The Death in the Willows (23 page)

“This bond?”

“Best there is.”

“All right. Here's the key.”

“A key to a cave?” Bea asked.

“Ten years ago I put a fence across the entrance. Didn't want no kids going in there. I keep it locked. You take the key and bring it back to me when you come out. If you don't bring it back, and I got to go up there and lock the gate again, no one else goes in the Willows—forever. Now, when you people be back?”

“Not later than six.”

“Hold you to that. If you aren't out by six, I go to Ledley's place down the road and call the sheriff to come find your bodies.”

“That's reassuring,” Bea said.

“Mr. Bartram, if the gate is locked, you would have had to give the key to anyone else going into the Willows.”

“Only way in we know of.”

“In the past two weeks or even the past month, has anyone else gone in?”

“Nope. A group went in last summer. They were the last.”

Lyon turned from the porch in disappointment. “Are we still going in?” Bea asked.

“May as well since we're here. I don't see how I could have been wrong.” He shouldered the pack. They waved to the old man on the porch and began the long walk up the hill toward the cave entrance, which was shrouded in brush and trees at the top.

“Six, or we come after the bodies,” the old man yelled after them.

Their breath came in short gasps at the unaccustomed exertion of climbing the steep embankment. Scrub pine and heavy brush dotted the landscape, although there was a stand of willow trees flanking the cave entrance. As they neared the top, they saw the heavy wire mesh stretched across the narrow cave opening. Long spikes had been sledged into the limestone cliff and secured the fence on either side of the opening. A wooden door frame with a sturdy gate had been built into the mesh.

Lyon let the pack slip from his shoulders and ran ahead. He stood by the gate and examined the lock before turning toward Bea who trudged up the last of the hill.

“The lock's been jimmied. It's broken, Bea. Someone
has
been in here since last summer.”

They stood before the open gate and looked in the entrance. Afternoon light from the west fell through the willows over their shoulders and lit the entryway for a dozen feet. Lyon dug two waterproof flashlights from the pack and handed one to Bea.

She switched on her light and strode into the cave. Her light bobbed up and down, casting patterns across the floor and walls as the passageway began a downward slope. The walls were bare and mostly smooth, while the flooring seemed to be composed of a mixture of sand and dirt.

She stopped and turned off her light. The blackness was complete. The passageway, in addition to its downward incline, had also veered away from the entrance.

Where was Lyon? She switched the light on and pointed it toward the rear. “Lyon!” Her shout died without echo. She called again, “Lyon!”

He rounded a distant bend carrying his head thrust forward between hunched shoulders. The flashlight, clenched tightly in one hand, shone directly at his feet. When he shuffled forward in his awkward gait, she could hear the rasp of his breathing, each intake of air making a sharp cutting sound. He passed her, his gaze intent on the passage floor immediately to his front, each step a measured mechanical placement of one foot before the other. She let her light pass across his face and saw that his eyes were wide, nearly glazed, and small beads of perspiration studded his forehead.

Bea knew that her husband was in the throes of deep terror. She ran after him and nearly tripped on the now uneven surface that was dotted with small rocks and boulders. Her hand touched his arm without response until she shook his shoulder.

“Lyon, what is the matter?”

He mopped his brow with a bandanna without taking his eyes from the floor. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I don't know how much further I can go.”

“You're …” She could not use the word. “You look very uncomfortable.”

He laughed with a hollow sound. “Understatement, my dear. Quite an understatement.” The rasping breath continued.

“Sit down.”

They sat with their backs against the wall. She found the canteen in his pack and drank, passed it to Lyon, and watched him take a long drink. He seemed to make a conscious effort to control his breathing until it gradually returned to normal.

“I didn't think it would be this bad.”

“This is why you wanted me along on this trip?”

He nodded.

“We shouldn't have come.”

“It has to be done.”

“Someone else could have come in here. We could have called Rocco, Kim, and Raven, anyone else. I never knew you had this feeling.”

“You ever hear me suggest a spelunking holiday?”

“You've always known?”

Lyon leaned against the rock and closed his eyes. “If I pretend, perhaps I can fantasize that I'm in my balloon.”

“How did this happen?”

“I've never cared for close, narrow places, even as a child, but it became worse in Korea. It was toward the end and I went up to Rocco's forward position for a game of poker. We were in a bunker when a large shell landed. It burst near the entrance and collapsed the whole damn thing on us. We were in there two days before they got us out.”

She jerked to her feet. “Okay, back we go.” She reached for his hands. “No macho bit, let's just get out of here. I don't like flying and you don't like caving.”

He turned toward the descending tunnel. “We have to get those reels.”

“Let some trained spelunkers do it.”

“It has to be us.” He shuffled down the passage.

Bea stood looking at the retreating light then hurried to catch up.

Lyon stopped and shone his light on the large cave map Nordstrom had given him. The passage had narrowed considerably, and ahead he could see where the bedding plane lowered toward the floor creating a squeeze slightly more than a foot high. He checked the scale on the map and looked up toward the narrow opening. Bea caught up to him, looked at the squeeze and then at her husband.

“You think we'll fit?”

“Map says we do.”

She slipped the knapsack from his shoulders, extracted a thin nylon line, and tied it to a pack strap. She hunched over in the passage to make her way into the squeeze and looped the line to her belt. She lay on the floor and began to work her way awkwardly through the squeeze. It was difficult to grip the light and crawl, and now she knew why experienced cavers often wore miner's hats.

It was a long squeeze that lasted fifty yards, although the passage opened slightly to a height of nearly two feet. Her scrabbling movement slowly pushed her forward as sharp protuberances nicked her knees and elbows.

She paused for breath and shone the light ahead. The squeeze ended a few yards ahead and opened into a large cavern room. Bea exited from the narrow aperture and stood erect. She swiveled her light across the larger space.

The room was thirty to forty feet in width and nearly that in height. Flashing her light ahead, she could not make out the extent to which the cavern room extended. Pencil-thin stalactites hung in Christmas-tree-like rows from the ceiling, while stalagmites grew from the cavern floor and reached toward their dripping partners on the ceiling.

She found it breathtaking, and slowly walked along the side of the room studying a group of calcite crystals growing on the walls in myriad shapes and forms. They seemed to wink in her light and cast a blue shadowy glow along the walls.

The rasp behind her made her turn. Lyon had made it to the room and was huddled in the corner with the wavering light held in his shaking hand.

“This is ridiculous. We can't go on,” she said.

His hand, trembling over the map, waved at her. “At the end of this room there is a phreatic tube on the right. We take that for nearly a quarter of a mile until we reach another room similar to this. There will be three shafts in that room. The third one is where Pasic's map begins.”

“How far?”

“We'll be a mile in and eight hundred seventy-five feet down.”

“I'll lead. Just tell me what a phreatic tube is, so when I come across one I'll know it.”

He lay on the floor with his head pillowed on the knapsack and closed his eyes. “Limestone caves are formed by water seepage that erodes the rock. Phreatic passages are formed by water under exteme pressure that's subsequently changed course.”

“For a claustrophobic you know a lot about caves.”

“When I had the mumps overseas there wasn't anything to read but a book about …”

“I know. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” He forced his body to relax by starting with the lower extremities and imagining their anatomical makeup. He willed the various nerves in the lower portion of his body to relax, and then his midsection and arms. He lay limp against the rock and thought of animals that lived in caves. Bats, salamanders, and worms. The book
The Cricket in the Cave
might work. Bird's nest soup in China was made from certain types of nests found only in Java caves: that was an interesting fact he might incorporate in the book. The Wobblies didn't fear caves, but then again, the Wobblies didn't fear much of anything.

He felt them near him.

They moved down the length of the room to flank the entrance of the phreatic tube. Their tails swished back and forth while red eyes peered through the deepest possible darkness.

Lyon Wentworth got to his feet and followed his wife and imaginary beings into a passageway he could not have otherwise entered.

They stopped at the yawning blackness of the shaft indicated on Nick Pasic's map. Bea shone her light into the depths. The opening was nearly a perfect circle with a diameter of fourteen feet. Lyon turned away from the shaft to take pitons and an ice ax from the pack. He felt along the wall for fissures, found a narrow slit, and pounded his piton. Looping a line through the ring, he tugged until completely satisfied that it was secure enough to support their weight.

“I don't suppose you've ever rappelled?”

“All the time. Whenever our garden club runs out of speakers, someone always suggests that we rappel down a cliff or two. Wentworth, you know how I hate heights.”

He adjusted the rope around his body. “We make a great pair.” He showed her how to place the rope, and then stood at the lip of the shaft, facing away from the opening, and leaned backward. Gripping the rope, he leaped off the edge and bounced off the side of the shaft halfway down. He bounced again and then reached the bottom. “Lower the pack next and then yourself.”

For the first time the complete silence of the cave was broken. Water gurgled nearby. As Lyon swiveled the flashlight he could see the small stream as it came through the rock, widened, and then disappeared under rock at the siphon.

He turned the light upward to see Bea, halfway down the shaft, with her feet braced against the rock. Her body swayed. “Let out more slack and jump off.”

“ARE YOU CRAZY!”

“You stay like that much longer and your arms will tire and you'll be in real trouble.”

“IF THIS ISN'T TROUBLE, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.” She began to lower herself on the rope until he was able to reach up and pull her down to the floor. “ONE THING, WENTWORTH. How do we get back up?”

“Hand over hand.”

As the map indicated, near the shaft was a pile of fallen rock, and then the stream widened to fill the passage as rock and water met to form a seemingly impenetrable passage. They walked as far as they could on the shelf and looked into the water. “The siphon.”

“The professor said it was only a few feet until the roof became higher and there was another shelf.” Bea heard his breathing become more rapid and knew that any delay would not help matters. She tied the end of a line to her waist, sat on the edge of the shelf with her feet in the water, and pushed off.

The cold water shocked her. She took a deep breath, and holding the waterproof flashlight before her, began an awkward swimming movement through the siphon. There was only blackness ahead, and she had a brief moment of panic. They were following a map found in a children's book, and were taking the word of a fey disoriented professor that the siphon ended in an air pocket. She took a stroke upward and felt her fingernails brush against rock. She knew she must have come more than a dozen feet, the supposed length of the passage. It could go on … and on … an underground stream whose current would carry her on forever.

Her hand broke from the surface, and then her head and shoulders. She gulped air as her free hand clawed for the ledge.

She placed the light on the shelf and pulled herself from the water. Untying the rope from her waist, she wrapped it around the pillar and began to wait for Lyon.

She knew he was a strong swimmer, and with the safety line attached, should have little difficulty; but still he did not come. She gave the line two hefty tugs and felt a tug in return.

Lyon's head surfaced. His eyes were wide and blinking as she reached for him with both hands and helped him to the ledge.

“The reels should be behind the pillar.” He scrabbled around the pillar and knelt to scoop sand and loam with his hands. Within minutes he had uncovered a metal box encased in a plastic waterproof bag. He tore off the bag, opened the box, and turned the light on the two computer reels. “We've got them!” He turned to see Bea standing on the ledge beyond the pillar looking into the water.

“Maybe not for long.” She pointed to a glow in the water coming from the siphon. “Someone's coming.”

15

“Do you know who it is?”

Lyon looked at the wavering light refracted through the dark waters of the siphon. “Yes, I think I do. When he surfaces, he'll be disoriented for a few moments, which means we'll only have seconds.”

“To do what?”

“To get into the water and go back the way we came.”