Chapter 44 The Dark
The Dark
Lydia Brown
On Thursday, we drive to Baines Creek and hike into the hills where Sadie, Granny C, and Eddie meet us at the mouth of the cave.
Theresa, Kate, and I carry a flashlight and a sweater against the chill; Gus carries her camera.
We breathe our last fresh air then head down the narrowing throat into the inky gloom.
Kate’s dog stays behind in the speckled sunshine.
Granny C and Sadie take the lead, and then come Eddie, Gus, and me, with Theresa and Kate at the rear.
Today the curator wears black-and-white trousers and an oversize tunic in horizontal stripes, possibly modeled after prison garb from the fifties.
To elevate the look, she has pinned a red plastic flower on her left shoulder.
The effect would be ludicrous on anyone else, but the woman’s self-assurance reigns.
Our conversation bounces off the humid walls, and ten minutes in, Gus and Eddie run ahead like mountain goats on sure feet, their flashlights bobbing. Gus’s tiny voice barks, “Found it!”
Once through the narrow side passage, the space opens and the ceiling vaults.
A skinny waterfall from thirty feet high splashes into a stream, and emerald-green moss climbs the walls.
Mushrooms glow in the damp shadows. Gus snaps photos of the painting and the message from different angles, then joins Eddie sorting colored stones in the shallow creek.
Like children, they divide them into piles—but it is the painting on the wall that compels Kate, Theresa, and me.
It does resemble the painting in the ancient box.
Hooded figures wear black robes. They face right, and a triangle separates each figure, like the mark on my palm.
Kate and I are beside the curator, and the chamber amplifies Kate’s voice. “It’s Celtic, isn’t it?”
“Gaelic, the ancient Celtic language.” We follow as she points to foreign words painted long ago. “Tha an luchd-gleidhidh ann mu dheireadh,” she reads, then whispers, “How very, very odd…”
“What?”
Her eyes widen. “The translation reads: The Keepers are finally there.”
“Are you sure?” My palm pulses.
“Positive. Maybe being finally there refers to their ultimate destination. Or maybe the words refer to a universal understanding.” Theresa steps closer to the wall to touch the figures.
“They’re moving toward the cauldron, aren’t they, and a cauldron is a symbol for the divine feminine, for fertility and growth.
It can also represent the element of the womb. ”
Rainbow blobs from fractured sunlight dance on the walls. With the talk of the cauldron, a red bead settles on the pot as though it’s on fire.
Kate points to the triangles. “What’s that symbol between each figure? Is that the mark Birdie had?”
Granny C speaks for the first time. “That be the sign of a Keeper. I got me one.”
Kate flippantly exposes me. “Lydia has one on her palm, too. Show ’em.”
Granny C and Sadie come to stand beside us with their gathering bags full of mushrooms. Granny C orders, “Let me see,” and shines a light on my palm and rubs her thumb over my calloused symbol. “It be the sign all right,” she states calmly.
“Let me see yours,” I say, and she holds out her palm. Everyone is huddled over our two upturned palms in the light.
“What did you call them?”
“Keepers. All Keepers got that sign.”
Gus says, “So y’all are marked special, but how come? And Birdie was marked, too. But you two didn’t lay eyes on each other till today, so how did you get tied together?”
Granny C and I step apart like sparring opponents in a boxing ring. She rubs her hand on her long skirt. I put mine in my pocket.
“I don’t know, Gus. You have the gift of sight, but you don’t have the mark. I lost my gift but still have the mark. It’s all confusing.”
“Did Birdie say who made these cave drawings?” Theresa asks.
Granny C shakes her head, but she has the air of leaving about her. I can see that the time in the cave is coming to an end.
“Naw. We come for shrooms when I be a girl back in ’43. There be a fever killin’ off folks, but we don’t come the long way.”
“If not the way we came, how did you come?” I ask.
Granny C squirms, caught in a confession of her own making. She doesn’t answer, so I say what comes to mind. “It’s the tunnels, isn’t it?”
From the flash of her eyes, I can tell I’m right.
“You can come all this way—through the tunnels,” I state with conviction, and she nods.
We’re only now beginning to understand that the underground passages are a maze we can’t fathom. A world hinted at by the note found in the cuff of the Levi Strauss coat. A world Professor Covey says has never been mapped on paper. Maybe it should be.
“Can we go back that way?” I ask.
Granny C hesitates but Kate quickly says, “I won’t go in the tunnels. Rachel’s waiting for me in the sunshine. Eddie, can you come with me, please?” More than a touch of panic is in her voice.
“Sure, Miz Kate. I’ll come with you.” He pockets some of the colored rocks and glances at Gus, eyebrows raised, a quiet invitation to join him, but she says, “I wanna see the other way.”
I look at my watch. “It’s eleven o’clock. Why don’t we meet back at the trailer ruins. The time it takes each of us to get there will tell a lot about the distance.”
I think we’ll head back to the main vein of the cave, but Granny C doesn’t go that way.
She and Sadie loop around the waterfall and disappear.
After a minute, Theresa, Gus, and I go too and find a slit in the wall.
We squeeze through and step into an equally large chamber but with a low ceiling.
Water drips and hits the nape of my neck and chills me. It smells like wet dog.
“What is this place?” My voice is amplified.
“’Twas the bookmaking room till de flood come.”
“When was that?”
“Long while back.”
Two tunnels lead from the chamber and Granny C takes the left one.
When we round a curve, the trace of daylight from the waterfall is snuffed out and our flashlights struggle to penetrate the black.
Granny is in the lead, then Sadie and my group.
We walk an incline in a shaft a foot wider than my shoulders.
“Who made these tunnels?” I ask.
Sadie answers. “Miners or Cherokee could’a done it. But it ain’t Little People, for sure.”
“You believe in the Little People, don’t you?”
“Gotta be dumb not to. Them and the tommy-knockers.”
But this tunnel wasn’t built for Little People or for tommy-knockers. Men made these tunnels possibly to unearth semiprecious stones and minerals. Treasure lies beneath every bucket of dirt in these counties—if you know where to dig.
My head pounds from breathing loamy air laced with decay.
I hear skittering voices from inside the walls.
They let out scraps of words and tapping sounds.
A cool draft pushes against my back then lets go.
Bones from small animals crunch beneath my feet.
A rat the size of a cat scurries in a side channel.
“How do you know where to go?” I keep my voice neutral, but I’m beginning to be afraid. Granny C leads us down a path that has already forked three times.
“Blazes,” she says, which doesn’t make sense till we get to the next junction. She shines her light near the ceiling. “Yonder there.”
A white bar is reflected in her light. Like the tree blazes on the Appalachian Trail to show hikers the way.
“That’a way,” she says as she points and forks right to a path that looks the same—except for the blaze.
After we shift left then right then right again, my sense of direction is dulled and I feel trepidation being led by a woman I only met today.
If she had a mind to mislead us because we threaten her way of life, we’d never find our way out.
Suddenly, this venture feels foolish. I wipe nervous sweat from my upper lip and focus on the bravery it must take to travel through the black heart of Appalachia.
It’s the perfect place to hide sins, treasures and bodies.
The dark is mind-numbing and, finally, after sluggish minutes, the air begins to grow lighter. Birdie speaks to me as we enter a large chamber. You come for my secrets like I knowed you would. The mark on my palm mimics my heartbeat.
Granny C climbs stone steps and slides the hatch open so fresh air and light flood the space, which is neat and orderly. It’s different from the abandoned still at my graveyard. This place has not been neglected. It’s been respected.
Gus turns and whispers, “All those sad voices.”
“I know, honey. Go on in the sunshine and wait for Eddie. Sadie will show you the way to the meeting place. I’ll be there shortly.”
Theresa is starstruck and scans the chamber and the rooms adjoining it.
Like Kate said, the walls are lined with substantial shelves holding books and neat rows of clay pots with flat lids.
Colorful glass jars remind me of Trula Freed’s apothecary.
Here, the accumulated knowledge spans generations and centuries.
“This is extraordinary, Lydia,” Theresa begins.
“It’s like an ancient monastery, with its wooden ceiling and stone steps.
A place where monks and nuns lived their days hunched over, creating masterpieces to the glory of God and to honor nature.
This chamber was likely created by Florie and her tribe. ”
But we can’t explore the way we’re inclined. Granny C yells down the hatch, “Y’all coming? Don’t dally. We done finish the tunnel part.”