Blood-drenched Beard

He manages to grab his arm in the dark but feels the knife nick his waist. He hears Beta lunge at the old man’s leg. He shouts for him to stop, but it is obvious that he won’t. The girls all scream at the same time and then play dead. He and the old man fall onto the rocking chair and then the kitchen shelves. The embers in the stove are the only source of light in the cave, and he tries to push his grandfather in that direction. The old man doesn’t make a sound, just keeps his bony body tensed and keeps attacking tirelessly like a banana spider trying to catch its prey so it can fill it with venom. He manages to shove him onto the hotplate, breaking free of his clutches for long enough to charge toward what he believes to be an exit. He gropes the walls of rock but can’t find the opening he came through. A sliver of lightning illuminates the other two openings in the cave, and he throws himself through the closest one. He finds himself on a small promontory, which must offer a view of the valley during the day but is now no more than a parapet to nothing. Afraid the old man will come after him and attack him at any second, he takes off running and tripping down the slope without seeing anything in his path until he runs into the fence and jabs his hands and thighs on the barbed wire. He cries out in pain and is relieved at the same time because from there he can run to the bottom of the valley, to the creek, to the beach.

After putting some more distance between himself and the cave, which makes him feel a little safer, he stops to get the knife with the armadillo-leather handle out of his backpack but realizes that he’s left the backpack behind along with the dog. Her name sticks in his throat. Calling out will reveal his whereabouts. The adrenaline is slowly metabolized, and his instinct to flee is replaced with paralysis. He wants to go back to find Beta but doesn’t know where he is anymore. The sound of the sea reverberates against the walls of the valley. He touches the place where he felt the knife tear his skin, on the right side of his stomach, and has the impression that it hasn’t done too much damage. But it hurts. He starts walking, heedless of the direction, so as not to stay still while he tries to decide what to do, and slips down a small bank and falls into the creek. The direction of the small current allows him to deduce the approximate location of the sea and the sides of the valley. The couple in the tent have a gas lantern. They must have a knife, another flashlight, maybe even a cell phone. He clambers up the slope, praying for more lightning, tugged at by reason on one side and fear on the other. He has the constant impression that the dog has caught up with him, and it is only now, as he reaches the trees on the ridge, that his companion’s absence starts to sink in. Finally he works up the courage to shout.

Beta!

He shouts a few times with his hands on either side of his mouth. His calls are lost in the invisible valley.

He keeps looking for the tent among the trees. He can see better with his eyes closed, as if surprised at night by a blackout in his own home. The baby’s crying has stopped, or maybe he isn’t where he thinks he is. He calls the couple’s names, but there is no reply. The trees start to thin, and he picks up his pace in the hope of finding some reference point under the open sky.

A flash of lightning illuminates the cliff, his foot stepping into the void and a stormy sea that is chaos itself extending out on all sides. When everything goes dark again, he is still beginning to fall, and it is only in the middle of the descent that he realizes what is happening. He thanks the lightning. He almost died unseeing, like a blind man. Or perhaps the vanity of death knows no limits, he thinks, and even to the blind, it reveals itself at the last instant so that they’ll think about it as it happens. On his way down, the vision of the vortex of waves and foam that will swallow him is emblazoned in his mind with hyperreal clarity, the ocean that he so adores showing its most private and destructive facet, revealed to few men. When he is about to hit the water, he closes his eyes tightly, as one inevitably does when diving.