STORY: The Caver
I didn't get around to update this last month, so time to remedy that! Another uncanny story. Birgitta stopped going to the caving club, but she has a persistent intrusive thought about the last time she went caving. What is real?
If you enjoyed this story, consider supporting me at my Patreon.
Birgitta had worked out a schedule for testing reality. It didn't take more than a minute, and she could do it so carefully that Claes didn't see it. She touched something close by, especially if it was unusual in its surface or heat level: a cold tap, a warm pan lid, the rough loop-pile cushion that Johanna had made in shop class. The perception always fitted her expectations. If it was light outside, she lifted her gaze as close to the sun as she could take, because there wouldn't have been any sun if she'd still been down there. She took a quick look at her hands to count her fingers. If she was close to a mirror or glass, she glanced at her reflection. Dreams had difficulty remember your number of fingers, she'd read while doing the research. Reflections could become hazy as ghosts. If she was alone she finished off with a wide arm movement to be able to feel that there was only air around her.
As soon as she was finished with the washing-up that night she stepped out of the yellow warmth of the kitchen - desolate now the kids had gone back to their homes - and ended up standing on the gravel path to the gate.
There was still light in the sky, but down here on earth it was dusk. The row of birches along the country road swayed against the glass-blue sky. They were far from the coast, but the air had something pure and almost scentless that reminded her of the sea.
Claes came out to her after a while. A chain in the hammock-chair creaked as he sat down.
“You feeling all right?” he asked.
She turned around and smiled at him, but she didn't know what it looked like.
“I'm thinking about the cave,” she said.
Claes gave a slight jolt.
“Is this anything to do with why you quit?” he said.
“I'd say so...”
If she couldn't talk about it out here, with the scent of dew on the grass and a world of air around her, she would never manage. Even then it took a few moments before she was able to get the words out.
Claes got up from the hammock-chair, a bit slow, and put his heavy arm around her shoulders. She soaked up his almost feverish warmth.
“What's the matter, honey? Did something happen in there?”
*
She'd never told Claes, and especially not Johanna and Karsten: they deserved a mum who could always be strong for them, a mum who couldn't feel fear. If she'd put words on it, the memory might have become more detailed.
The start of the memory was sharp. She'd driven in to the club house that also functioned as cross-country station, unpainted logs and polished tables, and drunk an early cup of coffee with Glenn, the coach, before he went to collect her equipment. Glenn was taller and skinnier than Claes and bald, tanned to a colour like old wood, and used to pretend to flirt with her since she was the only one in the club who was near his age. She'd been there for long enough to get to make descents alone.
After she had descended into the cave mouth the memory became more hazy. Maybe it was because it had been so dark. She knew she had chosen a tunnel where she hadn't gone before.
The clarity was sudden. She was crawling forwards like a preschooler in a tunnel of cushions. The ceiling was so low that the rock scraped her back through her boiler suit. She couldn't raise her head enough to point the headlamp forwards, so all she could see was a glaring light on the rugged black rock underneath her. The surface hurt her kneecaps, perhaps they would be scratched bloody when she undressed tonight. The ceiling scraped against her helmet again. If it went on like this she would have to crawl backwards all the way until she got out into the wider space. It was too dangerous to continue in a tunnel where you had to crawl on your belly. Then there was no other way to go than ahead.
There the memory quivered. When she could remember again she was in the sunshine, in the car, going home on the motorway. The world was pure asphalt and tall white clouds. She couldn't remember how she'd got out.
*
As she finished talking, she realised that she was shaking her head. The memory was harder to get free of than most, it almost required effort.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “I can't even remember if I was particularly scared then. But afterwards...”
She broke off until she could go on again.
“Afterwards... I got a delusion of some kind. You're going to think it's silly. Seriously, you're going to laugh at me.”
Maybe it would help if he laughed, it might dispel the power of the delusion, but Claes just gave a little murmur that didn't have any words. He sat down on the hammock-chair and waved at her to sit next to him. The wax-cloth protective cover was cold under the folds of her bare knees. The night chill had started to move in.
“Sometimes I get a sensation that I'm dreaming all of this. I'm still down there... I'm not dead, but I'm stuck, I'm not getting out, and this is a hallucination before I die.”
She gestured around at their garden: the kitchen-garden he'd started working on last summer, the idyllically pale yellow villa, the hammock-chair with its starfish-shaped weights in blue glass, himself with the pink scar on the back of his left hand. It had got too dark, she couldn't see the birches any more. They had molten into the dark of the forest across the road.
Claes gave a laugh, but it was small and light.
“You're too smart to believe in that rubbish, Birgitta. It's been months, for crying out loud.”
Maybe that ought to have calmed her down, but her thoughts started finding their way back. What could she remember from these months? Nothing was important after she'd left the cave. She'd been lying in the hammock-chair with a book; the kids had come to stay. It didn't feel like she'd stored enough memories to fill a single day. One day she'd been at some charity fair with Johanna and watched her clamber up a climbing-wall. That had woken the thoughts again.
“Well, I don't know,” she began. “There are gaps...”
Her voice sank away, as if it couldn't manage much longer. Claes grabbed her shoulders as if he were going to shake her.
“But for the love of God, Birgitta, if you believe in that stuff, then there are no limits to what you can believe. Then you might as well have died... died in childbirth with Johanna, or whatever, and everything after that is just you dreaming.”
She nodded. On that point she couldn't disagree with him, but he hadn't been in her head and didn't understand that it wasn't equivalent. She had not lived those twenty-six years with transparent gaps where she wondered what had happened.
“I'm sorry,” he said and hugged her again. “I didn't mean to yell, but this is... I don't think you should worry about this sort of thing. Is this something you think about a lot?”
She shook her head. “Not particularly.”
That was a lie, but wasn't it better not to worry him? (If he wasn't real, it didn't matter.) His arms were warm around her, but she couldn't move. She pulled away.
“If it really worries you I guess you could see a psychologist.”
A psychologist would say the same things as he.
When she undressed that night she inspected her kneecaps under the edge of her nightdress. Claes was already in bed, reading in the circle of yellow light from his bed-lamp, and didn't look her way. It felt like she'd done it before. Her skin was pink and unspoilt. She pinched it over the kneecap and felt a faint ache, but perhaps that was just from the pressure.
*
She couldn't remember what she'd dreamt. She hadn't remembered any dreams since the descent. Maybe she wasn't dreaming any more. Was that one piece of evidence? Maybe she'd had difficulty remembering dreams before.
The moments after waking she carried out her first check. She stretched out her arms in each direction to feel that there was space. Only after that did she let herself be calmed by touching the sheets, dry and warm. To the right she brushed against Claes' shoulder. To the left, her hand hung out in the cool emptiness outside the bed.
*
The motorway was a plane of bright asphalt and the sky was clear and deepened almost to dark blue in the zenith. The sun warmed her through the car windows. It was as if she'd started feeling better as soon as she set off. Once she was through this, perhaps she would go and have a cup of coffee and a slice of cake at some café.
Glenn wasn't in the club house, but the other instructor was there. Her name was Annette, and she was heavily built and blonde - young, Birgitta had thought at first, but she was probably in her mid-thirties. Her handshake was strong when Birgitta introduced herself.
“I would like to descend into the Klensta Cave,” Birgitta said. “But... are you all right for following me? Or sending someone else down with me? Same difference, really. I've let myself go a bit, I don't want to risk anything happening.”
It sounded like a transparent lie. The truth would have sounded less pathetic. Why should she care about it, if there was no Annette?
“I'm free this morning,” Annette said, glancing at her watch. “How long do you need?”
“Oh, not more than an hour.”
Of that much she was certain. In an hour this would be over.
She pulled on the woollens in pale fleece, then the boiler suit. Could this be the one she'd used while she went here in the summer? It felt like she should have recognised the pattern of scratches on the brown knee-pads. The suit was bright red, a high-visibility shade. She could have laughed at the fact that you were supposed to wear something like that in a cave.
The sunlight was blinding outside the cave mouth, and the greenery around the broken-up limestone was profuse like in all childhood dreams of the last day of school. Annette went ahead and unlocked the gate. Birgitta drew deep breaths, while her chest was still free. It must be the draught from the cave that she felt. It wasn't an unpleasant smell. It had a tinge of cold that made her think of the sea.
They entered the vestibule of the cave, still broad as a street and only a little inclined. The cones of light from their headlamps glimmered on rock black with wet.
“We don't have a lot of beginners your age,” Annette said as they walked. “What made you take it up?”
Maybe she had noticed that Birgitta needed something to focus on.
“It was something I wanted to do sometimes when I was in uni, but I never got around to it... then my kids moved out, and it was like I'd lost twenty years... I could have a fresh start, and then I remembered about it again. Then I saw an advert for the Lund Caving Club, and it seemed perfect. It felt like it was made for me...”
She couldn't keep going. It was almost impossible to keep the terror out of her voice. They went on in silence, except for the almost inaudible squeak of the soles of her boots on the rock. She could still breathe. Her bra fitted a bit tight under all her protective wear - not hard enough to constrict her ribcage, just enough to cut into her skin. She could adjust it when she got out of here. The air was breathable: cold and dank, but maybe healthier than above ground where there were emissions and the carbon dioxide from other people's lungs. It didn't smell of anything except water. The cold wasn't going to kill.
She hadn't expected to be able to find her way after so long, but the memory had started to return as soon as she was within the dark. She'd gone left, the way you did when you explored a new area. Maybe it was the same learned behaviour as when your gaze slid to the left on a new line of text. Annette marked the crossroads with neon tape and didn't ask. How long had it taken that time? Her wristwatch was hidden under her boiler suit. Her body couldn't maintain the panic. Her heartbeats were still harsh, but they'd been forced to slow to an almost normal rate.
“You wanna keep going?” Annette asked when they got to a shaft. “Do you know how to use the rope?”
Birgitta wanted to snap back at her, and that gave her a bit of fresh energy. They were nearly there. Annette fastened the rope in the bolt and let her go first.
The cold intensified as Birgitta rappelled down, as if she had passed from the air into a layer of something else.
There was only one tunnel here - familiar - and Annette was still too far up for Birgitta to see her by the light of her lamp.
“I'm going ahead,” she called upwards in the blackness.
She could only crawl. The rock underneath her was sharp against her knees and sharp through her gloves. Maybe that pain would be enough to keep her anchored to reality.
And here the floor started sloping under her. It took a while for the panic to take hold in her chest. She could still crawl backwards, but if it got steeper she might not be able to get back. Maybe this was enough. If the worst came to worst, she could send Annette in to check; she had more experience.
The beam of her headlamp fell on something red. It wasn't blood; it was the high visibility shade of a boiler suit.
In front of her in the tunnel was a body.
THE END
If you enjoyed this story, consider supporting me at my Patreon.
Birgitta had worked out a schedule for testing reality. It didn't take more than a minute, and she could do it so carefully that Claes didn't see it. She touched something close by, especially if it was unusual in its surface or heat level: a cold tap, a warm pan lid, the rough loop-pile cushion that Johanna had made in shop class. The perception always fitted her expectations. If it was light outside, she lifted her gaze as close to the sun as she could take, because there wouldn't have been any sun if she'd still been down there. She took a quick look at her hands to count her fingers. If she was close to a mirror or glass, she glanced at her reflection. Dreams had difficulty remember your number of fingers, she'd read while doing the research. Reflections could become hazy as ghosts. If she was alone she finished off with a wide arm movement to be able to feel that there was only air around her.
As soon as she was finished with the washing-up that night she stepped out of the yellow warmth of the kitchen - desolate now the kids had gone back to their homes - and ended up standing on the gravel path to the gate.
There was still light in the sky, but down here on earth it was dusk. The row of birches along the country road swayed against the glass-blue sky. They were far from the coast, but the air had something pure and almost scentless that reminded her of the sea.
Claes came out to her after a while. A chain in the hammock-chair creaked as he sat down.
“You feeling all right?” he asked.
She turned around and smiled at him, but she didn't know what it looked like.
“I'm thinking about the cave,” she said.
Claes gave a slight jolt.
“Is this anything to do with why you quit?” he said.
“I'd say so...”
If she couldn't talk about it out here, with the scent of dew on the grass and a world of air around her, she would never manage. Even then it took a few moments before she was able to get the words out.
Claes got up from the hammock-chair, a bit slow, and put his heavy arm around her shoulders. She soaked up his almost feverish warmth.
“What's the matter, honey? Did something happen in there?”
*
She'd never told Claes, and especially not Johanna and Karsten: they deserved a mum who could always be strong for them, a mum who couldn't feel fear. If she'd put words on it, the memory might have become more detailed.
The start of the memory was sharp. She'd driven in to the club house that also functioned as cross-country station, unpainted logs and polished tables, and drunk an early cup of coffee with Glenn, the coach, before he went to collect her equipment. Glenn was taller and skinnier than Claes and bald, tanned to a colour like old wood, and used to pretend to flirt with her since she was the only one in the club who was near his age. She'd been there for long enough to get to make descents alone.
After she had descended into the cave mouth the memory became more hazy. Maybe it was because it had been so dark. She knew she had chosen a tunnel where she hadn't gone before.
The clarity was sudden. She was crawling forwards like a preschooler in a tunnel of cushions. The ceiling was so low that the rock scraped her back through her boiler suit. She couldn't raise her head enough to point the headlamp forwards, so all she could see was a glaring light on the rugged black rock underneath her. The surface hurt her kneecaps, perhaps they would be scratched bloody when she undressed tonight. The ceiling scraped against her helmet again. If it went on like this she would have to crawl backwards all the way until she got out into the wider space. It was too dangerous to continue in a tunnel where you had to crawl on your belly. Then there was no other way to go than ahead.
There the memory quivered. When she could remember again she was in the sunshine, in the car, going home on the motorway. The world was pure asphalt and tall white clouds. She couldn't remember how she'd got out.
*
As she finished talking, she realised that she was shaking her head. The memory was harder to get free of than most, it almost required effort.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “I can't even remember if I was particularly scared then. But afterwards...”
She broke off until she could go on again.
“Afterwards... I got a delusion of some kind. You're going to think it's silly. Seriously, you're going to laugh at me.”
Maybe it would help if he laughed, it might dispel the power of the delusion, but Claes just gave a little murmur that didn't have any words. He sat down on the hammock-chair and waved at her to sit next to him. The wax-cloth protective cover was cold under the folds of her bare knees. The night chill had started to move in.
“Sometimes I get a sensation that I'm dreaming all of this. I'm still down there... I'm not dead, but I'm stuck, I'm not getting out, and this is a hallucination before I die.”
She gestured around at their garden: the kitchen-garden he'd started working on last summer, the idyllically pale yellow villa, the hammock-chair with its starfish-shaped weights in blue glass, himself with the pink scar on the back of his left hand. It had got too dark, she couldn't see the birches any more. They had molten into the dark of the forest across the road.
Claes gave a laugh, but it was small and light.
“You're too smart to believe in that rubbish, Birgitta. It's been months, for crying out loud.”
Maybe that ought to have calmed her down, but her thoughts started finding their way back. What could she remember from these months? Nothing was important after she'd left the cave. She'd been lying in the hammock-chair with a book; the kids had come to stay. It didn't feel like she'd stored enough memories to fill a single day. One day she'd been at some charity fair with Johanna and watched her clamber up a climbing-wall. That had woken the thoughts again.
“Well, I don't know,” she began. “There are gaps...”
Her voice sank away, as if it couldn't manage much longer. Claes grabbed her shoulders as if he were going to shake her.
“But for the love of God, Birgitta, if you believe in that stuff, then there are no limits to what you can believe. Then you might as well have died... died in childbirth with Johanna, or whatever, and everything after that is just you dreaming.”
She nodded. On that point she couldn't disagree with him, but he hadn't been in her head and didn't understand that it wasn't equivalent. She had not lived those twenty-six years with transparent gaps where she wondered what had happened.
“I'm sorry,” he said and hugged her again. “I didn't mean to yell, but this is... I don't think you should worry about this sort of thing. Is this something you think about a lot?”
She shook her head. “Not particularly.”
That was a lie, but wasn't it better not to worry him? (If he wasn't real, it didn't matter.) His arms were warm around her, but she couldn't move. She pulled away.
“If it really worries you I guess you could see a psychologist.”
A psychologist would say the same things as he.
When she undressed that night she inspected her kneecaps under the edge of her nightdress. Claes was already in bed, reading in the circle of yellow light from his bed-lamp, and didn't look her way. It felt like she'd done it before. Her skin was pink and unspoilt. She pinched it over the kneecap and felt a faint ache, but perhaps that was just from the pressure.
*
She couldn't remember what she'd dreamt. She hadn't remembered any dreams since the descent. Maybe she wasn't dreaming any more. Was that one piece of evidence? Maybe she'd had difficulty remembering dreams before.
The moments after waking she carried out her first check. She stretched out her arms in each direction to feel that there was space. Only after that did she let herself be calmed by touching the sheets, dry and warm. To the right she brushed against Claes' shoulder. To the left, her hand hung out in the cool emptiness outside the bed.
*
The motorway was a plane of bright asphalt and the sky was clear and deepened almost to dark blue in the zenith. The sun warmed her through the car windows. It was as if she'd started feeling better as soon as she set off. Once she was through this, perhaps she would go and have a cup of coffee and a slice of cake at some café.
Glenn wasn't in the club house, but the other instructor was there. Her name was Annette, and she was heavily built and blonde - young, Birgitta had thought at first, but she was probably in her mid-thirties. Her handshake was strong when Birgitta introduced herself.
“I would like to descend into the Klensta Cave,” Birgitta said. “But... are you all right for following me? Or sending someone else down with me? Same difference, really. I've let myself go a bit, I don't want to risk anything happening.”
It sounded like a transparent lie. The truth would have sounded less pathetic. Why should she care about it, if there was no Annette?
“I'm free this morning,” Annette said, glancing at her watch. “How long do you need?”
“Oh, not more than an hour.”
Of that much she was certain. In an hour this would be over.
She pulled on the woollens in pale fleece, then the boiler suit. Could this be the one she'd used while she went here in the summer? It felt like she should have recognised the pattern of scratches on the brown knee-pads. The suit was bright red, a high-visibility shade. She could have laughed at the fact that you were supposed to wear something like that in a cave.
The sunlight was blinding outside the cave mouth, and the greenery around the broken-up limestone was profuse like in all childhood dreams of the last day of school. Annette went ahead and unlocked the gate. Birgitta drew deep breaths, while her chest was still free. It must be the draught from the cave that she felt. It wasn't an unpleasant smell. It had a tinge of cold that made her think of the sea.
They entered the vestibule of the cave, still broad as a street and only a little inclined. The cones of light from their headlamps glimmered on rock black with wet.
“We don't have a lot of beginners your age,” Annette said as they walked. “What made you take it up?”
Maybe she had noticed that Birgitta needed something to focus on.
“It was something I wanted to do sometimes when I was in uni, but I never got around to it... then my kids moved out, and it was like I'd lost twenty years... I could have a fresh start, and then I remembered about it again. Then I saw an advert for the Lund Caving Club, and it seemed perfect. It felt like it was made for me...”
She couldn't keep going. It was almost impossible to keep the terror out of her voice. They went on in silence, except for the almost inaudible squeak of the soles of her boots on the rock. She could still breathe. Her bra fitted a bit tight under all her protective wear - not hard enough to constrict her ribcage, just enough to cut into her skin. She could adjust it when she got out of here. The air was breathable: cold and dank, but maybe healthier than above ground where there were emissions and the carbon dioxide from other people's lungs. It didn't smell of anything except water. The cold wasn't going to kill.
She hadn't expected to be able to find her way after so long, but the memory had started to return as soon as she was within the dark. She'd gone left, the way you did when you explored a new area. Maybe it was the same learned behaviour as when your gaze slid to the left on a new line of text. Annette marked the crossroads with neon tape and didn't ask. How long had it taken that time? Her wristwatch was hidden under her boiler suit. Her body couldn't maintain the panic. Her heartbeats were still harsh, but they'd been forced to slow to an almost normal rate.
“You wanna keep going?” Annette asked when they got to a shaft. “Do you know how to use the rope?”
Birgitta wanted to snap back at her, and that gave her a bit of fresh energy. They were nearly there. Annette fastened the rope in the bolt and let her go first.
The cold intensified as Birgitta rappelled down, as if she had passed from the air into a layer of something else.
There was only one tunnel here - familiar - and Annette was still too far up for Birgitta to see her by the light of her lamp.
“I'm going ahead,” she called upwards in the blackness.
She could only crawl. The rock underneath her was sharp against her knees and sharp through her gloves. Maybe that pain would be enough to keep her anchored to reality.
And here the floor started sloping under her. It took a while for the panic to take hold in her chest. She could still crawl backwards, but if it got steeper she might not be able to get back. Maybe this was enough. If the worst came to worst, she could send Annette in to check; she had more experience.
The beam of her headlamp fell on something red. It wasn't blood; it was the high visibility shade of a boiler suit.
In front of her in the tunnel was a body.
THE END