After another ten metres the tunnel comes to an end. Alice finds herself standing at the threshold of a cavernous enclosed chamber. She is standing on a natural stone platform. A couple of shallow, wide steps directly in front of her lead to the main area where the ground has been levelled flat and smooth. The cavern is about ten metres long and perhaps five metres wide, clearly fashioned by the hands of men rather than by nature alone. The roof is low and vaulted, like the ceiling of a crypt.

Alice stares, holding the flickering single flame higher and bothered by a curious prickling familiarity that she cannot account for. She is about to descend the steps when she notices there are letters inscribed in the stone at the top. She bends down and tries to read what is written.

Only the first three words and the last letter – N or H maybe – are legible. The others have been eroded or chipped away. Alice rubs at the dirt with her fingers and says the letters out loud. The echo of her voice sounds somehow hostile and threatening in the silence.

“P-A-S A P-A-S… Pas a pas.”

Step by step? Step by step what? A faint memory ripples across the surface of her unconscious mind, like a song long forgotten. Then it is gone.

“Pas a pas,” she whispers this time, but it means nothing. A prayer? A warning? Without knowing what follows, it makes no sense.

Nervous now, she straightens up and descends the steps, one by one. Curiosity fights with premonition and she feels the goosebumps on her slim bare arms, from unease or the chill of the cave, she cannot say.

Alice holds the flame high to light her way, careful not to slip or dislodge anything. At the lower level, she pauses. She takes a deep breath and then takes a step into the ebony darkness. She can just make out the back wall of the chamber.

It’s hard to be sure at this distance that it isn’t just a trick of the light or a shadow cast by the flame, but it looks as if there is a large circular pattern of lines and semi-circles painted or carved into the rock. On the floor in front of it there is a stone table, about four feet high, like an altar.

Fixing her eyes on the symbol on the wall to keep her bearings, Alice edges forward. Now she can see the pattern more clearly. It looks like some sort of labyrinth, although memory tells her that there is something not quite right about it. It’s not a true labyrinth. The lines do not lead to the centre, as they should. The pattern is wrong. Alice can’t account for why she’s so sure about this, only that she is right.

Keeping her eyes trained on the labyrinth, she moves closer, closer. Her foot knocks something hard on the ground. There is a faint, hollow thump and the sound of something rolling, as if an object has shifted out of position.

Alice looks down.

Her legs start to tremble. The pale flame in her hand flickers. Shock steals her breath. She is standing at the edge of a shallow grave, a slight depression in the ground, no more than that. In it there are two skeletons, once human, the bones picked clean by time. The blind sockets of one skull stare up at her. The other skull, kicked out of place by her foot, is lying on its side as if turning its gaze away from her.

The bodies have been laid out, side by side, to face the altar, like carvings on a tomb. They are symmetrical and perfectly in line, but there is nothing restful about the grave. No sense of peace. The cheekbones of one skull are crushed, crumpled inwards like a mask of papier mache. Several of the ribs of the other skeleton are snapped and jut out awkwardly, like the brittle branches of a dead tree.

They cannot harm you.

Determined not to give in to fear, Alice forces herself to crouch down, taking care not to disturb anything else. She runs her eyes over the grave. There is a dagger lying between the bodies, the blade dulled with age, and a few fragments of cloth. Next to it, there is a drawstring leather bag, big enough to hold a small box or a book. Alice frowns. She’s sure she’s seen something like it before, but the memory refuses to come.

The round, white object wedged between the claw-like fingers of the smaller skeleton is so small that Alice nearly misses it. Without stopping to think if it’s the right thing to do, quickly she takes her tweezers out of her pocket. She stretches down and carefully eases it out, then holds it up to the flame, softly blowing the dust away to see better.

It’s a small stone ring, plain and unremarkable, with a round, smooth face. It, too, is oddly familiar. Alice looks more closely. There’s a pattern scratched on the inside. At first, she thinks it’s a seal of some kind. Then, with a jolt, she realises. She raises her eyes to the markings on the back wall of the chamber, then back to the ring.

The patterns are identical.

Alice is not religious. She does not believe in heaven or hell, in God or the Devil, nor in the creatures that are believed to haunt these mountains. But, for the first time in her life, she is overwhelmed by a sense of being in the presence of something supernatural, something inexplicable, something bigger than her experience or comprehension. She can feel malevolence crawling over her skin, her scalp, the soles of her feet.

Her courage falters. The cave is suddenly cold. Fear catches in her throat, freezing the breath in her lungs. Alice scrambles to her feet. She should not be here in this ancient place. Now, she’s desperate to get out of the chamber, away from the evidence of violence and the smell of death, back to the safe, bright sunlight.

But she’s too late.

Above her or behind her, she cannot tell where, there are footsteps. The sound bounces around the confined space, ricochets off the rock and stone. Someone is coming.

Alice spins around in alarm, dropping the lighter. The cave is plunged into darkness. She tries to run, but she is disorientated in the dark and cannot find the way out. She stumbles. Her legs go from under her.

She falls. The ring is sent flying back into the pile of bones, where it belongs.

Carcassonne

Southwest France

A few miles to the east as the crow flies, in a lost village in the Sabarthe`s Mountains, a tall, thin man in a pale suit sits alone at a table of dark, highly polished wood.

The ceiling of the room is low and there are large square tiles on the floor the colour of red mountain earth, keeping it cool despite the heat outside. The shutter of the single window is closed so it is dark, except for a pool of yellow light cast by a small oil lamp, which stands on the table. Next to the lamp is a glass tumbler filled almost to the brim with a red liquid.

There are several sheets of heavy cream paper strewn across the table, each covered with line after line of neat handwriting in black ink. The room is silent, except for the scratch and draw of the pen and the chink of ice cubes against the side of the glass when he drinks. The subtle scent of alcohol and cherries. The ticking of the clock marks the passage of time as he pauses, reflects, and then writes again.

What we leave behind in this life is the memory of who we were and what we did. An imprint, no more. I have learned much. I have become wise. But have I made a difference? I cannot tell. Pas a pas, se va luenh.

I have watched the green of spring give way to the gold of summer, the copper of autumn give way to the white of winter as I have sat and waited for the fading of the light. Over and over again I have asked myself why? If I had known how it would feel to live with such loneliness, to stand, the sole witness to the endless cycle of birth and life and death, what would I have done? Alaıs, I am burdened by my solitude stretched too thin to bear. I have survived this long life with emptiness in my heart, an emptiness that over the years has spread and spread until it became bigger than my heart itself.