The Secret of the Dark (6 page)

“Did you make all the pretty quilts, Granny?” I wanted so badly to think of something else. Forget the phone call. The ugly voice.

“Certain, child. My stitches used to be the envy of all the ladies in the guild. Six-seven to the inch, I got. Why I remember.…”

I guess I'd better be glad Granny wasn't aware of the call. Would the person have said the same thing had Granny answered? Or was the message only for me? It was a childish trick. But frightening.

I cleaned up the dishes and went back upstairs. Putting on a practice record, I did my exercises, concentrating on stretching and the music. The morning passed.

At one-thirty the phone rang again. I didn't want to answer but it could be Fleecy or even Rick or Neal.

Granny was near the phone, and she didn't hesitate. “I'm here,” she said loudly. I smiled at the way she answered. “I'm fair to middling, thankye.” She listened. “I showed 'um all right, didn't I? They think I'm getting old, but I showed 'um.”

I guessed the comment on the other end had been about Granny dancing, and she had certainly “showed 'um.”

“She's right here.” Granny handed the phone to me.

I recognized the voice at once. “Valerie, it's Neal. I have to back out on our date. Call Rick and get another time. The Widow Dickerson has got to go to the hospital, and Dad has an emergency at his office. I'm sorry. But listen, Mom says she bets you're out of groceries. I can come by in the morning and take you to the store.”

“That would be great, Neal. I was going to get a taxi.”
The
taxi. It still sounded funny. I'd welcome Neal's help.

“Okay, about ten, unless I call and say differently.”

I said fine and hung up. I was sorry not to see him today, but I understood.

Before I could move away, the phone rang again. I stared at it but on the second ring I grabbed it up. I wasn't going to let some silly prankster make me nervous. It was probably kids. They didn't have enough to do here on summer vacation.

“Valerie, it's Rick. Look, I can't get away right now to come get you. Can you walk over alone?”

“I guess so. If you give me directions.” I was glad he didn't have to cancel, too, and I wasn't going to back out because Neal couldn't go.

“It's easy. Take the path you were on yesterday and keep walking. You'll come to a fence. Turn right and follow it right to my door.”

“How far is it?”

“'Bout a mile, I suppose. Too far for a city girl to walk?”

“Of course not. I just wondered.”

He laughed. “See you soon then.”

A mile? And he considered himself a neighbor? Was there no one living closer?

Fleecy was a little early, so I left her and Granny digging through a box of material scraps with an envelope of patterns beside them on the kitchen table. Granny had taken a morning nap and was obviously feeling good. Even Fleecy noticed she was more alive and energetic.

“The dancing done Annie a heap of good.”

“Maybe I'll get her to show me how and we'll practice,” I said. “It will do us both good.”

We laughed and I set off, saying I'd only be gone till four-thirty. “I don't like leaving Granny alone, so I'll get back before you leave.”

“Hit'd be all right, Valerie. She just needs someone living with her. Hit wouldn't hurt none to go off and leave her. You need some time with your friends.”

I didn't mention to Fleecy that someone had come by the one time I'd left Granny. For all I knew it could have been a friend of Granny's since she never remembered who it was. But I still didn't like the idea.

It was a hot and sunny day, the kind of weather I'd expected in Arkansas. I started to sweat after walking only a short way. I had on shorts and a tank top with little pink flowers on it. I hoped I wouldn't get wilted.

It was strange to walk and not see one person. I felt so alone. The path was well marked, so at least I didn't have to worry about getting lost.

No birds sang. Maybe they'd gotten out of the heat. I was glad for some shade when the path led into a stand of pines mixed with leafy trees of several types. I had stopped for a minute to wipe my face with the bandanna I'd put in my pocket, when a rattle in the underbrush startled me.

Looking all around, I laughed at my nervousness. There were dozens of things that could rattle leaves in the woods. A mouse, a rabbit, a lizard, a deer. But I'd see a deer if it were close.

I jogged a little. But when the trail started downhill, I ran. At the bottom was a fence. I turned right where the woods were thick and leafy again and the shade felt wonderful. It had been silly to run. I stopped, wiped my face, running my fingers through the short damp hairs that clung to my neck.

Rounding a bend I found civilization. There was a parking lot, several cars, and a big sign.
Ozark Cave. Tourists Welcome
. The building looked like a small store. I pulled open the heavy door and went inside. Post cards, snack foods, soda—everything for the tourist There were even those junky souvenirs you see in the vacation spots. Fake tom-toms, bows and arrows, banners with hillbillies, corn-cob pipes, whiskey jugs — things that furthered the image most people have of the hill people.

From a stairway on the right, some people appeared, giggling and laughing. Rick was the last in line. He smiled and waved his flashlight at me.

“Be with you in a minute.” He sold pop to two girls, who giggled every time they looked at him, and a tom-tom to a little boy. Then everyone left and I was the only tourist left.

“You didn't tell me I had to buy a ticket and a tom-tom to get in.”

“Complimentary tour for pretty girls.” He turned a sign on the door so it read
Closed
and locked the front door.

“Where's your dad?” I asked. Rick had said he and his dad ran the business.

“Who knows? He was here when I went down. I told him I was closing for the day. He probably went home,” Rick finished.

“Where do you live?”

“Cabin out back.”

It was hard for me to imagine growing up here in the woods, so isolated. “Have you always lived here?” I was pretty sure he had.

“Since my mom left. I was about ten, I guess.”

“Who did you play with?” Maybe I was getting nosy, but I was very curious about Rick Biddleman.

“Deer. Skunks. Possums.” He grinned.

“Now you're teasing me. Wasn't it lonely here?”

“I like to be alone. There's lots to explore here. Bus took me to school. But it was usually boring. Not that I care, but where's Neal?”

“He had an emergency.”

“So we're all alone?” His smile held a sort of arrogance. I didn't know whether to be uneasy or to think he was teasing me again. There was a wildness in him that I wasn't sure I trusted. He was the kind of guy I'd have steered clear of in New York. Street smart, maybe a daredevil. Maybe it was that element of risk of being with him that appealed to me. I'd always led a super-safe life. I'd never considered it boring, but now I knew it was fairly uneventful.

“Do I need a chaperone?” I flirted with him.

“Too late if you do.” He headed for the stairway. “Come on. You're going to get cold, though. Get that shirt over there.” He pointed to a flannel shirt on the back of a chair beside the cash register. Rick had on a cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled down.

The shirt I grabbed smelled of cigarette smoke and perspiration. It was probably Rick's dad's, but I was glad to have it when we reached the bottom of the few steps where it was twenty degrees cooler.

Rick's flashlight spotted a switch, and he threw it on. A string of lights revealed a path into the cave.

“There are limestone caves all over these mountains. This one isn't much, but the tourists don't know that unless they've already been over to Blanchard Springs before they stop here. This one opens up into a bigger cave, a wild cave, but there's no way to get city people into it. You have to crawl about fifty feet before it opens out again.”

The cave smelled earthy, and it felt damp and colder the farther we walked. The lights were placed so one could see rock formations. “Oh, this is beautiful, Rick.” The rock was slick and caramel colored. It was all rounded like mushroom tops.

“That one's nothing compared to what I could show you if you're daring enough. It's a flow-stone. Water washed over it for years to make it that smooth. Minerals make it that color. There's a snow-white one overhead here.” He pointed with his light to show a rock that looked like scoops of ice cream piled up.

“It's an ice-cream sundae for giants,” I said.

“The caramel syrup is iron deposits.”

We walked around the cave wall. At one place I almost slipped and realized the path was wet. My sandals had smooth crepe on the bottom. Probably not the smartest thing to have worn, not to mention that my toes were cold.

“Careful.” Rick grabbed my arm. “The floor's wet here. It's a live cave — still growing. Water seeps in especially when it's as rainy as it's been this spring and summer.”

His hand was warm and I could feel the heat of his body close to mine. I stepped forward and kept walking, hugging the old shirt closer. My legs had goose bumps.

Suddenly the lights went off and it was dark — darker than I'd ever known it to be. I blinked but nothing got lighter. My eyes couldn't adjust since there was only darkness.

“Rick? What happened to the lights?” No answer. I waited for a moment but all I could hear was a slight dripping sound. “Rick, stop that! I know you're behind me.” No answer. I already knew him well enough to realize he was trying to scare me. I calmed down and tried to wait patiently, but it was an awful feeling — the total darkness and knowing I was underground. That there were tons of rock overhead.

“Rick.” I steadied my voice. “The joke's over. I'm not scared anymore. Turn the lights back on.” No answer.

Then his laughter echoed against the walls and bounced down corridors around us. The lights flashed back on. I blinked now to adjust to the sudden light.

“Gotcha.” He grabbed me.

I shrugged away. “You aren't funny, Rick.” I pretended to be mad, and I didn't like the joke, but it was something he'd do. I should have expected it. I walked on as if it hadn't happened.

“Scary, wasn't it? The total darkness. The tourists love it.”

Yes, it was something he'd do to tourists. Part of the act. I could just see the two girls he'd sold pop to, grabbing him and snuggling close until he turned on the lights. Maybe he'd expected me to do that.

“How does anyone manage to explore a cave in the first place?” I asked. “A flashlight wouldn't be much help.”

“Prehistoric people carried torches. We've found a few in here. People called the Bluff Dwellers lived in this area. We've found bones too. Occasionally some people fell in and died, or maybe they were thrown in for punishment and couldn't find a way out.”

I shivered at the idea. Then a patch of crystal-like formations distracted me. “Beautiful! What caused them to form that way?”

“That's calcite. All sorts of minerals leak out of the ground overhead. I'll show you some incredible sights in the bigger cave if you've got the nerve to go in there.”

Daring. Nerve. What would it be like? “Not today.” I wasn't sure I had enough nerve to go into something wilder than this.

“Of course not. You're not dressed for it.”

“I can't remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites.” At least I had remembered the terms from some distant geology lesson.

“Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling. Mites are on the ground.”

“Sure. That's easy. Do you really like being in here?”

“Yeah. I like exploring better. I'm so used to being in this cave, it's not a question of like or dislike. Sometimes I get bored with tourists. But there's big money for anyone who has a good cave. My daddy and I keep looking for a really big one. We'd get rich in a hurry.”

It was hard to think of a cave as a way of making money. Suddenly I wanted to go back outside — into the sunshine — almost like I needed to make sure it was still there. I quickly followed the lighted pathway and practically ran up the stairs while Rick turned off the lights.

He unlocked the door and followed me outside. “City girl,” he accused. “Nothing like that in New York, I'll bet.”

“Not unless you want to run around in the sewers, which I don't do. And the subways aren't that dark, even at night. I'm not very adventurous,” I added.

“Time for you to change.” He handed me a Coke he'd brought from the store. “Go into the big cave with me tomorrow.”

“I have to go to town for groceries.” Holding the Coke gave me a chill since I hadn't warmed up from being underground. “And I can't leave Granny alone, remember?”

“What day then?” He wouldn't give up the idea of getting me into the wilder cave to explore.

“I might be too scared.” I could lie about my previous social life, but I might as well be honest about my sense of adventure.

“I'll take care of you. Don't you trust me? There are parts of the big cave that I know like my own house. We'll stay in those. I won't make you explore, even if that's what I like to do best.”

“Let me think about it.” The sun felt so good. Why would anyone go into such a cold, damp, and scary place?

“I'll call you.”

“Okay. But please say it's you immediately. Someone has been playing jokes on us with the phone. Kids, I guess.” I told Rick about the funny phone calls.

“Beware of the dark? Yeah, sounds like kids. The dark isn't dangerous. But who you're with might be.” He was flirting again.

I flirted back. “Maybe that's what scares me.” I had to look away first. I tipped the Coke can and finished it. Then I stood up. “I have to get back before Fleecy leaves. Thanks for the tour.”