The Bedrock of Truth: Part 2
Part 2
Garrett was the leader of the local caving club. On the fourth Wednesday of every month, he and the other club members met at La Caverna, an underground bar in the city. Although a little hokey, it felt right that they should meet there. It took Emerson three months’ worth of meetings before she figured out Garrett was also a Leo Rock fan, and another six before she was willing to trust him with her clues.
“Of course, Leo would hide his final manuscript in a cave,” Emerson said when she finally revealed to Garrett her real reason for joining his club. “His last name is Rock after all.”
“Is,” Garret said. “Not was? You think he’s still alive?”
“It might be more of a desperate hope than a scientific belief.”
“It also doesn’t take a literary genius to see the consistent use of stone metaphors buried in his volume of work,” Garret continued. Emerson blushed. “Ah, shit,” Garrett muttered into his beer. “Creative writing major?”
“Ah, creative writing graduate student actually,” Emerson said and shrugged. “And it’s alright. His most famous series uses the entrance of a cave as a parallel universe. You’re right. It wouldn’t take a genius of any brand to figure it out.”
“But you know more than just the first clue,” Garrett said leading her further into the conversation.
Emerson nodded. Garrett ordered another round and although they were the only two who remained at the meeting, or maybe because they were the only two who remained, they carried on. The hints from the letter and the facts acquired through their lives of disciplined study piled up like boulders of truth, one after the other, tall enough to clearly mark the way.
Emerson would have gone on the quest to find Leo alone, but the author insisted that the adventure include other literary souls. Stories, after all, were meant to be shared. And with his clues, author Leo Rock assured that this particular story would not be a solo affair.
The road ahead maybe dark and narrow, but you have nothing to Fear.
As long as yOu bring yoUr friends, you’ll be able to keep your head cleaR.
Four. Four friends. They needed two more adventurers. Garrett introduced Emerson to another fan, Ethan, a buddy he met in the dorms freshman year and also a rare geology and communications double major. When the three of them teamed up to write a cryptic piece of their own that was published in, The Washington Square Review, the NYU Graduate and Faculty Journal, Claudia followed their clues and found them one Wednesday, seated around the table at La Caverna.
They’d likely have never met in person had it not been for the clues or the quest, but once they found each other, it felt like they’d be together forever. Perhaps they already had been, only now, instead of occupying space in a shared fictional world, they were finally together, in the flesh.
On the three Wednesdays a month they weren’t meeting with the caving club, the group, who all now lovingly adopted Emerson’s self-declared title of Leologist, met to prepare for the ultimate quest. A quest that would take them to the largest cave in the United States, and hopefully, to a treasure worth more to them than their combined weight in gold.
But first, they had to graduate.
Emerson had barely made it across the stage and flipped her tassel before she was shirking out of dinner celebrations with her parents to jump in Garret’s car and officially begin their quest. Fourteen hours and three pitstops later, they arrived, sleep deprived, but full of over-confident adrenaline and caffeine.
When Emerson stepped up to the cave’s entrance, she felt a cool blast of air brush over her bare arms. Goosebumps rose on her skin and she wasn’t sure to blame the breeze or the endorphins coursing through her veins. She had known the cave would be cool, sixty degrees year-round the brochure boasted, but she couldn’t imagine wearing anything other than her Keep Calm and Leo On shirt. She’d picked her favorite one, in green. Leo’s favorite color. The color of all his book covers.
As she walked, she recited the final clue.
The bedrock of truth lies beneath the reality you believe in.
New surprises await you, and my real story will finally begin.
Down and down they walked. After an hour of descent, the tourists had long since dropped out, and a half hour later even the serious spelunkers were getting sparse. Thanks to their training and emboldened with the purpose of a noble quest they felt confident despite the crushing darkness that surrounded them. When the path finally ended, Emerson stood face to face a sheer rock wall. She ran her hands over its pockmarked surface searching for an opening. But there was nothing. They had reached a dead end.
“Now what?” Ethan asked.
Claudia began to dig in her pack, reaching for what Emerson already had memorized.
When all seems lost look not to the sky, but to the ground.
The way forward is there and what was lost will soon be found.
Emerson bent down and let her hands explore the bottom of the wall, reading the surface with her fingertips like a blind man reads braille. And there, just as the clue instructed, was the thinnest of corridors, a crevice just big enough for a human to pass through. Emerson peered into the sliver of space that remained open between the floor of the cave and the wall that stretched upward.
“I’m going in,” Emerson announced. The others nodded silently.
“We’ll follow you once you are through,” Garrett said.
Emerson took a deep breath and nodded. “Sounds good. Stay calm,”
“And Leo on,” Garrett and the others completed.
Emerson slid forward on her belly. Pebbles and gravel pressed against her stomach, her thin t-shirt doing nothing to protect her from their sharp edges. She tried not to think about the crushing weight of rock surrounding her body and instead focused on the intensity of the light from her head lamp, waiting for it to diminish once it broke through into the next room.
The passage was long. Longer than any she and her friends had explored before. The darkness and fear and sound of the stone floor grating against her bare arms and toes of her boots almost convinced her to turn back. Maybe this whole thing, as real as she wanted it to be, was just a fairy tale she had written in her own mind. Maybe she had convinced the others to follow her on an imaginary quest. Maybe her hero worship and obsession had crossed the line to addiction.
Emerson’s heart suddenly felt like it would shatter her rib cage in it’s attempt to break free from this small and dark space. Simultaneously grieving and attempting to escape. Her heart needed… she didn’t know what it needed… except maybe some more space.
The thought of turning around and going all the way back was unbearable. Forward was the only solution, but she had to do it fast, or at least, faster. Emerson pulled with her arms and pushed with her toes, ignoring both the painful beating of her heart and the slices of skin she was surely removing from her cheeks and forearms. Faster and fast until finally she was through, until she was free.
When she made it to the other side, she saw she wasn’t alone.
Click here for the third (and final) installment of the story!
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