Gunther's Cavern

by Edward Etzkorn

  One of its uppermost arms reached out toward Gunther’s knife cut. “See here, Master Gunther, you have cut yourself.” The voice was deep and warm, with a quality that made it sound reassuring, like the voice of an old friend. Yet something about it was unearthly in the extreme—like Frosty the Snowman meets Mechismo. The vowels emerged broad and hollow, the consonants clipped and guttural. The voice might have been that of a computer language program that imitated sounds it could not understand. But the water bear clearly understood every word it spoke. Or would he or she have been more appropriate?

  Instinctively, Gunther jerked his arm away. “It’s okay.”

  “Do not attempt to be brave. You are only human. Here …” The water bear waddled two or three steps closer and projected its middle section toward him. “Touch your hand against my round, obese belly and bleeding will be arrested.”

  With a mixture of curiosity and repulsion, Gunther accepted the invitation. The water bear’s midsection felt soft and pliant—and cold, like a jellyfish. With a minimum of pressure, he could press his wrist inward as far as he wished. He withdrew his hand to find that the bleeding had stopped. Touching the wrist with his other hand, he felt no stickiness.

  “Do not touch your wrist,” the creature said. “Your body oils will start it to bleed again. Human bodies are lacking many qualities they should have.” One of the creature’s eyes rolled around as it focused on Gunther. “I feel good—yes? Normal—like an earth creature should.”

  “Y-yes,” Gunther stammered. Something about the creature’s last few words gave him pause. The words bore more meaning than the creature had intended. Or had it been intended?

  Normal. Like an earth creature should.

  With a wave of its upper arms and several sets of flagella, Teddy beckoned toward Gunther and June. “But come, young lady and gentleman. Onward and upward. Time waits for no man. We still have quite a few of your surface hours to reach your new home. Your friends look forward to seeing you.”

  Gunther shot a glance at June, to see her still staring at the creature. Her mouth was shut now, her eyes honed in on its “face.” She acknowledged his glance with a jerk of her head. He thought of addressing her in their secret language, but held back. Perhaps it was wiser to withhold any revelation that such a language existed.

  Trying to ignore the feeling of foreboding inside him, he found himself packing up his supplies and preparing to follow the creature. No other option presented itself. He picked up the half nutrition bar he’d dropped and broke it into two further halves. He gobbled his up within seconds, handed June her half and motioned her to do the same. Wherever the creature led them, they could expect to find food. Simon—although thin, as always—had survived five weeks without apparent ill effects.

  He retrieved his knife, folded it, and was about to drop it into his pocket when the water bear extended an upper-middle arm toward it. “You will please discard your weapon. I understand you intend no harm with it, but since you are entering a peaceable realm, you will have no need for it.”

  Gunther hesitated, reluctant to part with it.

  “Kindly hand your knife to your friend,” Teddy said, gesturing toward Simon.

  Realizing he had no choice, Gunther handed the knife, now closed, to Simon. The water bear flicked his upper-middle arm sideways, and Simon responded by tossing the knife in that direction. Nodding his “head” up and down, the water bear appeared satisfied. “Goody goody gumdrop,” he said. “Now we can proceed in peace.”

  Within minutes of starting out, Gunther realized the source of the drag marks on the ground. June, a step or two behind him, apparently noticed it, too, for she punched him in the back to be sure he hadn’t missed it. Teddy walked with a peculiar waddle, at times walking upright, at times on all fours—or all “eights.” Either way, he dragged his rounded lower section over the ground, leaving the impression of a blanket drawn across the ground. The “paws” of the bottom pair of “legs” left the imprints of a concave disc with claws on either side.

  Contrary to Gunther’s expectations, Teddy had no trouble negotiating the narrower and lower parts of the cave. His (Its? … Her?) body changed shape to accommodate changes in the size of the cave. Like a bubble, Gunther thought. A bubble that could bend and compress, but not break. He led the way like a well-trained guide, polite and concerned to the max. After each difficult squeeze, he turned around and bowed. Over and over he asked, “June and Gunther, you are doing okay?”

  To which Gunther always replied, “We’re okay.”

  And then would echo Simon’s voice from the rear: “We’re fine, sir!”

  The toadying sound of Simon’s voice forced Gunther to wonder what Simon’s role in his and June’s capture had been. Reluctant slave? Willing accomplice? POW—prisoner of war—who made friends with his captors in hope of reward? From what he knew of Simon, either of the two latter options seemed most likely. Then again, why had Simon gone out of his way to leave the gum wrapper with its inscribed warning?

  “We are approaching widest part of the cave,” Teddy said. “Widest and highest. I have never seen Saint Patrick’s or Notre Dame Cathedral, but I believe this part of cave will put you in mind of la Cathedrale de Notre Dame de Chartres. A fine example of Gothic architecture, here reproduced in miniature.” He chuckled—at least, the sound that emerged from his mouth sounded more like a chuckle than any other sound Gunther knew. “Maybe wet with limestone instead of rain.”

  Gunther could not find anything humorous about that last statement. He thought hard. Chartres Cathedral. Somewhere in France. You never knew when your high-school foreign language would come in handy.

  From a considerable distance Gunther could see it. Ahead, through a series of winding passages, emerged a light brighter than any he’d seen since he and June had entered the cave. His heart beat faster as each passageway brought them closer and closer. At last, after a final corkscrew turn, a cathedral opened up before them. Chartres Cathedral. Or Saint Patrick’s in New York City. Perhaps Saint Teddy’s.

  They entered a giant room, bigger than any Gunther had ever seen above ground—except, perhaps, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The room was populated by creatures of all descriptions—beetles, bugs, dragonflies, lizards—some of them cave species that Gunther could identify, but all a few orders of magnitude larger than he would have expected. Plus a dozen or more creatures that could have been mirror images of Teddy, who went about their work as if the arrival of guests from the surface were a daily occurrence.

  And humans. Nine of them, to be exact. All of whom bore names that Gunther knew well. Giles, Rad, Tiff, Sass—all the kids who had disappeared from New Calar, minus Serge and Simon. The kids sat at a table-like rock, dressed in light jackets or sweaters, their faces wearing breathless but wary expressions. Expressions far different from those they wore in the high-school hallways. Expressions they might have worn if they were looking not at kids who were geeky and deserving of ridicule, but at their potential saviors. Although none of the kids appeared unhealthy, they all looked thinner than Gunther remembered, and he thought their skin bore a yellowish tinge—except, perhaps, for Hood and his older sister Tiff, whose skin shone as black and healthy as ever.

  A look upward revealed the source of the light—row upon row of glowworms.

  “Arachnocampa luminosa,” Gunther murmured.

  The glowworms hung from cord-like lines, suspended like Christmas lights from one side of the cathedral to the other, some tense, others lax, crisscrossing each other, curling around and through each other. From some of the lines flapped moth-like insects stuck in the goo—several times larger than the moths Gunther knew above-ground—while the glowworms scurried up and down the cords to devour them.

  Feeling faint, Gunther sank to a squatting position. June did the same. Her hand grabbed his and curled around it. “Farts be with you,” she murmured.

  “And with you,” he returned.

  “Singe so scroy-o mu
ck.” We can do this together.

  “So muck.”

  “Come and see your friends,” Teddy beamed. “They have not eaten since breakfast. They have been waiting for you. You can all enjoy dinner together. And there is water for you to drink and bathe. Of course, you may find it cold. We do not have heat or electricity. We want you to think of this as your home away from home. As your friends will tell you, we work night and day to find a way to get you back to your real home up above.”

  Hood, never one of Gunther’s favorite people, muttered something that prompted a turn of Teddy’s head—or upper segment.

  “Yeah, right,” Gunther thought he heard.

  CHAPTER 10

  Food and water were the last things Gunther wanted to think about. His stomach was churning, and he felt like vomiting. Not that his stomach contained anything for him to upchuck.

  The New Calar kids’ expressions made the encounter more difficult. He could have dealt with expressions of disapproval or mockery. But this new look—the look of younger wizardry students looking toward Harry Potter as their role model—rendered him helpless.

  For perhaps fifteen seconds, squatting beside June, he gulped air and tightened his grip on her hand.

  “Fake it,” he thought he heard her say.

  Her hand squeezed his like Aaron Judge’s squeezing his bat. “Fake it,” she repeated—and this time he could not mistake her words.

  At once he felt his spirit overtaken by that of another—the spirit of the Gunther he’d always wanted to be. He rose to his feet, June rising with him.

  “Hey, Guys,” he said, surprised at how casual and yet how strong his voice emerged. “So what’s happening?”

  At some signal from Teddy, the New Calar kids stood as one and formed a line. As if he and June were visiting dignitaries who deserved special attention.

  Hood stepped forward first, extending his hand. “Welcome to New Calar II,” he said. “Land of the free, home of the brave. Where thou must sucketh up to no man, but troglodytes reign free.”

  Perhaps he was imagining it, but Gunther thought Hood averted his eyes as he spoke. He’d never averted his eyes before—on campus, as leader of the “Mock Gunther” crowd, his gaze had always been direct and fearless.

  Gunther shook the hand that was offered. “Thank you, Hood. I …” His eyes pried Hood’s, but got no response.

  He could not complete his sentence.

  I’m glad to be here?

  It’s great to see you?

  Hood seemed not to expect a response, but moved on to let his older sister take his place.

  Tiffany—Tiff—had never mocked him, and at times had even run her fingers over his arm and looked at him with what appeared to be flirtatious glances—which scared him more than mockery would have. Now she merely shot him a glance, nodded, faked a smile, and moved on.

  In her glance he saw more than she had intended—or maybe less. Her eyes looked red, and her eye sockets appeared to bulge. Her faked smile gave a message.

  The rest of the group followed one by one. Some held out their hands, some just nodded or mumbled a few barely-audible words.

  Giles, whose British accent and intelligence might have made him a target for mockery, but did not because he excelled on the football field.

  Billy, a tough guy and hallway bully who now looked close to tears. A “D” in every class did not prevent him from catching more touchdown passes than anyone else on the team—or attracting more girls.

  Cecilia—better known as Sass—who flirted with every guy on the pavement, then backed off if they responded. She’d once come on to Gunther in a womanly way that had set him into a near-panic. Since then, she’d treated him like a retarded little brother. To June, of course, she nodded—since the day June had popped her in the nose, she’d never messed with her again.

  Rockford—Rocky VII—another football star who sometimes managed C’s and was another favorite among the girls.

  Kara, a shy girl who lurked on the fringes of the popular groups rather than mingle among them.

  Vanessa—Van—the beauty queen that every boy wanted to date. A girl who could not be tamed, but whimpered in a corner if someone spoke a cross word to her.

  As the kids filed before him, Gunther attempted eye contact with each one, growing bolder as the interchanges progressed. In the past, he would have been the one to look away. Now the other kids shot no more than quick glances in his eyes before looking away to avoid his gaze. Whether they were embarrassed or frightened or begging his approval, he could not tell. None of those explanations made sense. A glance at June drew merely a shrug.

  “So muck,” she answered his questioning look. Keep on.

  Rad approached last, and even in this situation, something inside him melted in her presence. Chin thrust forward, she stared him in the eye to the point that he had to look away.

  Her words rasped in his ear. “You better get us out of here.”

  As if to reinforce her words, she stared at him again, her eyes no more than three inches from his. This time he could not look away. The intensity of her stare locked his eyes to hers. Not only were her pupils dilated as far as they could go—not unexpected in the darkness of the cave—but her corneas bore a bright red color, and the skin around her eyes was swollen, giving her the look of a bug-eyed alien.

  “Got it?” she said.

  “Uh … uh …”

  “Got it,” June said for him.

  With a satisfied smirk, Rad moved on—so fast, he could almost have imagined the encounter had not happened.

  But her message had seared itself into his brain.

  Looking happy with the human-to-human encounter, Teddy motioned for Gunther and June to follow the New Calar group. “They will show you to your quarters,” he said. “And where you can bathe and drink. You will reassemble here at 6 o’clock sharp for dinner.”

  This last statement took Gunther by surprise. Six o’clock sharp?

  As if in answer, Giles held his wristwatch to his face. “Five forty-three at present,” he announced. “New Calar Surface Time.”

  With Hood in the lead, the group led the new arrivals along a ridgetop and down a path along the base of a giant stalagmite—worn nearly black—into a grotto where the light cast by the glowworms barely penetrated. Here various scraps and shreds of material had been sewn into sleeping mats. Despite the grotto’s total area of fifty or sixty square meters—about 25 feet by 25 feet—the mats had been drawn within an area of perhaps half that. Alongside the grotto, over a series of washed rock and firmly-embedded stones, a stream rushed past, dampening any other sound. Had the setting been that of a family picnic or school outing, it might have been conducive to relaxation. In the present situation, however, it was disturbing, even frightening.

  “Welcome to The Swamp,” Hood said, leaning forward so his face nearly touched Gunther’s and June’s.

  His friendly manner fostered a sense of camaraderie that both bolstered Gunther’s confidence and put him on edge. The feelings were magnified when Tiff stepped forward and spoke in a similar manner. To his surprise, she encircled both Gunther and June in her arms, pulling them together so she spoke directly into Gunther’s left ear and June’s right. Except for her gleaming teeth, Gunther could not see any part of her face.

  “Be careful what you say. Don’t lean against walls or sit on the ground when you talk. When you stand, stand on your tippy-toes. Otherwise they hear everything you say.”

  She let go and drifted behind them, letting her brother take over.

  “Find as comfortable a place to sleep as you can, my fellow inmates,” Hood said. “Any spot not taken is yours. You can wash up in the stream—long as you don’t mind thirty-three degree water. And be assured it takes hours to get dry and warm. We won’t notice how you smell—won’t be worse than the rest of us. Water’s drinkable. Tastes a little funny, but that’s nothing compared with dinner.”

  With a clow
nish half-bow, he stepped back from them, joining the rest of the group in the sleeping area. As if he were watching a faint black-and-white movie, Gunther saw the group sitting or lying down on their mats, like impressed laborers at the end of a tiring day. They spoke little—clipped syllables that Gunther could not catch above the sound of the rushing water.

  With a few words in his and June’s special language, he motioned June toward a spot on the periphery where they spread Gunther’s space blanket on the ground and dropped their packs. He thought he felt the other kids’ eyes on him, but in the near-darkness, he had no way of being sure.

  A clacking sound, as of two bamboo poles being clapped together, made the New Calar kids snap to attention. With a jerk, Gunther followed suit.

  A tardigrade Gunther had not seen before, perhaps thinner than Teddy but the same height, stood on the ledge above them. “Greetings, Newcomers,” he said—his voice sharper than Teddy’s, with less warmth. “I am Thomas. When it is time to move, I expect you to more with alacrity. No dallying, no excuses. Late for bathroom break—you hold it all day. Late for dinner—you go without.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gunther said without thinking, an edge of mockery in his voice.

  “You mock me?” Thomas returned.

  Gunther foundered for an instant. “No, sir. Just letting you know I understand.”

  The water bear appeared to stare in his direction an instant before turning away. “That is good. Mockery of your leaders is not tolerated here.”

  With hardly a second’s pause, Hood led the group up the path they’d followed a few minutes before.

  “Imbecile,” Rad shot in his direction as she passed him.

  “Him or me?”

  “You. Don’t do anything to provoke them.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think …”

  “Sshhh!” several voices followed.

  Staying to the back with June, Gunther followed the group up to the ridgetop, then down again into the open area where they’d first convened. There the kids began sitting around the table-like rock. Hood motioned some of the kids to move down and gestured for Gunther and June to sit in the middle, their backs to the direction from which they’d arrived.