The Lost Cavern

by H. F. Heard

  I’d just reached that fantastic level and height of melodrama when it happened. I’d relaxed my up-staring head and neck a moment when, whoof, and I was on the floor. I didn’t struggle. I’ve learned that on the one or two occasions that I’ve been tackled from behind. You’re only more likely to get broken up sooner. So I copied our friend brother ’possum and just tried to lie limp but keep my mind taut. I couldn’t see a thing, of course, for my torch had been knocked out of my hand, and anyhow, I could feel a kind of sack over my head. It was smooth enough, almost velvety, you might have said; but something had hold of me here and there that was certainly the iron hand in the velvet glove. My neck, for instance, was grasped by what felt like a hook. I’m glad to say it didn’t close, just held me pinned. Another such hook fastened down my left arm, having hold of me just above the shoulder, and my right wrist, which was spread out as I fell—and the torch shot out of my grasp—was secured by something that felt as springy and as tough as a fork made of bamboo. It was clear to me in a moment that my adversary was on top of me and had made a very neat tackle with some kind of net or cape. But one odd thing struck me then—that though (for I could feel him move and actually hear him breathing) he certainly wasn’t standing on me, or I’d have been far more uncomfortable, I could not make out actually where he was standing.

  So I lay doggo and had just come to the point at which, in my inventory, I noticed that he had a queer, musky, not unpleasant, perfume—which again was odd—when I found myself being pulled up and backward. I found myself sitting, and the cape was off my head. But the grip on my neck and arms remained. It not only remained but was added to—heavens, I thought, is this some sort of land octopus? I could feel new hooks getting round my arms; and then in a moment I was on my feet, pulled up onto them. I was past trying to make sense of what was happening; I was in that state when you can notice everything and make sense of nothing—not a bad state when the only alternative is blank panic. And when I was on my feet, my captor drew me along. That I thought pretty intelligent, of an octopus, but perhaps this was an afterthought of mine. I continued my policy of falling in with such suggestions as were given with complete force and didn’t immediately threaten me with death. I went quietly, as they say of criminals going to the chair. Besides, I now had a faint stirring of a wish to know who had taken me into custody, if I couldn’t know where that custody might lead. As I stood up, the grips had been shifted from neck and shoulder to the lower arms; but they were held mighty securely, and I was certainly being led along by someone, though he moved so quietly that an Indian would have been green with jealousy. Believe me, I could hear the breathing, just; but the footfalls, no—now and then a rustle, but not a step. I suppose we went for a hundred paces or more like that; then I’d swear we turned right and then left and then I lost count. But I don’t think we went more than perhaps five or six hundred steps—and I’m good at that kind of reckoning—and all the way perhaps it sloped a bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was level—a pretty fine place to discover, if only one had been free to observe and not think of oneself. But I was alive enough to note that we were approaching something. There was no doubt of it, there was a greenish gleam somewhere, the kind of first hint when light half a dozen removes away is filtered, or rather comes echoing down, to its last faintest glimmer.

  But it was soon quite clear that whatever it was, it wasn’t daylight. Indeed, if I’d been in a dramatic mood, I’d have said it was just the sort of light that this situation seemed to call for: a mildew green with a bloom of unhealthy blue on it. Still, as it grew, I found I could see by it, could see that I had been in some sort of high tunnel, and this shaft in turn was opening into still another cavern, and it was from this farther cavern that the light—you couldn’t say “streamed”; it had none of the vigor of a stream—“oozed” would be the better word. I could also begin to get some sort of dim outline of my captors, for I now saw I had a cop on each hand. They were huddled figures not up to my shoulder, but that didn’t mean they weren’t strong—kind of skinny acrobat-dwarfs, I made as my first guess. Why, then, they should smother themselves up in gowns and robes and trains beat me—but then I was, you’ll judge, pretty beat all round by then. Well, we traipsed along and the light grew more dense; you couldn’t say brighter, for it showed practically no detail, and yet the place wasn’t foggy, only nothing seemed in clear focus. Then we turned yet another right angle and we were where the light was coming from. Now, I ought to have been pleased to discover that, or at least have noted what it was that gave off this odd illumination. But I didn’t give so much as a glance. Why? Because of what at last, though very dimly, the light did show.

  We were in a hall, or perhaps I ought to say a series of halls. Great apses and bays and coves, transepts and aisles and ambulatories went off in every direction from a vast central space. That was a striking enough setting, but it was what it set that kept me from admiring the plutonic scenery. The place, though so vast, was so fully carved, wrought, decorated that you hardly noticed its spaciousness. It was just like one of those late baroque Mexican cathedrals, so covered with carving that you can’t see an inch of clear stone or have any idea where the structural ribs and shafts run. Nor was there any doubt in my mind now that all this was not merely the chance scoopings, meanderings, and pilings-up of deposits and streams that had oozed from the roof. The light wasn’t good, but you could see again and again the same fantastic patterns repeated like arcades and canopies. I leaped to the conclusion—here was some huge shrine of, say, some Maya or Toltec people, people driven literally underground and here pursuing hidden, dark rites! I had grounds for some gloom. Early Mexican religion, everyone knows, holds one prize firmly: it is without comparison the cult which puts most value on human sacrifice and the shedding of human blood. And what met my glance was in complete confirmation of my suspicion and utterly unreassuring. Every one of these figures along which my eye ranged was ghastly. I once saw a photograph of the famous Ossuary, as I believe they call it, of the Capuchin monks in Rome. In their cloister there they have a peculiar soil. So they used only to bury a dead brother for a little while, after which he was dug up and used as a key part of the gigantic macabre composition which makes the walls of the horrible place. The corpse became the statue in a series of canopied niches, each so filled. And the canopies and the rest of the wall arcarding are made of the ribs and limb bones of less worthy members, while the fretwork is of finger bones and toes, and the finials, of course, of skulls.

  Well, all I can say is that looking around at the carvings that encrusted the walls of this giant vault, I’d have preferred good old human corpses and skeletons: it would have been more homelike. For these forms weren’t human, not one of them. Over and over again these infernal patterns of demonic fantasy were carved in the highest relief, and they were all hived round this central space, as though ready to swoop down and devour a victim. That, of course, led me to turn from my first glances back to myself and my “companions.” Well, if I’d felt a bit sick before, now I was seized with such a shudder that I nearly shook myself free from the grasps that held me. For, looking first right and then left, I saw that the things that held me and were drawing me along were exactly the same as the carvings. They were those pendants above me come to life. I don’t think such a wave of nausea, disgust, horror, and panic ever struck me in my life. I thought I’d die. I was in the grip of obscene demons. I couldn’t get away from them. They didn’t turn on me, but neither did they relax that hold. But they did let me stand a moment, or I’d have slumped in my tracks. To get my eyes at least away from the horror which kept my flesh in a constant goose-fleshing, I looked up to the roof and walls again. And it was then, at that second look, that I gave up, my knees went, I was down on the floor and didn’t care what they did with me—though that seemed pretty clear, pretty close, and quite certainly horrible. For there was only one thing that could have been added to my sickening dismay—those carvings, that wild work which fretted and
festooned every corner and crag and vault and facet of that vast place, every piece of this fantastic arras, was alive! Crawlingly, pulsingly alive, every inch of it. For these weren’t carvings. They were creatures, hanging like pendants, splayed like spandrels, bracketed, corbeled, finialed. The place was just crowded, literally from floor to ceiling, by an immense inhuman audience. And every one of them was like my captors. I could no longer have a doubt of it. I was in the hands of a huge tribe of man-size, or nearly man-size, bats! And of their strength and agility I had, and at that moment was having, clearest proof. Seeing is believing, but feeling is knowing. Well, they hoisted me onto my legs again and, staggering as though I were a drunk being taken off by a couple of cops, I was led down the hall with this huge overhanging audience, all gazing, as I could only imagine, greedily at me. No wonder the Mexicans had said, “The devils will get you!” They had.

  We stopped in the center. The light was better there. I’d discovered, in a dull uninterested way—the way you count and note the patterns on the carpet when you’re having a really bad interview with someone—where that light came from. As it would in that infernal place, it came from below. The sand was faintly phosphorescent and threw up this greenish light, so that the dark forms were lit, as you see the faces of people lit by the old Christmas lighting when you play at “snap dragon.” I’d reached that dreary acceptance in which a deep disgust is all that is left of the full tide of horror—a sort of sludge that remains after the wave has passed over one. I lifted my eyes wearily. I suppose I was tired of waiting for the creatures to pounce and begin tearing me to pieces. But they had order in their ritual and table manners—or was it that there was to be actually grace before meat?

  I was, not a doubt of it, in front of some kind of broad pillar or high altar. I waited, they waited, and then, from behind the pillar something rose, something was clambering onto it. The creature was twice the size of any at which I had yet glanced, and, whereas they were dusky, it was light colored. I could see it comparatively clearly, for the sand around the pillar was most phosphorescent, and the bright glow, striking up, brought into strong relief every one of its features, and they certainly repaid such dramatic lighting. Did you ever read the horror book called Dracula? Well, that old half-human bloodsucker was just a tame dude beside this king of vampires. Dracula: he was only a dear old aristocrat who had unfortunately contracted a taste for hemoglobin! The thing, which had now perched itself on this post, was a bat, certainly as large as any man, and when it had got itself comfortably roosting, it first threw up its wings, as birds do when they are just settling, and then let those great leathery vans droop down like the skirts of a robe. There was a face, of course, but that was all you could say. Have you ever studied bats’ faces? I expect not. It’s certainly not an exercise in esthetics. But I have now. Nature seems to have been in a queer, quirky mood when she modeled these mysterious mammals. There’s one called “the tube-nosed bat”; two are called “the greater and lesser horseshoe bats,” for their faces are designed in a grotesque series of grinning wales that look like horseshoes. And there’s another called the mask bat, for, like a kind of camouflage, his real features are disguised behind a sort of sham face all of puckers and scowls.

  But of all I’ve studied since, not one has approached in wild fantasy the face I now confronted. There was a vast mouth that, with a kind of fixed leer, spread right across the face and had teeth gleaming over the edge of the curved lips. Above that—for there seemed little chin—was a row of bristles that made a fringe just below a nose so wide and flat that it repeated on something of the same scale the sweep and span of the mouth. Indeed, the enormous nostrils seemed to make a kind of secondary and upper mouth. Out over these wide distended vents, evidently allowing a vast intake of air, peered two eyes, small, steady-gleaming, green lamps, and above each of these points of light reared up two miter-like ears, tasseled with hair. Yes, it was a horror. And yet there was about it such a symmetry, such a suggestion, too, of efficiency that one had to see at once that this was no disease or distortion. It was simply a terrible and indeed a wonderfully extreme variant on the face we have, a face in which everything had been sacrificed, strained, and distended so that all the ports of the five senses should be thrust out, mounted on turret batteries or gun emplacements. I was suddenly reminded of some Javanese masks I’d seen, very beautiful really, though wildly extravagant. And then I, too, like the Ancient Mariner when he’d given up all hope and lay idly waiting for death, looking at the huge sea-snakes playing round the abandoned ship and raising iridescent lights in the stagnant water, I, too, “blessed them unaware.” This creature and his court were fascinating—though five minutes afterward they might be brooding, with me as their digesting dinner.

  I still like to think it was this change in my mood that at least helped to bring about the next stage. The monstrous creature that towered above me, and which till then I had thought was giving its full attention to me, began now to swing its great ears to and fro, as though it were garnering impressions. For some time I heard nothing but a sort of occasional click. But then, true enough, every now and then I could catch a piercingly high note. Next I could see the lips of the central creature begin to move, and I was close enough to see the great furry throat swelling and pulsing. This went on, say, for a quarter of an hour, and indeed I had begun to sink back into a sort of dullness that came from exhaustion and too much strain, when I was brought back with another severe start. The creature crouching above me suddenly spread its vast span of wing, which till then had shrouded it. I saw a body of terrible leanness, flanks like a giant greyhound’s, a chest even deeper—a great keel, like a yacht’s, under the stretched skin of which one could see the splay of the ribs moving at each huge breath like fingers of weaving, sinewy hands. The loins and legs were birdlike, just a lattice of tendons twisted like snakes round the bare bone-shaft, and these ending in almost talonous feet that gripped the capital of the pillar. From the neck, as craggy thin as the legs, the wirelike sinews moving under a skin like worn velvet, a gray-green down, rose this unbelievable head, a perfect if repulsive design, something more diabolic than any medieval illuminator had ever fancied. But I want to make clear: The features of that face were just too extravagant, the sneer, scowl, grimace—put it as you will—were too monstrous to convey or express any human passion, any passion at all, for passion always has about it some gust; it is an explosion of a sort. This visage was so outlandish, so outrageous that it had gone beyond—one could now have no doubt—any kind of mood. This was not man defaced by vice; no, it was not even the wild animal raging at its prey or its rival. This was Life, free from anthropomorphism, from all notions of beauty, free from all struggle with fellow life. This was Life itself, or the answer that Life itself had carved and made to the challenge of death, to the sheer pressure of circumstances, to the vast challenge that dead matter and this indifferent world hurl at everything that would dare try to live. The lines of conflict carved in such terrible torsion of high relief on this face marked the reactions that living tissue must make if it is to hold on to life in this world, draw force from the air, sense where it may find purchase, and cling to a universe that whirls on regardless of those who miss their grip and fall.

  Yes, I was wrung to a kind of fascinated admiration. Yet I did duck, like a chick at the swoop of a hawk, when, with one leap, and one vast wing-sweep, the thing took the air. It was up, though, that it went, clean into the air, yes, and swung through it with the easy strokes of a master swimmer or, indeed, as a fine walker will stride the earth. Again it was magnificent, though utterly inhuman, and, if I may put it so, it was as though the chairman having risen, the meeting too adjourned. For now, down from the corbels and lintels and coigns, and out from the friezes and architraves and capitals of this huge roost, the entire roster plunged and swept out after their lord. The breakup of the conference in Pandemonium, when in Paradise Lost we are told Satan had planned his attack upon Eden, could not have appeared in gr
ander or more gloomy imagery to Milton himself. But Pandemonium means din—and perhaps the strangest thing of all this strange event was that, save for those few piercing notes, the whole thing, meeting and maneuver, was carried out in a silence that in itself was amazing. Even the flight was practically noiseless: just a murmur, a sighing high up in the vaults, the faint sound of a draft of wind in the tops of very tall trees—and the host had vanished like a dark dream.