The Spelunkers

A Chipper Press Anthology

Union Lake, Michigan

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. All characters appearing in this work are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the written permission of the publisher.

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Union Lake, Michigan 48387 mail to: info@chipperpress.com

© 2020 Chipper Press, et al

Published in the United States by Chipper Press An imprint of Zimbell House Publishing http://www.chipperpress.com

All Rights Reserved

Trade Paper ISBN: 978-1-64390-151-0 .mobi ISBN: 978-1-64390-152-7 ePub ISBN: 978-1-64390-153.4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932704

First Edition: February 2020 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Chipper Press

Union Lake, Michigan

Acknowledgements

Chipper Press would like to thank all those that contributed to this anthology. We chose to show-case seven new voices that best represented our vision for this work.

We would also like to thank our Chipper Press team for all their hard work and dedication to these projects.

Table of Contents

A Japanese Rescue with Hachi Error! Bookmark not defined.

K.A. Ramstad

Crystal Caverns Error! Bookmark not defined.

Stephen Jackson

Gone Out 8

Megan Kunz

Nomad of the UnknownError! Bookmark not defined.

Rachel Racette

The Nighttime ScreamError! Bookmark not defined.

Katy Mitchell-Jones

The Notch Error! Bookmark not defined.

D. L. Sloat

The Secrets of Castile CavesError! Bookmark not defined.

Taylor Rigsby Contributors

Other Works by Chipper Press

A Note from the Publisher

Gone Out Megan Kunz

It was just Dad and me; there wasn’t another soul in sight. It wasn’t until I was in that cave that I realized how much I would want to see another soul.

“Perfect, Liv! We’ll have the cave to ourselves.” Dad grinned as he pulled his pack out of the back of his truck.

I just lifted my eyebrows and tried to keep from rolling my eyes. I had to remind myself over and over again that I had to be pleasant because I was doing this to try to help my dad.

I heard gravel crunching beneath Dad’s feet as he walked up behind me and put his arm around my shoulders. “You ready?” he asked, excitement in his voice.

“Yep, I’m ready,” I replied, trying my best to match his excitement, but failing miserably.

“All right, well, we’re off then, I guess,” Dad said, sensing my hesitation, but trying to conjure some excitement. He swung his pack onto his back and we put our ancient headlamps on. Dad had gone caving a couple of times when he was a teenager, and he insisted that his old carbide lamps were just as good as the LED ones of the modern world.

“Don’t these things run out?” I asked, glancing up at the antique lamp now resting heavily on my forehead.

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

“Aw, they go for about four hours. We’ll be just fine. Unless you want to make this a longer expedition?” He nudged my arm playfully.

I gave him a half-hearted smile. I could tell the new boots he bought me were going to blister my feet.

We started into the cave and immediately felt the temperature drop. I wondered if I had worn enough layers.

“It’s amazing what the lack of sunlight can do, huh?” Dad asked, rubbing the sides of his arms.

“Yeah, it’s freezing in here,” I said. I was already having so much fun.

The deeper into the cave we went, the colder it got, and I found myself shivering in short bursts every now and then. I definitely had not worn enough layers.

After exiting a pretty lackluster tunnel of sorts, we walked in an expansive “room” ornamented with stalagmites and stalactites. This was the typical image most people conjured when thinking of a cave and, I had to admit, it was beautiful.

Dad looked over at me, and a smile spread across his face when he saw my jaw hanging open and my eyes wide. “See, I told you it would be worth it.”

We carefully walked around the room, as though we were exploring glass cases holding the treasures of a museum. Jutting out from the wall in big globs, stalactites were dripping off of a big, round mound. It reminded me of an ice cream cone left in the sun for too long—except there was no light and not much heat in here.

I had always pictured stalactites as these big, pointy spikes hanging from the cave’s ceiling, and there were some of those, but mostly they were kind of meshed together, as though some little preschooler had smeared glue in between them, bonding them together in one big messy form.

The rocks were brown, my least favorite color, but, admittedly, they could pull it off. Light, almost white stripes ran through the darker browns, as though some behemoth had come along and swirled his paintbrush over the surface.

“It’s pretty, Dad. I admit it,” I said. “Well, let’s see what else we can find,” he said,

reaching out and putting a small strip of reflective tape on the wall near the entrance to another tunnel.

“What’s up with the tape?” I asked, wondering if we should be leaving souvenirs behind.

“It’s to mark our path. So we don’t get lost. I’ll pull them as we leave,” he said, putting the roll back in his pack and zipping it closed.

“Gottcha.” I nodded. We walked through a longer tunnel, with several

branches shooting off in varying directions. “Which one, Liv? You pick!” Dad said. I pointed in a random direction. They were all the

same to me. Dad put his tape on the wall and then we started off in the direction I had designated. The passageway quickly shrank in size, and I suddenly knew what Alice felt like when she visited Wonderland. We had to crouch down and slowly shuffle our way through the passage, surrounded by sharp rocks jutting out here and there.

I had never really been in a tightly enclosed space before, so it never occurred to me that I might have claustrophobia … but the thought was occurring to me just then.

“Dad, how tight is this going to get?” I asked. “I don’t really love this.”

“Well, that’s the exciting thing about caves,” Dad replied, his voice straining a bit as he crouched even lower. “You never really know until you get in there.”

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The passage, thankfully, didn’t shrink any further and then suddenly opened up into another room, smaller than the last, but no less impressive. As we started to explore, I found a “shelf” with what, at first glance, looked like little eggs. When I came closer, I realized they were just part of the rock. Some of the bubbles were amazingly symmetrical, while others were a bit off, dipping in here and there. It reminded me of the time I noticed tiny balls of sand all over a beach when we were vacationing in Thailand. I couldn’t fathom what had caused the sand to look that way until I saw a sweet little crab pop up with a tight ball of sand in its claws. He popped the ball of sand next to the others and quickly dove back down to his burrow.

The memory made me smile. Thailand was such an amazing experience, but more than that, it was before my mom got sick. Life was simple then. Life felt good back then.

“Dad, look at these,” I said, gesturing him over to where I stood.

“The white ones remind me of pearls. Mom would love them,” he said, his smile fading.

“Hey, should we keep going? You pick this time. Which tunnel?” I said, hoping to take his mind off of Mom.

Dad picked another tunnel, thankfully, with more height than the last, and we explored room after room. All of the cave’s rooms were filled with varying formations that made the ground uneven, but only one had a ledge that dropped down to an abyss. I walked over to it and, standing as far back from the edge as I could manage while still being able to see, I peered down into the black hole. Dad said it was probably at least a fifty-foot drop. Heights are a no-go for me. I shivered and took a big step backward, then walked the long way around the room to avoid being near the ledge. I was glad to leave that room for the safety of a solid floor beneath my feet.

“Hey, when are we heading back to the car for lunch?” I asked. My stomach was starting to gnaw away at me as I thought of the cooler full of ham sandwiches and cold juice boxes. I know, I’m a kid when it comes to juice boxes, but they’re so delicious. Do you ever really outgrow those?

“Lunch? You’re already asking about lunch? We’ve only been at it for …” Dad paused to look down at his glowing watch. “Oh, it’s been a few hours, actually.”

“A few hours? But, Dad, didn’t you say that the lamps only last for four hours? What are we going to do if they go out?” I started to feel anxious about being miles into a hole in the earth with a light that had an expiration date. On top of that, my feet were, as predicted, beginning to give way to painful blisters: one on my right baby toe and one on the back of each of my heels.

“Don’t worry, I brought extra carbide. Let’s just explore one more area, and then we’ll call it a day and head back. Sound good?” he asked.

“Okay, that’s fair,” I agreed, but the uneasy feeling had stuck to my ribs, refusing to let go.

We followed a tunnel, this time, turning down several different corridors before finding another room to explore. While it was still an amazing sight, I was finding it more difficult to enjoy. My feet were beginning to ache, especially where the blisters had formed, and my stomach was constantly reminding me that lunch would be ideal right about then.

I put the straw of my Camelbak to my mouth, but only a pathetic drizzle of water escaped. I tightened my lips around the tube, and I sucked back, harder this time. Nothing. Even more reason to head back now. I was not looking forward to spending the next few hours traversing back through the cave without any water.

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

“Dad, my water’s out,” I called, a sense of irritation in my voice. It wasn’t his fault, and I knew that, but I still felt like he should’ve been watching the time better.

“Completely out?” He reached for his own drinking tube, and, after taking a test sip, let me know that he still had some. I could share if I got thirsty on the way out.

I tried to suppress the irritation that was building up inside me. The entire point of this trip was to take his mind off Mom and off all the stress he’d been feeling, and it wouldn’t help if I was just going to get annoyed with him. Since she’d been sick, Dad had been a crazy man … so stressed all the time. Chemo, radiation, surgery … she’s almost done with that load, but Dad hasn’t been the same. I figured I could go on this dumb trip in order to give him a break.

We started to turn back when Dad noticed my face, pinched with pain. “What’s the matter, Liv? Are you hurt?” he asked, reaching down and beginning to examine my foot.

“Just a few blisters. I’ll be fine,” I said, although they were beginning to become more and more difficult to walk on.

“I should have made you break these in first. Dumb mistake,” he muttered.

He stood up, and all of a sudden, the room was darker. My lamp had gone out.

“Okay, we’re going to have to stop for a minute so I can change the carbide,” Dad said as he pulled his small pack off his back and began to unload the contents. He pulled out a bag that looked like it was full of one of my little brother’s rock collections. Little grey stones piled on top of one another.

Dad lifted my lamp off my head, leaving behind an odd feeling, as though one of my limbs had been removed, and began to take the lamp apart. He carefully scraped out the

spent carbide and put it inside another bag. When he went to fill the lamp with the new carbide, his face fell.

“It’s wet. How did it get wet?” he mumbled to himself, a sense of urgency in his voice.

He dug through his pack again and realized the culprit: a juice box. My little brother was playing with our equipment before we left for the trip, and he must have slipped a juice box into Dad’s pack. Somewhere along the way, it was squished open and leaked all over the bag of carbide, seeping in just enough to get it wet.

“Liv, listen to me. We’re gonna be fine, but we need to move out of the cave a little faster than we came in, okay?” Dad said.

I could feel the stress levels rising and knew he was trying to stay calm. I just nodded and lifted his pack, slipping it onto his right arm and then pulling it around to his left. We turned and pulled off the first of our reflective tape markers. We were going to be fine.

We made our way through the first winding tunnel, pulling up more and more pieces of tape. With each piece, it felt as though a weight was lifted. There was no reason to stress. Dad still had a lamp, and we were on our way out. We had markers. We’d pull them and wouldn’t have any issues.

Two more rooms and several more tunnels. We were making good time. The next one was the tight tunnel. I guessed that the tunnel was the instigator of the juice box incident. It probably got popped open when Dad was squeezing through some of the tighter spaces in that cramped passage. We started into it and got maybe halfway through when Dad’s lamp spent the last of its carbide.

Black. I reached out a hand for Dad’s, my grip on his hand as

tight as a python around a rabbit. My nails dug into his palm. He squeezed back, and, for a moment, all we could

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

hear was the panicked breath that we were both expelling.

I had been able to reason my way out of feeling overly claustrophobic when we first made our way through this tiny shaft, but now … now I felt it bear down upon me with the weight of an angry bull. I immediately started breathing too quickly as my mind rushed to feed me all sorts of terrifying possible outcomes to this scenario. Dad let go of my hand and tried to reach my back, but ended up just barely making it to my head. He gently patted my helmet, which I would have found hilarious in any other setting, but nothing was even remotely humorous at that point.

“Olivia, take slow, deep breaths,” he said, his voice forcing a calm mask, but underneath that mask, I could hear distress.

The darkness seemed to press down upon me, its tentacles reaching out from the ceiling, the floor, the walls … everywhere. I lifted my hand to my face and felt a bit unnerved when I couldn’t make out its shape. Black. That was all. And when I tried to move my body in any direction, I was met with cold, pitiless rock. I wanted that rock gone. I wanted it away from my body. I didn’t know how to take slow, deep breaths right then.

“Olivia, we’re going to keep moving. Listen for my movements. I can’t hold your hand while we go through this shaft, so you have to stay right behind me, okay? I’ll light my watch as we go, so keep your eyes on the glow,” Dad said.

I nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. “Olivia, I need to know that you are with me. Can you

talk to me? We’re going to move forward, and you need to stay with me,” Dad said again.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m following you,” I said, my voice shaking as I pushed back a lump in my throat. “Dad, I’m really scared. I’m so scared.”

He reached back one more time to give my hand a squeeze, and then let me know that he was going to start moving.

I could go a few feet, a few minutes more, and then my body would seize up again as the claustrophobia returned, smothering me from every direction. I remembered my first experience with feeling claustrophobic—okay, I guess I had felt claustrophobic once before. I was in the wave pool at the water park when I was little; enormous tubes floated in almost every inch of that pool, and I was just a lone swimmer, with no tube to sunbathe on. When the first set of waves came on, they pulled back so strongly that I went with them, and I found myself surrounded by a wall of tubes on every side, bumping into my face and threatening to send me under. I had been terrified.

Right then, I would’ve given anything to be back in that water, surrounded by those gargantuan tubes. They seemed so easily conquered compared to this wall of stone that was holding my body captive.

I still could barely utter a word, but Dad could tell when I had a panic attack by the change in my breathing. He would stop moving and wait, holding my hand and speaking softly to me.

It took us two hours to get through that tunnel—the same tunnel that had taken thirty minutes in the light. I looked forward to entering the room after the shaft, and, for some reason, I expected it to have some sort of light. I told myself that all the misery would pass if I could just get out of the tunnel.

Dad lifted me up when the tunnel let out, and I stretched my arms and legs. As much as I wanted this to bring relief, it didn’t. Instead, a new kind of fear gripped my heart. As I stood and took a step forward into that impossibly dark room, I began to feel a sense of vertigo.

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

Without any sight, my mind didn’t know how to process where I was, and each step forward felt like a risky move.

I told Dad that I couldn’t walk, and he pushed the button on his watch, hoping to give me a little bit of light so that I could gain a sense of where I was in relation to everything around me. The little green numbers lit up, but it seemed as if we were in a black hole, and all the light that emanated from the watch was just absorbed into the darkness around us. It wasn’t a watch made for spelunking … just a run-of-the-mill digital watch. Actually, it wasn’t even that. It was primitive; I’m pretty sure he’d had it since digital watches first became a thing. The numbers barely lit up anymore. If Dad held it a half-inch from his face, I could at least make out his features that were closest to the light, but if he held it out, hoping to light the room a bit, it did nothing.

“Can we just sit down for a few minutes?” I asked, hoping that my mind would adjust to being blind.

Dad hesitated, surely wanting to remind me that the sooner we got out of there, the better, but then replied, “Yeah, of course.”

He lit his watch up again and held it a few inches from the ground while he tried to find a place to sit that wasn’t going to puncture my hind end. I helped him out by brushing my foot back and forth over the ground below us.

Time seemed to move at an extra slow pace, sitting there in the void of darkness with nothing to occupy my mind but fear. Neither of us spoke much, as though we were worried that maybe our voices would run out too. I don’t know how long we sat, I didn’t think to check the minutes trudging by on the watch, but it must have been some time because my rear started to ache from the cold, unwelcoming cave floor and my legs became stiff from being pulled in close and held tight for so long.

I stood slowly, feeling the ache in my legs and the blood rushing to neglected body parts, and suddenly I was dizzy again. My mind flashed to a picture of the fifty-foot drop that we had passed by earlier. In reality, I didn’t think the drop-off was in this room, but my memory was becoming more and more muddy as the time passed and I couldn’t convince myself otherwise.

I felt completely disoriented, and all of a sudden, panic started to spread through my body, as though it were being slowly pumped through my veins by an IV. I reached out for the wall to steady myself, my breathing starting to come in short bursts, and when I found it, I let it guide me back down to the floor. I pulled my knees in and rested my forehead on them. This helped ground me somewhat, and I begin to slow my breathing again. I felt Dad’s hand on my back, gently rubbing it, although he remained silent.

“I think I can walk if I just hold your hand, Dad,” I said, though my voice gave no indication that I was sure of this.

Dad grabbed hold of my hand again and gently said, “I think it’s best if we keep moving. Let’s give it a try, okay?”

We stood together and slowly began to shuffle over to the cave walls. Each of us lifted our free hand out in front and to the side to feel for the wall before our faces found it instead.

My fingers felt the prick of the cave’s spines, and I half-expected a dragon’s head to turn around and blow a mouthful of fire at me. At least we’d have some light.

“Wall,” I said, only partially excited about my discovery. There wasn’t much that could lift my spirits, other than a great big hole leading to back to the real world appearing in the cave’s ceiling. That would cheer me up considerably. I remembered reading a book about a princess who was taken to live in this dark underground kingdom. I remembered how miserable it

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

felt for her to be there, and I suddenly felt like we were sisters. The princess and I. Both prisoners of the dark.

“Great job, Liv! Okay, now we just need to walk along the edge until we find our reflective tape. Keep holding my hand,” he said, bringing his watch up just above waist level and using it to scan the cave walls for any sign of the tape he’d left behind.

We walked slowly, painfully slowly, around the skirt of the cavern, sometimes having to veer out and then back again in order to avoid colliding with a large stalagmite or two. Despite having a watch, time seemed to stand still. Again, my mind started to lose its sense of reality, and I felt as though we’d surely circled the cave multiple times.

At first, the darkness seemed to blot out any outside thoughts, and my mind could think of nothing but how much I wanted to escape the cave, how much I wanted to see green earth again and to breathe fresh air and to feel the breeze on my face … and the sun … oh, the sun. I wanted so badly to feel the sun right then. But, as we kept walking, my thoughts began to wander further. I wondered what Mom was doing right then. I wondered how long it would be until she would begin to worry. She wasn’t always the most level-headed person in the room, but I didn’t know if she would jump to conclusions and send out a search party right away either. I imagined the news stories about two unprepared spelunkers who were trapped in a cave for days; they had to be carried out by rescuers, their bodies withered to skin and bones.

It was dramatic, yes, but I felt it was also a terrifying reality. Being trapped in a huge hole in the earth with no real light and no real way to find an escape had a way of making dramatic endings feel very possible, and I felt my defenses falter again, tears returning for another round of humiliation.

I knew Dad could tell I was crying because his hand squeezed mine a couple of times as if to reassure me. It didn’t. It just made me want to hide. I could have hidden easily enough, but I was too scared to and, for some reason, that made it even worse, and I began to cry louder, sobs bursting from my chest every few seconds.

Dad turned around and hugged me. “Liv, I know this is a lot. We’re gonna get out of here, though. We can’t let our minds imagine the worst, or the worst might happen, okay? Keep up hope.”

We walked in silence for a bit before Dad started telling stories. “Remember that time when you were scuba diving, and you didn’t know if you’d make it to the surface? You thought you were going to run out of air.” He chuckled.

I sniffed back a trail of snot that was running from my nose. “Dad, I was in the pool. And I was only ten.”

“So, you still thought you weren’t going to make it back, and you did!” he said a bit defensively.

“Dad, the training pool is not like the ocean. I didn’t even pass the certification test, remember? I couldn’t get the ratios figured out. I’ve never been able to dive in open water.”

“Yeah, but you were still panicking, and that was a deep pool. It was a legitimate concern.”

“A deep pool? It was maybe fifteen feet deep! I could’ve just been pulled out by my instructor at any point. No one was just going to watch as I slowly died in the pool, Dad.” I paused. “I know you’re trying, but this is not helping.”

He mumbled something I couldn’t make out, and then we walked on, letting the darkness smother out the embers of any more words.

I stumbled here and there, tripping on small jutting pieces of rock, but mostly just felt like I was doing a mind-

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

numbing repetitive dance. Forward, forward, to the left, back to the right, forward, forward.

“Stop!” Dad abruptly called out. He let go of my hand and lifted his watch to his right hand. A glint of reflective tape flashed on the wall.

“Hah! Tape! We found it, Liv, we found it!” Dad turned back and hugged me as we both jumped up and down, hardly daring to believe we might actually make it back.

I cried again, this time because maybe, possibly, those terrible endings were all going to be something to laugh at in a few hours, rather than our fate.

“Okay, let’s go. One down,” Dad said, fresh confidence in his voice. He slid his hand carefully along the wall until it curved sharply, indicating the passageway we’d taken to enter this room the first time.

I felt like my brother’s favorite song. He played it on repeat. All the time. And that was me right then. We walked, or crawled, along a corridor, and danced around the edges over and over again until we found the tape. Then we did it again. And again.

I lost count of how many times we did this, but we reached a particularly large space that seemed to have eaten our tape marker for a mid-afternoon snack. We also found the ledge.

We coursed the room for what seemed like an eternity and found nothing. Each time we went around, we would both hold our hands at different heights along the wall so we would have a better chance of feeling the tape. Our steps were extremely careful and deliberate so as to avoid stepping off the ledge when it came around again.

Nothing. My legs were aching, and my feet were screaming. My

stomach mercilessly reminded me that I had now likely missed both lunch and dinner. I could tell my blood sugar was low because I was beginning to feel lightheaded. At

least, I thought I was. It was difficult to tell when it was so dark and my senses were already so off-kilter, but the familiar feeling of very little blood pulsing to my brain altered me to the likelihood that I might pass out.

“Dad, I think I need to sit down again. I’m feeling really dizzy,” I said.

“Okay, Liv, but I think I need to keep going. We’ve got to find the tape. Just sit here, and I’ll come back for you when I find it,” Dad replied.

At first, I thought about protesting. I didn’t want to be separated, but my body won out, and I agreed to wait.

I pressed myself tight against the prickly cave walls, their spikes threatening to puncture my skin. I closed my eyes, if for nothing else than just to rewet them. I was beginning to feel weak, and I really didn’t know how many more times I could circle this room. I heard Dad’s footsteps shuffling along in a rhythm that, after a few moments, lulled me to sleep.

I don’t know how long I slept, only that I slept, and, when I woke, I didn’t hear Dad’s footsteps any longer.

“Dad?” I whispered. There was no response. “Dad?” I called louder. Nothing. The steady drip-drip-drip of the cavern’s stalactites

had been halted by the nauseating sound of small rocks being jostled.

“Dad, is that you? Did you find it? I think I fell asleep. I’m sorry I haven’t been helping,” I said.

My voice seemed to echo back, almost mocking the fact that there was still no answer from Dad. The gentle rustling sound was closer now, and I realized that it was not a sound coming from Dad.

It’s a snake. I know it’s a stinking snake, I silently cried. He said this would be fun, and now I’m here stuck in this stupid cave with a stupid snake! My mind flashed to all the

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

different times my dad said this would be an adventure. He had asked me to go spelunking with him a month ago and I flat-out refused. I don’t like snakes. I don’t like the dark. I don’t like spiders. I don’t like heights. What in that lineup suggested that I would like spelunking?

A chilly drop of water fell on my nose, dousing my thoughts. This room was much wetter than the others had been. Maybe that’s why our tape didn’t stick.

I still couldn’t see a thing, and I had no idea where the rustling thing was; I could only assume it was a snake because, really, could this day get any worse? Why not throw my least favorite animal of all in the mix?

Where did Dad go, anyway? Why didn’t he come for me? He had to have turned out of the room without realizing it. I was alone. I thought of my mom’s old rule when I was a kid: stay put if you’re lost; I’ll come find you.

I couldn’t stay put, though. I couldn’t stay in this cavern with mystery creatures moving all around me. I had to do something to try to get out of here. I did not want to die in a cave. I’d end up being one of those skeletons from the pirate stories I’d read when I was little … all folded up and rotten in the corner of a deep, dark cave—except there would be no hat and no jewels. So, not quite as glamorous. I’d just be a skeleton. A lonely mystery. A snake would probably make its nest in my skull and slither out of my eyes when someone came along. I shuddered.

I grasped at the armored walls, my hands now wet again with the cave’s spewing, and took a few steps to my left. I tried to orient myself; I tried to guess where exactly Dad had headed after he left me here. My senses were still so muddied up. I could’ve thought down was the right direction to go, if only my feet weren’t there to prove me wrong.

Discouragement began to overwhelm me, and I slowly sank down to the floor, forgetting everything but

thoughts of never escaping, never seeing daylight again, and dying alone in this miserable cavity in the earth. Cavities … I had “my dad’s teeth,” as my mom always said, and I’d had more than my fair share of cavities filled. I hated cavities. All kinds.

My chest began to tighten, and I felt the bite of tears at the back of my eyes. A lump pushed its way into my throat, making it tight and uncomfortable. I was so tired of crying. Months and months of wondering if my mom would live had already robbed me of enough tears for my entire life, and I didn’t want to give anymore.

I swallowed hard, pushing back at the lump in my throat and blinking my stinging eyes until the tears receded. This was silly—of course I was not going to die. Addie had asked me to ride horses at her barn on Saturday. She had invited Mason too. I didn’t know if the horses or Mason were a bigger draw for me. It was a toss-up. I was going to get out of this pit-o-death and I was going to ride horses with Mason and Addie on Saturday. The end.

However, this backfired on me. Thoughts of Addie and Mason riding without me while I rotted away down here instantly rocketed the tears back into being, and this time, there was no blinking them back. I cried. I cried like I might never live again because that’s what I thought my fate would be.

I’d heard stories about people getting lost in caves. The underground network can be so complex that sometimes you’re just gone … no one finds you, and, eventually, they have to give up searching.

I sat chewing on this thought and wondering how long they’d search before they left me for dead. Wondering how long I could last before I’d be hopeless. Wondering—

My mind froze. I felt something on my leg. The weight of its body wasn’t much, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. An icy, wet body slid like butter up my lower

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legs and onto my right thigh. It paused and just sat there, torturing me while it soaked up my body heat. While I couldn’t move my muscles, I felt myself begin to shiver, and involuntary sobs began to pound at my chest. If there was a worse way to die, I couldn’t think of it.

The snake must have been long because I could still feel its scaly tail flicking against my calf, while the top half began to slowly ascend my arm. I silently whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut and trying desperately not to breathe. I closed my mouth tight, imagining the snake working its way right inside.

The snake paused halfway up my arm. The slow pace at which it was sliming its way up my body was agonizing. I felt my fists clench, taking up small bits of rock from the cave floor under my fingernails. The snake swayed at the movement of the muscles in my arms, and I immediately wondered what I had been thinking. I froze again, daring only to let my chest rise and fall with the tiniest of breaths.

I felt a flicker on my nose. Oh, please, take me now! I couldn’t see two inches in front of my face, but I could feel the snake’s own face poised directly in front of mine. Tears silently fell at a rapid pace, plummeting in torrents from my soaked cheeks onto the front of the new purple raincoat my dad had bought me in his efforts to convince me to go on this “adventure.”

I squeezed my mouth shut even tighter as images of the snake biting my tongue tortured my thoughts. I wished I could morph into a turtle and pull my head and all my extremities into a shell. I had never in my life felt so exposed and so completely vulnerable.

Minutes went by. Every muscle in my body was as tight as a bolt on a bridge, and the snake just hovered, weaving back and forth in front of my face. Every so often, I could feel the gut-churning flick of its forked tongue against my cheek or my nose. In my mind, I could

see nothing but the snake’s face—or what I imagined it to look like—inches from my own. My head started to ache, probably from the tightness of all the muscles inside it. I prayed without words and begged for relief.

Seconds. Minutes. And more minutes. Finally, I felt the muscles of the snake’s body begin to tighten and contract. The animal crept slowly up my arm and then actually slid across my face. To my surprise, it was a relief to feel its body, wet with cave water, slime across my profile; that meant that its fangs were no longer inches from my nose. After I felt the tail dip from my nose and over my eye and, finally, off my scalp, I wanted to cry all over again. I sat frozen for a few more moments, afraid that any movement might invite the snake back. Finally, I permitted my muscles to relax. A monstrous sigh released my body from its confines, and I wept.

This time, I dared to let out a few audible sobs in the midst of my weeping, but still felt that I should restrain myself somewhat, in case any other lurking creatures of the night were looking for a meal.

Despite the rocky ground, and the threat of more unseen creatures, I crumpled onto the floor, my legs pulled in tight, my right arm pillowing my head. I lay there sobbing like a lost little kid for I don’t know how long. If there was anything left in me, I couldn’t find it just then. All I could draw to the surface were tears and thoughts as dark as the cave I was a prisoner to.

I contemplated which would be a worse way to go: snake bite, its venom ceasing my body and surely causing excruciating pain, or slow, miserable starvation, where I’d be left to wonder for days and days like this. The snake bite’s efficiency had its draw, but, oh, just the thought of another one of those bodies sliding its way up my own was enough to make me feel like I could happily skip a thousand meals in order to avoid it.

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

The cave’s unwelcoming damp floor felt like death wrapping icy claws around my body. I shivered and pulled my limbs in tighter for what little warmth they could offer.

Despite the knowledge that one of the most terrifying animals in all the world could slime its way back over to me at any moment, my mind and my body were both still exhausted, and sleep hit me hard. As much as I needed rest, the sleep was fitful, and my dreams were of twelve-foot snakes and endless pits beckoning me to step into their chasms.

When I woke again, I breathed in a deep, slow breath to try to steady myself. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. It felt as though my tongue and cheeks were made of cotton, rubbing rough and dry against one another. As I breathed, the air caught in my drying throat; a scratchy cough forced its way out, followed by another and another. My lips felt tight, and I could feel them starting to crack. Mom said I never wore enough lip balm anyway. I wished I had some now.

I was beginning to feel numb. I just wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, although I wished I could find something other than my arm to use as a pillow. The ache when I woke wasn’t something I wanted to revisit.

The drip of water from the cave’s ceiling interrupted my thoughts of sleep, and I listened for it again. Crawling on my hands and knees, I opened my mouth, waiting for the drip. I listened. I moved a few inches in one direction and waited. The slow drip seemed to never come. When it did come again, it did not drip in my mouth, but in my eye, on my forehead, and then on my neck. I tried again and again and soon wondered how close I had moved to the ledge. The panic welled up inside me for another round and I lay low on the ground, feeling in front of me with my hands until I hit the wall.

I grasped at the wall and frantically felt the floor beneath me, brushing my hands in a wide circle, as though I were sprinkling salt to keep a vampire at bay. But this was no imaginary vampire. I was trying to ensure that I wasn’t about to be thrown fifty feet down into the cave’s belly.

Finally, convinced that I was on solid ground, it occurred to me that my hands were wet, and my tongue was still not. I slowly crawled forward and carefully guided my face toward the wall of the cave, my hands going before my nose. I didn’t need to be bloodied up when the wall showed up before I anticipated it.

I felt the chilled wall with my fingertips. I slowly stuck out my stiff tongue and pressed it against the rocky surface, letting the small stream of water trickle over it. Despite the heavy mineral flavor, the water tasted like nectar from the gods. I sat there, my tongue lapping in and out of my mouth like a dog, relishing the cool moisture that rewetted my pallet and throat, and then feeling the cool sensation as the extra ran down to my stomach.

For a split second, I imagined the snake returning, ready to lunge at my exposed tongue, but the relief from the water was too great, and I couldn’t stop. Again and again, I lapped the trickles of water up into my mouth until, finally, I felt that it was enough. I turned around and just lay against the wall. I closed my eyes and rested. The water felt like a superpower being injected into my body. I could feel a renewed sense of strength. I also felt a renewed sense of hope.

I decided to give up on a rescue. I also decided that I wasn’t going to rot in that cavern, and I wasn’t going to let my dad rot either. I picked myself up and began to take slow steps, using the wall as my brace. I had been so completely disoriented in the dark and had moved around so much trying to catch a drip of water, that I now

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

had no sense of direction and only hoped that I was not leading myself deeper into the cave.

I began to call out to Dad. No response, but I didn’t quit.

Each step was measured. I hadn’t lost my fear that I would somehow end up at the bottom of a pit, so I bent a bit at the knees and reached my toes out as far as I could in front, tapping them gently on the ground before taking another step forward. I continued on like this and began to wonder if I would go mad. Walking completely blind in an underground labyrinth that was just daring me to find a way out was demoralizing, to say the least.

At times it felt as though I had gone on for hours, and discouragement would sweep through my body, sucking up all the hope, and with it, motivation to continue. I would sit and cry. Actually, I hardly had enough water in my body to produce tears. Mostly, I would just go through the motions but never feel the satisfying burn of tears as they dripped down my cheeks. I felt robbed, even of my own tears. If I was going to die here, I wanted to at least be able to cry about it.

My mouth, after a while, would start to feel reminiscent of cotton again, and I would simply turn and begin licking the wall. Sometimes I was met with nothing but cold rock scratching at my parched tongue. I learned to feel around until I found a trickle of water before putting my tongue to it.

Despite the water’s invigorating hold, I began to feel weaker and weaker, as it did nothing for my blood sugar levels. Still, I put one foot ahead, followed by another and another, praying that I was taking myself back to existence.

And then I heard a noise. My body seized up, afraid to hope. Despite not having sight, I opened my eyes wide and hardly dared to breathe. Dad. I could just barely make out his voice, but I knew it was him, and not only because

we were the only two people in this void, but because my heart beat ten times faster and relief flooded through me when I realized that he was with me again.

“Dad! Where are you? Call out to me so I can find you. Light your watch, Dad!” I cried.

“I’m over here. I’m so glad you’re okay,” he sobbed. I had never heard my dad cry. Ever. But he bawled like a baby. “I’m so sorry I brought you along, Olivia. I’m so sorry for not being better prepared. I didn’t realize. I didn’t know I’d be risking your life like this.”

“Dad, it’s okay,” I said quietly. “My ankle is hurt. I tripped and twisted it. It might be

broken,” he said, leaning forward to light his ankle with his watch. It was barely visible, but it looked swollen and angry.

“All the more reason to get out of here. I’ll pull you up, and then you can lean against the wall and my shoulder for support, okay?” I said.

We began to walk, even more slowly than before. Ten or fifteen minutes went by. And then I felt it: a slight breeze. I wondered if I was just imagining things because I wanted to be out of there so badly, but then it came again, stronger than before.

“Dad, did you feel that?” I asked, pleading in my voice. Please say I’m not going crazy.

He just laughed, a short laugh of disbelief. Then it turned into strong, shaky laughter that was difficult to tell apart from a sob.

“We’re gonna make, Liv!” he choked out. It was then that I realized that I was able to make out

faint variations in the cave’s walls. Stalactites and stalagmites materialized before my eyes.

Light. We were going to make it.

***

Gone Out by Megan Kunz

Mom never knew the whole story of that day. Dad didn’t want to cause her more stress. But she had to know some of it; Dad couldn’t hide a broken ankle from her. He sat by my bed after dinner a week later. The sound of dishes clinking in the sink as Mom washed them was soothing. Everything from normal life was so amazing. I was sure that would wear off, and I’d just be a normal person going about everyday life again, but, for right now, I was grateful for every little thing.

“You saved us, you know,” he said, a grin pulling up one side of his cheek. “Well, one thing is for sure. I’ll never ask you to go in another cave. I’m so sorry, Liv,” he said, his face determined and hard. “Never again—”

“I think my boots are broken in now,” I said, interrupting him.

“What?” he asked. “My boots. I think I’ve broken them in.” I grinned. He laughed and shook his head. “Liv, you never cease

to amaze me.”

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