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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 10/31/2022
Out of the Depths.
Born 1940, M, from Morris, IL, United StatesOut of the Depths.
I'm suddenly in the dark. Then, I'm stumbling, falling, my head hits the wall and I am on the ground. My left shoulder hurts and I am crying. A grown man sitting in the dust crying! I can't help it. The pain is not that bad but frustration and fear squeeze my throat and even though I want to scream, I can't.
What is it now... a half-hour since I started this tour? Maybe it's only been fifteen minutes ago that the lights went out. I hate darkness and narrow confines. Here I am on the floor. I am afraid.
When I was a kid, eight or nine, I got trapped in a meat locker at the back of Mrs. Podlock's grocery store. The heavy door had slammed shut on me.
Seems strange now, but in those days no one paid much attention to kids wandering into neighborhood shops. No one gave me a second thought. I was just a curious kid who suddenly found himself alone with two fresh sides of beef hanging in the ice box of the old grocery store. The owner couldn't hear me beating on the heavy wooden door and yelling. It was dark in there and my feeling of entrapment was as keen as the edge of Mrs. Podlock's butcher's knife.
She eventually came back for some cold cuts and found me sobbing on the floor. Maybe it was only five minutes that I was entombed in the locker. It seemed much longer.
“What you do here? You come out now!” She was angry. I moved quickly out into the warmth of the grocery store, promising the old lady never to open that meat locker again. Ever since I fear being closed in.
I'm not closed in now, though. I just have to turn around and go back the way I came, toward the stairs. Darkness then reaches out to smother me in this underground corridor of death. I'm afraid to move.
“Always keep something holy with you.” My mother's voice echoes in my brain. Through the years, mom had given me among other churchy things: a rosary, a tiny cross, a medal of St. Christopher, and a vest-pocket new testament issued by the U.S. Army which had belonged to my father.
“Remember: there's a lot of evil in this world. Sometimes, you'll need something holy to protect you.” Thus spoke my mother.
Well, I didn't have any of that with me now. I'd long ago left religion and its ghosts behind me. My dead mother had been moldering in her grave in Southport for eight years, waiting there for her resurrection.
No rosary. I don't know what happened to it. The silver cross, a one-inch long trinket is usually in my pocket along with spare change. I had left the change and the cross in the top drawer of my dresser at the hotel. My cell phone with its flashlight capability was also there.
I've got nothing holy with me in this place of death. Bones have turned to dust here and that dust moves around in the air when the steps of tourists stir it up. I breathe it in now as heavy and damp.
I'm still sitting in the path thinking like this. My forehead hurts. I feel a knot beginning to form on my forehead. I wipe my left hand across the lump. No blood. I couldn't feel any wetness. No blood.
What was it that I had stumbled over? I get up now on my knees to feel for it. Yes, a corner of some sort. The path turns left here. I had stumbled over a marker.
I'm standing now and feeling for the wall with my left hand as I begin to make my way back along the path. The wall abruptly ends, making way for one of the thousands of burial niches carved two millennia ago in the soft rock outside Rome. They are arranged in three-tiered elongated hollows like bunk beds for three. I had passed many of them.
I have nothing to guide me except the rock wall. I stretch to feel for the continuation of the wall, only to be reminded again of the burial at the next niche when my hand meets space. I stop, afraid to move on in this emptiness and gloom.
Some of these niches hold the remains of early Christian martyrs. I never understood that. Why not just perform whatever religious action was asked of you and keep your fingers crossed? Then, you live on and maybe can do something for your world. When you die, you are gone.
Outside, is it still raining? I remember I had to run fifty yards or so to reach the entrance to the Catacombs of Callistus from the off-street parking lot. I was wet and breathing heavily when I reached the entrance, a rectangular gift shop. At the back of the shop, an attendant in uniform took tickets.
,
It's a half-hour at least since I handed over five Euros to the Gen-Z woman behind the desk who was listening to something rhythmic through her earbuds She handed me a ticket and a small pamphlet marked “Self-Guide.” Without looking up from her book she said “You are the last tourist today. We close in one hour.” It looked to me like a short tour. Great! I had a dinner date at 7 PM back at the hotel.
I was happy to see the diagram which showed that though the catacombs were lined and crisscrossed with many passages at multiple levels, my tour would be a half-mile walking path on one level which circled back to the stairs.
The white-haired signore took my ticket, pointed down some stairs, and said, “Hold the hand-rail, per favore!”
At the bottom of the steps was the dirt floor of the catacombs. The path was brightly lit, with arrows pointing the way every twenty feet or so.
That was at least a half-hour ago. Now, I can't see anything.
I can't hear anybody moving around. No voices, either. When will these lights come on again? What happened?
My God, no! Maybe, the lights were turned off because the catacombs were now closed for the day! And, I am alone for the night in this tomb of tombs.
Dilemma: I could stay where I was or, I continue forward until I completed the tourist path and I'd be at the stairs again. Or, I could turn around and go back the way I came. The problem was that going forward or going back, I would still be in this darkness.
Maybe the best thing I could do is just stay where I'm at, I thought.
Just then something feathery brushed my left hand and I jerked it from the clammy wall. Could have been a bat, I thought, but more likely a spider, a big one. I sucked in a breath of dank air and shivered. Not knowing is worse than knowing.
I decided it was a spider. “Well, it's good to know I'm not alone down here,” I said out loud, trying to joke my way through my fear. I then sank to the floor and sat there defeated by that fear.
It was at least fifteen minutes later that I thought I heard something.
Something in Italian. Then, English. “OK? Everybody O.K? A voice! Coming closer. And then a moving light. Suddenly the path was lit again and from around a turn in the path, the attendant who took my ticket appeared. I couldn't see much of him but I recognized his voice. He carried a large swaying lamp that lit up the passageway.
He lifted his lamp so I could see his face. A kindly one.
In my fumbling Italian, I said: “Que successo?” What happened? “Non c'est malo,” replied the old guy. “Un sciopero!”
Is he saying what I think he's saying: that it was a worker's strike? I finally understood that the cause of the light failure was a one-hour work-stoppage at Rome's electrical complex. Scioperos are common in the Eternal City, a way for workers to make their importance known.
The old attendant and I walked together to the stairs. “If I not come, you maybe sleep with the saints tonight, eh?” I smiled but didn't think much of his humor.
As we reached the stairs, the entire path was illuminated in one great flash. The strike was over. It had been one hour.
We ascended the stairs as the darkness escaped to wherever it goes when the lights come on. Then, darkness stays there waiting until the moment it finds a way to get out again.
Out of the Depths.(GERALD GLEN WATT)
Out of the Depths.
I'm suddenly in the dark. Then, I'm stumbling, falling, my head hits the wall and I am on the ground. My left shoulder hurts and I am crying. A grown man sitting in the dust crying! I can't help it. The pain is not that bad but frustration and fear squeeze my throat and even though I want to scream, I can't.
What is it now... a half-hour since I started this tour? Maybe it's only been fifteen minutes ago that the lights went out. I hate darkness and narrow confines. Here I am on the floor. I am afraid.
When I was a kid, eight or nine, I got trapped in a meat locker at the back of Mrs. Podlock's grocery store. The heavy door had slammed shut on me.
Seems strange now, but in those days no one paid much attention to kids wandering into neighborhood shops. No one gave me a second thought. I was just a curious kid who suddenly found himself alone with two fresh sides of beef hanging in the ice box of the old grocery store. The owner couldn't hear me beating on the heavy wooden door and yelling. It was dark in there and my feeling of entrapment was as keen as the edge of Mrs. Podlock's butcher's knife.
She eventually came back for some cold cuts and found me sobbing on the floor. Maybe it was only five minutes that I was entombed in the locker. It seemed much longer.
“What you do here? You come out now!” She was angry. I moved quickly out into the warmth of the grocery store, promising the old lady never to open that meat locker again. Ever since I fear being closed in.
I'm not closed in now, though. I just have to turn around and go back the way I came, toward the stairs. Darkness then reaches out to smother me in this underground corridor of death. I'm afraid to move.
“Always keep something holy with you.” My mother's voice echoes in my brain. Through the years, mom had given me among other churchy things: a rosary, a tiny cross, a medal of St. Christopher, and a vest-pocket new testament issued by the U.S. Army which had belonged to my father.
“Remember: there's a lot of evil in this world. Sometimes, you'll need something holy to protect you.” Thus spoke my mother.
Well, I didn't have any of that with me now. I'd long ago left religion and its ghosts behind me. My dead mother had been moldering in her grave in Southport for eight years, waiting there for her resurrection.
No rosary. I don't know what happened to it. The silver cross, a one-inch long trinket is usually in my pocket along with spare change. I had left the change and the cross in the top drawer of my dresser at the hotel. My cell phone with its flashlight capability was also there.
I've got nothing holy with me in this place of death. Bones have turned to dust here and that dust moves around in the air when the steps of tourists stir it up. I breathe it in now as heavy and damp.
I'm still sitting in the path thinking like this. My forehead hurts. I feel a knot beginning to form on my forehead. I wipe my left hand across the lump. No blood. I couldn't feel any wetness. No blood.
What was it that I had stumbled over? I get up now on my knees to feel for it. Yes, a corner of some sort. The path turns left here. I had stumbled over a marker.
I'm standing now and feeling for the wall with my left hand as I begin to make my way back along the path. The wall abruptly ends, making way for one of the thousands of burial niches carved two millennia ago in the soft rock outside Rome. They are arranged in three-tiered elongated hollows like bunk beds for three. I had passed many of them.
I have nothing to guide me except the rock wall. I stretch to feel for the continuation of the wall, only to be reminded again of the burial at the next niche when my hand meets space. I stop, afraid to move on in this emptiness and gloom.
Some of these niches hold the remains of early Christian martyrs. I never understood that. Why not just perform whatever religious action was asked of you and keep your fingers crossed? Then, you live on and maybe can do something for your world. When you die, you are gone.
Outside, is it still raining? I remember I had to run fifty yards or so to reach the entrance to the Catacombs of Callistus from the off-street parking lot. I was wet and breathing heavily when I reached the entrance, a rectangular gift shop. At the back of the shop, an attendant in uniform took tickets.
,
It's a half-hour at least since I handed over five Euros to the Gen-Z woman behind the desk who was listening to something rhythmic through her earbuds She handed me a ticket and a small pamphlet marked “Self-Guide.” Without looking up from her book she said “You are the last tourist today. We close in one hour.” It looked to me like a short tour. Great! I had a dinner date at 7 PM back at the hotel.
I was happy to see the diagram which showed that though the catacombs were lined and crisscrossed with many passages at multiple levels, my tour would be a half-mile walking path on one level which circled back to the stairs.
The white-haired signore took my ticket, pointed down some stairs, and said, “Hold the hand-rail, per favore!”
At the bottom of the steps was the dirt floor of the catacombs. The path was brightly lit, with arrows pointing the way every twenty feet or so.
That was at least a half-hour ago. Now, I can't see anything.
I can't hear anybody moving around. No voices, either. When will these lights come on again? What happened?
My God, no! Maybe, the lights were turned off because the catacombs were now closed for the day! And, I am alone for the night in this tomb of tombs.
Dilemma: I could stay where I was or, I continue forward until I completed the tourist path and I'd be at the stairs again. Or, I could turn around and go back the way I came. The problem was that going forward or going back, I would still be in this darkness.
Maybe the best thing I could do is just stay where I'm at, I thought.
Just then something feathery brushed my left hand and I jerked it from the clammy wall. Could have been a bat, I thought, but more likely a spider, a big one. I sucked in a breath of dank air and shivered. Not knowing is worse than knowing.
I decided it was a spider. “Well, it's good to know I'm not alone down here,” I said out loud, trying to joke my way through my fear. I then sank to the floor and sat there defeated by that fear.
It was at least fifteen minutes later that I thought I heard something.
Something in Italian. Then, English. “OK? Everybody O.K? A voice! Coming closer. And then a moving light. Suddenly the path was lit again and from around a turn in the path, the attendant who took my ticket appeared. I couldn't see much of him but I recognized his voice. He carried a large swaying lamp that lit up the passageway.
He lifted his lamp so I could see his face. A kindly one.
In my fumbling Italian, I said: “Que successo?” What happened? “Non c'est malo,” replied the old guy. “Un sciopero!”
Is he saying what I think he's saying: that it was a worker's strike? I finally understood that the cause of the light failure was a one-hour work-stoppage at Rome's electrical complex. Scioperos are common in the Eternal City, a way for workers to make their importance known.
The old attendant and I walked together to the stairs. “If I not come, you maybe sleep with the saints tonight, eh?” I smiled but didn't think much of his humor.
As we reached the stairs, the entire path was illuminated in one great flash. The strike was over. It had been one hour.
We ascended the stairs as the darkness escaped to wherever it goes when the lights come on. Then, darkness stays there waiting until the moment it finds a way to get out again.
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