The Cave

A man explores a cave near his hometown and stumbles upon an ancient horror.

      

          They say that in the summers these woods sing.  I’d heard the old folks tell stories about the singing woods my whole life, and explanations for the phenomenon ranged from wind whistling through the pines to the wails of the ghosts of people who disappeared and even faeries playing jokes on men.  I’d always chalked it up to sentimentalism.

            My mind was changed the night I returned to those woods.  I don’t know what pulled me back there.  I hadn’t been home in years and had no reason to be back, but nonetheless I had returned.  I was able to reunite with my buddies and as we reconnected I was invited to a party in the mountains.  Those folks never changed.  They had parties every Friday, recovery every Saturday and church on Sunday; just like clockwork. 

I decided to oblige them, and that night I was by a fire up in the mountains, nursing a cold one, and listening to stories slowly fade into nonsense as the storytellers became more and more inebriated.  It must have been around midnight when I decided to stroll into the woods.  As I left the warmth of the fire behind in favor of the unseasonably chilly summer night air I began to hear what sounded like music.  It was on the very edge of audibility and I could faintly make out a slight tune rising and falling.  It was exceedingly lovely, like the voice of an angel, and I wanted nothing more than to be closer to it. 

I trudged deeper into the woods, not caring that I could no longer see the fire behind me or that I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.  The sound grew ever so slightly louder as I went on and soon I was at its source.  It wasn’t a ghost, there wasn’t a breeze to be felt, and I’m fairly certain there were no faeries nearby.  The sound was coming from the mouth of a cavern with stalactites hanging from its ceiling like jagged teeth.    I paused for a moment, debating whether or not to go inside.  Curiosity beat self-preservation and I ultimately decided to go in, but vowed not to go in too deep or stay very long.   

Soon the darkness of the cave became too much.  I fished my cell from my pocket and activated the built in LED to light my way.  As I moved deeper into the cavern, the song became louder and louder, and the stalactites on the ceiling were replaced by large crystals.  I reached over my head to touch the crystals, and as I touched one it seemed to vibrate softly.  “Hmm,” I murmured.  As the sound traveled through the cave it began to slightly gain pitch.  It seemed the crystals vibrated with sound and reflected it back at a higher frequency. 

All of a sudden the song increased in volume as if in response to the sound I made.  I quickened my pace through the cave, forgetting the promise I made with myself earlier.  Not only did I forget my vow, I also forgot how quickly the LED light drains my phone’s battery.  My phone beeped once and the light flickered out of existence and left me in the suffocating darkness.  My eyes tried in vain to adjust to the inky blackness.  I tried to focus on the angelic song, but the sound of my own blood rushing in my ears drowned it out.  The walls felt terribly close and claustrophobia closed around my heart like a vise.  A scream began to work its way up from deep within me and I tried to hold it in but it burst forth with a flood of sound.  The atavistic yell was thrown back at me tenfold by the crystals.  The sound was deafening and my very skull felt as if it were about to split open from the inundation of sound.

I stumbled forward blindly then broke into a run, my feet slipping clumsily on the slick floor.  I soon lost footing and went tumbling to the ground.  I stayed there, curled in a fetal position, until the cave stopped throwing my own twisted voice back at me.  Eventually the cavern fell silent.  Even the angel’s song ceased.  I opened my eyes and through the tearful slits, I could see light.   Delicious starlight was shining ahead of me.  I could taste the freedom.  I scrambled to my feet and walked forward into the light, staring up at the stars above me.  It appeared that I had found an area where the cavern opened into a vertical-walled pit that was open to the sky.  Luckily the walls here were scored and rough and I was able to climb up.  I didn’t notice that the air was just as stale here, if not more stale, than anywhere else in the cavern.  I didn’t notice that the nighttime sounds weren’t present here.  But worst of all, I failed to notice that the sky I was climbing to was not the sky I was familiar with. 

Before I could make any of these lifesaving observations, I reached the cavern’s ceiling and my head collided with a bundle of slimy tendrils dotted with points of lights.  Suddenly, more tendrils dropped all around me and I was covered in the softly glowing mucous.   I struggled as much as I could but the tendrils contracted as quickly as they descended.  Soon I was fastened tight to the roof, my arms and legs bound, my mouth shut tight.  I turned my head as far as I could and saw I wasn’t alone.  An enormous writhing form clung to the cave’s ceiling, its sticky skin adhering to the cave wall.  It slithered towards me, its transparent flesh gave me a horrifying view into the monster.  Muscles convulsed and twitched and organs churned like the workings of a liquid machine.  The terrible spectacle was illuminated by a series of lights on the creature’s sides.  The beast’s mouth was a dark and slimy looking pit ringed by claws that twitched independently, as if it were already beginning to shovel my body down its monstrous gullet.  I turned away from the thing, unable to take much more when I saw that I wasn’t the only person up here.  Another man was cocooned near me, already partially digested but still not quite dead.  He wore a visage of unrelenting horror.   Then I felt the creature gnawing on me, beginning the slow process of digestion from the feet up.  Terror welled up inside me and I let out the only sound I could: a muffled groan.

       I listened over the sound of the beast slurping and I could hear my groan echo out through the cavern.  It sounded like the voice of an angel.

Author's Note

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