As Arlis worked his way closer, Tomlinson and the boy took turns watching him. The hole was big enough to provide them both air, but just barely. The boy didn’t say much, but Tomlinson was even more hyperactive than usual, and he talked nonstop when it was his turn to push his face into the hole.
Arlis had noticed that reaction before in men who had come close to dying, and a thought came into his head. First time since I met Tomlinson that he’s ever behaved like a normal human being.
Tomlinson yammered away until the light must have hit Arlis’s face just right, which caused the hippie to pause, and then he said in a soft voice, “My God, Arlis, what happened to your face?”
Arlis hadn’t thought about what he must look like, but he knew that his left eye was almost swollen shut and the skin of his jaw was puffy tight with bruising and blood. It was embarrassing, in a way—Arlis had never been beaten so badly by another man, and he hated to lie about it but did. “I took a spill back there on the rocks. Probably because I’m not used to roaming around the woods at night clean sober, but here I am. So don’t worry about it.”
Still concerned, Tomlinson said, “Man . . . you need a doctor.” But then he sensed the old man’s embarrassment and recovered by adding, “I’ll buy us a twelve-pack on the way home. It’s important to stay hydrated down here in the tropics—a few beers will make us both feel better.”
Arlis was having trouble getting through the roots. Every few feet, he had to stop and whack at them with the tire iron before proceeding. During the pauses, Tomlinson continued to talk away, telling Arlis about the series of underwater landslides that had buried them and how they’d ended up here, several hundred feet from the lake. Of course, the hippie also repeatedly asked questions about Ford, which Arlis found disconcerting. He didn’t mind exaggerating a story—that’s the way stories were meant to be told—but he had seldom told so many outright lies in the space of only a few minutes.
To get Tomlinson off the subject, Arlis said, “Once you’re out of here, you can ask Doc your own self how he’s doin’. But right now, let’s focus on the best way to get this job done.” He shined the flashlight toward the eastern wall.
“There’s a pool of water there. See it?”
Tomlinson squeezed his face tighter against the rock hole before saying, “Not from this angle. Is it under the petroglyphs? I can only see part of the floor from here.”
Arlis said, “Petro-what?,” but then realized the man was speaking of the cave drawings on the wall. There was a bizarre-looking stick figure of a man with horns and what might have been a sun and a moon, plus a lot of other scratching.
Arlis had no interest in archaeology, but the stone drawings gave him an uneasy sensation in his belly. It was bad enough to be crawling around in a snake den where there were bones and chewed-on cow skulls, but the witchy-looking images gave him the feeling that the cave would be a dark place no matter how many flashlights a man brought along. The Indian mounds along the Gulf Coast all had this same heavy feel to them, full of shadows and weight, even at high noon.
“Jesus Christ,” Arlis said, “I mighta known a man like you would end up in a weird place like this.”
“Don’t blame me,” Tomlinson replied. “Will gets all the credit for this one. He’s on a journey, man. Will’s a shaman, he doesn’t even know it. His ancestors have something big planned for the kid, which I can explain later if you want. That’s why we ended up here.”
Arlis heard the kid say something sharp to Tomlinson about kicking his ass, but Arlis put an end to it by raising his voice, saying, “There’s a water hole there, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. An opening in the limestone wide enough for you to crawl out. Shut up long enough for me to make my point, if you don’t mind.”
Tomlinson shot back, “I’m only trying to help. Shallow-up, Arlis.”
Squeezing his way between two roots, only a few yards from the hole now, Arlis replied, “We don’t have time for you to help. Just be quiet and listen to what I’m saying! There’s a bigger opening in the floor of this dungeon. It’s right over there, no more than ten or twelve feet from where you are. I’m thinking the crevice you followed might be linked to this hole I’m looking at. Are you with me so far?”
Tomlinson said, “Sorry . . . I get excited. This has been God’s own hell broth of a day, man. We’ve been time-traveling, Arlis, our asses on the line the whole time. It has been one continual monkey-fuck after another, but—”
“Quiet until I finish!” Arlis told him. “I can chop away at those roots, dig your hole wider and get you out. But all I got is this tire iron. It might be a lot easier for you to swim underwater to the next hole and climb out on your own.”
Tomlinson sounded dubious, saying, “I don’t know, man. I’ve had just about enough of swimming around in the dark.”
“At least take a look! I’ll shine the light on the water hole. Maybe you’ll be able to see it if you stick your heads under.” Arlis motioned with the flashlight toward the pool, its water blackish red in the light.
As his head turned to look, though, Arlis’s breath caught. The surface of the pool had been flat, glassy and still, when he’d first entered the cave. But now the water had begun to vibrate for some reason. The surface showed expanding, concentric rings that lapped against the rock perimeter. The waves sailed outward, as if the hole was connected to a distant sea.
God Aw’mighty, it’s that damn snake, Arlis thought. She’s left the cypress moat and now she’s swimming home to her den.
Tomlinson interrupted his thoughts, saying, “Hey—what’s wrong? What do you see over there?”
Arlis replied, “Jesus-frogs, you ask more questions than a schoolteacher. I’m trying to find a quicker way for us to get out of here, that’s all. Why are you being so pigheaded about it?”
“The openings aren’t connected,” Tomlinson replied, sounding sure of himself. “The chamber we’re in is only a little bit bigger than the one you’re in. We searched the ceiling before our lights went out.”
Arlis looked away from the water hole long enough to see Tomlinson blinking at him like a turtle, as Tomlinson continued, “Will was lucky to find this hole—he saved our lives. It wasn’t even big enough to grab more than a quick breath until he dug it out with his knife.”
Arlis said, “Are you sure?,” and was surprised that his voice wasn’t shaking. His eyes were locked on the pool again and he was as scared as he’d ever been in his life, which was a strange thing to admit at his age. But there was nothing to be gained by lying to himself. In his brain, he could picture the snake, with its burning orange eyes, swimming through the tunnel, getting closer and closer, while they wasted time talking.
Arlis added, “I’m in sort of a hurry to get out of here. Did I mention that? And if there’s a faster way to do it—”
“Do you think we’re enjoying ourselves?” Tomlinson laughed. “The smell’s about to kill us.”
Arlis said, “Well, at least let me try it,” but he was thinking, That’s not the only thing down here that can kill us.
A minute later, Will Chaser’s face appeared. Arlis realized the kid had moved Tomlinson out of the way and thought, Good. The boy ain’t as fond of conversation as the hippie.
“Go ahead and shine the light,” the teen told Arlis. “We didn’t have time to look the place over good—he’s wrong about that. Could be there is another opening. If you think it would be faster, we might as well check. Our lights ran out of juice, so how would we know?”