The Haunted Cave

by Christopher Pike

  Although the light from the lava pits was reassuring, the fumes in the place made it hard to breathe. They were pretty much constantly coughing, and their thirst was a real problem now. After the bat attack, they felt even more dehydrated. Adam noticed the girls beginning to wobble on their feet. He was having trouble focusing his own eyes. Plus he was beginning to get a headache. He nodded at the chamber.

  “Let’s explore this place quickly,” he said. “But if we don’t find anything that can help us, then we have to go back into the cave.”

  “But the bats are in the cave,” Sally protested.

  “We have no choice,” Adam said. “Besides they might have flown off. We might not see them again.”

  “If they catch us away from here,” Cindy said, “we’re dead.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Sally said.

  They had been exploring the chamber only a couple of minutes when they found a strange set of four lines on the far wall. They made the shape of a large doorlike rectangle, and were etched into the rock. The bottom line started two feet above the floor and ran parallel to it. The top had to be twelve feet above them. It was a big door, perhaps for huge creatures to go in and out. But it wasn’t really a door, just lines on a wall. Like a caveman’s drawing. They exchanged puzzled glances.

  “Somebody cut these into the rock,” Adam said.

  “What for?” Sally asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Adam said.

  Sally reached out and touched the sharp-edged grooves. They were about two inches deep, straight, and without flaws. The surrounding volcanic stone was hard. It would have taken a powerful instrument to cut the lines.

  “The person who drew these was not just doodling,” Sally said. “This could be a door of some kind. A portal to another place.”

  “But it has no hinges,” Cindy said. “No doorknob.”

  “Interdimensional portals don’t need hinges or doorknobs,” Sally said. “Adam and I have had experience with this kind of thing before. When we passed through the Secret Path.”

  Adam nodded. “But that portal took us into a nightmare world. I wonder if this doorway would do the same—if we knew how to open it.”

  Cindy spoke with feeling. “We already are in a nightmare world. If we can open it, then we should open it.” She coughed, choked actually. Her voice came out weak and dry. “I need water real bad.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a tall glass of ginger ale myself,” Sally said. She glanced at Adam. “Can you think of any special spells to open this door?”

  Adam shook his head. “With the Secret Path, we just had to walk backward into the tombstone to make it work.”

  “Not really,” Sally said. “First we had to trek all over town in a certain order.” She paused. “But if you want to try walking backward into the thing, I’m all for it.”

  Together, the three of them tried the technique that had worked so well in the graveyard. But they just ended up bumping their heads on the hard stone wall. Adam was not enthusiastic about experimenting any more.

  “We’re dripping sweat even when we stand still,” he said. “We’re going to lose what water our bodies have left if we don’t get out of here.”

  “But that tunnel in the cave was leading us nowhere,” Sally protested. “We have to give this a chance.”

  “What should we do?” Adam asked simply.

  Sally threw up her arms. “I don’t know. Let me fool with it for a bit. You guys go sit closer to the cave, where it’s cooler. Please, Adam, give me at least ten minutes.”

  “No more,” Adam warned. “You’ll pass out if you stay any longer.” He surveyed the bubbling pools as he wiped the sweat from his face. “I wonder if the ape creatures ever come here?”

  It was an interesting question to ask.

  Perhaps it was the wrong question.

  Adam rested with Cindy by the crack in the cave wall that led into the volcanic chamber. They sat outside, on the cave side. There the temperature was still warm, but at least it wasn’t blasting like a furnace. They stared at each other, probably wondering which one of them looked worse. Cindy’s blond hair was covered with black soot. The blood from her ear had spilled onto her white blouse. Her lips were cracked and starting to bleed. Her eyes were so weary, she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.

  “Are we going to get out of here?” she asked after a minute of silence.

  Adam sighed. “I don’t know. There could be an exit just around the next curve, or the cave tunnels could go on for another ten miles. But we’ve been walking under Spooksville for the last few hours, and I can’t imagine that the caves run under the ocean. For that reason, I think we’re going to reach the end of the road, one way or the other.”

  “You mean the cave might just end in a wall?” Cindy asked.

  “Or it might end in someone’s backyard. It’s possible.”

  Cindy was doubtful. “But we don’t know of anyone who has a cave opening in their backyard.”

  Adam nodded reluctantly. “That’s true. If the cave does have an exit inside the city, then it’s where no one knows about it.”

  Cindy shook her head sadly, fingering the flashlight. They didn’t need it turned on here. But the moment they left this area it would be their only source of illumination. Adam thought the batteries couldn’t last more than another hour.

  “This is all my fault,” she said quietly. “I forced us into this cave.”

  “You didn’t force me. I wanted to come.”

  Cindy smiled faintly. “That’s nice of you to say, Adam, but I think I forced you more than anyone. I just assumed you’d come. And you did.” She paused. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “It sounded like an interesting adventure.”

  “But you’ve had plenty of those since you moved here.” She paused again. “Did you come because you thought I’d think you were a coward if you didn’t?”

  “No,” he said. Then he added, “Maybe.”

  Cindy laughed softly. “I could never think that. You’re the bravest boy I’ve ever met.”

  “Really?” That was nice to hear.

  Cindy touched his knee. “Of course. Who else our age would swim with sharks and fight with ghosts and wrestle with trolls?”

  “Sally.”

  Cindy giggled. “Sally’s weird. I don’t really hate her, you know. I just love to tease her. She has so many buttons, and I can’t stop pushing them.”

  “I think she cares about you, too. You saw the way she risked her life to save you from that troll’s spear?”

  Cindy nodded. “I just hope I don’t need to be saved again.”

  It may have been the wrong thing to say.

  Especially considering where they were sitting.

  Adam didn’t know exactly what happened next. The cave around them was black, of course. Everything underground was black. But it seemed as if for a moment a deeper blackness rose up from some hidden depths. The shadow came from one side, and it swiftly took on a vague shape. Adam saw a hairy face, yellow teeth, weird eyes—yet it was all a blur. Before he could react, even shout, the shadow fell on Cindy. It covered her in darkness and then quickly pulled back into the black. Cindy wasn’t given a chance to scream. Adam wasn’t given a chance to save her.

  She was just gone.

  The monster had her.

  12

  Bum knew about a well located not far from the beach. He believed it was one of the wells Ann Templeton had been referring to. Watch had never heard of the place, and he knew the town inside and out. Or at least he thought he did. But Bum explained why he had never seen it before.

  “It’s located in an old woman’s backyard,” Bum said. “Her name’s Mrs. Robinson. She never leaves her house. When her husband died ten years ago, she didn’t even go to his funeral. A young man brings her groceries. She hasn’t been out of her house in forty years. She has that disease where she’s afraid to go outside. But that’s understandable in this town. A lot of se
nior citizens have it. Anyway, I once rented a room from her, so I know her pretty well. She’s not a bad person, although she’s addicted to black-and-white reruns on TV. I used to have to watch them every night, just to get to the news. While I lived there, we used to get all our water from her backyard well.”

  “But why do you think it’s one of the wells Ms. Templeton was talking about?” Watch asked.

  “Because I can’t think of any other private well in town. Also, it’s very deep. You have to lower your bucket way down to get any water. I used to get calluses on my hands trying to get a drink. The water you do get is ice cold. Remember how the witch mentioned the cold.”

  Watch scratched his head. “Is Ann Templeton really a witch? She seems so nice.”

  “Get on her bad side and you’ll see how nice she is. I think the best way to understand her is to know that she does whatever amuses her. She has the power to do that. If it strikes her fancy, she’ll save you from a thousand enemies. But if she’s in a dark mood, she’ll feed you to her boys.”

  “Who are her boys?” Watch asked.

  “You mean what are her boys. I don’t want to talk about them tonight. We have enough problems.” Bum pulled Watch down the street. “We have to hurry to Mrs. Robinson’s house. She does stay up late with her TV, but it’s already two in the morning.”

  They reached the house twenty minutes later. It was an old wooden affair that stared out at the rock jetty and the burned-down lighthouse. Two stories tall, with a steeply pitched tar-paper roof, it didn’t look as if it had been painted in the last two decades. Watch wondered how many other old people there were in Spooksville who never left their houses. Who just peered out from between their curtains and were terrified of the horrors that walked outside. Actually, Watch was amazed that anyone lived long enough in Spooksville to get old. He couldn’t imagine he would last past his twenties. The thought didn’t bother him, though. Not right now.

  “You stay here on the sidewalk,” Bum instructed. “It’s better if I talk to her alone. She gets jittery around strangers. Last week a brand-new letter carrier tried to deliver her mail and she blew a hole in his mail bag with her shotgun.”

  “She has a shotgun?” Watch asked, amazed.

  “Yeah, and she’s a crack shot. Just give me a minute with her. She’s proud of her well. If I tell her I have a friend who’s just dying to taste the water from it, she’ll let us run all over her backyard.”

  Bum was gone several minutes. Watch could see him talking to someone on the front porch of the house, but with the shadows he couldn’t tell who it was. When Bum returned, he was grinning.

  “We can fool with her well all we want,” Bum said. Watch noticed he had a flashlight in his hands and a coil of rope. The old woman must have given him the stuff. Bum didn’t have a penny to his name, but whatever he needed just came to him. Watch wondered if Bum had powers of his own.

  “I want to thank you for helping me rescue my friends,” Watch said as they hurried around to the back of the house. Bum waved his hand.

  “No problem,” he said. “I like your friends.”

  “But you were ready to let them die when I first spoke to you.”

  Bum chuckled. “I was just hungry. When I haven’t eaten in a couple of days, I never feel like rescuing anyone.”

  The well was nicely constructed. Built of gray bricks and a few white painted boards, it stood in the center of the backyard like a prized plant. It had a small roof over it, from which hung a rope, a pail, and a lowering winch. Watch wasn’t sure what Bum had planned, but was sure it would be dangerous.

  “You’re not going to lower me down there, are you?” Watch asked, when he saw Bum tying the extra rope onto one of the well’s support poles. The question amused Bum.

  “They’re your friends,” he said. “And better you than me.”

  Watch stared down into the black well. “How far down before I reach water?”

  “At least two hundred feet.”

  “Can you lower me that far?”

  “Lowering you is no problem. It’s pulling you back up that’ll be hard. I just hope my back doesn’t give out.”

  Watch took Bum’s flashlight and shone it down the well. Still, he couldn’t see anything except pure blackness. But ever so faintly he did hear gurgling water. It sounded as if it was moving, an underground river.

  “What if there’s no room to breathe down there?” he asked. “To stand up?”

  Bum nodded. “I thought of that. You might just end up in a cold pool, with no way out. If you do, shout for me to pull you back up.”

  Watch nodded as he swung a leg up onto the edge of the well. “Should I hang on to both the new rope and the old pail rope as I go down?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bum said. “It’ll decrease your chances that either of the ropes will break. You know, Watch, I have to admire your courage. If my friends were trapped down there, I wouldn’t try to rescue them. Not that I have many friends.”

  “Does that mean if you can’t pull me up, I’m doomed?”

  “Exactly,” Bum said cheerfully, slapping him on the back. “But I wish you the best of luck anyway.”

  Watch grabbed hold of both ropes. He kept the flashlight on and tucked it in his belt. He just hoped his glasses didn’t fall off.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  Bum began to lower him down the deep shaft. Yet Watch didn’t only depend on Bum’s strength for support. The well was narrow. As he descended, he wedged himself against the opposite sides of the circular wall—his upper back jammed on one side, his feet on the other. Above, he could see Bum’s face growing smaller and smaller. Soon it was just a dark dot against a black sky. Watch gripped the ropes tightly. He kept waiting for the feel of the water but it never came.

  Yet the sound of the gurgling water grew louder. When Bum had become all but invisible, Watch felt a faint spray on his face. He stopped his descent and carefully pulled his flashlight from his belt. The well did not end in just water, but in a small air space. Panning around with the beam, he saw that two feet more and he would have burst free of the shaft, which now was dug out of bedrock. For the first time he hung with all his weight on the end of the two ropes and tried to peer around the edge of the shaft. What he needed to know was if there was only water below him. If there was no bedrock to lower himself on, he would have to abandon his rescue efforts.

  And leave his friends to the Hyeets.

  A moment later he saw that the well didn’t draw its water from a pool. The black liquid twenty feet below him was definitely moving. If he wasn’t messed up on his directions, it seemed to be flowing toward the ocean.

  Watch found that interesting.

  Unfortunately, as he stuck his head under the edge of the shaft, he could see no place to swim to. The underground river flowed out of one wall of blackness, and disappeared into another. It might reappear in an open space, but he couldn’t drop down and take that chance. Swimming underwater and underground with the icy river, with nothing to breathe, he would drown in minutes.

  A wave of sorrow swept over Watch then. It was rare that he allowed himself to experience any powerful emotion, but he had known Sally a long time. And in the last couple of weeks he had come to admire Adam a great deal. Plus Cindy was his friend as well. To lose all three of them at once would be horrible. He knew he needed to shout for Bum to pull him back up because there was nothing he could do. But Watch hesitated, straining to think of some way he could help his friends even if he couldn’t see them.

  But nothing came to Watch.

  “Bum!” he shouted reluctantly. “Pull me up!”

  The tension on both ropes increased. Bum was pulling with all his strength. Too bad he was the town bum instead of the physical education teacher. He wasn’t that strong. Watch had to aid Bum’s efforts by trying to crawl up the shaft, his upper back still jammed against one wall, his feet against the other. The problem was he was tired from the descent, and his strength was givi
ng out, faster than he could have imagined. He tried to rest for brief moments by letting all his weight rest on the ropes, but Bum must have been tiring quickly also. When Watch did relax, he ended up slipping back down several feet.

  This went on for over twenty minutes. At the end of that time, the top of the well was still far away. Watch wasn’t sure what to do. He was breathing hard and his arms and legs and back ached terribly. He paused to take another quick break, to gather his strength. As he did so he let all his weight hang on the ropes.

  Disaster struck quickly and without warning.

  The ropes gave way and Watch fell.

  There was nothing to do. He tried grasping at the walls of the shaft, but they slipped from his fingers. The overhead circle of sky shrank. Watch felt the cold air on his face just before the freezing water slapped his entire body.

  Watch went under. He went down, into blackness.

  He struggled frantically. Trying to reach a surface he couldn’t see.

  For a moment his head broke the surface.

  He heard Bum shout from far overhead.

  “I’m soooorrrryyyyy!”

  Then the current of the underground river gripped Watch and carried him against the far black wall and under the water once more. Where there was no light, and no air. He fought for a surface that didn’t exist. The cold was crushing, his panic shattering. He was in a liquid tomb and there was absolutely no way out.

  13

  “We have to save her,” Adam was saying. “We can do it.”

  “How?” Sally asked. “Cindy had our only working flashlight. It went when she went. We can’t walk a hundred feet in this dark.”

  “What about the first flashlight? There was still a little juice left in it.”

  “There’s none now. I tried it a minute ago. The light’s dead.”

  “Let me see it,” Adam demanded. They were standing just outside the volcanic chamber, on the exact spot where Cindy had been swiped. Sally handed over the flashlight, and Adam flipped the switch and pointed it around the cave. He couldn’t see a thing. “Why would it stop working?” he muttered.