Aquifer: A Novel (27 page)

Clayton was about forty-five feet further down the cave tunnel than his companions. He was working his way along the riverbank, heading deeper into the dark recesses of the subterranean chamber. He carefully examined the cave’s clay floor as he probed his way along.

“Clayton!” Welton yelled. “You seem to be looking for something rather specific.”

“I am, and I think I found it. I believe you’re right though about that metal not being earthly. Come take a look at this,” he yelled back.

Welton and Larry joined Clayton by the edge of the underground river. He squatted with his flashlight trained on a very small patch of a clear, jelly-like, slimy substance beside some faint animal tracks in the clay. The tracks led into the water and disappeared. As his companions approached, Clayton traced the tracks with his flashlight for the benefit of his friends.

“It looks like something crawled along the cave floor, entered the river, and swam away, and it’s injured. Notice the faint blood trail and this track with the missing toes,” he circled this track with the beam of his flashlight. “Its got a gimpy right front foot,” observed Clayton. He then trained his flashlight directly onto the patch of clear slime, which was not much more than a few droplets. “Now look at this stuff. Notice anything unusual about it?”

“No,” answered Larry.

“Watch this,” said Clayton.

Clayton turned his flashlight off and a faint bluish glow was emitted by the slime.

“That’s amazing. What do you think it is?” inquired Welton.

Clayton turned his flashlight back on and the glowing ceased.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to take a sample of it back to the lab and check it out,” replied Clayton.

Clayton fumbled in his pocket for another sample vial. He pulled a couple of them out then stopped in surprise. One of the vials he had just taken from his pocket was also glowing with a faint bluish glow.

“Well, I’ll be!” exclaimed Welton.

Clayton trained his flashlight onto the vial and it immediately ceased to glow. Then he deflected the beam away from it and it resumed its glow.

“It appears to be the same stuff. And you got that one from the hunting site didn’t you?” inquired Welton.

“That’s right,” replied Clayton as he opened an empty vial and scooped up the small quantity of slime from the cave floor.

“So there’s a connection between the missing hunter and whatever made this crater?” Welton asked.

“Apparently so – and I’ve a hunch that there’s also a connection here with the two missing swimmers from Johnson Shut-Ins, and possibly with the monster Johnny saw,” added Clayton.

Welton whistled in amazement.

“Gentlemen, since we’ve ruled out every other possibility, I think we have to accept the fact that we are standing at the crash site of an alien space craft,” announced Clayton.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. That was the same conclusion I had arrived at earlier but just needed some more evidence. I think that we now just might have that evidence,” stated Welton.

Kneeling, Clayton extended the fingers in his right hand and used the distance between the tips of his thumb and little finger as a makeshift measuring tape. Then he proceeded to approximate the length of the animal’s stride. “Five spans, that means the distance between the animal’s front and rear paws was about four feet. These tracks match the ones I saw at the hunter’s site. The animal is missing half of its right front foot. Only those tracks are considerably larger, indicating a tremendous growth rate. If this is the same creature it would have tripled its size in just a few months. . . . Gentlemen,” he concluded, “I think that something survived the crash.”

“Wow!” interjected Larry.

Clayton continued with his conclusions. “This stream is fed from the continental aquifer, so whatever entered this river could conceivably have access to virtually any major waterway in the country.”

“And you think that could be dangerous?” inquired Welton.

“I think it could be disastrous . . . Let’s get back to the lab and see just what this stuff is,” Clayton urged.

=/\=

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-O
NE

Fears Cave

The next morning Johnny, Frankie, and Austin, decided to go spelunking in
Fears Cave
. Johnny had previously made numerous trips to the cave but had never ventured more than a few hundred yards inside. He was always afraid of being caught.

Years earlier, in the 1940s, the land around the cave had been part of the farm owned by Johnny’s great-grandfather. One hundred years before that, Johnny’s 5
^th
-great-grandfather, James Monroe Fears, moved his family from Peducka, Kentucky, to the Current River area of the Ozarks of Southern Missouri and staked out a homestead. In the mid 1840s the cave had served as the temporary family home for almost a year while they built a log and sod cabin, cleared farm land and planted their crops. From that time forth the cave had been known as Fears Cave by the locals.

All of Johnny’s older relatives had shared wonderful stories with him about their exploring experiences inside Fears Cave. Now, however, the cave was part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways park system. It was located at Owl’s Bend about ten miles east of Eminence, just off Highway 106 where it crossed the Current River, about a half-mile upstream from Blue Spring.

At various times during the Civil War both the North and the South had mined sodium nitrate, or saltpeter, from the abundant supply of bat guano in Fears Cave for use in the manufacture of gun powder. Unfortunately this activity created a misunderstanding in the minds of historians who generally confused it with Powder Mill Cave which was located a quarter of a mile farther upstream along the Current River and higher up the bluff wall, making it much less accessible to tourists. It too had been used for the mining of saltpeter and was located much closer to the mill operations established along the riverbank. The confusion was further compounded by misnaming the creek that sprang from the mouth of Fears Cave. It was called Powder Mill Creek.

In the late 1960s, the Fears family was forced to abandon the farm due to economic conditions coupled with the federal government’s massive land seizures for the creation of the park. Once they and other local citizenry left the area the park service eradicated the name
Fears Cave
and replaced it with the misnomer,
Powder Mill Cave
- much to the consternation of the Fears family.

Shortly after the creation of The Ozark National Scenic Riverways Park, the park service, under the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency, sealed the entrance to Fears Cave with a lattice work of steel bars to preserve its pristine condition and to provide a roosting place for several species of endangered bats. There are over 350 known caves in the park, of which fifteen were similarly sealed and gated. The park service estimates that there are probably twice that many caves awaiting to be discovered. The park also contains over 300 known springs.

Though the park follows the shoreline of the Current River for over 125 miles, as well as the Jack’s Fork River for over sixty miles, the width of the park is restricted to only a few miles on either side of the two rivers. Consequently, it is speculated that there are over a thousand other caves, sinkholes and springs remaining to be discovered in the vast regions of Ozark back-country outside of the park boundaries. The federal Cave Resources Protection Act however, restricts unapproved publication of cave locations, reflecting the preference of many cave owners not to reveal exact cave sites, since abuse and vandalism of caves by trespassers often occurs.

*

The sun shone brightly, though the sky was dotted with massive billowy cumulus clouds. A red, beat up, pickup truck threaded its way down the narrow, winding road as it approached the Current River Bridge at Owl’s Bend. The driver, Mac Dace, had given a lift to Johnny and his friends, who had started hitchhiking as soon as they reached the edge of town.

The boys were huddled together in the back of the pickup’s open bed discussing the events of the previous day at Johnson’s Shut-Ins. That topic had been the focal point at the barbershop as well as many informal discussions up and down Main Street. Everyone seemed to have his own opinion as to the cause of the missing bodies of the girl and diver.

Certainly tragedy was not foreign to Eminence. To have two missing bodies where recovery should have been so easy, though, was a baffling mystery. Johnny’s account of the man-eating monster was quickly making the rounds and in the minds of many of the town’s citizens, it settled the question.

“Johnny, did you really see a man-eating monster?” asked Frankie with much concern in his voice, dreading to know the truth, yet unable to conceal his anxiety.

“I guess not. Sheriff Akers says that the diver hit a rock and made a big blood cloud. It all happened so fast. He said that the light, shadows, bubbles, and the blood just played tricks on my mind. I guess he’s right. After all, who ever heard of a man-eating monster?” Johnny asked rhetorically.

Austin, who was sitting slightly behind Frankie, made a vicious looking face, bared his teeth, opened his eyes very wide and brought his hands up near his face with his fingers curved like giant claws. He then tapped Frankie on the shoulder and let out a blood-curdling roar. Frankie squealed as he jumped in surprise while Johnny and Austin reeled with laughter.

Frankie, embarrassed, mumbled, “How much farther to the cave?” regretting that he had ever brought up the subject of the monster.

“Just to the other side of the bridge,” replied Austin.

“Thanks for bringing me guys,” stated Frankie. “I’ve never been in a cave before. My parents think it’s too dangerous, so I didn’t tell them we were coming.”

“You’ll like Fears Cave, it’s sweet,” said Johnny.

“Yeah,” added Austin. “We’ve been in it lots of times. My dad said it’s got more than eight miles of tunnels in it and it’s real easy to get lost.”

“Really?” muttered Frankie, starting to get a little scared but hesitant to show his fear, for fear of being teased. “Then how do we keep from gettin’ lost?”

“Well, there’s a river that flows out of it, so I figure we just follow it in. That way we can’t get lost, ‘cause all we have to do is just turn around and follow it back out again,” Johnny answered.

“Good thinkin’,” Frankie sighed, beginning to feel a little better, but still wanting to change the subject. “Hey, Austin, can you really hypnotize people?”

“Of course he can,” Johnny exclaimed.

“I’ll bet he can’t do it to me!” boasted Frankie, trying to sound a little more self-confident.

“Yes I can! Just you wait ‘till we’re inside the cave,” replied Austin.

As the truck approached the Owl’s Bend bridge, Johnny gazed over the sidewalls of the truck bed at the blue water flowing thirty feet below. The majesty of the lazy bend in the river and the grandeur of the tree covered bluff wall on the far side was not lost on him, even though he was such a young boy.

Reaching the other side, the pickup pulled off to the side of the road and the boys jumped out of the truck bed.

“You boys have fun now, ya hear?” shouted the driver as the pickup slowly drove off.

“Thanks for the ride Mr. Dace,” Johnny yelled back, waving at the departing pickup.

One of the nice things about living in such a small community was that everybody knew everybody. People were not afraid to interact with each other. That usually kept most people in line. To a kid, however, such openness made it hard to get away with anything. If they did anything wrong their parents would immediately hear about it from twenty different sources. That was probably the true meaning of the saying,
It takes a village to raise a child
. It’s not that the village was actively involved in the child’s raising, they were just all aware of what was going on and not afraid to speak up about it to the child’s parents. But they left it to the parents to deal with the child, considering it none of their business once the report had been made. The boys knew that reports of their spelunking activities would eventually make it back to their parents. For the moment, however, the allure of the adventure was worth the price it would exact.

The boys picked up their backpacks and headed into the dense forest at the side of the road. The foliage was very thick but they only had to walk a short distance to reach the bank of Powder Mill Creek. From there they continued along the gravel bar which formed the stream’s bank. The creek was not more that three feet deep at the center and barely twenty feet wide. Its slow gentle current was ideal for rock skipping. As the boys walked along the bank they had a contest to see who could get the most skips from a single rock. Jubilantly they hurled their stones upstream. Austin was the undisputed champion from previous such contests, with eight skips to his name, and he was not about to let his title be taken by anyone. As fortune would have it, his title remained unchallenged.

After hugging the stream for a few hundred yards the trail suddenly jogged to the right and ascended a steep but low hill, the face of which had been eroded by the stream, creating an earthen embankment dropping about fifteen feet from the hilltop to the shallow water below. Arriving at the top of the hill the boys stopped for a breather. That’s when they saw it.