I turned my head, looking for some way around the abyss. But it was as wide as it was long. I recoiled at the sight of corpses on both sides of me, on the sloping walls of the chasm where I couldn’t see them before. The nearer I got, the more the stench of rotting flesh made me gag. As far as I could see, the fringes of the chasm were lined with corpses. I watched as reptilian carrion-fowl feasted on human entrails, picking bones and pulling tendons with their great beaks.

Upon closer inspection, what I thought at first were scattered white rocks in the sand, I realized now were human bones, picked clean by wind and sand and predators. The chasm before me was not some natural wonder, but an unnatural graveyard, unspeakably vast, with no tombstones or caretakers, nothing but the beating sun and the merciless winds of time.

The air was dry, yet thick with death, so thick I felt like I was breathing through a wet dishrag. Covering my nose and inhaling through my mouth, I moved on the red road to the very edge of the chasm. I scanned it, wondering if there might yet be a way to descend into it and cross. The wound in my neck, oozing again, and the moisture in my eyes drew flies, which I kept swatting, unable to keep them at bay.

As I held it in my hand, I realized that the white sand of the chasm edges was not sand at all, but powdered bone. What did the millions of human bones mean, scattered as far as I could see? Didn’t it mean that others before me, many no doubt smarter and better than I, had tried to find their way around and over and across the chasm?

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to piece it all together. Large piles of bones covering the sloped side of the chasm testified to the distances people had traveled. Some had gone much farther than I would have thought possible, given the steepness of the slope. Groups of bones, some of them gathered on narrow shelves, showed some had tried to cross together, while countless scattered remains showed many had tried to make it alone.

Though some made it a few miles farther down the sheer edge of the chasm than others—either by climbing skill or long falls to their deaths—none came close to crossing it. Indeed, it would be impossible to cross, for as deeply as I gazed into the chasm, I could see no hint there was ground to walk on. It appeared to be a bottomless pit. Even if it weren’t, who could possibly cross it? And if by some miracle they did, who could even begin to climb the other side? I wanted to cross it—but how could I?

I slapped my forehead, killing a couple of flies and stirring up others.