The Secret of the Dark by Barbara Steiner

underbrush startled me.
    Looking all around, I laughed at my nervousness. There were dozens of things that could rattle leaves in the woods. A mouse, a rabbit, a lizard, a deer. But I’d see a deer if it were close.
    I jogged a little. But when the trail started downhill, I ran. At the bottom was a fence. I turned right where the woods were thick and leafy again and the shade felt wonderful. It had been silly to run. I stopped, wiped my face, running my fingers through the short damp hairs that clung to my neck.
    Rounding a bend I found civilization. There was a parking lot, several cars, and a big sign. Ozark Cave. Tourists Welcome . The building looked like a small store. I pulled open the heavy door and went inside. Post cards, snack foods, soda—everything for the tourist There were even those junky souvenirs you see in the vacation spots. Fake tom-toms, bows and arrows, banners with hillbillies, corn-cob pipes, whiskey jugs — things that furthered the image most people have of the hill people.
    From a stairway on the right, some people appeared, giggling and laughing. Rick was the last in line. He smiled and waved his flashlight at me.
    â€œBe with you in a minute.” He sold pop to two girls, who giggled every time they looked at him, and a tom-tom to a little boy. Then everyone left and I was the only tourist left.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me I had to buy a ticket and a tom-tom to get in.”
    â€œComplimentary tour for pretty girls.” He turned a sign on the door so it read Closed and locked the front door.
    â€œWhere’s your dad?” I asked. Rick had said he and his dad ran the business.
    â€œWho knows? He was here when I went down. I told him I was closing for the day. He probably went home,” Rick finished.
    â€œWhere do you live?”
    â€œCabin out back.”
    It was hard for me to imagine growing up here in the woods, so isolated. “Have you always lived here?” I was pretty sure he had.
    â€œSince my mom left. I was about ten, I guess.”
    â€œWho did you play with?” Maybe I was getting nosy, but I was very curious about Rick Biddleman.
    â€œDeer. Skunks. Possums.” He grinned.
    â€œNow you’re teasing me. Wasn’t it lonely here?”
    â€œI like to be alone. There’s lots to explore here. Bus took me to school. But it was usually boring. Not that I care, but where’s Neal?”
    â€œHe had an emergency.”
    â€œSo we’re all alone?” His smile held a sort of arrogance. I didn’t know whether to be uneasy or to think he was teasing me again. There was a wildness in him that I wasn’t sure I trusted. He was the kind of guy I’d have steered clear of in New York. Street smart, maybe a daredevil. Maybe it was that element of risk of being with him that appealed to me. I’d always led a super-safe life. I’d never considered it boring, but now I knew it was fairly uneventful.
    â€œDo I need a chaperone?” I flirted with him.
    â€œToo late if you do.” He headed for the stairway. “Come on. You’re going to get cold, though. Get that shirt over there.” He pointed to a flannel shirt on the back of a chair beside the cash register. Rick had on a cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled down.
    The shirt I grabbed smelled of cigarette smoke and perspiration. It was probably Rick’s dad’s, but I was glad to have it when we reached the bottom of the few steps where it was twenty degrees cooler.
    Rick’s flashlight spotted a switch, and he threw it on. A string of lights revealed a path into the cave.
    â€œThere are limestone caves all over these mountains. This one isn’t much, but the tourists don’t know that unless they’ve already been over to Blanchard Springs before they stop here. This one opens up into a bigger cave, a wild cave, but there’s no way to get city people into it. You have to crawl about fifty feet before it opens out