James Tabor - The Deep Zone

“What do y’all call that place?”

“Batshit Lake. What else?”

“Let’s go.” Bowman’s curt tone ended the small talk. “Hallie, move us out.”

She looked at him, hesitated a moment, then nodded. Despite his brusque way of going, something about the big man was still attracting her. She recalled the staring contest, the way he had winked at her. If ever something seemed out of character for a black ops kind of guy, that did. And maybe that was part of it, the contradiction such an act implied. Contradiction suggested complexity, and with complexity came surprises. As she had learned, some could be good, some bad, but she knew herself well enough to know that, for her, any were better than none.

The route steepened again and led eventually to a great portal, roughly rectangular, twenty feet high by thirty feet wide, in a rock wall that rose higher than their lights could reach. Here all the air that had been moving up from the cave’s unfathomable depths was compressed and blew through the opening with such force that Cahner grabbed a golden stalagmite to steady himself.

“I have been in a good number of caves,” Cahner said. “But I have never seen wind this strong moving through an opening this big.”

“Y’all know what they say about caves. If she blows, she goes. This is one monster we got us here.” Haight, impressed.

“What’s on the other side of that?” Bowman was poking his light beam into the void, trying to assess the terrain.

Hallie followed the caver’s protocol of keeping her light focused on his chest rather than shining it onto his face, where it would blind him. “A place where a lot of people died.”

She led on, down over boulders, past pits with bottoms their lights could not reach, through gardens of varicolored speleothems, white and red and black stalactites and stalagmites. Some were as thick as tree trunks, great columns that rose to the ceiling. Other, younger stalagmites stuck up like short spears from Cueva de Luz’s floor.

The darkness down here was the luminal equivalent of absolute zero. It began to have weight, like water on a dive, and it consumed the beams of their lights more quickly than any surface darkness ever could. Hallie felt it pressing her body and her mind. There were other physical manifestations of the cave’s presence. Its out-blowing breath pushed their chests and faces, filled their noses, had substance and force. There was nothing foul or corrupt in the scent now, but neither was it like any odor ever smelled on the surface. It came up from the cave’s ancient heart, carrying a coppery tinge like the smell of fresh blood and other, stranger things unknown to the world of light.

This is the real heart of darkness , Hallie thought. Watch over us, Chi Con Gui-Jao .

THEY ENTERED A TIGHT, TWISTING PASSAGE, THEN DESCENDED a jagged vertical chute that required them briefly to “chimney”—to press their backs and feet against opposite walls and work their way down foot by foot. They dropped out of that into a room big enough to contain a football field. Near its center, a bus-sized slab of gray stone had peeled off one wall. Following Hallie, they worked their way through boulders and rubble until all were standing beside the giant slab. It rose twenty feet over their heads and was wreathed in mist that boiled up off a small river running down one side of the chamber, an offshoot of the cave’s main watercourse.

“Some piece of rock.” Haight was playing his light over the slab, examining it in detail.

“This is more interesting.” Hallie moved her light down to the floor of the cave, beneath the end of the rock platform.

“Good Lord. Those look like…” Cahner didn’t finish the sentence.

Bowman did. “Bones. Human bones. Right, Rafael?”

“That is correct. The ancient Cuicatecs believed in many gods. They relied on human sacrifices to stay in good graces with them. Especially with Chi Con Gui-Jao.”

“Those all’re little bones.” Haight’s voice was tight.

“They believed that the most effective sacrifices were children.” Arguello sounded sad. “Their souls were thought to be more pure, therefore more powerful.”

“How would they get down this deep, though?” Haight had turned professionally curious. “We’re two hours past the twilight zone, at least.”

“They would line up from the surface all the way down to the places of killing, each holding a torch,” said Arguello.

“Why here?”

“That we do not know. But obviously they considered such places to have great power.”

Bowman had been shifting from foot to foot. “Let’s keep moving. Good people are dying up top.”

They started down again, following the bouncing circles of blue-white light. After a while, the descent assumed a rhythm that let Hallie’s mind wonder. And what she thought was: We all change in caves. How will this cave change us?

Then the down-climbing grew treacherous again. It was not like hiking down a trail on the surface, nor even like clambering over boulders and talus, and not just because of the surrounding darkness. Down here, everything was wet. There was no trail or path, only an endless jumble of steeply sloping rocks and debris. The trick was to stay on top of the boulders as much as possible, moving along without dropping down into the spaces between them. It required both balance and courage, because sometimes the distance between boulders was a jump from the slick round top of one to the slick round top of another, with empty space of unknown depth yawning between them. At other times, the only way to keep going was to down-climb steep or even vertical faces. None was more than twenty-five feet, but such a fall could maim or kill easily enough.

Even in such terrain, Hallie felt the familiar skill coming back as she descended. When she was in a boulder garden, her brain would automatically plot a path several yards ahead that her feet could follow. Climbing down a short face, her hands and feet seemed to find placements on their own, her fingers to become one with the wall’s protrusions and hollows. To those behind her, she appeared to be almost floating along, so smooth and even was her progress. Bowman, coming next, stayed close despite his size, though his movement was less fluid. Next in line was Cahner, his experience in caves serving him well. His progress was not as graceful and efficient as Hallie’s, but he moved easily and with confidence. Arguello was having the most trouble, and before long, he was sweating hard and swearing. Back at the tail end, Haight could have gone much faster had he not had to stay behind the two older men, but he seemed happy to be easing along, taking in the surroundings, even humming some Appalachian tune to himself as he went.

Hallie came to a huge stalagmite, taller and thicker than one of the Parthenon’s columns, colored red and yellow and black by minerals in the dripping water that had created it. The formation rose from the cave floor straight up to the ceiling. Even in this Brobdingnagian cave, such a speleothem was remarkable, and it was the signpost she had been anticipating.

“Let’s stop here.”

“Why?” Bowman impatient, prodding.

“Because if you keep going you’ll fall about five hundred feet straight down.”

“The big wall you told us about?”

“None other. Stay beside me, be careful, and I’ll show you.”

The others waited while she and Bowman stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. Their lights, shining out into the void, revealed the top of a gigantic canyon, deep enough that their beams did not reach the bottom.

“One thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine feet across to the far wall.” Hallie aimed a laser range finder across, then pointed it straight down. “Five hundred and twenty-three feet deep.”