The Serpent Passage

by Todd Allen Pitts

  Exhausted, William flopped on his back, threw his mask to the ground, and lied motionless, listening to the cascading sounds of the waterfall. Pinholes of sunlight from the cavern’s ceiling provided just enough light to see the giant stalactites above him; they looked like claws reaching down.

  “So you decided to go for a swim after all,” said a familiar voice.

  William jumped. “Betty? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. I’m over here.”

  He spotted her approaching along the shore of the underground lake. “You’re alive!” he said, and blushed upon noticing her exposed breasts. He retrieved the yellow shirt that he had stuffed into his vest pocket earlier.

  “Yeah, I’m alive… unfortunately… because I don’t figure there’s any way out of this place.”

  William took off his fins and made his way to Betty, holding her shirt out in front of him, cringing as he stepped on some jagged rocks. “Here,” he said, tossing the shirt to her when he got close, being polite to look the other way while she put it on, but unable to resist catching a peek when she lifted the shirt over her head. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Well, you know… I feel pretty good as a matter of fact. Some ride, huh? Invigorating!” she said, and then looked up, trying to recall the events. “I don’t know what happened. We were having a nice little chat at the restaurant, and then… kerplop! I thought I was falling off a cliff. How the heck did you end up here?”

  “I went looking for you and got pulled in just the same,” William said.

  Betty smiled with a big creepy grin. “That was awfully kind of you to come for me… though you probably should’ve stayed put. The bad news is that we’re both gonna die and rot here. Don’t mean to be crude, but that’s how I see it.”

  A long pause followed as Betty’s last words crawled through William’s mind. He shook his head. “No, there must be a way out,” he said.

  “I’ve been swimming in that cenote for years,” Betty said. “The locals told me there were dangerous undertows, but I never felt anything in all that time… up until now, of course.”

  William looked around the chamber’s perimeter, searching for an escape route.

  “No sense in looking…. uh… what’s your name again?”

  “It’s William. William Spalding.”

  Betty laughed, slapping her hand to her forehead. “Like the balls?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You know… the balls? Spalding. It’s a brand,” she said, and laughed again. “Get it? Because you sure got balls to come after me.”

  William wondered how she could be cracking jokes in their predicament.

  “Anyhow, you might as well get comfortable,” she said, becoming serious, “because there’s no way out of this mess. I figure this is where they all ended up.”

  William glared at Betty. “Where who all ended up?” he asked.

  “All the others that disappeared in the Cenote Azul,” she said. Betty tiptoed over the sharp rocks and stopped beside a large stalagmite. “Their bodies were never found, you know.”

  “That doesn’t mean they ended up here,” William said.

  “Tell them that,” she said, pointing her bony index finger—like the grim reaper—beyond the stalagmite.

  William lurched back in horror. Human remains were strewn all about the cavern, like someone had kicked the bones around and smashed the skulls into pieces.

  Chapter Two

  Bones littered the hellish chamber. Thirteen skulls—some intact, some smashed—provided a possible indication of the head count. There were likely many more skeletons, William considered—from those who never made it to the shore, resting on the bottom of the underground lake. He cringed at the sight of what appeared to be a child’s femur; its attached foot-bone still wore a decayed sneaker. It was horrible enough for parents to think they had lost their child to drowning, yet it was better than knowing the truth of the situation—that their child died of starvation in an underground cavern, with the remains stirred about.

  “I’m guessing he did this,” Betty said with conviction, pointing at the only completely intact skeleton—a man who appeared to have hung himself with shreds of fabric fashioned into a noose and looped around an outcropped rock along the cavern wall. “He probably went nuts, made all this mess, and then found his own way out.”

  A wave of fear took grip, inspiring William to search under every outcropping in the cavern for an exit. Yet there were no visible tunnels anywhere, except for the large opening of the waterfall that had brought them in. Small spots of light entered the cavern from the center of the ceiling, some fifty feet above, through tiny cracks and fissures in the earth. “Look, the surface is right there,” he said, pointing up, while surveying the area for the best way to reach the top.

  Betty watched with an amused smirk as William made several attempts to climb the cavern walls. He strained to grip the rocks, but the sides sloped inward—like a dome—so he couldn’t get more than ten feet up before stumbling back down.

  Giant stalactites and stalagmites met each other in several places along the shore, providing the only smooth surfaces, which Betty took advantage of to rest upon. William, on the other hand, tried to scale several of the slippery stalagmites with even less success than he had with the cavern walls. He groaned as he slid onto the jagged rocks, swearing from the added cuts inflicted on his bare feet.

  “If there was really a way out, there wouldn’t be so many folks who died down here,” Betty said, with her last words echoing, as if the chamber was confirming their fate. “But at least we have each other for company.”

  William tuned Betty out, focusing his concentration on the waterfall. His gaze shifted to the underground cenote as an idea began to take shape. “Maybe there is a way out!” he said.

  Betty looked his way with a raised eyebrow.

  “The waterfall keeps dumping water in here. So why doesn’t it fill up this entire chamber?” he asked.

  “Do I look like a geologist?” she asked, standing up. She moved near William by the shore.

  William pointed at the cenote. “The water is draining off down there. There has to be another tunnel that continues out.”

  “How does that help us exactly?” she asked.

  “Because we have something that no one else ever had,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Scuba gear,” he said with a proud grin. William rushed over to his equipment and checked the pressure gauge, cursing at it. “Look Betty, there’s only about four hundred pounds of air left in this tank. That may not be enough to get us through, but I’d rather die trying to get out of here than to sit here and die of starvation in this messed up place. There’s not enough air for me to check it out first by myself. We have to both go together… now.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about this,” she said.

  William pulled his scuba gear back on, manually inflated his vest, secured his mask to his face, and entered the water of the underground cenote. He clenched his teeth from the pain of the jagged rocks further digging into his injured feet. “Well, come on,” he hollered.

  Betty just stood there like a statue, with a worried look carved into her face.

  “Or what, you’d rather stay here with these skeletons?” William asked, as he slipped on his fins.

  Her eyes opened wide. “Okay, let’s do this,” she said, and jumped into the lake.

  William floated over to Betty and handed her his alternate regulator. “When you’re ready, bite down on this mouthpiece and just breathe. We’re low on air, so try to breathe as slow as you can. But don’t hold your breath. When you feel pain in your ears, just pop them… the same way you do on an airplane. Are you cool?”

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Betty asked.

  William removed his mask that had begun to fog over. He spit on the lens, wiped it with his fingers, sloshed it around in the water, and put it back on. “Yeah Betty, my dad taught me to dive wh
en I was ten. Now hang on to these straps on my vest and don’t let go. Just keep breathing, okay?”

  Betty nodded, already breathing from the regulator.

  William popped the primary regulator into his mouth and released the air from his vest. As the two began to sink, William spotted the skeleton hanging by its neck. It appeared to be staring right at him, giving him the chills just as they slipped underwater.

  Beneath the surface, he jerked a glow-stick from a pocket on his buoyancy vest and cracked it between his hands, illuminating the area around them with its green fluorescent light. The sediment stirred up from the waterfall made it difficult to see very far ahead. He touched bottom at about thirty feet. He controlled his breath until neutrally buoyant and hovered with Betty until he felt a current pulling them along.

  William turned and followed the current, having a hard time keeping his balance with Betty hanging on behind him. Giant stalagmites lurched out from the murky water, and he pushed off of the limestone pillars as they appeared in his path.

  Out of the gloomy darkness, a faint red light materialized. Then it was gone. For a moment, he thought he had imagined it, but there it was again, even brighter as they neared it. The light went out again, and William wondered what could be causing it. When the red light illuminated again, an enormous snake charged at them with menacing eyes, mouth opened wide, about to swallow them whole!

  William screamed through his regulator, paddling with his arms to back away from it. But then he relaxed when he realized that he had been startled by an elaborate carving of a serpent’s head at the entrance of the tunnel; the red light beamed out of its mouth. He caught his breath and allowed the current to suck them in through the serpent’s gaping jaws. William felt astounded by the discovery, thinking that it may be a significant archeological find, should they live to tell anyone about it.

  Upon passing through the entrance, William had expected to see a rough tunnel, like the cavern dives that are well known in the Yucatán. However, what he saw before him, amidst the occasional blast of light, defied logic. A spherical tunnel, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, continued straight ahead into the darkness, like a gigantic drainage pipe. As the current pulled them forward, William slid his hand along the side of the tunnel, surprised by its metallic texture. He snapped his hand back after sensing a static discharge emanating from it.

  The current moved them along without any effort, as though they were on a ride at Disney World. An entire section of the tube just ahead of them lit up with points of light spaced apart, lining the tunnel from top to bottom as far as he could see. Then it went dark again.

  On the next interval they entered the brightest portion of the tunnel; it blasted them from all angles, flashing like a strobe light. Their velocity picked up as though they had been caught in a rip current. William strained his eyes to get a look at one of the points of light streaking past him. The objects appeared triangular, with light emanating from their crystalline structure. The light changed from red to orange to yellow. Its brilliance surrounded them until he could see nothing else but the light.

  William kept his hands outstretched ahead of himself, fearing he might smash into something at the end of the ride. Several minutes elapsed, and he worried that their air would run out at any moment.

  As they sped forward, he wondered how such a tunnel could be there in that remote part of the world. The lights flickered faster and faster, until an intense white flash forced William to shield his eyes from the glare.

  Their speed slowed with the suddenness of a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. The brightness faded, and William opened his eyes. He let loose a muffled cheer, thrilled to see the sun gleaming through the silky blue of the surface above. They had escaped! As they ascended, William glanced back and noticed the same carving as before—a hideous face of a snake, with a pulsing red light beaming out of its mouth.

  William shot a few bursts of air into his vest as they broke through the surface. He spit his regulator out and took in a deep breath. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  Betty still clung to William; her eyes were closed tight, and she continued to breathe from her regulator. William shook her to get her attention. “Betty, it’s okay.”

  She opened her large green eyes, and a smile spread across her face from ear to ear when she realized that they were free. “You did it!” she said, hugging him tight to her wet body.

  William laughed. “Yep, we made it, Betty. We’re back. We’re…” He scanned the dense jungle all around them, “…in another lake… in the middle of freaking nowhere.”

  “But we’re out! Thank God!” Betty said, cheering to the sky.

  William surveyed the landscape surrounding the lake, trying to determine the best exit point. “Over there,” he said, pointing to a rocky ledge protruding from the jungle. It looked like a boat ramp, the way it angled down into the water.

  Betty’s expression changed from excitement to terror. “William!” She pointed over his shoulder.

  William looked back and spotted three giant dark forms fast approaching on the surface of the cenote. “Alligators!” he said.

  “Actually,” Betty said, back-peddling away, “they’re crocodiles.”

  “Yeah? Well, actually, they’re coming this way!”

  Betty swam as though she was trying out for the Olympic swim team and out-distanced William; he was slowed by the heavy equipment on his back.

  The crocodiles closed the gap on William. As he sensed the collective wave of their approach, he managed to unbuckle and free himself of the scuba gear. He took a quick breath and dove under water to swim at a faster pace. A moment later, he surfaced right near the edge of the cenote, popped out, and scrambled up the ledge beside Betty.

  Betty let loose a big sigh. “Oh, for heaven sakes, William, I thought they had you!” she said, gesturing to the crocodiles.

  William looked back to the water and watched his equipment being ripped to shreds. A froth of bubbles blasted out from the tank through the severed tubes. “My scuba gear!” He groaned, while pulling his mask beneath his chin, remembering another detail. “Oh, crap,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “The scuba tank was a rental. Now I’ll have to pay for that old tank too. My mom’s gonna be so pissed.” He ripped off his fins, glaring at the giant reptiles. “Still hungry? Here’s your damn dessert!” He threw his fins at them. The crocodiles pulled his equipment out of site beneath the surface.

  “I’d say you got your money’s worth for the gear,” Betty said. “It saved our lives after all. Hey, I’ll pay you back for all that. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “At least I won’t have to lug all that equipment back to the restaurant with us now.”

  They climbed further up the rocks, a safe distance away from the unfriendly inhabitants of the cenote. William plopped down, still annoyed about losing all his gear. He removed his mask and glowered at it. “My mom doesn’t want me to dive anymore. She’s probably right… just gets me into trouble.” He tossed the mask over his shoulder into a nearby bush, thinking that he might give up scuba diving altogether.

  Betty sat beside him with an odd stare. “Why did you have a rental tank if you weren’t supposed to be diving?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  William regarded Betty with a sneaky smile. “Yeah, about that… there’s not much else to do around here. I didn’t want to follow that particular rule.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. I’d still be down in that bonefilled crap hole!” Betty said.

  William laughed at her remark and shook his head in disbelief. He picked up a small rock beside him and flung it into the cenote. While watching the ripples expand, he contemplated the impact of his choices in life, relieved that at least this decision seemed right. “No one’s ever gonna believe this story, Betty. I mean no one.”

  “Yeah, and topped off by those God damn gators, no less,” she said.

  “You
mean crocodiles?” he asked with a wink, and they were both in hysterics, bending over with tears running down their faces. This went on for the next several minutes until they regained their composure.

  After a long silence, Betty looked over at William with a thoughtful smile. “Why did you do it, Will? Why the heck did you come after me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. I just felt… compelled to.”

  “Well, it was a crazy thing to do,” she said in a scolding tone. “But I thank you, Sir.”

  A warm breeze drifted by, causing the leaves in the palm trees above them to flutter, flashing the sunlight around them. It reminded William of the unusual tunnel. “What do you suppose those lights were down there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, what was that?” she asked. “I had my eyes shut—thought it was a flashlight dangling by my face.”

  “Oh… so I guess you didn’t see the giant snake carvings either?” he asked.

  Betty just stared at him, scratching her head.

  “This is an odd discovery, Betty… like X-Files odd.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s a good show,” she said. William could see that she still didn’t know what he was referring to.

  William became serious, realizing something very important. “Oh… my… God!” he said, jumping up.

  “What is it?” Betty sprang to an immediate stance and scrambled away from the lake, as if she thought a crocodile had made its way over.

  “They’ll think we’re dead,” William blurted. “Your husband already does. We need to hustle back before my mom gets any wind of this. It would devastate her.” He checked his watch. “It’s six-thirty. Hopefully, we can make it back before sundown.” He looked to the sky with a confused expression, squinting from the glare of the sun. “That’s strange.”

  “What?”

  “The sun,” he said, pointing at it. “It’s in the middle of the sky.”

  “Well, of course it is,” she said. “Where did you expect to find it?”