The Other Side of Nowhere (20 page)

‘How much have we got left?’ I asked looking at the small coil of rope in Nick’s hand.

‘Not much. Maybe twenty metres or so.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a lot,’ said George in a worried voice.

‘Well if it stays this flat we won’t need any of it,’ Nick replied matter-of-factly.

‘You think we’re near the bottom?’ I asked hopefully.

Again Nick just shrugged. ‘Hard to say, but I reckon more like halfway.’

If he saw my disappointment, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he just grabbed the torch and headed off, following the watercourse. He kept the torch pointing just ahead of his feet so we could see where he was stepping. Everything else was dark, so for the most part we had no way of telling if we were in a cavern the size of a football stadium or a tunnel as narrow as a pipe. It was getting colder but I didn’t care. All that mattered was that we kept moving. It also became quieter the further we moved away from the falling water and for a time the only sound was the gentle gurgling of the stream trickling over rocks. Then gradually the sound of water rushing began to grow louder again.

Nick raised his hand and brought us to a stop. ‘Might be another drop up ahead,’ he said, getting down onto his hands and knees. ‘Stick close.’

On all fours, we crawled forward cautiously until we came upon another ledge. In the torchlight we could make out a sheer drop to a small rock pool that the water was spilling into. To the side of the pool was a narrow ledge that we figured we could get to. It wasn’t as big as the drop we had already scaled down, but it was too far to jump.

Nick flashed the torch around, looking for somewhere to secure the last coil of rope. The light settled on a small rock formation behind us that resembled a giant toadstool. It was about as thick as my leg and when I gave it a good kick, it felt pretty solid.

‘Probably only been here for a zillion years,’ Nick said, passing me the rope.

I tied it off with a solid knot and tugged as hard as I could to test that it wouldn’t budge. Nick flung the other end over the edge. When it stopped swinging it was still hanging a couple of metres off from the ledge next to the rock pool.

‘Have to do, I guess,’ Nick said. ‘George, you go first this time. We’ll hang onto you up here.’

He passed her the torch to tie around her waist and as she took up the slack and stepped over the edge Nick and I shouldered the full load of her weight. Nick leant in close and whispered in my ear, ‘Wouldn’t have thought she’d be such a load.’

It only took her a few minutes to shimmy down and when she dropped off the rope went slack. I crawled forward to the edge and looked down. George waved the torch from side to side and her voice floated softly up from below. ‘I’m good. Bit wet, but good.’

‘Okay, Nick. You next,’ I ordered.

I thought he might have argued with me but without a word he grabbed the rope and stepped over the edge. Nick went down so quickly I barely had a chance to hold onto the rope to feel for the two tugs that let me know it was my turn again. It was only a short climb and I could see the water below pooling and flowing slowly away.
Perhaps this is the bottom
, I thought hopefully and, wrapping my legs around the rope, I started to slide down.

As soon as I pushed off I knew something was wrong. A shudder in the rope made me stop and look up. I froze, hoping it was nothing, sliding slowly to halfway down the rope.

Then it shuddered again, and I heard an almighty crack above me. The rope went slack in my hands and I had the weird, momentary sensation of being suspended in mid-air until,
smack
, I hit the ground in a shower of rubble.

I lay there trying to breathe, but it was as if there was no air in me at all. Just a crushing weight, like an elephant was sitting on me. I had to get oxygen. Slowly, painfully, some air found its way into my lungs and at last I managed to lift myself up from the rock-strewn earth.

‘Johnno, are you all right?’ came George’s frantic voice in the darkness. ‘Where’s the torch?’

‘You had it,’ said Nick.

Moments later a shaft of light appeared, lighting up the cloud of dust that hung in the air all around us.

Nick was shaking debris from his hair.

George swung the torch towards me, and I squinted as the light flashed in my eyes. ‘Johnno, you’re bleeding!’

‘I’m okay, I think …’ I said breathlessly. I put my hand to my temple and felt a sticky ooze trickling down.

Nick came over, picking his way through the litter of rocks on the ledge to find the rope that had dropped down in the rockfall. ‘You might want to lay off the doughnuts, fat guts!’ he said with a grin as he coiled the rope on his arm.

‘You might want to pick a better rock,’ I snapped back, aching all over and feeling seriously pissed off. I definitely wasn’t in the mood for one of his wind-ups.

There was a short silence.

‘So now what?’ I said shortly. It was more an accusation than a question.

Nick glared back at me, his eyes narrowing. ‘Now what? We keep going and find a way out. What else?’

‘And what if there is no way out?’ I said, suddenly losing confidence in this crazy mission.

‘There will be …’ He answered, sounding vague.

‘How do you know? You don’t know that.’

Nick turned on me, stepping closer and throwing his hands in the air in mock surrender. ‘Jeez, Johnno … What do you think we should do? Sit and have a good cry?’

‘I’m not crying,’ I snapped.

Then, before either of us could say anything further, George stepped between us. ‘Cut it out, both of you. As if we have any choice here. We need to keep going.’ Without waiting for an answer, she brushed past and started along the narrow path beside the stream.

Nick stood firm for a moment, his eyes challenging me in the disappearing torchlight. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t think of anything sharp enough or ugly enough to say. When it was obvious I had nothing, he picked up the rope that lay at his feet, stuffed it into the backpack and turned to follow George. As the torchlight faded and the dark closed in again it was all I could do not to scream.

At first, the change was so subtle we didn’t notice it. George flashed the torch around every now and then towards the stream or up the cave wall to catch the curve of the ceiling above our heads. But other than that, the torchlight illuminated the path for a couple of metres ahead and that’s all we could see. It was like walking in a vacuum. I didn’t even realise I needed to start stooping until George slowed so suddenly that Nick ran into the back of her. When she shone the light above our heads I saw that the rock ceiling was right above me.

‘What is it?’ asked Nick, impatiently.

But George didn’t answer. She just shone the torch in front of us to where the path should have been. But instead, the ceiling pitched sharply downward to the floor a few metres ahead. The light bounced back off a solid wall of rock. The water that had been flowing along the stream next to us now lay motionless in a large, stagnant pool.

We had come to a complete dead-end.

Nick yelled in frustration and kicked at a small rock at his feet, sending it skidding into the pool. George reached out to touch the wall, pushing it gently as if testing whether it was as real and immovable as it looked. Feeling light-headed, I slumped to the ground against the cold rock.

When Nick had sent a dozen or so rock missiles into the water he squatted next to me, kneading his fingers into his temples. I wanted to blame him so much. For walking off and running into Zaffar and Baldy, for bringing us into the cave, for Matt getting caught – for everything that had happened since we’d left Shell Harbour.

Suddenly Nick turned and looked at me. ‘You know your problem, Johnno?’

‘
My
problem?’ I gasped, totally taken aback.

‘You see, you’ve got me on some kind of pedestal. And now you’re all disappointed because things aren’t working out. And you can’t figure out how this guy on the pedestal can be such a stuff-up. Well, here’s the newsflash. This is me, Johnno. The real me. So get used to it.’

‘For god’s sake, Nick, will you shut up!’ snapped George, before I had a chance to say anything. ‘I’m so over both of you. It doesn’t matter why we’re here or who’s to blame. We have to work together or we’ll never get out.’

Get out, get out, get out, out, out
! Her voice echoed around the chamber.

She picked up a stone and threw it angrily into the middle of the stream. Nick went to say something then decided against it. Instead he turned away and slunk into the shadows. George tossed another stone into the middle of the pool.

Through eyes that were now blurry with tears at the sting of Nick’s and George’s words and the hopelessness of our situation, I watched her stone sink to the bottom where it sat in plain view in the shallow water.

George tilted her head, looking at the stone for a moment, and then tossed another at the wall. It bounced off and plopped into the water where it sank quickly and disappeared.

‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Did you see that?’

Nick’s voice came from out of the darkness. ‘So it’s deeper over there – so what?’

George let the torchlight linger on the tiny ripples that quivered on the water’s surface. ‘See how the water’s flowing into the pool?’ she asked me.

Wiping my eyes, I nodded at what seemed like a pretty obvious observation.

‘Then how come this pool’s not overflowing?’ George asked.

I watched as she shone torchlight along the stream to the pool to illustrate her point. I realised George was right. The water was flowing in, but the pool level wasn’t changing.

‘So … what? It’s going underground?’ I said slowly, not sure if I really understood what that meant.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ she said, tossing another rock near the wall. ‘The water must be flowing under the rock base in the pool somehow … Maybe it’s not a dead-end, after all.’

There was a splash next to me. Nick had jumped into the pool and was wading slowly across to the wall. With each step the water got deeper, until it was just below his chest as he reached the wall. George shone the light on him.

He stood splashing around, feeling the base of the rock pool with his feet. ‘It’s deep all right … Then it drops away. Chuck me the torch.’

George tossed the torch to him and he ducked under, the dim light moving from side to side under the surface.

Resurfacing, he gasped. ‘This water is seriously freezing … But there’s a gap all right.’

‘Big enough to get through?’ asked George.

‘What do you mean,
big enough to get through
?’ I asked disbelievingly.

She looked at me sideways, grinning. ‘Well, it’s no more insane than climbing down here in the first place …’

‘George, it’s beyond insane.’ I could almost feel the blood draining from my face just at the thought of it. Somehow I’d managed to stay reasonably calm so far, but suddenly I wanted to yell and scream and scrape my fingernails down the rock walls like some loony in an asylum.

‘Yeah, well, maybe …’ George said, quietly. ‘But we can’t go back, can we?’

Nick was out of the pool and stood shivering like he’d just stepped out of a freezer. ‘I’m game,’ he stammered.

George nodded. ‘Well, I can hold my breath for about fifty metres – can you do better than that?’

They were talking to each other as if I wasn’t even there. I knew I was useless and so did they, but no matter how hard I tried to share their enthusiasm about jumping into a freezing pool and swimming through a hole for an unknown distance, I just couldn’t.

‘Maybe, I don’t know,’ Nick was saying. ‘But hey, I’m already wet … and it’s probably not that far, anyway.’

But George had already made up her mind. ‘No, the strongest swimmer should go, and that’s me.’

Nick must have realised she was serious about this and so, shaking his head resignedly, he passed her the rope. ‘Here. Pull twice –’

‘… really hard if I get into trouble,’ she finished with a nervous laugh. She lifted her arms and placed her hands lightly on his shoulders as he tied the rope.

‘Mind if I take the torch?’ George asked, cheekily. ‘Or are you two scared of the dark?’