Chapter 4
Allie looked back. “Think he’s the one who took a shit back there?”
Tess wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
The daylight drained away with every step, and the graffiti and trash seemed to be thinning out. Most of the vandalism was
concentrated at the mouth of the cave, maybe because few vandals were willing to descend deeper.
“You didn’t have to say that,” Tess said.
“No, but it just felt right.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Allie climbed over a car-sized boulder. “If we’d been nice to him, he would’ve taken it as permission to invite
himself along and keep trying to flirt with you. Trust me. You can’t smile your way out of some situations, because some people
don’t listen to nice. You have to learn to stand up for yourself.” Allie punched Tess’s shoulder, a light but precise jab. “I won’t always be
there to back you up.”
Tess smiled, but it was too dim to see.
She’d always prided herself on having more subtle talents.
Years ago, Allie’s older cousins often played a drinking game called Changeling where one player was randomly selected to play the role of the secret monster.
At the end of every round, the group would take a vote on the creature’s identity, while that player won if they survived three votes.
Whenever she was the Changeling Tess always won, and the cheap beer (lake house rules: the winner shotguns a Natty Lite) somehow only amplified her devilish skills. She
could feign disbelief and suspicion. She could redirect attention and play others against each other. Tess was in her element
hiding in plain sight, and of everyone in that lake house, only Allie had ever had a chance of piercing her best friend’s
lies—and only sometimes. Everyone has things they’re good at.
I may not be brave like her, she sometimes told herself. But I’m crafty.
Sometimes that was even better.
Allie moved on ahead, confident and agile as they left the wan gray lighting of the entrance (the twilight zone, she called it) and entered the dark zone. Tess had never seen such an absence of light before. The purest, darkest midnight
she’d ever seen, miles from the city, had still been softened by starlight and moonlight. This darkness was absolute. It spread
out to encircle them until, for a disorienting moment, Tess felt like she wasn’t walking at all but floating in it.
She shivered. It was instantly colder, like swimming through a patch of chilled water.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Then Allie switched on her headlamp with a plastic snick. Tess swallowed a tremor and reached for hers, but it took several
tries to find the button (“Left,” Allie coached. “No, my left”). Even with both headlamps on, Tess was surprised by how small
a difference they made. Their LED lights took weak bites out of the darkness and revealed hidden protrusions of pale rock,
ancient slabs glistening with moisture. Look away, and it all vanished again.
Outside her circle of light, there was only that dizzying, eternal black. No peripheral vision at all. Tess felt vulnerable,
like something might creep up on her from all sides.
The cave seemed to devour light.
The way forward became chaotic, the colorless walls and floor and ceiling all melting together. Allie led the way through
a jumble of multi-ton boulders, some to be circumnavigated, some to be clambered over with slippery boots. Over, under, scooting,
sliding. The trick to keeping your balance in such an unpredictable environment, Allie explained, was to keep three points
of contact on something solid at all times.
Traversing this place was a surprising workout, assaulting muscles Tess hadn’t used since elementary school. She was already
sweating under her clothes, her glasses fogging. The tunnel lowered, and giraffe-like Allie had to stoop under overhangs,
her headlamp sweeping low. Tess was five-two, small-framed since birth, and she navigated this world with surprising ease.
Failure to thrive, her mother had described her infant years. It had always felt like a not-so-subtle insult to Tess, like a space shuttle stalled
on the launchpad.
The odor had changed, too. The wet soil and mossy smells were far behind, replaced with something dense, bacterial, sickly
sweet. The odor of decay.
Almost like . . . rotting meat?
Allie perked up as if she’d remembered something important. “By the way, Tess, if you see any giant bugs, immediately close
your mouth.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
“I really need to know why I should close my mouth.”
“They’re called spider crickets,” Allie said. “They can jump six feet in the air, and they have an aggressive startle reflex. That means when they see a
human, they’ll sometimes jump directly into your face.”
Tess laughed.
“They taste awful,” Allie added, “if you’re curious.”
“I’m not.”
“On average, everyone swallows ten spiders in their sleep anyway.”
“That’s been disproven.”
Allie froze. “Do you hear that?”
Her voice had sounded both muffled and uncomfortably loud. The silence was dense, spongy. Sound behaved strangely in this
new world.
Tess stopped. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Just listen.”
Now she sensed something. Maybe.
“Can you hear it?”
Yes. It was right at the edge of her perception. It sounded like wind: a low drone of moving air originating from somewhere
deep. She could hear the vastness of the lower tunnels—were they thousands of feet across? Miles, even? As she listened, she
started to detect something else, a low and guttural vibration from below.
Almost a growl. Like something was snoring.
She shivered. “What’s that?”
“The Minotaur.”
“Funny.”
“Every cave has one.”
“Seriously, what is it?”
“Caves breathe, in a way.” Allie’s breath misted in the glow of her headlamp. “Since warm air rises, air flows in and out
consistently as the surface temperature changes. Caves are surprisingly well circulated.”
“So we won’t suffocate.”
“Not up here.”
“But?”
“But,” Allie said, “farther down, carbon dioxide can sometimes sink into low spots and accumulate in pockets. It’s called foul air. Invisible, odorless, and, when you’re belly-crawling in a confined space, extremely dangerous.”
“What are the signs?”
“Rapid heart rate. Difficulty breathing—”
“I mean, how do you know if the air is safe?”
Allie flicked a cigarette lighter and held it up for Tess. She had a way of making the smallest gesture look effortlessly
cool. “See the nice healthy orange, with blue at the base? The weaker the flame, the worse the air you’re breathing. And the
faster you need to move your ass back to the surface.”
“What if it doesn’t ignite at all?”
She snapped it shut. “You’d already know.”
At least the cave’s air felt breezy and fresh, aside from the roadkill odor. The smell of decaying flesh wasn’t unusual, Allie
explained, because predators sometimes dragged carcasses inside caves to eat in shelter. It’s not uncommon for cavers to find
the ground carpeted with crunchy white bones. A naturally formed graveyard.
The tunnel split off into multiple chambers on both sides, almost like subterranean bedrooms. Tess swept her headlamp beam
through these offshoots, illuminating pockets of deep shadow. Some were obvious dead ends, while others might have gone on
for hundreds of feet farther. She imagined if she sliced her light fast enough she might glimpse something peering out at
her from one of those bedrooms, catch it before it could retract its strange head.
With a quiet chill, Tess realized the ceiling was now crowded with icicle shapes, jagged and hostile. Like the spiked inside
of an iron maiden. How long had she not noticed them looming overhead? They were four feet long, colored coppery red like
hardened spears of dried blood. Water droplets beaded on the sharpened tips.
“Don’t bump your head,” Allie said. “They’re fragile.”
As rainwater drips through a cave, she explained, it deposits calcium carbonate. One drop at a time, these deposits gradually
grow into formations of prickly stalactites. Where those same droplets land below, stalagmites form. The movement of water
simultaneously erodes and accumulates, sculpting over millennia.
“Reminds me of a caving joke,” Allie added.
“Let’s hear it.”
“You wouldn’t get it. It’s too deep.”
“I hope you eat another spider.”
All this physical exertion was making the scar tissue on Tess’s back feel uncomfortably tight. Even with a shower rack full
of moisturizers, her skin cracked and split apart often. Chemical burns can heal poorly, doctors told her, and hers was uniquely
severe. Most burns are one-offs, but hers were accumulated over many months, several times a week, the same flesh scalded
over and over just as it was starting to heal.
She reminded herself to stay focused. With every confident turn Allie took, she tried to memorize their downward route.
Right.
Left.
Right again.
Every step taken was a step farther from the surface. Every obstacle passed would be passed again from below. Tess tried to
draw a mental map of the cave behind her, but the natural formations were all so chaotic. It felt like navigating a dream.
“I understand now.” Her voice sounded distorted, like she was speaking near a live mic.
“What?”
“The riddle you told me. The cave you entered isn’t the cave you’ll leave.
” Tess glanced back, lighting the tunnel with her weak headlamp.
“It’s not like walking down a hallway. In a cave, everything looks different when you’re going the opposite way.
So to avoid getting lost, you should periodically look back and memorize what you see. ”
“Exactly right,” Allie said as something snapped between them like a bullet. Tess jolted, feeling a flutter of air on her
cheek. The gray blur was already gone.
Just a bat.
“We won’t get lost,” Allie clarified. “I’ve got most of the cave memorized. If I had to, I could find our way back up by touch.
But the most important thing I need to stress, in case we somehow get separated down here: if you see a warning sign with