“How much further?” Adan asked.
“We’re more than halfway, but still have a way to go.”
His small, tired voice said, “Okay.”
Hunter’s shoulders ached from not being able to lower her arms, and she knew her knees were raw and bloody from using them to help propel her forward. She checked her phone again, this time noticing there was only ten percent power left on it. She pushed the “low power” mode to save what she could.
Three minutes later, she thought she saw the hairy moss moving on the wall. She stopped and stared. It was coming toward her. She froze and, with horror, saw several clumps join into one mass, almost filling the shaft.
A small running trickle of water hit her chest as it ran down the shaft. Rainwater, coming down the hole.
Adan said, “Hey! There’s water coming in!”
“It’s not much. Let’s keep going.”
“Okay.” He hesitated a moment before saying, “We’re not going to drown, ar
e we?” Adan’s voice was almost pleading.
“No, Adan, we’re not. We’ll get out of here before that can happen. Be strong, okay?” She prayed it wasn’t a lie.
“Okay.”
They crawled further and Hunter’s shoulders ached so much that she felt cramps forming in her upper back. Her knees were like hamburger and her jeans felt sticky and wet from the blood. She tried to use her toes more, but that meant almost doing a plank in the tight space, which made her buttocks and lower back cramp, too.
The shaft grew darker, and Hunter used the phone flashlight. The large clump of hairy moss was a foot away, and breath caught in her throat. The moss was a moving, striding mass of spiders, filling the shaft from top to bottom and side to side. The first portion reached her outstretched hands and she felt the tiny, prickling legs of thousands of daddy long-leg spiders crawling over her hands, then arms, coming for her face.
She barely had enough composure to say, “Some spiders, Adan. They’re not poisonous, but they’re going to crawl over us.”
He didn’t answer as he gripped her ankle.
The spiders crawled on her hair, and on her face, with their needle-thin legs going into her ears, her nose, her eyes, and on her closed lips. They were in her hair by the hundreds, burrowing in, the tiny feet touching her scalp and the stilt-like legs moving her hair so it gave her goose bumps.
She couldn’t breathe because so many skittered around and probed inside her nostrils, so she opened her lips just enough to let in air. Spider legs slipped in the cracks, and Hunter pressed down with her lips. The spiders pulled them out, but immediately others pushed their own legs in her mouth.
She tried to squirm, but the rock all around her kept Hunter in place, almost as tight as a straightjacket. She heard herself make small noises, and behind her, Adan struggled in full blown panic. He tried to blow them out of his mouth, but then gagged as more entered.
“Keep your lips together, open them only a hair.”
He stopped gagging, but his breathing sounded ragged and full of phlegm. She said, “We’re almost there.” She spat out the spiders that swarmed in her mouth when she spoke.
Hunter’s neck was on fire from holding it off the rock for so long. She turned her head to the side, and the pain forcing stiff muscles and ligaments to twist made her breath whistle.
As soon as her head touched down, she jerked it up.
Water ran in a small rivulet down the floor of the shaft, two inches deep and six inches wide. Hunter’s stomach felt a ball of ice form.
The water’s rising, and fast.
Hunter’s fear of tight spaces and of drowning almost caused her to faint as the blood pounded in her ears, but she held on and pushed the fear back down. “Adan, the water’s rising, so put your face to the side when you need to.”
He patted her ankle, but didn’t speak. She heard him spitting out spiders.
She crawled ahead, feeling the water grow steadily deeper on her chest. The spiders didn’t like it, so they gathered on her head and face, any place above the water. She felt goose bumps every time their tiny legs touched her neck and went into her ears.
She snorted when they went into her nose, and with her head turned sideways to stay above the water, it was constant.
The water was cold, and made their teeth chatter, but it also helped with the pain on their knees. When several dime-sized hailstones floated down to her, she knew why.