In the Belly of the Earth Read online

  "Dang it!" he spat and kicked the ground. Things were not going well for him. He returned his attention to the flashlight, specifically the small metal cap he'd just unscrewed. With his fingers he felt for the spiral metal spring and a ring of foam rubber beneath, which he carefully pulled free. When he felt the cold glass bulb wedged in its underside he almost shouted in excitement.

  It was precarious work, laboring blind with trembling fingers. But after five minutes he'd replaced the shattered bulb with the new, found the errant battery in the darkness beyond his lap, and returned them all to their proper place. After twisting on the cap, he placed his thumb on the switch.

  He hesitated, took a deep breath, and pushed his thumb forward.

  Light exploded into the darkness. He fell backward and almost dropped the flashlight a second time. Twin stabs of pain jolted his eyes as they tried to adjust. It was brighter than the sun! More blazing than a nuclear explosion!

  The most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

  His wonder wore off quickly. With his blindness healed, he jumped to his feet and swept the beam in a wide circle, three hundred and sixty degrees. The room was indeed enormous, twice the size of a large movie theatre with an even higher ceiling. One side of the room dipped down to a pool of water, doubtless the one he’d fallen into earlier. The opposite side rose slightly upward, increasing in its angle until it was completely vertical where wall met ceiling. It was here he saw a tunnel - the very tunnel he’d fallen from. It was the sloping angle of the rock that had saved his life. Without it, he would have plummeted sixty feet to his death.

  Staring at the opening, neck craned back, he placed the tail end of the flashlight in his mouth, keeping the beam trained upon his only known chance of escape, and started forward. His tennis shoes were newish, with rubber soles still treaded deep. Even with wet stone beneath him, he was able to move swiftly up the side of the cave. The tunnel was now only twenty feet above. But the angle was too steep to walk. He leaned forward and let his palms meet rock, then began to crawl. Ten feet from the tunnel, with the slope all but vertical, he began to slide. He bit down hard upon the flashlight and tried to keep from tumbling backward. Once he stopped sliding, he steadied himself, and resumed the climb, this time attempting greater speed. He got closer. But still slid back before reaching the tunnel.

  “Really?” he shouted as he slid all the way to the cave floor. His third try brought him closer still to the tunnel, this time within five feet of the tips of his fingers. But to no avail. Enraged, he slid backwards, all the way down. His hands began to blister and swell from their rubbing upon the rough stone. He rested a moment, caught his breath, but kept the beam of his flashlight on the opening above. He could make it. He had to make it. It was only five feet beyond the farthest point he’d reached. Though he was exhausted and in pain, he finally stood up again, stepped back a dozen feet from the incline for a running start, and with a silent, desperate prayer, darted forward like he was running a forty yard dash, zipping past a line of stalagmites, then up, up, up the wall, stretching out his free hand, almost, almost…..but not enough. With a cry of despair, he slid backward to the cave floor.

  Three feet. That was all there had between him and freedom. Three feet. His entire body ached now. The exertion had warmed him, but he found he could hardly move. With a defeated sigh he lowered himself to the ground and lay flat. He pulled the flashlight from his mouth and pointed the beam at the tunnel, as if the darkness would erase it the moment he turned away.

  Eventually, reluctantly, he turned off the flashlight to conserve energy and bathed himself once again in pitch. When his eyes acclimated to the darkness, he noticed a faint blue glow up above. So faint he wondered if he was imagining things, or hallucinating. But as the minutes passed by, the glow grew slightly brighter as his eyes adjusted more.

  “It’s daylight!” he said aloud. “It’s light creeping down the tunnel.”

  It wasn’t much. But seeing even a hint of the outside world lifted his spirits, if only by a notch. He would rest a while, and then try again. Soon his eyelids drooped, then fluttered, then closed.

  Sometime later, waking out of a slumbering haze, Fred heard voices. He sat up straight, rubbed his eyes, and instantly switched on his flashlight, pointing the beam at the tunnel. Mr. Howard was there, holding a rope!

  “You alright, powderpuff?” he called down.

  “Yes!” Fred cried, standing to his feet. He was too elated to wonder why the man had called him that name. As far as he was concerned, Mr. Howard could call him whatever he liked. He started up the incline as the troop leader began to lower a rope.

  “Quite a pickle you’re in down there, ain’t ya?” Mr. Howard didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed or upset at the situation. Craig had probably not told him what had happened. A cowardly omission soon to be remedied.

  When he reached the end of the rope, Fred took hold of it and quickly tied it around his waist. Mr. Howard began to pull him upward, hand over hand.

  “You’re never gonna believe what happened!” Fred called up as he ascended.

  “Oh, I’m sure I will. Craig gave us a full account. He’s quite a brash boy, don’t ya think?”

  By now he was almost to the tunnel, close enough to smell the rubber on Mr. Howard’s shoes. But before his head reached the opening, the man stopped pulling. Fred looked up.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothin’” Mr. Howard said, smiling wide. His white teeth gleamed in the near-darkness. “You just look funny dangling there like a hooked fish. I can see why Craig pushed you overboard. Lame little powderpuff falls like a potato sack!”

  Fred’s blood went cold. He gripped the rope as tight as he could. “Pull me up!”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Howard said. His voice began to change, to get higher, and raspier. His face changed too, popping up with a dozen spontaneous pimples. His thinning brown hair grew thick and curly, and he shrunk a whole foot in an instant. It wasn’t Mr. Howard at all.

  “Sweet dreams, powderpuff,” Craig said and dropped the rope. Fred screamed and fell.

  “Nooooo!” he jolted awake, breathless. He was still on the cave floor. It had been a dream. A cruel, terrible nightmare. Looking up to where he thought the tunnel was, he saw no blue glow. It must be night now.

  And rescue hadn’t come.

  7

  Darkness. Cold. Panic.

  A rush of nausea swept over him. He gripped his stomach and tried to steady his breathing, but there was little he could do. His heart pounded erratically against his ribs. His skin felt thick and clammy.

  Over twelve hours must have passed now since he’d been pushed, more than enough time for Craig to lead others back. The troop had been scheduled to return to Little Rock that afternoon. He pictured his parents standing in the school parking lot as the van rolled up. They would have been eager to find out how the trip went. If he’d had fun or not. If he’d made friends. But none of that had happened. His mother was sure to be going insane with panic by now, his father trying to hold her together.

  “I’m alive,” he said between labored breaths, as if they could hear. “I’m alive.”

  His tongue felt swollen and pasty inside his mouth, and for the first time he realized how thirsty he was. He stood and picked his way across the room, stopping just short of the pool he’d fallen into earlier. The water was shallow for the first several feet, and then deepened to an unknown depth as it neared the far wall. It glowed a deep sapphire in the beam of his flashlight.

  He knelt down and dipped his hand into the water, daggers of cold piercing his skin. For a moment he wondered if it was clean. Bacteria could live anywhere. But his thirst was too strong, and overcame any momentary misgivings. He cupped a handful and lifted it to his lips, took an experimental sip. It was sweet. Perfectly clean, as far as he could tell, anyway. He dropped to his belly and lowered his head until his lips met the water’s surface. There, he slurped several long draughts until hi
s stomach bulged like a balloon.

  Within seconds, his mind cleared as water seeped into his cells. He rose to his feet and swept the flashlight in all directions. The tunnel couldn’t be the only way out. In a room that size, there had to be other passages leading somewhere. Whether they went deeper into the cave or toward the outside, he’d have to find out. A cursory examination of nearby walls revealed dozens of shadowed holes and fissures. Some were a farce, dead ends after a foot or two. Others extended deep into the rock. But even the most promising of these eventually tapered off, too narrow for a human to squeeze through. His claustrophobia was also proving a concern. He wondered if he’d have the guts to push through a small tunnel if it so presented itself.

  On the far end of the room, the cave floor angled downward, its rock sinking into intermittent patches of mud. He slipped twice before lowering himself into a sitting position and sliding on his rump the rest of the way down. Once he was at the base of the incline, he raised his flashlight to illuminate the looming wall a dozen feet ahead. Where wall met floor, a four-foot hole gaped like an open mouth.

  Fred rose to his feet and moved to the opening, crouching low enough to shine his light into its depths. Ten feet in, the passage turned, disappearing behind a corner of stone. He swallowed, licked his lips, and then began to crawl on all fours. It was probably a dead end. Was sure to be. But when he reached the corner and peeked beyond, he could see the tunnel continued onward without shrinking an inch. He glanced back to the mouth of the tunnel, but could see only blackness rimmed with stone. He breathed in, fought the already creeping tendrils of claustrophobia, then continued onward. Three more turns and thirty feet later he found himself staring into another pool. The tunnel had dipped down and was filled three-fourths to the top with water. He could shine his light across the surface and clearly see where the tunnel extended beyond. But it would require swimming with just his head above water. Even the mere thought terrified him. What if he got stuck? What if the water level rose and he drowned?

  Dejected, he turned around and made his way back to the main room. Stepping out into the open felt good, though it took five minutes of struggle to climb up the muddy slant. Once at the top he was filthy and aching and bruised and in desperate need for some rest.

  “I have to try the main tunnel again,” he whispered to himself, though his muscles felt like jelly. When he stood below the rock face, he took one look at the distance from floor to exit and sighed. He had to rest. Just for a little bit. Then he’d try again.

  This time, when he lay down, he heard his stomach begin to protest. It gurgled and growled inside him and brought to his mind that he hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, longer than he’d gone his entire life. For a while he allowed himself to fantasize about deep-dish pepperoni pizza and mounds of mac and cheese, but the dream without the mouthful was simply torture. It only made his stomach more ornery. He forced all thoughts of food from his mind, turned off his flashlight to conserve the battery, and attempted to sleep again.

  With his body shivering, Fred slipped in and out of a half-asleep dream for over an hour before finally drifting off. It was there, in the deep parts of his brain, that he sat before a feasting table with his hands tied behind his back. The smells were intoxicating, turning his mouth into a fountain of saliva. But he could only look on and imagine what it must be like to eat the food. When he finally awoke, half crazy with hunger, he saw at once that the tunnel glowed a faint blue again. It was daylight. The second day. He’d been there for twenty-four hours.

  They’ll come today, he assured himself. Craig would finally tell them. He’d break down and confess what he’d done. And before long, someone would shine a flashlight from above and see Fred waiting below, covered in mud, shivering from head to toe, but alive.

  He tried for the tunnel a few more times, but was dismayed to find he was not improving in his efforts, but getting worse. With no food in his system, his strength was quickly waning. On his third try, he barely made it past the halfway mark. He tripped, smashed his head against the rock and slid back down on his belly. He lay there as if dead and determined to wait until others found him.

  Dipping in and out of a fitful sleep, he passed the day until the blue glow faded and night arrived once more. An idea popped into his head and he sat up in search of a shard of rock. When he found a thin sliver of limestone, he picked the flattest spot on a nearby wall and scratched a single notch into the rock to mark the passing of the first day.

  Time slipped by in an inky blur. A numbing routine of drinking water from the pool and attempted sleep. Each morning, he scratched another mark into the rock and prayed for rescue, though he began to realize that every passing day made such a prospect more and more unlikely.

  Eventually, so tired he could hardly walk, he sank deep into his mind and stayed there, drifting from dream to dream.

  He’d been in the cave for three days.

  8

  Sunlight warmed his face. He blinked, opened his eyes. He was standing in the middle of his backyard, crabgrass up to his ankles where his Dad had yet to mow. His tire swing swayed gently beneath their pecan tree, its frayed rope creaking in slow motion. He heard a familiar and beautiful humming and turned to see his mother through the open kitchen window, hunkered over the stove. A hint of frying chicken lingered in the air. His mouth watered.

  “Mom?” he called out. She lifted her head and looked out the window, smiling when she saw him. “You make sure you spray bug repellent all over, okay? I couldn’t live with myself if you got West Nile.”

  Her floral sundress rippled in the breeze, as did her hair, rich brown with a touch of gray she refused to color. Fred nodded and waved her off.

  “The mosquitos aren’t bad today, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “I always worry, kiddo. It’s my job.”

  He moved to the tire swing and draped his arms over its smoothened treads. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’ll be home in half an hour. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because I'm working on a feast!”

  She retreated back into the kitchen and Fred watched her bustle about for the next several minutes. He'd never really noticed how pretty she was. How she seemed to glide about as if her feet hardly touched the ground. Her mouth was always turned up in a smile. Like she was thinking about some joke. Some funny memory. He could hardly recall her frowning a day of his life. “What a day!” she'd always say, even if it was raining and she was running a fever. His mom was just glad to be alive. To have breath in her lungs and eyes that could see the world.

  Fred turned his eyes from the window and looked around him in the backyard. Dappled sunlight riddled the ground like luminous coins, each yellow circle dancing when a breeze rustled overhead branches. He’d never noticed how stunning the color of light was, nor how soothing its warmth. It's not something one thinks about. Not really. But standing there in the yard, he almost felt a hunger for light. He spread his arms wide and tilted his head back, opening himself to the sun like a leaf soaking it in. He closed his eyes, saw yellow fire turned red through his eyelids.

  When he opened them again he was not in his back yard.

  He was at school, in Biology class. The teacher, Mr. Allen, was drawing the diagram of a plant cell on the chalkboard - mitochondria and organelles rendered in quick, powdery screeches. Most everyone was sleepy after lunch, resting their chins on opened palms, eyes half closed. Fred, however, was all ears, taking fastidious notes. Not so much because he was interested in photosynthesis as much he was with Rebecca Bates. She sat right in front of him, the back of her golden head no more than twenty inches from the tip of his nose, and half that from his fingertips. How many times had he imagined reaching up and running his fingers through those silky tresses? Too many to count. He could smell the fragrance of her strawberry shampoo. Could count the freckles on the back of her neck. There was probably no one else on the planet, including her own parents, who knew that she had preci
sely 17.5 freckles in the space below and behind her left ear.

  He'd hardly said four words strung together to the girl all year. But he was smitten all the same. Not just because of her fragrant locks or freckles either, but because she was smart. The moment Mr. Allen started in on his lessons, she would pull out her glitter unicorn Trapper Keeper and take down his every word in an elegant, bubble letter script. She might be five inches taller than he was, but he didn't care. He'd catch up soon enough when his hormones kicked in. Then, with height and bulging muscles, he'd sweep her off her dainty little feet.

  He had a sudden idea. An idea so ambitious, so audacious, he could hardly believe his brain had thought it up. He would write her a note. Simple and to the point. Before he could convince himself otherwise, he reached into his desk and retrieved a sheet of notebook paper and a freshly sharpened number two pencil. He clutched the pencil, bit his tongue, and wrote the first thing that came to mind.

  * * *

  I like you.

  * * *

  He folded the paper once, then twice, attending to the corners to make sure they were perfectly crisp right angles. He swallowed, clutched the note and extended his hand until the edge of the paper just rested on her shoulder. She didn't move. Didn't even seem to notice.

  And then the bell rang.

  She closed her notebook, tucked away her things, and stood up as elegant as a ballerina. Fred closed his fingers around the note and pulled his hand back. He began to gather his own things, averting his eyes. She was out the door before anyone else, instantly decreasing the beauty in the room.

  But the air in front of his desk still smelled of strawberry shampoo.

  Next time, he vowed. I’ll do it next time.

  The scene seemed to ripple, like a stone dropped into a pool. Mr. Allen's classroom shimmered and faded, replaced at once by a mountaintop and a setting sun. His father stood beside him, snapping pictures of dusk as it settled over the Ozark Mountains in a vast amber blaze.