Anywhere But Home

Harvey, our guide, had only a vestige of a moustache in his nineteen years. The entrance of the caves, like a giant, corroded mouth, brooded darkly. We shuffled crab-like down the sloping rocks. The last high notes of birdsong found our ears and the last rays of sun our necks. We then saw the coffins. Stacked upon one another, clambering up the side of the cliff with their beaten, warped boards, the tombs resembled rotten cavities, gaping down as if they might crumble and collapse. "This way," Harvey said, and both my companion and I edged after him.
The descent took an hour, plummeting down shafts barely wide enough to admit Harvey's fragile(but nimble) frame. "Okay, one at a time," he would shout. It grew colder, and only when I stood close to the guide’s light would I see my breath pluming outward. Rappelling down a rope above an abysmal black, Harvey said, "Whatever you do, keep both hands on the rope." He clamped the thin metallic handle of the lantern in his mouth and went down. At the bottom there was a stretch of knee-deep water. We waded through. "Now we climb," the guide said. Our legs diddered. We hoisted ourselves out of the water. I wanted to stop, but I was spared the request. Harvey crouched and placed the lantern flat. The filament had lost its brightness; only a few orange flames fluttered. He moaned, applying a delicate touch to the lantern, its chrome edges rusted. The young Filipino struggled, offering us lulling glances when his efforts failed. He took his bag and emptied the assortment out: a spare filament, a pen, a set of keys, Marlboros. First he withdrew a cigarette, lighting it from the flames. Some essential piece within must have shifted; Harvey took two of his keys and began to jab softly into a slot at the bottom. He flinched but did not wait; if the flames winked out we would be marooned.
Our eyes traced the guide's fingers. The scrawny digits of his hands reddened. I leaned against the damp rock with my friend, all three of us now smoking. A mound of ash had built at Harvey’s feet; he'd smoked the Marlboro without using his hands. Only his constant tinkering fractured the silence. I thought then of those coffins hundreds of metres above, of the irony of their unburied souls endlessly welcoming new wayfarers. And then, as abruptly as the filament had wavered, Harvey's touch urged it back to life. The relief oozed into his face, and ours. "Bad joke," he said, smiling at us. "Okay, now we go up."