by B. B. Wurge
“Grandma, don’t say that! I didn’t want you to be crazy. I really didn’t. All those people were confusing me, and I just wanted to see it for myself.”
“That’s okay,” she said, grinning and patting my knee with her sticky fingers. “I bet you’ll believe me from now on.”
“I really will, Grandma. Everything you said was true. All of it.”
Then I told her about climbing down the hole, and going to sleep on top of T29, and then waking up and getting chased by the police. By the time I finished my story, she had finished the jelly and used the napkins to get the remains off of her face. A lot of the dirt came off too, so that she looked more and more like my dear old Grandma. “You should save these,” she said, handing me the grimy and sticky napkins. “They have a lot of jelly on them, and we might have to eat them. You never know.”
“But aren’t we going to climb back up now, Grandma? We’ll be home in a few hours.”
“That’s one possibility,” she said, looking at me with her eyes twinkling.
“But Grandma,” I said, “what else do you want to do?”
“I want to show you something,” she said. “Something very interesting. But I’ll have to lean on you a little, because I can’t walk too well on this leg.”
Chapter 19
We Find the Birdfrogs
“Where are we going, Grandma?” I said.
“You’ll see,” she said. “But we better be quiet. Don’t talk, and try to walk silently.”
We packed up the bag again and got up from the cave floor. Then my grandmother leaned on me and I helped her to walk to the edge of the cavern, into one of the tunnel entrances in the wall. The tunnel looked narrow in comparison to the gigantic cavern, but it was still wide enough for us to walk in side by side, and tall enough that we didn’t hit our heads on the ceiling. The passage sloped up, and we had to go slowly because my grandmother’s leg couldn’t climb up the slope very well. Also, as we followed the twisty bends of the tunnel and got quickly out of sight of the glow of the large central cavern, the light started to fade. The walls of our tunnel glowed, but not as much, and there were big patches of wall that were in darkness, so we had to watch carefully not to stub our toes. We didn’t say anything to each other. Every few minutes, my grandmother would turn to me and put her finger to her lips, and then wink and nod.
After about twenty minutes we got to the end of the tunnel. It just ended. It went nowhere. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted to show me, but she gestured to me to get down on all fours and to crawl to the very back of the cave. On the back wall, near the floor, I saw some uneven holes where the stone had crumbled away. It looked like they might open onto another part of the cave.
My grandmother lay on her stomach and put her eye to one of these holes, gesturing for me to do the same. I lay down very quietly and put my eye up to the hole, and almost screamed. My grandmother’s hand shot out and covered my mouth with a wrinkly palm.
“Not so loud, Love,” she whispered in my ear.
“But Grandma, what are they?” I whispered back.
“Look carefully,” she said.
I put my eye to the hole again, and stared for a long time. I think we lay there for about half an hour.
I could see into a cavern, a much, much larger cavern than the one we had just come from. It was football fields across. It was so big that it was hard to see the opposite side. The holes we were looking through were very high up in the wall of this cavern, about thirty feet up, so we were looking down onto a wide, flat, glowing floor that stretched out in front of us. The floor was crossed and patterned with lines running everywhere. It looked like a computer chip with strange lines running mysteriously, sometimes in parallel, sometimes making right angle bends. The lines were made of stone. They were little walls, maybe twelve inches high and about six inches wide, perfectly constructed, and running everywhere. Some of the walls made streets, and some made little square building plans, with little rooms connected by gaps that were like doorways. There was not a roof anywhere, of course, because the whole cavern already had a roof, and so anyone building a city down here would just build walls and never think to put on a ceiling.
Little plants, a few feet high, lined some of the streets and stood in front of the open houses.
The entire city was teeming with creatures. Millions of them. They were everywhere. Even in the distance, I could see a seething, crawling movement in the houses and on the streets. One of the creatures was especially close, only about thirty feet away, almost below us, and I could see it clearly. It was sitting on top of one of the walls, scratching its head. It must have been about three inches tall, but it was unmistakably a gorilla. It was a three-inch-tall gorilla.
“Grandma,” I whispered suddenly, “it’s just like specimen R46A, that my mother found!”
“Yes!” she whispered back. “But keep watching! Watch them closely, Billy!”
I watched. The one sitting on the wall scratched his head, then his armpit, and then his foot. He yawned, opening his little red mouth very wide. He was a perfect replica of a gorilla, except for being so small. He was exactly the shape, very wide at the bottom, with a big round belly, long arms, round shoulders, and a pointed top to his head. His eyebrows and snout stuck out far from his face. He had leathery, black, hairless pads on his chest. After a while he picked up something from the wall beside him. It looked like a tiny newspaper. He leafed through it for a minute, scratched his head again, and then put it back down on the wall beside him. He looked around and I was afraid at first that he might see us. But there was no way that anyone in the gorilla city could have seen our tiny spy holes in the cavern wall, especially since the cave we were in was a dark one without a lot of phosphorescence.
He got up, picked up the newspaper in one hand, and walked away.
“Look at him,” my grandmother whispered. “Do you see that?”
“I see it, Grandma,” I said. “He’s walking on the wall. The sidewalk is really the top of the wall for them.”
“That’s very nice, boy,” my grandmother hissed impatiently, “but that’s not what I mean. Look at the way he’s walking.”
Then I understood. If you have ever been to the zoo then you have seen a gorilla knuckle-walking. They walk on their hind feet and also on the knuckles of their hands. This tiny gorilla was walking in exactly that way. He was knuckle-walking. But because he was holding something in his right hand, he was walking on the knuckles of his left hand. He was using three limbs, and if he could have made footprints, they would have been three-footed prints.
I turned and stared at my grandmother. “It’s the birdfrogs!” I said.
“Shhh!” she said. “Not so loud! Yes, it’s the birdfrogs. But they aren’t birds, Billy, and they aren’t frogs.”
We stayed for a while, lying on our stomachs and watching the birdfrogs.
“Grandma,” I said, “do you still think they eat people?”
“I bet they do,” she said. “Remember, they took my kitchen knives.”
“But gorillas don’t eat meat,” I said.
“Right you are,” she said. “But gorillas don’t read newspapers. I tell you, these ones are different. I wouldn’t put it past them. Do you see that big building to the left? That one against the cavern wall?”
“I see it, Grandma. It’s huge. It’s person-sized.”
“It’s just the size for a half-dozen cows,” she said. “Why does a three-inch gorilla need a building that big? And it’s got a roof. It’s the only building with a roof. Why do you think that is?”
“It could be their city hall,” I said.
“I thought of that,” she said. “But then it would be in the middle of the city. Not at the edge. And why does it have a roof? Whatever’s in it, they don’t want it to get out. That’s why there’s
a roof. And whatever’s in it probably makes lots of noise banging around, so they keep it at the edge of the city. Look how they don’t have any of their own houses near it. No, I tell you, it’s a holding house. I bet they keep cattle in there. And I don’t mean just four-footed cattle.”
“Grandma! Do you mean they keep people in there?”
“I tell you, I wouldn’t be surprised. I bet if we went in there, we’d find my good kitchen knives.”
“Ugh! Grandma!”
“Why else are they sneaking up to Central Park? People are always disappearing out of Central Park. I bet that’s where those old ladies ended up, hanging by their hocks.”
“Don’t say that, Grandma! That’s awful! And they look so peaceful.”
“You can’t tell by that,” she said darkly. “I bet if we were discovered here, they’d swarm us and tie us up. They’d drag us around by some back route to that building and fatten us up on big slimy hunks of cave fungus.”
“Then we better go right away, Grandma. We better climb out of here, before they discover us.”
“That’s the sensible thing to do, Love. But I wanted you to see them first. Now that we know what we’re up against, we can resist them better.”
We got up very quietly and turned around, and sitting on the cave floor just a few yards away was a birdfrog. He must have snuck up behind us to see what we were doing. We stared at him and he stared at us, and then he let out a yell. He leaped about two feet in the air, grabbed the sides of his head with his hands, and shrieked. When he landed, he turned and galloped down the tunnel. It was amazing how fast he went given how small his legs were. In a second he was gone and his yells had faded away.
My grandmother and I stared at each other. I could see that her face was pale even through the dirt and the greenish phosphorescent glow.
“Billy,” she gasped, still trying to keep her voice down. “We better get back to the rope before that one spreads the alarm!”
Chapter 20
The Chololate Banana Handprint Is Food for Thought
My grandmother leaned on me and we hobbled as best we could given her limp. It took a long time to get back down the twisty turns of the tunnel.
“They’ll have short cuts,” she said as we hurried. “They’ll be able to get through cracks that we wouldn’t even notice. I bet the whole first and second regiments are on the way already.”
I didn’t say anything, but I thought she might be right.
It took us about fifteen minutes to get back to the big stomach-shaped cavern and I was certain that our rope would be gone. I expected the whole cavern to be full of birdfrogs, thousands of them holding little pitchforks and chains to tie us up in. But the cavern was deserted. It was totally empty and silent and our rope was hanging from the center of the ceiling.
“Look, Grandma, we’re saved!”
“Don’t stop and gloat now,” she said. “Let’s get up there, fast!”
When we got to the rope she suddenly threw out her arm to stop me. “Hold it!” she said. “Something’s been here! Billy, look, something’s smeared on the rope!”
When I looked up at the end of the rope dangling just above my head, I could see a small amount of yellowish-brown goo stuck to the fibers.
“Grandma, it must be the peanut butter. You had it all over your hands before, and—”
“Don’t be silly, I didn’t touch the rope. It wasn’t me. Something’s been messing with our rope. It might be a special poison. Some kind of cave spore that they mash up into a paste, and if you touch it you turn purple and melt on the inside. Or it might be. . . .” She stopped and sniffed at the rope. “Billy,” she said, “What do you think?”
I stood under it and sniffed. The end of the rope dangled about a foot above my head. “It’s. . . ,” I said, “it’s banana.”
“It’s more than banana,” she said. “Sniff again, Billy!”
I took another sniff. “It’s hard to tell Grandma. You’re taller than me, so your nose is closer to it. But it smells like . . . like banana and chocolate.”
“It does,” she said, looking at me grimly. “The birdfrogs have been here.”
“How can you be sure, Grandma?” I said.
“It’s obvious,” she said. “They’re gorillas. What does a gorilla eat? Banana. But they’re cultured gorillas, so they eat chocolate-covered bananas. They were in the middle of lunch, stuffing their nasty faces, when suddenly they got the call to nab some intruders. Wham, they come running out and climb all over our rope.”
We peered around everywhere and peered up at the black hole in the ceiling that the rope went into, but we didn’t see or hear anything that might be a birdfrog, or any other animal. We were alone.
“Maybe they left,” I said.
“Bosh!” my grandmother said. “They’re hiding and watching. They’ll wait till we’re half-way up the rope and then untie it at the top.”
“Maybe they won’t, Grandma,” I said. “If they eat chocolate-covered bananas, then they don’t eat people.”
“Billy,” she said, still staring around suspiciously. “Don’t lose your grip now, boy. You eat chocolate covered bananas, and you also eat meat.”
“But I don’t eat people,” I said.
“Never mind boy. You climb the rope, and I’ll wait below. If they cut the rope, I’ll catch you. If they don’t, I’ll come up after you.”
I swarmed up the rope. I didn’t see any movement above me; everything was still. The chocolate banana was stuck to the rope at regular intervals, as if it had gotten on some creature’s palm just before it had climbed up hand-over-hand. But the creature was no birdfrog. It must have been about my own size, or larger, judging by the length of its reach.
When I got to the top I scrambled up into the shaft. Rod A and B were still firmly wedged into the shaft just as I had left them, and the rope was still securely tied to them. Nothing was different except for a handprint of banana on the rocky wall. I could see the handprint very clearly because it blocked the greenish phosphorescence. It was a large print; human sized.
My grandmother started to climb the rope but she was very slow. I could see that her hurt leg was preventing her from climbing easily. You might think that you climb a rope only with your hands and arms, but you need to grasp the rope between your knees to steady yourself. Because her arms were so strong she was able to pull herself up slowly, bit by bit, but I wasn’t sure that she would be able to get to the top.
“Grandma,” I called down, “hold on tight and I’ll pull you up.”
“You can’t do it, Billy,” she called up. “I’m too heavy.”
“No, Grandma, I can do it.” I braced my feet on the crossed rods, grasped the rope firmly, and hauled. It was just like hauling a sack of canned goods up the stairwell, except that it was harder to put my back into it because the shaft that I was standing in was so narrow. I heaved and heaved until I thought that my arms would get pulled out of their sockets, and finally my grandmother rose up to the top. She reached out a hand and clutched onto one of the rods, and right away her weight lifted from the rope.
“That was just in time,” I said as she climbed up into the shaft after me. “You were really heavy.”
“That’s the weight training,” she said. “Builds muscle mass. And all that sewer mud adds a little too. But you did it, Billy. You really did it! You are a wonderful boy.”
I showed her the handprint on the rock, and she stared at it for a long time.
“Grandma,” I said, “do you think it’s a person?”
She measured it between her fingers. “Billy,” she said finally, in a grim voice, “Do you know what that is? It’s a regular sized gorilla. Those little ones, they must keep a few giant ones around. I bet they keep ’em chained up in that big building we saw, and they u
nchain ’em whenever there’s dirty work to do. It’s a hit gorilla. They sent him up the rope and he’s waiting for us up there somewhere to rip off our heads, when we’re stuck in the tunnel and have nowhere to run.”
“What do we do?” I said in a frightened voice.
“There isn’t much we can do, Love, except climb up and see what happens. Maybe we can fight it off when the time comes. I know a few tricks, and these iron bars will come in handy. We can’t stay down here, anyway.”
Chapter 21
We Encounter the Hit Gorilla
Even with my grandmother’s hurt leg, it was easier climbing with two people than with one. We tied one end of the rope around my waist and the other end around hers, so that if one of us fell, the other one would be able to brace against the tunnel wall and hold the weight. I took rod A and my grandmother took rod B. First, with my headlight on, I climbed up very far, about fifty feet, and wedged in rod A and sat on it. Then I shined my headlight down the shaft so that my grandmother could see. She climbed up slowly, taking as much time as she needed with her injured leg, until she passed me and climbed about fifty feet higher. Then she wedged in rod B and sat on it. Then I climbed up above her again, and so on. After about an hour, my grandmother said that the exercise had limbered up her leg and made it feel better.
“Grandma,” I said, after a while, “do you hear something clinking above us?”
“Yes, it’s that giant gorilla,” she said, scowling. “The filthy brute is climbing up ahead. I bet he’ll wait for us in the basement, and as soon as we stick our heads out of the top of the hole, he’ll reach out and nab us. Then, crunch.”
