Dipping Into Together

Ch 19

I try to get the courage just to let myself drop, but I can’t seem to muster up enough guts just to do it. Why is this so difficult? I sigh, but it comes out ragged, coated with fear, anxiousness. I try to organize my thoughts. Jonah would have had to discover the sewer and he would’ve dropped, so why don’t I just drop? He would’ve had to come this way, so the drop can’t be that far. I’m doing a pretty good job of convincing myself of this until a chilling thought rips through my brain.

What if Jonah’s dead down here?

What if he fell and broke his legs and crawled a little ways and eventually just died? What if that’s going to happen to me too? If I stay, I die, I decided. And there’s no way that I’m going to climb back up, so here I go.

I take a deep breath and tell myself I’ll let go when I count to three.

“One, two…” I pause, blink a couple times, “Three!”

But I don’t let go.

“Don’t be afraid, Des,” I tell myself. “Just do this!”

And then my hands are slipping, and I’m not ready. I wanted to let go; I didn’t want to fall against my will! But it’s too late, because all of the sudden my fingertips are gripping nothing but air.

A scream rips out of my throat, but there’s no need for that. The fall is quick, terrifying, but quick. I land on my feet only after about a foot of falling. There’s no pain. No broken limbs. I do a little happy dance, but my foot catches on something, and I trip, falling down face first.

My hands shoot out to stop my fall, and I land on hard dirt. Or, at least what I think is dirt. Dried, smelling just as awful as I imagined, and underneath me, I realize that this is in fact, not dirt. Gagging, I stand up quickly, and immediately begin feeling my way forward. I walk carefully, lifting my legs up so that I don’t accidentally trip on anything. I spread my arms out and feel the walls on either side of me. Concrete. There’s no dampness or anything, so this sewer must not have been used for a long time.

Maybe Jonah is down here.

The thought runs through my mind so quickly, but it has an immediate effect. My heart beat quickens, and I heat up just a bit only thinking about the possibility of him being down here. I take a short, sharp intake of breath, and get ready to scream his name, when suddenly, I hear something even more terrifying.

“The fuck is this?”

It echoes. It’s like the sound wave shoots up my spine and into every nerve in my body. I have to hold in a scream, but tears are already welling up in my eyes. I’m staring into darkness but the picture in my head is vivid.

It’s Uncle.

I can imagine him up there, feeling the sewer lid, looking for me.

Then, something even worse happens.

Light.

The tunnel is illuminated momentarily, dimly, but illuminated nonetheless. Uncle has a flashlight. How long before he jumps down and sees me? Ten seconds? Twenty? Less? The light disappears, but then reappears again for only seconds. But I take advantage of the time and whirl around, looking in front of me. Up ahead, maybe about ten yards, there’s a divide in the tunnel. This tunnel splits into two smaller tunnels. I’ll have to crawl, I realize. So, wasting no time, I scramble forward and hit the ground on my knees, being as quiet as possible. I pick the left tunnel, shooting forward, arms flinging out and knees moving quickly. There’s another very dim flash of light, which allows me to see that the tunnel’s starting to curve more to the left. I pick up my pace before I’m thrown back into darkness. The fact that the light is so dim means that he probably is still up in the dirt tunnel.