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“Carefully,” Loch agrees.
“If there are other traps, they’re probably slow-burners too,” Bill-E argues.
“But I doubt if there are more,” Loch says. “What would be the point? One’s enough. If it was set off, old Sheftree could have simply cleaned up the remains of the bodies, then set the trap again.”
In the end, despite the dangers, they decide to proceed. Since they can’t be swayed and there’s no profit in cutting myself off from them, I reluctantly grab a shovel and all three of us climb down into the hole.
For an hour we work doggedly and fearfully—me fearful of faces appearing in the rocks, Bill-E and Loch fearful of running afoul of the dead Lord Sheftree.
We pause every time there’s a rustling in the trees overhead, or when a heavy stream of earth trickles down into the hole, me anticipating whispers, Bill-E and Loch thinking it might be the grinding gears of Lord Sheftree’s next weapon of mass destruction. But gradually we adjust to the natural sounds of the forest and stop flinching at every minor disturbance.
Bill-E and Loch are more convinced than ever that we’ve unearthed the final resting place of Lord Sheftree’s buried treasure. Not me. There’s something magical about this hole. It drew me to it last night, sang out to the moon-affected beast I’d become and lured it here, turning me into a conspirator, using me to clear the way for… what?
I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea what we might be digging our way down to. But I’m pretty certain it’s not a rich miser’s hidden treasure.
Loch and I work paired, chipping away at the hard-packed earth around the large rocks, prising them out slowly, often painfully, rolling and dragging them up the slope. Bill-E cleans up after us, removing the smaller rocks, pebbles and dirt. We’re an effective team, although as Loch tires from the hard work, he starts cursing and teasing Bill-E, taking out his irritation on him. At first I ignore it, but he keeps on and on, Spleenio this, fat boy that, dodgy eye the other, and eventually I snap.
“Why don’t you lay off him?” I snarl after an especially brutal remark about Bill-E’s dead mother.
“Make me,” Loch retorts.
I square up to him. “Maybe I will.”
Loch holds his shovel in both hands and raises it warningly. I grab the handle and we glare at each other. Then Bill-E slips behind me and whispers, “Do him, Grubbs!” It’s so flat, so vicious, so un-Bill-E, that I turn around, startled, releasing the shovel.
“What did you say?”
Bill-E looks confused, but angry too. “I meant… I just…”
“I heard him,” Loch growls. “He told you to bump me off.”
“What if I did?” Bill-E bristles, and now he tries to get round me, so that he can go toe-to-toe with Loch.
“Stop,” I say firmly. I lay my left palm against the nearest rock wall and concentrate. After a few seconds I feel or sense the vibrations of a very faint throbbing. A non-human throbbing. “We all need to chill.”
“Who made you the leader?” Loch barks.
“We’re being manipulated.” His forehead creases and I start to tell him there’s magic at work, affecting our tempers. But then I realise how crazy that would sound. “The soil,” I say instead, inventing quickly. “There must be some sort of chemical in it. Put there by Lord Sheftree. It’s making us feel and say things we shouldn’t. If we don’t stop, we’ll be at each other’s throats soon.”
Loch’s frown deepens, then clears. “I’ll be damned,” he sighs.
“The sly old buzzard,” Bill-E hoots. “Chemicals to alter our dispositions and turn us against one another. Coolio!”
“I thought you were my enemy,” Loch says wonderingly, staring at me. “It came so suddenly, without warning. I believed you were out to kill me. The shovel…” He looks down at the sharp, grey head, then drops it and clambers out of the pit. Bill-E and I follow. We find Loch sitting by the edge of the hole, shivering.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
“I don’t think we should carry on,” Loch whispers. “You were right. We should turn this over to someone who knows what they’re doing. Chemicals… That’s out of our league.”
“No way!” Bill-E protests. “We’re close, I know it. You can’t back out now. That would be real madness.”
“But –” Loch begins.
“There might be no chemicals,” Bill-E interrupts. “Maybe we’re just tired and edgy. It’s been a long day, we’re hungry, we’ve been working hard, it’s late… Combine all those and you get three sore-headed bears.”
“It was more than grumpiness,” Loch says.
“Probably,” Bill-E agrees. “But let’s say there are chemicals down there. It’s been so long since they were planted, their strength must have dwindled by now. I bet, if we’d dug fifty years ago, they would have blinded or killed us. Now all they can do is make our hackles rise. We should take a short break, clear our heads, then get back to work. If we find ourselves getting short-tempered again, we come up for another rest.”
“I’m not sure,” I mutter. If we were alone, I’d tell Bill-E about my fears—that this place is part of the world of magic. I’m sure he’d take more notice of my warnings then. But I can’t speak about such matters in front of Loch. “Why don’t we leave it for today. It’s getting late. Let’s go home and sleep on it.”
“Not yet,” Bill-E pleads. “Give it until dusk, like we planned. Since we’re here, we might as well make the most of the daylight.”
“Spleenio’s right,” Loch says. Now that the influence of the hole has passed, he’s his old self again, intent on getting his hands on the treasure, quickly forgetting his fears. “Let’s do what we came to, then go home and relax. It might be weeks before we dig all the way to the bottom. We can’t get cold feet every time we run into an obstacle.”
I don’t like it but their minds are set, so after a brief rest, we up tools and edge down the hole again.
→We remove one of the biggest rocks yet and haul it to the top. Standing by the edge of the hole. Sweating, shaking, flexing our fingers. “This is torture,” Loch groans.
“Think the treasure will be worth it?” I ask.
“It better be.”
“What if there’s nothing there, if it’s just a hole?”
Loch smiles. “It isn’t. We’re on to something big. I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re just feeling what you want to feel.”
Loch scowls. “Stop being such a –”
Bill-E screams.
Loch and I bolt down the hole. We find Bill-E submerged in earth to his waist, clinging to the rocks around him, face bright with terror. “There’s nothing underneath!” he shouts. “My legs are dangling! I’m going to fall! I’m going to fall! I’m going to –”
I grab his right hand. Loch grabs his left.
“We won’t drop you!” I yell.
“Not unless you give us reason to,” Loch jokes.
“I was digging,” Bill-E gasps, fingernails gouging my flesh. “Rooting up stones. The floor gave way. My shovel fell. I heard it clanging all the way down—a long way. I thought… I dropped this far… I managed to grab the edge. If I hadn’t…” He starts to cry.
“Look at the chubster,” Loch howls with delight. “Booing like a baba!”
“Can’t you shut up just once in your stupid bloody life!” I roar—then catch myself. “The chemicals,” I hiss. “Loch… Bill-E… take it easy. No outbursts. No insults. Relax. Think nice thoughts. Tell me when you feel normal.”
“How can I be normal when I’m stuck down a –” Bill-E shrieks.
“Nice thoughts,” I interrupt sternly, sensing the throbbing again, coming from the rocks around us. “Loch—you thinking nice things?”
“Yeah,” Loch grins. “I’m imagining the baby’s howls if we let him drop.”
“Loch!”
“OK,” he grouches and shuts his eyes. After a few seconds his expression clears, he opens his eyes and nods to show he’s in control. Bill-E’s less composed, but that’s understandable given the situation he’s in.
“You need to talk to us,” I tell him. “We’re going to pull you out but we don’t want to hurt you. Are there any stones jabbing you, sticks, wire… anything that might cut into you if we pull you up quickly?”
“I don’t think so,” Bill-E sobs. “But it’s hard to tell. I don’t know.”
“Relax,” I soothe. “You’re safe. We have you. Now concentrate and let us know how we can help you out of this mess with the least amount of discomfort.”
Bill-E focuses and moves slightly, exploring the unseen territory around his legs. Finally he gulps and says, “I think it’s safe to pull.”
“Great.” I smile falsely. “Loch—you ready?” He grunts. “We’ll take it easy to begin with. Act on my command. Pull softly when I say. Stop if I give the order. Understand?”
“Whatever,” he shrugs.
I’d like to wipe my palms dry but I don’t think Bill-E would hang there patiently if I released him. So, gripping tighter, glad of the dirt on my skin which counteracts the sweat, I give Loch the nod and we tug. Resistance, but not for very long. Soon Bill-E’s sliding out of the hole-within-the-hole, trembling wildly but otherwise unharmed. When his feet are clear, we give one last yank and he sprawls on top of us, knocking us to the earth, where we lie panting and laughing weakly.
After about a minute, without discussing it, we get up and crawl forward, eager to check out the hole that Bill-E has uncovered. It’s a black chasm. Impossible to see very far down it. The light’s too poor.
“Wait here,” Bill-E says, scrabbling up to the surface. He returns swiftly, a baseball cap on his head, two small torches strapped to either side. “Spent half an hour last night fixing this up,” he says proudly, then holds up a bigger, stronger torch. “I brought this too. Been lugging it around all day. Just in case.”
“Spleen, you’re a genius,” Loch says and Bill-E smiles. “A fat, deformed simpleton, but also a genius,” he adds and Bill-E’s smile turns to a scowl.
“Why don’t you take one of the lights off the hat?” I suggest. “Then we can all have one.”
“No,” Bill-E says. “They’re not powerful enough by themselves. You need the two together for them to be worth anything.” He brushes by us, justifiably smug, taking temporary leadership. He crouches by the edge of the hole he made and flicks on the strong torch. Loch and I crouch by him and stare. The hole continues down as far as we can see, at a slight angle, lots of little stones jutting out of the main rock face, plenty of niches for hands and feet.
“Bloody hell!” Loch gasps. “It’s massive.”
“There’s no way Lord Sheftree could have dug this,” Bill-E notes. “He might have widened the entrance to make it easier to get to this point, but the rest of it’s natural.”
“How far down do you think it runs?” I ask.
“Only one way to find out,” Bill-E grins.
“You’ve got to be joking!” Loch snorts.
“What?” Bill-E frowns. “You’re not coming with me?”
“We can’t go down there,” I mutter, taking Loch’s side. “Not without proper climbing boots, ropes, those metal pegs with the loops that climbers use… all that sort of gear.”
“It doesn’t look so difficult,” Bill-E argues. “I say we try it and go as far as we can. If we run into difficulties, we’ll come back later with climbing equipment.”
“Why risk it?” I press. “Let’s wait until the weekend, stock up, then –”
“You ever used any of that stuff before?” Loch asks. “Boots, ropes and so on?”
“Well, no, but –”
“Me neither,” he interrupts. “Spleenio?” Bill-E shakes his head. “If we’re going to do that, we need to practise,” Loch says slowly.
“So we practise. It means a delay, but –”
“What if someone comes along in the meanwhile, finds this and claims it for their own?” Loch cuts in.
I glare at him. “I hate the way you set out on one side of an argument, then talk your way completely round to the other side.”
Loch laughs. “You’re too conservative, Grubbs. I share your concerns for our safety, but the Spleenster’s right. If we take it easy, advance cautiously, stop if we feel it would be dangerous to go on…”
“What if the batteries in the torches die while we’re down there?” I ask stiffly, fighting a losing battle but determined not to give in gracefully.
“I replaced them last night,” Bill-E says. “They’re all fresh.”
“Genius,” Loch murmurs, then grins at me. “It can’t be that deep—old Sheftree needed to be able to get up and down with his cases of treasure. The angle’s not too steep. And there are loads of toe- and finger-holds.”
“Let’s try, Grubbs,” Bill-E whispers. “We won’t do anything foolish. You can call it off if you think things look dicey. We’ll follow your lead. Promise.”
I hesitate and check the time. Glance up to where the moon will soon be appearing. I place my right hand on the rocky floor, feeling for vibrations, but there aren’t any. I think of all the dangers—then of the treasure, if it’s there, if I’m wrong, if this isn’t a place of magic, if I’ve been imagining hidden perils.
A deep breath. A snap decision. I grab the big torch from Bill-E. “Let’s go.”
THE CAVE (#ulink_5f7c2f74-2e73-5b43-ae42-f414bec3385a)
→Descending slowly, testing each foothold firmly before settling my weight on it. Coming down three abreast, me in the middle, Loch on the left, Bill-E on the right. Loch complains several times about not having a light of his own, but Bill-E refuses to relinquish either of his torches. I’ve been to his house. I know that Ma and Pa Spleen keep several torches around the place, ever fearful of power cuts, determined never to be left stranded in the dark. He could have easily brought another torch for Loch. A mistake or intentional oversight? I don’t enquire.
It’s stuffy down here, warmer than I imagined. The air’s not so bad though. I thought it would be stale and thin, but there’s a good supply of it. Easy to breathe.
Part of me knows this is madness. It screams from the back of my head, reminding me of what happened last night, the face, the whispers, the throbbing today. It wants me to assert myself, demand we make for the surface, tell Dervish, leave all this for experienced potholers to explore.
But a larger part thinks it’s thrilling. We’re the first humans to come down here in decades. In fact, if the others are wrong and this wasn’t used by Lord Sheftree, maybe we’re the first people to ever find it. Maybe it will turn out to be an amazing geographical feature and we’ll get to name it and be on the news. Reni would really dig being a celebrity’s girlfriend.
You’re an idiot, the cautious part of me huffs with disgust.
“Put a sock in it,” I grunt back.
→I lose track of time pretty quickly. Have we been down here ten minutes? Twenty? The hands of my watch are luminous, so I could check. But I’m not going to start fiddling around in the dark, rolling up my sleeves, leaning forward to squint. I’m keeping both hands on the rock face and all my senses focused on the climb.
I go carefully, one hold at a time. Foot-hand-foot-hand-foot-hand-foot. Bill-E and Loch are the same. We don’t speak. My torch hangs from my right wrist by a strap. The light bounces off the rocks. I’d have to stop, turn around, lean back and point the light down to get a clear view of what lies beneath. But I’m not going to do that. I’m taking no chances. The thought of slipping… sliding… tumbling into the unknown…
Foot-hand-foot-hand-foot-hand-foot-ha –
I touch ground. Or a very large overhanging rock. Can’t tell yet. “Wait,” I call softly to the others, who are slightly higher than me. “Let me feel around a bit. I think…” I extend my foot outwards. More rock. I tap it—solid. Gently lower my other foot, still holding tight to the wall. Gradually letting my full weight shift to my feet, I release my grip and stand unsupported. The ground holds and my stomach settles.
Bringing up my torch, I shine it around and gasp.
