Moffat’s Secret
J.C. Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are used fictitiously. No representation that any statement made in this book is true or that any incident depicted in this book actually occurred is intended or should be inferred by the reader.
Dedicated to the Readers.
To the Inquisitive who ask - what might be.
To the Open Minded who say - it could be.
To the Convinced who state - it is.
Part I
The Caverns
Four Years Earlier
Chapter 1
Chad Archer adjusted the light on his hard hat and went back to work. He half listened to Doc’s continuous lecture on mankind’s shared accomplishments. He had heard it before. Chad attended Dr. Henry Clark’s lectures for four years at Braxton College and for another six summers on excavation sites. Doc was not only his teacher, but also a mentor and friend to the younger archeologist.
Chad looked up at the wall paintings. The low level light from multiple battery lanterns created shadows that danced among the century old figures. This elliptical cavern that they named Grotto 2 was not nearly as large as Grotto 1. It measured only twelve feet wide and eighteen feet deep. Enough room for two diggers at a time. He wondered again at the uses of this cave throughout the centuries. There were stories in the local Native American tribes of the powers in these caves and the out of body experiences of their shamans.
Chad’s thoughts were interrupted. He felt a vibration. He locked eyes with Henry. They had been through earthquakes before. Only, never inside a mountain. Not in a place where there was no time to escape.
Earthquakes suspend time. Fear and helplessness speed up thoughts. Mostly thoughts of bad outcomes. The mind operates ten times faster than normal. Time seems longer than it really is.
Three seconds. The lanterns tip over. Five seconds. A shovel propped against the wall falls. Six seconds. Dust and small granules rain from the ceiling. Seven seconds. Chad and Henry start to react. Nine seconds. A tearing sound. Rock cracking.
Ten seconds. Large rocks fall from above. Thick dust consumes the light. And, their air.
Chapter 2
Archer opened his eyes but didn’t move from his protective fetal position. The dust cloud in the grotto muffled all sound. The vibration from the quake had ended. The battery powered lanterns worked hard, but futilely, to push light into the darkened room. He breathed slowly through the dust mask, a last instinctive action, before the rain of stone. They both kept the masks hung around their necks as protection from any sudden dust eruptions by the piped in air.
He uncurled, checking his limbs one by one. No injuries. Several pebbles had pinged off his helmet. Chad turned his helmet light toward Doc. The dim light showed shadows of equipment, creepers, and other strangely shaped objects. He didn’t see Henry. He crawled toward Henry’s position.
“Doc?” No answer.
“Henry? Are you okay?” Still no answer.
Finally, he saw Henry, lying flat, not moving, covered in dust. Chad brushed away the dust from Henry’s face and checked his pulse. He was alive. Carefully, he placed Henry’s mask over the mouth and nose. Using his helmet light, Chad inspected his friend. Doc’s helmet was dented and the light broken. The sleeves were ripped and his arms were scratched from the sharp rocks, but there were no large bloody wounds. Good, so far. Next, Chad looked at Doc’s legs.
“Damn,” he said softly as he viewed the odd angle of the left foot. The ankle skin was broken and a small amount of blood oozed from a wound. A few feet away, Chad saw several watermelon-sized rocks. One of them probably crushed the ankle. What else was damaged?
Moving back to Henry’s face, Chad noted the mask moving in and out in a regular rhythm. Good. He was breathing.
“Henry?” Chad called out. He slapped Doc’s face. “Henry, can you hear me?”
The body stirred. Henry groaned.
“Henry, wake up. C’mon now.”
Henry’s eyes slowly opened. They took a few seconds to focus.
“Chad? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good. Henry, you’ve been hurt. Knocked unconscious. Can you see my hand?”
“Um, hm.”
“How many fingers do I have up?”
“Two.”
Chad knew he had only a few moments before the pain and shock of the ankle injury reached the brain.
“Now how many?”
“Five,” Henry said weakly.
“Wrong. Four fingers and one thumb.” Chad saw Henry’s eyes light up in a smile. Good. Doc could comprehend.
“Follow my fingers with your eyes.”
Chad moved his fingers back and forth and Henry’s eyes followed obediently.
“I don’t think you have a concussion,” Chad said confidently. “How does your head feel? Your helmet was cracked.”
“What, are you a doctor now? My head is okay. But my leg really hurts.”
“Your ankle is damaged. I need to cut your pants to see what is broken. Don’t move. I’ll get the kit.”
Chad groped his way to the side of the cave where they kept emergency supplies - first aid kit, water, food, and two tanks of compressed air for the SCBA, Self Contained Breathing Apparatus.
Returning with the first aid kit, Chad noticed that the dust was settling. He didn’t hear the air pumps. They had lost power. They still needed the masks. He cut open Doc’s pants. The left leg was broken. One or both bones. The skin wasn’t broken, however, the leg was contorted by the bone pushing against the skin.
He looked in the kit and found the morphine tablets. “Henry, your left leg is broken. You need to take morphine for the pain. I’m going to remove your mask and lift your head up.”
Chad opened the envelope, dropping the pills directly in Henry’s mouth. Then he slowly gave him the water.
“Are you going to set the leg, doctor?” Henry grinned.
“No. I’ll get you out and we’ll let the professionals do that. The skin isn’t broken. I need to clean the ankle and stop the bleeding. This may hurt.”
“Can you take off my helmet?” Henry asked.
“There may be an aftershock. I don’t think that will be a good idea.” Chad had a thought. “Be right back.”
From the corner he gathered the tarps they used to cover the excavation at night. He folded them and carefully put them under henry’s head, removing the helmet and positioning it over Henry’s face.
“How’s that?”
The muffled response was, “Better.”
“Okay. Now I’ll clean and bandage the ankle.”
Henry twitched with the pain but never cried out as Chad worked.
Satisfied with his bandage, Chad lifted the helmet. Henry’s eyes were closed and his face grimaced.
“Henry, I’m going to see if the tunnel is clear. I don’t see any light from it, not that we get much anyway. The air has stopped pumping, too.”
“Your bedside manner lacks encouragement, doctor.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve never lost a patient.”
“How many have you had?”
“You’re my first, but not to worry, Braxton College had an anatomy course in the archeology curriculum, remember?”
“Oh, great. Did you attend or skip that class?”
“I attended a few. Enough to pass the course.”
“Wonderful,” Henry said sarcastically. He knew Chad aced everything. His former student had a genius IQ. But, it was one thing to learn something. It was another thing to apply it.
“I’ll be back,” Chad said as he lay back on the first of a three-creeper train. He propelled through the tunnel, as a mechanic would do sliding under a car. The trailing creepers had b
ins that could hold tools, samples, and supplies.
Pushing his creeper carefully, Chad estimated he was only about ten feet short of the first grotto when he ran into a pile of stones. That was bad news. But, the worse news was that the rocks must have crushed the air hose coming from outside. Their time was limited. He slipped his hands into leather gloves and moved a double handful of stones from the pile to the empty plastic bin. He continued until the bins were full. Chad pushed the rock-filled bins back through the tunnel. It had taken ten minutes. He hardly dented the blockage.
“What’s it like?” Henry asked.
“Not bad,” Chad lied. “There’s a pile of stone blocking the entrance. It won’t take long.”
Most of the dust had settled. Henry removed the helmet and the dust mask.
Chad brought a SCBA to Henry. “You may need this.” Chad learned in training that these lasted thirty minutes, but would last longer if the person were at rest.
On his next trip down the tunnel, He worked faster, cutting the ten minutes to six. He calculated the size of the pile and the amount of air in the cylinders. There was not enough time.
Chapter 3
Chad slumped against the wall. Despite the coolness, his shirt was wet with the sweat from his feverish trips back and forth in the tunnel. He tried to calm his breathing sucking in the air from the second SCBA. He had to make it last. He had made fifteen trips in the last hour. His productivity improved to four minutes a trip.
Watching his friend lying on the ground, Chad estimated they had only twenty to thirty minutes of air. The mountain of stone and rocks was getting smaller but the more he dug, the more rocks trickled down from some unseen peak in front of him.
“Chad?”
“Yeah, Doc.”
“You better set this leg.”
“I know. But Doc, I could mess it up.”
“We wait much longer it will mess itself up.”
“Okay, Doc. Give me a minute.”
Chad had been thinking about this. They had several small short-handled shovels about three feet long. There was a roll of duct tape. Doc always brought several, using them in creative ways. Chad removed his belt and folded it over three times.
He knelt over his patient, one knee on each side of the left calf. “Doc, bite on this belt.”
Henry bit down on the belt.
“I’ll do this in three. Try to relax. Ready? One, two..”
Chad pushed the leg from each side on two. Henry jerked in pain, tears welling in his eyes.
“Sorry, Doc.” Chad worked quickly making his splint with the shovels and duct tape.
Sitting back, Chad took Henry’s hand.
“Best operation I’ve ever done, Doc,” Chad quipped taking the belt from Henry’s mouth.
Henry actually giggled. “Damn, it hurts, Chad. Don’t make me laugh.”
Chad laughed for them both. “I’ll get you another dose of pain killer.”
“As I lay here Chad, I’ve been pondering the Rocking Man.”
“You have, huh? Figured it out, have you?”
Henry named the painted etchings on the one side of the grotto as the Rocking Man. It wasn’t like drawings normally found in some of the Native American caves and cliff dwellings they had worked on or visited. These figures were chiseled into the rock wall. There were nine of them. The first and last were the same – a standing figure. A man-like figure, though the detail was primitive – a bulbous head and bulky arms and legs that almost looked inflated. No hands. The second figure from each end was a sitting man. The third and fourth were the sitting man tilted backwards. One was thirty degrees, one forty-five degrees to horizontal. The middle figure was the man in a sitting position, but tilted fully on his back, with his knees up to his waist.
It looked like a man who sat, rocked back, rocked forward and then stood up. The Rocking Man.
“It’s a description of reincarnation.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Man, upright man, gets old. He becomes sitting man. He goes through two stages of increasing age. Finally he dies and is buried, lying flat, and peering skyward. Man then is reborn as a fetus, the inclined positions, to a child – another sitting position and finally back to upright man.”
Chad paused and looked at the etchings.
“Could be, Henry. There is a belief in many Native American cultures of reincarnation. Sometimes as animals. Sometimes as humans. Take these pills. Then tell me what you see. I can’t wait to hear it.”
Chad returned to the tunnel. He had a new idea. This time he crawled as far as he could up the pile. He stretched and reached to the top and started pulling handfuls of rocks and stones down past his body. Minute after minute, handful after handful. He worked quickly. His arms ached. His back was stiff from his position. Once more. One more time. Again. He pushed himself. His body screamed at him to stop. His head grew lighter and lighter with lack of oxygen.
Finally, he saw a sliver of light. A rush of air. He stopped pulling and started pushing. He opened a foot-high gap. Then he stopped, exhausted and breathed in the air.
Chapter 4
“How are you doing, Doc?” Chad asked coming out of the tunnel.
“Doing okay. Those pills are working. Mostly working. I do feel some pain. But it’s a dull pain. You know I think Rocking Man was looking at something. I can see stars on the ceiling. They flicker.”
Chad looked to the roof of the grotto. “I think it’s the pills, Doc. That and the dust that’s swirling around in here. It’s reflecting the lantern lights.”
“Don’t be so logical and analytical, Chad. Let your mind flow freely. See the possibilities.”
“I think your mind is flowing freely enough for the both of us, Doc.”
Clark laughed.
“Doc, I made it through to Grotto 1. Just poked a hole. I still have to clear it. No one is there. But we have some more air and when I get through there are more SCBA’s. We’ll be okay.”
“Good, Chad. Good.” His voice whispered and he fell asleep.
It was another hour for Chad to push the pile of stones and rock through to the first Grotto. Grotto 1 was blocked to the outside. He heard men working on it. Luckily the air tube from outside wasn’t crushed. He carried an SCBA on his creeper back to Henry. Henry didn’t wake as Chad placed the mask over his friend’s face and started the flow of air.
Returning to Grotto 1, Chad could still hear the sound of metal on rock. Help was coming. But how long until help arrives? He didn’t know. But, eventually, he needed to move Henry through the tunnel to Grotto 1. Might as well try now. Using more of the duct tape he secured Henry to the creepers. Slowly they made it to Grotto 1. Twenty minutes later the rescue team broke through.
Chapter 5
Chad waited for Henry to wake up in the hospital. His friend looked frail. His gray hair, bushy gray mustache, and weathered wrinkles from years outside that always looked robust, now made him look old. Henry was fifty-five and had been doing this for thirty-five years. He spent his summers on digs when he was at college, usually at sites in the States. After graduation, he excavated full-time for nearly ten years. Occasionally Henry took a semester to work on his doctorate, and after ten years, he finally began teaching. However, his true love was the digs and every May through August he could be found excavating somewhere in the world.
Chad was following in his footsteps. He was a child genius, starting at Braxton College the summer he turned sixteen and graduating three years later. After Chad’s first year of college, the summer he turned seventeen, Henry invited Chad to join four upper college classmen in Peru on a dig. Every summer since then they worked together. When he graduated, Chad began working full time at various sites under renowned archeologists who held the contract or grant. He had never secured his own grant for an excavation because he wanted the summer with Henry.
“Everything looks white, Chad” Henry said. “Is this heaven? How come you’re here?”
“You’re in a hospital, Hen
ry.” Chad looked at the tubes in Henry’s arms, the leg in a cast, and the traction device holding it immobile. The room could hold two patients. At the moment, Henry had it all to himself.
“Good. I don’t think I was ready to go yet. I need to write my entrance speech and practice it, too.”
“You plan to write a speech to get into heaven?”
“Aren’t you?” Henry asked.
“In the first place, I don’t believe in heaven. In the second place, if there is a heaven, why are you going to write a speech? They are supposed to have a record of all the good things and bad things. What good is a speech?”
“What if it’s a close call? It’s like getting into college, Chad. Consider it the essay that makes a difference.”
“Henry, you’ll argue about anything. How does your leg and ankle feel?”
“I hadn’t noticed. I can’t move it, now that you mention it.”
“They got you drugged up, Henry. Let me get the nurse.”
Chad got as far as the door of the hospital room. A nurse came in, brushed past Chad, and took charge.
“Well, Dr. Clark, you’ve decided to rejoin us. How are you feeling? Let’s check a few things…”
She rambled on while checking blood pressure, tweaking dials, taking his temperature, poking, prodding, and fluffing. She declared him ready to see the doctor and left.
“I’ve seen tornadoes that would be called dormant next to her,” Henry said. Both men laughed.
“Where are we, Chad?”
“Sedona. Seems like they have good doctors.”
On cue, a doctor walked in.
“Dr. Clark. I’m Dr. Willeth. I’d ask you how you are feeling, but with the drugs, I doubt you really know. Also, I doubt you will remember what I say today. So I will tell you again tomorrow. Okay?”
“Sure,” Henry responded, nodding and wearing a silly grin.
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