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emptymanuscript · 1 year

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Monstrous May Day 4 - The Cave

Michael punched Isaac in the shoulder. “Go on, go in.”

Isaac punched Michael back. “You go in, you coward.”

They both stared at the cave, dark and moaning. The wind blew across the lip of the cave. That’s what made the moaning sound. It was just like a giant soda bottle. Michael had blown a note on a bottle plenty of times. “I’m not a coward. You’re a pussy. You go in.”

“I’m not a pussy.” Isaac punched Michael’s shoulder again. “You’re a chicken. It’s lunchtime on a Tuesday. Nothing scary ever happened at lunchtime on a Tuesday.” Isaac flapped his arms and clucked. “Bok. Bok. Bigok! Chickin. Bok. Bok-bok-bok. Chicken.”

Michael took three steps up the sandy scree that lead to the dark of the cave. Then he turned around, his back to the darkness in the cave. “Pussy! Meow-mow. Pussy. You’re afraid, pussy.”

Isaac snorted. “You don’t even know what a pussy is, chicken.”

“Do too. It’s what you are. I’m closer to the cave. I’ve got my back turned. You’re more scared than me.”

Isaac took four large steps toward the cave. He crossed his arms. “Now who’s closer?”

Michael backed up until he was a step closer than Issac. “You’re still more scared. You heard about Lucy Nelson and you won’t ever go in.

“Who’s Lucy Nelson?”

“Lucy went in the cave and never came back out. The sheriff went in and he never found her except for her teeth.”

“Her teeth?”

“Uh huh.” Michael took another step back. “Each one pulled out in perfect condition like a dentist had done it.”

Isaac rolled his eyes. “You made that up.”

Michael took another step toward the cave. “Then why am I closer to the cave?”

“Why don’t you go in if you think you’re so brave.”

“Will you admit you’re a pussy if I go in the cave?”

“Sure. Whatever. If you walk inside the cave backwards, I’ll say I’m a pussy.”

Michael took another step backwards but stopped there, looking over his shoulder at the low moan that ruffled his hair. He expected the breeze to feel cold and dry, like there was nothing but sand and wind in the cave but the flicker of breeze was hot and moist like someone breathing on him. Like Isaac huffing out to clean his glasses. And there was a funny smell. Like spoiled eggs.

“Well?” Isaac asked.

“I didn’t,” Michael said.

“I see that.”

“No. I didn’t make it up. About Lucy Nelson.”

Isaac was silent a moment before he asked, “Did you hear about Todd Rafferty?”

“The guy whose shoes they found?”

“And nails. All his fingernails and toenails and his clothes. And that’s it.”

“I’m not scared. His little brother Scott went in to look for him and nothing happened to Scott at all.”

Isaac took a step away from the cave. “Maybe we should come back after school. We'd need time to look around. And if we’re not back in class after lunch we’ll get in trouble.”

“You are a pussy!” Michael skipped the final few steps into the cave. The cave was warm, damp. Pale slime dripped down the walls. Michael poked the slime and it was rock hard. Like old tree sap. It looked like a drip but wasn’t anymore.

“Ok,” Isaac called. “I’m a pussy. But we’re going to be late. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Michael looked into the dark interior of the cave. Even inside, his face right in the shadows, he could only see a foot or two into the cave.

“Michael.”

Isaac’s call wafted through the darkness of the cave, skipping down the walls like a rock over water. It rebounded, Michael’s name whisper distorted beckoning from deep within. Which meant, Michael thought, that the cave had to be fairly uniform with an end not too far away. Michael shuffled forward into the darkness.

Isaac called again, sounding more scared. And the echo whispered to Michael again, sounding louder, more sure, less like Isaac. It had a metallic twang, like someone had tried to scratch the right tone shift along an electrical pole guidewire. Michael had seen that. Someone running a metal rod down a metal wire to get an interesting sound for a movie.

Michael shuffled deeper, both his hands outstretched to feel for any wall or stalagtite that might have dripped to face level. He could hear Isaac coming into the cave after him. The crunching of his tennis shoes getting louder and then clearer as he passed the entrance and the distorting wind.

The sound felt like it came from the other way this time. That metallic tonal scratching, not quite a voice, crooned for him and skipped along the walls in a ripple, passing him, rebounding from the empty space of the entrance and picking up that tinge of Isaac’s fear. “Michael come back.”

Michael called over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. I’m almost to the end.” But his voice came out different. There was no metallic whine, no ripple. His voice sounded flat. Reflectionless. Like he would expect his voice to fail bouncing off the cushion of his bed. He spread his arms to reach for the walls. His fingers slid through lukewarm slime over something that felt like warm squishy lumps. The wall dented, retreated like a soaked sponge. But the wall also glowed an orangey-red, filaments like long thin streamers spit hung with little globules of brightness, motes of light winking upward to be lost in the darkness. And deeper into the cave, like the little lights on the floors of airplanes that were supposed to lead you to an exit.

The metallic tones, one rising high, one spilling down, thrummed out to him, more little red lights winking to life with the sound, pulsing, so they seemed to run from where he stood on to the end of the cave he still couldn’t see.

Isaac shouted from far away, “Where are you?!”

The metallic echo lit up, skipping to him along the winking glow, bright and fading, “Mi-chael.”

Michael took a step in the direction of the lights, his fingers dragging through the jelly-ish slime across the strange quivering softness of the walls. “Who are you?”

“Mi-chael.”

Where he dragged his fingers the wall turned an angrier red, the lights pulsing in warning that he was coming as more of the glow filled the cavern, lighting it up in soft orangey-red streaked with bloody streamers where he touched and stepped.

“Michael.”

“That’s me but who are YOU?”

A soft echo from far away might have been Isaac. But the metallic voice called louder, “I’m a friend, Michael. Come to me.” The lights pulsed in sequence like a guiding ring of light rushing into the darkness.

Michael wasn’t sure why he ran. He could fall in a hole. Smash into a rock. There could be anything in the dark. But it wasn’t really dark anymore. The cave sent him another guiding ring of slimey light, paced just right for him to skirt along behind it.

“That’s good, Michael. Come to me.”

Michael looked behind him at an odd screech, like a far off scream. But he couldn’t see the entrance any more. Just the swelling lights and the bloody path he had traced, stretching back behind him until the glow faded into black.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No, Michael. I want you. Hurry.”

Wait, had the scream been Isaac?

Michael stumbled to a halt, turning to look back.

“Don’t stop. Come to me. I want you.”

The orangey-red glow faded as he watched, the darkness rushing toward him. Dimming into just the angry crimson path he had ripped as he passed.

“Don’t stop,” the metallic voice growled, like an angry double strike of metal on metal. The voice rebounding from behind and before him, demanding and chasing.

Michael ran from the darkness, chasing another soft ring of beckoning light, this one dodging ahead, while blackness ate the light behind, chasing him, wide and hungry.

“I’m coming!” Michael yelled, trying to make it stop.

“Faster,” the metallic voice commanded, the ring speeding up, the light evading him.

Michael panted, running too fast to yell clearly again, his lungs and legs hurting. The light kept speeding up, demanding more from him, leaving him behind.

He gasped. Pain lancing up his side. “Wait!” His lungs stuttered instead of producing the word ‘for.’ “Me!” and he stumbled.

Michael crashed into the softness of the floor, his face feeling like it splashed through the surface tension of a first layer of congealed spit onto warm ooblek. Rubbery at first but softening as he laid still, gasping for breath.

He tried to push himself up but the soft clinginess of the floor surrounded his hands, knees, and feet - sucked at his face and clothes - held him down.

“Help me.”

The light pulsed back to him, no longer a ring or long streamer, it was like an icon face pixelated onto the curve of the wall, looking at him. “Done so soon?” it accused. “I thought you could do better, Michael.”

“Help,” Michael repeated.

“Who do you want, Michael? Isaac? Or me?”

“Please,” Michael begged.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Isaac to come and pull you out? But I’ll tell you something, Mike, Isaac is already here. He is inside and happy with me. He is going to stay with me. He doesn’t want you either. Why would anyone want you?”

The darkness pressed closer, the face congealing like the graphics were upgrading even as the image shrunk. She was leaning right over him, her blood red hair pulsing over her orange face, her pointed gray teeth reflecting the light as it bounced around the squeezing cave. Even if Michael got free of the sucking floor, he wouldn’t be able to stand in the cave any more, he would have to crawl on hands and knees.

“Sorry,” Michael tried. “I can do better.”

The woman squeezed down so the hot wash of her rotten egg breath made him gag. “You’re sorry. How are you going to make this up to me Michael? What are you going to give me to forgive you? Do you have flowers? Do you have diamonds? Do you have anything I want?”

Michael swallowed hard, his throat and stomach feeling full of noxious lumps from his fear and her breath. “Fingernails,” he said. He would live without his fingernails.

She laughed, mockingly. “Todd already offered to give me his fingernails. And his toe nails, too. You’re underbidding, Mike. Don’t you want me to be happy? Don’t you think I deserve it? I already have fingernails and toenails. And they haven’t made me happy.”

Michael sputtered, trying to spit out the soft non-newtonian sludge that was trying to seep into his mouth. He was sinking. Drowning in muck. She was just toying with him, like a cat with a mouse. She wasn’t going to let him out. Not even if he offered her, “Teeth, too!”

“Oh, Mike. You know Lucy already gave me her teeth. Poor embarassed girl. Needy little thing. Offered me her teeth for practically nothing. There was a girl who wanted to make me happy. She was happy to give it to me.”

Michael spat a globule of glowing blood. “Get it out. Get it out of my mouth!”

“Oh!” Her voice shimmied up the scale in delight. “Michael, how wonderful. No one has ever offered me that before. You must really love me. We’re going to be so happy together.”

“Lemme-go!”

“Shhh. Let’s just get rid of that bad part, the part you knew you could live without, then we’ll be happy together, like we should be, forever and ever.”

Something hard and smooth touched Michael’s cheek. It brushed past as he squeezed his mouth and eyes shut against the quickening pull of the floor. But then there were fingers at his mouth, prying at it. His eyes snapped open, under the gelatinous floor of the cave, where she moved off the wall into three dimensions, her hair wafting in the buoyancy of the slime as she pulled him down by the shirt with one hand, into her domain, along with small clean skeletons all around him, all grinning emptily at him in the bioluminesence. One right next to him, so close the skull was nuzzling the side of his face.

She forced her other hand past his lips and grabbed his tongue.

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