Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions Read online

  The cave had once been inhabited by something. Stacks of dried brush lay where the front cavern ceiling diminished to meld with the silty floor. The former bed of bear and ’coon, I thought, and flashlight in hand, I pushed my way deeper into the cave, to begin the exploration of the tunnel beyond that first small cavern. Would it only peter out to an impassable crack in the mountain, or lead to more geological treasure rooms within? I ached to find out.

  I had come prepared. My backpack held spare flashlight batteries, a canteen, a hammer and a variety of snacks. After hearing horror stories all my life of unlucky and unprepared spelunkers, I had attached an end of twine to a tree just outside the cave lip. The spool hung from my belt, unwinding a guideline back to daylight with every hesitant step I strode.

  As I moved into the murky recesses of the earth, my mind kept returning to Rachel. This should have been a shared excursion, I growled to myself, blaming her for our current lack of connection. Never mind that I hadn’t asked her to come with me.

  I found a bitter laugh in the memory of the two of us bicycling down the slope of a volcano on Maui so many years before. In the pregnant predawn gray, we’d weaved back and forth on the descending slope, pedaling close enough for me to reach out and hold her hand – a romantic and foolhardy thing to do when whizzing with almost no control down the slope of a mountain. My situation now was so completely opposite. I thought.

  The tunnel did not, as I’d feared, taper off to a dead end, but instead, angled slowly upwards. Its sides were nearly smooth, completely unlike the haphazard crash of rock and boulder on the outside of this mountain. They glistened wetly in the yellow light of the flash. The air seemed humid and strangely warm, not at all the clammy cool of deep earth I’d expected and dressed for. Soon I was tying my jacket around my waist by its arms, and sweat was running freely down my cheeks and neck. And the tunnel continued, slowly but inexorably sloping upwards, toward what pinnacle I could not guess.

  I stopped and wolfed down a bag of Doritos, then emptied half the canteen at the thirst they brought. Not, perhaps, the wisest choice in snacks. Still, refreshed and having caught my breath, I continued forward then. How long was this tunnel? Would I simply exit halfway up the mountain and then have to stumble my way home back down the outer face of the rock? Or would the trail end and leave me forced to retrace my seemingly endless steps straight back down? The sense of adventure in exploring an underground labyrinth was giving way to boredom and exhaustion. And the deep blackness which the light of my flash couldn’t completely disrupt was giving me a slight case of claustrophobia.

  After walking a little while, I was strongly considering giving up and turning around. This was no doubt a sluice tunnel from the spring thaws that simply had burrowed into the outer skin of the mountain and wended its way down to the valley, never branching, never creating any of the stalactite wonder I was hoping to find.

  But then I heard the rush of water. It was faint, just a whisper, but unmistakable. My goal couldn’t be too far away! I redoubled my steps and the trickle grew in my ears until the tunnel abruptly ended in a cavern 10 times the size of the one at the cave’s entrance.

  The flashlight only barely cut the gloom to trace out the slick gray face of the opposite end of the cavern. A few feet below me flowed the source of the sound. Crystal clear water. It looked to be only a few feet deep; I could see the white and pink pebbles that lined its bed. Carefully I eased my way down the smooth slope from the tunnel mouth to the creek bed. It seemed warmer here than it had in the tunnel. Hot springs?

  I leaned over and dunked my hands into the deceptively still water and confirmed my suspicion. The water was warm, almost bath-hot. I dunked my face to wash off the sweat, and the effect after my exertion was heavenly. All I wanted to do was crawl into a warm tub and relax my aching feet.

  And why not? It wasn’t as if anyone was going to disturb me here. Setting the flash between two rocks to aim its light to reflect off the wall and onto the water, I stripped off my sweaty clothes and gingerly stepped into the spring water. As I felt the hidden current ripple between my legs, I also felt an embarrassing stirring. It wasn’t as if this were a public pool, I chided myself, and then slid all the way into the water.

  I’d been wrong about the depth. My feet couldn’t touch the ground unless I dove deep. I soon found myself paddling against the current to remain near my clothes and light, but it was a joyous exertion. I flipped my feet up into the air and slalomed under the water, kicking myself lower and lower until I could grab handfuls of the glittering rock bottom. I soon felt a rash of tickles on my thighs and belly, and had a moment of bladder-voiding fright when I realized there were things in this water with me. What if they were snakes? Poisonous ones?

  Trying to control my fright, I eased my way to the bank, all the while feeling the groping of smooth, slippery kisses on my exposed body. I stifled the urge to cry out. At last reaching the light, I directed its beam into the water to discover the source of my discomfort.

  They were yellow. About the size of my fist. And apparently, harmless.

  Darting in and about my privates were a school of what looked like giant tadpoles. Pale citrus-colored tadpoles with no obvious mouths or eyes. They were flesh with tails.

  Keeping hold of the light, I let the current take me again. The creatures followed, bobbing and bumping against my butt and belly. It was a pleasant feeling, their smooth caress, and I found myself relaxing and enjoying their strange attention. In moments I drifted from one end of the cavern to the next, and was faced with the question of whether to duck my head under a rock overhang and follow the stream to its next destination, or to fight the current and go back.

  The tadpoles zipped past my legs and disappeared into the under-ledge tunnel. It looked like there might be enough space for my head to surface and breathe between the water and the ceiling, but I opted for safety and turned around.

  As I climbed out of the water near my clothes, relishing the steamy humidity of the cavern and the tingle of the foreign water dripping from my pores, I knew I would be back. I wanted to see where the stream – and the tadpole creatures – went.

  I returned to the underground creek the very next day, better prepared and even more glad to have kept the place secret. I’d felt unusually lustful and amorous after my furtive adventure the day before and had once again tried unsuccessfully to make love to my wife. This time however, it didn’t result in quiet fuming, but in a heart-squeezing torrent of bile and bitterness. As we hissed and spat at each other, I could literally feel my love for her distilling into hate.

  Later, in the oppressive shadows of the bedroom, I stared at her silken dark hair tangled amidst the sheets. I’d once found it an erotic accoutrement. Now I only longed to yank it, hard, for the feelings its owner had exhumed in my heart. Rolling from the bed, I left the cabin without my clothes, eventually coming to stand naked in a moon-drenched clearing. Despite – or perhaps because of – the bitter fight, I was as aroused as I could remember, and sought to still that hunger on my own. As the cool air of the night moved against me in its own secret rhythm, I tried to picture Rachel stretched taut between the pillows of our bed back home. But the only picture that came to mind was of darting, twisting tadpoles.

  It was enough.

  When I returned to the cave I carried two flashlights and an old oil lamp I’d found tucked away in the cabin’s cupboards. This time, I entered the water without hesitation, almost anxiously anticipating the touch of the school of lemon tadpoles. They did not disappoint. Within seconds I felt their nibbles and slickly smooth caresses around my thighs. I’d brought more twine, and sealed my best flash in a Ziploc freezer bag to keep it dry. Letting out the rope from where it was anchored near the exit of the watery cavern, I let the current steal me down, down to where the tadpole creatures had passed me the day before. I sucked in a breath and submerged my head beneath the rock ledge. The current was swift, and a pang of fear ripped my gut as I considered the consequences o
f cracking my head against an outcrop of rock, or of this watery tunnel ending in a sheer waterfall.

  My light did little to show me where I was going, its beam dissipating before it reached the sides of the sluice way. I slowed my passage by letting out the twine slower than the current moved. But my need to breathe wouldn’t allow me to limit my progress by much. My heart was soon hammering in my head, my lungs screaming for my mouth to open.

  And I was through.

  My head broke out of the water at the same moment as my mouth wrenched itself open to breathe, regardless of my mental instructions not to. I brought up the light as I gasped in the cool fresh air and saw that I was in a cavern similar to the one I’d been in before.

  But not quite the same.

  At the far end, next to where the river disappeared beneath another shelf of slate, was the most blatantly erotic sculpture I had ever seen. I felt myself growing beneath the water as I stared. It was like the fertility sculptures I’d seen pictures of from ancient cultures. This one was created on an enormous scale. She must have been at least 20 feet tall, and every detail lovingly carved. Rock rivulets of hair cascaded from her forehead to her shoulders and chest. Her lips were heavy and parted, her breasts erect and melonous. But the part that struck me at the start was her sex. She sat at the edge of the water, her legs spread apart, feet submerged. A pile of rocks and mud blocked the current’s passage to the open cavern between her thighs, but the original purpose of the V of her stance was obvious.

  It wasn’t a conscious decision that led to my action. I was suddenly just doing it. Removing the smaller rocks between her calves, digging my fingernails into the packed muck that glued the dam together. Within minutes the water was seeping into crevices that my fingers also worked at. I beat at the stubborn wall using the earliest dislodged stones, and within minutes I was sweating and streaked with black slime. But I was excited. I know now, that feeling must have stemmed from her. With each stone I moved, I felt a surge in my loins, an electric reward. I became a reverse beaver, thrusting against it with unexplainable passion, until all at once, the current sloshed over the top of the splintering dam. I lay down on the long-dry tunnel between her legs and with my feet, kicked to loosen the base of the dam. With water pooled on both sides now, it began to give. Then a splash, a slow sucking sound, and the last of the rocks twisted and sunk out of sight. A warm wave passed over my body. As it kissed my face and disappeared into the hole behind my head, I think I had an orgasm.

  And then the tickling began.

  I hadn’t noticed the tadpoles in a while, but the water around me was suddenly thick with them, all surging to dive into the channel I’d just reinvented. I moved out of their way, and the water churned with lemon creatures diving into the statue’s sexual abyss. Was this some natural spawning waterway that I had reopened, that some strange artist had commemorated with this statue? I backed up into the central channel again and surveyed my handiwork. The water had risen to kiss the very tops of her thighs, just missed the mark where it would begin dribbling over them. A steady stream of lemon tadpoles disappeared up the tunnel of her exaggerated vagina. None seemed to reappear, and I wondered how far that passage continued into the rock.

  I was tired, and felt odd – disconnected – after my exertions so I decided to head back. At first I tried pulling myself along the twine hand over hand, but I soon realized that it was just as easy to swim against the current – it wasn’t as strong as it seemed when you just let yourself glide against it. I came up gasping but triumphant in the first cavern, and soon levered myself up on the bank at my backpack. I wolfed down the lunch I’d packed (no Doritos this time) and considered heading home.

  The thought of reentering the cabin and sitting across from a sullen Rachel dissuaded that idea quickly. The lunch seemed to instantly restore my strength, and I felt almost an erotic need to plunge into the watery mouth at the opposite end of the pool – to see where the current originated from.

  The water was bereft of tads as I kicked my legs and arrowed under a new ledge. Again the light failed to show my way, but I wasn’t worried this time. I was unlikely to swim my way into a rock hard enough to knock myself out, and I surely wasn’t going to go over a fall with water rushing opposite my chosen course.

  This tunnel seemed shorter than the southern passage, and within seconds I popped my head up in a new pool, in a new cavern.

  This was the place I’d searched for.

  I shone my light on the walls and laughed out loud.

  “Holy shit,” I said to no one.

  The place was beautiful; a magical mouth of rocky teeth. Stretching many feet from the ceiling were tiers of blue-green and blushing stalactites, and rising from the floor on the sides of the pool were an equally dizzying number of multicolored stalagmites. It was like swimming in the midst of a shark’s mouth.

  I swam to a bank and ran my hand up and down one of the glossy rock needles. It was smooth and cool. Like a marble column shellacked in varnish. I longed to break it off, but didn’t want to mar the beauty of the place by destruction. Perhaps I could find one that had fallen from the roof?

  I climbed the bank and walked gingerly along the shore, uncomfortably aware of the consequences if I slipped on the smooth stone floor and landed heavily on the points of the stone spears that were everywhere around me. I stared at the path carefully, catching sight occasionally of a darting tadpole speeding towards the entry tunnel.

  At last, I came to the last turn of the cavern. I’d found no broken spears, but I nearly slipped and ate one when I saw the guardian to the end of this chamber.

  A man to match the woman.

  He was gargantuan, like her, and in the same posture: back to the wall, legs spread to capture the water. But there was no blockage to prevent his giant sex organ from hanging into the current. Hanging, actually is incorrect. He seemed in a state of excitement, if the sculptor was attempting to work to scale. (It’s hard to tell really – should a 20-foot man have a three-foot organ, or only a foot and a half? His was at least arm’s length.)

  I slid back in the water, and swam to the icon’s feet. Its chest was bulging, shadowed muscle, its arms were clasped behind its head. Eyes closed, it seemed wholly at peace as it let its lower body dangle in the water.

  But it wasn’t at peace. It was in my head.

  “Bring her to me,” I heard clearly, though not with my ears. Its face remained passive, but I swear to god it spoke to me, threatened me. A vision flashed in my mind of what it wanted as it spoke.

  “Bring her or meet my children.”

  In my mind I caught a glimpse of a pulsing mountain of flesh, warted gleaming gold eyes, and teeth. Teeth everywhere. A crash came from my left. A stalactite had somehow dislodged from the ceiling to land a yard from where I stood.

  “Promise to bring her, or the next one will not miss. Use it. Bring her.”

  I promised. Then I grabbed the stone spear and dove back into the current. I almost forgot to pull my pants and backpack back on before running down the long slope out of the mountain.

  “You have to come see this cavern,” I crowed that night. Rachel looked at me with something less than boredom.

  “I’ve never liked caves,” she sighed. “And I don’t think I like you anymore, either. So why would I want to go to a cave with you?”

  “It’ll be quick, I promise. Just humor me one more time, OK?”

  “And I’ll get what out of it? Claustrophobic and clammy? No thanks.”

  But I didn’t let up. Finally she gave in, simply, I think, to shut me up. Reasons didn’t matter. I smiled inwardly. And as we lay down to another sexless night, I dreamed of nuzzling citrus tadpoles and an amazon stone woman. The sheets were sticky when I woke in a warm sweat to the sound of croaking frogs.

  Rachel complained the entire walk up the inside of the mountain, which only strengthened my resolve. The closer I got to the cavern, the less I heard of her. My mind began remembering the sensation of the tadpoles agai
nst my legs, of the watery extended orgasm I’d experienced in opening a channel to the statue woman’s deep and thirsty tunnel. And I remembered the vision of her partner.

  When we reached the cavern, Rachel looked around with her flashlight. Her face dropped. “Where are the stalagmites?”

  I was already peeling off my clothes.

  “We have to swim for them.”

  “I’m not diving into that! You don’t know what things are in there. Caves have all sorts of weird fish and things with no eyes swimming around in them. Uh. Uh.”’

  “I’ve been in a couple times now,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  She turned her back to me and began to retrace our steps.

  “Goodbye, Jim. I’m going to the cabin, packing, and leaving. You stay here in your little cave.”

  I threw myself at her, my shoulders connecting with the backs of her knees. She fell hard, crying out as her head cracked against the rock floor. The force knocked her out, and something inside me whispered, “it’s easier this way.”

  I pulled her back into the cavern, and saw the swelling on her forehead already goose-egg big and blue. She was breathing fine, so I undressed her and pulled her into the water with me. Immediately a swarm of tadpoles gathered around us, but this time they concentrated, not on mine, but on Rachel’s thighs. She moaned slightly, and I swam to the giant man’s tunnel quickly, before she came to completely. I held her with one arm around her chest, and felt myself swelling at the feel of her familiar, yet still tantalizing, breasts. I pulled her under the water with me, and the dunking served to wake her fully. She started clawing at me, but I only gripped her harder, and pushed us against the current the short space underwater until we could surface in the stalagmite cavern.