The Cave

A caver is separated from the rest of her group by a rockfall in an unexplored cave system.

The Cave

 

     Delia hauled herself out of the way as the roof of the tunnel collapsed behind her. Rocks and loose debris thundered into the empty space where she’d been standing moments before, smaller stone shrapnel ricocheting off the calcified walls around her, skittering into the darkness beyond her lamp’s beam.
     The reverberations of further movement rumbled throughout the cave’s walls as she backed off quickly, praying against any secondary collapses.
     Then in the moments after, in the deadened, dust-choked silence that followed she began to truly appreciate her situation.
      Wiping her dirty gloved hands on her even dirtier blue coveralls, she took a few shaken steps backwards to appraise the rock fall now entombing her.
     Judging by where she was now, and how far she estimated she’d vaulted to avoid the cave-in, there could be upwards of five meters of debris between her and the rest of the caving team. Most likely more, due to secondary collapse.
      Delia raised one grubby glove up to her mouth and tore it off at the wrist with her teeth, exposing the small bare hand beneath.
      She wiped away the perspiration that was beading upon her forehead.
     They had nothing to do with her temperature.
      Fighting down her fear and rising panic, she took a few deep breaths. In several hours, she’d likely be freed and they could all laugh about this back at the basecamp, perched on the mountainside merely a hundred meters away, give or take a dozen.
     Breathing in the frigid air and watching it mist before her face, she cursed her idiocy for volunteering on this expedition.
     Recent tectonic activity had revealed a whole new cave system down here in the Patagonian ranges, and of course when her long-time colleague Simon, a geologist and researcher at the University had asked for her participation due to her caving experience, she’d agreed quickly.
      The trill of being the first into the undiscovered system and pathfinding for the expeditionary group of academics. Geologists, Geographers, a pair of local guides and a few others. Now it seemed that she’d paid for her eagerness.
     Clutching savagely to the relative calm she’d achieved, Delia turned from the rubble of the collapse, and swept the yellow beam of her shoulder lamp around the walls of the cave beyond.
     The dark tunnel, bathed in the light, glistened wetly and extended some meters away from her before rounding a bend to the right and away, out of sight.
      She would have hours to wait before the team behind her could safely excavate a passage through for her. She decided to investigate. It would not be surprising if there were another air hole or opening deeper through the cave system that would allow her egress. She even smiled at the prospect of sneaking up on the group from behind, having found her own way out.
     The wet bare rocky floor was uneven and slippery as she made her way further into the mountain. Great calcified columns and stalactite/stalagmite formations lined the walls, or in some cases the accumulated limestone poured forth from the walls, as through a waterfall frozen in time forever.
      The strangely fluid-seeming formations gleamed in her lamplight and she rounded the bend down the tunnel, eager now with the momentum of her progress.
     The bend opened wide, and she was awarded a view of a high, arcing vaulted chamber.
      The cavern was immense. Easily over two hundred meters across, her pitiful lamp beam could not penetrate the darkness of the far side. Or, she corrected, the far shore.
     A wide blackwater lake rippled below her, down from a short slope of tumbled boulders and loose rocks that lined her side of the cave, towards the tiny entrance she now was exiting.
     Wind-chime like notes, almost musical but mostly random reverberated around the damp chamber. They were born from the hundreds of individual droplets coalescing overhead to plummet onto rock or water below, each a slightly different pitch and tempo to each other.
      Despite herself, Delia laughed. It was scenes like this that had garnered her love for caving in the very first place.
     She made her way slowly and carefully down the tumbled slope of uneven rock, and soon was standing mere feet away from the black glassy edge of the water body.
     It rippled and wavered with the impacts of hundreds of droplets overhead, seeming as though a calm pond caught in a light shower.
     High above, stalactites larger than cars shimmered in the light reflected by the pool, rippling and undulating. Delia cursed herself for not bringing a camera, and resolved to steal Simons when they were reunited.
      She bent down for a moment as if to inspect the rocks upon which she stood, and a moment laterwas upright again, several large pebbles clutched in her left hand.
      Her right picked one out and her arm came back, at the ready.
      It whipped forward again, slinging the stone high and far across the underground lake to plonk noisily into the surface a dozen meters away. She laughed again, and prepared another stone.
     This one flew higher, and further. It’s parabolic arc carrying it far across the rippling, seething water. It passed beyond the reach of her light, and she stood waiting, expectantly.
      There was no splash. No loud plop of rock meeting water.
      Delia’s brow furrowed as she frowned.
     Across the lake, a tiny, dim purple light blossomed into being in the darkness. It was rounded, though roughly diamond shaped.
     Another winked into existence, some meters away from the first. It was slightly larger, though had the same curving, pointed shape.
     Delia took a hesitant step backwards.
     Dozens of the lights exploded into being, flickering into existence against the dark of the far end of the cavern. There were many and varying in size, though all retaining the same almond shape as the first pair. The faintly glowing purple lights grew in number and variety as she watched, frightened from the shore.
     In a matter of moments, hundreds of them lined the darkness that not even their accumulated luminosity could penetrate.
      There was a great void in the centre of the black mass, bare of any of the glowing lights that surrounded it.
    A glowing horizontal line split the void, the same fluorescent purple as the other twinkling shapes that surrounded it. It was different, however.
     The line split and widened, becoming a singular massive ovoid shape centred in the far wall of the cave. It was easily taller than her, judging from the distance and scale. A huge round pupil dominated its centre, surrounded by the faint outline of an iris which fluidly contracted around it.
     Frozen, Delia could only look on in primal fear as a thousand and one glimmering eyes gazed down at her from the darkness.