The Shadow Beneath the Sand

Around the cowboy, the desert looped infinitely. The dust, sky, and stones all shared the same bruise-like, dusky red shade. He rode along with no hurry, the brim of his black hat pulled low to shield his eyes from the dirt and the glare. Beneath him, his bay mare, with the white blaze up her nose and a leaf tangled in her hair, moved slowly. Though her ribs showed through her pelt, she walked steadily.

The sun was sinking low on the horizon behind him, tinting the edges of the world pink. He didn’t bother turning around to watch. A sunset was just another piece of beauty fading from life.

Strange, how still the desert air was. Flat land like this should have some movement, even a lazy whisper of a breeze, but here the air just hung. The atmosphere sat metallic and dusty on his tongue, an unwanted invader. His thoughts kept drifting back to the bedroll tied to the mare’s haunches. Still, no wind. That was reason enough to keep riding.

The leather beneath him creaked as he moved; the sound was stark in the stillness. Aside from the horse’s quiet stride, the land offered no sound at all.

If the trail they wandered had once been populated, the wagon tracks were long-since filled in, and the hoofprints were forgotten. The horse was following a path that was little more than a tramped down streak of vegetation. A half-visible trail was better than none at all, so they followed it anyway. Though the pair had no real goal in mind, they travelled forward because it was easier than going back. There was no “back;” no home to return to or other goals to necessitate it. All they had was movement.

Above him, the air was growing heavy, as though the ozone itself was pressing closer.

On her own, and despite his commands to the contrary, the horse slowed to a trot, ears flicking.

In his hands, he let the reins go slack, and the horse stopped moving entirely. Scanning the horizon, there was nothing visible but red sand and a sun gradually disappearing. The mesa to the west cut a harsh, square shadow across the cerise landscape. There were no rivers, cliffs, or towns within hundreds of miles; the horse had no reason to stop.

When he exhaled, his sigh felt as though it came from somewhere deeper than his lungs. It was a bone-deep weariness that had seeped into his marrow. “Damn creature,” he muttered, more at himself than the horse.

Because she wouldn’t move. Even when he clicked his heels or lashed the reins, she dug her heels in and stared at him from the corner of her eyes. With a sharp, impatient grunt, he swung his legs out of the saddle and gently lowered himself to the ground. When his boots hit the dust, a puff of red smoke stained his chaps.

As he paced a few steps forward, he noticed it.

In the middle of the desert was a perfectly circular hole. It was a perfectly angular chasm, roughly large enough for a train to fall through. The cowboy had a map of the area in his mind that he referenced occasionally; there should not have been a hole of this size here. Without any rocks or other indicators, he couldn’t tell what it was or why it was there. All he knew was that it wasn’t supposed to be.

The sand at the rim of the thing wasn’t sloping downwards, as he might expect it to if the hole connected to a nearby cave system. Regardless, the idea of this being an unexplored treasure trove kept him from walking away. As he’d noted, the sand stopped right at the edge of the entrance, without so much as a ruffling of the grains. It was as though whatever was inside the cavity was entirely separate from what was on the outside.

Inside it, the shadows felt wrong. They were deep, a darker shade of black than he thought possible, and he couldn’t stop staring into them. The hole ought not have been so shadowy; the moon was beaming directly into it. Alas, no light seemed capable of finding its way in or, he thought with a scowl, perhaps the hole itself was swallowing all light.

Taking another few steps forward, the ground felt too steady beneath his feet. 

Behind him, the horse snorted and stamped her foot, head lashing against the reins, even though she hadn’t bolted yet.

The sensation of being watched. He felt it then. The peculiar sensation of standing in front of some ancient aperture that really wasn’t meant for him. The ground seemed to pulse faintly, though, he supposed, it may have been the slight swelling of his eyes, as the sand did not once sway. He shook his head to clear it and watched everything the light could touch blur into one color.

At the edge of the hole, he stooped to peer inside. A puff of dirt, stirred up by his sudden movement, caught on the brim of his hat. Since it was very late by this point, the desert should have been cooling; instead, it was abysmally hot and humid. For a moment, it felt as though he were a piece of food, and the hole was a throat, warm, wet, and waiting to swallow him whole. With a shiver of unease, he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the cloth he kept in his coat.

Up close, the hole looked monolithic; it was entirely possible that it had expanded by more than a few yards in the minutes he’d been observing it. The desert behind him was impossibly still, other than the horse tapping her hooves. With his head tilted, he scanned his surroundings for any sound. Then, hearing none, he quietly called out, “How do you do?”

The greeting dropped like a boulder into the dark then went unanswered. With no echo, the sound disappeared across the threshold and disappeared from reality entirely.

With his jaw twitching, he searched for anything he could use to test the depth of the cavern. He found a handful of small, white pebbles nearby and gathered them into his arms, before returning to the hole. Pinching a stone between two of his fingers, he dropped it into the dark. The descent was silent; even the landing, which he assumed ought to make sound, went unheard. After ten seconds of nothingness, he grabbed another pebble, ready to test it as many times as it took for him to realize it was an auditory void.

Deciding to give it a better test, he chucked the stone as hard as he could down through the opening. It should have “plinked” off the far wall. Instead, the sound vanished again as soon as the rock sank into the cavern.

The horse snorted again; the sound vibrated low in her throat.

Something down in the dark shifted, and for that reason, he didn’t turn to check on the horse. Though his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was saying, there was a formless shape in the dark, watching him. The movement, if there indeed was any, would have indicated a being of substantial mass, but there was nothing definitive offered in the abyss. With no certainty could he say whether there was, in fact, a shape or movement or mass, let alone what those things might be. All he could tell was that there was an impression of movement, that motion felt intellectual, and that intelligence seemed to be judging him.

A chill descended upon the desert; the cowboy exhaled a breath that came out as a bloom of fog. With limitless patience, he squatted at the edge of the abyss, squinting, and waited. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he knew it was staring back again.

As he sank down to one knee, he realized the sand was very warm. Placing his palms on the ground, the heat nipped at his hands, even through his thick leather riding gloves. Something inside the hole shifted at the same time, and the whole thing seemed to breathe, rising up on its vertical axis. Suddenly, he was on the same eye level as the stygian dark. Staring into that void, it was like looking at the blackness of the beyond, and his stomach turned, bile rising to nip at his throat.

A whisper was carried on the breeze, though the breeze was hardly more than a ruffle that swayed his collar once then went still. The noise didn’t sound quite like human language. It was difficult to explain but more akin to having a feeling transplanted from one mind to another.

That strange voice, if it could even be called such a thing, pulled up something he thought extinct inside him. A memory - one he had tried his best to forget and which, even now, seemed at once unrecognizable and nostalgic. For a split second, there she was. A woman running through his mind, reddish-brown hair streaming behind her and dressed in nothing but a few scraps of rosy, silk cloth. When his fingers reached for her, she was almost laughing, face bright and saintly. The cowboy closed his eyes. He already knew how this memory ended and felt no urge to relieve it, but he felt it, even with his eyes closed, when that cold, gray cliff, looming ever closer, finally closed in.

It was familiar in that hazy, dreamlike way half-buried things often are. Back to reality, it was swiftly disregarded, other than the fractured husks still clinging to his mind. Within the earth, a new sound was starting. It was more real in the typical sense than the last; at least, it seemed to be created by true vocal chords.

From deep inside the hole, his own voice whispered out at him: “Daphne…”

The voice was husky and far too deep to be his own, yet all the same, he recognized it as his. The tone was frankly gentle, as though whatever had conjured it was trying to coax out a scared animal. With his throat tightening and knees locking up, he suddenly found himself unable to move.

The darkness shifted again, and within it, he saw a ripple of far too many limbs. It moved like smoke blown underwater, unreal but fluid and moving regardless of the physicality of it. It appeared to be bound by bones it didn’t seem to possess, and behind the movement, multiple pinpricks of light appeared within the inner chamber, illuminating nothing of their surroundings. Though he was almost certain they must be, as they seemed to carry within them some emotion, they appeared in all actuality closer to drawn stars, half-finished by some distant painter.

The voice drew closer and, at the same time, warmer. “Daphne,” it said, growing nearer to an approximation of his voice.

His fingers curled into the sand as the horse behind him began to tremble. She stamped her foot twice against the dirt and thrashed her head as though still believing she was tethered. Her breath was ragged and hot against his back; even from some feet away, he could feel the fear in her shivering exhales. The expression on her face was expectant. It was like she was waiting for him to grant her permission to bolt, but he wasn’t planning on being abandoned.

Besides that, the darkness was too distracting. How long had it been since he’d looked away? The thought drifted lazily through his mind, but all the same, he did not look away. It was like being in a state of deep half-sleep, aware that one was unconscious but unable to change that fact.

Finally, the sand around the rim shifted, heaving downwards. The man didn’t blink. It looked like a trick of the light, and he was afraid if he looked away for even a second, something grievous would happen. Only a few grains trickled inward, and he watched those grains the way he might watch a hissing rattlesnake.

Whereas before the hole seemed to be holding itself still and tight, it now gave up and showed itself in all its horrible, fascinating glory. The rim softened. The edges of it blurred together, until he couldn’t separate dark from dusk. Fine dust poured inward in increasing waves. It wasn’t like a collapse; it was more like something beneath the earth was carefully rearranging his surroundings.

The hole grew wider and yet wider in spasms of mere inches. As the ground eased itself in and out in russet waves, his knees sank further into the silt. When he lifted his hand, it came away hot and covered in a strange, shimmering oil. Even the air was the wrong texture, brushing against his skin as though it were made of velvet.

Behind him, the horse arranged herself into a statue, going very still with her hooves rooted to the ground. Holding her breath and locking all her muscles, her neck became very tense against the reins.

The whispers drifted up again. This time, they were inarticulable. It brushed against him fondly, like the ghost of someone he used to love rubbing her hand across his chest. Its presence had a strange effect on them, as though gravity had forgotten its hold on his organs, and they were now floating effervescently across his abdominal sac. Breathing out slowly, he whispered, “I feel you.” 

Though his head was practically in the hole now, the words did not echo into the chamber around him. The sand kept sliding in, and from inside, he knew he was being watched again. It didn’t matter that he was getting closer to identifying it, as his own vision was being snuffed out.

Finally, his weight acquiesced to the shifting sand, and he slid forward on his knees. What happened could not be described as a fall; more than anything, he poured forward and down, nothing more than another grain. The rim rose past his gaze in slow motion, and then all he could see was the cruel, blank dark. Inside, there was nothing. No moonlight, no quiet horse snuffling or hooves clicking. Not a thing but the endless tenebrosity and power of his own thoughts.

Inside the darkness was a strange sense of fullness that made vomit leap up his throat. It was thick and warm, clinging to his body like ink heated to room temperature then spilled. The forward spillage had stopped. In the void, it was difficult to say with certainty whether he was moving or not, especially as he was no longer convinced he had a body, let alone that he could feel it.

Nearby, something moved.

A shudder ran down his spine. The earth felt like a sphincter, pulsing around him - it flexed and relaxed slowly. Perhaps it was closer to something massive within the ground turning over in its slumber. Either way, he felt he was in the throat, right above the belly of the beast. And there it was again - that horrible whispering! This time, it seemed less eager to communicate; it came across instead armed with another memory. It slid it into his mind the way a bartender slid a drink across the counter.

There she was again, though she seemed less herself now.

She ran her fingers through his hair, cupping his cheeks and pressing her lips to his. In his nostrils, he detected the faint scent of wildflowers in the spring. Daphne. Her name lit up some emotion he’d thought was dead inside him; his chest went warm. It was as though it hadn’t been longer than a millennia since he’d last seen her; suddenly, he loved her as much, perhaps more, than he had when she’d died. And those memories weren’t his own. As much as he wanted them to be, they didn’t belong to him. Something was taunting him with them, reminding him what he could have had, if things had been different.

In the distance, the lights flickered again. This time, there were only two. Even though he had a feeling that whatever this being was, it could harm him, he didn’t feel afraid. There was hardly room for feelings in the cavern. It was just him and whatever was down there with him. Suddenly, thinking of that thing, fear flooded warmly through him.

With one blink, he turned and ran off on all fours.

It wasn’t that all-consuming terror that spurred his feet onward; it was the memory of that girl. Her flight had become his own. Though he couldn’t tell where his legs were carrying him, or even whether they were touching solid ground or not, it felt like a lacking and unimportant detail. They would undoubtedly take him somewhere, and perhaps that unknown location would be right where he needed to be. With his heart racing and feet slipping against the sand, he sprinted, searching for an exit or a deeper ditch off which to throw himself.

When he crashed through the rim, the moonlight assaulted his eyes and rendered him temporarily blind. There was no proof that anything had happened. Perhaps he’d sat in the sand, hallucinating from some unseen chemical within the ground. It would have been believable, if sand hadn't clung to whatever surface it could find, or if that oily warmth hadn’t been trailing him even then.

Ahead of him, the horse still stood. Though still sightless, he could hear her soft, breathy snorts. Using that sound to move forward, step by step, he finally felt her damp neck beneath his fingers. Her ears were flat against her skull, and she wasn’t remotely soothed by his tender, grazing hands. The horse reached her breaking point before the cowboy; with a rougher snort, she took a few steps backwards, leaving him alone once again.

For fear that he might be sucked back into whatever otherworldly portal that chamber bore, the cowboy rose to his feet quickly, loosing a cascade of dust and pebbles off his coat. His eyes were, even now, drawn to the dark, and he averted them slowly, for fear that looking away might leave him vulnerable to whatever lurked down there. 

As he stepped toward the horse, the air changed suddenly, becoming thicker and warmer in an instant. Whatever icy chill had overtaken the desert was vanishing again.

The whole world went black again as he grabbed the saddle. The moon had dimmed; the sky blinked out of existence. Even the stars ceased to shine. Despite that, there were no clouds in the sky and nothing else to indicate why that might happen. There was nothing, he supposed, but inky darkness, and perhaps there always had been and always would be. The thought passed such a dark shadow over his soul that he shook his head to shove it away. A few moments later, the moon popped back into existence.

The horse’s neck was slick with sweat, and she trembled as he hauled himself into the saddle. A few moments later, she turned on her own away from the hole. They moved without guiding one another, both overcome by the urge to ride off.

The desert around them was still and quiet. The presence of the moon and stars was more than enough to soothe his soul. Regardless, it took him many minutes to work up the courage to turn around and look again. The hole was merely a freckle on the horizon now; it was there but smaller. For some reason, with such a distance between them, he felt almost silly for being afraid of the dark.

The thing beside it, though, was what made his blood run cold again. Kneeling at the rim of the hole, head bowed in prayer, was his shadow. It was staring reverently into the void. Ahead of him, he noticed the lack of his shadow; where he ought to have been on his horse was nothing. The moon still shone. There was no use stopping to retrieve a shadow. He kicked his heels, and the horse picked up the pace.

And neither of them looked back a second time.

© 2025 N.S. Graven
| Image by Frédéric Barriol on Unsplash