Chapter 8
Tess saw it now.
It wasn’t a dead end at all. Whatever prehistoric underground stream carved this passage had changed direction here and drained
straight down, through a small cavity at their feet. It was ringed with shiny brown sludge, like an open orifice.
Allie nudged her. “Guess what it’s called.”
Tess could only stare. They were already deep underground, but this felt like gazing into an entirely new tunnel: a cave inside
a cave. It was too small to walk through. A human would need to crawl inside it. She tried to remember the named areas on the map she’d studied—some descriptive, some darkly humorous—until finally
it surfaced in her mind.
The Drainpipe.
She must have whispered it, because Allie nodded. “Bingo.”
“We’re going into that?”
“Through it, yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Allie’s enthusiasm was almost evil. “It’s a bit of a squeeze.”
“No shit.” Tess knelt on her kneepads and peered down the tiny chute, her borrowed helmet scraping rock.
The crawlspace was a little over two feet wide, barely enough space for a human to fit through on their elbows and knees.
The tight corridor was studded with protruding rocks, some sharp-looking.
Tess was reminded of the interior rows of a shark’s teeth, layers of crooked fangs, like they were gazing inside a mouth.
Or a meat grinder. Even with her flashlight, the darkness within felt thick and powerful. “What if I get stuck?”
“The biggest caver always crawls first,” Allie said. “That’s me.”
“What if you get stuck?”
“I won’t.”
Allie had described these kinds of claustrophobic passages before, but Tess had always assumed there was some exaggeration
at play. Even her GoPro footage had been misleading. Now that Tess was underground herself, she understood that first-person
video could never convey the oppressive darkness of a cave, the closeness, the pressure of it. Nothing compares to the physical, full-body experience of being there.
And it was about to get significantly worse.
“Ethan calls it Bishop’s Crawl,” Allie said.
“Why?”
“Remember the part in Aliens when Lance Henriksen’s character has to crawl a mile down that long, narrow pipe?”
“Your boyfriend is weird.”
“I usually scoot in feetfirst,” Allie said, lowering one muddy boot inside to demonstrate. It looked like she was feeding
herself down the throat of a python. “About fifteen feet down, there’s a few extra inches of overhead space where you can
turn your body around. It’s a long tunnel. Really long. I know this is breaking the rules, but I always tell people to crawl
headfirst the rest of the way, so you can use your headlamp to see where you’re going.”
Above the opening, something glimmered in Tess’s light: a metal sign bolted into rock, rust-eaten and slimy. She palmed away
mud to reveal a black stencil.
Entrapment Hazard
Proceed at Your Own Risk
“We’ve already passed two of those,” Allie said. “That’s just the lumber company covering their asses. Remember: as long as there’s no Grim Reaper, we’ll be fine.”
“Great.”
Tess knew Allie was trying to make her feel better in her clumsy way. And it was reassuring nonetheless to find more evidence
that humans had been down there. She’d never imagined she’d miss the graffiti and Pepsi cans.
She realized she’d never actually asked Allie how deeply she’d explored this place. She led a group here at least twice a
year. Had she traversed the entire system? The cramped lower reaches where that prospector died over a hundred years ago?
She imagined acres of narrow tunnels under their boots, all hundreds of feet farther down.
So far down, the only way to rescue the trapped man had been to break his legs.
And it hadn’t even worked.
“Trust me,” Allie said. “This is why you wore kneepads.”
She nodded weakly.
“Everyone does Bishop’s Crawl a little differently. You either baby crawl on your hands and knees or go flat for a full-on
belly crawl. Whichever is more comfortable. And watch out for sharp rocks. When it gets tighter—and it will, in a few spots—you’ll
want to roll over and squeeze through on your back so you can breathe easier. Keep one arm forward and one arm trailing your
body, so you don’t get bunched up in a spot you can’t escape from. Remember, you’re smaller than me, so if my ass can fit,
so can yours.”
“If I get caught on something, what do I do?”
“You won’t. But if you do, I’ll guide you out of it.
The most important thing to remember is to stay calm.
If you hyperventilate, your blood vessels swell and your body actually gets a few millimeters bigger, which won’t help.
And don’t thrash or panic, because all you’ll do is bruise yourself.
Remember: the cave will always stay the same shape. ”
“Unless it collapses.”
“Let’s not jinx ourselves.” Allie patted smooth rock. “The bogeys are listening.”
As Tess studied the cramped tunnel, she felt a faint breeze on her cheek, like the exhaled breath of something waiting at
the bottom.
“Feel that?” Allie pulled off a glove and held out her bare palm. “If it blows, it goes. If there’s an air current, there’s
more cave.”
“I’m guessing my surprise is at the bottom?”
She grinned. “Sure is.”
“That doesn’t sound sinister at all.”
“I promise, Tess, what’s down there is amazing. It’s a thousand times cooler than anything you’ve seen so far. It’s a long, tight crawl to get there, but it’s worth it.”
Tess said nothing. Like the presence of the cameras, she hadn’t expected this. She was sensing a hidden motive under Allie’s
words. Why change the plan now?
Why didn’t you mention this before?
“We were supposed to stay in the Upper Vault,” Tess said.
“That was it. The real cave, ninety percent of it, is still down there.” Allie hesitated, suddenly vulnerable. “I’d planned
on making it a quick day, but watching how you handled the problem with your descender . . . I thought maybe you’d be up for
more of an adventure. Seeing more of the cave with me.”
With me. There was a hopefulness in her voice that broke Tess’s heart.
“Well? What do you say?”
“Describe the next few minutes carefully, Tess. Try to remember every detail.” At this point, Washington knows, the two women were standing where it happened.
The long, cramped tube known as the Drainpipe—or Bishop’s Crawl (to Allie and her grotto)—is the first truly challenging section
of the cave. Rescue crews described the crawlway as between two and three feet high and sloping thirty degrees downward, crowded
with loose cobble and pools of sandy mud. There’s no room to stand up or even crouch. Not everyone is psychologically capable
of entering such a space.
It made Washington think of an iron lung—the antiquated mechanical breathing apparatus. Some polio victims had to live inside
them.
“Why do you think Allie wanted you to go down there so badly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she try to guilt you?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you have a guess? A feeling?”
“Allie always looked out for me. I think she wanted to give me the opportunity to face something that scared me and defeat
it.” She tugs her gown to hide the scarred flesh on her back. “So I’d be reminded that I could.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t do it,” Tess says. “I kept thinking back to her story from that morning. The guy who crawled down a cramped little
tunnel like that one, how he slid into a narrowing squeeze until he couldn’t move or breathe. And I just . . . my throat closed
up. I couldn’t.”
Honestly, Washington can’t say if she’d have done any better herself, even if her joints were up to it.
It’s not fear or weakness that holds most people back from entering such dangerously confined spaces, but simple evolved instinct.
Like jumping off a building or inhaling water, your body just knows it’s a bad idea and fights you if you try it.
“Was Allie disappointed?”
“She understood, I think. She told me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, which only made me feel worse. But the
truth was . . .”
“You wanted to go down there.”
Tess nods.
Then she forms a wistful, genuine smile. “The day had been exhilarating, honestly the most fun I’d had in years. I can’t describe
it, but being scared is kind of addictive, you know? Hooking up and trusting my life to a rope and a harness, cutting my hair
out of a descender with a crappy knife. I was starting to feel like a badass, like I could handle myself the way Allie always
could.” She breathes out, deflating. “But then, looking at this new challenge, it was like I’d leveled all the way back down
to my old self. The longer I stared down the Drainpipe, the more my throat tightened and I felt sick. I had to close my eyes.
I couldn’t follow Allie down there, and I hated myself for it.”
She looks up, and the fluorescent lights shadow her face harshly, making her eye sockets appear dark and hollowed.
“And then it was over, just like that. I could already feel the adrenaline leaving my body, half relief and half disappointment.
The whole day ended early because of me.” She hesitates, a slow acceptance. “It cuts both ways, you know.”
“What does?”
“The thing you told me earlier, to make me feel better.” Tess glances at the digital recorder on the table, still listening.
“Because we know now that he was stalking us. If Allie and I had hiked back to the car, we would’ve been killed.
And if we’d turned around inside the cave, we would’ve been killed, too.
Moving forward was what kept us both alive, right? ”
Washington nods.
Tess exhales, her shoulders heavy. “Until that moment, when I made us stop.”
“We can always come back sometime,” Allie said warmly, without a trace of disappointment. “You did amazing, Tess.”
Her mouth was dry. “Thanks.”
“I wasn’t trying to spring the Drainpipe on you. I just . . . I’ve really had fun with you today, Tess. It felt like we were
kids again.” She looked away and kept nodding, as if building herself up to say something. “And honestly, I think I’ve been
trying to distract myself, too. Something has been bothering me.”
“What?”
“I . . .” Allie stared up at the stalactites, at the sharpened fang-like points beading with water. When she looked back,
her eyes glimmered with tears. “I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you this. I’ve been in denial, I guess.”
Tess touched her arm. “What happened?”
“Ethan and I . . .”
She trailed off and said nothing. It took Tess a few confused heartbeats to realize Allie had frozen, the words caught in
her throat.
She turned and saw it, too.
Up the tunnel, the red glow had returned. Now it was closer, brighter, impossible to deny, hovering six feet off the ground
like a ball of incendiary plasma.