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In the Shadows

Chapter 13

Herbert stared like a deer caught in an automobile’s headlights; he couldn’t move or speak, because he didn’t really know even how to think. Beyond the darkness, through the cavern spikes, a figure hunched like a man resting his hands on his knees, or an enormous frog squatting beside a pond; its bulbous white eyes reflected back like a cat’s. 

When the rest of the group gave attention, and Aaron directed the beam of light toward it, they recognized the unmistakable face of Mr. Dolor; he was dressed just as they had seen him the day before, crammed up between a narrow passage in the rock. 

“Dad?” Esther called to him. 

He dropped below a large stalagmite, out of view, and they heard the quick scurrying pitter-patter of footsteps running away. 

“Dad, wait! Where is he going?” Esther panted.

“You sure it whar hem?” Aaron asked.

“Yes, I’m sure!”

“It was him, I saw him,” said Herbert. “But he didn’t look right.” 

“Why is he down here?” Esther thought aloud.

The light glanced around the dark chamber, casting strange, sharp shadows all over the distant walls; they gave the distinct impression that the children were inside the jaws of a massive creature. 

Marian was silent. She thought deeply about the figure, whom she recognized as her father, but agreed with Herbert had seemed peculiar. 

“You sure it wadn’t the Top-Hat Man,” Aaron asked.

Esther rolled her eyes. “I know what my dad looks like.” 

“It jist don’t make a hoot a sense why yer pa would sunly be down inna cave with us.” 

“Shine the light over here,” demanded Esther. She was climbing up a rock wall, and pulled herself between a low ceiling and shelf on her belly. The others hadn’t any time to discuss it, before she was on the other side of wall, standing below a three-hundred foot chimney. She brushed her pants and shoulders clean of the moist dirt and felt her way forward into the darkness. 

“My goodness! Wait for us, Esther!” Marian shouted. 

“You’ll just slow me down,” replied Esther derisively. 

She reached the end of the light and felt fear leap on her shoulders as she heard the sing-song voice whisper from the shadows. “Uwe la na tsiku. Su sa sai.” 

Immediately regretting her decision to race ahead, she stumbled back into the rock wall she had just climbed over. Aaron’s feet dangled against her shoulders, and she looked up to see his silly face mocking her. 

After jumping down, he removed his head-lamp and shone it over the wall for the others to come across. First, Herbert squeezed through the passage, followed last by Marian. When they were safe on the wet stone floor, Aaron flashed the light around the small chamber; several tunnels diverged off of it, and above them, the chimney traveled up as far as the eye could discern until veering into darkness again. 

“There ain’t no sign abody here,” said Aaron, studying the ground where they had seen Mr. Dolor crouching. 

“I think we should go back to the path Mr. Top-Hat Man had us on,” said Herbert. The vast and differing tunnels made his stomach turn and finally the revelation of their disorientation settled in. They were undeniably lost, and every step was taking them further from any chance of finding their way out of the cave. “Where did hego, anyway?” Herbert asked. 

“Who, yer Pa?” Aaron asked.

“No, the Top-Hat Man. He’s gone. How?”

“He left us,” replied Esther. “Like we all could have guessed he would.” 

Marian felt the sting, because in her gut, she knew Esther was right. The Top-Hat Man was gone, and he took with him her feelings of anger and bitterness, leaving behind only the residue of shame and embarrassment. She had lost her temper, and threw it at Balaam of all people. She didn’t know what was going on with Esther and the Top-Hat Man, but she knew better than to act that way toward Balaam, who was only trying to help. 

“Dad!!!” Esther screamed. 

The voice echoed down tunnel after tunnel for several seconds; just as soon as they thought it had died away, it would bounce off another wall and circle back to them, revealing how vast the cave system really went. It could be miles deep and they had no real way of knowing how far they had already come. They felt as small and terrified as Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher lost in Injun Joe’s caverns, holding on to the last shred of light they had. “What do we do now?” 

“Well,” Marian calmly said, fully aware of the desperate situation and taking slow breaths.

“Please, don’t say it,” Herbert groaned.

“We’ve got to keep going,” she declared. “All we can do is hope this tunnel leads out.” 

“Why don’t we try to double back?” Esther suggested.

“I don’t even know which way is back,” replied Marian. “Were any of us taking note of which tunnels the Top-Hat Man took?” 

Aaron stared into the darkness down the small tunnel they all had seen Mr. Dolor disappear into. “Whut bout hem?” 

Marian shook her head, exasperated. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t even know who I saw anymore.”

Aaron shivered his shoulders and shook his head. “Gawd, girl, you got me squirmin’ like a worm in hot ashes,” said he. “Pfft! Aright, shoot, let’s get a movin’.”

The group followed Aaron’s headlamp back through the crawlspace to their initial path where the Top-Hat Man had disappeared. Aaron shot the light up and down the dark tunnel and rolled his eyes in frustration. “This is dummern heck,” he whispered to himself. 

The scariest part about walking in darkness is being unsure if something is lurking in the shadows, meanwhile banging your knees into hidden objects. But Marian had learned a lesson from her father a long time ago; he had taught her the best way to do something scary or difficult is to set your mind only on what you know. Instead of thinking about how long and how many steps it will take to get you through it, think only about the next step in front of you and the final step at the end. As long as you keep taking one step at a time, you will reach the final one. But if you worry yourself with the ones you don’t know about, it’ll only make you miserable and terrified, and make you give up. 

Undeniably, having someone brave beside you can muster up your own courage; here, Marian’s confident steps forward helped propel the others onward, even though none of them liked the idea one bit. 

The sinister stalactites reached for them, and water dripped on their heads; the pitter-patter of their footsteps splashing on the wet rock echoed in the darkness. 

“Dadgumit, that stanks!” Aaron whined and halted. A rank stench had lifted from the tunnel ahead. “Ye’n smell it?”

“I do,” Marian confirmed quietly.

“It smells like Grandma’s sink water,” said Herbert. 

“Well-water,” Marian answered to Aaron’s apparent confusion.

“What kinda water yer Gramma drinkin’?”

While they stopped, Esther kept scanning for signs of her father in the darkness. She worried for him and what he might be doing down here all alone; her immediate thought was that the Professor had dragged him down here. But it didn’t make sense that he would run from them. While she pondered the idea, she glimpsed a scurrying shadow along a far wall, ducking behind a limestone pillar. 

Esther grabbed at Aaron’s flashlight, ripping it off his head, and aimed the light across the chamber. 

“Hey! Whar y’en doin’?” Aaron shouted. 

The figure had jumped out of view, but Esther had just caught sight of it before the others could evenly see it.

“What was it?” Marian asked.

“Whar it yer Pa?” Aaron doubled down.

“No,” Esther handed the flashlight back to Aaron and looked at Marian dumbfounded. “It was you.” 

“What?”

“I saw you—er—another Marian, I guess; over there by that dripping moss, running under the spiky thing and disappearing.”

Aaron and Marian looked at each other in the kind of concerted anxiety that only children of the same age can feel together; while confused Herbert asked a lot of nonsensical questions and made light of his sister’s apparent mistake. 

“What do you mean another Marian? That doesn’t make sense. You aren’t making sense. I don’t like it down here. I think we should go back. Which way is home? Stop making stuff up, Ess.” 

Aaron sighed. “Okay,” said he. “Less jist kep goin and kep ourn eyes a-open for everwho’s down here.” 

Esther wiped her face and flung hot sweat to the ground in frustration; she longed to turn around and go back the way they had come; find a way out of this cave; get free of the forest altogether; and forget this entire day. But a stubborn spirit in her told her she should be leading the group further and not to turn back; only babies turn back. She wrestled back and forth desiring to go back in one instant and lead onward into the darkness the next; as long as whatever she decided was in direct opposition of what Marian proposed.

A dangling stalactite evaded Aaron’s attention and dinged him in the side of the head. “Ugh! Dumb wall—er—hanging—spike—bat—club—thang!” he shouted. He rubbed his temple and the flashlight danced on the ceiling above them, reflecting off the wet surface and shimmering across the room. 

“Ah! It’s the Professor!” Herbert shouted, pointing and grabbing at Esther next to him. 

The kids, alarmed, grouped together. Aaron shone the light; the kids held each other close. 

“Where?”

“I don’t sees nothin’!”

“Over there! I saw his crooked face, smiling at us from around the orange, brain-looking rock.” 

The girls and Aaron stared, anxious and afraid, at the expansive thirty-food-wide stone. 

“It all makes sense,” shouted Herbert. “It wasn’t Dad; it’s the Professor, because he’s a vampire and he must live down here!” 

Fear scaled up their spines like spiders running through a web for victims to paralyze. They felt its terrible sting on their necks and the cave seemed darker than ever before; either from Aaron’s slow dying headlamp, or the impending doom upon their short lives. They worried and wondered if they would ever make it from this underground nightmare.

A silky voice sang from the darkness; a soft note floating so faintly that it sounded like wind.

“Okay, we all hear that, right?” Esther asked. 

“—Hesh!” said Aaron. “Didje hear that?” 

“Yes,” Marian answered. 

“Not the voice, biddy. Warter! I hears runnin’ warter.” 

The silky voice lifted in vibrant intervals, “Uwe la na tsiku. Su sa sai.”

Aaron had had enough; it was apparent that there was someone down here with them, who might have even followed them since the mountaintop. And whoever it was, could change their appearance to look like several different people they knew. The sound of running water was his last chance for hope; if water was running, that meant it was running out somewhere. He wouldn’t wait another second to discover whatever singing phantom was out there in the shadows. “Run!” he shouted.

The Dolor children followed Aaron’s sudden spur and ran through the cavern, climbing up and up and up over wet, loose pebbles, dodging long thin stalactites and heaping, monstrous pillars. The headlamp bobbed up and down on Aaron’s forehead, bouncing the light all over the thin, large, wide, low, vast, tall, passage; the path climbed, climbed, climbed and Aaron persisted as long as he heard the thin, distant song of that invisible siren out there and the ever-growing sound of rushing water ahead. 

“Why are we running?” Esther gasped.

“Do you even know where you are going?” Marian pleaded.

“Long as we-all far from everwhat’s out there in the dark—Ah! Gawd, help me!” 

Aaron’s strangled voice disappeared into a raucous cry; it was followed by a tumbling mess of rocks slipping, arms flailing, and all four children sliding on top of one another down a very steep incline. The next moment, the rocky floor disappeared altogether and the four were plummeting through the air. The moment was infinitesimal, yet felt like an eternity; at once, an invisible blackness they hovered through like infinite space, and next, water rushed upon them, tangling the four children into a confused ball of each other’s extremities underwater. 

Brushing and bumping into rocks and mossy weeds, unable to see anything, they lost all sense of up and down, grabbing for anything that felt firm—roots, rocks, and each other’s limbs. Their feet touched the bottom, and one by one, they propelled themselves to the surface and gasped for air. 

“Oh, my Gawd!” Aaron screamed. “Aryone a’right?!”

“Herbert doesn’t swim!” Marian hollered back. 

“Where are we?” Esther begged. “Where is your flashlight?” 

Aaron heard Herbert flailing and thrashing in the water, and raced to his side. “Herbie!” Aaron gasped, and Herbert clung to his neck before spitting a mouthful of water into it. “Hang on, Herbert! Oh, Gawd—I lorst the headlamp!” 

The water had a current, gently twisting and nudging them. 

“Are we going to die?” Esther whimpered; she had lost any sense of pride and arrogance; a flood of emotions hit her and she cried out deliriously, “I’m sorry, Marian; I’m sorry, Herb; I’m sorry, Mom and Dad; Oh God, I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay, Ess,” Marian’s resolve was spurred by her sister’s frantic voice; she lunged into motherly concern and calm. “We are going to be okay. Look—here, everyone, I can touch the bottom over here!”

“I can, twos,” said Aaron, planting his feet in loose stones and struggling to hold onto Herbert. “Le’ go a little, Herbie. It’s a’right, it ain’t deep acrost here.” 

The children groped through the water for each other’s arms, listening to each other’s voices. Soon all four were clasped together in the darkness, feeling the gentle water rush over their shoulders. 

“There!” Aaron shouted, pointing his arm up at a dim yellow ball, like a candle. “D’ya sees it?” 

Slowly the flame rolled on itself, and doubled in size. As it did, the children saw the magnificence of the chamber; perfectly rounded limestone and gypsum rolled up the cave forming a type of dome, full of hundreds of tiny holes, home to thousands of roosting bats. The river ran end to end, thirty-feet-wide at its center, but narrowed to a violent current through the tunnels at the chamber ends three-hundred-yards apart; it gave the dome the oblong shape of a football or, more precisely, a cucumber.

“What is it?” Herbert begged, staring at the growing yellow flame in the distance.

The yellow flame was already five times as large as when Aaron had first noticed it; around it, a red and purple haze appeared, glowing ever so slightly like a fog at sunrise. As the light grew closer, the children gagged from a stench like a skunk permeating throughout the chamber. 

“Ugh! It’s terrible,” they complained. 

The light continued expanding like a balloon, and they noticed the reflective rocks around it moving backward like a movie reel running on a projector; until they realized the light was not growing larger, nor were the rocks moving, but the flame was actually approaching them. As it enlarged to the size of an apple, the light hesitated and hung in the air above them, gently bobbing. The smell was intolerable and they were convinced it came from the flame above them. 

As they pondered what it was or what it was doing, Herbert recalled the angler fish at the bottom of the sea that wears a light at the end of its illicium to bait unsuspecting prey into its mouth. “Marian,” said he. “I don’t like it.” 

She shrugged and gazed around the black cavern, until she saw a dim green light at the far end of the chamber; a mere speck compared to the yellow haze that was spreading through it, but it danced about the narrow tunnel of the river’s exit. She was just pointing it out when a deep, hiss bellowed from above and shook the chamber; a flurry of teeny disturbed bats dropped from the ceiling and fluttered around like black paper airplanes. 

The flame was now even more peculiar; it billowed and rolled, shedding more light on the purple and red haze. The haze had cleared and the light shimmered back, sleek and smooth, like emerald stained-glass windows. 

Then, in a fiery blaze, the light erupted to reveal a massive head underneath it. The flame was the shining diamond-crest of a great sea-serpent. Its scales flashed in dazzling colors of orange, red, and purple; its eyes stared venomously at the children, and its wet fangs shimmered in the darkness. The snake was round as an oak tree, with two brilliant, curved horns protruding from its smooth scalp. 

The children dove into the water and kicked their feet as their lives depended on it, and their arms gulped water behind them with every stroke. They sped along with the current and raced through the dark chamber toward the dim green light on the far end. Thrashing and hurling, they heard the heaving, demonic throat of the sea-serpent on the water behind; the yellow light filled the chamber and they glimpsed the skeletons of men and animals stuffed into rock shelves high up on the walls. 

Tears were racing down Esther and Marian’s faces while they kept up with Aaron; Herbert closed his eyes and hung on for dear life; a loud splash nearby told them the beast had dived underwater and was serpentining closer. The light grew from beneath; water palpated in little volcanoes behind them; the stench rushed upon them; they screamed into the water as they swam faster than they ever had in their lives.

“Kep goin!” Aaron hollered. “Kep goin!” 

And then, nothing made sense.

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