The Anomaly(30)

“Good thinking,” Gemma muttered as everyone but me and Ken turned off their lights. “Because also it’s totally not spooky or anything doing it this way.”

“Pierre,” Ken said. “Start filming.”

Pierre tucked in behind me as I started to walk.

“After a long climb,” I said, “we’re here. Wherever ‘here’ is. It’s certainly man-made. The contrasts between this passage and the fissure below are obvious. This is much wider, there’s a more even floor, far greater consistency in the walls and ceiling. Someone put a lot of effort into this. Why? I hope we’re about to find out.”

We walked farther, seeing more of the same. I turned my head to the right so the light was stronger on the wall. “I’m still not seeing any markings, or anything else of interest, beyond some evidence of chiseling,” I said.

Then I stopped. “Well, except…that.”

We all looked in silence at the doorway in the wall.



The opening was about four feet wide, sides perfectly straight, curving to a graceful arch at least ten feet from the floor.

“There’s one on the other side, too,” Molly said.

All heads—and Pierre’s camera—slowly swiveled to see. Yes, a matching opening on the opposite wall.

“Nolan,” Ken said, “does this tally with Kincaid’s report?”

“Yeah. Well, in that he said that fifty-seven feet from the outside wall there were openings on either side. With curved passages leading from both.” I moved the light from side to side and peered into the doorways. “Which does appear to be the case.”

“You want to check if these are about that distance from the entrance?”

“Let’s do that.”

And so we walked farther along the passage, marking out the distance with our feet. “Shouldn’t we be able to see light from the opening to the outside by now?” Gemma asked after a minute.

“Yes,” I said. “Well, maybe. Soon.”

But after another twenty feet the light from my headlamp showed why we weren’t seeing anything. The passage didn’t end in an opening. It ended in a wall.

“That makes no sense,” Molly said, with a trace of anxiety. “This passage is straight, isn’t it? We must be at the canyon wall by now.”

I went right up to barrier and bent down to get a closer look, and finally put two and two together. “It’s been sealed,” I said. I ran my finger along a joint. “Chunks of rock, joined with some kind of rough mortar.”

I turned to Ken. “That’s what the rocks were inside the opening below. Dylan said there’d been a tremor in this area last year, right? And it dislodged rocks into the river?”

“Yes,” Gemma said. “Hence those rapids yesterday being more hectic than they used to be. He did say that.”

“And it was enough to crack the bricking-up below, too. That’s why nobody has spotted the opening in the last hundred years: It wasn’t there. Last year the fill-in fell apart, leaving what we found. Up here it survived. Did anybody keep counting as we walked?”

“Yeah,” Ken said. “We’re now about twenty yards from those doorways, so call it sixty feet. Or fifty-seven, near enough. I’m bored with being judicious and ‘maybe, maybe not,’ Nolan. This is Kincaid’s cavern. Face it.”

“I think it must be. So the only question is…what do we do now?”

“Meaning?”

“There’s a strong argument that we should retire in triumph and hand it over to the grown-ups.”

“Nolan, we are grown-ups.”

“You know what I mean, Ken. Qualified, experienced, by-the-numbers and write-it-all-down archeologists. People who won’t inadvertently screw up the site.”

“But Kincaid and the bloke from the Smithsonian already stomped all over it a hundred years ago.”

“That just means there’s two layers of archeological evidence to protect. We’ve found the thing, and that’s awesome. So let’s not turn a small gain into a huge loss.”

“Small gain?” Feather said. “Nolan—you found Kincaid’s cave! You’ve proved thousands of people wrong, including the Smithsonian itself. This could change…everything.”

“So let’s protect the win. And I’m not only talking about The Anomaly Files, Feather. Your foundation doesn’t want to be associated with a monumental screw-up. It’s somewhat illegal to enter a cave in the Grand Canyon without permission. And when I say ‘somewhat’ I mean ‘totally,’ in a ‘this is an actual criminal offense’ sense. And that’s going to count tenfold for a cave nobody even knew was here. It’s not just the archeological establishment we’d have to worry about, or radical Native American groups. The science fanboys of the Internet will crucify us.”

“So what are you actually worried about?” Gemma asked. “The integrity of the site, or losing your cable show?”

Ken and I turned to her. “Both,” we said, together.

Pierre stopped filming and lowered the camera. “So what are we going to do?”

Everyone turned to Ken. Molly might be Acting Mom, but nobody’s in any doubt about who’s the daddy.

Ken thought it over, but not for long.