was the
title of the book.
Its answer,
right on the first page:
“You have to
see it to understand.
I’ll teach
you how to get there,
but your challenge
is to jot it all down,
because I
couldn’t.”
I read,
and read,
and when I
had read everything, I thought,
“I can do
this.”
It didn’t
matter I had never seen the inside of a cave,
I knew where
to go, and what to do by heart,
and the
author’s picture on the back
showed that
he was taller than me.
I wouldn’t
get stuck if he hadn’t.
As I flew
across the country to find my cave
I stared at
the last few pages, lined but empty
and labeled,
“OBSERVATIONS.”
I squeezed
through the mouth into a gaping cavern,
of
stalactites and stalagmites, jutting out like teeth.
There were
bats clustered everywhere on the ceiling,
silent, but
unfurling momentarily as I passed.
At the back was a little gash in the wall
and the bats
no longer clung to the ceiling,
they huddled from cold oozing out of the crevice.
I followed a
trickling stream down the winding passage
and at the
bottom I heard the sound
of water falling
into the lake I was looking for.
I pulled out
my book, and following the last directions,
I hopped in.
Then I saw
why the bats stopped roosting where they did.
Coating the
walls was a dense mat of fuzz,
thick and
clumpy like wet dryer lint,
I could even
feel it submerged under my feet,
getting
tangled on my boots,
and caught
everywhere on the walls were bats, slowly desiccating .
As I got
closer and shone my light on a recent victim,
I stopped,
and thought,
“Bat’s aren’t
white on the inside.
They don’t
have pages.
Or the faded
title,
What do
Caves Eat?”
I looked around
at the dangling books in horror,
and the
tangles of fibers, slowly squeezing out
their
substance letter by letter,
dripping
into the stew of enzymes
that I was
standing in.
I slapped my
book shut, cradling its precious few notes
and turned
for the entrance,
but I was
caught in the tangle underfoot
and the book
went tumbling into the water, sinking fast,
and not even
taking a moment to untangle myself I dove for it.
I found it on
the floor, already ensnared in fibers,
but I wrenched
it free and tore my feet away,
and
clambered out of that vile hole in the ground.
My book is
safe now, the fibers and enzymes withered
under the
heat of a hotel dryer on high,
but I fear
that the cave has a taste for something new.
I can feel
the fibers slowly creeping up my back
(it seems I
can’t get dry enough to halt them).
So I have to
get this all down
before they engulf
me
and start to
squeeze,
and I
drip,
drip,
drip
away.
