that, Quentin set off after his brother.
“Why are the caves sacred?” Brian asked as he and Davy trudged reluctantly up the mountain after the others.
“Nana
With three older brothers, Brian Fellows was used to having his leg pulled. “Is that the truth or is that just a story?” he asked.
Davy Ladd shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Looks At Nothing told it like it was the truth, but maybe it is just a story.”
They had followed the older boys to the entrance of the cave and then waited outside until the flashlight gave out, forcing Tommy and Quentin to emerge.
“It’s beautiful in there,” a gleeful Tommy reported. “Unbelievable! It’s too bad you’re both chickens.”
“We’re not chickens,” Davy said quietly.
Quentin laughed. “Yes, you are. Come on, chicky-chicky. Let’s go have that hamburger. I’m starved.”
During the next couple of weeks, Tommy had persuaded Quentin to spend every spare moment exploring the cave. When they ran out of money for gas and flashlight batteries, they stole bills from their mother’s purse. And even Quentin was forced to agree it was worth it. The cave was magnificent—magnificent and awful at the same time. It was so much more than either of them had imagined and yet it was terribly frustrating. They had found something wonderful and amazing, beautiful beyond all imagining. Gleaming wet stalactites hung down like thousands of rocky icicles. Stalagmites rose up out of watery pools like so many gray looming ghosts. Here and there, pieces of crystal reflected back light like a thousand winking eyes. Tommy was dying to share their discovery.
“You know what’ll happen if anybody finds out,” Quentin had warned his brother. “They’ll kick our asses out of there and we’ll never get to go back.”
“Will they ever open it up? Maybe charge admission like they do at Colossal Cave?”
“Don’t be stupid, Tommy. You heard what Davy said. It’s sacred or something.”
It wasn’t the first time Quentin and Tommy had squared off against the rest of the world. The two of them had been keeping secrets—some worse than others—all their lives. They were used to it, and they kept this one, too.
Three weeks after finding the cave, they ventured far enough inside the first chamber to locate the narrow passage that led to the second. The first room had been so rough and wet that it was almost impossible to walk in it. Starting in the passage, the second one seemed dryer, and it had a dirt floor, as though someone had gone to the trouble of covering the rough surface so it would be easier to walk on it.
Inside the second chamber they had discovered the rock slide barring most of what had once been a second entrance to the cavern. And over against the far wall, much to both their horror and fascination, they had found the scattered pieces of a human skeleton.
“Hey, look at this?” Tommy said, picking up a bone and flinging it across the cave. “Maybe they left this guy here to guard these pots and to cast a spell over anybody who tries to take them.”
Tommy Walker’s imagination and his fascination with magic had always outstripped his older brother’s. “Shut up, Tommy,” Quentin said. “And leave those bones alone. What if they still carry some kind of disease or something?”
Shrugging, Tommy leaned down and picked up the first pot that came to hand. In the orange glow from the flashlight it looked gray or maybe beige. A black crosshatch pattern had been incised into the surface.
“I’ll bet something like this would be worth a lot of money,” he said thoughtfully. “How about if we take it to the museum over at the university and try to unload it? Whaddya think of that idea?”
“It might work,” Quentin had agreed. “With all the gas we’re buying these days, our budget could use a little help.”
Together they had discussed which pot might best serve their immediate monetary purposes, settling eventually on the one Tommy had picked up in the first place. Carrying the pot in one hand and his flashlight in the other, Tommy had started back toward the main cavern. Quentin was several feet behind him, so he never saw exactly what happened. All he knew was he heard a noise, like something falling. He also heard the pot breaking into what sounded like a million pieces. When he came around the corner, Tommy was nowhere in sight.
“Tommy,” he yelled. “What happened? Where’d you go?”
For an answer, he heard only dead silence, broken occasionally by the drip of water.
“Tommy, come on now. Don’t play games,” Quentin said, fighting back a sudden surge of fear. “This is no time for jokes. We have to get out of here and head home. It’s getting late.”
But still there was no answer. None at all.
Slowly, carefully, Quentin had begun to search the area. After ten minutes or so, he found the hole, almost killing himself in the process. Just off the path they had used to get to the passage, there was something that looked like a shadow. But when Quentin shone his light that way he found instead a shaft, some twenty feet deep, with Tommy lying still as death at the bottom with his feet in a murky pool of water.
“Tommy!” Quentin shouted again. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?” But Tommy Walker didn’t answer and didn’t move.
Terrified, Quentin raced out of the cave. In honor of their spelunking adventures, the two boys had managed to amass a fair collection of discarded rope. Gathering an armload of rope, Quentin dashed back up the mountain. Inside the cave, working feverishly, he managed to rappel himself down the side of the shaft. Once there, he was relieved to find that Tommy was still alive, still breathing.
“Tommy, wake up. You’ve gotta wake up so we can get out of here.” But there was no response. Finally,
