The Cave – Part Four

To quickly recap: Two friends, Eve and Sara, were rock climbing and stumbled across a fissure in the rocks. Upon further exploration, they discover a cave with primitive drawings in it. They venture in further and there’s an earth tremor that seals them inside.

Having little choice, the delve further into the cave, hoping to find another way out. They stumble across another chamber, this one with mosaics embedded in the walls. Eve seems oddly mesmerized by one of them and Sara gets a bad feeling about it and drags her from the chamber. Just when Eve is herself again, they hear a noise.

“I don’t—” Eve paused, and cocked her head. “It’s some kind of clicking noise, or tapping maybe.”

Sara shuddered. “It sounds like the clicking of a beetle. I had a close encounter with a swarm of them once – it’s not a noise you forget.”

“I think it’s stopped now,” Eve said. “Do you want to go back and take the other passage?”

Sara thought about it for a moment. Which was worse, the other passage which reeked of evil to her, or continuing on with the possibility of running into a swarm of beetles?

“Let’s keep going,” she said finally. “As you said, the noise has stopped now.”

“And if it starts up again?”

Sara shuddered. “Then I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

As they continued on their way, Sara slowly relaxed as the noise wasn’t repeated.

“I’m kind of sorry you heard the noise too,” she said.

“Why? It proved you weren’t hearing things.”

“Exactly. If I was the only one who heard it, then I could believe it was just my over-active imagination.”

“Maybe my imagination was just spurred on my yours,” Eve said. “This place is enough to make anyone start hearing things.”

“At least we’re not seeing things.”

“Not yet,” Eve muttered. “But I have noticed something odd.”

Sara paused to take a drink of water and waited while Eve did the same. “What’s odd?”

“The space in this passage is uniform.”

“I don’t follow.”

“If this was a naturally made tunnel, it would vary in shape and size, but this passage is more or less uniform.”

“So you think it’s man-made?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“That’s a good thing though, isn’t it?” Sara ventured. “There must be some purpose to it, it must lead to somewhere.”

“I hope so,” Eve said. “Oh, great. What now?” she asked, coming to a dead stop. She held the light up but it wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the darkness of the chasm in front of them.

“I can’t even begin to figure out how to measure this,” Eve said. “We have no points of reference to tell how big it is.”

The darkness of the void pressed in on her, making her shiver. Sara came up to stand beside her. They both stared at the abyss in front of them. Eve swept her light downwards but it didn’t even begin to touch the darkness. “I guess we don’t have a choice,” she said, with kind of a grim satisfaction. “We’ll have to go back and take the other passage.”

Just then, the clicking noise started up again, this time coming from behind them.

“No way,” Sara said, and switched her own light on. She pointed it downwards, hoping to see hand and footholds that would allow them to climb down, but there was nothing. Then she played the light over the walls on either side of the opening they’d just come through.

“Look,” she said. “There’s a path along the edge.”

“That’s a pretty narrow path.”

“But it’s still a path, and it’s better than having to deal with whatever’s clicking.”

Eve was shaking her head. “You can’t expect us to just sashay along a path we can barely see. What if the rock isn’t as solid as it looks? Or worse, what if it peters out?”

“Then we back track and you get your way about the other tunnel,” Sara said. “I can’t explain why, but I just have the feeling we need to go this way.”

“Fine,” Eve grumbled. “But if I fall to my death I’m coming back to haunt you.”

Since the narrow ledge/path was on Sara’s side, she took the lead. It might not have been the brightest idea she’d ever had, but facing the dark unknown was preferable to facing whatever was making the clicking noise. The thought of running into a swarm of beetles terrified her.

“You know,” Eve said as they slowly edged their way along. “It’s too bad neither of us thought to bring a flask. I could really go for a stiff drink about now.”

“Make mine a double,” Sara said.

“At least the clicking has stopped again.”

“Small comfort.” Sara wished they’d been able to take a break before starting along this ledge. Her feet were sore and her calf muscles were starting to cramp.

The ledge that had started out so comfortably wide in the beginning began to narrow. Sara no longer needed to keep a hand on the rock wall beside them, now they were forced to turn so the wall was at their backs.

This slowed them down even further, forcing them to sidle along, facing into the void of the chasm. Sara thought of how far they’d come and quailed at the thought of having to backtrack.

“You know who would have loved this?” Eve asked suddenly.

“Who?” Sara asked, grateful for the distraction for the downward turn her thoughts were starting to take.

“My father. He loved adventures like this.”

“That must be where you—uh, oh,” Sara said.