PART 3.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.
With a start she raised herself up, all senses alert. She held her breath and focused all of her attention on listening.
Nothing.
Something had changed. She was sure of it. She raised herself up on her arms, and strained her senses at the dark, strained until it hurt.
And then she heard it.
A scraping sound, like a heavy sack being pulled across a floor. The sound stopped, and then a few moments later returned.
“Who’s there?” She called out, but no reply came back.
The sound approached and grew louder, and now she could hear a rasping breath.
Panic overwhelmed her, and frantically she began to crawl away. She scrabbled across the ground, and paused to listen, gasping for breath.
The scraping had ceased. Replacing it, though, was the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Slow. Confused, but unmistakably searching.
Unsteadily, she stood. Her joints ached from being curled up for so long, and she felt dizzy, but even so she stumbled away, moving as quickly as she could with her hands outstretched in front of her.
“Oof!”
Her vision burst with yellow sparks, and she fell to the ground. She had run into a wall. A wall! It was something. The first something she had encountered in this place.
Ignoring the pain, she crouched and pressed herself as tightly as possible against the invisible wall. It was rough as if made of stacked stones. The footsteps thudded closer, and closer, and then faltered. She took shallow breaths and kept absolutely still. Every particle in her shook with fear. She heard rasping breath. She heard a shuffle. And then another shuffle, and then the steps began to move away. Bumping and thudding, they became fainter, and more faint, and then ceased to exist.
And now we have come in a circle, back to the start of our story. We are with a girl, once named Lisa, in a very dark place, who is blindly feeling herself forward on her hands and knees. She whispers to herself over and over, “There has to be a way out,” and her hands pat out frantically in front of her, over the dusty stone.
Suddenly her hands find only empty space. So suddenly in fact did this happen that she almost falls forward, and she feels a cool, wet breeze blowing upward from an even greater emptiness. Her hands shake, and she thinks, “What if I had fallen into that?”
Slowly, keeping her fingers cupped over the pit’s edge, she inches along on her knees.
But her thought is interrupted. There it was again, faint but definite, the sound of the steps. How long had it been following? Days? Weeks? Years…the thudding, erratic steps coming for her.
“Please,” she sobs, and then under her breath, “You have to keep going,” and moving away from the pit, her hands feel quickly in front of her. So quickly, that at first she doesn’t notice that the stone floor has changed to something smoother, and then her hands are rising up a wall. Not rock, but concrete maybe. Wobbling she stands, and once more begins to run, her left hand keeping contact with the wall.
At first nothing changed. And then far ahead, like a pin being stuck through a black piece of paper, a prick of light appeared. It flickered like a star. It bobbed like a firefly. Gradually, dustings of light began to coat her surroundings — a vaulted ceiling of brick, a marble floor, and cement walls. Ahead, she saw an archway grow and pouring from it light, and warmth and a familiar sound. Not daring to look behind her, she strained herself forward toward this light.
Gasping, she reached the archway, and paused. The light squeezed into her vision too, too bright, until finally, her eyes, like dried sponges slowly began to soak in the sight before her.