“Just inside the mouth of the cave. One of the boys we’d brought grew very excited, and the lead geologist gave him permission to run back to town with it, as long as he returned immediately.”
“You had children with you?” I asked. Or panted, more like, from my exertion.
“Yes, a pair of small boys. Normally they sort the coal, but we brought them along in case portions of the cave proved too narrow for an adult to get squeeze through. The other died in the collapse, I’m afraid.”
His voice trembled slightly; surely the deaths of the other men and the boy weighed heavily on him. I tried to imagine being in such a wild, lonely place as this, all my comrades suddenly dead, exhausted and with night coming on. “I’m very sorry,” I said. “It must be painful for you to return here.”
Sadness drew shadows on Elliot’s handsome features. “Thank you for the sympathy. It is difficult, but as I said, I wish to aid you in whatever way you deem necessary.”
“I’d like to speak with the other boy, the one who took the stone back to town,” Griffin said. “Just to be thorough.”
Elliot’s expression of sadness only grew. “I’m afraid it isn’t possible. He was run over by a mine cart and killed.”
Christine batted irritably at an insect. “This boy, the geologists, Johnson. Do this many people normally die in your mine in such a short time?”
“It’s dangerous work, Dr. Putnam. Stotz Mining Company has far fewer deaths than other operations, I assure you.”
We emerged from the dense tangle of trees into open air. Ahead of us stretched a steep bald of rock, free of everything but moss and the occasional small flower, growing from a crack. The peak of Threshold Mountain loomed overhead, its heights seeming no less mysterious for being nearer at hand. On the other side of the bald, a narrow opening gaped in the face of the mountain. The vegetation around it had been torn away, and piles of rubble lay outside, along with discarded timbers, all, no doubt, from the attempt to rescue the men lost in the collapse.
Griffin came to a halt, staring at the narrow opening. His hands clenched, then relaxed when he seemed to remember himself.
A thought occurred to me, as I observed the detritus of the rescue effort. “Why didn’t you go inside with the rest, Elliot?”
“There was no reason for me to accompany them. I’m no geologist or engineer. I remained outside, guarding the mules and horses against bears. As I told Dr. Putnam, black bears will seldom attack a human, but the animals would have made tempting prey.”
“Why didn’t you ride back to town to fetch help, instead of getting lost and wandering around the countryside?” I asked.
“The mine collapse was very loud. They broke their traces and ran away.”
“And none of them made it back to town? I suppose they were all eaten by bears?”
Elliot stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean to imply,” he said.
“I’m sure Whyborne didn’t mean to offend,” Griffin said quickly, cutting a sharp look at me.
Actually, I rather did, but I kept my mouth shut.
Whether Elliot believed Griffin or not, he chose to behave as if he did. “Here is the cave. Please be cautious if you choose to go inside, not that there is much to see. As for me, I have other duties to attend to back in town.” He tipped his hat to Christine, then glanced at Griffin. “If it’s convenient for you, I’ll dine with you at the hotel, and share any findings?”
Griffin looked surprised, but quickly covered it. “Of course.”
“I look forward to it.” He nodded to me and turned his back on us, the trees swallowing up his figure within minutes.
Chapter 11
“Honestly, Whyborne, what is the matter with you?” Christine asked, as soon as Elliot had left. “You sounded as if you meant to accuse the poor man of something nefarious. You all but asked him why he didn’t have the decency to die along with his companions!”
“I most certainly did not!” I turned to Griffin for support, but he also frowned at me.
“Christine has a point, although I would not have put it quite as strongly,” he allowed. “You were a bit rude.”
“Well, I’ll have the opportunity to apologize over dinner, won’t I?” I snapped. “Come, let’s have a look at the blasted cave.”
Griffin touched my elbow lightly. “Don’t be angry with us, my dear. It’s just not like you to be so…forthright, shall we say.”
“It’s not my fault if I’m not as taken with him as the two of you seem to be.”
“Oh dear lord,” Christine muttered, rolling her eyes. “I beg you, spare us any melodrama, and focus on the task at hand. Now, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything directly around the cave, or even within, given the extent of the rescue operations. The entire area is disturbed. Unfortunately, it would take a far larger force than ourselves to give the surroundings a proper survey.”
“Do what you can, Christine,” Griffin said. “I suppose…well, there may be nothing to see inside the cave, but we should at least check.”
“I’ll go,” I offered hastily.
“We’ll go together,” Griffin said, although he didn’t sound at all certain.
“Don’t be silly,” Christine said. “If there are any traces of carvings or whatnot, they must be subtle enough to escape the notice of the rescuers earlier. I will accompany Whyborne, while you begin a transect.”
I took a lantern from our gear and lit it with a match, while Christine lectured Griffin on how to conduct a proper survey. When done, she rejoined me, and together we ventured into the cave.
My heart picked up its pace as we closed on the black maw of the cave opening. The tumble of stones, cast aside by frantic rescuers, served as a mute reminder of the lives lost at this spot. We entered the cave cautiously, both of us seeming afraid to breathe, lest we bring the roof down on us. The rescuers had shored up the ragged roof with hastily placed timbers, but it was far too easy to imagine them coming down on our heads. At least we could stand upright; my back was still sore from stooping in the mine yesterday.
As Elliot had indicated, the area cleared of rockfall was quite shallow. About twenty feet in, a truly enormous boulder blocked our progress.
“I wonder why the rest of the cave was filled with smaller rocks,” I murmured, staring at it in the light of our lantern.
“Perhaps they undertook a blast during the rescue,” Christine suggested. “Now do shine the light on the walls, where it might be useful.”
I obeyed. There was little hope of finding anything, however; the walls were nothing but ragged rock from the collapse. Even so, Christine scanned the walls closely, pausing to pick up a bit of broken stone every so often. Eventually, she shook her head and stepped back. “Nothing. It was a bit of a stretch to hope for more, I suppose.”
We went back outside. The day had grown darker, and thunder rumbled ominously again in the distance. “Blast these storms,” Christine muttered, holding her hat in place as she tilted her head back to glare at the sky. I merely blushed and looked away, remembering the night before.
“Well,” she went on. “I’ve set Griffin to walking transects to the north side of the cave. You take the south. I’ll walk the quadrant directly in front of the cave, to a depth of one hundred yards to either side.”
I made my way up the slope with the intention of keeping my path as straight as possible. The roughness of the terrain and the slickness of my shoes quickly put an end to my plan. I peered at the exposed rock and poked about at the base of the scrubby trees which clung doggedly to the steep slope, but I was no archaeologist. I feared I might be missing obvious signs.
The day grew progressively hotter, and the thunder remained in the distance, passing to the south and eventually dissipating. Some sort of large insect insisted on buzzing around my face and hat; I tried to dash it away, fearing it meant to bite.
This was why I preferred not to leave Widdershins. I was no good in this savage wilderness, full of bugs and caves and trees. I was m
eant for gambrel-roofed houses, and sidewalks, and omnibuses to take me where I needed to go.
Lost in thought, I scrambled around one of the larger outcroppings. There seemed to be a slight depression beyond, but I paid no mind to it—at least, until the ground gave way beneath me.
I let out a startled cry, scrambling back as the thick matt of leaves and roots gave under my weight. But I wasn’t fast enough, and in a rush of crumbling rock, I plunged into darkness.
~ * ~
I twisted as I fell, dirt and rotted leaves raining down with me into the depths below. I struck something hard, slid, then fell again, only to come to a sudden, jarring stop.
For a moment, I lay absolutely still, save for my rapid breathing, my lungs unable to draw in enough air. Darkness surrounded me, the only light streaming down from a fissure above and behind me. An odd reek underlay the scent of damp stone. Although faint, it reminded me of ammonia.
I’d fallen. Into…a cave? Perhaps another part of the same cave? Had the earlier collapse weakened some other portion of a more extensive system? “Hello?” I shouted weakly. “Help?”
“Whyborne!” Griffin’s voice was faint but frantic. “Where are you? Is everything all right? Whyborne?”
“Here!” I struggled to my feet, taking stock as I did so. I ached abominably and had lost my hat, but at least my bones seemed intact.
“Whyborne!” Christine added her voice to the shouting.
“I’m here! Please—be careful! The ground isn’t stable.”
Within moments, Griffin appeared, framed against the sliver of light. “Ival? Are you hurt?”
“No. Well, bruised, but I’m on my feet and everything seems to be in working order.”
“I’ll fetch the rope,” Christine said.
“Bring a lantern as well!” I called after her.
“Why?” Griffin asked suspiciously.
I didn’t answer. A few minutes later, Christine reappeared. “Shall I tie the lantern on and lower it down to you?”
“No!” Griffin objected. “Whyborne, you can’t mean to wander about down there by yourself.”
“I just wish to have a quick look around,” I said. “I’ll be fine, Griffin.”
He didn’t reply, his face nothing more than a shadow against the bright sky, but I suspected he was not at all pleased with me. Christine lowered the lantern, which I freed from the rope. I considered fumbling about in the dark for matches, but that seemed ridiculous, so instead I lit the lantern’s wick with a few words. Griffin’s sigh drifted down from overhead, which I pointedly ignored.
Shadows swung and shifted alarmingly when I lifted the lantern, before settling into recognizable shapes. The passage around me seemed oddly level. I knew little about such formations, of course, but didn’t they usually twist and turn, the ceiling growing higher or lower as the stone dictated? This seemed more like the tunnel leading down to the mine in Threshold than any natural formation.
Something on the wall caught my eye. Frowning, I stepped closer. “Christine?” I called.
“Yes?”
“Would it be possible for Griffin to lower you down?”
“Why?”
“Because there are carvings on the walls. Pictographs, similar to those on the stone.”
There came the sounds of a brief argument. Predictably, it ended with Griffin lowering Christine down via the rope. “What have you found?” she asked, even before her boots touched the ground.
“Look here.”
I held the lantern close to the wall, revealing row upon row of carved pictographs. Christine let out a gasp and leaned in to examine them. “And they’re the same as those on the stone?”
“A similar style, at least. Without a direct comparison, I can’t say with absolute certainty, but I believe them to be.”
“Damn, I wish I’d brought paper and charcoal to make rubbings. Later, perhaps.” Her eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “Do the symbols seem at all familiar to you?”
I studied them carefully. Many of the pictographs were highly stylized, and their grouping suggested they might form sentences. “No. That is, they could be, but at first glance they don’t seem to be related to any language with which I’m familiar.”
“Do you realize what this could mean?” she asked, and her voice trembled with an excitement I’d never seen in her before. “What if we have discovered a heretofore unknown civilization?”
“Of yayhos? Don’t start writing a paper just yet.”
“Assuming these yayhos even exist,” she reminded me. “We haven’t met anyone who has claimed to actually see them, and the buzzing voice in the mine could have been produced by some strange trick of acoustics.”
We worked our way slowly along the wall, and I began to grow excited myself. The repeating nature of the symbols convinced me this was indeed a system of writing. If only there was some way to know how ancient or recent the carving might be. I longed to have an accurate reproduction in my hands, to compare with other known systems of writing. Were there connections, or did I view the work of wholly alien beings?
What if Elliot had been right and the theft of the stone was nothing more than the work of men who had decided the wrong side of the law offered more opportunity than the mine? What if these carvings represented the work of men? If Christine and I uncovered evidence of a new civilization, to rival those discovered in Mexico and South America…
As we worked our way along the wall, the hieroglyphs—for such they seemed to be—began to be interrupted by scenes meant to depict specific happenings. The first showed some sort of creature, which resembled a winged crustacean, like a prawn, with an oddly pyramidal head.
“A god?” Christine suggested.
“A yayho?”
Her mouth pressed into a line of annoyance. “Before you dragged me into the business last December, it wouldn’t have even been an option.”
“I didn’t drag you into anything,” I reminded her.
“Hmph.”
The next pictorial display showed the crustacean-thing interacting with a stylized human, dressed in Indian clothing. The human knelt and bowed his head, as if the creature dominated him in some fashion. Was Christine’s suggestion correct, and this depicted a god of some kind?
Christine’s frown turned uneasy, but she didn’t comment. We continued on.
“Odd,” she said, after we had gone a bit further.
“The carvings?”
“Well, yes, but the cave itself. I’ve been in more cracks and crevices than I can count. Any left open to invasion by animals invariably collect some sort of occupants. Snakes, scorpions—”
“Not here, I hope!” I exclaimed with a shudder. Surely this blasted place didn’t have scorpions, did it?
“Spiders,” she went on, undeterred. “Bats. At the very least, I’d expect to see cobwebs or guano. But there’s nothing.”
“Which means…?”
“That the area is too regularly disturbed for animals to find it a safe haven.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
More scenes appeared amidst the carvings. Crustacean-things, humans, and strange jars seemed the most common depictions. But the humans were frequently…wrong. Their right and left arms depicted on the wrong side of their bodies. Missing limbs. Extra limbs. A body rigidly laid out, while a crustacean-thing cut into its skull with some odd implement.
If these carvings had been made by human hands, they were strange indeed, for they never showed a man in ascendance, only dominated or operated on by the creatures.
Before long, our exploration brought us to the other side of the rockfall. Or, rather, the other side of the enormous boulder we had commented on earlier.
A few smaller rocks had fallen on this side, but the main damage seemed to have occurred at the very front of the cavern, where the unfortunate men and boy had been found. I held the lantern close to the walls and floor. Looking for what, I wasn’t entirely sure. The boulder fit almost unnaturally into the tunnel, bu
t just above it, I made out the ceiling of the cave.
Wait a moment. If the boulder had fallen, shouldn’t there be an equally large hole in the ceiling above?
“Look at the size, the shape,” I murmured to Christine. “It almost looks as if someone put it here to block the entrance.”
The line between her brows deepened. “It can’t have been. The geologists would surely have sent back for blasting powder, and possibly men to help move the rubble after, when they let the boy run the black stone back to town.”
“Unless it was put in place after the collapse,” I said uneasily.
“Impossible! If that were indeed the case, the stone would have to have been fit into place from the inside. From deeper within the mountain.”
We were silent for a moment, contemplating the possibilities. I didn’t care for any of them, and with the hideous carvings added to the mix…
“Perhaps we should return to town, and come back later with more hands,” I suggested, my voice just a touch higher than normal.
Christine swallowed visibly. “Yes. Let’s.”
We hastened back to the ragged hole in the roof of the cave, where Griffin waited. “Are you coming up?” he called down.
“Yes, at least for now,” Christine said.
The reek of ammonia had grown stronger in our absence. I found myself glancing worriedly into the deeper part of the cave. More carvings stretched off into the blackness, decorating the wall with even more distorted human figures.
Was that the scrape of something hard, like a claw, against the rock deeper into the cave?
It was probably just a bear. Dear heavens, let it just be a bear.
Christine gripped the rope; she’d tied heavy knots into it before being lowered initially, to give purchase to her feet and hands. At the sound, however, she too turned to the darkness.
“Whyborne?” she asked.
“Go.” I backed up toward her, my eyes fixed on the tunnel. “Hurry, damn it!”
“Haul me up!” Christine called, and Griffin must have heard the urgency in her voice. Earth and pebbles tumbled down from above, accompanied by a curse.
Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3 Page 36