foul stench of it filling his nose.
When did it first come , he wonders? When did it crawl from its subterranean lair, and what did it see when it did? Was it frightened, determined, hungry? He imagines it waiting in the dark, studying the only other source of light in the dark woods—a yellow tent with a light burning within. Perhaps despite being a creature of the Stygian dark, light is a language it understands. And so it adopts the pose of a tent and sends out its signal in the hope of communicating with this other strange creature. But its only response was to send along the creatures that were hiding inside it. And perhaps once it devoured them, it mulled over the gesture and considered it a gift, for indeed it had been starving.
The creature flails; Mike slips further, hands scrabbling madly for purchase where there is none to be found. The orangey-red light burns crimson. He has wounded the parasite, he’s sure of it, but his only reward for his boldness, will be death.
He has time only to pray for a mankind who never knew him that the day will never come in which such creatures grow bold enough to leave this place, and then he is clawing at the wing, thrusting his feet out toward the edges of the ragged hole in one last attempt to save himself, his efforts undone as the creature rises up on its side at the behest of the parasite.
But I did it , Mike thinks, with one single moment of shining pride. I attacked it, wounded it, maybe killed it. I didn’t run. For once, I didn’t run.
There is a brief tantalizing moment in which his fall is halted, the heel of one foot pinned by his own weight and impetus against the grassy edge of the dark hole, his back braced reflexively against the creature’s bulk. His mind goes blank. No thoughts, only a flat-line of primal dread laced with acceptance, and a cold electric current that hums through him from groin to sternum, until the parasite bids its host to move again, his foot slips, and the world opens like a hungry mouth beneath him and he is falling.
The fall seems to last for an eternity, the abyss endless and impenetrably dark. As the air whistles past his ears, he hears first the walking stick, then his phone, splash against the bottom, and is absurdly relieved to know there is one. That there’s water suggests he might survive the fall. The odds are not good that he won’t simply shatter himself against the rocks, but any odds are better than none.
He is no longer afraid, no longer anything but an empty vessel with one word left on his lips: Sorry .
The word is meant for Emma, for Cody, for himself, until he has the opportunity to tell them face to face in whatever follows oblivion, assuming anything does.
The promise of it gives him a smile.
Sixty feet down, a tall thin stalagmite abruptly halts his descent, punching through his stomach, shattering his lower vertebrae, and suspending him there in the dark like a fly on a needle. The pain feels like something bestowed upon someone else. He is already dying, finally ready to exit a world that was Not His Department.
Soon, h is beloved mother comes and mercifully mutes the world for her little boy, one last time.
On the opposite side of the clearing, unexplored by Mike or his ill-fated wife, the hill slopes downward through another two miles of dense, tangled woodland. A disused and therefore untrustworthy slatted wooden rope-bridge crosses a narrow river which, if followed south for another quarter-mile, leads to the approved camping ground Mike eschewed despite the camp attendant’s instructions.
As the sun rises on the new day like a swollen, burning pumpkin, turning to sparkling diamonds the beads of water left in the wake of the storm and coaxing veils of mist up from the sodden earth, Greg Kohl, a fifty-three year old college lecturer, emerges from his tent and stretches. Refreshed despite a sleep frequently interrupted by volleys of thunder and the howling wind, he sets
When did it first come , he wonders? When did it crawl from its subterranean lair, and what did it see when it did? Was it frightened, determined, hungry? He imagines it waiting in the dark, studying the only other source of light in the dark woods—a yellow tent with a light burning within. Perhaps despite being a creature of the Stygian dark, light is a language it understands. And so it adopts the pose of a tent and sends out its signal in the hope of communicating with this other strange creature. But its only response was to send along the creatures that were hiding inside it. And perhaps once it devoured them, it mulled over the gesture and considered it a gift, for indeed it had been starving.
The creature flails; Mike slips further, hands scrabbling madly for purchase where there is none to be found. The orangey-red light burns crimson. He has wounded the parasite, he’s sure of it, but his only reward for his boldness, will be death.
He has time only to pray for a mankind who never knew him that the day will never come in which such creatures grow bold enough to leave this place, and then he is clawing at the wing, thrusting his feet out toward the edges of the ragged hole in one last attempt to save himself, his efforts undone as the creature rises up on its side at the behest of the parasite.
But I did it , Mike thinks, with one single moment of shining pride. I attacked it, wounded it, maybe killed it. I didn’t run. For once, I didn’t run.
There is a brief tantalizing moment in which his fall is halted, the heel of one foot pinned by his own weight and impetus against the grassy edge of the dark hole, his back braced reflexively against the creature’s bulk. His mind goes blank. No thoughts, only a flat-line of primal dread laced with acceptance, and a cold electric current that hums through him from groin to sternum, until the parasite bids its host to move again, his foot slips, and the world opens like a hungry mouth beneath him and he is falling.
The fall seems to last for an eternity, the abyss endless and impenetrably dark. As the air whistles past his ears, he hears first the walking stick, then his phone, splash against the bottom, and is absurdly relieved to know there is one. That there’s water suggests he might survive the fall. The odds are not good that he won’t simply shatter himself against the rocks, but any odds are better than none.
He is no longer afraid, no longer anything but an empty vessel with one word left on his lips: Sorry .
The word is meant for Emma, for Cody, for himself, until he has the opportunity to tell them face to face in whatever follows oblivion, assuming anything does.
The promise of it gives him a smile.
Sixty feet down, a tall thin stalagmite abruptly halts his descent, punching through his stomach, shattering his lower vertebrae, and suspending him there in the dark like a fly on a needle. The pain feels like something bestowed upon someone else. He is already dying, finally ready to exit a world that was Not His Department.
Soon, h is beloved mother comes and mercifully mutes the world for her little boy, one last time.
On the opposite side of the clearing, unexplored by Mike or his ill-fated wife, the hill slopes downward through another two miles of dense, tangled woodland. A disused and therefore untrustworthy slatted wooden rope-bridge crosses a narrow river which, if followed south for another quarter-mile, leads to the approved camping ground Mike eschewed despite the camp attendant’s instructions.
As the sun rises on the new day like a swollen, burning pumpkin, turning to sparkling diamonds the beads of water left in the wake of the storm and coaxing veils of mist up from the sodden earth, Greg Kohl, a fifty-three year old college lecturer, emerges from his tent and stretches. Refreshed despite a sleep frequently interrupted by volleys of thunder and the howling wind, he sets
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