Deep Down by Amanda M. Blake

Author:Amanda M. Blake [Blake, Amanda M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

8

A person could get used to anything.

It was actually amazing when he stopped to think about it. And he had to stop a lot.

But he was moving.

That constant pain became normal so fast disquieted him. It was a state of being, now, the pain.

But in this new darkness that followed the dim blue light, the worst part wasn’t how much pain he was in. The man suspected painkillers played a small part in managing that, and he tried not to think about the fact that he only had so many of those and that the bandages would run out eventually.

The worst part was that he didn’t know what was in the darkness beyond the beam of the headlamp.

Before going through the crevice, it had just been him, the dog, and endless variations of stone. Since going through the crevice, encountering the salamander—not the girl, who hadn’t been there—and entering the glowing oasis, he’d been walking through an actual underground ecosystem, one that seemed to thrive in the darkness as well as the light.

Beetles. Spiders. Salamanders. The headlamp beam passed over each of them as he staggered through the tunnel, which meant there was more water somewhere, or perhaps they all went to the oasis when necessary. The man didn’t see any more slugs, but he sometimes thought he heard them in the walls. The rock around them was like the inside of a gigantic anthill, with endless hollow tubes, tunnels, paths, homes for things like the leech slugs and the beetles, places where the salamanders nested—all around, hidden from each other, lest they attract the attention of what could eat them. Because in an ecosystem without plant life, everything was a flesh-eater, one way or another.

They whispered—the same whispers he’d heard in the dark chamber on this side of the crevice. In addition to the movement of the drafts that chilled his damp clothes and made his cold sweat even colder, the scratches and whispers of little feet echoed in the tunnels, contributing to his confusion. Now he knew what it was, and knowing didn’t make it any better, because he still couldn’t see them beyond the limited beam of his headlamp. He couldn’t use the flashlights, not when he needed his hands free to steady himself and limit how long his bad foot had to carry his weight.

What he caught in his light was enough for him to fear all the more what hid in the darkness beyond it. They slithered and skittered away from the edge of the beam just as the light reached them, which suggested that perhaps some of the creatures here, in the part of the cave where there was still some natural light, could actually see. It seemed too coincidental that things continued to just evade his light unless that was what they reacted to. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t hear him coming. He couldn’t be stealthy even if he tried.

There were plenty of the beetles, and the salamanders that must have feasted upon them.

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