The Cave
It certainly wasn’t the first time Nerissa had gotten herself into a tight spot, only this time it was a literal one. She’d known better, but as was so often the case, she let her curiosity get the better of her. After judging that she’d fit, she’d wiggled into a hole in the limestone karst, pushing her camera in front of her and using the flashlight on her cellphone to light the way through the dark.
Now she was stuck, not by the tight confines of the narrow cave, but as she’d rounded a curve she’d come face to face with an intimidating-looking spider that was bouncing its web to warn her off. Spiders were her kryptonite. She’d take a snake over a spider any day, and now here she was at a stalemate, unable to push forward. Trying to wiggle out backwards would take time, and she wouldn’t be able to tell if something had crawled in behind her. If she could figure out a way to get past it…
She took a calming breath and watched the spider warily. The creature bounced in its web once, twice, almost like a sentry. Nerissa closed her eyes, forcing herself to find calm despite her racing pulse. It’s just a spider. A big, hairy nightmare of a spider, but still—just a spider. Maybe if she focused on being nonthreatening.
When she opened her eyes again, the spider had gone still. Its legs held tight against the silk, poised, like it was deciding whether to spring. Then, in a movement too sudden to predict, it darted sideways off the web and vanished into a crack in the rock.
Nerissa blinked. “Well… that’s convenient.” Her laugh came out shaky, but she wasted no time nudging her camera ahead and inching forward. Coincidence or not, she wasn’t about to question her sudden good fortune. Hopefully, the spider would still be gone if she had to return this same way. The cave she was in now, on the floodplain near the Chipola River, was in an area riddled with other caves. It could be a dead end, or it might connect to part of the larger system. Logically, she shouldn’t be in here at all, especially without proper caving equipment, but once again, her curiosity got the better of her.
As she rounded the curve, the height of the cave increased. From stomach-crawling, she progressed to hands and knees, then crouching, and at last, she could walk cautiously in the confined space. A few yards later, the passageway opened into a cavern large enough to hold a dozen people.
Nerissa gasped. There in the light from her phone, she could see the faint etchings of glyphs, spirals, animals and handprints decorated in ochre covering the walls—dozens of them. She lifted her camera, steadying her trembling hands, and began to snap photo after photo, her pulse racing at the thrill of discovery. This cavern had probably been untouched for centuries until now. It felt as if she was standing in a sacred place, perhaps that of her ancestors, the Choctaw.
She stayed as long as she dared, trying to conserve the battery on her phone. There was still the issue of finding her way back, either past the guardian spider, or through another exit. Moving around the room, she’d found a crack in the wall just wide enough for her to squeeze into, and she caught the faint scent of a forest in bloom spilling from within. Nerissa pushed into the crevasse and followed it.
Several hours later, back home and freshly showered, Nerissa sat on the couch, a cup of sweet-smelling cocoa on the coffee table in front of her and her laptop tucked onto her lap. She inserted the memory card from her camera and waited patiently for the images to load. There were hundreds of photos from the day. The hiking trail, river, and even entering the cave. But all the photos from the cavern itself were blank. Black.
The photos of the hike back to the trailhead were fine.
Nerissa examined each photo of the cavern with a frown on her face. The files were intact, but they were black. Her camera had never failed her before. There had been light from her cellphone and the flash from the camera. There was no reason these should be blank. She rubbed her arms, a chill rising despite the comfortable temperature in her cabin.
“I guess the ancestors didn’t want their secrets shared,” she muttered, trying to laugh off the uneasy feeling that settled upon her. Even so, she didn’t delete the files, but this was a mystery for another day.
(©) Copyright Sage Byrne, 2025
