The Money Pit

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 12.

One fine summer’s day in 1795, a sixteen-year-old boy named Daniel McGinnis rowed over to a small island called Oak Island, off the coast of Canada. He hadn’t been there long when he noticed a track leading inland. He followed it, and found a little clearing with an oak tree at the centre. There was a depression in the ground beside it, and marks of ropes and pulleys on the trunk.

Next day he came back with two friends, and started to dig for the buried treasure they thought must be hidden there. Four feet down, they found a layer of flagstones, which persuaded them they were onto something. At ten feet, they found a layer of oak logs. At 20 feet, more oak logs. At 30, still more. That was as far as they could get by themselves, so they went back to town to try and raise money to dig further.

No-one seemed very interested in their project, so it wasn’t till 1804, ten years later, that they were able to return with the equipment to dig deeper. At 40 feet, they found another layer of oak logs, sealed with putty. Then there was a layer of charcoal, then more logs at 50 feet, 60 feet, 70 feet and 80 feet. At 90 feet they found a stone with strange writing on it, but none of them could read it, so they just kept on digging. By now the ground was very wet, and they were continuously bailing out water. At 98 feet they found a platform of spruce logs, and decided that the treasure must be hidden underneath. It was late on a Friday, though, and they decided to leave the last few feet for Monday morning.

On Monday, when they got back to the island, they found the entire pit flooded with water from about thirty feet down. There was nothing more they could do, so they were forced to leave behind whatever was buried there.

This was just the first of many attempts to excavate the “Money Pit” and decipher the mystery of Oak Island. Each new group who came to dig there messed the ground up more, making it more and more difficult to reconstruct the original arrangements.

Eventually they discovered there were tunnels leading to the pit from the nearby seashore, which is why it flooded at every high tide. As the mine shafts got deeper and deeper, the ground got more and more sodden with water, which is why nobody could ever follow up drills which seemed to touch metal objects down in the darkness.

To this day, nobody has succeeded in discovering just what was hidden at the bottom of this mysterious deep hole in the ground. In 1970 a special submarine camera was sent down over 200 feet. It filmed what looked like a treasure chest with a severed hand beside it. Divers were unable to find anything there, though.

Nobody knows who dug the immense pit – or why.

B(-). This is an interesting story, which you tell very well, but I wonder why it’s of significance to you, and what it tells you as a story? (I take it it’s true and not invented?) You might have included some character sketches of the main people involved, or some theories about who dug the hole (Pirates? Spacemen?) It isn’t really a history essay otherwise, I’m afraid, and can’t be seen as an answer to the question about the nineteenth-century event which seems most significant to you. [1]

•

Picking up her backpack, Laura slipped out the front door. Outside, everything was brilliant sunshine. The garden glowed green, a bright metallic green – no shadows anywhere.

She walked quickly, conscious of the need to hurry. It was bright but cold; a brisk wind had sprung up, leaves blew round her as she walked. Cars honked as they passed her, but no faces were visible through the mirrored windows.

There was a beggar on the corner, an old blind beggar with his hand thrust out for alms. “CRIPPLED IN THE WAR,” his sign said. It didn’t seem quite right somehow. Crippled in the war – what war? It was as if he’d stepped out of a book. Even his rags seemed wrong: too smooth, too oily, tightly wrapped around … he wasn’t accurate.

As she hurried past he pushed up his dark glasses and stared, then made a sudden grab for her. She’d been half-expecting it, and veered away from him, shrinking from the groping hands.

“Stay here for a bit, girlie, I’ve got some things to show you,” he croaked, as she broke into a run. “I’ll let you touch it; if you do things for me I’ll …”

His voice faded as she made her way out onto the main street, safe from his grimy gaze, his horny hands.

Now, as she walked along, she sensed a shift behind her. Everything fixed itself as she drew beside it – tried to look as normal as it could, here on her everyday route to school. But the instant she walked past it changed. It wasn’t a visible change. Each time she looked back, the street-scene shimmered slightly but held shape. She could feel it vanishing, dissolving in her track. In front, a heat-haze, fog, line of blurred horizon marked the place – perhaps the moment? – where all this began. It was like being caught in a film-loop, a Moebius strip of appearances.

When the school loomed up in front of her, she felt the effort most strongly – the effort of pretending it was so, that the buildings were like this, that this was all there was. She sensed a pressure of chaos waiting to break through it all, a darkness held in check by habit alone.

Her Maths teacher, Mr Blaine, stood by the gate. “You’re late,” he barked. The clock was striking nine. “Time for class. Let’s see your bag.”

“But I need it! It’s got all my books and notes and things.”

“I’ll keep it safe for you. I need to check your homework. You won’t be needing it first period, anyway. Your first class is Phys Ed today.”

She handed him the bag.

Passing into the school hall, she saw the hall monitor, a poisonous senior named Sandra, standing outside her first period classroom. “Hurry up, you’re late,” she prompted. “Hold on, you won’t need that” – pointing to her school blazer, the red one with the school’s embossed crest: SPEM SUCCESSUS ALIT – Success inspires hope.

In the classroom, there was a large message left on the whiteboard: First period maths is cancelled. This morning you’ll have your fitness tested. Make your way to the gym to change for the twelve-minute run.

It was like some tedious treasure hunt. The sheer normality of the school, the smells of chalk, badly-washed sheets, hung over the place like a miasma, somehow reinforcing belief in this odd set of events.

The other girls were out of the changing sheds already when Laura ran in. All, that is, except Brenda, still slobbing around in her unattractive undies. Whistles were blowing outside. Clearly something was being organised out there, and Laura felt a strong pressure on her to hurry.

“Can I borrow your skirt, Laura?” asked the girl. “I need to go to the office, and one of the others spilt shampoo all over mine. I won’t be a minute, I promise.”

Fuck off, fat cow, snarled Laura in her head, as she smiled and slipped off the heavy uniform skirt. This was getting a little out of hand.

“And the blouse? I need that too,” smirked Brenda.

Silently, Laura handed it over. The sounds in the hall outside had died down to nothing. Presumably all the others were off on their run by now. Nagging doubts were beginning to rise. What was she doing here? Wasn’t there some other dimension to this? What was happening seemed familiar, true, but then school days do resemble one another. No time to think about it now. She rushed out into the gym.


Sure enough, everyone had gone except Miss Prentice, the gym mistress, with her ugly white shorts and bright tin whistle.

“Shoes, Laura, shoes! No black-soled shoes in the gym hall, you know that! And where’s your gym gear? Did you forget to bring it?”

Looking down, Laura realised she was only wearing bra and briefs. Blushing, she bent to pull off her shoes and socks.

“You know you can’t go on the run like that! You’d die of cold! You’ll have to find Sandra. She’s organising some girls to help the caretaker.”

“But …” she began, and was immediately cut off.

“No buts,” said the teacher, scooping up the shoes and socks. “I’ve got to go, got to check the circuit in case anyone’s in trouble. Find Sandra. I’ll see you at the end of the period.”

And there stood Sandra, at the other entrance to the gym hall, smirking as usual, with her little blue monitor’s badge and her list of defaulters.

“Laura, over here! You and Brenda are to go down to the boiler room to help Mr Jones with clearing up some rubbish. Where is that girl?”

“But … I need to put some clothes on first.”

“No time for that. It’ll be a dirty job anyway. You might just as well go down as you are. You won’t need that either,” pointing at Laura’s watch.

The watch was gold, rather valuable, inherited from her mother. She couldn’t imagine why she’d come to school wearing it. Reluctantly, she slipped it off her wrist, and handed it to the officious Sandra.

“Brenda borrowed my clothes to go to the office.”

“Oh, did she now? We’ll see about that,” said Sandra with relish. “Off you go to the boiler room, then. Mr Jones’ll tell you what to do.”

I’ll bet he will, thought Laura, as she made her way through the freezing corridor, silent as a cat on the linoleum in her bare feet.


The boiler room could only be reached through a side door off the main entrance. It was at the bottom of a narrow flight of concrete steps.

“At least it’ll be warm down there,” she thought, pulling open the heavy green double doors.

She’d never been down here before. It was an almost impossibly baroque adjunct to the prosaic school buildings. The staircase quickly degenerated into a few scrapes in the clay, and the walls were positively sweating with moisture, running red down the sides to puddle at her feet. It’s a good thing I’m not wearing anything that could be ruined, she thought as she went lower and lower into the earth.

Mr. Jones was there, sure enough, stoking a boiler as large as a room. There was a heap of coal to one side, with a spade and a wheelbarrow, and wood for kindling stacked neatly beside it.

She didn’t know whether to speak to him or not. For the first time she felt nervous, as if she’d passed the bounds of her normal day and was breaking through elsewhere, somewhere outside.

He didn’t look round, simply muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “More kindling.”

“What type of kindling?” she asked, looking at the rough heap of logs.

“Cloth, paper, anything light. I need to get this fire burning properly or the coal won’t catch.”

“There’s only wood.”

“Nah, has to be lighter than that. Quick, or it’ll go out. It’s down to embers already.”

It was very important that the fire shouldn’t go out. Suddenly it had become the most urgent thing in the world. The boiler’s red mouth seemed to plead with her: Keep me stoked up! If I do go out you’ll be sorry …

Sighing, she slipped out of her bra and briefs, and handed them to the swarthy dark man.

The flames flared up, briefly, then died down again.

“More fuel, we need more fuel,” growled the man, handing his poker to Laura. His eyes flicked over her idly, as if he hadn’t even registered she was naked. “Keep it stoked as high you can.”

He shuffled off up the stairs. He didn’t resemble Peter at all, but that was who she found herself thinking about as she poked and prodded at the waning flames. More like her father, really. Back when he’d been big and strong, before the cancer …

God it’s huge. No wonder, really, when you think it heats the whole school, all those class rooms and halls and offices. You could hardly see the end of it. She bent over to see what success she was having, and glimpsed a expanse of black crust with red heat glowing beneath it.

There seemed to be an opening at the other end. Perhaps that’s where all the heat’s going, she thought, as her eyes slowly adjusted themselves to the flickering red light. Was that a face over there? Someone looking out at her, as if in a mirror? Was it a mirror?

She tried moving her hand to and fro to see if the other figure would do the same, but it was too hard to make out. There did seem to be some kind of corresponding motion. It was speaking, surely. She strained to hear what it was saying.

“Come on …”

That much could be made out, but there was something else as well.

“Over …”

“Come on over …” Hardly, through the middle of a furnace! Was there a way round the side?

She could see the face more clearly now. It did look a little like her, but it was older. Like an older sister, or herself in a few years, perhaps?

It was beckoning to her, unmistakably beckoning. She shivered. She’d almost forgotten her nakedness in the heat of the fire, but now it was dying down the chill of the day began to strike at her again. Suddenly the furnace seemed a less unattractive place to be.

The first part was all fused charcoal anyway. She tested it with her hands. Warm – not burning.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she crawled into the bright belly of the flames.

---

Notes:

[1] For more on the infamous "Money Pit", see the Oak Island Mystery entry on Wikipedia.

---

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)


[3/8/03]

[2368 words]

[Published in Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 109-15.]

•