The Catacombs Of Yucatan

CHISAGO COUNTY PRESS, 10/31/91

SCRIBE’S CORNER, page 4                                                  

                                                                            

                                                                             The Catacombs of Yucatan

                                                                                  By Jeffrey Smith

                    Richie had never meant to go into that cave, but he had to now. His dog, Dusty, was down in there. He stooped to light the lantern.

                    Nobody had been in there for years. Nobody even went close to it anymore. Even the owner of this land now lived in Florida and the old souvenir shop near the road was a pile of debris – a victim of some forgotten and fierce summer thunderstorm.

                    Richie didn’t like this place. None of the kids from around Black Hammer ever played or explored here. It wasn’t their parents’ stern warning that kept them out – parental cautions were often an invitation to forbidden pleasures.

                    No, what kept them away were the things their parents didn’t say; troubled allusions and vague mutterings about tourists, an entire family from Iowa, who were lost down there in the 1930’s, shortly after this attraction had opened. And, a whispered legend about the young constable who, after searching in vain for that family, returned to the surface as a white haired, bulging-eyed, gibbering idiot.

                    Even area farmers pastured their sheep and other livestock away from the cave. There had been too many lost animals over the years, probably victims of one of the yet to be discovered sinkholes common to the Driftless Region.

                    It gave Richie the creeps just to bicycle past this place and, when Dusty chased up that rabbit, it was with a sense of dread that he wheeled down the fading track to the cave’s entrance in their pursuit.

                    His hesitation had been costly. For by the time he drew near he managed only a glimpse of Dusty wriggling through a gap in the boards which had sealed the cave since that unfortunate constable stumbled out there over 20 years before.

                    He heard Dusty’s excited barking for several minutes it seemed. At fist, they boomed, and then echoed as if there were a thousand Dusty’s down there. Eventually the sounds became tiny, feeble, and then, disappeared altogether.

                    He had pried off boards, creating an opening he could squeeze through. Shivering in the dark, he’d called and called and hollered until he was hoarse. His voice ricocheted into the depths and sometimes would boom back at him. It sounded frightened. He would need a light.

                    After frantically pedaling home, he had made off with his pa’s lantern. More of a challenge was obtaining the matches. He had to appear nonchalant while his mother insisted he have some cookies and milk. He finessed the matches when his mother went to the clothesline.

                    Finally he was back and breathless. The lantern sputtered and lit. Pausing outside, he considered the cave. The entrance; with its few missing boards looking like toothless gaps in a frown of unspeakable sorrow, sent a shudder through him. Richie was losing courage.

                    But, Richie’s dog was his best true friend. It was inconceivable when pa had let him keep Dusty. He knew his pa would never enter the  cave ‘for just a dog” and would probably never let him get another. In any event, he was sure to get a whipping if his father found out about his being in here.

                    He looked up at the weathered, faded sign. He read it aloud, “The Catacombs of Yucatan,” and wondered what in the dickens that could mean.

                    “If it was me lost in there,” he vowed, “Dusty would come and get me.” He stepped inside.

                    Several yards ahead a mist and rotting stairway descended into the depths of the cavern. Carefully, in the flickering light of the lantern, he inched forward. Clutching the now flimsy railing with his freehand, he tested every timber. It was painfully slow going.

                    Once, after many steps, he craned his neck back to see the opening he had made in the entrance. Viewed from below through this constricting tunnel it looked like a tiny blue sliver of light and seemed impossibly distant.

                    Down he went, fighting cloying spider webs and the cold. He reached the foot of the steps and followed the narrow, slimy corridor forward. Onward and down, he stopped occasionally to venture into side chambers with signs that identified them as “The Cathedral” or  “the Dungeon.”

                    Calling for Dusty, sometimes his voice would boom out and reverberate, returning to him sounding taut and hysterical. Other times, depending on the cave, his calls would sound puny and muffled – as if the best he could squeeze out was a squeak.

                    Frightened and alone, he plumbed the depths of that cave, He crept over spongy catwalks where, in the blackness below, he could hear cascading water and again a long forgotten sign would proclaim “Niagara of the North” or “Ghost Falls.”

                    He followed the ancient knob-and –curl electrical wires, stung overhead to illuminate the god forsaken hole for former paying customers.

                    He had lost hope by the time the wiring curved up and out of sight, perhaps to a now corroded bank of floodlights. He had reached the end of the line. A sagging railing surrounded the platform from whish, as one final sign read, “The Catacombs of Yucatan’ could be viewed.

                    Holding his lantern aloft he saw, in every direction, openings, fissures and tunnels, reaching out like black tentacles.

                    He bellowed one last throat torturing “ Dusteee!” Fragmented echoes returned and rebounded into a deathly quiet.

                    A single whimper disturbed the oppressive silence.

                    “Dusty!” Richie whirled and plugged off the walkway, following the sound into a crevice to his left, Now slipping though mud and clay, he could easily see tracks left by his big dog.

                    Following the trail, he stooped through an opening into a cavern. With the lantern held overhead, he viewed this new room with astonishment. The walls, as far up as his lantern could illuminate, were swathed in webs. Huge, thick mats of webbing extended everywhere and swirled upwards out of sight.

                    A  slight movement caught his attention. There, hopelessly bond in a tangle mass of web, was his dog. With sides heaving and his snout covered with foam, the young animal was exhausted and spent from his fruitless attempts at escaping from the sticky net.

                    Setting his lantern down, Richie noticed something else. The floor in there was covered with a layer of bones. Picked as clan as matchsticks, they provided a shifting and uneven carpet underfoot.

                    Kneeling beside his friend, he scratched an exposed ear. The dog whimpered again and managed a feeble was of its tail, despite the binding webs.

                    “Hang on Dusty,” he said  dragging out his knife, he began sawing at the tough strands.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Like some kind of sinister telephone operator, the huge arthropod tended to a network of unimaginable complexity and sophistication.

                    She was the last of her kind. But what she lacked in family and kin, she made up for in size, cunning and malevolence.

                    It was her unquenchable appetite that had sustained her for these centuries. A hunger which consumed her being and manifested itself in the utter devastation of any creature unfortunate enough to invade her domain.

                    That same appetite, now aroused, had alerted her to some remote disturbance in the system she had so painstakingly constructed. Delicately she scampered to the side. Yes, here the minute frequencies and vibrations were a bit more distinct. She traipsed several miles to the east and down. Oh, it was far distant, but her instincts told her is was definitely a matter requiring her immediate attention and it felt as if damage was being done to her network.

                    Rage welled up inside her. Fury and hunger spurred her. Bolting along her ancient thoroughfares, arcing over blind escarpments and ripping along the side of chasms, she was a belligerent wisp, a gossamer juggernaut.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Nearly exhausted, he had finally managed to free Dusty. Dusty was played out for sure, the way it looked, and might need to be carried. But first, he’d have  to saw his own his way out of the web – for his own foot had become entangled in the sticky stuff while freeing Dusty.

                    While he worked he wondered why there weren’t any spiders around, seeing how webs stretched out in every direction. Just then Dusty growled, a deep menacing rumble from somewhere deep and ancient inside the animal. Dusty was looking overhead and Ritchie, following the dog’s pointed gaze, saw her descending as quietly and quickly as a paratrooper commando from above.

                    Scrambling through the shamble of bones, he chose a weapon: a stout blade – like club. )Actually it was the femur form the father of that long-departed family form Mason City, who had disappeared down here in 1937.)  He brandished it in front of himself.

                    Purposefully, without hesitation, the spider advanced…..black and huge and hairy, easily the size of a pony. It minced tis way across the scattered bones, airy like a ballerina. Certain of her prey, she raised two legs like pinchers.

                    A grey shape lunged out the gloom. Snapping and snarling it severed a leg from the spider as effortlessly as if it was an articulated crystal stem.

                    Coiled and crouching, teeth exposed in a vicious growl, Dusty leapt again towards the now unsteady creature.

                    This time , however, she was prepared and caught him in midair and hurled him, thrashing, to the floor.

                    With one leg pinning the whining dog below her, the spider slowly lowering herself towards his thrashing dog. Richie desperately pummeled her and raked his club uselessly across her back. Still, her scissoring, serrated jaws descended.

                    In a final act of despair, Richie seized his pa’s lantern and hurled it at the spider. The lantern shattered, gushed kerosene over the monster, setting it ablaze.

                    The creature twirled and spun, canting onto its side and flailing its legs wildly. It reared up like a bronco, now a pillar of flames, and flung itself against a sheet of web.

                    It ascended upwards then, like a meteor, at an astonishing rate, each singular footfall igniting other patches of the web. The ratcheting fireball disappeared into the upper reaches of the cave leaving a path of fire in its wake.

                    The cavern was ablaze and filling with choking smoke. Dusty was on his feet, wobbly, but at Richie’s side. As Richie stooped to ecape the inferno he glimpsed a fluttering movement near his foot.

                    The rabbit, wild eyes, struggled in a wad of web. As the flames danced towards it, Richie grasped the trembling mass, tore it free and, following Dusty, dove back through the crevice.

                    Smoke soon obscured what little light escaped through the openings behind them. Without the lantern, Richie soon found himself in pitch darkness.

                    He soon lost his footing, as well as his directions, and began crawling through the muck on the cave’s floor. Thinking of the many catacombs, the rotting catwalks over chasms, and the endless steps, Richie began to sob.

                    A familiar snout nuzzled him. Grasping Dusty’s collar, his dog began to lead him to the surface.

                    It was an agonizing journey in that total darkness, he bashed his head several times on overhanging rocks and outcroppings. He stumbled on through, grasping both the rabbit and the dog’s collar and Dusty never wavered.

                    Choking, they finally reached the greasy stairway and the final grueling ascent. With their protesting lungs burning form the thickening smoke, they finally clattered into the boards which had sealed the cave entrance.

                    Squeezing through the gap he had made, Richie realized it was night. He collapsed in the sweet fresh air beneath a sky full of stars which burned with an intensity, the likes of which he’d never again witness. Dusty was licking his face.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Smoke continued to belch out of the Catacombs of Yucatan for nearly six weeks that summer. Smoke filled caves as distant as Harmony and Cherry Grove. Many undiscovered sinkholes were revealed during that time due to the telltale wisps and smoked issued from fissure in exposed rock on hillsides as far away as Hop Hollow, Peacock Ridge and Cabbage Ridge. Even storm sewers in  downtown Caledonia had smoke curling up through their grates.

                    Water wells in the regions were spoiled with a smoky taste for awhile. Indian Spring and other springs in the area carried bits of soot and ash.

                    No one noticed a decline in the number of lost livestock. The pattern had been too random and widespread.

                    What was noticeable, however, was the demise of many mature trees in the area. It seems trees, sometime an entire grove, would topple for no reason, exposing charred an absent root systems.

                    The local residents were fearful of volcanoes. A  university professor was summoned form his visit with relative near Brownsville down on the Mississippi. He dispelled fears of volcanic activity.

                    However, he was reluctant to enter the catacomb and pronounced the smoke’s appearance as being related to “An unexplained phenomenon.”

                    A nearby evangelist seized upon the smoke as a handy and visible example for the proximity of eternal damnation by claiming is was generated by “The embers of hell itself.”

                    If Richie would’ve heard that one, he might’ve agreed.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Nearly 10 years after the last of those subterranean fires had smoldered and died, Richard found himself outside of a large institutional appearing building on the campus of the Regional State Hospital.

                    For almost a decade he had made very pointed, yet discreet interrogation of his parents, their friend and other in his community.                   Upon entering the building he was shown to a stooped old man. In the corner he sat alone in a wicker wheelchair. Long hair, unkempt, grew to his shoulders. The hair was, without exception, totally white.

                    After several unsuccessful attempt at engaging the patient in conversation, Richard leaned over and whispered into his ear: “I was down there, I saw it. I killed it.”

                    As he straightened up to leave, the old man’s trembling hand shot out and grasped Richard’s arm.

                    Richard looked down, there were tears in the old constable’s eyes.

                                                                                                    The End