But I never had someone run up to me and smash my light before. It's disconcerting, and I don't think it's an overreaction. We're trying to find a burnt corpse, probably murdered, we're deep in the lower level of Simpson Cave, we're out of earshot of anyone else, and we get some guy literally punching our lights out. I'm with Jed, who also got his light smashed.
I think I'm taking it well. The first five minutes, we both tried shouting. We knew voices wouldn't carry back to where anyone else was planned to be, but maybe we'd get lucky. Some sound wave could bounce off a wall right, or someone goes upstream to sneak a cigarette or something.
After enough of that to exhaust us and prove there's no one within earshot, I was quiet. More to not let Jed know I'm freaking; I didn't want to wave this particular moment of my life around.
Jed, of course, was never quiet. "I can't believe I didn't check my flashlights. I checked them all last week when we were here before, so I didn't check now. When the hell did this guy steal all our batteries?" It helped to have someone talking, even if it was about all our other light sources having empty battery cases or just not being there.
Logically, this was a great time for something like this to happen. There were at least twenty cavers, cops, state police and FBI in here with us, also searching for the corpse. All we needed was one light source and we'd be home. And based on the task force assigned to the different regions of the cave, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out who's close enough to sneak attack us.
"OK, OK, what are our options?" Jed said. I heard him pacing back and forth through the bloated stream. It was close to a foot deep in parts. "How do we get out? Option 1: wait for someone to find us. Sgt. Addison did say he was sending a cop down to us to see little corpse marks we could miss."
"Maybe he forgot. Maybe the cop got lost. Maybe the smasher got the cop, too. I don't want to have to rely on him. I want to do something." I felt like live bait in a can.
"Me too, Ted. That's Option 2: follow the stream back to Hans Moleman. There's going to be plenty of people around there, and even if there's not, we can shout up through the pit to the upper level."
"I guess."
"It's risky to move blind through the stream, especially with it high and all the mud. But we've got experience under our belt, and I think we can do it no problem."
Something about going through the stream blind rubbed me the wrong way. I'd like to say it was more than just getting creeped out, but it probably wasn't.
"I don't know," I said, "it smells funny."
"If there's a third option, I'd like to hear it. Stick or move, that's what we got."
"Something's bugging me about it. Why would this guy do it?" That wasn't bugging me, but I figured I'd throw out some conversation, hopefully get Jed into talking us out of it.
"Seems pretty obvious. We're close to the body. Instead of having us find it, he smashes our lights and slows down the discovery, possibly stopping it."
"Stopping it?" Old trick I heard, repeating the last bit of the sentence to keep someone talking. I think it was in a book Jed lent me.
"Maybe we're real close to it, the corpse. Maybe like a foot or so, just a bit of mud between us and victory."
"Victory?"
"Damn right it'll be victory. Pretty stupid on his part, all the cops in the cave, very little chance he'll worm his way out of here. Unless he dug a tunnel or something."
I had a real question now. A good one, too. "Hey Jed, why would someone do this with all those police around? Assuming he hasn't dug an escape hatch or something." My best shot.
Jed didn't talk for a second. Then, it what I could tell was a smug grin just from his voice, he announced, "It's a trap."
Good old Jed. Let him talk, he'll win your case for you. "A trap? Like a net coming down on our heads?"
"I'd say more like a big boulder. Imagine this: we head back for civilization, someone comes along behind us and smashes our heads in. He then gets a little rockslide or a rock slipped from Jasper or someplace high to simulate an accident. When people see the bodies, they see us dead with our lights smashed, assumedly by the same boulders that turned our brains to yogurt."
I couldn't see this happening, but it was plenty good enough to have me not go through the stream blind. "So are we ruling out the stream?"
"I'd say. In addition to that, there's the small chance we could trip of our own accord and turn our brains to yogurt the old fashioned way."
"So we wait?" I wasn't thrilled about it, but it was better than yogurt.
Jed spoke slowly. "How ... about ... Option 3?"
"It's not a Lifesaver, is it?"
"Better. Henry's pack."
"Henry's pack?! The one he dropped in a crevice three years ago?"
"The crevice was right in Moe's. Even blind, we're right next to it. We could find it in five minutes and have light."
"Batteries are long dead by now," I said.
"They wouldn't be pristine, but they should still have juice in them. And even if they don't, there's bound to be a lighter or a glowstick or something ambient."
"No one's found anything for three years, and they were searching with lights."
"We'll have an advantage, because of the lights."
"What, bat radar?"
"Close. Sharpened other senses. We'll feel the walls better, we'll smell and hear better. Just like the blind."
"I don't think his pack's going to beep or smell."
"Hey, it's Henry. Could be an old sandwich in there."
We made our way carefully towards Moe's. It felt good to get my feet out of the water. I don't know why I was standing there so long.
Jed had been staring at Moe's for a long time before the smashing incident, so he led. "Remember to make a lot of noise the whole time we're in here. You can hear this room from the stream, so if someone comes they'll hear us."
Moe's Cavern, when there's lights on, looks a little like a brain. A lot of squiggles. It's a jumble of rocks with a thick solid foot of mud overtop everything. All the squiggles are the crevices. A path roughly through the middle has been worn out through thousands of footsteps. There's nothing much to look at on the other end, just more of the same. But it's part of a regular Simpson trip.
We passed through what I heard someone once refer to as the door to Moe's, a brief spot where it tapers down to about a foot across. In all this walking passage, it's a surprise to find somewhere you have to turn to get through.
I turned sideways as I went through the door. Didn't have to suck in the gut; I need to drink more beer. There was ten or fifteen feet of flat mud between the door and the first crevice. We crawled it slowly.
Jed volunteered to go to the back, some fifty feet away, and work his way toward the middle. I would start on the near end, also working toward the middle. With a short but decent search of each crevice, we should check them all by the time the murderer died of natural causes.
"Crawling down in the crevices to check is blind even with a light," Jed said, "since you can't see past your legs with the light. Checking these will definitely take longer, but not much longer. Most of them are shallow. And go for the ones in shadows first," Jed's voice said. "People probably haven't searched those much."
"This whole place is one big shadow, Jed."
I had a simple plan to check a crevice. I'd stick my hand in, see if I could touch bottom. If so, I'd check it for the pack. If not, I'd lower myself down feet first until I touched ground, then search quick. No crevice took more than a minute, but it took a lot out of me.
I had a brainstorm. Easy way to get out of this. "Jed! Put your helmet batteries in your flashlight!"
"I wish. 4.5 volt." The big flat battery. Useless for anything but caving. I hate those things.
I checked a dozen crevices, the freak-out in decline but not dead. Maybe lying down would kill it.
"I'm, uh, I'm going to take a little break," I said.
"Fine, more glory for me." I crawled my way back to the door and leaned against a wall. There were no crevices for yards, so I could lie down and not have to worry about remaining exactly still. I closed my eyes. Making the darkness voluntary helps a bit.
"Think we'll find the body in here?" Jed shouted.
"It'd be cool if we did. Second time in a week."
"Who else has done that, Ted? Who else, buddy?"
I rolled a bit to my left, scratching an itch. I was feeling OK again. "You mean finding two bodies in a week, or finding the same body twi-" I fell.
It wasn't a fall so much as a slide down a mud slope. I ended up a whopping two feet lower then where I was. "Damn mud! It slipped me into a ditch."
"Crevice?"
"No, a ditch. I'm lying down by the door, I roll a bit to scratch my butt, and I'm in motion."
"You sure you're by the door? I don't know any ditch by there."
"Can't deny where I am. A ditch. A muddy ditch." "Don't suppose there's a pack in there?"
"No such luck." I decided to actually check, and within five seconds I found something. "Scratch that."
"Your butt?"
"No, the search. I found something. I think it's Henry's pack." I felt around for the top. The fabric was rotten, and I could hear it ripping as I turned it. I found the top and unloaded it on the ground.
"You da man!" Jed yelled, working his way back."
"Not yet." I felt through the pack contents. An awful smell came out at me; three year old gorp. I found a cylinder, fiddled until I found its beam, and twisted it.
A tiny beam of light glowed in the light bulb. The maglight worked. A barely noticeable circle of light went down towards the pack contents. It was muddy as hell. I found a glowstick, shed my gloves, and broke it open. A huge green glow burst from it. I could see Jed crawling towards me. I could see Moe's Cavern. Hell, I could see. The freak-out was officially gone.
"Your ugly face never looked so good," Jed said.
"It was the door," I said. "Henry didn't get stuck at a crevice at all, he got stuck trying to get through the door. He never even got in Moe's."
"He must have thrown his pack in first, then realized he couldn't make it."
"And fudged on the story, saying that the crevice stopped him rather than the door."
"So that's why no one could find it.
"Mystery solved. Well, a small one, that is. Come on, let's see who left their partner to stone us." We left in the green glow of a three year old glowstick.