Open Sesame
Stalagtites and stalagmites. Up or down?
Is their no verse, no aide memoire, to help me here, thought Kramer, restless and sweating slightly, in the warmth of his bed. But Kramer knew which was which, he always had. It was one of the many bits of information that clogged his mind. Not useless exactly, but not helpful either. Stalag tight, stalag might, stalag might not, Stalag 17.
Drip, drip, drip. For million years. One drop every few seconds. How many drips is that? How many drips make five? The thickness of a coat of paint, every hundred years.
Then in front, a totem pole, thirty feet high and made of limestone, multi-coloured layers, faces, the ones on the bottom, squashed, gargoyle-like, grimacing. Take the weight off their mind, Kramer, a voice said, but Kramer couldn't. He just stood in awe as he tried to comprehend the vast time-scale he was presented with.
How high when dinosaurs ruled the earth above, how high when man first stared at the stars, unsteadily on two back feet.
How high when Kennedy and the grassy knoll were in conjunction with Jupiter and Mars. Come fly me to the moon. How high the lie?
Then a chandelier. A great crystal formation, suspended from the roof, lighting up the darkness enabling Kramer to see the extent of the chamber he had entered. He'd been here before. The Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, United States of America, Zip Code unknown.
The Big Room.
What an uninspiring name for such an inspiring place.
A natural wonder of the world if ever there was one.
Kramer looked and tried to put himself into the mind of the man who had discovered it.
If, with just a flickering wooden torch or an old oil lamp, he knew the enormity of his find?
The Big Room. A thousand feet long and several hundred wide. Big enough to hide an aircraft carrier and still have room to spare. Drip, drip, drip. Time passes. Before him a seated figure, dominent in this corner of the cave. But benign.
The hint of a smile playing on his rocky lips as he surveys his domain. How many drips will it take, how many millenia must pass before he is crowned. Drip, drip, drip. A crown of rock. A crown of thorns.
And now, one wall to Kramer's right becomes a mighty pipe organ, silent in this cathedral of stone. Cylindrical formations of different heights. A keyboard, formed when the drips hit a small ledge and settled for a while before spilling over the edge leaving a tiny crystal calling card in it's path. A crystal wake, a crystal nacht. Home to a million bats. Gotham city above. drip, drip, drip. Now the drips speed up. Kramer watches as new shapes appear, sprouting up, a centuries worth every second.
The bats, great flocks of them, fill the cave, their high pitched squeaks and squeals hurting his ears. Ultra-sonic mayhem.
Super-sonic dreams. Sub-sonic formations. Inaudible silence. Is such a thing possible. What had he just said? Do bats come in flocks? He doubted it now. It sounded wrong. But a what of bats? A pride, a gaggle, a shoal, a school?
Whatever their collective name they were gone now, out into the night. To paint the town red, or a least give it a good undercoating. Vampire bats. Blood red. Kramer watched them leaving from a small opening just visible at the far end of the cave and then followed. The opening was just large enough to allow him to squeeze through, but not solid anymore, and it gave a little as he passed. Then it closed behindly. Silently.
Open Sesame.
Nothing.
Inside it still drip, drip, dripped, but, as no one was was there to hear them, did they make a sound?
