Veiled Existence Read online

  “Stay together. Keep your voices low and if you need your light, point it at the ground.”

  Who didn’t need a flashlight? Jeni wondered. When she camped, she used her flashlight everywhere she went once it was dark, even if she was just getting something out of the truck.

  Max led the way, followed by Dale, Jeni and Tyler, while Whitey brought up the rear. Dale asked a question and Jeni heard most of Max’s quiet recounting of the Action Squad’s history with the Kessel caves. “…first time, we trekked into the worst sewer tunnel I’ve ever been in. The Squad isn’t big on exploring really unpleasant places like sewers, but here… all kinds of unexpected connections so sometimes we’ll follow a sewer tunnel if it leads somewhere else. To tell you the truth, I think we could’ve died in there that first time… realized our hearts were beating way too fast. The air in the tunnel was so methane rich that we weren’t getting enough oxygen. When we realized… happening, we got out of there fast.”

  “But you went back?” Dale asked.

  “Yeah, when we discovered an alternate route. …we made it to the caves, but the air in there was nearly as bad as the sewer tunnel… brewery cellars had the worst atmosphere of any place we’ve ever explored. It smelled nasty, everything was coated in slime and a heavy mist made it hard to see and to breathe. We couldn’t even take decent pictures in there.”

  Jeni was glad when Dale voiced exactly what she was thinking. “And you think Ice could be in there? In the most inhospitable place you’ve explored?”

  The buzz of a cell phone sounded and then bluish illumination came from behind her. Whitey or Tyler must’ve received a text or ignored a phone call, because neither of them spoke.

  “…back a third time,” Max was saying. “By this time the brewery was no longer functioning and the air was far better. There was still a heavy mist… able to explore. I wouldn’t want to be there longer term though… one of the reasons I think it might have been chosen—to keep your friend subdued.”

  Jeni winced. Maybe it would’ve been better if she hadn’t heard Max’s answer. A low whistle from behind stopped Max in his tracks. Jeni stepped out of the way as Whitey made his way forward. The group bunched to hear Whitey’s hushed report, “I think someone’s following us, man.”

  “Off the trail. No lights,” Max ordered. They scattered into the woods on both sides of the trail. Dale followed Jeni and crouched nearby. The rain was light enough that the trees had provided some shelter from the wetness as they walked, but off the path, water ran from the damp plant undergrowth and soaked into her jeans.

  Heart hammering, Jeni breathed through her mouth to remain as quiet as possible. With the sound of water dripping on leaves and the forest floor, Jeni began to think Whitey’s warning was a false alarm. Then she heard a scraping noise on the trail back in the direction they’d come from. Seconds later, a light flickered. With her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out a lone figure moving along the trail. Male, judging by the gait.

  The figure drew closer, slowing as he neared where they were hidden. He paused, his head cocked slightly, and flicked the beam of his light over the trail ahead. Jeni tucked her chin to her chest, breathing shallowly, frightened to hold her breath on the chance that she might noisily suck in a gulp of air if the man stood there long enough. The shadowy form advanced slowly, making a more thorough search of the surrounding forest.

  Across the path, someone stood.

  “Hold it right there!” The man’s free hand hovered near his hip as he fixed his light on Tyler.

  Jeni very nearly stood up also, but Dale put a hand on her arm.

  Tyler blew out a huge breath and grinned. “Am I glad to see you.” He took a couple long steps toward the path.

  “Stay right there, son.”

  But by now, Tyler was at the edge of the trail anyway. And he began to babble.

  Tyler.

  Babbling.

  “…visiting my friend at the university…lost track of them. We’re supposed to meet…”

  Jeni realized what Tyler had probably known right away—the guy was a cop, or possibly a ranger, but he sounded more like a policeman. Her cousin had given himself up so the rest of them could continue.

  The policeman frisked Tyler while he continued with a steady stream of chatter. “Have you been drinking tonight?”

  “No sir.”

  Jeni had to admire her cousin in action, he’d put the officer at ease by acting goofy and flustered and also managed to draw him away from the rest of the group. The gesture confounded her though. She knew Tyler had been looking forward to the caves.

  As the policeman escorted Tyler back toward the parking lot, they remained crouched in the underbrush until all they heard was dripping rain. Max was first to stand. “That was a close shave,” he said in a low voice.

  As they made their way back to the path, Whitey asked, “Are we still doing this?”

  “Yes.” Jeni looked from face to face. “Of course. Tyler didn’t give himself up for us to quit.” She imagined he’d be downright pissed if they quit now.

  “That’s what I was hoping to hear.” Whitey ushered them onward.

  The trail became more treacherous as they descended toward the river and the rain escalated to shower status. Jeni would have liked to use her light, afraid she’d slip or misstep and tumble down the bluff, but after the close encounter with the policeman, she didn’t dare.

  Then Max said over his shoulder, “We’re getting close.”

  The woods thinned out and soon their feet were navigating more dirt and stones than tree roots. Jeni pulled the hood of her borrowed rain jacket over her head. A few minutes later, Max slowed and then stopped, waiting until they were bunched together. The beam of his flashlight swept to the right, revealing the river bank as it became more vertical. “We’re going this way. Be careful, it’s steep.” Then he turned off his flashlight and looked up at the cloudy sky. “There is a moon tonight underneath those clouds. Once our eyes adjust and we get out of the trees, I think we’ll be able to see without flashlights. If you must use a light, cup it in your hand and keep it brief. We don’t need anyone reporting lights up here.”

  Jeni placed each foot on the ground cautiously, unsure which shadowy forms were loose and which were stationary. Dale continually looked back, grabbing her arm once when her foot slid on a patch of gravel. Requiring more steps than her longer-legged companions, she was breathing hard when Max finally halted. It took a moment for her to realize that the darkness in front of him was an opening in the face of the bluff. A chill snaked its way down her spine and she shuddered. The hole was smaller than she’d anticipated. They would have to crawl.

  Max turned to Dale and Jeni. “All right. It’s going to be close, smelly and damp. There will be bugs; possibly bats and probably rats. If you’re not able to be an asset, you’ll be a liability, so take a moment to consider if you really want to come with us. Me and Whitey can find your friend if he’s in here.”

  Jeni stared into the black hole thinking of the report she’d written on bats. The assignment had been to choose a subject they feared and demystify it. Bats had freaked Jeni out since she was small and they’d discovered one in her grandma’s living room. But the objective of the assignment worked on Jeni; she was okay with bats. The rats, too, she could deal with. Bugs? Jeni shivered. She didn’t like bugs.

  She also hated close, dark spaces. The situation wasn’t like Itasca, where it had to be her in the cave. This time though, Ice was in danger, possibly hurt. As Dale reiterated his intent to participate in the search, Jeni closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. When she’d expelled the entire breath, she opened her eyes. “I’m in.” Her tone was resolute.

  Max’s teeth shone in the murky light when he grinned. “Okay then. Let’s roll.” With that, he put his knee on the lip of the tunnel and crawled inside.

  Ice could no lon
ger deny it. The lantern was dying. The excuses he’d been telling himself—that his imagination was playing tricks or that he was in a larger tunnel—no longer held up. Now the pool of light encompassed only his mud-caked shoes as they swung forward one after the other and disappeared into the muck. Making up for his limited sight, his ears strained for any change in the hollowness of splashes produced by his ongoing march.

  The thought of stumbling around in absolute blackness filled him with dread even though he’d never had a fear of the dark. He’d spent many nights in seclusion at the vision quest lodge. When the sun dropped behind the edge of the earth and clouds obscured the moon and stars, without residual city light, the darkness of a northern Minnesota night seemed impenetrable. But Ice learned to employ his other senses, feeling the ground change beneath his feet, hearing the rustle of branches and whisper of long grass, smelling damp earth, and even tasting on the air that he was near water.

  Here, in this subterranean hell, his senses were dulled by toxic gas, foul odors, slime covered walls, and echoes. Losing the ability to see would rob him of the one faculty that was still sending reliable information to his brain. Even his sixth sense, gut instinct, was poisoned by a strange regret that was slowly consuming him. He couldn’t fathom why he felt as if he should have stayed in the cave, should have given in to Elletre and lived to make up for his transgressions instead of perishing in this place.

  A shiver ran down his torso, shaking him from the thought. No. He would die before being under her control again. He would never surrender to Elletre or the old woman.

  His ears detected rushing water somewhere in the distance. The sludge in this tunnel had decreased in water content, leaving a sticky muck that sucked at his feet every time he bent a leg to take a step. Although Ice still wished he wore boots, the one redeeming quality of his canvas tennis shoes was that the laces weren’t allowing the gummy mud to pull the shoes from his feet.

  The crashing sound of a waterfall became louder as the tunnel sloped upward. Mercifully, the muck thinned, although the incline posed a new challenge for Ice’s labored heart. A puff of nearly fresh air brushed his face, and one step farther, the pounding water reverberated with the feel of a large space. He was out of the tunnel.

  A careful exploration revealed that he’d reached a major junction of five or six sewer lines whose joined archways formed a sort of chamber. Even in the dim glow of his dying lamp, Ice could see that the water was mostly clear. This was a rain runoff sewer. And judging by the swiftness of the flow, it was raining.

  Placing the lantern and backpack on top of a bricked-in outlet pipe, Ice put a hand to the wall to steady himself as he dipped each foot into the stream of water and rinsed the muck from his shoes and bottom of his jeans. Then he climbed onto the ledge with his meager gear. Scooting until his back was against a damp—but not slime-covered—wall, Ice turned off the lamp and considered his next move.

  The more convinced he became that he could follow the stream of water to the river, the less inclined he was to move. Unzipping the backpack, he rummaged until his hand closed on a granola bar. The current had beat against his feet with a considerable force that would be tough to withstand in his weakened state. Food and rest would fortify him. Perhaps the rain would stop while he took a break, lessening the strength of the current.

  Pulling up his jacket hood, Ice rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The gushing water splashed and spattered on the brick, babbling like human voices. His mind wandered, allowing the sound to shape itself into familiar things, soothing things: chanting and ceremonial singing, tribal functions…

  This was the first stop that allowed him to actually sit down to rest. And breathe normally. With the granola assuaging his ever-growling stomach, Ice was as close to comfortable as he could get down here. An image of the rushing water pulling him down and sweeping him off into the dark unknown reran in his head like a tape loop.

  Better to rest. Better to wait.

  He drifted to sleep.

  “We explored all of these sandstone crawl tunnels,” Max informed them as they passed a second branching passage. “All of them are dead ends except the one leading to the sewer tunnel. Did you catch a whiff of that? We’re getting close.”

  They’d been on their hands and knees long enough that Jeni’s kneecaps ached and she was grateful for the suede gloves Max had loaned her. She hadn’t noticed the change in smell, but a few feet farther along she began to detect the unpleasant odor of a pit toilet on a hot day. By the time they reached their turn-off, the stench filled her nose.

  The compensation for the noxious reek of the sewer tunnel was its size: six feet or so high and just wide enough to walk down normally. The central trench where the raw sewage ran was bordered by ledges on either side. The air was humid. The dangling, jiggly slime mold covering the tunnel’s walls and ceiling horrified her. Max referred to them as “snotsicles” or “booger stalactites.”

  The mold, however, became the least of her worries as they ran into swarms of cockroaches. In their rush to scurry from the lights, the insects piled on top of one another, causing many to fall. Jeni squealed when a few dropped onto her head, the stiff hairs on their legs getting tangled in her hair. Dale took off his gloves to extract them for her and she quickly removed a ponytail elastic from her wrist and tied her hair back. Then she pulled her jacket tight around her neck, shuddering at the thought of cockroaches inside her clothes.

  Panic expanded in her chest, restricting her airflow. As they advanced, Jeni’s breathing became more labored. Her throat ached and her heartbeat, already accelerated by fear and the edge of hysteria, thumped almost painfully. She paused, hand to her breastbone.

  Whitey whistled and Max turned, pointing his light at Jeni. “You okay?”

  She nodded, taking a pull of the noxious air. “Just needed a minute.”

  “Imagine this atmosphere like three times worse.”

  Jeni shook her head. “No wonder you almost died.”

  “Yeah, that trip wasn’t too fun.” He caught her gaze and held it as he said, “It’s not far to the brewery cave. Do you think you can make it?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be okay.” She would not be the reason to call off the search for Ice.

  When they reached an offshoot, Max halted to aim his light down the tunnel. “This is it,” he announced.

  At the end of the passage, Jeni saw a small hole at the top of a pile of rubble. She felt the blood drain from her face.

  “Don’t worry,” Max said. “You don’t have to climb in there. We’ll be returning the same way we came in. I’ll just go see if there’s anybody inside. You should sit down if you can find a spot.”

  Dale stepped forward. “I’ll go with you.”

  Max looked at Whitey. “Guess that makes sense. If something happened to us, these guys wouldn’t know their way out.”

  “All right,” Whitey said. “I’ll help you up.”

  As they approached the hole, Max pointed to scrapes gouged into the wall beneath the opening. “Look fresh to you?”

  Dale felt the grooves with his fingertips and nodded.

  Sweat beaded at her hairline as Jeni watched Whitey provide a knee for Max and Dale to boost themselves into the hole. She didn’t know if she should hope that Ice was in the cave or not.

  Whitey assessed her pinched look and tried to engage her in conversation, asking what grade she was in and if she was involved in sports. She answered him, but her voice lacked enthusiasm.

  After a span of silence, he said, “Max has been in that cave twice. If your friend is there, he’ll find him.”

  Jeni nodded, and then turned away so he wouldn’t see her watery eyes. The crunching sound of footsteps drew her attention back to the small hole where Max’s face appeared. “We think he might have been here. There’s a water bottle that looks recent, some bandage wrappers and a few antiseptic wipes
that still smell like rubbing alcohol.”

  As fast as Jeni’s spirits rose, they instantly plummeted. “So either he’s been moved, or he’s wandering around down here.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the latter,” Max said, dropping from the hole into a crouch. Then he stood to help guide Dale through the opening.

  “What kind of shoes do you think Ice would wear to a party?” Dale asked.

  Jeni thought for a moment. “Converse, probably.”

  Dale nodded. “That’s what the tracks looked like.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Max rubbed his gloves together to get rid of the mucky slime. “Dale said he’s a competent tracker, so we’ll let him lead. See if we can follow the trail.”

  Following clues of disrupted slime mold, occasional footsteps in the mud along the sewer trenches, and one discarded water bottle that matched the one in the cave, they ended up out of leads at a crossroads of putrid smelling sewer tunnels. Jeni knew her weakened state had slowed their progress. As they contemplated their next move, she swayed and staggered, nearly falling. Max reached out and caught her, steadying her with his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why am I the only one affected by this?”

  “You’re not,” Max said. “My heartbeat is definitely elevated. You’re just smaller than the rest of us.”

  “I don’t feel too great, either,” Dale said, and Jeni saw Whitey nod in agreement. “But I haven’t given up on picking up this trail. How about Whitey comes with me and you two stay here? I’ll check the side tunnels.”

  Whitey and Max exchanged a look and Max nodded.

  Bending with her arms braced on her knees, Jeni pulled in air, her lungs aching for oxygen. Max rested a hand on her back to make sure she didn’t keel over into the sludge. I will not be a liability. I will not be a liability. She repeated the mantra in her head, losing track of time, barely cognizant that the other guys had returned and struck off in another direction.