by J; P Voelkel
“It looks like a cathedral,” gasped Max. It was then he realized that the hissing sound was coming from the hundreds—maybe thousands—of brown furry creatures that were clinging to the roof of the cave.
“Bats!” he whispered to Lola, but she’d gone.
He could hear her splashing on ahead. He quickly climbed down into the stream and followed her into the darkness.
“How much farther?” he asked, but she didn’t answer.
They waded deeper and deeper into the cavern, following the course of the stream. Bats swooped over Max’s head, making him duck and stumble. Most of the time, the water came up only to his ankles, but it was cold and the stones on the streambed were sharp, so the going was difficult. It was also slightly surreal, due to the ever-increasing amount of pottery they passed.
Pots had been placed in small pools, on ledges, stuffed between stalagmites, tucked into small niches: anywhere there was a pot-sized hole, a pot was filling it. It reminded Max of his grandmother’s house in Italy, where every available space was filled with china figurines. But the oddest thing about this display was that every single pot was cracked or broken.
“What’s with all the pots?” asked Max.
“Caves were sacred places,” said Lola. “People came to this one to pray for rain. They would bring a piece of pottery with them and break it to release the spirits inside. It’s a way of saying thank you to the gods.”
Max was enjoying the image of holding a Maya Thanksgiving at Nonna’s house and smashing all her china, when he heard a noise behind them. One glance at Lola told him she’d heard it, too.
They upped their pace.
Presently, they entered an even bigger cavern, where the stream formed a wide, shallow pool. In this chamber, the tops of the stalagmites had been cut off and the insides hollowed out. Max slipped and bumped into one of them. It rang like a bell, with a low vibration that echoed through the cave. The other stalagmites in the chamber also began to resonate, creating a haunting melody.
“Idiot!” hissed Lola. “You’ll lead them straight to us. Don’t touch anything else. And stay on the edge of the pool.”
“Wouldn’t it be quicker to just wade straight across?” he asked.
In answer, Lola shone her flashlight onto the pool. Several skeletons were lying in the water, their centuries-old bones covered in a layer of calcite, which gave them a more fleshly appearance. Rising from the pool’s center was a small island on which a stone altar had been built. On the front of the altar was carved a fearsome figure with bulbous eyes, a long nose, and two curving tusks. In one hand, the figure held what looked like a bolt of lightning. In the other, it held a bowl containing a sinister-looking lump.
“What’s in his bowl?” asked Max.
“A human heart.”
“Oh.”
Max’s own heart was pounding as they circled the rest of the pool.
On the far side was a narrow cleft in the rock. As they drew closer, he heard a low rumbling. They turned sideways to squeeze through the gap, and as they inched along, the rumbling got louder and louder until it became a deafening roar.
“Not much farther now,” called Lola.
The passageway gave another turn and opened into a tall, narrow cavern. They were on a stone platform overlooking a rushing underground river. Facing outward from each corner of the platform was the stone head of a snarling jaguar. In the center of the platform, steps led down into the raging torrent.
“It’s a dead end,” screamed Max. “We’re trapped!”
“It’s the Sacred River of the Jaguar Kings—our escape route!”
Max looked down at the whirling, surging, foaming maelstrom beneath them. It wasn’t possible that anyone could survive in those perilous waters.
“No way!” he yelled.
“It’s the only way!” she yelled back.
Chapter Nine
SHOOTING THE RAPIDS
You’re crazy!” Max screamed over the noise of the water. “We can’t swim in that—we’ll drown!”
“The water is a little high,” conceded Lola. “But we won’t be swimming.”
Max watched, puzzled, as she climbed up behind a cluster of stalagmites and pulled out a large bundle. When she shook it out, he saw it was a six-foot rubber raft. Rolled up inside were two collapsible paddles and a foot pump.
“I had a feeling I’d need a fast getaway.” Lola looked pleased with herself.
“You planned this?”
She nodded.
“But look at the water. Nothing could survive that.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Hoop? You pump, I’ll pack. Hurry!”
His brain paralyzed with fear, Max inflated the raft and assembled the paddles. Lola tied the backpacks onto the raft’s handles and taped the flashlights to the front as headlamps, so their hands would be free for paddling.
She seemed to know what she was doing.
They dragged the raft down the steps, and Lola held it steady while Max scrambled in on shaking legs.
Before Lola could follow him, they were both caught in a powerful beam of light.
“Stop!” commanded a heavily accented voice. “There is no way out. Surrender now, or these will be the waters of your death.”
Max recognized the lisping tones of Count Antonio de Landa.
He was ready to surrender there and then, but Lola jumped in and started paddling furiously. They were swept away from the steps and into the darkness.
Bang!
A shot echoed in the cave, and a red light high above them illuminated the raft as it careened and bucked in the churning water.
“What was that?” whimpered Max.
“Flare gun,” said Lola as she dug her paddle into the water. “They’re lighting up the cave to shoot at us.”
Max started paddling like his life depended on it—which it did.
A burst of gunfire ricocheted off the cave wall. Max threw himself onto the floor of the raft, but Lola yelled at him to get back up. As he dipped his paddle shakily into the water, he braced himself for the bullet that never came. The swift current swept them out of Landa’s view, and the last they heard of him was a volley of Spanish curses echoing through the cavern.
There was no time to relax. The tunnel narrowed and the current strengthened, shooting them into a twisting passageway. They bounced from one wall to another until, soaked in spray, they were swept sideways into a cavern filled with stalactites and stalagmites, like a forest of stone.
At times, they glided through vast chambers where the water was calm and their flashlights found blind catfish lurking in the depths, their eyes atrophied from centuries of darkness. At other times, the current was fierce and they had no time to look at anything as they struggled to keep the raft off the rocks.
All the time, Max was trying to keep his mind a blank, trying not to think about the blackness around them, the weird shapes of the rocks, what it would be like to fall into the water, the impossibility of ending this day alive.
They entered a place where the cave roof had collapsed, and they had to shade their eyes from the blinding sunlight that poured down on them. The water here was a sparkling green, and it flowed slowly as if reluctant to reenter the darkness. All around the chamber, strange forms like giant hairy turnips twisted out of the water and up through the roof of the cave.
“What are those?” asked Max.
“Tree roots from above,” said Lola. “They’ve burrowed down through the limestone to get to this river.”
“I can’t believe roots could bore through solid rock,” marveled Max.
Lola turned around to look at him. “Life is hard in the rainforest,” she said. “Everything is fighting for survival.”
“Including you?”
She didn’t answer, and they paddled on in silence.
All too soon, they slipped back into darkness. The river was quiet now and the air was stale. It was getting harder to breathe. The cave ceiling came down lower and lowe
r, and they had to lean back to pass underneath. Sometimes they had to lie completely flat on their backs as they pushed themselves along with their fingertips in the pitch black.
Once there was the terrible sound of rock scraping on rubber as they got wedged under a particularly low overhang. Then they had to try not to scream and calmly maneuver themselves to the left or the right, to find a place where the raft could squeeze through. (By unspoken agreement, Max did the trying not to scream, while Lola did the calm maneuvering.)
“Are we nearly there?” gasped Max. It was so hot, he thought he might dissolve like a lump of butter in a frying pan. Claustrophobia didn’t really cover it. There was no air, no space, no light. This raft was like a floating coffin. Except that he knew he wasn’t dead because he could hear the blood roaring in his ears.
“I need you to concentrate, Hoop,” said Lola. “Do you hear that roaring noise?”
“You can hear it, too?” asked Max in surprise.
Lola nodded. “It’s the rapids.”
“Rapids?”
“Calm down, Hoop, it’s okay. The river splits in two: our branch meanders calmly to the outside, the other way gets a bit wild. We must stay close to this wall. If we drift into the middle and get caught in the current, we’ll be swept over the rapids and we don’t want that, do we?”
Max shook his head. He definitely didn’t want that.
They inched along, hanging on to rocks and tree roots to keep them close to the wall. The water was placid on their side, and ahead of them was a silent tunnel filled with darkness.
Lola groaned.
She waved her paddle into the darkness. It made a dull thud. What had looked like a tunnel was a solid wall of black stone. The raft lurched to a stop. The river disappeared under the rock.
“Now what? We’re trapped! You said you knew the way!” Max was panicking.
“It’s not my fault,” said Lola. “The water has risen after the storm.”
“What are we going to do?”
“How do I know? Just don’t freak out, you’re tipping the raft.”
She pulled one of the flashlights off the front of the raft and shone the light along the surface of the water where it met the wall of rock.
There was no way through.
“The rapids it is, then,” said Lola.
“No way!”
“Let’s just go back and check it out. We can’t stay here.”
Reluctantly, Max helped her turn the raft and maneuver it back to the splitting point. Bits of vegetation flew along in the fast-flowing water rushing to the rapids. The roaring noise was almost deafening now.
“I vote we get it over with,” said Lola.
Before Max could argue, she pulled his hand off the rock and they were off, slowly at first and then gathering speed until they became one with the roaring river. The twisting tunnel curved sharply down and they shot through it, whirling and pitching. The jumping beam of the flashlight made it hard to see what was ahead. Boulders loomed at them out of the darkness.
Max screamed all the way.
You’d pay a fortune for this at Disneyland, he told himself.
They struggled frantically to keep the raft centered in the current. A jagged outcrop loomed on the right. Max used all his strength to push off of it with his paddle. The raft hung there for a moment before veering back into the current. Max’s paddle, still wedged in the rocks, was ripped from his hand.
Caught off balance, he almost fell overboard.
He’d just scrabbled back inside when the raft was thrown into the air as they dropped over a small waterfall. He was pitched over the side of the raft and under the foaming water. The current swirled around him and raged in his ears. Everything was black. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know which way was up.
His lungs were gasping for air.
Suddenly, something pushed him from underneath and he shot up through the surface like a whale rider at SeaWorld.
He was in some sort of underground lake.
The water was still.
The rapids were behind him.
The raft was about ten feet away. He could see Lola outlined in a circle of light, surrounded by the menacing darkness on all sides. He splashed over through the icy-cold water, trying not to think about what might lurk in its depths.
“Give me a hand,” he sputtered, pulling at the side of the raft.
A hand! A hand! A hand! his voice echoed back at him from all directions.
“Hold on,” called Lola. “The raft’s full of water.”
“Hurry, the catfish are biting my legs.”
This wasn’t true, but in his imagination they were circling him like sharks. He was sure it was only a matter of time before they pounced.
“No, they’re not! Don’t be such a baby!”
Baby! Baby! sang the echoes, as if the cave walls themselves were taunting him.
Lola helped him aboard.
“Where’s your paddle?” she said.
“I lost it.”
“You lost it?”
“I nearly drowned.”
“But you didn’t drown, did you? I think the Jaguar Kings are helping us.”
Max remembered how something had pushed him to the surface. He was shivering uncontrollably, out of cold and fear. “Y-yeah, sure,” he said as cynically as he could through chattering teeth. “J-just get me out of here.”
“Get a grip,” said Lola sternly. “We’re coming to the tricky bit.”
“The tricky bit? Trickier than those rapids? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Calm down, Hoop. The Jaguar Kings will look after us.”
“But—”
“Shh,” she said, holding up a finger and listening intently. She paddled hesitantly onward, then stopped and listened again. She did this a few times, paddling and listening, paddling and listening, until she announced triumphantly, “Found it!”
“What?”
“The way out!”
“But we’re in the middle of an underground lake.”
“Can you hear that faint sucking noise? This lake drains from below.”
“No way!” said Max. “Forget it!” Being sucked through an underwater drain sounded even more terrifying than bodysurfing through the rapids of an underground river.
“Do you have a better idea?” asked Lola.
Max looked at her with terror.
“No? Then we have no choice.” When she unfixed the one flashlight they had left, darkness fell like dirt on a grave.
“I’m not getting back into that water,” he said.
He heard Lola splash over the side, and then there was silence.
“Lola? Lola?”
Out of the darkness, her arm snaked around his waist, there was a quick scuffle, and he was flipped overboard. Spluttering and coughing, he grabbed hold of the side of the raft, too shocked even to protest.
“I’m sorry, Hoop, it was for your own good,” she said. “Just hold on tight.”
He didn’t need telling twice. He was gripping so tightly, his hands were starting to cramp up.
There were strange sounds in the dark.
“What’s that noise?”
“I’m slashing the raft.”
“No!” he cried, but it was too late.
“It’s done,” said Lola. “Just let me put the machete away.”
Weighted down by the backpacks, the deflated raft started sinking. It would have gone straight to the bottom if they hadn’t been holding it.
“Take a deep breath,” said Lola, “and let the current take you. The raft will pull us down. The Jaguar Kings will help us, I promise.”
“I can’t do it,” said Max.
“We’ll go on three,” said Lola.
“I can’t do it!”
“One …”
“Stop!”
“Two …”
“No!”
“Three!”
He heard Lola take a deep breath and then he felt the raft pulling him down as she d
isappeared under the water.
He could let go or he could follow her.
He followed her under the water and heard a roar coming up through the lake. In a panic, he let go of the raft and swam back up to the surface. He gulped great mouthfuls of air, treading water in the pitch black.
What now?
He called Lola’s name, and it echoed back at him mockingly.
Lola! Lola! Lola!
Echoes surrounded him and closed in on him. The crazy count had been right. These would be the waters of Max’s death. When he was too tired and too cold to tread water anymore, he would slide under and drown.
The current tugged at his ankles.
His only chance was to follow Lola.
He took a big breath and forced his face into that black water.
He swam down.
One, two, three strokes. The roar was deafening.
Four, five, six strokes. His ears hurt and he felt dizzy.
Seven, eight, nine. His hand exploded with pain as it smashed on a rock.
Ten, eleven, twelve. He tried to fight it, but it was too late. He closed his eyes and gave in to the force that was pulling him down and squeezing him and squirting him out like mustard on a hot dog. Pictures from his life flashed before his eyes, faces and places and long-forgotten moments.
Strangely, Max Murphy’s last thought was of Zia’s tamales.
Chapter Ten
STRANGE WEATHER
When Max opened his eyes, he was lying on his back in shallow water.
Somewhere in the distance he could hear a rushing torrent, but the pool around him was as warm and still as a bath. Light bounced off the water and cast an unworldly light throughout the chamber, reflecting the ripples of the waves on the rock walls above him.
He was just wondering if this was a special watery heaven for drowning victims, when a familiar voice called him back to the land of the living.
“Are you going to lie around all day?”
He turned his head to one side and saw Lola sitting on a sandbank, cutting the backpacks from the remnants of the raft.
“Did we make it?” he gasped.
“Yes,” she said, “no thanks to you.”
Max sat up. His hand hurt like crazy and he guessed the rest of him was covered with bruises. “Some escape route,” he grumbled. “I feel like I’ve been through a washing machine.”
