Haggopian and Other Stories

My imagination needed no urging, and after that I followed more closely still upon his heels, scratching marks of my own as we went. And sure enough, within a distance of perhaps fifty paces more, it began to become apparent that David had in no way exaggerated with regard to the labyrinthine nature of the place. There were side tunnels, few at first but rapidly increasing in number, which entered into our shaft from both sides and all manner of angles; and shortly after this we came to a sort of gallery wherein many of these lesser passages met.

The gallery was in fact a cavern of large dimensions with a domed ceiling perhaps thirty feet high. Its walls were literally honeycombed with tunnels entering from all directions, some of which descended steeply to regions deeper and darker still. Here, too, I heard for the first time the sluggish gurgle of unseen waters, of which David informed: “That’s a stream. You’ll see it shortly.”

He laid another explosive charge out of sight in a crevice, then indicated that I should once more follow him. We took the tunnel with the highest ceiling, which after another seventy-five to one hundred yards opened out again onto a ledge that ran above a slow-moving, blackly gleaming rivulet. The water gurgled against our direction of travel, and its surface was some twenty feet lower than the ledge; this despite the fact that the trough through which it coursed was green and black with slime and incrustations almost fully up to the ledge itself. David explained the apparent ambiguity.

“Tidal,” he said. “The tide’s just turned. It’s coming in now. I’ve seen it fifteen feet deeper than this, but that won’t be for several hours yet.” He gripped my arm, causing me to start. “And look! Look at the kelp…”

Carried on the surface of the as yet sluggish stream, great ropes of weed writhed and churned, bladders glistening in the light from our torches. “David,” my voice wavered, “I think—”

“Come on,” he said, leading off once more. “I know what you think—but we’re not going back. Not yet.” Then he paused and turned to me, his eyes burning in the darkness. “Or you can go back on your own, if you wish…?”

“David,” I hissed, “that’s a rotten thing to—”

“My God, man!” he stopped me. “D’you think you’re the only one who’s afraid?”

However paradoxically, his words buoyed me up a little, following which we moved quickly on and soon came to a second gallery. Just before reaching it the stream turned away, so that only its stench and distant gurgle stayed with us. And once more David laid charges, his actions hurried now, nervous, as if in addition to his admitted fear he had picked up something of my own barely subdued panic.

“This is as far as I’ve been,” he told me, his words coming in a sort of rapid gasping or panting. “Beyond here is fresh territory. By my reckoning we’re now well over a quarter-mile from the entrance.” He flashed the beam of his torch around the walls, causing the shadows of centuries-formed stalactites to flicker and jump. “There, the big tunnel. We’ll take that one.”

And now, every three or four paces, or wherever a side tunnel opened into ours, we were both scoring the walls to mark a fresh and foolproof trail. Now, too, my nerves really began to get the better of me. I found myself starting at every move my friend made; I kept pausing to listen, my heartbeat shuddering in the utter stillness of that nighted place. Or was it still? Did I hear something just then? The echo of a splash and the soft flop, flop of furtive footsteps in the dark?

It must be pictured:

We were in a vast subterrene warren. A place hollowed out centuries ago by…by whom? By what? And what revenants lurked here still, down here in these terrible caverns of putrid rock and festering, sewage-like streams?

Slap, slap, slap…

And that time I definitely had heard something. “David—” my voice was thin as a reedy wind. “For God’s sake—”

“Shh!” he warned, his cautionary hiss barely audible. “I heard it too, and they might have heard us! Let me just get the rest of this dynamite planted—one final big batch, it’ll have to be—and then we’ll get out of here.” He used his torch to search the walls but could find no secret place to house the explosives. “Round this next bend,” he said. “I’ll find a niche there. Don’t want the stuff to be found before it’s done its job.”

We rounded the bend, and ahead—

—A glow of rotten, phosphorescent light, a luminescence almost sufficient to make our torches redundant. We saw, and we began to understand.