The B Girls (24 page)

"Maybe. Let me check something," Mae
said.

Lucy caught up to Mae. She couldn't see much with
Mae between her and the obstruction, but it did look like something was
blocking the passage. Or maybe the tunnel took a turn.

"It's tight but we can get through," Mae
said and her upper body disappeared.

"Get through where?" Somehow Lucy didn't
think Mae's top half disappearing was a good thing.

"The top and bottom sort of overlap." Mae
lifted her head and chest to look back at Lucy. "It looks like we're going
to be crawling some more. I think the ceiling is a little lower on this
side."

Lucy watched in horror as Mae pushed forward, and
disappeared completely and tried to pull the packs after her.

"Hang on," Lucy called. "The packs
are hung up."

Lucy moved up, pushed the packs over the hump and
got her first look at the shrinking tunnel.

"Come on," Mae called back.

No. No.
No. No.
Lucy tried every trick she
could think of to make herself move forward. Nothing worked. Her mind wasn't
letting her body go. "Don't think I can. I seem to be um, stuck."

"Stuck?" Mae sounded confused.

"Well, not literally. I just . . . Nothing
seems to be working."

"I can't turn around in here so you'll have to
wait til I get to the end and come back."

Now this was a problem too. Waiting alone here?
That wasn't going to work. Forward was the way out. "I'm coming."

Lucy crawled over the obstruction, and stared at
the sliver of darkness that had swallowed Mae. The already low ceiling dropped
another foot, leaving about two feet of space between the floor and the
ceiling.

This wasn't going to be and hands and knees crawl.
This was going to be a belly crawl.

Lucy shuddered from head to toe. Was Mae kidding?

Lucy
knew
without a doubt if she pushed into that black mouth, she would be in the dark
forever.

Lucy added shivering to her list of physical signs
of stress and fear. Of course the cold wasn't helping either. Her coveralls
were wet from her skid through the puddle.

"Hello? Anybody back there?" Mae called
from inside the black hole.

"I'm here," Lucy said.

"Well how about getting up here," Mae
said.

Lucy could see a little glimmer of light deep in
the passage. "Is it bigger again?" she asked.

"Not yet," Mae said. "Are you
okay?"

Lucy wasn't okay at all, but she nodded her head
yes, forgetting that Mae couldn't see her. "I just need a few more
seconds. I'm okay." Since she was probably going to die down here anyway
she might as well die going forward.
Forward
is the way out,
Lucy repeated the words to herself.

Mae's light flashed across Lucy's face. "Then
why are you crying?"

Was she? Lucy reached up to touch her face. Yep,
those were tears leaking out of her eyes and trailing down her cheeks.
"Guess I'm more afraid than I thought." That was a lie. She knew
exactly how afraid she was.

"This cave has probably been here since before
the first people set foot on the continent," Mae said. "It's not
going to suddenly collapse now."

Lucy's body felt like a block of wood. All
sensation deadened and movement impossible. "I don't think I can do
this." She couldn't wrap her mind around even the possibility of
slithering into that shallow crack. Every time she danced close to the thought
her body locked up.

"Sure you can. Just like me. Close your eyes
and don't think about it."

Clearly Mae didn't have claustrophobia she was
crazy. "What about the packs? What if they get caught on something and I
get stuck in there?"

"If you can fit the packs can fit. This is the
last bit before we get to the hiding place. Remember?"

No. Lucy couldn't remember her own name at the
moment.

In the end this was her quest. She couldn't give up
and leave Belle's fate in someone else's hands. Besides she didn't want to think
about trying to crawl backwards and she didn't think she had room to turn
around.
Forward is the way out.

She dropped down on her belly, slithered into the
crack and closed her eyes against the fear. It didn't help. Her breath wheezed
like a patient with advanced emphysema and she became absolutely certain her
heart was going to stop.

She could hear Mae's voice but couldn't make sense
of the words.

Lucy's entire world shrank to a space two feet by
two feet and she shut out everything except the need to propel herself forward.
The floor under her was smooth, which meant no scrapes or scratches. But it
also meant finding ways to push and pull herself along was hard.

The ceiling was mere inches above her head and she
kept bumping it in a vain attempt to catch her breath, like a drowning victim
trying to break the surface for air. Each time she bumped her head, each time
she failed to surface, her breath got shorter and she got more lightheaded. But
she kept moving forward, trying to outrun the panic.

Lucy had no idea how long she'd been crawling when
the panic caught up. She needed to stand, or sit, or at least lift herself to
her hands and knees. For the umpteenth time, she tried to rise up, to lift her
head free, to get a big breath of fresh air.

For the umpteenth time she cracked her head on the
ceiling and saw stars. A cold clammy sweat broke out over her body.

A scream built in her throat and she knew if she
let it loose, she'd go insane and hurt herself or worse, Mae. The sound she
allowed out was a keening wail in the back of her throat.

She started to flail and thrash in a vain attempt
to get free of the tons of rock encasing her. She was no longer a thinking
human but a trapped animal incapable of rational thought.

###

Lucy didn't know how long she was in the grip of
the madness.

What brought her back was the sharp, queasy pain of
striking her funny bone on a knob of rock protruding from the wall of the
crack. She collapsed, sobbing and became aware of her surroundings again.

"Wah wah wah, wah wah."

Mae's voice penetrated the black fog of Lucy's mind
but the voice sounded like an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. "What?"

"Are you okay?"

"No."

"You have to keep moving," Mae said.

Lucy did her best to ignore the fact that she still
couldn't lift her head or catch her breath. If she thought about it she would
start screaming and would probably still be screaming when she went into shock
and died. "I can't."

"You have to."

Mae was right,
forward
is the way out
.

Lucy started belly crawling again. The next panic
attack would have to wait until she got some energy back.

"I can stand up again," Mae's voice came
back down the passage. "Oh my God!" Mae said. "This is amazing.
Lucy, I promise it's worth the trip."

Lucy couldn't do the dance of joy. She couldn't
even manage a deep breath. But she squirmed forward with renewed effort.
"God, if I survive this nightmare with my body and my sanity intact I will
. . .Wow." She emerged from the crack of doom into a fantasy.

"Told you it was worth it." Mae smiled
but didn't take her eyes off the view.

 
Lucy
was still having a little trouble catching her breath and her heart was racing
but the horror of the crack was starting to fade. Maybe it would be like
childbirth and the bad part would be hard to remember. Nah, she was going to
have nightmares about that crawl for a long time. Maybe forever. But. . .
"I guess the whole caving thing is starting to be a little more understandable,"
Lucy said.

"You could say that."

This final chamber in their quest was the magical
cavern they'd stopped expecting.

There was a forest of stalagmites growing from the
floor and a whole ballroom's worth of chandeliers dropping down from the
ceiling. And they were shades of white instead of muddy brown. Moisture
glistened in the light from their headlamps and honest to God flecks of fool's
gold glittered in the walls.

Lucy could have spent hours exploring and touching.

But Jane was forty-five minutes back, alone and in
pain. And Belle was being held by a crazy person.

"So, where do we look?" Mae asked.

"The map only shows a vague outline of the
ceiling formations with an X on the backside of the longest one."

They both stared up at the stalactites trying to
decide which was the longest.

"That one," Lucy said pointing to one
near the wall on the right.

At the same time, Mae said, "That one,"
and pointed to one in the middle.

"You check yours and I'll check mine,"
Lucy said.

They both came up empty. The stalactites were
smooth with no place to hide anything.

They met in the middle.

"Now what?" Mae asked.

Lucy pulled the map back out. "Can you see
anything I could be missing?"

Mae studied the map, with a lot of back and forth
to the ceiling. "No. But there must be something. Unless someone got here
before us."

"I can't imagine who," Lucy said.

"True. Do you suppose he came down here
alone?"

"Who? Paul?"

"Yes. I can't believe anyone would come all
this way alone."

"You're right but it seems he was pretty serious
about keeping his secret. Who would he trust?"

"A friend."

"Maybe so. But we're getting off task."
Lucy stared at the map some more. "We have to be missing something
simple."

Mae started to wander around dodging stalagmites
and scoping out the ceiling.

Lucy looked at the map. The problem as she saw it
was that the stalactites sprouting from the ceiling all seemed to be too smooth
and regular to provide a good hiding place. It would have made more sense to
mark a spot on the floor where there were lots of nooks and crannies.

Inspired, Lucy looked around with new eyes.

It didn't take long to find the match to the sketch
growing out of the floor instead of the ceiling.

"Mae! I think I figured it out."

Mae scurried over and Lucy pointed to the
formation.

"Imagine it upside down," Lucy said and
held up the map.

"You're right. That has to be the
answer."

Lucy was reluctant to check her theory. Time was
ticking away and if she was wrong they couldn't afford much more time to come
up with another idea. There was too much riding on their success for her to be
wrong.

Lucy made her way to the formation on the far side
of the room against the back wall. The stalagmites and stalactites reached
toward each other forming a loose screen for a small alcove.

The perfect hiding place.

Mae had come over and was dancing in place making
her light bob crazily around the walls. "This has to be it," she
said. "It's perfect."

Lucy squeezed through the biggest gap in the
formation and into the alcove. Turning so her back was against the wall, she
swept her light over the formations looking for the most likely hiding spot.

Lucy focused on the tallest of the stalagmites and
had her choice of two that nearly touched their stalactite counterparts. The
first one she took a closer look at didn't appear to have any sort of
depression or crack but she ran her hands over it anyway to be sure she didn't
miss anything.

She moved on to the second part of the formation.
This looked much more promising. The tall stalagmite and several smaller ones
formed a nearly closed circle. Lucy leaned in and shone her light down into the
stalagmite Stonehenge.

Something different from the surrounding rock
reflected the light back to her.

"I think I found it," Lucy said as she
reached down to retrieve the object.

"What is it?" Mae asked.

"Just a second." The top of the object
was too large for her small hand-span. Too heavy to pick up one-handed with her
fingers stretched to the limit.

Lucy wriggled her way as far down between two of
the stalagmites as she could, reached down with both hands, grasped the object,
and pulled it free.

An old pottery jar shone dully under her light. She
looked back into the space to make sure she hadn't missed anything and found it
empty.

"It's an old jar," Lucy said. She wriggled
back out of the alcove and held up her prize for Mae's inspection.

"It's an old canning jar," Mae said.
"Get it open, let's see what we've got."