Holland Suggestions (24 page)

“I thought I heard noises…down there.”

His voice dropped to a half whisper: “You mean just now?”

“No, earlier. I had just come out of the first tunnel and I heard the sounds of metal striking rock.”

He shook his head.

“Another thing—I’m not real sure of this, but for what it’s worth—I thought I saw a light down there too.”

We were both quiet for a long time. We listened. Then, as I had, Max shrugged it off and went back to work on the ladder. The events of the past forty-eight hours ran through my mind like a fast-motion film.

At last he said, “How could there be anybody down there? The only rope from the top was that old one, and we know nobody came down that.”

“At least you know,” I said.

He tilted his head up and his light caught my eyes. “What do you say we worry about what’s down there when we get down there. Here—help me over the edge.”

He lay flat and squirmed out to the shaft. Water dripped from the mouth in steady streams, wetting both of us thoroughly as we struggled to get him a secure hold on the ladder. He started down; I lay in a puddle on my belly and watched him go. His light got smaller and still smaller, until he blended with the fuzzy whiteness at the bottom.

It was my turn. Max was looking up at me from the pit; the light from his headlamp filled the shaft and cast up shadows from jutting rocks. I clutched my safety rope under my arm, lowered myself carefully over the edge, and began my long climb to the sandy floor.

T
HE SANDBAR WAS ABOUT
thirty yards long; the sand was almost like salt, fine and white. A stream ran through, splitting the sand into two short slabs. Somewhere beyond was a larger stream; I could not see it but I heard it and felt it. The air was heavy with it; the moisture left my face and arms slick. Water poured out of the shaft at the bottom, forming a pool that fed the stream. I had to drop the last six or eight feet to the bottom because the ladder did not quite make it. But the sand was soft; I sank to my ankles and was cushioned from the drop. Max was standing nearby, looking around. I came close to him and together our lights pushed back the darkness.

We were in an immense chamber, probably the bottom of that great room we had seen from the upper cave. Behind us was a wall of rock; overhead, a sloping ceiling. But
out there,
away from the wall, was only empty darkness. We played our lights around us in a circle, but the only solid wall in sight was the one behind us.

“What a hole,” Max said; “a man could walk a few feet away from here and just never find his way back. We’ll have to be damn careful.”

He set up a flashing red light directly under the shaft. “The first thing to do is see if I’m right about your friend Barcotti,” he said.

He was. We found Kenneth Barcotti’s body at the far end of the shaft. The skeleton was badly shattered. He had fallen squarely onto a huge rock, smashing his skull and back and breaking both arms. “At least he didn’t suffer,” I said, kneeling over the remains. The clothing was almost completely rotted away, but I found part of a billfold that still contained a driver’s license, renewable in 1957. I took the wallet and stashed it in my pack. At least now we could write an end to the disappearance of the friend of my friend.

There was still much that could not be so neatly wrapped up. To Max, the Barcotti element was done and he had no more interest in it. He moved away from the remains and crossed the sandbar to the stream. I followed about ten feet behind him. The stream ran down to the larger stream, a swiftly moving water flow about ten yards wide. We went along the edge of the water, with the flow, and soon the sand thinned and disappeared and the rock was slippery under our feet. We got up higher, where the stream plunged under the earth and the walk was easier; then the ground sloped downward and the stream burst through again and the walk became a climb. At first the slope was gradual, but it deepened quickly. I slipped and fell into Max. He gripped me around the arm and we steadied each other there.

“This is as far as we go,” Max said; “come on, let’s get back, quick!”

But he had slipped too, and was struggling from his hands and knees. His grip on my coat broke and I began to slide backward. I gripped a rock and looked around for another handhold higher up. I found Max’s hand; he had crawled up to a higher level and was kneeling there, waiting to pull me up. At the top we both rested.

“It’s one of those tricks of gravity,” Max said; “it seems to be sloping gradually, but actually it’s steeper than you think. Listen.”

The only sound was that faraway waterfall, ahead of us now.

“Is that from this stream?”

“Damn right it is,” he said. He got to his feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

We backtracked upstream for about seventy yards. There we crawled out of the sloping channel and walked in a long arc away from the stream. We came downstream again, this time keeping to the high ground fifty yards from the edge. “We were in a riverbed,” Max said; “it’s just a trickle now, but the river must have been fifty yards wide at one time. Maybe it still is, at certain times of the year. Later in the summer, when the snow really starts to melt high up, I bet this place is a roaring bitch.”

We were walking very slowly now, and his hand reached out and gripped mine. “Easy,” he said. Ahead, the ground dropped away, insidious because it first looked like a short drop in the floor. Ten feet from the edge Max motioned me down, and we inched the rest of the way on our bellies. Below us was an extension of the cave, how deep I may never know. It had to be at least as deep as the original shaft; maybe twice that. We saw nothing solid in that black void, not the slightest hint of any wall other than the wall beneath us. I turned toward the waterfall; the water flickered at me as it tumbled over the edge and out of sight. Max followed it down with his light until he lost it, and for several minutes we just listened to the sound of it. The roar was muffled, like some small earthquake that you feel but hardly hear.

“How deep do you think?” I said.

“A thousand feet; maybe more.”

We pushed away from the edge and followed the stream back toward the sandbar. The return trip seemed longer; actually it took only a few minutes, probably less time because we were surer now of our footing. As we came to the sand Max stopped and looked around; I saw that the flashing light he had left under the shaft was out. “That’s funny,” he said; “I know that light had new batteries.”

We found the light just where he had left it, but a large rock had smashed it beyond repair. Max looked up into the shaft, playing his light along the walls. “I guess a rock could have fallen from up there somewhere, but there aren’t many rocks in this sandpit, even under the shaft. It does seem funny that one would fall just now and hit our light. Doesn’t that seem funny to you?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Just remembering the noises you heard down here. It’s possible that somebody has beaten us to the mine. Maybe they’re trying to scare us off.”

“Maybe they’re doing a pretty goddamn good job. I don’t like fooling around with people I can’t see.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not push any alarms yet, okay? We’ve still got a lot of exploring to do.”

He set up another flasher—his last—in the sand, some ten feet from the shaft opening. We moved out again, this time going upstream. We cut diagonally across the sandpit, joining the stream at the far end. Max did not try to cross the water; he followed the stream on high ground, above the riverbed, and I came a few steps behind him. I looked periodically at the flasher; long after we had passed the edge of the sandbar I was glancing nervously over my shoulder. Then the ground sloped upward and I heard the sound of a new waterfall, ahead of us, and I turned my attention to what was ahead. Soon I saw a great sheer wall loom up and I felt a heavy spray against my face. We moved along the rocks behind the spray and came into a wide trail cut into the rock and leading along the side of the wall.

The climb was short, ending just thirty feet above the floor. There the trail turned inward and bored into the wall. There was a slight hollowed rock platform there, where the miners had worked long ago. We did not go in; we probed into the mine with our lights. The roof had crumbled in at least three places; rotted timbers had long ago collapsed, leaving the floor littered with shattered wood and rock debris. Deeper, a bad cave-in had sealed the mine, making passage impossible.

“That’s that,” I said.

“Not by a longshot. I’ll be amazed if this is the only mine in the cave. There’s a lot we haven’t seen yet.”

We backtracked to the floor and followed the wall into a great concave dip. There was still an outline of trail, even at floor level, and we kept to it, coming to an end at the deepest part of the dip.
And there they were:
two great wooden doors, blocking our way like guardians of a medieval castle. They were old and strong and forbidding; burned into each were symbols that I now knew by heart: The Maltese cross.

Max was beside himself. He threw down his bag and hugged me around the shoulders; he scrambled over the few loose rocks and pulled at the doors with his fingers. That was futile, and he stepped back for another look.

The doors were reinforced with strong steel bars, badly scratched in places with the unmistakable signs of pryings. Max played his light along the floor to reveal two smooth arcs of earth where the doors had been opened backward.

“Christ, somebody’s been in here.” He pulled again at the door with his fingers, but it did not move. I helped, but even the two of us could not budge it. “Crowbars—that’s what we need,” Max said. “Damn it to hell, I knew I’d leave something upstairs. You stay here and keep watch.”

He was gone, just that quickly. I called, “Wait!” but he either did not hear or did not choose to hear; he clattered over loose rock to the floor of the cave. I moved to the edge of the trail and watched him go, a tiny bobbing light picking its way toward the dull red flasher. I wanted to go with him, wanted desperately for us to be together again, and I called louder. He did not stop. The darkness closed in around me and became a threat. I eased back against the doors. From there I could not see Max or the red flasher,
so the hell with it;
I was stuck there alone until he returned, and now the thing was not to worry about it. I filled the time with other things: speculation on the nature of the Spanish who had worked here and what we might find behind these doors. I looked at the Maltese cross and touched the oak; it was still hard and very thick. But these efforts to divert my attention waned and my jitters returned. I looked at my watch and sat against the doors to wait for Max. But he never came.

Thirty minutes later I was too nervous to wait any more. I moved away from the doors and stood on the edge of the trail, peering into the cave for some flash of light. I saw nothing; even the red flasher was out. My first reaction to that was cold fear, but I overcame that with reason: Max might have put it out, for any possible reason. I called his name loudly; only echoes came back at me. I turned off my headlamp and crawled down in the shelter of a large rock to wait and to think.

The foot noises came first: the sound of someone walking toward me on the rock floor. But he was coming without a light:
That was insane!
I stretched my body over the rock, straining my eyes for some sign of light. The footsteps stopped and I heard other noises; a shuffling, an unpacking of tools. Then there was quiet, so absolute that it strained my nerves to the breaking point. I screamed Max’s name, knowing that now there could be no answer. I cringed down in the hollow of the rock to wait.

There were cave noises all around me, I know, but I never heard them. My mind was tuned to other sounds that weren’t there. I concentrated on hearing them above all others; what followed was a twenty-minute stretch of absolute silence that almost shattered my nerves. I moved my leg which had become cramped and I kicked loose some rock. The sound was jarring, but even more so was the sound
out there
that answered it. I jumped up and turned on my headlamp, casting the beam in a quick circle around me. Nothing. I turned it off, and immediately there were more noises just outside my light’s range: a scurrying, the uneven click-click-click of spiked shoes, then nothing. Again I waited; that terrible silence fell over me and I began to talk to myself:
Easy now, easy; he’s trying to flush you out, make you do something stupid.
I could make a run for the shaft, but a run across this back floor would be more than risky; it would be suicide.
Something had to be done.
Yes, something. I moved out of my hole and peered into the black. I could wait him out; make him come to me. That was the obvious tactic; that was what he would expect of me if he knew me at all. As he must. He would know that I was holed up, waiting in mindless fear for him to come to me. If I could fool him, if somehow I could get back to the ladder before he understood what I was doing, maybe I had a chance. I crawled away from my rock and was lost at once; I groped behind me until my fingers felt the wood of the doors. And I knew that fifty feet out on the floor my sense of direction would be completely shot and I would be crawling blindly. There was an alternative: I could follow the trail back along the base of the wall to the waterfall, then feel my way along the stream until I felt sand. That would take a very long time, and I doubted that I had the nerve for it. No, I would get one fix and go directly across the floor. I moved down from the base of the rock and slipped in a pile of loose gravel. I slid down a short embankment to the floor; something hit my head and knocked my helmet off. It rolled away from me, but I could not tell where. Instant panic:
the light, my God, the light!
I scrambled around on my hands and knees, groping for it. My foot kicked it and it rolled away; I whirled around and lunged toward the sound, fell hard on the rock floor and lay there, a lump forming in my throat.
Christ!
I was up again, feeling the rock frantically, and I blundered into the helmet a few seconds later. By then my hands were raw from the jagged rocks of the floor. I fumbled with the headlamp, and it came on with a frightening flash. Something scrambled back in the darkness; I whirled and aimed the light where the noise had been, but I saw only a dark form moving away.
Come back here, goddamnit!
I jumped up, stumbled, fell again, and almost lost the helmet. I strapped it to my head, turned off the light, and waited. Noises, somewhere in the dark; my light reached out again…to nothing.
Maybe he’s throwing rocks, maybe that’s his plan, keep me going in circles. … Come out, you sonofabitch! I’ve got a gun here. I’ll blow your goddamned head off!
I shouted again; the sound echoed and drowned me out. I was shouting like an idiot.
Come out!
It was a sob now and I struggled for control. I sat in something cold and wet on the cave floor and tried to gather my wits. I flopped back and lay looking up, though there was no way of telling that but from the pressure of the floor against my back. I might have been hanging from the ceiling looking down or hanging from a wall looking east or west.
Enough of that! I’ve got to keep my head. I can’t lose control. …
There were enough cards stacked in his hand as it was. He knew this cave well; that much was obvious. He knew it far better than I did. He had been here many times, enough to know it in the dark. None of that made sense. If the answer to this cave of gold had really been in my subconscious and nowhere else, how could
he
know it so well now? How could
he
walk through it without a light? It didn’t make sense. I sat up and listened.
Nothing. Time to move:
I had to make the shaft. I crawled until I heard another noise, then I whirled and turned on my light.
Nothing.
I cursed my stupidity. I was giving him a good report of my progress, and all he had to do for it was sit back and throw rocks. He might even be maneuvering me toward some dropoff, herding me like a goddamn steer into the slaughterhouse. I sat still for a minute and thought about it. It was more than a remote possibility; so I would fool him, I would use my light once and no more,
get my bearings, get a sighting, and strike out swiftly until I was there.
That was the only way:
Surprise him, fight him. I’ll fight him. I’ll kill the sonofabitch if I get my hands on him.
My hand tightened around a rock; I threw it away. There were plenty of rocks around; I could always find a rock. Right now I needed to move, before
he
had time to figure it out. I stood and turned on my light and looked around for identifying marks. There were none. I had crawled away from the wall and was isolated somewhere in the center of the big room. I had nothing to work from, but that was that, and crying about it wouldn’t help. I turned off my light and got down on all fours. For a minute I stayed there, trying to guess where the shaft might be, where I had come from, and if there were any obstacles along the way. I struck out quickly, crawling over semisharp stones and pausing now and then to pick up one and cast it into the darkness.
Two can play that game.
I heard the waterfall some time before I felt it; then I heard the rushing of the stream and felt the water on the rocks and the spray in my face.
Sonofabitch!
I had turned completely around and was crawling back toward the wall. I moved straight to the stream after that.
The hell with it, the utter complete hell with it:
At least now I knew where I was and about how far I had to go. The water stung my hands;
they must, they must be two red pulps now; knees are bad too.
I was in the water to my elbows; had to,
have to keep going until I feel the sand under me.
The sounds of the stream were all around me, and the sounds were good; they helped cover my splashing. Faster…My hand slipped into a hole and I fell off balance and tumbled into the stream. The water swept me along, how far I did not know, until I found the bottom again and pulled myself out. I moved along carefully now, feeling the edge of the riverbed for some faint trace of sand and finding none. Where the hell was it? Could I be going the wrong way after all? Could I have gotten into another stream which even now was carrying me into a deeper part of the cave? The urge to use my light was too strong. I flipped the switch and there, not ten feet from me, was Max, propped against a rock, staring away at nothing. His head was brutally crushed; blood and brains were everywhere, and I saw red long after I doused the light and ducked again into the water. I reached my saturation point with that; the lump in my throat became a sob, then a low moan. I lost track of time and distance; I found myself crawling disjointedly through the water, still groping for sand and finding only slick stone. Suddenly the ground sloped downward and the river began to run fast.
This is it; I’m there; I’ve made it.
I moved with it, flowed with it, and it dipped again and ran faster. I stopped, letting the water wash over my back, but it was very difficult to hold myself there. The rock under my hands was slimy and the water worked around them to pry me loose. I was sucked free, and I knew then that I would never reach the sand; I had gone past it and was tumbling down toward that bottomless pit. The red alert flashed through my mind; I grabbed for any projections along the bottom. A rock came loose in my hand; I found another and another and held myself there, stationary for a moment against the heavy flow of water around me. But my fingers were giving out; I was losing ground and could not last more than another few seconds.
Now, now, nothing left.
My fingers slipped over the rocks and I found my voice and screamed across the cave.
Help me, help, help me, for God’s sake…
someone was coming…
light against the darkness:
Was it my imagination? It came as a shock, one shock added to all the others;
someone coming, hurry, whoever! hurry!
The light came slowly toward me, bobbing over the uneven steps of the one who carried it. It was a headlamp, yes, and the man limped as he came down from the sandbar to the riverbed. He came slowly, as though hoping that the cliff would do his work for him, but he carried a large crowbar and was prepared to finish it himself. He came to the edge and looked down at me; the light blinded me as I tried to look past it, and his face remained a shadow. He raised the crowbar; I lowered my head and took the blow directly on top of my helmet. I looked up; he was rearing to strike again, this time, I knew, at my arms. I released my slipping hold and the crowbar struck solid rock. My feet hit bottom, and I pushed my body toward the edge, lunging for another hold. My fingers scraped along the edge, breaking all the nails before my hand closed around a sharp piece of granite and held me there. He rose above me again, striking at my arm with the crowbar. The blow glanced off my shoulder; I grabbed for the bar with my free hand; and for a second I had it by the tip. He jerked it, lost his footing, and sprawled on his back. He swore and tried to roll over, but he had slipped too near the edge; yes, he was in trouble now, and I had the only chance I would have. I crouched so low that the water came over my chin and lunged halfway out of the stream. I gripped his pantsleg; he kicked at my face with his free leg, and I heard him scream in pain as his foot hit my shoulder at the base of the neck. I clawed my way up his body, shifting my attack from his good leg to his bad, and when I had it I twisted it, twisted with my whole body, until I could almost feel his agony. We both slipped into the stream; only then did I let him go and fight my way back to the edge. He never had a chance and his scream never ended; it just got farther away. Harry Gould never stopped screaming until he hit bottom.