In the Belly of the Earth Read online

  "The sun’s falling fast," Fred observed.

  "It's actually us that's moving," his father said. "The sun stays put."

  When the orange orb touched the horizon, his father snapped pictures all the faster, as if the sun were setting for the last time, never to awaken again. A final sliver of light clung to the edge of the earth and then vanished altogether. His father lowered the camera, took a deep breath, and spoke the words he always did at dusk.

  "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

  A chilling breeze marked the arrival of night.

  Fred’s eyes opened and he remembered where he was. The memory of sunlight lingered a moment, then slipped away. He covered his face with his hands and began to sob. Tears ran hot and unabated down his cheeks, his quivering voice moaning in the blackness.

  How long could he take this? How much more could he stand? Trapped in a pit and forgotten. No way out. No way out. Destined to die if he wasn't rescued. He had water. But nothing to eat. His body was already weak and borderline hypothermic. How many days more before he had no strength to move?

  Fred’s mind ran wild and vivid, painting pictures of his bones years later in the cave, discovered by some spelunker. They’d haul him out in a trash bag, identify him by his dental records and the mystery of his disappearance would finally be solved.

  He reached for his flashlight and marking stone and stepped to the cave wall, scraping letters as deep and clear as his remaining strength would allow. When he was done he stared at the message and hoped that someday it would incriminate the guilty to the furthest extent of the law. He might be only bones and hair and crooked teeth by then, but he’d have the final word:

  * * *

  Craig pushed me.

  9

  Seven days.

  There was little use for movement now. He’d explored as much as he felt he could. With no clear passage out and hardly any energy left in his body, he’d decided to restrict his motions to drinking water from the pool. Other than that, he lay beneath the tunnel, his flashlight clutched to his chest with both hands. Though he loathed the dark, he knew he had to ration what energy the batteries had left. He’d noticed the day before that the beam had grown dimmer. With a week of almost continuous use, this was no surprise, though the rationale behind the knowledge made it no less terrifying. Once or twice a day, he risked a short span of illumination, shining the beam on the tunnel’s mouth, though he knew this had no real practical use. It just reminded him that it was there.

  Fred felt his mind slipping. Slow at first, almost imperceptible, but then so fast it was impossible to stop. He began to hit the cave floor with his fist, picturing Craig’s face there, how he would love to bruise him, hurt him, pummel his nose to a wet red sponge of crushed bone and cartilage.

  “I hate you!” Fred screamed as he pounded the rock. Knives of pain shot up his arm. He bit his lip against a tsunami of rage and cried until his tear ducts were dry.

  When he saw the tunnel’s faint glow reappear hours later as the seventh day dawned, he realized if he stayed there wallowing, Craig would win. And he couldn’t have that. He had to do something. He had to move. He was not dead yet.

  The mere act of rising to his feet was an arduous chore. His heart pounded between labored breaths. He felt sluggish, as if he were moving in slow motion. But he was moving now, and that was something. He drank from the pool once more and set out for the far end of the cave.

  Once past the muddy slope, he reached the tunnel. It curved round just as he remembered from before, then angled sharply down to the barricade of water. With shoes just touching the pool’s edge, he leaned down and shined his flashlight again through the small passage of air, not six inches wide and half that tall, between the water and the roof of the tunnel. There was nothing to see but black, even in the beam of the flashlight. He stood pondering, weighing the options. It was clear the path continued on. Maybe all the way out of the cave, maybe only for a dozen feet before hitting another dead end. Either way, he had to try.

  He stepped furtively, one foot into the water, then the other. It was cold, stinging furiously. Thankfully it was not deep at first, only two feet at most. He began to crawl through the water, holding the flashlight above the surface. Where the tunnel started constricting down to the water’s surface, he knew he had only one choice. He counted to three and paddled onward until everything was submerged but his face and hands. With one hand he kept the flashlight dry and with the other he pushed himself forward.

  The passage continued straight for quite some time, the rock ceiling undulating only by inches above the water. It wasn’t long before his teeth began to chatter, followed by a full-bodied shivering so violent that he almost dropped the flashlight. He squeezed the metal handle as hard as he could, feeling his grip would lose all strength within minutes.

  There! Up ahead was a flash of light. What was it? He narrowed his eyes to focus. There were dozens of pinpricks. Like quartz deposits in the rock, facets reflecting back the flashlight’s beam. No. Not quartz.

  They were moving.

  Fred froze. The specks of light were sliding up and down the walls and clinging to the ceiling. There was no way to continue without pushing through them. They were obviously some kind of cave creature. Spiders? Pale and blind and possibly poisonous.

  He couldn’t move now, frozen by more than cold. The mere idea of hairy legs and exoskeletons was enough to make him want to head right back from where he had come. His breathing quickened to staccato gasps. His heart raced. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this.

  Don’t do it and you will die.

  The voice in his head was right, though he took no comfort from the fact. What good was it to live if he was forced to wade through a tangle of insects that might bite and sting and send him into anaphylactic shock?

  You must go.

  He squinted his eyes shut and crawled forward. In seconds, he felt the first creature clinging to his head. He reached up and tore it free, but did not stop. Then came another, and another, and another until he could no longer remove them all. The moment he could pull at one, three other replaced it. They were large bugs with long thin legs and flailing antennae, and now they were all over him - his hair, his face, his neck, his hand. They made a kind of faint screeching sound as they jumped, their shelled bodies smashing into the rock with hollow thumps. Fred let out an unbridled scream of horror and rushed forward as fast as his knees and single hand would take him. Twice his head struck against low hanging rock, but the bugs hung on like a living garment. He saw stars through his closed eyelids, felt himself on the verge of passing out from cold and terror. But then the floor began to rise along with the ceiling. The water level sank and sank around his quaking body until he found himself crawling and dripping onto dry rock once again.

  The pool was behind him.

  Still frantic, he slapped at his face and head until the bugs were all knocked free or crushed. When he opened his eyes and shined his flashlight upon the carnage, he saw they were crickets - cave crickets - white as bone with ink black eyes and legs like jointed straw. He shivered in disgust, then straightened up and walked on as fast as his hypothermic body would allow.

  The passage had narrowed here, but not so much as to block his progress. With heavy breaths he lumbered up the path. It began to ascend. He felt a gust of warmer air.

  This is it! This is the way out!

  He rounded a bend in the rock and instantly saw the most beautiful sight he had ever seen: sunlight! Luscious, gleaming sunlight cutting down into the dark. In less than twenty feet he would be out in the open, alive and free. He could already smell growing things, the sharp tinge of pine, the sweet scent of honeysuckle.

  Something jarred his shoulder. He twisted sideways as a blast of pain shot down his right side and he fell, sprawling. He was facedown on the rock floor, wedged sideways at the base of the passage. It was too narrow here for him to pro
ceed facing forward. It took a bit of shimmying and squirming but he managed to get on his feet again, this time facing sideways into the tunnel ahead. He stepped forward more carefully this time, and as he did, he moved full on into a ray of sunlight. For a moment he didn’t move. Just let the beams warm his skin. He inhaled fresh forest air through his nose, reveling in the green smell, and then commenced his ascent.

  But he was stopped again. The walls had drawn too close together. He turned completely sideways and managed four more feet, but even then, with the walls allowing only a few inches to pass through he could not take another step. He tried. Hard. In a frantic stretch of arms and legs and fingers. But pushing any further was to risk getting permanently stuck. Finally, scraped and exhausted, he stopped, resting his forehead on the wall.

  Birds flittered from branch to branch only a dozen unreachable feet away, talking to one another in song. He could see the sky outside, smell the lush green of leaves, all through a narrow gap that was now nothing more than a prison window. Fred pressed his hands against his temples and gritted his teeth. The sound was a soothing torture.

  So close to freedom.

  But still chained fast to the world of shadows.

  He stood there and wept until the sun was gone.

  10

  He’d forgotten just how loud the woods got when the sun went down--cicadas filling the evening air with their harsh vibrations, as if they were growling at the stars. Parts of the cave were padded with a layer of moss where sunlight could reach across the stone floor. He ran his hand over the green carpet, thankful for such texture after days of only cold, hard rock. When his legs grew too weak to stand, he inched down and lay on his side, tearing a large wad of moss to clump together beneath his head for a pillow. Comforted by the balmy summer air, he closed his eyes and let exhaustion take him.

  He was awakened by a raccoon that had come sniffing and rustling into the cleft. Fred’s odor--the result of a week without bathing--was probably strong enough to draw anything with a nose. He must smell like something decaying to the little beast. It came within two feet of his head before he jumped up and shouted it away. The raccoon hissed, equally startled, and retreated frantically from the mouth of the cave.

  Outside, the sky was just brightening, flecks of red on a line of clouds beyond the trees. It was morning again. The eighth day.

  He thought hard on what to do. Without carving away at the stone walls on either side of the opening, there would be no way out. At its smallest point, the passage was only three inches wide. He tried tapping at the rock with the butt end of the flashlight but this hardly made a dent. He sat still as day arrived. The air outside warmed, sitting humid and heavy on his skin.

  By midday, he pondered his weakness, and his gnawing hunger. He felt his body devouring itself. Soon he would not be able to move, or even cry for help. There had to be a trail running outside somewhere near the fissure. Some offshoot from the main trail along the river. There were many hikers this time of year, groups of climbers, families out picnicking. There could be dozens of people within earshot at that very moment.

  “Help!” he cried, and then much louder. “Help! Help me!”

  The sound of his voice echoed in the cleft, reflected and magnified by the rock like a giant stone megaphone. He shouted even louder, waited for an answer, and then shouted louder still. For hours he persisted, until his throat felt shredded and his voice was all but gone. When the sun sank toward dusk again he settled on the floor, delirious with fatigue.

  “Help…” he croaked in a raspy whisper. His chin quivered, but he had no tears to cry. Without a drink in over a day, he was dehydrated and getting worse by the hour. To get a drink, he knew he had to move back into the cave where crickets stood guard over the flooded tunnel. He loathed the idea, but his thirst was stronger, and it won out.

  They seemed even more numerous than he remembered. At one point, there was no glimpse at all of rock, every inch covered by an undulating tangle of legs and antennae. His feet crunched on dozens as he approached the water, despite his efforts to kick them out of the way. They leapt and clung to his skin, hair, and clothing. Once at the water’s edge, he knelt down and sucked up a bellyful of water. The cave crickets all but swarmed him, a thousand sticky legs holding tight to his skin. When he had his fill, he turned and fled back toward the fissure, slapping furiously at the creatures as he went. Once he was at the barricade, he stopped and removed every cricket he could find, flinging them down into the darkness. When they were gone, he collapsed and covered his face with his hands.

  The water had served to clear his head, but he still spent the rest of the day trying to ignore his hunger. It had become a living force, like his stomach had taken control of his head. There were no more fantasies of burgers and pizza. Now there was only a single minded, laser-focused lust for anything edible. Anything.

  At a certain point in the day, when the sun shined upon the moss just so, its green grew luscious in his eyes. He’d never been much for salads, or vegetables in general, but the tiny green velvet seemed to call to him. He tore a small piece free, sniffed it, found it earthy and somewhat sweet. Then, almost before he realized what he was doing, he stuffed it in his mouth and began to chew.

  Sand and grit crunched hard between teeth. The moss seemed more dirt than plant. He tried to swallow, but found a wad of clay and earth sticking to the back of his throat. He coughed and spat until his mouth was clear, scraping his tongue with his fingers to remove any vestige of the unseemly snack. Eating moss would take a more delicate hand, it seemed. He picked at another mound, retrieving only pinches of velvet green between his fingers. Though these proved edible enough, they were more a culinary tease than an adequate source of nourishment. It would take him days to gather enough for even a decent meal. And still there was the question of whether the moss would end up making him sick. In the end, he settled on waiting. He sat down and stared out at the daylight.

  He wondered if this was what it felt like to be in prison, barred off from the outside world. Or solitary confinement, denied interaction with another living soul. Fred was beginning to understand the torture of such methods. Humans were made to converse, to share moments and words. Even the most solitary of introverts needed this to survive, or at least to maintain sanity. He’d been in the cave for eight days. He knew there were prisoners who had spent lifetimes in a concrete box without so much as a word whispered under the door.

  But at least they had been fed.

  Even prison food sounded gourmet at the moment. What he wouldn’t give for a stale piece of bread and stinky cheese! What he wouldn’t give for anything at all. His stomach continued to chide him, writhing within his gut like a rope twisting upon itself. He had to eat. He had to.

  Something jumped over his shoulder from behind and landed right in front of him. He looked down and saw a cave cricket crouched with legs poised for another jump. Something clicked and he suddenly forgot his loathing of the creatures and began to salivate. His stomach churned. How many cultures ate bugs as a normal part of their diet? What was the big deal?

  No sooner did these arguments pass rapidly through his starving brain then he shot out his hand and snatched up the critter before it could escape. He lifted it to his face as its limbs writhed in vain. He closed his eyes, and thrust it in his mouth, chewing instantly. It squished and crunched and turned to mush between his teeth. He swallowed and clamped a hand over his mouth, expecting to throw up at any second. But his stomach seemed to take the snack easily enough. And as he thought of it, the creature hadn’t tasted all that bad. Its texture left something to be desired. But its flavor was somewhat sweet, almost like a mushroom, with hints of bitterness not unlike certain cheeses he’d tried before.

  He stood up and moved back into the cave where the creatures clung to rock in limitless supply. He plucked another one free, popped it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The second one was even better.

  When his stomach realized it was finally being
fed, it seemed to take immediate control of his body. He lost all sense of timidity, dropped to all fours, and began to shovel the writhing insects into his mouth, chewing and swallowing as fast as he could. Ten minutes later, he was so full he could hardly move. He drank a mouthful of water to swish out bits of leg and antennae from his teeth and crawled back to daylight for a nap, satiated from his unexpected feast.

  11

  The crickets proved a valuable source of energy. Within hours, he felt his strength returning. For a while, time passed in a series of mundane periods of eating and drinking and waiting and thinking. There was the problem of where to relieve himself without contaminating his water or food supply, but once he found a small offshoot on the near side of the water and established it as his subterranean latrine, he was able to settle into a seemingly indefinite routine. With the warmth of the air, the smell of his waste became hard to endure in that enclosed space, but at least he was near the surface, where the occasional gust of fresh air diminished the stench. Of course there were the flies. Drawn to the odor, they soon began to swarm inside the fissure. Fred tried his best to ignore them, but they proved to be quite a nuisance.

  Much of his time was spent devising a new plan of escape. All of the surrounding rock was limestone, and though not as soft as sandstone, he knew he could scrape it away with the handle of the flashlight without damaging the bulb or the wiring. The question was, which would wear away first, metal or stone? He crouched on his knees and peered forward through the fissure. Ten feet to freedom. That was all. He could focus on widening the bottom portion to allow him to squeeze through on his belly. It would take a long time. But what else could he do?