“But I can’t see where I’m going.”
“You must not see,” she said. “Not with your eyes.”
“The hole is closing in. If I go on I won’t be able to move.”
There was no answer.
“I can’t go any farther,” I said. “What should I do?”
Again no answer.
I could no longer hear Donna Anna and Komi. I sensed they were gone. All that remained was a deep silence.
The tunnel continued to shrink, making it even harder for me to advance. Panic was setting in. My limbs felt paralyzed—just drawing a breath was growing difficult. A voice whispered in my ear. You are trapped, it said. This is your coffin. You cannot move forward. You cannot move backward. You will lie buried here forever. Forsaken by humanity, in this dark and narrow tomb.
I sensed something approaching from behind. A flattish thing, crawling toward me through the dark. It wasn’t Donna Anna, nor was it Komi. In fact, it wasn’t human. I could hear the scraping of its many feet and its ragged breathing. It stopped when it reached me. There followed a few moments of silence. It seemed to be holding its breath, planning its next move. Then something cold and slimy touched my bare ankle. The end of a long tentacle, it seemed. Sheer terror coursed up my back.
Could this be a Double Metaphor? That which stemmed from the darkness within me?
I know where you were and what you were doing.
I couldn’t recall a thing. Not the black cat, not the Peugeot 205, not the Commendatore—everything was gone. My memory had been wiped clean a second time.
I squirmed and twisted, frantically trying to escape the tentacle. The tunnel had contracted even farther—I could barely move. I was trying to force myself into a space smaller than my body. That was a clear contravention of basic principles. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was physically impossible.
Nevertheless, I kept on thrusting, pushing myself forward. As Donna Anna had said, this was the path I had chosen, and it was too late to choose another. The Commendatore had died to make my quest possible. I had stabbed him with my own hands. His body had sunk in a pool of blood. I couldn’t allow him to die for nothing. And the owner of that clammy tentacle was trying to get me in its grips.
Rallying my spirits, I pressed on. I could feel my sweater unravel as it caught and tore on the rock. I awkwardly squirmed ahead, loosening my joints like an escape artist slipping his bonds. My pace was no faster than that of a caterpillar. The narrow tunnel was squeezing me like a giant vise. My bones and muscles screamed. The slimy tentacle slithered farther up my ankle. Soon it would cover me, as I lay there in the impenetrable dark, unable to move. I would no longer be the person I was.
Jettisoning all reason, I mustered what strength I had left and forced myself into the ever-narrowing space. Every part of my body shrieked in pain. Yet I had to push forward, whatever the consequences. Even if I had to dislocate every joint. However agonizing that would be. For everything around me was the product of connectivity. Nothing was absolute. Pain was a metaphor. The tentacle clutching my leg was a metaphor. All was relative. Light was shadow, shadow was light. I had no choice but to believe. What else could I do?
* * *
—
The tunnel ended without warning, spitting me out like a clump of grass from a clogged drainpipe. I flew through the air, utterly defenseless. There was no time to think. I must have fallen at least six feet before I hit the ground. Luckily, it wasn’t solid rock, but relatively soft earth. I curled and rolled as I fell, tucking in my head to protect it from the impact. A judo move, done without thinking. I whacked my shoulder and hip on landing, but I barely felt it.
Darkness surrounded me. And my flashlight was gone. I seemed to have dropped it when I tumbled out. I remained on all fours, not moving. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t think anything. I was only aware, and barely at that, of a growing pain in my joints. Every tendon, every bone wailed in protest at what it had been put through during my escape.
Yes—I had escaped that dreadful tunnel! The realization hit me at last. I could still feel the eerie tentacle sliding over my ankle. I was grateful to have eluded that thing, whatever it was.
But then, where was I now?
There was no breeze. But there was smell. The odor I had caught a whiff of in the tunnel was everywhere. I couldn’t recall where I had encountered it before. Nevertheless, this place was dead quiet. Not a sound anywhere.
I needed to find my flashlight. I carefully searched the ground where I had fallen. On all fours, in a widening circle. The earth was moist. I was scared that I might touch something creepy in the dark, but there was nothing, not even a pebble. Just ground so perfectly flat it must have been leveled by human hands.
After a long search, I finally found the flashlight lying about three feet from where I had landed. The moment my hand touched its plastic casing was one of the happiest of my life.
But I didn’t switch it on right away. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a number of deep breaths. As if I were patiently unraveling a stubborn knot. My breathing slowed. My heartbeat did, too, and my muscles began to return to normal. I slowly exhaled the last deep breath and switched on the flashlight. Its yellow light raced through the darkness. But I couldn’t look yet. My eyes had grown too used to the dark—the tiniest light made my head split with pain.
I shielded my eyes with one hand until I could open my fingers enough to peer through the cracks. From what I could see, I had landed on the floor of a circular-shaped room. A room of modest size, with walls of stone. I shone the flashlight above my head. The room had a ceiling. No, not exactly that. Something more like a lid. No light seeped through.
I realized where I was: in the pit in the woods, behind the little shrine. I had crawled into the tunnel in Donna Anna’s cave and tumbled out onto the floor of this stone chamber. I was in a real pit in the real world. I had no idea how that could have happened. But it had. I was back at the beginning, so to speak. But why was there no light? The lid was made of wooden boards. There were cracks between those boards, through which some light should enter. Yet none did.
I was stumped.
At least I knew where I was. The smell was a dead giveaway. Why had it taken me so long to figure out? I carefully examined my surroundings with my flashlight. The metal ladder that should have been standing there was gone. Someone must have pulled it out and carted it off. Which meant there was no means of escape.
What I found strange—it should have been strange, I guess—was that I could find no trace of the opening, no matter how hard I looked. I had exited the narrow tunnel and fallen onto the floor of this pit. Like a newborn baby pushed out in midair. Yet I couldn’t find the aperture. It was as if it had closed after it spit me out.
Eventually, the flashlight’s beam illuminated an object on the ground. Something I recognized. It was the old bell the Commendatore had rung—hearing it had led me to discover the pit. Everything had begun with this bell. I had left it on the shelf in the studio—then at some point it had vanished. I picked it up and examined it under the flashlight. It had an old wooden handle. There could be no doubt—it was that bell.
I stared at it for some time, trying to understand. Had someone brought it back? Had it returned under its own power? The Commendatore had told me the bell belonged to the pit. What did that mean—belonged to the pit? But I was too tired to figure out the principles that might explain what was taking place. And there was no pillar of logic I could lean on.
I sat down, back against the stone wall, and switched off the flashlight. I had to figure out how to escape from this pit. I didn’t need light for that. And it was important to conserve the batteries.
So what should I do now?
56
IT APPEARS THAT SEVERAL BLANKS NEED FILLING IN