Aerin waves frantically, and I run to her. She’s already twisting a dirty handle-crank in the floor. It creaks loudly, but when Aerin pulls on it, it swings up on rusty hinges, revealing a dark opening in the floor.
I look down into the hole and see a metal ladder leading into the darkness below. Warm air emanates from the opening, but I can’t see anything except the rungs of the ladder. Without hesitating, Aerin sits down and swings her legs over the side.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask.
“Well, yeah!” She looks up at me with narrowed eyes. “This is what we’ve been looking for! Bring the light!”
Aerin grabs the edge of the hole and descends into
the darkness. I grin, admiring her fearlessness when it comes to the unknown. I feel my own excitement grow as I quickly follow her. Holding onto the flashlight and the rungs of the ladder isn’t easy, and my hand starts to go numb as I grip the handle precariously between my fingers.
It’s a long climb, and the flashlight needs to be cranked up again, as it only offers dim light now. When I shine it down, I can’t see the bottom of the ladder. I can barely see past Aerin below me. I lose count of the rungs on the ladder as we continue on.
Suddenly, I hear a thud, and Aerin cries out.
“Are you okay?” I freeze, trying to decide if I should jump down to make sure Aerin is all right or continue down the ladder.
“Something burned me!” she says. “I found the bottom. Bring the light down here, but watch that last step—it doesn’t exist.”
I navigate a few more rungs until I reach out with my foot and find nothing. I slow down and lower my foot a little more until I feel solid ground. Once both feet are on the ground, I shine the light around us.
We are inside a narrow corridor. Actually, it’s more like a tunnel with slightly curved walls of both metal and stone, much like the shaft where we first entered Rock Mountain. Conduits and cables are anchored to the walls near the ceiling of the area, heading off into the darkness. A wide metal pipe is attached half way up the wall. Everything I see is covered with an inch of dust.
“Be careful,” Aerin says. “That pipe is what burned my arm.”
Making sure I don’t touch it, I hold my free hand out near the pipe. I can feel the heat coming off of it and look over at Aerin for an explanation.
“It must be a steam pipe,” she says. “Unless it’s the hot water. I can’t really tell.”
The light goes out, and I spend the next few minutes cranking it up to provide more power. I feel Aerin move up close to me, her arm touching my side briefly and sending shivers down my spine. My mind immediately flips from the present to last night, and the feeling of her fingers gripping my backside as I plunged into her. My loss of concentration causes me to slip while cranking the flashlight, and it drops to the ground.
“Shit!” I kneel down and start feeling around with my hands.
“What was that?” Aerin asks.
“I dropped the flashlight.” I hear Aerin crouch beside me.
“Here it is,” she says.
“Is it okay?”
“Let me crank it some more.”
The crank whirs, but no light comes out.
“The lens is cracked,” Aerin says. “That’s all I can really tell without being able to see it, but the bulb must be broken, too, or it would still light up.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
I turn my head up, but I can’t even tell if I’m looking at the top of the ladder or not. It’s nearly pitch black now, and as I turn my head from side to side, I get disoriented. I reach out to grab a hold of Aerin, but my hand only finds air.
“Aerin? Where are you?”
“I’m right here.” She grabs on to my arm, and I relax a little.
“What should we do?” I’m not used to having an accomplice in my escapades. I’m both embarrassed and pissed at myself over my blunder. Putting myself in danger is a common enough occurrence, but I can’t help but feel a little responsible for her as well since I’ve shattered our only light source.