What awaits after the jump?

[Fiction] Friday Challenge for June 19, 2009:
Include this line in your story:

...(your character) closed his/her eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped

= = =

Young Master Tyrus whimpered as he curled up as tightly as possible, the sound too loud in his sensitive ears. He continued to rock back and forth, working himself into the springy layer of twigs and leaves that covered the the forest floor, and that of the cave in which he sought shelter. Well, not so much cave as just a little alcove formed by an outcropping of rock just a foot or two from the ground.

His insides were on fire. Was it hunger, or effects of the water he'd gulped down at that deserted well? He whimpered again as another spasm threatened to rip his guts into shreds: this time his eyesight and hearing throbbed in time to the uneven rhythm of his stomach and intestines.

A twig must have worked its way to the seat of his pants with all that rocking. Young Master Tyrus reached down with a trembling hand to brush it away, but the shock of cold metal had him on his knees in an instant, scrabbling in the dirt to unearth the offending object.

Oh ironies of ironies.

He'd been sitting on it all along! Grinding his behind into it over the past two hours! How Vincent would have been amused.

How Vincent would be amused, when I tell him! he corrected himself, his mind shying away from the battle scene, refusing to lock on anything except the crimson blood spray that had covered every person on that battlefield. Hadn't Vincent joked about having blue blood? Young Master Tyrus had only seen red yesterday. Surely Vincent was still alive?

Forcing his tortured mind back to the task at hand, Young Master Tyrus managed to twitch the corners of his mouth in a ghost of a smile. The trapdoor. He'd been sitting right on its handle, buried under decades of forest detritus, unearthed only because he had this habit of half-rocking half-burrowing into the ground when needing comfort, a habit his poor departed Ma had tried to rid him of so long ago, and in the end gave up on, deciding it was just easier to just reinforce the seat of his pants than get him to not wear a hole in them every week or so.

Pulling with all his remaining strength, flaming guts forgotten for the moment, the trapdoor reluctantly, but silently, opened up, emitting surprisingly fresh-smelling air and the sound of ... water. Moving water. An underground stream? What a precious resource! Vincent would have been, no, would be overjoyed! The legend was true!

But of the realm's guardian? It was supposed to be Vincent's duty to confront the beast, to tame it the way the legends foretold. All Young Master Tyrus had with him was the ring he'd stolen from King Philliam, the theft that on hindsight had probably precipitated this whole mess.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, whispered Young Master Tyrus to himself, smiling as he imagined Vincent's gruff voice, not his own barely cracked one, filling his ears. He reached down to grasp for a ladder, or to locate stairs, but didn't find any: either they had rotted away, had been destroyed, or they had never existed. Well then, only one way down, isn't there?

Young Master Tyrus closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped.

If only he had thought to somehow close the trapdoor behind him.