“Do you know what a cenote is?” Samuel asked, shining the torch in Michael’s face. He squinted and looked down at the forest floor, not answering. He remembered the first cenote he had visited in Mexico. It was huge, much bigger than this one. The water inside was crystal clear and connected to a network of underground caves. Tourists gathered at the opening, looking in, plucking up the courage to make the drop into the blue water below, and when they did, everybody would cheer. This was different.
“You know there are over 6,000 cenotes in this area alone, and that doesn’t include the undiscovered ones.” Samuel got close to Michael, trying to force him back towards the opening. Michael took a step back, not being able to stand being so close. “You know the Mayans believed that Cenotes were gateways to the underworld?” Samuel said, his face glowing underneath from the torch in his left hand. His gun was in his right hand, lowered, so that the gun was pointing somewhere around Michael’s thigh. Samuel got closer. “You know what else?”
“What?” Michael asked. He opened his hand that had been clenched into a fist at his side, and wondered if he grabbed at the gun now, would he be able to move it away quickly enough to avoid getting shot? He could twist Samuel’s hand in the other direction. Maybe he would misfire into the forest. Maybe he could then catch him off balance. Knock him into the hole in the ground. Too many maybes, but then again, he had nothing to lose.
“The Mayans would also drop their sacrifices into the cenotes. Pots, jugs, precious stones, food, cloth… people. It’s so important to keep tradition alive. Don’t you think?”
Michael reacted on instinct, his hand working independently of his brain, reaching for the gun. He heard the sound before he felt the pain. So loud in the deathly quiet night. Ringing though the trees, waking up whatever animals had been quiet until now. The solid ground beneath his feet gave way as he stumbled backwards, falling from the precipice, and in seconds his body slammed against the water like a stinging-slap.
The shock of the cold water made him gasp, but as his head went underneath the surface, he couldn’t breathe. He sank from the momentum of the drop, sliding deeper and deeper, to a whole new level of blackness. For a brief moment, we wondered what it would be like to drown. He moved his arms in a swimming motion, but could not tell which direction he needed to go until his body naturally started floating towards the surface. As he broke through to the world above, he sucked in all the air he could and panted as he tried to stay afloat. The disturbed water lapped against the limestone walls.
Now his head was above water, and even though he could barely see, he could tell how huge the cave was from the inside by the way the sounds echoed off of the walls. It had the acoustics of being in a stone cathedral. It had to have been much bigger than it looked from the outside, because he swam for a while before his hands made contact with the cold, damp stone that made up the sides of the cave.
The water got shallower towards the edge and he could stand up. He leaned against the stone, resting his weight against it as he waited for his breathing to catch up with him. Now he didn’t have to worry about staying afloat, the pain made itself known again. He touched the side of his torso and winced as his fingers touched the exposed flesh through the rip in his t-shirt. He must have been hit when he tried to grab the gun. The bullet appeared to have grazed his side. He couldn’t let the pain overwhelm him and tried to distract himself, and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.
He looked up but couldn’t see anything. It was mostly black, except for the odd flash of white as water rippled and the tiniest amount of light glistened off of the damp walls. He couldn’t see the mouth of the cave.
Fragments of limestone exploded near his head, and reverberations echoed off of the cave-walls as a shot rained down from above. The water exploded near his feet, liquid shooting up into the air like a volcanic eruption. Michael dodged, hopping around clumsily like he was walking on hot-coals. He waited, chest heaving, as he flattened his body against the wall, but no more shots came.
The voice from above was an incoherent mumbling from where Michael stood. He desperately tried to make out the words, to have some kind of clue as to what was going on up there. Another shot fired out, but it wasn’t fired into the cenote, not that he could tell anyway. A sinking feeling lurched inside of him, like going over a bump in the road. His heart sunk. It had to be Josie, surely. Another shot fired. It sounded quieter this time, further away maybe. He hoped Josie was making a run for it. Maybe she could outrun him. There were plenty of hiding places in the thick jungle. There was a chance, and he held onto that sliver of hope as tightly as he could.
There had to be a way out of this pit. As his eyes adjusted somewhat to this new level of darkness he could make out
