Welcome to the Family
Story by Chris Morey
The beam of my helmet lamp swung wildly across the walls as I slid down the shaft that had opened beneath my feet. The scree of loose rocks and gravel dealt me painful blows, but at the same time slowed my descent to a speed I might survive. I prayed the gradient wouldn’t get any steeper than the forty-five or fifty degrees it was already.
As a dedicated spelunker, I’d always been up for a challenge. And something told me that the eastern arm of the Paramount Cave had secrets still to yield. Didn’t Jack Stevens, a legend in caving circles, hint in the nineteen-thirties of vast unexplored formations deep under the known system? Then he disappeared on a solo expedition and his ‘find’ entered folklore, finally becoming mythical.
But it could be true. Successful explorers, like successful scientists, needed intuition, the sixth sense that told them where to set to work. The idea grew until it assumed the form of a virtual certainty.
The time was ripe. A recent dry spell might have allowed tunnel-blocking pools to drain away, perhaps giving access to uncharted regions. Fortune favored the bold.
I went alone. No point in sharing the glory of a grand new discovery with others who didn’t have my imagination and initiative. My equipment, top of the line, would be proof against any ordinary difficulty. I prepared carefully, packing three days’ iron rations and water-purifying tablets. The Labor Day weekend was an ideal time.
A 5.a.m. start got me to the empty parking lot as others slept in. A final check of my gear, and I set out down the well-worn path to the first cave with its display of stalactites, the farthest most visitors reached. I crossed it and went on.
About half a mile in, I came to a pool that had always filled the tunnel before. But today, the water level stopped a few inches short of the ceiling, leaving a gap in which a man could – maybe – breathe. My heart leapt – I’d known.
Wading through freezing-cold water was all in a day’s work. I sloshed forward, holding my head high and shielding it with one hand. Even in a helmet, I could knock myself out and drown.
After sixty feet or so, the tunnel floor and roof rose in tandem, the water waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep, until I hit dry ground. I moved more quickly now, making good time, the going easy underfoot.
I stepped confidently over a small ridge of rock. Under my weight, the floor lurched, crumbled…
My descent slowed as the incline bottomed out. I came to a halt on a pile of the debris that had accompanied me down, in an almost-horizontal tunnel. My bruises aching, I scrambled a few yards down it, away from any large rock that my slide might have dislodged from above. I checked the contents of my backpack: almost unscathed.
How far had I fallen? I calculated: say two minutes at ten miles an hour, about fifteen feet per second – eighteen hundred feet, call it two thousand. Not all vertical distance, but enough to make a long climb back – unless I found an exit on the other side of Elk Ridge, where the valley was lower.
Utter silence. I chose the direction I thought was closest to the one I was following before my fall.
My footfalls echoed hollowly: no surprise in a confined space: The tunnel walls, unexpectedly smooth, glowed with a faint phosphorescence. Experimentally, I doused my lamp and found I could see my way.
Side tunnels occasionally intersected the passage I was in. From one of them came a faint regular, metallic sound – water dripping, almost certainly. The luminosity of the walls might have been increasing, or it could just be my eyes becoming attuned to it. Now I could see colors: grays, browns, purples, dull reds and greens. Perhaps algae or lichen, perhaps natural minerals. I could even pick out apparent patterns, as if they’d been carved into the walls. The endless panorama unrolled as I strode the corridor, never repeating itself.
A current of cool air came from the next cross-tunnel. A good sign, indicating a connection to the outside that might be big enough to exit through. Others might give up now, with a respectable discovery under their belts, but I wasn’t done exploring yet.
My helmet pressed uncomfortably on my forehead. Of course, I’d been wearing it for hours. With the glow from the rock and the tunnel’s high ceiling, it gave neither light nor protection. I removed it and strapped it to my backpack, reveling in the release from its constriction.
As the path descended, a current of warm air rising from below enveloped me. I took off my windbreaker and crammed it into my backpack. Then my shirt, leaving me still sweating in my undershirt.
The sensation of soft, almost soundless footsteps came from behind me – or from a parallel passage? The idea took hold, and they became louder and more distinct. Pure imagination: the human psyche hated solitude so much that it provided the lone wanderer with imaginary companions. Or maybe warned him to flee back to the haunts of humanity? But no living person, besides me, could be walking this ghost-lit labyrinth. I was scaring myself like a timid child imagining bogeymen. The sounds seemed to die away.
The floor, smooth and dust-free, didn’t demand cleated soles and stout ankle-supports. I took off my boots, peeled away my socks and secured both to my pack. Welcome coolness, my feet seeming to expand with their liberation. Only the knowledge that I’d need the boots and other stuff when I left the caves stopped me from discarding my pack then and there.
When I left… The prospect of returning to the upper air seemed suddenly unappealing. This was my world, by right of discovery. Unlike Columbus, I didn’t even have to beg royal funding for my project. I was beholden to no one, absolute monarch of all I saw.
The tunnel reached a T-intersection. This time, intuition didn’t come to my aid. I tossed a coin: heads left, tails right.
Heads. Farther on, the walls sparkled with mica, or – though it couldn’t be – inlaid decoration. Carefully, I examined an especially showy area, coruscating in rainbow colors, that spoke to something deep in my psyche. For long minutes, I stood mesmerized before its staggering beauty, until I forced myself to turn away and continue.
I rounded a sharp corner and pulled up short. Blocking the way was the stuff of nightmare. Seven feet tall, rough, scaly reddish skin, an egg-bald cranium with two incipient horns, staring eyes the size of golf-balls, a hole where a human nose would be, fore- and hind-limbs tipped with wicked, curved claws. A super-predator, and was I its prey?
I froze, biting my lip to stifle my gasp of shock. Hardly daring to breathe, I stepped carefully backward.
The creature took an identical step back, as if I’d scared him as much as he’d scared me.
The angles of the corridor that stretched behind the monster seemed subtly out of alignment. The light bore a leaden tinge, as if filtered through glass. I shook my head to clear my vision.
A feather-light touch on my shoulder, a hoarse whisper of extreme old age.
“Howdy, son. Welcome to the family.”
Chris Morey was born at Cowes, Isle of Wight, England and educated at University College London. He has been writing creatively since 2015.