Tourist Mine

“And for those of you with children - please keep them close, okay?” He glanced towards Ann. “Believe me, you don’t want to lose her down there.”

“No,” I said, “of course not.”

“That’s what I hoped to hear!” The guide winked.

On the way down Ann held my hand tightly. Except for the one light bulb right above our heads the world seemed to be made of metal bars and the dark stone of the shaft.

Not five minutes later we stood at the entrance to a vast cave that seemed to be a world of its own; heaps of stones appeared like small hills, in between them reflections revealed ponds of different sizes.

“Imagine what this kid must have felt like, when he crawled in here to discover all this?” The guide waved his hands around while he spoke. “There’s a rumor that he was fleeing from his abusive father or something of the kind, but probably he was just fooling around like children do. He must have come in somewhere near the top of the cave and then falls down right into the middle of this planet!”

He pointed to two points near the far end of the chamber.

“I personally think it must have been over there, there’s a few small tunnels that look natural.”

“We’ll go in there?” asked someone from the group.

“No,” the guide said. “Far too dangerous. We’ll take the old galleries, but we won’t be far from there.”

We started walking along a well-cleared path; the stone was smooth from thousands of feet walking over it throughout the years.

“Where does all the light come from?” I asked.

The guide shrugged. “We’re not really sure. Some of it is lamps we built in for these tours, but even if we turn them off you’re still able to see inside the cave. If you want I can switch ours off on the way out and you can see for yourself just before the monsters crawl out into the darkness.”

Ann pressed my hand more tightly.

“Please don’t let them papa,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

We had to duck to enter the first tunnel; a side gallery that the miners had dug when the main tunnel got blocked by falling stones.

“You have to take a moment and let this sink in,” said the guide. “If you look closely you can see that this tunnel was dug from both sides.”

He grinned and pointed towards a protrusion on the wall.

“Around here they must have met; just imagine that, you are down in the mine, hear a rumble, and when you turn back your only way out has collapsed. All you got are a few oil lamps and your pick axe and you have to shovel and hack your way out before your own light flickers off. And you just have to hope that your buddies on the other side are also digging in the right direction and that you’ll meet in the middle.”

“But they knew the others were digging? That there were people coming to save them?”

“We can’t say for sure.” The guide waved us onwards, but Ann stopped to touch the protrusion and I waited with her; her hand in mine. “But these walls are very porous. I suppose that’s also how the light comes in here, but you sometimes can hear sounds through these walls, even if they are a few meters thick you might lean against them and hear a voice on the other side.”

Ann shivered at his words and we picked up the pace to get back to the group.

“There’s lots of stories about this place.” The guide nodded at his own words, waving his flashlight forward. “My favorite one is that you never know whether the voice you hear is another man’s or the spirits of this place, trying to lure you further in.”