Climb Down

Panic tightens every muscle in my body. The cave waits silently beneath the cliff beside me like an open mouth. The mountain rises endlessly above it into darkness. And I suddenly realize I have almost no time left to choose between them. Then laughter echoes across the desert again, closer.

I do not choose the mountain. The thought of climbing higher beneath open moonlight while those things close in behind me suddenly feels impossible. Instead, I grab the jagged edge of the cave entrance and lower myself into the darkness beneath the mesa. Loose dirt immediately slides beneath my bare feet.

Cold air rises out of the cavern below me carrying the smell of damp stone and something older buried deeper underground. The slope inside falls away immediately beneath my bare feet steep enough that I almost lose control the second I commit to it. Loose dirt and gravel slide beneath me while I half-climb and half-slide downward into the darkness.

The cave swallows light almost immediately. Moonlight reaches only a few feet beyond the entrance before the darkness thickens into something absolute, pressing against the walls and ceiling like wet black fabric wrapped around my body.

One hand scrapes violently against rough stone trying to slow myself before I tumble headfirst deeper underground. Moonlight disappears behind me almost instantly. Cold air wraps around my body. The cave narrows sharply after only a few feet, forcing me sideways between jagged walls of damp stone while the descent continues deeper beneath the mesa.

My breathing echoes loudly around me. Dust clings to my skin. Somewhere overhead, small rocks skitter down the slope after me into the darkness below. Outside, voices drift faintly from the cliff above the entrance. “Thought I heard her over here.”

Another voice laughs softly. “She ain’t stupid enough to go down there.” I freeze instinctively against the cold stone. The darkness surrounding me feels enormous now. I can barely see anything beyond the faint gray outline of the cave mouth far above me where moonlight spills weakly down the slope.

Then even that light disappears. Somebody passes in front of the entrance overhead. I stop breathing entirely. Silence stretches for several horrible seconds while I remain pressed motionless inside the cave, listening to my own heartbeat hammer inside my skull. Then the footsteps slowly move away again.

Relief almost reaches me. The slope inside the cave steepens almost immediately beneath me. Dirt and loose gravel spill downward every time I shift my weight, carrying me deeper under the mesa whether I want to continue or not. I glance back once toward the entrance above me and instantly realize the awful truth.

The descent is manageable because gravity is helping me, but climbing back up this loose incline barefoot in total darkness would be nearly impossible. One bad step would send me sliding right back down again. Which means the moment I dropped into this cave, I stopped looking for a hiding place.

I start looking for another way out. The tunnel slopes sharply downward beneath the mesa, narrow enough in places that my shoulders brush both sides at once. Jagged stone tears at my palms every time I steady myself against the walls. The rock feels strangely damp beneath my fingers, slick with cold mineral condensation that leaves muddy streaks across my skin.

The air smells wrong. Not just dirt or dust, although both are there thick enough to coat the back of my throat every time I breathe. Something older lingers underneath it all, wet stone, rotting wood, rust and animal musk. Beneath all of that, faint but unmistakable, the coppery scent of old blood.

The deeper I descend, the colder the cave becomes. The desert heat disappears completely behind me until goosebumps spread across my bare arms and legs despite the sweat still clinging to my body. Every sound echoes unnaturally loud through the narrow passage.

Loose gravel skitters beneath my feet and tumbles away into darkness below me long after I stop moving. My own breathing comes back warped and hollow from somewhere deeper underground, making it sound like somebody else is breathing beside me.

Then there is the taste. Dust hangs so thick in the air that I can feel grit crunching faintly between my teeth every time I swallow. Dampness gathers on my lips from the cold cave air, carrying the bitter mineral taste of the stone itself. Every breath tastes stale, trapped, recycled through a place sunlight has not touched in years.

And underneath everything else, I feel the cave, the pressure of it. Thousands of tons of rock hang over my head. The crushing narrowness of the walls and the constant awareness that the mountain is surrounds me on every side now, sealing me deeper beneath the mesa with every careful step downward into the dark.