The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery (14 page)

“Very impressive,” said Roni. “I didn't know you were a Boy Scout.”

“My dad taught me that one,” Brian said. He pocketed his flashlight, grabbed the rope and sat down with his feet hanging into the cave entrance. “Want to give me some light?”

Roni shined her flashlight past him. “Give my regards to the cave troll.”

 

Brian hated that exercise in gym class when they had to try to climb up a thick rope about nine thousand feet to the ceiling. He tried to miss that day of school if he knew it was coming up. One time he had managed to get about twenty feet up before his fingers gave out. He had slid back down and burned his hands.

But lowering himself into the cave turned out to be relatively easy. The rocky, uneven walls of the shaft gave him plenty of places to brace himself. He stopped and rested halfway down.

“You okay?” Roni asked.

“Piece of cake,” Brian said. “You could almost do this without a rope.”

“See any scary man-eating creatures yet?”

“Just a few. Nothing I can't handle.” Brian continued to climb down, gripping the rope with his hands and bracing his feet against the walls.

A few feet farther down, the shaft suddenly widened, and he found himself swinging free, supporting his entire weight with his hands on the rope. He lowered himself quickly, his hands slipping painfully on the rope, until his feet hit the floor.

Roni's voice echoed down through the shaft. “Brian?”

“I'm good,” he yelled, turning on his flashlight.

He was in a dome-shaped chamber about thirty feet across, its ceiling studded with fat, limey stalagtites. Large flat chunks of limestone littered the floor. The opening of the shaft was a good ten feet above him. It would be tough to climb back up the rope, but he thought he could do it.

Not that he had any choice.

But could Roni climb a rope like that? He wasn't so sure.

“You better stay up there!” he yelled.

“Okay!” She sounded relieved.

Brian ran the beam of his flashlight around the chamber and found two openings, both large enough for him to fit through.

The shaft he had entered was directly north of the cave entrance that had been dynamited. He took out his compass and took a reading. One of the two openings was roughly to the south. Brian shined his light into it just as a bat came flying out. Brian ducked. The bat careened through the chamber and shot up the shaft. Brian heard a startled yelp come from Roni. He laughed, then followed the beam of his flashlight into the passageway.

 

“Brian?” Roni shouted. Her voice was swallowed by the shaft.

No answer. Roni wasn't too surprised. He'd been gone only six minutes. She wondered how long she should wait before calling 911. An hour? Two?

She slapped at something biting the back of her neck. An hour in the woods was a long time. She sat down a few feet from the opening with her back against a tree trunk.

Time.

Passed.

Slowly.

She played the beam of her flashlight across the trees and boulders. The shadows just made the woods look darker and scarier, so she turned it off.

She checked her watch. Three more minutes had passed. She shined the flashlight on her feet. Maybe she should figure out a better way to tie shoes. Why did the knot always have to go at the top? Why not put the knot down at the toe?

She heard a crunching noise and turned off the flashlight, her heart pounding.

The noise was coming from higher in the coulee.

Probably just a deer.

Or a bear.

She saw a flicker of light coming through the trees. That made it a human—but who? Somebody just decided to take a walk in the woods? In the middle of the night? On Indian Bluff?

It could be whoever attacked Dr. Dart, Roni thought. It could be whoever blew up the cave.

Whoever it was, they were coming straight toward her.

She looked around for a place to hide. If she moved far, they would hear her. Maybe she could hide in the cave entrance—just go down a few feet.

The person with the flashlight was only about fifty feet away. It looked like they might walk right past her, if she could get out of sight.

This is no time to think, Roni told herself. It's time to act.

She put her flashlight in her pocket, grabbed the rope and carefully lowered herself into the jagged opening. Brian was right—it was easier than it looked. She climbed down about six feet, then braced her back against the rock and found toeholds for her feet in the opposite wall. She could sit there for quite a while before getting tired.

But then she started thinking about two things: one, the person with the flashlight could see her if he looked down the hole, and two, what about the bats? She did not like the idea of bats trying to squeeze past her in the narrow shaft. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to scream.

There was only one thing to do: continue on down the shaft.

Slowly, she let herself down the rope, supporting most of the weight by feeling for toeholds on the walls. This is so easy, she thought.

And then her feet were suddenly pedaling air. Frantically, she sought a toehold, but the shaft had widened and she was hanging by her hands. She tried to wrap her legs around the rope, but she couldn't find it in the dark.

Her hands were slipping. Roni squeezed the rope as hard as she could, ignoring the pain in her hands. She knew she couldn't hold on for long, and then suddenly it didn't matter anymore—

—because she was falling.

It would be easy to get lost, Brian thought as he entered yet another chamber that looked just like the one he'd been in five minutes before. The cave was like a bunch of big bubbles in the earth connected by numerous twisted, narrow, bewildering passageways.

In fact, he wasn't 100 percent sure how to get back to the entrance. But that didn't mean he was
lost.
He wasn't actually
lost
until he tried to find his way back and couldn't.

Brian played the flashlight beam over the walls and across the dusty floor.

Footprints!

He examined them carefully. They looked familiar. Brian lifted his right foot and looked at the tread pattern.

Yep. Same shoe. Either there had been someone else in the cave wearing identical sneakers, or he was going in circles.

Even with his compass he was confused. Was it possible that this cave didn't hook up with the other cave? Maybe there were two completely separate caverns.

Brian didn't believe it. The two cave entrances were only about a hundred yards apart. They had to be connected. He ran his flashlight beam slowly around the chamber. No other way out. He shook his head and went back the way he had come.

For about three long seconds, Roni lay in the dark thinking that she had broken every bone in her body. She thought her heart had stopped. A bunch of white lights were floating in front of her face. The lights began to whirl and she felt as if she were being sucked into a whirlpool, and for a moment she was certain she was about to die.

Then she remembered to breathe.

As air filled her lungs, the lights disappeared and her head stopped spinning. She sat up in the utter darkness and listened to the echoey silence.

She looked up. She had to be sitting directly beneath the shaft. There. The faintest imaginable light. A single star.

What had happened? She had been hanging on to the rope and suddenly her hands had just given up. Remembering the flashlight in her pocket, Roni took it out and switched it on.

She was in a chamber about the size of a classroom. She looked around quickly, checking for cave bears and trolls.

She seemed to be alone. Just her, and the dangling rope, and a bunch of rocks scattered on the floor. She was lucky she hadn't landed on one. She shined the light to where the rope disappeared into the shaft, five feet above her head. Could she climb back up into the shaft? Maybe if she held on to the rope and climbed up on Brian's shoulders she could pull herself up.

Maybe.

But first she had to find Brian. She looked around the chamber again and found an opening leading into a passageway. She shined her light into the passage. Dark. That was the problem with caves. Too much dark.

 

Brian came across his own stupid footprints four times before he finally noticed an opening he hadn't seen before. At first he thought the six-inch-wide crack was too small to fit through. He shined his light into the crack and saw that it got wider.

Might as well try, he thought. Turning sideways, he tried to wedge himself into the crack, but his chest was too wide. He took a couple of deep breaths, then blew all the air out of his lungs and tried again.

It worked! He was squeezing through, almost as if the wall was swallowing him, when his shirt caught on a projecting chunk of rock. Brian panicked. He was stuck in a crevice with no air in his lungs. He closed his eyes and tried to will himself smaller, then pushed hard with his legs. He heard his shirt rip, the pressure on his chest eased and he sucked air into his lungs.

He had made it. The bad news was that he'd have to do it again to get back out. Oh well, he would deal with that when the time came.

The new passageway quickly widened. For the first time, Brian found footprints that were not his own. Yes! He followed the footprints.

The passageway led to another chamber. Had he been here before? Brian shined his flashlight around. At first pass, he didn't see anything. Then when he played the flashlight around the chamber more slowly, he saw something in the far corner. He jumped into the chamber and ran over to the scattered collection of bones.

Dr. Dart's rescuers had been none too kind to poor Yorick. His bones had been scattered and trampled as the rescue workers had put the injured archaeologist on a stretcher and carried him out of the cave. A few yards from the scattered bones he found the skull hiding behind a tumble of rocks. Brian picked up the skull, saying, “Don't bite me or anything, Yorick. It's me, the guy who swore an oath on your stupid bony head.”

Yorick grinned up at him. Brian was glad the skull had a name—it made it not quite so grisly. He set the skull against the wall by the bones, then took out the disposable flash camera Roni had given him. Holding the flashlight and the camera at the same time, he framed the shot of the bones with the skull in the exact center, then hit the button.

The flash lit up the cavern.

But what was that? Brian thought he had seen an odd glare in Yorick's skull. He took a step to the side and photographed the scene from a different angle.

Again, the odd glare. He bent over the skull and shined his light into Yorick's empty eye sockets. He could see through to the back of the skull. But what was that shiny thing?

He picked up the skull and turned it around. On the back of the skull, part of the bone had been replaced by a shiny steel plate the size of a half-dollar.

Brian stared at the metal patch for several seconds. Did ancient Native Americans do brain surgery? Possibly. But did they have steel? Brian thought about the turkey tail on his desk at home and shook his head. Anybody who had to make arrowheads out of rocks would not be able to patch a skull with stainless steel.

There was only one possible conclusion. Whoever Yorick had been, he wasn't ancient. He probably wasn't even an Indian.

Stupid Yorick. Probably just some old prospector who had wandered into the cave and died. Brian looked more closely at the pile of bones and saw something else—a black rubber cup about the size of a shot glass. Brian picked it up, trying to think what it was. It looked familiar.

Whatever it was, it was definitely not Native American.

So much for their saving an “Indian burial ground” from the bulldozers.

He shrugged and added the rubber cup to the collection in his pocket, then started back toward the cave entrance—if he could find it.

 

I do not like caves, Roni thought to herself as she inched her way along the passage. I do not like caves and I do not like secret passages. I do not like them at all. And if I see one more bat, I am going to scream my lungs out.

The passage opened into another chamber much like the first. Only now there were two more openings. One might lead to Brian, the other to a bottomless pit, or worse.

“Brian?” she called out. “Hello?” Her voice echoed briefly, then died. She examined the floor and found footprints going in and out of both exits. Great. Maybe she should go back to the entrance and wait for him to show up.

Roni was still standing there, undecided, when she heard a faint noise on her left. She switched off her flashlight, pressed her back to the wall and waited.