Not many ways to interpret that sign. I let it drop back down to the gate by the loop of wire that connected it.
Jed climbed out of his truck, staring at the sign. "What's that say?"
"Keep out cavers."
Jed looked at the sign, then picked up the padlock holding the gate closed. "Well, that sucks."
"Maybe this is an old sign. Mrs. Coten probably forgot about it. I mean, hell, not twenty minutes ago she gave us permission to go to Devil's Hollow."
"I hope so," Jed said. He had decided not to tell Mrs. Coten that Jed and I were the trespassing cavers that made her shut this cave down a few years ago. Jed hoped she didn't notice it was us.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was Mrs. Coten's revenge, making us drive all day to West Virginia to go in a cave she'd keep the lock on. I didn't want to bring that up, but I was thinking it. Hell, if that was the case, she probably wouldn't let us stay at her house tonight. We'd have to motel it, since no one brought a tent.
"We can drive back and get the key," Jed said. "I'm sure this is just an oversight."
"How's driving possible?" I asked. "There's no room for a K turn. You'd have to do it in reverse the whole way."
"OK, I'll walk. Hell, walking would probably be quicker, with that road. Save my truck some shocks."
Marv's Lexus SUV pulled up behind us. Even considering his SUV was brand new, he took his sweet old time on this road.
Marv hopped out and immediately ran to the right side of the car. "Please no scratch, please no scratch," he reached the right side and stared. "Son of a bitch! It scratched!"
"Sorry, man," Jed said.
"The branch just took a big fat gouge out of my car! It was just sticking out in the road from a tree, and I went about half a mile an hour past it since I couldn't frigging go around it. I should have sent Gunther outside to pull it away."
"We've sorta got other problems, Marv."
Marv looked up from his scratch, which was barely noticeable. "What's up?"
"This gate's new. We should be able to drive right up to the cave entrance," Jed said.
"Maybe the road's washed out ahead. It wasn't exactly easy street this far," Marv suggested.
"Mrs. Coten didn't mention this. I think she just forgot. I'm going to walk back and see if she has a key."
Gunther rolled down his passenger seat window from Marv's Lexus. "What the hell's the holdup?"
"Big sign saying 'Keep Out Cavers'." Jed said.
"What the hell?!" Gunther popped out of the Lexus, and almost shoved me out of the way in his effort to look at the sign. "Well look at this. Thank you for killing our weekend."
"I'm going to walk over to Mrs. Coten's, see what this is about. She probably just forgot to mention it, and has a key to the lock right in the house."
"What if she doesn't?" Gunther sneered.
"If she doesn't have a key, then we suit up here and walk the rest of the way. She gave us permission," Jed said.
"Oh, hell no," Gunther spat out. "You and fatty got us screwed royally when you did that a couple years ago. I'm not going to get this place off limits for another couple years because you want to trespass again."
"You're talking crazy, Gunther," Jed said, "Mrs. Coten invited us down here. The gate's new, it probably just slipped her mind."
Something rumbled through the woods above us to the left. Dead leaves crunched for a few seconds, and then a shower of reddish gray gravel poured out by Marv's car.
"Aah! Rockslide!" Marv screamed, running to see if one of the pebbles nicked his paint job. The rockslide moved its way over to Jed's truck. Nothing dented it, but the truck's so beat up, I doubt I'd notice if a cinder block slammed into it.
The cause of the rocks made himself known when he popped out from the woods, half-sliding on his butt. He had the most distinct mullet I had ever seen. Short up top, long in the back, and with a funny little moustache to match the MacGyver cut.
"Guess you hit the gate," he said.
"Yeah, and you almost hit my car with that gravel. Could you hold off on the avalanche next time, OK?" Marv said. I could tell he was pissed, but Marv wasn't the sort to express his anger well.
"Sorry man," the guy said, giving the Lexus a good look over. "It's quicker to come through the woods then to walk the road the whole way."
"It's OK," Marv said, all the anger from his voice gone. Stab Marv in the chest and he'll be politely thanking you for it within the minute.
"You probably want a key for that thing," Mullet said.
"Yeah, Mrs. Coten gave us permission to go in Devil's Hollow," Jed said, giving him our case. "You can check with her if you want, we just talked to her."
"I know. I heard you guys talking to her," he said, his eyes trying to not stare at the Lexus, but not really succeeding.
"You were there?" I asked. When we talked to her, she was standing by herself.
"I was upstairs. Walls are thin." I didn't know Mrs. Coten had a son. Or a tenant. Or whoever the hell he was.
"So do you have the key?" Jed asked, smiling.
The guy dug in his pocket, and pulled out a key. The keychain was a WVU bottle opener. "Here's my copy. I put the gate in last year when I moved back. She doesn't come out here much, so she sorta forgets it's here."
"Why'd you put it up?"
"To keep out the cavers. We had some problems with them two or three years ago." Mullet was talking about us, although he didn't know that. He gave the key to Jed. "Figured the sign alone wouldn't do it. Lock it up after you two go through. I don't want anyone following you guys in.
"Sure thing," Jed said.
Mullet pointed at the rock filled road ahead of us. "After a few minutes, you'll come to a spot in the road where you can make a left. Don't take that left. Mitch lives there."
"I know," Jed said. "You keep straight, hug the road the whole time, and you come to the grassy place where there's room to park and turn around."
"You been here before?"
"A couple years ago, before it got closed down. Not since then, of course." Decent save on Jed's part. Technically not a lie, either.
"If you been here before, you probably don't need any more instructions. The land ain't changed that much over the years." Mullet wiped a finger across his moustache.
"We're staying at Mrs. Coten's house for the weekend, so I guess we'll see you later today?" Jed asked.
"You just might," he said, grabbing a tree limb and pulling himself back up on the steep hill.
"Uh..." Marv started.
"Don't worry, I'll be careful about the rocks," he shouted back. Sure enough, not a single rock fell as he crashed through the woods.
Jed ceremoniously unlocked the gate, waving the padlock around like a towel at a Knicks game. "Problem averted. Problem averted." The gate swung open with a rusty creak.
We got in our cars and rolled just far enough for both cars to make it past the gate. Then Jed got out of his, closed the gate, and reattached the lock. He dropped the key in his shirt pocket.
After fifteen minutes, just like Mullet said, we came to a fork. A steep rocky hill went up to the left. We could see the house from this one.
It was probably the worst house I had even seen. The left side had collapsed in, and looked like it had been that way for five years. Some two by fours had been shabbily nailed up as a replacement frame, but those looked about two years old as well. A transparent dropcloth closed off that part of the house. Heating must be murder. That was assuming it had heat, which was a big assumption.
This Mitch guy must not have a car. Or much of a life. I'd be pissed if someone else put a locked gate between my driveway and the road out. I'd have to ask Mullet or someone about it when we got done tonight.
We kept driving. Five more minutes of testing the shocks, and we hit Devil's Hollow. We both parked in the big grassy area, and got out to take a gawk at the entrance.
Marv and Gunther had never seen Devil's Hollow before. It was a vertical crack in a massive forty foot wall. It was about five feet wide at the base and about three up top. It sloped a little to the right, but was remarkably straight.
"It looks like the Washington Monument, only black," Marv said.
"Looks like West Virginia giving us the finger," Gunther said.
"I always thought it was a giant windshield wiper," I said.
"You're all wrong. It's that slab from 2001," Jed said.
We hauled out our gear and suited up. Everyone was tired from the all nighter of driving, so there wasn't much in the way of talk. It turned out well, since it was about the quickest suiting up I had ever seen. Just fifteen minutes, and that included getting everyone's lights to work.
"Hey, gimme that gate key," Marv said after packing up his gear and stuffing it in the Lexus's tailgate.
"OK," Jed said. He had already pulled on his coveralls, so he dug through his clothes to find the shirt it was in. "Here. Why do you want it?"
"I could use a bottle opener. Forgot to bring one. Didn't want to have to dig through your clothes when we get out. I'll keep the key in the glove compartment." Marv dropped the gate key in the Lexus, then locked the Lexus up and hid the car key under the back tire.
Jed's and my clothes and unused gear would just be in the back of his truck, free for the world to take. But who was going to take them? Mitch? I didn't think much about it. Jed locked the truck cab up and hid his keys under the front bumper.
The air inside and outside Devil's Hollow was about the same temperature, so there was no satisfying monster temperature change from going inside the Hollow. The air got a lot moister, but moist air's not a huge selling point.
Devil's Hollow followed the gigantic crack on a relatively straight climb down through a floor littered with breakdown. My brass carbide lamp didn't stand a chance of lighting up the ceiling at some points.
Once at the bottom, there were two passages disguised among the scattered boulders. One went under the mountain for the through trip. We were saving that trip for Monday. It was only three hours, so we'd be able to do that, get back in our cars, and arrive back in New Jersey at a reasonable hour.
The other passage went Upstairs. That's where Jed and I went two years ago. It was a connection of big rooms and long low passages that occasionally led to other big rooms. It wasn't all that stressful, but it had been two years since Jed and I went there. Plus, Marv and Gunther had never seen it.
Saturday and Sunday would be the stress caving days for us. Saturday was dropping the pit at Deep Rock, and Sunday was dropping as much of Cougar Pit as we had time for. Today was easy, and Monday's through trip would be easy.
The stairs of Upstairs are seven stone slabs that look a whole lot like real steps. It's a popular place for group pictures, or at least it was. Even after two years of no traffic, the stairs were still covered in elephant tracks. No one brought a camera.
About half an hour from there, Jed and I refound the virgin passage we pushed on the trip that got Devil's Hollow shut down for two years.
"That's it?" Gunther asked, looking at the unimpressive hole. "It goes nowhere."
"We know that now. I thought it could have led to a big room or something," Jed said.
"I can see the end of the passage from here. Homer's Misery's bigger than that," Gunther was almost laughing. The passage that shut down the cave ended up being as big as a closet. This was making his day.
"There's a few other leads around here that've never been pushed. Maybe there still is a big room to find," Jed said. Gunther seemed very skeptical about that, but he did seem to be checking every untraveled crevice with a good deal of interest. There were plenty of stories of big rooms found in Devil's Hollow and other nearby caves just by pushing the horrible little crawls.
None of those stories were written that Friday. We had a good time looking around, but nothing that would have a survey team want to follow us.
We ended up spending five hours in Upstairs. A decent trip. We made the long climb back up the breakdown, watching the daylight get brighter and brighter. With a few hundred feet to go, Jed clicked off his electric light and climbed by the sun. My carbide was still on, but with all the sun coming it, I had to do a heat check to make sure it was still on.
I was the first one outside. I didn't notice it. I kinda feel stupid for not noticing.
Jed came out two minutes after me. He didn't notice it either.
Marv was third. Sure enough, he noticed.
"Where the hell's my car?"
Jed's truck was sitting right in the grass, but it was alone. The Lexus had disappeared.