The B Girls

Wonderland





Lucy couldn't do the dance of joy. She couldn't even manage a deep breath. But she squirmed forward with renewed effort. "God, if I survive this nightmare with my body and my sanity intact I will . . .Wow." She emerged from the crack of doom into a fantasy.

"Told you it was worth it." Mae smiled but didn't take her eyes off the view.

Lucy was still having a little trouble catching her breath and her heart was racing but the horror of the crack was starting to fade. Maybe it would be like childbirth and the bad part would be hard to remember. Nah, she was going to have nightmares about that crawl for a long time. Maybe forever. But. . . "I guess the whole caving thing is starting to be a little more understandable," Lucy said.

"You could say that."

This final chamber in their quest was the magical cavern they'd stopped expecting.

There was a forest of stalagmites growing from the floor and a whole ballroom's worth of chandeliers dropping down from the ceiling. And they were shades of white instead of muddy brown. Moisture glistened in the light from their headlamps and honest to God flecks of fool's gold glittered in the walls.

Lucy could have spent hours exploring and touching.

But Jane was forty-five minutes back, alone and in pain. And Belle was being held by a crazy person.

"So, where do we look?" Mae asked.

"The map only shows a vague outline of the ceiling formations with an X on the backside of the longest one."

They both stared up at the stalactites trying to decide which was the longest.

"That one," Lucy said pointing to one near the wall on the right.

At the same time, Mae said, "That one," and pointed to one in the middle.

"You check yours and I'll check mine," Lucy said.

They both came up empty. The stalactites were smooth with no place to hide anything.

They met in the middle.

"Now what?" Mae asked.

Lucy pulled the map back out. "Can you see anything I could be missing?"

Mae studied the map, with a lot of back and forth to the ceiling. "No. But there must be something. Unless someone got here before us."

"I can't imagine who," Lucy said.

"True. Do you suppose he came down here alone?"

"Who? Paul?"

"Yes. I can't believe anyone would come all this way alone."

"You're right but it seems he was pretty serious about keeping his secret. Who would he trust?"

"A friend."

"Maybe so. But we're getting off task." Lucy stared at the map some more. "We have to be missing something simple."

Mae started to wander around dodging stalagmites and scoping out the ceiling.

Lucy looked at the map. The problem as she saw it was that the stalactites sprouting from the ceiling all seemed to be too smooth and regular to provide a good hiding place. It would have made more sense to mark a spot on the floor where there were lots of nooks and crannies.

Inspired, Lucy looked around with new eyes.

It didn't take long to find the match to the sketch growing out of the floor instead of the ceiling.

"Mae! I think I figured it out."

Mae scurried over and Lucy pointed to the formation.

"Imagine it upside down," Lucy said and held up the map.

"You're right. That has to be the answer."

Lucy was reluctant to check her theory. Time was ticking away and if she was wrong they couldn't afford much more time to come up with another idea. There was too much riding on their success for her to be wrong.

Lucy made her way to the formation on the far side of the room against the back wall. The stalagmites and stalactites reached toward each other forming a loose screen for a small alcove.

The perfect hiding place.

Mae had come over and was dancing in place making her light bob crazily around the walls. "This has to be it," she said. "It's perfect."

Lucy squeezed through the biggest gap in the formation and into the alcove. Turning so her back was against the wall, she swept her light over the formations looking for the most likely hiding spot.

Lucy focused on the tallest of the stalagmites and had her choice of two that nearly touched their stalactite counterparts. The first one she took a closer look at didn't appear to have any sort of depression or crack but she ran her hands over it anyway to be sure she didn't miss anything.

She moved on to the second part of the formation. This looked much more promising. The tall stalagmite and several smaller ones formed a nearly closed circle. Lucy leaned in and shone her light down into the stalagmite Stonehenge.

Something different from the surrounding rock reflected the light back to her.

"I think I found it," Lucy said as she reached down to retrieve the object.

"What is it?" Mae asked.

"Just a second." The top of the object was too large for her small hand-span. Too heavy to pick up one-handed with her fingers stretched to the limit.

Lucy wriggled her way as far down between two of the stalagmites as she could, reached down with both hands, grasped the object, and pulled it free.

An old pottery jar shone dully under her light. She looked back into the space to make sure she hadn't missed anything and found it empty.

"It's an old jar," Lucy said. She wriggled back out of the alcove and held up her prize for Mae's inspection.

"It's an old canning jar," Mae said. "Get it open, let's see what we've got."

"It's sealed. We'd have to break it or at least break the seal to get it open. We can't open it without Jane. It wouldn't be fair," Lucy said.

"What if there's a clue inside the jar to another hiding place down here?"

Lucy thought about it for a few seconds. "No. What would be the point?" She shook her head. "We've got what we came for and Jane deserves to be included. Besides, we might damage the document if we aren't careful."

"And we need to get back," Mae said.

They'd left Jane nearly an hour and a half ago. "We should make better time on the way back."

They started across the room to the crack of doom and Lucy stopped in her tracks. In the excitement of finding the declaration and seeing the beautiful part of caving she had forgotten about the crack. She started shaking and felt the tears come back to her eyes again.



# # #



"I can't. I can't go back in there."

"What?" Mae didn't seem to remember Lucy's panic attack either.

"That was a one way trip for me. You and Jane are going to have to figure out a system to keep me supplied with food and water. Maybe a sun lamp. Blankets. Clothes. Porta Potty. Some good books. I've been seriously considering a meditation retreat but maybe I won't need to pay for a weekend. I can get plenty of meditation in while I'm living down here."

"Very funny," Mae said. "We have to go. Jane and Belle are counting on us."

Except Lucy wasn't kidding. "I'm not going back in there. I'd rather become a hermit and live down here than crawl back into that hole." She was crying again and she couldn't seem to stop shaking.

Mae, put her arms around Lucy and hugged her hard. "People pay a lot of money for the kind of therapy you just had."

It took a second for her words to register. Lucy pulled back and blinded Mae with her headlamp. "Therapy? Are you crazy? Because I almost was. I think if I'd been in there for another minute I would have had a psychotic break. A real honest to God psychotic break."

"No, I'm not crazy. I've read about this. Therapists take people with phobias and expose them to the things they're afraid of to desensitize them. It's like a magic cure."

"Did you hear me? I almost went insane. I could've hurt you."

"But you didn't," Mae said. "And I bet if you think about it you feel better now."

Did she? Lucy tried to think about going back into the crack.

The opening to the nightmare crawl stared at her with its unblinking black eye. The eye of death, soulless and flat.

Lucy shivered. Belle needed them to pull this off and Jane needed medical help. Getting out of here with Jane and the Declaration was all that mattered. Forward is the way out. "I'll try. Let's pack up this jar."

They spent a few minutes wrapping the jar in one of the remaining blankets and cushioning it as best they could with water bottles and bags of gorp.

Mae gave Lucy an unwavering "you can do this" look before dropping to her stomach and slithering into the hole pulling the packs behind her again.

Lucy wasn't at all sure she could do it. Only the fear that Jane would die of shock or Belle would be hurt by her kidnapper had Lucy even thinking about going back in there.

Of course the bigger likelihood was that she would start crawling, panic, and be no help to anyone--or worse, actually cause a bigger problem.

Decision time. Panting in fear, Lucy didn't try to stop the tears still running out of her eyes. Live people cried.

She reached a hand into the opening. As it disappeared into the shadows, it went numb as though crossing a barrier between life and death.

Lucy pulled her hand back, almost surprised to find it still attached.

Surely Mae would find a way to get Jane help. Then Mae could send the paramedics back to Lucy and they could give her something to knock her out while they pulled her free on her very own stretcher.

And delay getting Jane to the hospital. Not to mention further endangering the rescue team.

Her fear was echoed in her pounding heart. She pushed her hand back into the maw, it tingled and went numb.

This time, she squeezed her eyes shut tight and pulled her body up to her hand. Her scalp crawled, her hair felt alive as though it was reaching out to touch the rock and send alarms to the rest of her body.

She hovered there, arms, head, and shoulders across the threshold of the underworld, the rest of her still in the land of the living.

Focusing her light on the disappearing packs, Lucy inched forward, keeping pace with Mae's jerky slide through the crack. The flush of heat turned into a cold sweat as soon as she was completely encased in the rock. She couldn't catch her breath and her heart strained to feed her oxygen starved body.

Spots danced in front of her eyes and she fought to maintain her focus on the packs and convince herself there was plenty of air.

The panic rolled over her in a tingling wave.

She clenched her fists to her side to keep from beating at the walls and watched Mae's head move farther into the tunnel.

Gasping and wheezing, she knew this time she wouldn't make it through.

"--matter what they say, Jane's gonna want a whole pitcher of margaritas."

Mae's voice penetrated the screaming darkness in Lucy's head but she didn't have the breath to respond.

"Lucy? Are you still back there?"

Forcing her eyes open, Lucy saw Mae's light bounce around the crack as she tried to twist around to get a look at Lucy.

Once again Lucy struggled with the need to raise up to be able to move freely and expand her lungs. Once again the panic won and she fought a losing battle against the rock.

This time the sharp pain that brought her back was in her knee.

Out, she had to get out.

Lucy made a renewed effort to scramble forward and butted her head against the packs which were acting just like a cork in a bottle. Behind her the pressure of Lucy's fear was building again.

Some tiny part of Lucy's brain that hadn't gone feral warned her she was about to hurt her friend.

With a moan, Lucy forced herself to stop, go limp and just breathe. She managed to croak, "Go."

Mae seemed to get the message because the packs moved away from Lucy's head.

"Just keep moving and try to breathe," Mae said. "We're almost there."

Lucy didn't respond. She was using every bit of her available rational brain to keep herself moving forward.



###



"Okay," Mae called back. "Hands and knees. Just a little longer."

Lucy slithered for all she was worth. Hands and knees! What the hell was she doing in a place where crawling on her hands and knees was cause for celebration?

When she reached the spot and crawled back over the obstruction she collapsed and sucked in deep lungfuls of air. A few more minutes and she'd be able to stand up. She hauled herself up to her hands and knees and scurried as fast as she could.

Popping out of the hellish crack behind Mae was like Christmas, New Years and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

She bolted to her feet and this time did a little dance of joy. "If we make it out of here alive, I don't think I'll ever so much as go into a basement again." She grabbed Mae's shoulders in her excitement and practically shouted in Mae's face. "Above ground. I'm going to live the rest of my life above ground."

Mae chuckled and nodded. "Okay. Sounds like a plan. Now let's keep moving."

"The rest is cake," Lucy said. "We'll be back to Jane in no time."

They made it back in record time and without any further scares.