A Cavern's Secret

The caverns were cold, and damp. But more than that, they were dark, the feeble bulb above all that separated me from the utter blackness soon to descend. It flickered, then went out. And as my heart began to pound forth a fierce, audible rhythm from deep in my chest, I clung to all four of my children huddled, like a second skin, around me.

We’d descended the steps to this place, knowingly...or at least thinking we knew. Yet as I released my oldest son for the barest flicker of a moment, waving my hand desperately before my eyes, trying to catch the minutest glimmer of its presence, I realized that until that instant I hadn’t understood darkness, at all. Not this tangible darkness, this living entity now sucking away hope and calm, leaving only its residual fingerprint of fear and despair as seconds measured by eternities ticked by.

The voices around me helped...some. But in truth their own laughter quickly weakened as fear now began tasting its own life’s blood, and what began as fun quickly ran a gamut of emotions hard to describe, even now.

One thing only kept my pounding heart from exploding through my chest ... though I began to wonder if even in the knowing I could keep it contained. Our guide, somewhere ahead, had prepared, no warned, us. Immersed now in an ebony reality, a discovery fell upon me, full of its own message. Preparation for this daunting cloak I had no power in myself to remove had been impossible.

And the guide’s voice, meant, I’m sure to bring comfort, grew more and more detached by the pounding of my own heart.

Something beside me stirred, then. A soft stirring that in its own right should not generate heightened anxiety. But I knew it a stirring born not from my children’s presence, snuggled closer to me now than I thought humanly possible. The merest whisper of movement came, again, and my eyes were drawn, in desperate hunger, to a strange light emanating from sound no longer beyond my sight.

It glowed ... the watch’s face.

And my heartbeat ... began to settle to its more normal rhythm.

Soon a silent chuckle slowly replaced fear’s song which only moments before hinted a full orchestration never before in my repertoire.

I took a message away from those caverns. One I never anticipated at this day’s beginning.

Darkness’ power. Its living, breathing power. And the greater power which conquers it.


© DeAnna L. Brooks
24 January 2005