Page 8 of Prison Moon
“Me too.” Sara studied the drawings. They ran the length of the wall, some easier to see than others. Time had leeched the color from them and whatever this place was, it was old. “The human-looking aliens are about as odd as the dragons.”
“How so?”
“Well, we have stories and legends of dragons on Earth. What are the odds of us seeing depictions of them here, on an alien planet?”
“Yeah, I see your point.” Marcy chewed her thumbnail as she stared at the drawings. “Well, we know aliens exist now, so maybe our myths about dragons were started by someone from here visiting Earth.”
“Possible. As much weird shit that’s happened to me over the past however-long those Big Head’s snatched me, I’ll not be surprised by anything much anymore.”
They separated and searched the chamber but found nothing but dirt and mounds of cloth so rotten it fell apart the moment they touched it. The sound of water running was still present, though. It was a faint hum in the background.
She walked around the other side of the dragon statue, its head laying on the ground as if it were sleeping. She trailed a hand across one large horn, winding her way behind it and stopped when she saw a dim light. It was another opening. “Marcy, I think I found another passage.” She walked to the opening, staring down the length of it. The light grew brighter further down the passageway. When Marcy stepped up beside her, Sara asked, “Door number two or stay where we are?”
“Keep going. I hear water and where there’s water, there might be food.”
Sara nodded her head and stepped into the passageway and started walking toward the light. Unlike the entrance they came in, this hall was lit enough to see. Other doorways led to places so dark they made her uncomfortable and they hurried past them. Irrational fear caused her heart to race as she imagined something coming out of those dark voids and grabbing her.
The light grew brighter with every step, and unlike the dim bug-lit cavern they’d left behind, the next wide cavern they stepped into flared with light so bright, she had to close her eyes. She shielded them with one hand and blinked several times, giving her eyes time to adjust, and smiled when she could open them without the glare.
Marcy stopped beside her and lifted her hand to pinch her nose. “Ugh, it stinks worse here.”
Sara still didn’t smell anything bad and wondered if Marcy wasn’t the one with the brain tumor instead of her.
The cavern they now stood in wasn’t as large as the other but the water she heard running was here, a small trickle coming down what looked like a fountain attached to the wall to splash into a small pool beneath it. She ran to it and held her hands under the stream, catching a palm full before smelling it. There wasn’t any sort of odor to it and it looked clear. The water drained through her fingers and she held her hands back under the stream to catch more—then tasted it, and smiled. “It’s good.” She and Marcy drank their fill before splashing their faces, arms, and necks. The water was cool and if the small pool it splashed into were bigger, she would have been tempted to sit right down in it and have a proper bath.
Sara stepped away after her body was cooled and she felt less sticky and looked around the cavern. Sun shined from a hole in the ceiling and the far left wall was missing. The jungle was visible, allowing anything out there, inside. She watched the trees and underbrush for movement but saw nothing and assumed they were safe for now.
Marcy was still splashing water on her body as she wandered away from the pool. The wall behind it was smooth and unlike the rest of the structure, made of slick, smooth stone. She walked to the center of the cavern and noticed that sweet scent she’d smelled earlier was heavier here. She turned in a slow circle, wondering where it was coming from.
Further down from the fountain of water was another small opening. She crossed the space and peered inside. More steps led further down, and she’d found the source of the sweet scent she kept smelling. It was here, whatever it was. “I found something. There’s another set of stairs over here.” She looked over her shoulder at Marcy. “Should we go see what’s down here?”
Marcy eyed the doorway, then the sunlit chamber. “You can go. I didn’t lose anything down there and I’m not a fan of dark places.”
Sara took a small step inside the doorway, feeling her way along the wall. She saw the stairs cut into the rock wall and moved toward them. Her foot hit something and it skittered across the floor and down the stairs, clanking over the side before it fell. And fell. It took some time before she heard it hit something again. This room was deep and pitch black near the bottom and even though her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, she still couldn’t see but halfway down. “It’s too dark anyway,” she said over her shoulder. “I can’t see a thing past the first couple dozen stairs.”
“Then don’t go messing around in there. If you fall down those steps, I’m not coming after you.”
She turned to leave but stopped when she heard what sounded like a deep sigh. She peered into the darkness, a chill running up her spine. Was something down there? She backed toward the doorway. Was this where the imagined boogyman she’d envisioned grabbing her in the corridor they’d walked through lived? She didn’t wait to find out.
Once she was bathed in sunlight again, she distanced herself from the doorway and looked toward the jungle. Just like in the front where they entered the ruins, nothing moved here either. She turned her head to look back at the dark room she’d just been in and remembered the sound she’d thought was a sigh. Maybe there was something down there and that was the reason nothing moved here.
She took a deep breath then shook her head. She was getting herself worked up over nothing, scaring herself needlessly. She walked back to the pool of water and dismissed the entire idea. There was nothing down there. She’d heard nothing more than wind whistling through another corridor somewhere below in the darkness. Probably. She hoped so. If the noise she’d heard really had been a sigh, the creature that made it would have had to be huge.