we would be spelunking.”
“Excuses, excuses. A rope is an essential tool in adventuring. And don’t your men know how to make all sorts of items out of plants and trees? They can certainly fashion a rope in no time.”
“I do not see any trees, do you, Mr. Rathbone?”
“Irrelevant! Irreleva —”
“Just find Hollis,” I shouted. “You can get the rope later.”
Tired of listening to the surface folk argue, I shined the light on my surroundings. I was in a large cavern, a real cave like you’d see in a National Geographic special. Long, fang-shaped stalactites hung from an arching ceiling with equally impressive stalagmites reaching up from the ground to meet them. The cave must have been around for thousands, if not millions, of years to produce such immense structures from just dripping water. I was in a big chamber, but I guessed there were many other chambers in the cave, because I could hear air flowing through them.
“I’m going to have a look around,” I called up. “Maybe there’s another way out.”
I followed my ears toward the sound of slight hissing. At one point, I stopped and reached out to grasp several different stalagmites to try to channel them, but with no luck. All I heard was silence and the distant whoosh of air circulating in the underground rooms. The rock walls were light and beige, possibly limestone, I thought.
As I reached the far end of the chamber, the ceiling got lower until it was just a few inches higher than my head. The great room narrowed into a tunnel that appeared no wider than a one-yard fissure in the rock. I poked my head inside and shined my flashlight down the corridor, which became narrower. Right by the entrance to the corridor, I was surprised to see some drawings on the walls of the tunnel. They weren’t elaborate murals of bison or anything, just some black geometrical shapes and patterns that looked like the tribal tattoos I’d seen throughout my stay. People had been in this cave.
“There’s some paintings on one of the walls,” I shouted up. “Basic shapes and designs.”
“I’m impressed with your fieldwork, Leo,” Crane shouted down. “But please stay put. We’re working on a solution.”
“You find Hollis?”
“Not yet.”
I could still hear the faint hissing of air coming from the fissure ahead. I took a sniff and shined my light down the narrow sliver. The air smelled fresh, and the tunnel appeared to extend for quite a while.
“I’m going to press farther in,” I shouted up. “This looks promising.”
I squeezed myself into the narrow tunnel, walking lightly on uneven ground. After I had gone about twenty feet, I realized that I hadn’t laid down a gravel trail. That was no problem. I would start once I got to the next chamber. As the corridor narrowed considerably, I had to turn sideways to go forward. I held my arms winglike along the walls, nudging my backpack forward on the ground with each step. I was starting to sweat, both from the heat and my nerves. I’d never been claustrophobic before, but suddenly I found myself considering such thoughts as, What if the ceiling collapses? or What if I get wedged in and am unable to free myself? I was finding it difficult to breathe, afraid I might black out at any minute.
Just when it felt like the corridor would keep narrowing until it squeezed me into a sheet of paper, it widened slightly and opened up into another chamber, and I tumbled out and into a big empty room. As I looked around, I realized this chamber was not normal. There were no stalactites or stalagmites, nor were the walls uneven. No, this room had been carved out — the brown rock walls were covered with little notches, the evidence of tools and human hands. Human hands made this room, there was no doubt about it.
On the opposite side of the room, on the far wall, there was a wide opening with an arched ceiling, opening onto a tunnel that extended into the distance, until it split in two. And right by that opening there was a giant stone disc leaning against the stone wall, some sort of barricade or door that had been rolled aside. I ran my hands along the rough textured walls but heard nothing. That didn’t matter. People had actually made this. Maybe there was something to crazy Marie’s ideas? Maybe the tunnel led to the center of the Earth? Could this be evidence of the immortal Boskops?
“I’ve made an amazing discovery!” I called into the narrow crevice, my voice wildly distorted and echoing. My voice sounded older, deeper, bigger. “I’m going farther inside.”
“Come back,” I heard faintly from the crevice, just an echoing whisper of Crane’s voice.
But I didn’t listen. How could I? I headed down the brown rock tunnel, its arched ceiling only six inches taller than me. Maybe, I thought, maybe if I kept going and went deep enough, I’d find some of those immortal Boskops people, or maybe even the dead souls hammering away for eternity. Who really knew?
I took the left-hand tunnel and began laying down my gravel trail as I crept ahead. This tunnel sloped downward and led to successively narrower tunnels that veered left, then veered right, then sloped down again. To my surprise, the end of the tunnel opened up into a small room, a kind of hub, and from there, at least ten more tunnels radiated outward like bicycle spokes. I couldn’t believe it. This place was immense.
Immense and completely empty. There was nothing on the ground, no art on the walls, no signs of humans at all — except that this tunnel system was clearly built by humans … or humanlike beings. In one of the later chapters of Marie’s book, she’d channeled a Boskops named Pastor, who told her that the interior of the Earth was like a honeycomb, filled with numerous empty chambers, home to the immortal Boskops, who created their surroundings through mind power. Maybe there were invisible Boskops all around me, and while I just saw empty tunnels, they saw beautiful forest trails.
“It’s absolutely amazing down here,” I screamed, but only heard my faint voice echo back to me from twelve different tunnels.
I chose a tunnel that sloped downward the sharpest and followed it. It led steeply downhill past more branching tunnels. I knew I was at least fifty, if not a hundred feet below the surface,
but the air was still somewhat fresh, and the heat manageable. But I wanted to get deeper. Every time I saw a steep downward tunnel, I took it. I lost count of how many times I’d veered. Somewhere along the path I ran out of gravel, but I didn’t care. Something else had attracted my attention — little circular stone knobs, ranging from the size of a small fist to a big dinner plate — that were carved from the rock and lined up every fifty feet or so along the tunnel. Maybe they were some sort of language or code? I tried to channel them, but got nothing. They were puzzling, but intriguing. Another thing puzzled me, too. None of the tunnels were more than four or five inches higher than the top of my head, and I’m only four feet, eleven-and-a-half inches.
The next tunnel opened up into an underground room about fifteen feet high and twenty feet wide, a room much different than the others. As I looked around, I immediately noticed that the ceiling was covered with large patches of a tarry black substance, indistinct and blending into the rocks, almost caked on. Exploring the chamber, I soon discovered that there were also about ten patches of that same tarry substance on the ground, all of them right underneath the ones on the ceiling. Was it some sort of mold? Or weird bacteria colonies? I touched one on the ground. It felt a lot like soot, really old soot, but definitely soot. Those were spots of old fire hearths! Next to one of them I found a small stone shaped like a triangle, with edges so sharp they nearly cut my skin. It appeared to be a spear tip, and it looked straight out of the Stone Age.
Going around to all the ancient hearths, I found six more stone spear tips, dozens of other strangely carved rocks that were clearly tools of some kind, bone fragments from small animals, and three teeth. The teeth were molars — human molars. It didn’t make sense. Were these the remains of this underground city’s builders? Or were those the remains of squatters who had chanced upon this underground Boskops city one day and decided to make it their home?