By Joseph Marlowe
Clarence did not want to get out of bed that morning, but that was the normal state of affairs. At least that had been the normal state of affairs for the last four months ever since the excitement of Christmas had worn off, and he had given up on fitting in at his new school. It was just his luck that his father lost his job in eastern Michigan and found a new one in small town Wisconsin in the middle of the school year.
“You need to be more grateful,” his mother often lectured him. “Jobs can be hard to find, and your father found a good one at a steady company. Layoffs can be very difficult for families, but we always had food on our table.”
Clarence would then mutter under his breath, “What good is food on the table if the table is in Wisconsin.” This conversation was a routine dance with his mother at this point. He hated their new town, and he hated his new school. He made an effort to assimilate when he first enrolled late October, but by the time Christmas arrived he had given up on fitting in with his classmates. It was enough effort to get out of bed every morning and even that seemed pointless these days. He could not muster any excitement this morning despite the fact that today was a day-long field trip to the outdoors.
The yellow bus drove on rural highways past rolling hills carved by the receding glaciers. The bright sunny day warmed the earth while small puff ball clouds of white floated overhead. The frosty cloak of winter felt like a distant memory. The late spring season had produced a scenery flush with greenery. Notwithstanding the scenic beauty, Clarence stared dully out at the passing landscape. He possessed no wandering imagination to avail himself of boredom. The querulous seventh grader let out a sigh as he brooded over his plight. He has lost his best friends from elementary school, and he missed the bike trail next to his old neighborhood. Wisconsin may as well be a different country. Everyone here seemed unusually nice and more boring than the classmates at his large school in Michigan. Derrick was the only friend by any stretch of the word he made since coming to this podunk town, and he was a weirdo. Other kids laughed at Derrick because he sometimes chewed on his pencil tip.
He sat by a window near the front of the bus away from the other school children while listening to a Queen’s greatest hits CD on his Walkman and clutching a brown paper bag lunch in right hand. His headphones blared the symphonic rock as he looked around the bus. Some of his classmates were still listening to cassette tapes. Yet another sign he was in the rural backwoods. He missed the suburbs of Detroit. Every weekend his family could drive to a different mall. There were only some dinky strip malls his family could patronize in his new town; it took an hour’s drive to reach Appleton which had a real mall. Turning back to the window he saw more fields waiting for the season’s planting and cow pastures. Wisconsin was always just more of the same old rural landscape.
All the other students seemed excited for today’s field trip to some stupid hole in the ground. The teacher said they were visiting a pasture at the base of some sizable hills formed by the Green Bay lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet. They would picnic in the field and the rest of the afternoon would be spent as playtime. And of course they would have a chance to jump into the hole. It sounded like a made-up activity to Clarence. Running around in the grass and jumping up and down in some inane pit only to get back on the bus for another long ride back home was not how he wanted to spend his Friday. It struck him as odd that all the other kids used words like “tradition” and “favorite” to describe the day’s activities. “Simpletons, the whole lot of them,” Clarence thought to himself as he turned up the volume on his CD player.
After exiting the highway and driving down a bumpy country road the bus’s aged brakes whined and screeched as the vehicle came to an abrupt halt. Excited chatter echoed through the cabin as the teacher and chaperone, Mr. Clark, rose to his feet at the front of the bus. “Everyone sit next to your buddies,” he commanded his students. He did a quick headcount and reached the desired number of twenty-six. “Does everyone have their buddy?” he asked with a knowing smile. The enthusiastic crowd of adolescents replied with a resounding yes.
Mr. Clark stood back as the young passengers bustled down the aisle, down the steps, and out the door. Clarence, despite being at the front of the bus, was one of the last kids off. He looked out and saw a wide verdant field swaying in the brisk spring air. In the distance past a line of oak trees rose some hills. Clarence scanned the clearing searching for the fabled hole, but could only see some small mounds in the field from his vantage point.
“Where is the hole?” he asked aloud. His buddy Derrick pointed to a small rock cairn in the distance and said, “It’s next to that marker. You can’t see the hole until you get close to it.”
“I want to visit the hole and say hello,” sang out Mary, a bubbly girl with blond hair and blue eyes. “You know the drill,” rejoined Mr. Clark. “Today’s itinerary starts with lunch and recess is afterwards.” Then Mr. Clark instructed a group of girls to set out the picnic blankets, and the class sat down with their packed lunches.
Clarence held his brown paper bag upside down as the contents spilled out onto the fabric. With a sullen face he observed his lunch fare: an apple, a string cheese, a juice box, and a ham sandwich. “Food on the table or food on the blanket, same old humdrum Wisconisn,” he ruminated to himself. He wished he had a lunchable, a candy bar, or anything more interesting than the same food his mother packed for him everyday of the school week.
“Mr. Clark, Mr. Clark, I finished my lunch, can I go over to the hole now?”, Mary called out from across the sprawl of students seated on the ground.
Mr. Clark responded, “Not yet Mary, some of your classmates are still eating. Once everyone is done with lunch, playtime will begin, and you can visit the hole.” She sat back down, rocking back and forth with a giggle of anticipation. Shortly afterwards, lunch was finished, and the swarm of students ran off to the far end of the field while the teacher gathered up the blankets and put them back on the bus. Clarence reluctantly followed the pack as he sauntered across the clearing.
As he got closer he saw the pile of flat rocks stacked on one another with the crowd of schoolchildren standing next to it. They all appeared to be looking downward until a boy let out an excited scream, and they all ran back from the object of their gaze. With their parting, Clarence could finally see the hole. Between the clumps of grass was an almost perfectly round circle approximately six feet in diameter that cut straight down into the earth. Looking across the hole he saw the rough dirt wall on the opposite side descending below the surface into the ground. However, he did not approach any further so he could not see how far down it penetrated the earth.
“Who’s going first?” a voice called out in the crowd. It was John, a dark haired, green eyed classmate who seemed to know everyone at the school.
“Me, me, me!” screamed Mary, unable to contain herself as she jumped up and down.
“Well, have at it,” replied John. Clarence watched as the girl skipped towards the hole. She stopped a couple feet before it and then tip-toed towards the edge. She then took a big leap and yelled WEEEE as she fell down the center of the hole. Clarence waited to hear the thud of her landing on earth at the bottom, but only heard her elated shriek fade into an eerie silence. He looked around at the other kids who all had giddy smiles on their faces.
“Where did she go?” he asked nervously.
“She went in the hole of course. Didn’t you see her jump in?” John retorted.
“But how will she get out?” followed up Clarence in a puzzled tone.
“You’ll have to ask her when she comes back,” John answered with a grin.
Clarence was not sure if John was being obtuse with him because he was a jerk or if he was being honest. Clarence must have had a confused look on his face, because another kid chimed in asking, “Do you not have holes in Michigan?”
Clarence timidly walked closer to the hole. As he approached he saw the coarse earthen walls plunging downward. He stopped about a foot from the edge and leaned forward; there was only an impenetrable blackness in the center of the pit. This frightened him, and he scampered away from the hole as fast as he could. The group of kids watching his movements began laughing amongst themselves. Their casual demeanors unsettled him.
He stood there anxiously, apart from the group and far enough away from the hole so that he could only see its edge next to the rock cairn. The kids appeared to be discussing who was next to jump in the hole. Then, in another direction he heard a familiar giggle. Over in a patch of clover was Mary rolling on the ground laughing. The group of kids ran over to welcome her return to the surface.
“What did you see down there Mary?” John questioned with expectancy.
She sat up on her knees and gleefully recounted, “I wasn’t falling for very long until I landed on a pile of daisies. I rose to my feet and next to me was a table with a teapot and teacups. I had the most delightful tea time with a great white rabbit. He was telling me all about all the other holes down there and how far down they go. It was so interesting and I kept laughing, but before I knew it I was back here.”
“Ok, it’s my turn,” said John confidently as he marched towards the hole and proceeded to cannonball into the earth. Some of the girls sat down in the clover with Mary and started making necklaces by chaining the stems together as they chatted more with Mary about her rabbit friend in the hole. The rest of the kids returned to the perimeter of the pit to discuss who would be next to take the leap of faith.
Mr. Clark had grabbed a lawn chair from the bus and was drinking a soda while sitting underneath the shade of an oak tree. He was close enough to keep an eye on his students, but far enough away for them to enjoy this peculiar excursion beloved by their town without the overbearing presence of an adult. This was his second year chaperoning this field trip with a class of middle schoolers. A veteran teacher with a group of sixth graders came last time and calmly explained the strange ritual to him. “Almost every kid you have ever taught here has already jumped in this hole. And so have their parents when they were children. This spring field trip is just part of life out here, like the town’s Fourth of July parade and Oktoberfest. Hell, most of the teachers at this school grew up here and jumped in there, myself included. It probably seems strange to a city guy like you from Madison who moved out here for this teaching gig, but think of it as a silly game kids play. The hole is perfectly safe, I assure you.”
Clarence saw Mr. Clark reclining in the shade and decided to walk over to him and ask him some questions so that he could get farther away from the hole. Mr. Clark saw Clarence approaching and let out a sigh. This kid has been in the classroom for almost half a year now, and he seemed incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself. Normally a nominally well-behaved student like him who spurned socializing with his classmates was distracted because he was lost in noetic pursuits, but there seemed to be little thought below the surface of his outward grumbling comportment.
“Why is that hole there, Mr. Clark?” Clarence asked as he approached.
Assuming an instructive tone, Mr. Clark explained, “A geologic feature like that normally forms over a long period of time by the movement of water. This field was once covered in a glacier, and then it melted. It became a lake or a pond, and then the water likely drained down into the earth and created a cavity.”
“But why did we have to come here for a field trip?” Clarenced queried clearly unsatisfied with the first answer.
“This is something all the classes do every spring. The eighth graders were here last week, and the sixth graders are coming here next week for their field trip.”
“Did people always jump in this hole?” the boy quizzed his teacher.
“Probably. It’s an old tradition for the town. Before the settlers arrived the Menominee Indians lived here. They had stories and legends that refer to a great black pit of the earth. They revered it, but likely feared it as well since many of their folklore tales refer to the spirits underneath.”
Clarence stood there unhappy with the answers. He wanted to hear that the field trip was over, and they would be getting back on the bus now. A mischievous grin formed on Mr. Clark’s face. “I wouldn’t go in that hole,” he said. “There’s no telling what is down there or if you will come back at all.” That last part was an embellishment he added for his own amusement. His job as a middle school teacher didn’t have many perks, but occasionally frightening a peevish child was one of them.
At that point Clarence ran away from the teacher back to the group of children. Fewer kids were standing around the hole, and more of them were recumbent on the grass. Some of the students seemed to have forgotten the hole altogether and were playing a game of tag.
John was sitting next to Mary as he recounted, “I fell into a pile of muck. There was mud and cattails and bullfrogs hopping around everywhere. I caught so many of them.”
Another boy turned to John and argued, “There’s not a pile of muck down there. It was a lake. The water was so clear and fresh. I swam around and drank as much as I could.”
“I had my best visit yet,” a short girl with long black hair named Erin stated. She was the most recent one to reappear in the grass. “I saw a strange bird down there. Well I don’t know if I was down there, because it didn’t feel like I was underground. There was a big sky filled with two moons. I climbed on the bird’s back, and we flew all around until we passed through this gray cloud. Then, I was here.” She chortled after finishing her story.
“What about the newbie?” asked John. At this point all the kids in earshot turned and looked at Clarence. He felt his face grow red with embarrassment.
“You’re not scared are you?” one of his classmates teased.
“It’s okay, I was scared my first time, but it’s fun. You have to try it,” John said encouragingly.
Clarence apprehensively edged towards the hole. The group of kids standing around the perimeter backed away so that Clarence was there alone as he reluctantly peered down the opening. It had taken on a new and fantastical appearance. Approximately eight feet below the surface, the pit’s sides no longer descended into earthy darkness, but rather were gaily lit with an assortment of hues. The deeper section of the hole had transformed into accordion-like tubing that gently moved with a rhythmic undulation as if the entire grassy field was breathing. Clarence was staring at the strange sight as the breeze in the clearing died down, and the sounds of merriment from his classmates dissolved into the background. The remarkable display of lights deep within the earth conjured in his brain a frolicsome tune that beckoned him. He gazed deeper into the kaleidoscopic orifice and observed in the depths a bifurcation as the hole split into a left and right shaft.
“Is there more than one hole?” he pondered. “If so, which one did everyone else fall down?” The uncertainty disquieted him. He felt a growing unease about the field trip, this bumpkin custom, the strange pit, and the asinine idea to jump in it. He turned his head and looked around the field. A small crowd of classmates had gathered around the clover patch and were watching him intently.
“Aren’t you going to jump in?” Mary called out. Clarence turned back to the hole. He took in a big breath of air and held it in. He tried to jump, but his body stupidly resisted the action. This led to the heaving of his mass, followed by a stumble, and finally, the sensation of falling as he was engulfed in the parti-colored gulf.
***
Clarence was not in free-fall for a long period. Soon he was tumbling as he bounced against the colorful spongy sides of the hole. His wheeling form briefly wobbled upon striking the divergence of the underground paths. Before he could even realize what was happening, he was soon rolling down one of the routes as he heard a horrible wailing building from the other direction. He continued to tumble until the tube-like structure terminated, and he was once again in free-fall plunging into a black abyss.
He landed softly on an ashy pile of dust that expelled a large cloud of soot into the air causing him to sneeze. Lying in the heap he looked up seeing himself surrounded by darkness save for the aperture of the tunnel that discharged him many yards above. The strange light of the hole shone down on him. The dust pile sat upon a rocky, cavernous surface scattered with a layer of regolith. He looked back up at the circle of light and noticed it was shrinking. It was but a small ray before the hole sealed up like a closing wound, and he was left in the darkness on the dusty mound.
Clarence’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the new murkiness, and he realized his surroundings were not completely devoid of light. Above him in a thin layer of air there pervaded a subtle phosphorescence. In the dark abyss above he could not see the ceiling of the cave, but the air was populated with the uneven tips of stalactites pointing downwards. Their vertical bases extended upwards in the impenetrable blackness aloft.
Dimly he could see the ground. He held out his hand examining its back. He could just barely make out his fingernails on the tips of his digits. The rocky floor was littered with debris ranging in size from minute dust particles to large stones. While most were scattered about randomly on the bedrock, there were curious piles of materials meticulously sorted by size into mounds that randomly dotted the environment. Heaps of dust, ashes, pebbles, and stones lay scattered around him in no discernable pattern. In the faint glow from above he could see in all directions for multiple yards. It was an inane landscape of debris as desolate as the surface of the moon.
He rose from the dust and began to wander the cave hoping for an exit. “Surely, he would be transported back to the surface any second,” he thought to himself. “It never seemed long at all for the other kids that fell down the hole, however this illogical thing worked.” He walked and walked, but all he could see was more of the same. The tips of stalactites hanging like stony icicles, dirty piles of dust and ash and cinder and rubble. The same vague luminescence penetrated the air above him. In the silence he yearned for his CD player. “If I could only listen to my Walkman then maybe this whole idiotic expedition would not be so draining. Why was it so empty down here? Where does this end?” His mind filled with impatient questions about the grotesque subterranean world. He walked up to a pile of small stones. He picked one up and threw it as hard as he could in one direction towards the distant blackness. It disappeared only to be succeeded by the startling sound of a rock bouncing on the stony floor behind him. He turned swiftly to see where the noise came from, but saw only the stillness of the cave.
He could not take it anymore. He picked a direction and started running. He sprinted past more piles of dust and rocks and found himself at a spot that looked like any other locale he had seen so far in the cavern. Perhaps the piles were larger than where he started, but he could not be certain. He slowed to a walk to catch his breath as he approached one of the larger piles of rocks. The heap of rubble was taller than himself. Clarence paused for a moment and began to circle it. “Is the hole a puzzle that he had to solve in order to escape?” he wondered aloud. He was beginning to grow desperate in the weak light. After circling the mass he saw nothing of note.
“It’s just another dumb pile of rocks,” he shouted to himself. He continued walking further beneath the irregular canopy of stalactite tips emerging from the dark void above. A strange texture flickered in the distance causing him to feel disorientated. His eyes were initially confused at the sight of this new object, until he approached closer and realized he was looking at a cave wall. The rough surface extended to his left and right in a peculiar curving fashion before fading out of his field of view in the omnipresent darkness. It extended above him into the blackness that his eyes could not penetrate.
In a way, the wall gave him a brief moment of comfort. The endless expanse he was lost in was beginning to fill him with a terrible dread. Here was proof, finally, that he was underground and not dead or trapped in limbo. He turned right and walked along the wall for a while trailing his left hand against the rough surface of the rock. A wave of disappointment began to swell within him after a couple minutes as he found nothing but the interminable wall on his left side and the empty field of debris piles and stalactites to his right.
He took a step back to observe more closely the section of cave wall he had come upon. Queer shadows danced upon the surface. He could not tell if there was an intentional pattern to their movements or if the faint light overhead was flickering. Perhaps he was steadily going insane. The half-formed silhouettes fluttered in feeble movements upon the worn stone. Wave after wave of shadow, each mightier than the last. Till last, a great shadow gathered itself from the bottom of the wall and slowly rose and plunged roaring through the lesser shadows. Then a stillness overcame the shades as if they were watching or waiting for something. They sickened him. He could bear no longer looking at this wall and ran directly away from it back into the bleak plane of rubble piles.
Despite his exhaustion, he ran determined to find something, anything. The blood coursed through his body making his head feel hot. His frustration boiled over as he leaned forward to catch his breath. “I’m in this stupid hole because of this stupid field trip because of my stupid school all because my stupid parents had to move to stupid Wisconsin,” he lamented disconsolately. In that moment he forgot about his isolation, the cave, the hole, and his predicament. He let out the biggest scream his small body could muster, and with time the anger gave way to exhaustion which gave way to sobbing. He was on his knees now with his hands planted on the dusty rock floor. He looked at the ground trying to make out the cracks in the bedrock, the scattered dust, and the minute debris in the weak light.
He sniffled as his emotions began to recede, and he became aware of his senses again. The unexpected has malicious intent whenever it intrudes upon a moment of sad solitude. The simple sound of a rock bouncing on the cave floor until it came to rest with a tat-tat-tat in front of him awakened him from his fatigue with a sharp pang of fear. He looked up and saw two piles of dusty rubble rising in front of him. His ears strained only to hear the sound of empty air. Yet a pit of fear gripped his stomach as he realized the unmistakable feeling that he was being watched. A shadow darted behind the heap to his left.
“Wh-who goes there?” Clarence called out as his voice cracked. He waited in painstaking silence for a response. Then with a slow movement behind the peak of the pile to his right appeared two yellow and bloodshot saucer-eyes leering down at him fiendishly. The eyes were bisected by a long crooked nose. The countenance rose as the figure mounted the summit of rocks, and Clarence recognized a goblin grinning a wide ugly smirk. His ashen face featured high cheekbones and a pointed chin. His bald skull was covered with a disheveled and ragged caul of arabesque stylings that sat upon the thin leathery skin.
The creature incited a feeling of repulsion in Clarence which transformed into rage. In his agitation he managed to utter, “Who are you? What are you?”
“I am no one,” the goblin retorted as he picked another rock off the pile and tossed it on the cavern floor.
“If you are no one then why are you down here?” the schoolboy challenged the fiend.
“I am here for you my friend, to keep you company. My dear chum Clarence, we are friends, are we not? You can tell me anything, I am here to listen to you,” the goblin sang out in a mocking tone.
“I don’t have any friends”, Clarence obtusely responded. This was met with some odd humming from the goblin as he continued his staring. Clarence was at a loss for words in the dialogue wondering what his insouciant company wanted from him. Perhaps the creature didn’t want anything at all. He was as revolting as the shadows on the cave wall. In the discomfort a new question rose to Clarence’s mind so he asked, “Did you also jump in the hole?”
The disinterested goblin perked up at the query and cleared his tiny throat before he said, “Everyone jumps in the hole at some point in their life whether they know it or not. The hole ultimately belongs to no one, however many fools may have belonged to it.” He recited the paradox with a dignified eloquence, but it was betrayed in the latter half with a tone of melancholy. His bony hands reached up to adjust his bizarre headdress. He was silent for a moment, before picking up another stone and tossing it squarely at Clarence’s head.
“Owww!”, he exclaimed as the missile struck him rudely. He shouted at the goblin, “What’s your problem? You can go now. I don’t need you or your silly answers.”
“Is that so,” the creature replied, frowning. “You know Clarence, there are those that survive and those that don’t. Your petulant demeanor is never in the former faction. A sad lonely twig stands alone and then SNAP!” The goblin made the sound with his bony digits, and it reverberated across the cavern. “Besides, you’re trapped down here.” With that pronouncement he made a sweeping gesture of left arm. Its sickly form waved through the air as he wiggled his gnarled, thin fingers.
“What do you mean stuck down here?”, Clarence angrily demanded. “Everyone else returned to the surface. This is an annual field trip that my school apparently has done for years. I wouldn’t be in this idiotic hole if I could go missing in the first place!”
“You think you are so special that those ‘simpletons’ would remember you?” the goblin sneered cruelly. “You are dust and down here dust is all that remains. Do you even exist, Clarence? The hole exists. Your quaint town with its little school full of prancing children loves its dear, dear hole. The children dream about it at night. They look forward to it when they wake up in the morning. They miss it when they leave it. Can the same be said about a little snot like you? I think not.” The goblin’s rebuff hurt Clarence, and his face became a pout.
The fiend continued, “I said you are trapped down here, because the hole is a trap. That which it does not desire passes through the sieve, and that which it does are the forsaken held in its covetous grasp. I grow tired trying to push these facts through your ungracious skull, because if you could learn this lesson you wouldn’t be down here in the first place!” He ended his rant with a derisive impression of Clarence’s impotent outburst. “Perhaps you will realize this in a couple centuries,” he concluded mysteriously. The goblin gave one last look at the lonely schoolboy before freezing in an odd state of paralysis like a forgotten marionette. His corporeal form proceeded to fade out of existence like dissipating smoke.
Clarence looked around the dingy cave with rubble and dust and ashes. The faint glow in the air from above began to weaken. He wished nothing more than to return to the surface with the open sky and the sun. The waning light filled him with anxiety. Even that horrible goblin was better company than the sad cave. “It’s not fair!” he thought to himself. He did not even want to go on this dumb field trip with these dumb classmates at this dumb school in dumb Wisconsin. He could scarcely perceive the outlines of the stalactites in the benighted subterranean lair. Then there was nothing. He was alone in a darkness that held illimitable dominion over all.
***
The afternoon sun was descending from its midday peak. Most of the kids were sitting on the grass as Mr. Clark folded up his chair. “Class, time to return to the bus. Stop jumping in the hole,” he commanded. They ran, skipped, and strolled in batches towards the yellow school bus. Mr. Clark scanned the field to make sure no more stragglers were reappearing on the grass. As he boarded the bus he bellowed out, “Everyone sit up, we are doing a headcount. Make sure you are sitting next to your buddy.” He scanned the seats counting the kids: twenty-five kids in total. Everyone had their buddy except for Derrick, whose buddy was himself. He paused for a moment at a peculiar feeling, but it faded as swiftly as it had arisen.
Mr. Clark felt a sense of relief that the day’s activities concluded without incident. The teacher thought about this small town and their queer field trip to this beloved geographic anomaly. He mused about the childish spirit that freely jumps into the hole with carefree abandon. He wondered if he could bring himself to take the leap when he was their age. He had never heard of adults jumping into that strange orifice in the ground. He was content to simply imagine what would be waiting for him down there rather than taking the plunge and finding out for himself.