The Light in the Darkness

My gaze roamed the night, drinking in the light fog around the around the yard lamps as I made my way to the tree lined path I usually walked. The night sky was a brilliant scattering of stars and the full moon stayed faithfully with me as stepped on the path. It meandered through the back half of my 45-acre property. I enjoyed seeing the owls peek their heads out and always felt special when I caught a glimpse of the nighthawks.

I was completely in my element. I belonged to the night in a way I could never belong to the day. I’d been working third shift for 15 years; I just felt off trying to keep a normal 9-to-5 schedule. My prime time was between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. The night just called to me, as if, in her way, the night belonged to me too. She often made me feel protected, as if I was in some way special. A barn owl took flight with an intense shriek and I understood her warning a half second too late.

The pinch was quick as the small needle punctured my foot. A burning sensation enveloped my toes and the ball of my foot. My eyes had been on the night sky and not my feet, but I still tried to pull back at the last second when my hackles stood up. My head swam and my body grew heavy.

My balance suddenly gone, I found myself looking at the stars again as I crumpled to the ground. I barely registered the injector sticking out awkwardly from my boot sole. I felt too heavy. Sluggish. I tried to move my mouth, but no sound would come out. I couldn’t lift my head, but I could still move my eyes.

I did the best I could to see anything around me, but I was only greeted by the night song. No footsteps, no breathing from someone watching. There was no rustle of bushes. My vision started to blur.

Panic gripped me. I was alone and fading fast. My vision started to narrow, going grey at the edges. I don’t think I’m dying, but consciousness will only remain a few seconds longer. I was hyperventilating as I heard the mournful wolf howl and somehow, I knew that it was the night screaming in terror. Abject horror of what was to come flooded through me. I barely heard the rustle of wings, felt their soft feathers brush across my face as my eyes finally lost the fight to stay open.

***

I’m not sure when I came back around; it could have been hours or days. My best guess based on my pounding head, seriously dry mouth, and growling stomach is that it was between 12 and 24 hours. I was so stiff that moving was a slow process, but I finally managed to sit up. It was completely dark. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I guessed that I had to wait for my eyes to adjust.

At first, I was surprised that I wasn’t physically restrained in some way. I fully expected to wind up duct tapped to a chair or chained to a wall. Or maybe handcuffed in a trunk or tied to a bed. I’ve watched more than my fair share of horror movies, and honestly, I was ridiculously hoping that might have prepared me in some way.

After what felt like several minutes, I realized that my eyes weren’t going to adjust and I really was unexpectedly restrained. There was no light to adjust to. Thinking about it, being physically restrained would have been easier to work with, but no, I’m restrained by total, impenetrable darkness. Strangely enough, it reminded me of an old vacation experience. I had been on a cave tour, and part of the tour was turning off the lights to show what true darkness looked like. Was I in a cave now?

I ran my fingers across the ground around me. The floor felt smooth and cool, but dry and clean. I scooted forward and put hand to the floor where I had been sitting. The heat started to dissipate rapidly. My sad little experiment didn’t help much. Smooth, dry, and clean said concrete, but the overall coolness and rapid heat dispersion spoke against that. I could be in a cave or very deep basement.

The only way I was going to get more information was to move round. I had to try and find a wall. Having already made an epic mistake today, I erred on the side of caution. I would assume everything was a danger until determined otherwise. The last thing I wanted to do was step on another injector, fall in a chasm, or break an ankle on uneven floor.

I stood up slowly with my hands protecting my head. I managed to stand up all the way without incident. I stretched my hands up as far as they would go and didn’t hit the ceiling. Being only roughly 5’9, short of a footstool, I can’t reach a standard ceiling, but it was still good to know that I cleared head space at the moment.

I patted down my hoodie and leggings. Everything seemed intact and I still had my shoes. My phone was in my pocket and dead. That wasn’t too surprising. I had a bad habit of leaving my phone plugged while I was sleeping, so it drained pretty easily. My smart watch was also dead. That was strange - I had just charged it before I left the house. I should have had days left on the charge.

Had it been longer than I thought? Surely my bladder wouldn’t hold that long. I touched my leggings again. They weren’t wet or stiff. More importantly, I didn’t smell urine. In fact, I didn’t smell much of anything. I could smell just a lingering touch of my perfume, but that was all. I touched my hair - not greasy enough to have been several days.

I stood stunned for a moment. It’s strange to think about sight blinding you, but it really does blind your other senses. Even in describing it, I associated a word that has to do with sight and not the other senses that are being lessened. I shook my head to clear out the extraneous thoughts. Now was not the time for meandering around in my thoughts. I needed to be taking care of business. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes out of habit.

Something flashed across my eyelids and my eyes flew open. I was greeted only by darkness. I saw the flash; deep down where it counted, I knew I saw it. I caught myself before panic set it. “It’s just neural noise from the dark adaptation,” I whispered to myself quietly.

Great, I was already talking to myself. That’s always a good sign. I tried not to giggle as I thought of the old saying: Talking to yourself is fine. It’s when you start answering yourself that you have a problem.

I’m not sure how that’s different from thinking out loud or using someone else as a sounding board, but whatever. I needed to get focused. If I wanted to survive, I had to make it happen; not get distracted by random thoughts.

The first thing I needed to figure out was how I was supposed to get around and investigate without going in circles. I needed a wall, ideally, but how do I get to the wall? I can’t see anything. I don’t have any string or anything like that, or much less anywhere to attach it. Even if I just faced a direction and started walking forward, it was highly likely that I could and would veer off. Everyone has a dominant leg or a slight differential in stride, and it is physically impossible without some kind of frame of reference.

I wasn’t willing to part with my shoes, leggings, or hoodie to lay down a touch point. I decided there was no choice but to crawl. Perhaps I’d be able to find a divot in the floor or an object. I crouched down and my knee popped loudly in the still, silent dark. I nearly screamed. What if there was something else out there in the dark? I had just told it exactly where I was.

It took everything in me to crawl slowly and deliberately. I was trying to be as quiet as possible and stay in a straight path. I so focused on trying to hear anything that I feared I was leaning towards my dominant side even more. I could just be running myself in a spiral, wasting precious energy. I couldn’t imagine a time when I would need a clear head more, but my thoughts were everywhere. I was trying to control them, stay focused on my task, but they slipped through my fingers like sand. Unfortunately, they were not pouring out of my mind but gathering in a pile like grains in an hourglass.

I swept my hands out in front of me as I crawled, stretching my fingertips wide, silently begging for something solid. How could I gauge how long I had been crawling? Should I count? What if I missed hearing something because I was too focused on counting? What if I crawled right by something solid and missed it by mere inches? Stop it, Ariana. You know that the what-if game never helps anything.

I don’t know how long it had been and I didn’t really care at this point. My knees hurt significantly and I needed a stretch. I carefully and slowly rose to my feet. I made my breath slow and shallow, willed my ears to hear better. Hell, to hear anything. Ok, maybe not anything - I didn’t want to hear a maniac sneaking up on me or something that wanted to eat my face. I found myself suppressing a giggle at my unintended joke - those two things might not be mutually exclusive.

Was I becoming hysterical? I don’t think I’d ever been hysterical before. No, I think it was more a laugh or cry and I went with laugh. Regardless, I still heard nothing. Maybe I could run through synonyms for darkness and silence to entertain my mind. I took a deep breath, held for four, and then let it whoosh out. I was pretty sure that nothing was close enough to hear something like that, and honestly, at the moment, I didn’t really care if they did. If I was in here with something that was adapted to this environment, my survival odds were damn low to begin with. I did it again. I did it a third time and took a step forward with new determination.

Pain blossomed across my forehead and nose as I walked face first into a wall. “Son of a whore!” I yelled before I could stop it. Several more, lower volume curses also left my lips. I quickly ran my hands over my face and was grateful to feel no wetness there. I’d probably develop a hell of a bruise, but at least I hadn’t broken my nose. I didn’t have the heart to be upset with myself either, because I had completed my first quest! I found a wall!

With one hand keeping a touch point on the wall, I moved forward slowly. I used my other hand to gently test the space around in front of me. I made steady progress for several minutes, but the terrain suddenly felt uneven. I crouched down, never letting my hand leave the wall. It was my lifeline and I wasn’t going to let go until I had absolutely had to.

I pressed my free hand to the ground. There was debris here - it felt jagged and rough. Perhaps something had crumbled here; part of the wall? Maybe part of the ceiling? I slid my foot against the wall so I could use both of my hands. There was something powdery as well as the building debris. I smelled my fingers. The smell was distinct. It smelled like chalk.

My brain found that information pretty useless, but I filed it away just in case. It was input and I had found very little of that thus far. I put my hand back on the wall and began my way forward again. I made it several steps before my shoe connected with something, sending it forward and away before I could figure out what it was.

It skittered across the ground with a clackety-clack. The sound wasn’t very impressive in itself, but after a moment it was followed by a sharp crack. It rang loudly to my ears and my stomach churned with anxiety. The sharp crack, the gap between it and the skittering, whatever I had kicked had fallen. I stood perfectly still, willing my ears to pick up anything else. I heard a faint rattling, but then silence returned. It was different than before, expectant.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my arms erupted in goose flesh. I was being observed. I could feel it deep in my bones as my heart picked up its pace. I had two very large problems. I was no longer alone and there was at least one hole large enough to allow whatever I had kicked through.

Both of my problems were in the same direction, forward, but I had no idea what might have been in the other direction, and that put my opponent at my back. How fast could they move? Could they see? What if I turned around, spent time walking back, and it turned out to be a dead end? I had no supplies of any kind; I couldn’t afford to waste more time. I was shaking like a leaf in the wind, but I stuck my foot out and tapped it around.

It was solid, so I stepped forward. I tapped around and took another step. My heart felt like it was going to burst in my chest. I wanted to curl up in a ball in cry. I wanted to shout my rage at the heavens. I wanted to turn around and run. I did none of those things. I just listened. Silence.

I tapped my foot, moved, and listened. Over and over again for maybe ten small steps, and then when I tapped, my foot was met only with open air. I slid my hand forward on the wall, and that too eventually disappeared beneath my hand. Dropping to all fours, I used the edge as a new point of reference. Crawling forward maybe 4 ft and I met another wall. I was standing on a ledge.

I grabbed around until I landed my hand on a chunk of rock. I tossed it over and counted. One… two… three. Crack. I was likely at least a 100 ft up. My arms slackened and I rested my head against the floor, a complete bastardization of the calming child’s pose I used to stretch my back.

Despair clawed at me. My breath was ragged, my heart beating like a wild horse’s hoof beats. Tears burned my eyes. The despair caught fire and the rage burst from me in a primal roar. I listened to it echo off the walls and wept.

Suddenly, I heard stone grating against stone. I sucked in my breath and tried to quiet my sobs. I pressed my hands to my mouth, but quickly let go – my nose was running to much to breathe through it. The fear, or maybe instinct, dried my tears and my vision no longer swam. Something was different.

My gaze shot to the ceiling. There! There was a small pinpoint of light. I heard stone fall as the pinpoint became wider. I jumped back as the fall turned into a roar. I threw my hands over my head, curled into a ball, and prayed. Cold water sprayed over me. I uncurled and couldn’t believe my eyes.

Light danced over the waterfall that was now rushing into the chasm in front of me. Water that was not going anywhere. The pool quickly grew closer. The water was frigid, but if I could outlast it, I could make my way to the surface. Make my way to the light.

As the water reached my waist, I waded further out so I wouldn’t get trapped in a tunnel. I fought to stay in the center, even though I knew it would tire me faster. I kept rising toward the light. I felt something grab me suddenly and I was yanked from the water. I don’t remember the rescue workers’ face, my eyes couldn’t take anything in but the light.

“I’ve got a live one!” broke the silence. “You’re ok, now, ma’am. We’ve got you.”

Almost everything after that was a blur. I don’t remember the helicopter ride or reaching the emergency room. What I remember is the news that was playing in my hospital room when I woke up. The cave system hadn’t seen the light of day in hundreds of years. The thousands of bones that it contained from burial during that span of time. What sticks with me, though, was the breaking news that interrupted the story. They had discovered several corpses in various states of decay that were recent. They were all women. Women who looked exactly like me.