The cavern is different from other subterranean vaults that you've visited. Sure, those past visits involved pale, patchy-bearded tour guides and swarms of rambunctious, shrieking children wearing matching tee-shirts, but now you're alone... right? But what really feels different about the cavern is in the small details.`
Instead of emanating the musty dampness found in most caverns, this one is uncomfortably warm. Even the stray breeze that escapes from the deeper darkness is a stifling blast of hot air. A pungent cinnamon smell invades your throat and nostrils – not sweet but eye-watering. You can taste it, tingling on your tongue, as you gasp for breath.
The warm, cinnamon cavern had seemed like the perfect place to escape the hunters. And, at a distance, they had seemed like normal, recreational hunters with camouflaged suits and orange hats. You tried to make as much noise as possible by stepping on brittle twigs and dead leaves. Even though it was about 10 in the morning, you weren't sure if or when these hunters had started cracking open Budweisers. Plus, you were wearing your brown, corduroy jacket and know that you're more than slightly overweight. You moved closer to the hunters, since a combination of these factors could have led to you being mistaken for a passing deer at several hundred feet.
As you approached the hunters, you noticed that they were hunched over in a group, perhaps engaged in a pre-hunt conference. You closed in another hundred feet and realized that the hunters weren't hunched over; they were just rather short. Another fifty feet and you saw that what you had thought were orange hats were peaked, fiery tufts of hair. A few more steps – and the camouflaged suits turned out to be greyish green skins with black patches scurrying across their surfaces.
Instead of encircling a cooler and assorted firearms, these eerie, otherworldly hunters had their arms submerged to the shoulder in a wriggling, black, spherical cloud. You screamed, and you'd always been louder than most – you couldn't help it. As you stood there, silenced by the shock of your own scream, the black patches crawling across the hunter's skins froze for several seconds. You peered at patches, trying to decide if their multiple extensions were antennae, legs, wings, or jaws. And then, as if following an invisible cue, they shot back into the black cloud, which flattened out like a pancake before seeping into the ground. This left the strange hunters with their arms free.
“Kayak-a-kayak-a-kayak-a-kayak,” the hunter nearest you rasped. You were fairly sure that he wasn't talking about boating. His three companions had also turned towards you. Their swollen facial features were a cross of orangutan and iguana, as if some mad scientist had found a way for the two species to mate that involved giving their offspring regular beatings. They were obviously not human, but what where they doing in your forest? You didn't stick around to find out.
As you loped through pine tree trunks, you didn't dare look back and risk clotheslining yourself on a branch. You couldn't tell whether the hunters were following you, but your legs gave out after five minutes. You were never in that great of shape, but wasn't that the whole point of these morning forest walks? A particularly thick tree trunk offered support as you slumped against it and felt a warm draft. The draft came from an elliptical hole at the tree's base. It looked spacious enough for you to squeeze into, and you supposed that you could hide yourself with clumps of dead pine needles. If the hunters were still following, then they might pass you by.
After you had squeezed yourself into the hole, the hole squeezed back. You tried to cling to tree roots, pine needle tufts, anything, but the hole swallowed your outstretched finger tips. Seconds, perhaps minutes of cramped, dark, panicked breathing passed before the hole excreted you into an open area, the dimly lit cave where you now stand.
The light comes from an opening about the size of a train tunnel entrance. You walk to it and look down before recoiling in vertigo shock. The only solid thing you saw thousands of feet below was a line of white – clouds or river rapids? You catch your breath and crawl towards the entrance once more – there is a earthen wall about a quarter mile distant, which makes you think that you may be in some type of canyon. Parts of that faraway wall glisten – are they man-made lights, semi-precious stones or something else entirely? Looking back into the cave, you imagine that you can see that glistening glow shining faintly from the depths. You lie on your back and peer up at a smooth earthen wall that extends about three hundred feet above you. The shadows that line the top may be pines or pursuers.
A blanket of shadow is creeping down the wall – or is it a black cloud? Judging from its speed, it'll be at the cavern entrance in the next minute.
“Kayak-a-kayak-a-kayak.” You can't tell if that searching sound, which you now associate with the green-skinned hunters, is coming from the roiling black mass above or from deeper within the cavern. Either way, it may not be the best strategy to just stay put.
If you decide to just stay put, then click here.
If you proceed to the unknown depths of the cavern, click here.
If you jump out of the cavern entrance because of a gut feeling, then click here!
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