Tight spaces

James Sterling had always been intensely fascinated with bodies of water, be it rivers, lakes, ponds, seas or oceans. He found it as riveting and moving as a Baptist finds church. He wasn’t quite sure what he liked most about them or what drew him to them, but he supposed that he didn’t have to know the attraction because not knowing it didn’t diminish its beauty.

As much as the superficial beauty of the water captivated his eyes and its cascading waves were hypnotic to his mind, his true passion lay in diving deep below the surface and as a humble student of Mother Nature dutifully exploring everything there was to explore he had done quite well for himself and become a rather skilled diver.

He had started as a young man in his twenties doing open water diving in the many lakes around him, eventually graduating to open ocean dives. His first dive was a cathartic experience comparable only to a young man's first orgasm in the sense of being otherworldly, intense and like some unseen eyes he didn't know he had being opened. He had dived a depth of 50m and for a duration of a mere 30 minutes, but it was all the time and depth needed to set something off inside James’ mind that formed a chemical chain reaction akin to a person with an addiction taking their first dose of a heavy substance. He quickly excelled at diving and, after a few short years, began to grow tired of open diving. At the advice of a friend who specialized in various forms of cave diving, he decided to try cavern diving.

It’s worth noting here that cave diving and cavern diving are two very different things; cavern diving is at a much shallower depth, still within reach of the sunlight, and you can always see the opening to the cave when your in it. James very much liked cavern diving and did it regularly as if his life depended on it; three years went by and he had eventually exhaustively searched all of the nearby lakes’ caverns and came to the conclusion that he needed a stronger dose of diving, so to speak, he needed to go deeper, he needed to go further, he needed more danger. He wanted to find things that hadn’t been found before; he wanted to tread where no man dared to tread; he had that same primal desire to explore that was upheld by our ancestors who colonized the world and filled out the gaps on the globe. He wasn’t solely diving for the inherent dangers that came with it. Still, the presence of danger hyper-inflated his ego and added a near-sexual thrill to it that he found unmatched by any other activity he tried. With the help of his friend Ron (the diver who got him into cavern diving), the two of them went on a cave dive together. This time, the depth was 120m, and the mouth of the cave was still within the daylight zone of the ocean; however, once inside, all light quickly vanished. They had brought a phosphorescent line with them to mark out their path and use as a way out of the cave, as well as several two-thousand-lumen lights, which helped immensely; however, the spot beam angle was only maybe 15 degrees, which still left much of the cave in complete darkness. It was a tight fit, there was no way to sugarcoat it, at many times the holes they squeezed through and the crevices they endured had less than 5 inches of clearance around them however this excited James, he knew should he get stuck it would be the death of him and the idea of that was not only humbling but sparked a macabre fascination deep within. That fascination would be what brought him back time and time again to explore deeper and longer than the time before. Ron had dived into this cave many times before and knew it better than the back of his hand. While at first, this allowed James the freedom to spend more time down there as they had all their routes in and out mapped and marked by line, this eventually became restrictive.

He found that following the same beaten path and glowing lines grew to be redundant and ordinary, contradicting what he thought cave diving should be about. Shortly after this time, James stopped diving at that cave and began to scout out new locations alone. It was no easy feat; he found many well-mapped and easily accessible coral caves and lava caves, which provide only short inlets into the caves and have little in the way of variety for paths to take and crevices to explore However, he was hard-pressed to find any solution caves, solution caves are carved by weakly acidic water flowing through the soluble limestone or dolomite and can create an immense web of trails and pathways to explore, often venturing in several hundred feet. It was these solution caves that James was after; there are many well-known and recorded caves like that all around the world. however, they’ve all been explored, and none of them held that same mystical allure that a previously unexplored cave held in his mind; he saw finding and exploring a cave for the first time as his birthright and his God-given mission on this planet, and he would not rest until he found a suitable solution cave to dive in. Over the coming months, James would begin to do a survey, mapping out areas that were prime for solution caves; on one of these dives at a depth of approximately 200m, he swore he saw a blink of light appear 150m in front of him and about ninety degrees from the beam of his flashlight. Appearing for maybe three seconds, it vanished into the growing dark ocean abyss before him. He scrambled with the flashlight's beam to trace the light's direction and illuminated the surrounding areas, searching for anything that could’ve been responsible for it. There was nothing, he quickly dismissed the light as a figment of his imagination and went on with his dive; with almost exactly one-third of his tank left, he found what he believed to be a suitable cave opening; it appeared to be a solutional cave based on the geological surroundings of the opening, and he predicted through the use of his flashlight that the opening to the cave sprawled in a hundred meters or more at least. James was thrilled, so he returned quickly to the surface to plot and map this cave and cross-reference it with all other known caves in the area to see if it had ever been searched. The textbooks he got from the library and used for reference were updated as late as the 1980s and showed no signs of the cave ever existing or having been explored. Whilst he was not a geologist. He knew it took millions of years or, at the very least, several hundred thousand years for a cave like that to form; he was certain it was no new addition to the ocean. Still, he found it queer that it hadn’t yet been documented or explored, at least not as recently as the 1980s. Back home, James went online to find the most up-to-date maps of the area and was surprised to find that even one as recent as two years ago showed no signs of that cave existing despite it thoroughly mapping out a cave that was only a mere 700m lateral to it, “surely if they discovered and mapped that cave they would’ve discovered and mapped this one too” he wondered aloud to himself. But despite his exhaustive efforts and many queries on online forums and message boards, he could find nobody, living or dead, who had ever seen that cave before. Had some ocean plant life obscured the opening, or was this cave his destiny to find and explore? Opting to believe the latter and inflate his ego further, he explored the cave the next day. He had planned to take Ron with him, as even in a known cave, exploring solo is incredibly dangerous, but Ron was ultimately unavailable. He dared not put it off for even a few days; he had grown paranoid that by posting the cave's approximate locations on all those sites, he would lure someone else out equally as hungry to make a name for themselves as having been the first to explore it. He set off alone early in the morning with his gear in tow, ready to begin a full day's dive; his rule of thumb for oxygen consumption was 1/3 tank going in, 1/3 tank coming out and 1/3 tank saving for emergencies. He knew some people who used 1/4 in, 1/4 out and 1/2 for emergencies, but he found that too cautious and unnecessary. After all, cave diving wasn’t meant to be a safe sport, at least not to James Sterling. To James Sterling, the danger was part and parcel with the experience and notoriety entangled with the pseudo-sport of cave diving. After shutting off his boat's engine, he reached the dive zone and readied his dive gear. He entered the cool water at 10:33 am and reached the cave entrance at 11:01 am. he struggled to find the opening in the dark water. The weather above was cloudy and dull with little sunlight penetration. After marking off the entrance to the cave with a circle of glowing lines, he began to explore the interior, which was stalactitic with long tendrils of calcified stone shooting out of the ceiling of the cave and entangling everything in sight in a sort of eerie stone labyrinth. He still had 7/8 of his tank of oxygen available and was in no hurry to return to the surface, finding this cave and exploring it, he felt, was his life’s magnum opus, he was careful and considerate of how he lay the ropes along the Stalactites and made sure to secure every line in a way that should he need to make a speedy exit he would not become entangled in them. The phosphorescent line was spooled neatly in his hands as he draped it over and around the rock fixtures jutting down from the ceiling and as he progressed further and further into the cave any sources of natural light ebbed until eventually he was in a near state of perpetual and absolute darkness, pierced only by the beam of his 2000lumen flashlight and the dull glow of the lines. After about 45 minutes of exploring the cave and using up almost 200ft of the phosphorescent line, he was sitting with his back to a stalagmite, enjoying the eerie stony view, when he noticed a glimmer of light out of the corner of his eye. He hastily shone the light in the direction and saw nothing; as he prepared mentally to move on and most likely physically move on as well, he saw it again, unmistakable and distinct, a shining ember of light in an otherwise near-pitch black cave. Was it some form of fish like a lanternfish or some ocean equivalent of a glow bug? He wasn’t sure, but what he was sure of was that this newfound entity in the cave had captivated his mind's attention; he began to follow it through the cave hastily and sloppily tossing line around himself as he went so as not to lose himself however as he got closer to the source of the light it began to speed up, his mind racing, not wanting to lose track of this marvellous creature he abandoned the line work and hurriedly raced after the glowing light that was voyaging further and further into the seemingly never-ending complex of caves and its stony tendrils. It bobbed and bounced around the cave, gracefully maneuvering the tightest of areas and sharpest of turns until he came to an area of the cave that began to decrease in height drastically, it was like a surrealist painting of a hallway that appeared to taper off into a tiny door at the end, and it was at this small opening that the light disappeared into, the opening couldn’t have been more than a couple inches wider than James himself was without any scuba gear, frantic and afraid of losing the light he had become hellbent on following he took off his scuba tank and pushed it through the narrow opening before swimming through after it. The portal opened up into a much larger area almost completely walled in except for a myriad of openings of various shapes and sizes each seeming to lead to a different tunnel or chamber, it was in this room of windows that he lost track and sight of the glow, after shining a light through each of the openings trying to catch any sighting of the light he began to turn back as his oxygen tank was now just below half when out of the furthest corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the shimmering light that was now nearly twice as bright as it was before and seemingly larger as well. He was still in the process of refitting his scuba tank and lines from having removed them to fit through the opening when the light quickly ducked into a crevice before backing out and then shooting down a narrow passageway; he raced after it, banging his scuba tank off the opening repeatedly as he did so. The shaft was long and narrow and he could hear and feel his tank scraping off the surrounding dolomite as he dragged himself through into another clearing this time with only two other openings, the openings sat above and below one another neither big enough for him and the scuba tank to fit through as he began to debate which one to go through the light reappeared to him from the entrance to the top cave beckoning to him to follow it into the cave complex further, he quickly disrobed of the tank. This time, he pulled it in after himself as he entered the narrow portal way within mere yards of the transient light that flickered before him, beckoning and calling out to him with a siren's call of longing. He made it roughly 30m into this narrow shaft before he snagged himself on a series of small stalagmites. They broke off easily as he swam through them, but they cut him as his body made contact with them. His blood oozed out of the abrasions. He hastily picked up the pace of his pursuit and made it another 15m before it narrowed further still. He found himself stuck; he could not back out, with his arms outstretched and his legs frantically flailing around. He desperately tried to free himself but saw the light fade out in the distance. He could not bring his arms back behind himself, and he began to frantically claw at the tiny stone turrets that circled the narrow passageway, desperately trying to use them as handholds to shove off from and propel himself forward or backwards or any which way he could go. After a few minutes of struggling, he began questioning how long he’d been in the cave and how much oxygen he had left. He knew the last time he checked, which now seemed like eons ago, he had less than half a tank. He knew now, surely he was at 1/3 or maybe even less, he knew he should’ve at the very least maintained roping out the passages he went down, he knew it wouldn’t do him any good now. Still, he also knew that if he were to free himself, he would barely know how to get back to the main opening of the cave, and he only had his emergency oxygen supply to get him through. Time went by, how much time exactly he wasn’t sure of, what he was sure of was that he was royally fucked. He could not free himself no matter how hard he tried and his arms were going numb from the loss of circulation, James was not a man who panicked easily, as a child he watched scary movies and never flinched once at the monsters or boogeymen they portrayed, he was never a night light kid either or the kind to go crying to mommy and daddy begging to spend the night in their bed, however now things were different, this was no scene from a horror movie, mired in bad acting and cheesy special effects, this was real life and time was running out, if ever there was a time to panic and be afraid, truly afraid, this was it. With every breath he took he swore he could sense the oxygen flow getting lower and getting fainter in his mouth, it was as if he was only getting 3/4 of a full breath each time he inhaled, he was doing his best to calm himself and steady his breathing so as not to diminish his already low supply any faster. As he lay there his mind began to wander, first to how stupid he was for going in alone to an uncharted cave and not even properly roping it out, then to how stupid he was even to have pursued this dangerous hobby, all his other friends were golfers or drinkers or spent their time idly in front of a tv, beer in hand cheering on various sports teams, he began to query about how the most dangerous aspects of their lives were the impending heart attacks from such stationary lifestyles, he quickly shook himself loose of these thoughts and his mind shifted to that glow, what was it exactly,

Some unknown breed of angler fish, some ball of gas that floated through the caverns and reflected and enhanced the light that shone on it from his flashlight, he supposed it didn’t matter too much now what it was as it was long gone and he had no way of going further after it. As his mind wandered hazily between thoughts he was brought back to reality and the gravity of his situation when he took a breath and this time barely seemed to get half a breath worth of oxygen, his tank was damn near empty now. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. As his mind frantically searched for any idea on how to free himself, there was a faint glow in the distance before him, the light had returned, or was returning. The white light had now begun to be outlined by thin halos of blueish green, dancing like ribbons around the mysterious orb's perfect circle. It got closer to him; it was now 15m from him. As it danced between the stalagmites and hovered ever closer to him, he could feel each breath getting less and less oxygen, his vision began to blur, his already numb arms became inoperable and as he tried desperately to flail his feet he could not muster the strength to do so, as his eyelids fluttered the light grew closer still and as he drew his final breath of oxygen the light was within the grasp of his hands if only he had the strength to move them, he was suffocating, the pressure of the water crashed down around him as his pulse hammered. His heart leaped into his throat; he was within a metre of the orb, but still had no understanding of what it could be. As his eyelids fluttered and his vision began to grow dim the intensity of the light grew as if feeding off what little life essence James had left, it was as if it was consuming the very soul of him and then it was over, as waves of black rushed over his eyes, James sterling ceased to exist in the mortal sense