voices, no teacher droning a list of facts he was supposed to remember. This time, when he went on, Adam smiled. He reached the chamber and shone his torch around it. The space was indeed roughly circular, and about twice his height. There was writing here too, and in places it was fresher. There were more names and more dates, just like Sash had said. Adam frowned. Why only names? Dates that had once meant something to somebody, and now meant nothing that he could tell?
There was darkness in the centre of the cave. Adam looked into it. He couldn’t make out the wall beyond that part. It must be too far off for his torch to reach, or perhaps there was another tunnel after all. He started to walk round the outside of the cave, tracing the wall with his fingertips. Soon he stood at the opposite side. There was no other tunnel; the wall was solid. Adam looked down at the floor and saw deep wrinkles in it, grooves leading towards the centre of the cave. They went into the dark and were lost to view. Adam shone the light along one of them. He still couldn’t see where it led. He shone it up at the ceiling. Bright lines flashed down, water dripping in the torchlight. He frowned, tried to watch them all the way to the floor. He could not.
Adam didn’t like the dark. He found his heart was thudding, a solid, heavy sound that reminded him he was alive, he was flesh and skin and bone, and could be taken apart quite easily. Could be sliced and bitten and ended.
He realised he couldn’t see the way out now. There should be a faint glow coming from the entrance, but it wasn’t there. Adam shone the torch straight ahead, into the dark. The beam was swallowed up. He heard his own breath, too loud. It sounded like some animal: a bear perhaps, or a wolf. He blinked. It made no difference to what he could see and what he couldn’t.
He shuffled quickly on around the cave wall, and realised he could see the tunnel after all. It was as though something had been blocking his sight. As he went on a few more steps, the whole, roughly circular shape of it came into view.
Adam closed his eyes. He was letting Sasha’s stories get to him. Of course, he hadn’t been able to see the tunnel: the torchlight had spoiled his night vision. If he’d just turned it off, let his eyes adjust, he would have seen it all the time.
Now he stood by the way out and turned back towards the centre of the cave. The darkness was there. There was something wrong with it. Adam frowned. There was one way to prove this was stupid, that Sasha was wrong, and that was to go in. He would go into the dark and banish the thought of the way she’d looked at him when she walked away with Fuzz.
Sash with her smooth, pale tits. Her laugh. Her grin.
Adam still didn’t move. He didn’t like the dark. It looked too solid somehow, especially when he looked at it dead on. Like a roughly circular patch of —
Adam shook his head. It was like standing in an old house and telling yourself not to think of ghosts. The moment you did, every shadow was brought to life, every room given breath. It wasn’t that anything was there, not really. “Nothing outside your mind,” he said out loud, and wished he hadn’t. He let out another sound; a hiss of irritation, at himself and this whole stupid place, the way the three of them had parted. It was this place’s fault. He had done everything right, put on the skin he’d needed, the bravado and the toughness that got him through. It was the cave that had fucked everything up.
“I’ll show you,” he said, and this time it seemed all right to say it out loud.
Adam shone the torchlight down at the floor. It found one of those deep grooves, and he placed his feet on either side of it. He took one step forward, and another. It was easy once he’d started. One after the next. The light moved forward and the dark retreated. When Adam looked into it, though, it seemed to swirl in front of his eyes. Coalescing. Massing. He took another step and the light went out.
Adam caught his breath, started back the way he’d come. He couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t think about where he was putting his feet, slipped into that groove in the floor, caught himself from falling. He had to get away; had to put some space between him and the dark before he could turn his back on it. When he’d gone far enough he turned and ran, not stopping to take out his lighter. Adam didn’t stop running until he was out of the cave mouth and into the trees, turning again so that the cave was no longer behind him. He leaned against a tree trunk, panting, hands on his knees. He let his breath come quick and fast. Then he started to laugh.
The torch was still in his hand and he shook it. The batteries rattled in their compartment. Duff batteries: of course they were. That was all there was to it, just his sodding luck. He laughed again. He turned the torch over in his hands, flicked the switch. His eyes shut involuntarily as bright light flooded his face.
“Hey: Fuzz, Sash.” They stood by the tree, a sorry thing that had been shorn of its lower branches. The tree stood in the centre of the school yard and its branches had been cut off to stop kids from swinging on them.
Sash scraped her foot across the concrete, staring at it fixedly. It was Fuzz who said, “All right?”
“I’m going back to the cave.” Adam said the words casually then wished he hadn’t. He should have made it a boast, one they’d have to rise to. Now Sash looked away, staring at the school as though she longed to be inside.
“Tonight. I’ve got a torch. You coming? It’ll be a laugh.” Adam stuck his hands in his pockets, straightened his back.
After a moment, Fuzz shook his head. “Sash is coming to ours,” he said. He made a movement, a jerk of his arm as though he’d been going to reach for her.
“You’re scared,” Adam tried. “Chickenshit.”
“All right,” said Fuzz. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “We’re chickenshit. Come on, Sash. We need to get to French.”
She nodded. Then she met Adam’s eye. “I’m not going back,” she said.
Adam looked at her for a moment. He remembered the way she’d taken off her top. The way he’d thought it meant something: the way he’d looked at her and Fuzz hadn’t. Now he realised that maybe it did.
But Fuzz was already moving. He took Sash’s arm, kept hold of it as he led her away. As he
Adam scowled after them. If they chose not to be a part of this, fair enough. It was something special he had found, that he had led them to. If they turned their back on it. he spat. Their loss.
He turned and started walking towards the road. If the others weren’t coming, there was no need for him to wait. No need to wait, at all.
The mouth of the cave looked smaller than Adam remembered. It didn’t look scary, or forbidding, or welcoming. It didn’t look like anything special. It just looked like what it was, an unexciting cave in an unexciting wood, clinging to the edge of an unexciting town. Adam thought of the first time they’d come here, the three of them laughing, hurrying into the cave so that Sash could light her cigarette. No, not laughing.
He shook his head. The others had no part in this. The dark was for him, and him alone. He was supposed to go inside. He knew the cave had drawn him back: he just didn’t know why.
He got the torch from his bag and it lit when he flicked the switch. He started walking.
The next time Adam looked about, he was in the chamber. He blinked. He didn’t remember the tunnel, didn’t remember if the footing had been damp or dry, whether he had slipped. It was nothing; just a blank. Like the space he saw in front of him.
The dark was there. Adam looked into it, and it seemed to him that the dark looked back. Adam listened. He felt he should be able to hear something, but there was only a faint silvering on the edge of hearing; something that could have been the blood in his veins or the wind outside or the sound the dark made.
Adam put down the torch and his bag, rummaged through what was inside. More exercise books, one with the blank pages missing. He couldn’t remember which went with which subject, which classroom, which teacher. It didn’t matter. This time he tore all the pages out, crumpled some so that they would catch. He got his cigarette lighter and set it to the paper, used another book to bat the flame towards the middle of the cave.
It fluttered to the ground and went out. It hadn’t gone far enough. Adam knew this because he could still see a faint glow where the paper smouldered.
This time he went closer before he flung the fire into the dark. Again, it went out. This time the change was so sudden Adam blinked. One moment the paper was there; the next it was not. It had fallen further in this time. There was nothing left to see, not a single smouldering page. The dark had taken it.
What was it Sash had said?
