The Cult of the Moon

Morgan brought the flashlight, I brought my key. We wore hiking boots and warm clothing and carried food and water, in case we got lost in the cave. There wasn't any point in taking anything else. I burned my diary- and the book too, of course. I didn't plan on ever coming back.

There was a heavy door in the basement of the theater, and no one had opened it in over thirty years. The key worked, but the door was warped and we couldn't pry it open without making a lot of noise. I wasn't too worried. The theater had closed for the winter and the closest house was half a mile away. Behind the door there was a steep and very narrow shaft, and at the bottom of the shaft there was a chamber dripping with stalactites. At the far end of the chamber there was a river and the river fell in cascades into the abyss.

We climbed down into the vast cavity. It was cold here; we could see our breath. Our flashlight beams found the famous statues. They were a little larger than living people. I never learned who had sculpted them, but the book said that these were all the people who had crossed the river. They were naked, of course, and nearly all of them were young.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I had to speak loudly, to be heard over the roar of water.

"Are you?"

"My parents are dead."

"I wish mine were," Morgan said. "The water is warm."

We were close enough now to feel the spray.

"It's geothermal," I said.

"What?"

"Geothermal," I said, almost shouting. "We won't be able to come back."

"Good."

"What if doesn't go where we think it does?"

"It has to go somewhere."

"What if it's just a- you know, a pit?"

"Then I guess we'll drown."

"I don't want to drown," I said.

"I don't think it's just a pit. The book was right about everything else. Do you want to go first?"

"No."

"Do you want me to go first?"

"We could go at the same time."

"Is that allowed?"

"The book didn't say it wasn't," I said.

"Speaking of which..."

She set her flashlight on a ledge at shoulder level. It was the big square kind of flashlight, the kind that you can use as a lantern. She looked at me and widened her eyes. At first I wasn't sure what she was trying to tell me, but I understood when she sat beside the river and removed her boots and socks. She slipped out of her jacket and unbuttoned her blouse.

"You have to take yours off too," she said.

Morgan was my best- my only- friend, but we had never seen each other naked. I never let anybody see me naked except for Doctor Gadaikis.

"I didn't think it would be this cold."

She dipped her bare feet in the river. "The water's warm."

"The book said that some people don't get through. Nobody knows what happens to them."

"You ever kill anyone?"

"No."

"You're not really a boy are you?"

I rolled my eyes. "No."

"Then you're safe. Unless you try to take something with you, other than... what did it say?"

"Flesh or keratin."

"You said that's hair and nails, right?"

"We could just wear wool and leather," I said.

"It would still have plastic and metal bits. You know- zippers and whatever you call them."

"Grommets."

"Besides, the statues are all naked," Morgan said. "I'll bet you don't get a statue unless you make it through."

"You think we'll get statues?"

"Maybe."

"Big, naked statues."

"Maybe."

"I don't think I can do this."

"I'm going, Laura. With or without you. And the police will look for me, and they'll remember this place, and they'll seal it up. If you don't follow me now you'll regret it forever."

I shined my flashlight around the room. Nothing moved, not bats, not spiders. We were completely alone. I sat beside her and started with my boots. Morgan waited for me to catch up to her.

"I wonder..." she said.

"What?"

"What if we show up in the middle of a street or something?"

"Morgan. I'm ready to do this. Don't... Just don't."

While we were undressing, she turned to look at me. I saw her head move, looked back at her, and then we both looked straight ahead. She had already finished; I still had my panties on. The image of her body did not quickly fade from my mind. When I closed my eyes it stayed with me, like the flashlight's purple signature. Even in the white glare of an electric arc, her skin was a perfect cream. Her breasts were quite small and her nipples were like a boy's. The cold air made them hard.

We stood and shivered side by side at the water's edge, but the stone we stood upon was hot. I grabbed Morgan's hand. She looked at me and I looked at her. Her flashlight cast hard shadows on her face. The boys from town always said she was pretty, but she was more cute than pretty. Her face was too round, too pale and her nose was a little too wide. Her hair was very black. At the beginning of the summer she had cut it page-boy style and now it was beginning to grow out.

Now goose-bumps were ruining that perfect cream.

"Let's do this before we freeze to death," she said.

-or burned our tootsies on the stone. I clamped onto her hand like she was the world's supply of bravery and the only way I could get enough to jump was to squeeze it out of her fingers.

"One," she said, shouting now.

"Two," we said together.

"Three."

The current pulled us down. It led only to a pit, and we would drown in it. My hand ached from squeezing, and I don't know which of us squeezed harder. We were completely under, buffeted and scoured, and I must have passed out. I think it was only for an instant, because when I came around, I was still holding Morgan's hand. Somehow we had been pitched forward, and we were falling the way a superhero flies: tits down. And we weren't in water any more, but foam and rain. We fell through space, so quickly that my stomach hadn't caught up to the rest of me. I wiped the water out of my eyes, but there was nothing to see, no light at all, so I shut my eyes again and tried not to throw up.

"Morgan!"

"Still here!"

"Fuck!"

"I never heard you say that word before!"

I started screaming, and she screamed too. I was glad she joined in; otherwise I would have felt stupid. We left the foam and the rain and fell through a tornado of heat. In moments we were completely dry- even our hair was dry.

After a while, I was able to remember words that had more than four letters in them, and string them together into sentences- at least in my head. I even stopped screaming.

"Morgan?"

"Still here."

"Don't let go."

"Don't plan to."

"Does this have a bottom?"

"How should I know?"

"What if it doesn't have a bottom?"

We started screaming again. Somewhat later, she stopped, so I felt like I should, too.

"Morgan?"

"Yeah?"

"What if it does have a bottom?"

We screamed some more, but by now we were more or less out of breath, and I was starting to get really thirsty.

"You know, this is actually pretty fun," Morgan said.

"Yeah, until we... Fuck!"

"We're not going to hit the ground."

"What makes you say that?"

"If we were going to hit the ground we would have done it already. And even if we do hit the ground, we can't see it. So it will happen so fast we won't know what hit us. We must be going really fast now. I wonder how fast we're going."

"Fifteen meters per second."

"No way."

"Way."

"How do you know?"

"Terminal velocity?"

"What?"

"Wind resistance."

"What?"

"Science."

"Oh, that. You know science is bullshit, right?"

"What?"

"It's a proven fact."

"Proven how?"

I don't know if she tried to answer me, because we plunged again into water. I must have been wrong about going fifteen meters per second because if we had belly-flopped at that speed we would have been dead.