Below Rheinfels Castle ran a series of narrow, mine shafts built as a network of secret access-and-escape tunnels. Despite bloody battles and the castle’s eventual destruction, those tunnels survived: somewhat intact. They measured four feet tall, and half as wide, and ran like a maze extending past the castle’s original footprint.

A sign marked the entrance.

I hesitated there—long enough to feel the weight of the warning—then I stepped into the darkness.

~

The gift shop had sold candles. Just a single stick wrapped in cloth to carry through the dark.

I’d laughed, then reached for my flashlight.

Instead, I’d brought a flashlight.

~

After fifty yards, the tunnel began a steep dive, plunging at a constant slope into the Earth to match the hillsides.

Decades ago, staff members marked the proper path through the twisting, branching maze of catacombs with lines of dirty, white-colored paint running along the ceiling.

Years of water and decay flaked this paint off, making it hard to distinguish against the stone in the colorless light of my flashlight.

No one else climbed down here with me.

I thought I understood darkness.

Then I climbed into the tunnel.

No one followed me.

My flashlight caught the wall three feet ahead, then the floor, then the ceiling. Every movement made the shadows jump.

Something moved.

I stopped.

Nothing.

I swung the light back.

Just rock.

I kept going.

The tunnel narrowed. My backpack scraped both walls, first on one side, then the other. I turned sideways and tried to squeeze through.

My shoulders caught.

I backed up.

The pack caught again.

I pulled harder.

My breath came faster.

I took the pack off and dragged it behind me.

My hands shook.

I stopped and pressed my back against the rock.

The flashlight beam trembled across the ceiling.

The line looked chipped and fading.

I waited.

Ahead of me, the tunnel bent.

Then bent again.

At last, the walls pulled apart and the passage opened enough to turn around.

I ran.

Daylight.

It never felt so good.