The floor of the cave was gradually sloping down. I had my compass out — we were heading east and north — and deducted we had already passed under the old woman's house and beyond.
At the first turn, a sharp angle to the right, Madden had stopped to wait for me. He was holding his fingers up in a silencing gesture. Gregory was just a few feet beyond him, transfixed.
I gingerly lowered myself down off of a small ledge until I was standing next to the big man. If anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have unashamedly informed them that old E.G. had just discovered a whole new dimension to his fears — claustrophobia. It was every bit as disturbing and irrational as my long harbored and openly acknowledged fears of heights and sharks.
The reason we were pausing was obvious. The cave ahead abruptly forked off in two directions. The one to the right took a sharp right turn some 20 feet from where we stood. The ceiling was lower, and it narrowed down to the extent that I wasn't at all certain it was big enough to accommodate either Jake or me.
To my way of thinking, the passageway to the left looked like it had far more potential.
We started disconnecting the life line and slipped it back through the D rings until Madden and I could operate independently from Gregory and Kelto. While we were going through that little exercise, I tried to get a better understanding of my surroundings. At the moment, we were in a chamber where two entirely separate forces of nature had been at work. We had the nearly smooth surface of basaltic material which indicated that the walls of the cave had been carved out by the surging waters of the great lake itself. Yet I was equally aware I had just emerged from an area that was mostly hacked out of dirt and limestone. All of this was going a long way toward proving my theory that the network of caves, caverns and tunnels was, in all likelihood, a reality.
It also stood to reason that we were now in enemy territory. This had to be the bivouac of the creatures, and the caves were their underground highway, the very thing that enabled them to move so handily from one region to another.
Gregory searched along the walls of the cave until he found a crack big enough to accommodate a stainless steel anchor pin. He inserted an O ring, connected his own nylon line, laced it through and inched his way sideways into the narrower cave. Within a matter of seconds he had disappeared into the shadows.
The other tunnel shot straight ahead, then began to slope down again. It was big enough to accommodate all three of us, walking straight in single file. It also served as a darkened universe of spiders, crayfish and a host of other scurrying creatures that shared a world devoid of light.
"Come on, Researcher," Jake grunted, "we've got work to do. You ready?"
"Ready," I lied.
What at first appeared to be a stand-up, no-nonsense cave rapidly deteriorated into a big man's nightmare. The gentle slope became a steep incline where the ceiling dropped to no more than 24 inches, forcing us to crawl on our hands and knees. At one juncture, the passage narrowed to the point that we had to strip off our utility belts and backpacks and inch them along in front of us as we crawled on our bellies.
At one point we had to come to a complete halt while Madden squeezed himself through a small opening and explored several feet of cave branching off to our right. All the while I was locked to the floor of the cave with no more than six inches of headroom. When Madden returned he had a quick exchange with Kelto, and a large, ghostly pink, eyeless spider meandered casually through the beam of my flashlight. The creature, about the size of a softball, abruptly changed directions, stumbled over my fingers, conquered my arm, brushed my face and casually traversed the length of my aching body. I felt the little bastard every inch of the way.
A few feet further ahead, the decline grew steeper, and Jake again came to an abrupt stop. At almost the same time, I became aware of the sound of rushing water. A few feet ahead of that, we inched our way into a small cavern with a four foot ceiling and right in the middle of it a hole some 36 inches in diameter.
Jake curled himself into a kneeling position, poked his head down through the hole and spent several minutes assessing the situation. When he looked back up, a small part of the grimness had gone away. "Take a look, Researcher. I think we've found what we're looking for."
It didn't take me as long as Madden. I poked my head through the hole and feasted my eyes on a cathedral-like cavern bathed in a world of eerie half-light, a universe of majestic limestone structures above and below, and thundering through the middle of it, a black, turbulent underground river.
I came back up, caught my breath and looked at Madden. I don't understand," I began cautiously. "Where's the light coming from?"
"There's torches placed at intervals all along the far wall. I think we've stumbled onto their main passageway." He propped himself back against the wall and began to reassemble his gear, checking the items in his backpack and his tool belt. "Damn," he muttered, "I think we finally caught up with 'em."
"Okay, now that we've found them, what's your plan?"
"We're gonna blow 'em to kingdom come. I don't think there's much hope of findin' old Bert alive down there. I just hope he didn't have to suffer much."
"We have to find them first," I reminded him.
"They're here, all right. I can smell the stinkin' bastards."
Jake lowered his backpack down through the hole, then shimmied gingerly down, lowering himself to the floor below. The drop was less than ten feet. He had no more than landed when he started signaling for me to follow.
I turned around to signal to Kelto.
He was gone.
A shudder ran down my spine, and I found myself scurrying frantically to get through the hole.
The news stunned Madden. "Where the hell could he have gone?" the big man blistered.
I stood there in the chilled dampness of the subterranean universe, wondering, like Jake Madden, what kind of terrifying world I had entered.
The world that surrounded me was right out of Jules Verne. The walls virtually shimmered with a palette of muted colors. We had entered an underground domain created by literally thousands of years of undisturbed, unhurried eroding waters. From some long-buried convolution in the back of my mind I recalled a seemingly unimportant (at the time) lab experiment — water absorbing tiny amounts of carbon dioxide and the ultimate formation of carbonic acid. It had, over time, created a world of massive pillars and exquisite hangings, curtains of stone and altars of maverick granite.
The torches had been placed at what seemed to be random intervals. It was obvious now how elaborate the preparations had been. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had been catapulted into another time and space, a universe where every known human reference becomes completely useless.
Suddenly the tranquility was shattered by a mechanical sound, a metallic click, a sound completely out of harmony with the bizarre underground world that confronted me. I recognized it immediately, but immediately was too late.
"I knew it was only a matter of time," the familiar voice whispered.
I spun in one direction, Madden in the other.
It was Bert Johnson. Behind him was a smiling, white-gowned Angie. Bert's hand was tightly clenched around a very ominous looking, very big revolver.
"Jesus, Bert, you scared the hell outta' me," Jake sputtered. "We've been lookin' for you. You okay?"
Johnson's stony face relaxed into a mocking half-smile. "Of course I'm all right, Jake. At long last I'm among my own."
Madden went slack-mouthed; his face furrowed into a frown. "What the hell's goin' on? You're talkin' weird, Bert."
I dug my elbow into Madden's ample ribs. "I think Bert has just informed us that he is one of the true believers, maybe even our long sought after Emissary."