Down (500 Words short story project, January 11, 2019)

The cavern was completely dark at this point, so far from the cramped opening that no natural light could find its way in. Alba’s headlamp provided her only illumination. To reach the next chamber, she had to make her way down an ancient wooden ladder that looked as thought it might disintegrate if the beams from her lamp hit it too hard. Alphonse had repeatedly assured her that the ladder was perfectly sound, that he climbed up and down it all the time, but Alba wasn’t so sure.

She tested the first rung gingerly, and while there was an alarmingly loud creak when the rung took her weight, it didn’t snap. So far so good. Slowly, slowly, she inched her way down the ladder, trying to strike a balance between getting down and off it as quickly as possible without taxing the delicate rungs any more than she had to. Even with her headlamp, she couldn’t see the bottom of the ladder from the top. The darkness of the cavern seemed to swallow up the beam of light. So she just worked her way down, slow and steady, trusting that the bottom would come.

After a minute of descending the ladder, she paused and looked down again. Was that the bottom? Maybe. It was so hard to say with her feeble light, and the crushing black of the cave. She kept going, one rung after another. Inside her heavy-duty gloves, her hands began to sweat and slip. Despite the cool of the cave, she felt beads of perspiration dripping down her neck and into her shirt, creating a nagging itch just between her shoulder blades. Can’t deal with that now, she thought. Get off the ladder first.

After another minute, she looked down again, and this time she was sure she could see a still-distant end to the rickety ladder. She subconsciously picked up the pace, and she could feel her mostly empty backpack slapping against her with each movement.

All told, it took nearly five minutes to descend the ladder. Alba tried to calculate just how far down she’d come, but she couldn’t be sure. Two hundred feet? Three hundred? And this was just the beginning. Here at the base, in a chamber that was about ten feet square, she found the supply box, just as Alphonse had described it -- a beat-up metal chest, with a coat of flaking red paint and a fair bit of rust. It was closed but unlocked. Inside it, Alba found candles and matches, a stockpile of individually wrapped protein bars, a coil of rope, a ball of twine, a trowel, and a clear, glassy orb, about six inches in diameter. The orb was faintly glowing.

Huh, Alba thought. So he wasn’t lying after all.

Alba took off her backpack, setting it on the ground next to the box, and gently picked up the orb. It was warm to the touch, weirdly out of place in this cool subterranean environment. She took a silk cloth out of her backpack and wrapped it around the orb. She could still the orb’s glow through the thin cloth. Then she tucked the wrapped orb into her backpack, reshouldered the pack, and surveyed the surroundings. Yes, just as Alphonse had said, there was an opening in the cave wall directly across from the ladder. Onward.

(This post is part of the 500 Words short story project.)