THE RAVINE (SAMPLE)
DISCLAIMER: The images in this video are all AI generated. The voice is my voice, a real human voice.
THE RAVINE
One moment, we can see the top of the mountain. The next moment, it disappears. A wall of white mist covers the rocks above us. Then it begins to move quickly down the mountain. “Shit,” I say. “We need to go back down.”
For once, Diane does not argue. The problem is that the path is very steep. Perhaps that is why we never read about this mountain in any of the guidebooks. Some local people told us about it in the hotel bar last night. They warned us that the climb was difficult. But Diane liked the idea of a challenge.
That seemed fine then. It does not seem fine now. We have to go down very slowly. One wrong step and we could fall down the side of the mountain. Then I notice another path. It is very small and difficult to see. It leaves the main path and goes sideways across the mountain. More importantly, it seems to go gently down.
“There, look,” I say. “What do you think?” Diane looks down the steep main path. Then she looks up at the mist coming towards us, fast. “Let's try it.” So we do. I move ahead. “Look out!” I shout. Diane is four or five meters behind me. “Faster!” “I'm going as fast as I bloody can, Steve.” I do not answer. I turn and continue down the path.
This new path is not as steep, so we can move faster. But we are not fast enough. Suddenly, everything around us turns white. “Shit,” Diane says. I reach out for her hand. I can hardly see her. She is only a dark shape in the white mist.
She takes my hand and moves closer. The mist is cold and wet. It covers our clothes and faces with tiny drops of water. “What now?” Diane asks. She tries to keep her voice calm, but I can hear the fear in it. I cannot blame her.
The Lake District looks beautiful in pictures. There are high mountains, blue lakes, little boats, gift shops, and old stone villages. People come here from the cities for the clean air and the beautiful countryside. At night, there are thousands of stars because there are fewer city lights.
But places like this can also be dangerous. If you fall here, there may be nobody nearby to help you. Your mobile phone may have no signal. And when thick mist comes down like this, you can quickly lose your way. It is October. It is cold. If we stay out here too long, our bodies will become dangerously cold. People die in these mountains every year.
I take a deep breath. “I think—” “Are you okay?” Diane asks. “I'm fine.” Her question annoys me a little. She is the one who sounds frightened. But this is not the time to argue. And then another thought comes into my mind. It is not a thought I am proud of. Maybe this situation could help me. If I stay calm and lead us safely down the mountain, perhaps Diane will see me differently. Perhaps I can be the hero.
“We need to get to lower ground,” I say. “Yes, I know.” She says it as if I have told her something very obvious. Maybe I have. I am trying to make the situation clear. And yes, I want to impress her. But I also want to do the right thing. Honestly. I point down the small path. We can only see a few meters of it before it disappears into the mist.
“We should keep going. Keep calm and go slowly.” “Yes, I understand that, obviously.” I know that tone. Diane is a university teacher. She uses that tone when one of her students thinks they know more than they really do. There was a time when I sometimes went to her lectures. I know almost nothing about geology. I never did.
I just liked listening to her talk about something she loved. I cannot remember her ever coming to one of my lectures. She was never very interested in music. Maybe our relationship was never what I thought it was. Maybe neither of us felt what I thought we felt. I do not like that idea. But lately, both of us have been thinking about it too often.
That is why we came on this trip. We spent our honeymoon here. We hoped that coming back might help us find something we had lost. But perhaps places do not have magic. Perhaps only people do. And right now, none of that is going to help us get off this mountain.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Come on.” Diane suddenly grabs the back of my coat. I turn quickly and almost lose my balance. Loose stones fall down the slope and disappear into the mist. The path is becoming rockier. Diane catches my arm and stops me from falling. I pull my arm away. “What?” “Steve, we're still walking.” “I noticed. Actually, we're not walking now because you just grabbed me.”
She folds her arms. “We've been walking for nearly twenty minutes.” Her teeth begin to chatter from the cold. “But I don't think we're much lower. I think we might be going the wrong way.” Then I notice that my own teeth are beginning to chatter too. I look at the ground. She may be right.
The path does not seem to be going down anymore. Perhaps it has become flat. If that is true, we are still halfway up the mountain. Panic begins to grow inside me. I imagine it as a small hungry animal inside my stomach. I cannot let it grow. I must stay calm. If both of us panic, we are in serious trouble.
At least we brought some supplies. We have some granola bars and a thermos of hot tea in our backpacks. They can help us stay warm for a little longer, but only for a little longer. We need to get off this mountain. We try our phones. Nothing. There is no signal. Out here, our mobiles are almost useless.
“We should have stayed on the main path,” Diane says. “If we had gone slowly, we would have been okay.” I say nothing. She looks at me. “What?” “Steve, I wasn't blaming you.” “Fine.” “Not everything has to be about that.” “I said fine.” But she continues.
“All I said was that we should have stayed on the main path. I wasn't saying this was all your fault.” “Okay.” “I wasn't. If I had seen this path first, I probably would have done the same thing. It looked like it would get us down faster.” “Right.” “I'm just saying that now, looking back, we should have gone the other way.” “Okay. All right. You've made your point.”
A sheep makes a quiet sound somewhere in the mist. A bleat. “Can we just forget about it?” I ask. “Okay.” She rolls her eyes. I pretend not to see. “So what now?” she asks. “Do we go back?” “Do you think we can make it?” “If we can find the main path again, we should be able to find our way back from there.”
Perhaps. If we are very lucky. Our hotel is about two miles from the bottom of the mountain. The mist may be down there too. Even if we get off the mountain, we will still be a long way from somewhere warm and dry. But going back seems like our best choice. Then we hear a dog bark.
We both stop. Diane pushes her dark hair away from her eyes and looks into the mist. I look too. I can only see the rocky path for a few meters. Then it disappears into white. The sheep bleats again. A few seconds later, the dog barks again. Diane looks at me. I look at her.
A sheep by itself does not mean much. It could be lost, just like us. But a dog is different. A dog probably has an owner. “Hello!” I shout into the mist. “Hello? Is anybody down there?” Diane calls too. “Hello?” Then a voice answers. “Hello?” “Thank God for that,” Diane whispers. We begin moving down the rocky path toward the voice.
“Hello?” it calls again. “Hello?” “Keep shouting!” I shout into the mist. For a moment, I wonder if the other person is lost too. Perhaps we sound like the rescuers. But I hope it is a shepherd looking for a lost sheep. Better still, I imagine a shepherd with a warm cottage nearby. A cottage with a fire and hot tea.
The loose stones move and make noise under our boots. The path is now almost completely covered with small rocks. It also begins to go steeply down. Diane grabs my arm. “Careful!” “Yeah. Okay. I know.” I pull my arm away. She gives a long sigh behind me. Then the mist becomes a little thinner as we reach the bottom.
Now we can see perhaps twenty-five or thirty meters in front of us. After seeing almost nothing, that feels like a huge improvement. But beyond that distance, the white mist still hides everything. We are standing in a shallow ravine between two mountains. The sides of the ravine rise steeply on both sides. The bottom is about ten yards wide. Almost everything is covered by loose broken stone.
The small path we followed ends here. Or perhaps it simply disappears under all the rocks. Further down the ravine, I can see two large boulders. They are big and flat on top. The first is about twenty meters away. The second is farther away, near the entrance to a narrow gully in the side of the mountain. The mist moves slowly through the ravine. But I cannot see any person. I cannot see a dog either.
“Hello!” I shout. For a moment, there is silence. Then I hear a sound. Click, click. Small rocks are moving somewhere in the ravine. They make a rattling sound. “Shit,” I say. “Easy,” Diane says. “At least we've found some lower ground.” “It doesn't mean much. We don't know where we are.” “There's somebody here. We heard them. Hello!” she shouts. Her mouth is close to my ear. “Ow!” “Sorry.” “Forget it.”
Then we hear the stones click and rattle again. And a voice calls, “Hello?” “There!” Diane says. “See?” “Yeah. Okay.” Then a sheep calls from somewhere above us and to the left. I look up. There it is. It is not really a sheep. It is a young lamb. The little animal is slowly walking across the loose rocks on the lower part of the opposite mountain.
“Aww,” Diane says. “Poor little thing.” Diane loves small animals. I almost remind her about the lamb she ate for dinner last night. Almost. The lamb sees us. It looks at us with large dark eyes and bleats again. Then something answers from farther down the ravine. Another lamb. At least, it sounds like one.
The little lamb moves a few steps sideways. It bleats again. Click. Click. The rocks move somewhere below. This time, the sound continues for longer. It sounds as if something is moving slowly across the ravine. But I cannot see anything. The lamb becomes still. It looks down the ravine. I look too. The mist hides everything beyond the loose rocks.
Then the sound stops. Silence. A dog barks twice. The lamb becomes tense, but it does not move. Click. Click. Click. The dog barks again. The lamb bleats. Then there is another long silence. Diane's fingers close around my arm. She starts to speak. I quickly put a finger to my lips. She frowns at me. I do not know why I suddenly feel that we need to be quiet. But I do.
A moment later, we both understand why. The clicking sound of moving rocks becomes louder and faster. The lamb takes a few steps backwards. It looks like it does not know what to do. Some stones fall down the slope. Then everything stops again. I stare into the mist. Nothing.
The dog barks. It sounds very close now. Close enough that we should be able to see it. But there is no dog. The ravine is empty. I look at the lamb. It is listening. Click. The lamb in the ravine bleats again. The real lamb answers. Then the rocks suddenly begin to move very fast. There is a loud sound. Diane grabs my arm. She points.
The ground in the ravine is moving. Something is under the loose rocks. A low shape pushes the rocks upwards as it moves beneath them. The stones roll away behind it. It looks like an animal swimming under water. Except this thing is swimming under rocks. And it is moving directly toward the lamb.
The lamb gives one terrified cry. It tries to turn. It is too late. The moving shape races up the slope. Loose stones fly everywhere. Then the ground under the lamb explodes. Rocks shoot into the air. The lamb screams. I have never heard a sheep make a sound like that.
When the stones fall to the ground, I can only see the lamb's head and its front legs. The rest of its body is under the rocks. Its front legs kick crazily. Its head moves from side to side. It screams in pain.
Then blood suddenly sprays out from under the stones. Diane puts a hand over her mouth. I hear myself say something. “Jesus.” The lamb screams even louder. Then the sound suddenly stops. The stones slide down the slope. Everything becomes still.
The lamb does not move. Its white fur is covered with red spots. Its eyes stare at nothing. I hope it is dead. I hope it cannot feel anything now. Then its body is suddenly pulled deeper under the rocks. The stones move over it. The whole pile of loose rock rises and falls several times. Then it becomes still.
The lamb is gone. Even most of the stones covered in blood have disappeared under the surface. It is as if the lamb was never there. “Fuck,” I say. “Oh, fucking hell!” Then silence. Diane starts to speak. Before she can, we hear the familiar click and rattle. Something is moving under the rocks. And from the place where the lamb died, a low, empty voice calls, “Hello?”
Diane puts her hand over my mouth. “Stay quiet,” she whispers. “I know,” I whisper through her fingers. “It hunts by sound,” she says. “Or vibrations through the rocks.” There is a small raised area where the lamb disappeared. You have to look carefully to see it. The rocks there move softly. Click. Click. “It's under the rocks,” Diane whispers. “I can see that.”
“So if we can get back onto solid ground, maybe we'll be okay.” “Maybe.” She gives me an angry look. “Do you have any better ideas?” “No.” The voice calls again. “Hello?” Diane looks toward the slope behind us. “Yes,” she whispers. “We go back. Very slowly. Very carefully. And very quietly.”
I nod. Diane lifts one foot. She moves it slowly up the slope and gently puts it down. Then she moves the other. She takes my hand. Or perhaps I take hers. It does not matter. Together, we begin climbing toward the path. We try to make as little noise as possible. But there are loose stones everywhere. They move under our boots. Behind us, the rocks near the dead lamb answer. Click. Click. “Hello?” the voice calls. We keep climbing. “Hello?” “Keep going,” Diane whispers.
A stone moves under my foot and bounces loudly down the slope. Then a woman's voice calls from the ravine. “John!” She has a Scottish accent. “John!” “Fucking hell,” I whisper. The voice changes. Now it is a man. “Shauna?” Another Scottish voice. “Shauna? Where are ye?”
Neither of us answers. A cold wind blows through the ravine. My teeth start shaking again. The wind pushes some of the mist away. For a moment, I can see dark trees and higher ground. Then the wind becomes weaker. The mist returns.
Stones click behind us. A sheep bleats. Then a cow moos. Diane pulls my hand. “Come on.” A dog barks two or three times. The sudden noise makes me jump. We are only about three meters from the top of the slope now. Then a terrible roar fills the ravine.
I do not know what kind of animal could make a sound like that. Diane cries out. I lose my balance. My foot sends a small river of loose stones down the slope. The rocks below us suddenly rise. Something races beneath them. Straight toward us. “Run!” Diane shouts.
We try. Then, at the last second, we see that the creature is not coming directly at us. It races past us. It is heading for the edge of the loose rocks, where the solid path begins. Diane immediately changes direction. She pushes me back down the slope.
Then the ground at the top explodes. Broken stones fly through the air. For one second, I think I see something inside them. Something alive. Then the stones fall again. Whatever I saw is gone. Only a low shape remains under the rocks.
Diane runs past me, still holding my hand. We race down the ravine. Behind us, the stones begin to move. The creature is following. Diane runs toward the nearest large boulder. It is about the size of a small car. More importantly, it is solid.
“Come on!” Diane jumps onto it. She turns and reaches for me. “Quick!” Behind me, the low moving shape is getting closer. The loose stones rise in front of it like a wave. I jump onto the boulder.
Then I understand what is about to happen. I grab Diane and push her flat. She does not fight me. She understands too. Something hits the boulder. Hard. The whole rock shakes. For one terrible second, I think it will move, and we will fall off of it. But it does not. It is too large and too deep in the ground. Loose stones rain down around us. I cover my head. I realize that I am holding Diane. She is holding me too.
I open my eyes. She looks at me. Neither of us speaks. Behind us, there are clicks and rattles. We slowly sit up. There is a hole in the loose stones beside the boulder. The creature hit the boulder there. The rocks at the bottom of the hole move and rise. Then the sides fall inward.
After a few seconds, the surface looks almost normal again. Except for one thing. A low raised shape is under the stones. Click. It moves. Click. Click. It begins slowly going around the boulder.
Then the voices start. “John?” “Shauna?” “Hello?” Different voices, all coming from the rocks. Then the sheep bleat. Then the terrible roar. The sound is so strong that I almost feel the air move. “Christ,” I whisper. A second later, my own voice answers from under the rocks. “Christ.” Then a child calls, “Mummy?” Click, click, click. “Shauna?” Click.
Then another voice. An old-fashioned English voice. “Oh, for God's sake, Margery!” Click. “For God's sake.” Then silence. The wind blows through the narrow ravine. Then a woman's voice begins to sing. It is a beautiful voice, but the song is slow and frightening.
“Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander...” Diane grabs my wrist. Click. The singing stops immediately. Click, click. Then the creature begins to move away from us. Slowly. The low shape becomes harder to see as it moves into the mist. Soon, we cannot see exactly where it is. Then even the clicking stops. There is only wind, mist, and silence.
