The Way In is Not The Way Out – Chapter 45

As far as we were concerned, all hell had just broken loose.  The walls, the ground, the ceiling shook and fissured, tumbled and tore loose, as great pillars of rock and calcite cracked and twisted, and the ceiling lurched above us, causing stone knives to rain down and stab at the floor behind us.

Water spewed down from jagged breaks in the rock, spraying us with cold and wet, threatening to douse our torches and swallow us in darkness.  We ran…as fast and as quickly as our weary legs could carry us.  Bounding off of granite walls, dodging the rocks that fell before us, threatening to obstruct our path.  While being pelted by tiny bits of stone and silt and sand swirling into our nostrils threatening to choke us of the very labored breaths we still had, we stumbled, crawled and scrambled through the dark musty caves twisting and bending in the deepening darkness ahead of us.

I heard shouts within the cacophony that I could not make out as being either human or animal, as those ahead of me careened off of the narrowing walls.  A large stone slab had fallen from an upper shelf of rock, slamming downward with a thunderous impact, lodging across the top of the two great stones between which we were passing. Its ponderous oblong shape forming a top lintel, much like one of the monolithic stone formations of Stonehenge, just outside of Wiltshire, England, and west of Amesbury.  The slab chipped and pelted us with small sharp fragments off its face, but did not fracture and pound us with more significant breakage.  If we survived this pelting, we would be lucky to only have received abrasions, small cuts, and bruises, rather than contusions, fractures, and gashes.

Water jets sprayed down behind us, forming a hissing curtain of wet rage chasing us into the darker throat of the caverns, driving us with a fury we could not dare look back on.  Great claps of thunder coughed billows of smoke and debris, as parts of the ceiling fell, rocks pinging off stone plunking into pools deep and some shallow, giving forth noises that pounded our eardrums with a persistent ringing that drowned out all other sounds beyond us.  In a half turn, under the fluttering light of our torches, we saw that the way behind us had been sealed off by tons of fallen stone and gravel, ensuring us that this would be our certain grave and fate if we found no other way within the darkness ahead of us.  Billows of dust, silt, and roiling smoke extended outward in plumes, like spectral arms reaching out from within an open, but rapidly filling, grave, pursuing us at our heels threatening to extinguish our firebrands, choke us with grit and ejecta and bury us where we fell.

We pressed through another narrow passage and our torchlight waned to curling embers upon each pole, barely enough to see through the blackness, but once on the other side of the narrow way, the room opened up, and the flames once again awakened to bright, flaring and spattering light, causing our long shadows to jump and dance along the walls and reflect in golden tremors upon a submerged floor in roughly two to three feet of shallow water.

Witnessing the rebirth of the nearly extinguished flames, Begglar spoke forth a verse from the Ancient Text, which echoed ominously within the great cavern, and, signified by the sound, that the room was even larger than we’d supposed it to be.

“5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” [John 1:5 NLT]

“Amen,” Nell added to her husband’s quotation as she and Christie held their torches higher so that we could take stock of ourselves.

We were a mess.

White powder covered us from head to foot, caked and streaked in places by the spritzing.  We were scratched and bruised but no worse for the wear.  But more importantly, all accounted for.…except for Maeven.

It had seemed so terrible to abandon the place where we had lost her, like a betrayal.  But I knew despite my conflicted feelings we had done what we were supposed to do.  The direction had come to me within my inner spirit, and its voice was clearly not that of my own.

Despite what Nell and Begglar had assured us, I felt sadness and remorse that we had not been able to be certain of where she went or where we had lost her if indeed she was lost to us.  Grief delayed is no less severe than grief realized, and I knew that both Christie and James shared my feeling of loss.  Somehow, we had done what needed to be done, in spite of our frantic instinct to try to search the Ghost Pool more thoroughly before we abandoned it.  But if we had done so, we all would be dead.

A curved passage bent ahead, as if the great pool and chamber that contained it was kidney-shaped, and there was something odd about the edge of the bend.  We could see its outline, without the benefit of the torchlight.  Somewhere, further in there was light above.  And if there was light, there just might be another way out.

***

Outside, the massive wave surged towards the shore, the group of seven brave souls clinging to the large log with all of their might.  The water ahead of the wave receded from the embankment, peeling back its wet lips into the front curl of the rising mound of water, revealing rocks and boulders once submerged below, now laden with wet green moss and interspersed with flopping fish caught in the breaks and crevices and pools below.   Green mossy skeletons of unfortunate land creatures, most likely victims of the Moon Sprites, lay strewn upon the lake bed now revealed as the wet skin of the basin and river shrank backward before the coming violent surge.

Almost within seconds of the recession, the brow of the wave lunged forward, its crest of water smoothing into a slope downward, as the water returned with a rush.  As the lead edge of the water slammed into the embankment, streams of water jetted upward into the trees and forest beyond tearing limbs and shoving mightily upon the undersides of the lower boughs.  Branches crackled under the onslaught of water and pressure, but the great trunks of the forest guardians stood strong against the barrage.  The water splashed up the embankment into the deepening forest beyond, sweeping pine needles upward with other forest detritus, until the force of the wave was expended, and the resulting streams fell backward into the lake borders below.
The log had magnificently borne the remaining company upward, over the rocks lining the shore, and as the water fell backward, the large limb lodged between two large fir trees and its forked limb caught between a bough and the trunk, nearly cracking the branch, but stopping short of it.
Matthew and Dominic had done their best to keep Miray from losing her grip on the log during the violent depositing, but their strength had been expended, and it was all they could do to keep their own grip upon the tree.

Miraculously, there were no injuries to any of the group, and as the water surrendered back to gravity’s call, the group slid off of the log onto the muddy grass that had once been a lush green embankment along the shore.

***

Maeven’s heart rate and pulse pounded as she began to feel a panic seize her body.  How long had she been down?  Where was Nory?  Was the nightmare real?  It must be.  Oh, God, she began to weep, realization pressing her downward, it must be.  Voices buzzed about her, she could not focus on them.  Why couldn’t she speak?  What had they done to her?  Where was this medical facility?  How did she get here?  Nory?  She’d last seen him flung from the vehicle, disappearing into the cold darkness.  He’d plugged his laptop into the lighter socket of the SUV and had been working.  WiFi was terrible between the peaks of the mountain ranges, but they’d picked up a faint cell signal passing through the last town that was named Cuchara, the Spanish word for Spoon, and they hoped to cut across to Trinidad and reach Interstate 25 and then on down into Sante Fe, New Mexico before it got too late.

She remembered attempting to crawl out of the vehicle, but something furry and smelly blocked her path and some sort of a bird.  Black feathers.  It didn’t make sense.  The cabin of the crushed SUV reeked of blood, and rotting flesh, and vomit.  Remembering brought the terrible smells suddenly back, burning her nostrils with the putrescent assault and she almost passed out from the memory.  Her throat was raw and burned.  She was intubated.  A breathing mask covered her mouth, but a trach tube was fed through an incision in her throat.  Uh, it was too much to take in.  Her hand was bound but the other one…she felt downward toward her abdomen.  Oh, dear God, no, No, No, NO!  Her eyes burned as tears spilled out over her cheeks, pooling and distorting the room and ceiling under their watery weight as a deep and profound sadness and pain plunged her down beneath them.  My babies…oh God, not my babies too.

Her abdomen tapered to a small belly, emaciated with time, and lack of exercise.  She was frail and weak.  She had lost time, memories, and sense of place as remorse, dread and guilt slammed terrible weights down upon her.  Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, trying to block out this terrible reality.  She felt pressure as hands reached out to grab her within the darkness and pull her deeper down into blackness and despair.

She felt suddenly cold as the dark enfolded around her, and she had an awareness of a trace memory that involved ice.  A lake full of ice.  And terrible, mesmerizing monsters with burning eyes…

***

“The sedative is taking effect,” Sereta observed as Maeven’s body finally surrendered to the drug they’d injected into her IV line.  Judy, the head night nurse, had returned to the room, with the authorization from Maeven’s physician, Dr. Corsi, to provide a sedative if needed, to avoid her going into distress.

“I wonder if it was the right thing to do,” Dora offered quietly, “She’s been down so long.”

“Five years, poor thing,” Sereta agreed, “Lost her husband in the car wreck AND the twin babies she was carrying.”

The three of them observed their charge’s heart rate even out to a steadier rhythm, and her pulse and respiration began to normalize as the medicine coursed through her veins settling physical her into the numbing fog of sedation.  But for her metaphysical state, that was a quite different story.

“She’s got enough to deal with when she wakes,” Judy remarked, “Best let her sleep, for now, a bit more.”

“Chart says she’s Jewish,” Dora whispered, “Should we call a local Rabbi to be here in the morning when she wakes?  She’s gonna need someone here when she’s told.  Does she have anyone we could call?  Family?”

“Not local,” Sereta shook her head slightly, “She’s got a half-sister in New York.  Family disowned her when she married.”

“Isn’t her married name Stein?  Isn’t that a Jewish surname?”

“Now that’s none of our business, ladies,” Judy took charge of the conversation, “We’ve got enough to do tonight with the other patients, so scoot.  Leave her be.  Chaplain Gibbs’ll be by in the morning.  Same as he always does.  Praying for her.  Reading an encouraging verse or two over her to give her calm.  He always visits the coma patients, even when their own family and friends eventually tire of it.  Some say it doesn’t matter much, but he thinks they hear it somehow and if you watch their monitors they seem to be at ease when he comes.”

***

The eight survivors of the harrowing ride across the lake clinging to a dead tree could barely believe the sight before them.  The cliffside crescent of the Trathorn Falls had seemed to collapse and implode, creating a much deeper descent off of the rock face into the basin lake below, and water barreled downward from the precipice with a pounding fury.  Great vaporous mists filled the air as the driven wet, roared into the lake below with a deafening and constant exhalation.  The concavity beneath the thundering cascade had collapsed under the weight of the water above, backfilling under the accumulation of pressure beneath the ice caps, cavitating and bearing down on the crest of the canyon lip until the ledge and chin jutting outward above the passage to the caves suddenly could no longer bear such pressure.  An assemblage of broken rock and scree from the cliff face, cause the pounding water to send monstrous white plumes of mist up into the air, forming a beard of moisture around the base.

If Mr. O’Brian, Christie, Maeven and James and Mr. and Mrs. Begglar were anywhere near the edge of the falls when the collapse occurred, there was very little chance that they had survived under such incredible destruction.

They would be on their own now.

Lost in a world they knew very little about.  Most of their party had been kidnapped and taken by the Protectorate Guards.  No doubt the horses were already appropriated by their captors.  They were afoot in the wilds, for the most part, stripped of their weapons which had fallen beneath the waves and lay at the bottom of the lake, with no help, supplies or guidance in sight.  Dominic was the only native of this land present who might still help them, but he too was witnessing the devastation with a mask of fear and shock, and no doubt was struggling with whether to believe what his eyes told him or hold out some faint and remote hope that somehow, deep inside the caverns, his parents might still be alive.

***

Deep within the heart of the caves beneath the collapsed-face of the Trathorn Falls, within an interior cavern of standing water, smooth and still as if formed of polished glass, we hesitated to move forward along the interior ledge to round the bend where the edge of the walls lightened.  It seemed almost a sacrilege to disturb the calm serenity of the smooth pools, and we were not yet certain whether it was, in fact, safe for us to enter these waters, nor how deep the seemingly shallow bottom was, nor how stable or solid it might be if we tried wading into it.  Some cave pools had been known to be deceptively shallow but were in fact filled with several feet in depth of a kind of sucking cave mud that would pull and eventually drown the unwary and foolishly intrepid soul foolish enough to enter it, without first ascertaining its true bottom.  Yet we had no choice.  Behind us was such devastation that we could never hope to dig their way out.  Before us, lay the edge of light breaking through from above somewhere up ahead, but a narrow sloping ledge that did not extend all the way to the lightened bend in the tunnel would prove treacherous to get around the pool without entering it at the last, before climbing up on the far end.  One might attempt to swim across without touching the bottom, but there was no guarantee that the smooth water was deep enough all the way across to avoid touching the bottom entirely.  We could attempt to use The Pearl once again to flash freeze this pool but were not certain exactly how its mysterious properties worked.  Without Maeven’s confidence and experience, I was extremely hesitant to risk losing it in the deceptive cave pool mud without some other assurances but Begglar and Nell could give me none.  They had been just as surprised as I and the others were when the Pearl had done its wonders.  Nothing in their experiences had prepared them for what they witnessed from it.

***

When Maeven came to herself, she realized she was once again in someplace where she shouldn’t be.  Something was very wrong.  She lay across something hard and musty with a slight give, but somehow old and barely recognizable in the gray half-light.  She could just make out some sort of instrument panel, hidden in shadow under the dark brow of a dashboard, and an old-style, white-grip steering wheel.  She was in some old abandoned car, lying across its front bench seat, it vinyl cover crackled with age and perhaps sun and neglect.  Old tuffs of cotton poked through the cracked seat, and hard spring wires once encased deeply within the cotton batting now were hard and pressed up uncomfortably against her hips and body like a griddle.  Old worn leather panels had faded over time, and parts of it had rotted or been chewed by goodness knows what.  All she knew was she should not be there.  The car, for one, was not stable.  It was canted and lay front downward, such that her knees and hands extended kept her from falling forward into the rotted-out floorboard.  The windows were dusky, with a fine layer of accumulated dust covering its splintered glass, but she could barely make out some sort of bluish stone walls, under the sole beam of some ray of light that came from somewhere above and behind her.  She tried to adjust her slanted position and pull herself upward for a better view, but the old car itself moved, creaked and groaned with her slightest motion or shifting of weight.  She thought for a moment that she might be in their old SUV, but nothing looked right.  This car was much older, and from what she could tell of the windshield posts and side-view mirrors almost occluded with dust, the car was a baby blue color.  She’d never been in a vehicle like this.  It’s make was long before her time.  Some foreign make or manufacturer.  Since the car had bench seats she could not see between the seat or into the back seat.  It had no headrests.  Another sign that it was a very old make and model.  Was she in a junkyard?  If so, how did she get in a junkyard.  She remembered a hospital bed, some nurses, orderlies, a lot of wetness, and blood.  Some painful memories on the edge of her mind were present but unclarified.  A sense of loss.  Painful and dreadful loss, but nothing more than that deep saddening feeling.  She didn’t belong here.  The outside looked to be made of stone.  Bluish stone.  Since she could not see beyond the car’s interior, she couldn’t be certain but…we she in a…large cave?

There was a slight noise behind her.  Somehow distant but not too distant.  Was something in the backseat?

Ummh!  She froze.  Had she heard right or was her mind playing tricks on her?

The sound was muffled, compartmentalized.  Partitioned away from her.

Ummh!  Uh-uh-eeuhh!  A knocking noise, sounding like something was struggling and crying…no mewling.  Crying or sobbing into a rag or somehow something muffled the voice.

Bam-Bam-Bam!  EEee!  Uh-uh-uh! Crunch! Ah-ah-aaah!

Something or someone was behind her, but not close enough to be in the backseat.

She heard muffled sobbing again.  The sound of despair that she knew and recognized all too well.

Someone else was close, but pinned or trapped or bound…or…in some confined space…

Maeven’s eyes went wide as suddenly she knew…whomever it was making those pitiable noises of struggle and despair was doing so from within the trunk of this very car.

She lurched upward, grabbing the back of the bench seat to pull herself up into a sitting position.

And then the vehicle began to lurch and rock and roll and bounce downward, throwing Maeven forward into the dash, knocking her forehead against the dusted and shattered windshield, spiderwebbed with jagged and gummed glass.  She was, indeed, atop a junk heap, and there was deep turquoise blue water below.  The beam of light from above and behind her made it look like a lake of antifreeze coolant, for the water was an unnatural shade of blue.

***

As I edged along the lip of the ledge, my feet slipped but my grip on the jagged crevice in the cave wall kept me from plunging headlong into the pool.  It was indeed full of silt and mud.  James had tested the water depth with the handle end of his halberd, and its tip easily penetrated the false bottom stirring the water into a murky dull brown in the yellow firelight as James fed the shaft, hand over hand down until he had to hang onto the barbed cap at the top of the pole weapon, but still could not feel the bottom with the blade almost into the water.  His weapon was at least six feet in length, and we knew that had we tried to wade or swim through that pool, it would have been a death trap.

I had volunteered to attempt the narrow ledge around the deep pool to see if the way forward was even passable.  If the cave terminated shortly thereafter, or if the shaft of light was at an impossible angle or too high up to reach, this way would do us no good anyway and we were better off going the other way around the kidney-shaped pool to see if there was another tunnel that we could explore beyond this cavern.

As I rounded the bend on the tiny sloping ledge, teetering, but clawing my way along the wall, reaching into every crevice I could find, I had almost made the bend when I slipped, my foot scuffing the edge and splashing into the water, creating wide concentric ripples across its smooth and deceptively serene surface.  The skin on my hands and fingers were raw, and slightly bled from gripping the black and bluish stone, but I held on, catching myself with the other foot, my heart racing and breath heaving, as I drew back from the water, rising up again to lean against the rough wall.

The light had grown brighter, and there was indeed a shaft of early morning sunlight, dust motes dancing in the golden beam, streaming down from an almond-shaped aperture high above the cave floor.  I looked upward, discouraged and disappointed, but then with a sigh, I looked to my left and beyond it.  A new pool of water extended beyond and around the bend and was separated by an assemblage of rocks and a brief land bridge dividing the silt-filled brown dust pool reflecting the arch and lighted ceiling above it, and a rock-strewn pool of some of the bluest water I had ever seen.  The dark blackened rock along the cave walls seemed to also have a bluish tint to it like it had veins of copper along with black granite and basalt.  But to the far end of the cave was a mountain of junk extending forty-feet upward below a cool silver-blue ray of sunlight.  The junk seemed to be an assemblage of rocks and shapes and objects that seemed out of place and suddenly my breath caught in my throat.  They were out of place…and out of time…and should not be here…

This was bad.  Very bad.  Dangerous.

My heart stopped, and my breath audibly wheezed out of me in shock.

This pile of detritus in the far corner of the cave, leading upward to the light above was Surface World junk.

There were old rusted drums half-submerged in the water, tangles, and masses of coiled and jumbled cabling, broken appliances, twisted and battered metal cabinetry, and teetering on the edge about fifteen feet above the water was an old blue rusted car.