Through the Hidden Door (7 page)

All in all we dug over fifty holes in the sand without a crumb to show for it.

“There’s got to be something here,” said Snowy. “There just has to be more than those steps.”

I sat back on my haunches. “Next time we need a kerosene stove,” I said. “It’s so cold down here, my fingers are stiff.”

“I can buy one,” said Snowy. “I have money.”

“Okay. And five gallons of kerosene.”

“But what good will it do if we can’t find anything?” Snowy asked.

“I think we’re not going at it the right way. I think just digging holes here, there, and everywhere is probably dumb.”

“Well, what is the right way?” Snowy asked. “I mean, the whole place is sand. It goes on for miles, like a desert. There’s nothing to see on top of the sand. I’m not a dummy, Barney. I looked up in the library how lots of old cities and things were found.”

“How?” I asked.

“Different ways. Mostly there were big mounds on the landscape, you know? Sticking up. Some guys a hundred years ago just kind of went up with a bunch of camels and natives and chipped away and found all this fabulous stuff. Sometimes they just dug under cities that were already there. Like Jerusalem. Sometimes they had old maps and books by the Greeks that gave ’em an idea of where to look. Anyway, as far as I could tell, there was always a hump or mound or some clue to lead to the right place. All there is in this cave is just level sand. Acres of it. We could spend ten years.”

“How did you find the steps?”

“I just walked along the riverbank. I didn’t see them, I stepped on them. I looked down after I felt something hard under my foot.”

I spat. I took up handfuls of sand and let it filter through my fingers. Thinking.

Snowy went on. “I mean, we could dig forever and not find anything if we go on like this.”

One more time I tried to make sense of the little steps. “Supposing,” I said to Snowy, “the steps had a reason for being right by the river. What do you think steps next to a river could be used for?”

“Used for?” said Snowy. “I thought you said they were miniatures made by the Indians.”

“That’s what I mean. Why did the Indians put them there?”

“You mean, why were they put here, even as part of a model, sort of?”

“Yes. Why would they lead down to the water like this?”

“A dock, maybe.”

“That’s all I can think of. But a dock would have been carried downstream or disintegrated long ago.”

“So,” I said, “a cajillion years ago this might have been a toy dock. And now there’s nothing left. Nothing anywhere. Maybe everything but these stairs was made of wood and has gone
pfffp!
Snowy, why do you think there’s any more than this? This has got to be some kid’s game. So a kid carved up a set of stone steps. So what? Could have been done five years ago, for all we know. Maybe a kid found the cave and never told anyone.”

“Barney, I told you there were no footprints when I first came down here. You could see for yourself there were only my prints and the dog’s.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But the ceiling drips here, and it’s damp air. In five years, ten, maybe our footprints would settle in the sand and a crust would form from the moisture. That could happen in six months.”

“Until this October there was no cave entrance, Barney. That rock that moved in the earthquake is the only entrance to the cave.”

“How do you know? There may be other rock overhangs, other crevices ...

“I checked the inside of the cave, Barney. It took me four days. The way we come in is the only entrance. The way we go out connects to it. There’s a small hole in the ceiling about half a mile away, but no one could come in that way because it’s about a hundred-yard drop to the floor and the hole’s only as big as your fist. It’s the way the bats go out.”

“Bats!” I said, my skin popping out in a cold sweat.

“They won’t hurt you. They’re on the ceiling. The first day I was here, the dog barked for some reason, I heard them on the ceiling and I shone my light on them. Then I watched them fly out at about five thirty. They all go through that tiny hole like bees going into a hive.”

“Bats carry rabies!” I said, standing up and looking at the ceiling nervously.

“C’mon, Barney. Don’t be such a paranoid. They’re harmless. As long as we don’t frighten them with loud noises.”

I still felt uneasy about them. I began pacing in a circle.

“Are you about to give up?” he asked. “Because you’re scared to death of a few bats like some geek who won’t walk under a ladder?”

I stamped, rubbed my chapped hands, and stuck them under my armpits for warmth. “It’s hopeless,” I said, dodging his question. “How are we going to find anything in this ... this freezing underground desert? Even in a parka and a vest I’m cold.”

“It’s not hopeless,” Snowy said. “We just have to keep at it. Boy, I’d hate to be with you in a lifeboat.”

“Why?” I asked.

“A little cold and a few perfectly nice bats make you a quitter,” said Snowy. “We’ve got a chance to make the find of the century here, Barney. Something nobody’s ever seen before. And you’re going to quit.”

“Snowy, at best it’s just some toy thing made by Indians. If there was anything else, we’d have found it long ago.”

“It’s not a toy thing, and it wasn’t made by Indians.”

“How do you know? What do you think it is?”

“If I told you, you’d laugh.”

“I promise not to.”

Snowy too was stamping and rubbing his hands. “Forty years ago, Barney,” he said between his teeth, “some guys, some U.S. Marines, landed on an unoccupied island in the Pacific. Okay? The island wasn’t even on a map. Only one guy survived. The island was inhabited by a race of pygmies.”

“Come on, Snowy.”

“This is the truth!”

“Okay, okay.”

“The people were no bigger than up to your knee.”

“Okay, what happened to them? How come
National Geographic
didn’t go out there and take pictures, huh? How come they haven’t been on TV?”

“Because the Japanese bombed the place to pieces, that’s why. The one American guy who survived and told about it had a piece of shrapnel in his head this big. No one believed him.”

“So how come you believe that story? Where did you hear about this?”

Snowy wouldn’t tell me. I knew it was straight out of the pages of
Soldier of Fortune,
and
Soldier of Fortune
was worse than the
National Enquirer
to me.

I was about to say, “Forget it. Take me home,” but I thought flickeringly of Rudy and the boys. Some afternoons there were no sports practices. Special assembly days we got out at three thirty and had free time to ourselves. Weekends with no away games the untouchables were around campus. They were biding their time. If I wasn’t in the cave, they’d find me. They’d find me sure as hell. Besides, just supposing Snowy found something and I wasn’t there to see it. “You felt the steps,” I said slowly. “Supposing we walk around in our socks. Maybe we’ll step on something else.”

“Let’s be organized this time, Barney,” said Snowy, his voice happy again. “We walk in squares, okay? Maybe ten yards on a side. Then we walk in rows up and down, filling in the square. The way you mow a lawn. That way we miss nothing.”

We padded over the sand in oblong patterns, marking the crust with our sock prints and coming back every few minutes or so to warm our feet by the kerosene lantern. “Why don’t we build a fire? It’ll be as warm as a stove,” I said. “The cave’s high enough so the smoke won’t bother us.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Snowy, shambling along in a careful line. “That’s all we’d need to drive the bats crazy.”

“Just how many bats are there?” I asked, trying to sound neutral and unafraid.

“Hundreds,” said Snowy. “Mr. Finney says bats often spend the day in caves. They have very sharply hooked claws so they can hang on to the stone ceiling.”

“Bats!” I repeated. “I don’t like bats! I don’t like sharply hooked claws either.”

“Well, don’t look up. They’re asleep. Have you found anything with your feet yet?”

“No. Just sand. Freezing sand.”

S
NOWY AND I PACED
off our squares for three days in a row, starting at a corner and walking in smaller and smaller squares at each go-round. It was every bit as much fun as vacuuming an Astroturf football field. Each time we came up empty. Then, on Sunday afternoon, I suggested to him that we go across to the other side of the river. As neither of us had rubber boots, we rolled up our pants and ran barefoot through the water, which was so cold it seared like boiling fat.

We paced out the same squares on the other side. The river water had been so unbearable that even the freezing sand felt warm. We hadn’t brought our stove across and so could only walk for about five or six minutes before we thought our feet would solidify and frostbite would set in.

“No good doing this anyway,” said Snowy. “My feet are like blocks of ice. I wouldn’t feel it if I were walking on broken glass.”

I agreed. I took off my socks and tried to rub some blood back into my toes. Then my hands got so cold I had to hold them under my armpits again to warm them up. The socks were frozen from putting them on my wet feet after we’d run through the river. I didn’t have the heart to put stiff, icy socks back on. I jammed them angrily in my parka pockets.

“Let’s go,” said Snowy, and he made a mad dash, splashing through the river to the stove burning invitingly on the other side.

I followed him. “We’re doing something wrong,” I said sadly. “I don’t know what it is, but we’re not going at this the right way.”

Snowy mulled this over. Neither of us had an answer. “Next time we wear duck hunter’s boots,” he muttered. I pounded and rubbed and kneaded my poor feet and only managed to anesthetize my hands again. When I jammed my hands in my pockets, wiggling my fingers for circulation, my legs froze next to the pockets.

The next day, in Army issue jungle boots supplied mysteriously by Snowy, we hauled the stove across the river and marked out areas that must have amounted to nearly an acre with orange-topped surveyor’s stakes. Snowy had stolen two dozen from the site of the Karlo V. Damascus Memorial Pool. Snowy had also brought two pairs of hunter’s socks that he’d no doubt also ordered from
Soldier of Fortune.
They were wired to heat up like electric blankets. The socks were wonderfully warm, but neither Snowy nor I stepped on so much as a single pip in another three acres of the frigid, softly crusted sand—that day or on any other day that week.

Miserably I tramped back to the stables, blindfolded and led by Snowy, on Friday afternoon.

“What are you thinking, Barney?” Snowy asked.

My brain was as cold and useless as my frozen fingers. All it told me was
Dead end. Give it up. Dead end. Give it up,
as flatly as my little cousin’s Speak & Spell. “The hell with it,” I snapped. “We’re never going to find anything, Snowy. We’re beating a dead horse. Who knows what the bone is or what the steps are. We’d have to be scientists to find out.”

“Don’t quit, Barney.”

“Snowy, what good is it? We’re just a couple of schoolkids. We don’t know anything.”

“Barney, please!” Snowy’s voice was like a little boy’s. A far cry from the one in which he usually gave me orders like a sergeant.

I promised myself I’d call Dad that night. I was tired of hiding out from Rudy and Company in a bone-frosting cave. I was tired of Snowy and the digging. If Dad could get me into another school after Christmas vacation, it would suit me just fine. A semester of surfing in Monterey looked very good that afternoon. No Rudy or Danny. No Silks. No freezing, frustrating caves. Dad was right. Muddy water had dripped onto my head on the way out of the cave. My hair stood up in ice spikes. I looked like a unicorn—a multicorn. California would be a very good place to go to school, I decided.
Chicken!
said a voice in my head.

Mellor, who went skiing every weekend with his Boston family, had dumped in the hall enough filthy laundry to clothe five boys for a month. I took off my clay-streaked shirt and dirty socks and threw them in the pile. My pants had seen five straight cave trips. They were in terrible shape due to the slide and the mud tunnel. I turned out the pockets, because the laundry won’t do your pants unless the pockets are free of spitballs, chewing gum, and dead lizards. I threw the pants in the pile and remembered the dirty frozen socks, in the pockets of my parka, from earlier in the week. I tossed them in too and strolled down the hall to wash up.

My hands were filthy, with slight bleeding around the base of every fingernail due to tunnel crawling. I ran them under the warm water. Just before I reached for the soap, I noticed little pellets or nodules of something on my nails. I took the pellets off and automatically saved them on a wad of Kleenex, telling myself to toss them out.

I began whistling “California, Here I Come.” Then I opened the Kleenex and stared at the four reddish peas. I couldn’t figure out where they’d come from since no hard bits had shown up in the sand in the past five days. Our feet were warm and sensitive in the hunter’s socks. We’d even examined the bottoms of our feet with the flashlights after every turn around the squares.

Since it was Friday afternoon, most boys were gone for the weekend. Those who hadn’t left for home had all piled into a bus and gone to a Christmas dance at a girl’s boarding school forty miles away. Off limits for boys on probation like me. There was not much for me to do. Unwillingly I wandered down to the science room, all the while mumbling to the air, “Give it up, Barney. It’s just a couple of pebbles.”
The first pebbles we’ve found,
said the voice in my head.

So what?
I answered.

It won’t hurt to try and find out what they are, will it?
wheedled the voice.

Fine. But I’m not going back in that Siberian cave. Give me a break!
the voice said.

I reached Snowy by phone at eight o’clock. Snowy met me at the stables first thing the next morning. On a sun-filled window ledge I spread out two wads of tissue and a magnifier I’d borrowed from the science room cabinet.