I used to pitch my tent wherever. If it looked interesting, I was setting up camp. I kept a tent at the ready in my trunk. There’s nothing exciting about a park; there’s no adventure in that. I didn’t camp out near someone’s house or anything like that, but I have found myself in some precarious situations. The worst yet, happened in East Tennessee.
I was traveling back to campus after spring break. There’s a spot of hills that I’ve always thought interesting. Between those hills runs a long valley. As I drive back and forth between Knoxville and Nashville, I always tell myself that I’m going to camp in that spot, but I never do it. I’m always pressed for time. I never leave in time though. Class is always the next day. Lost in music, I started ruminating on how boring my life had become. To hell with it, I was going to do it. I didn’t much care to do Calculus at eight in the morning anyway. I could afford to miss one day.
I pulled over to the side of the interstate, got my tent and backpack, and started hiking downhill to the valley. It was still early afternoon. The sun was still high enough in the sky to illuminate my way. The vegetation was thick. There was no human-made trail, no way to easily traverse the terrain. As I hiked through the briars and whipping branches, I reminded myself to buy a machete for instances such as these.
I found a perfect spot under a thicket of red cedars, with a nice flat area and no undergrowth. I pitched my tent and laid out my sleeping bag. I didn’t carry much on these excursions. I had a backpack with some crackers, a knife, lighter and a flashlight. It was usually a one-night affair and I’m gone the next morning. I spent most of the day exploring, but on this occasion, I was a little late. My main desire was to hike to the top of the largest hill to see the view and discover what was on the other side.
It took me about an hour and a half to make it up the hill. There on the other side was a wide expanse of nothing but trees. It looked like a green shag carpet rolled out across the landscape. I noticed directly at the bottom of the hill was an old wooden shed. What an odd place for a shed. The sun was farther down but I still had time to check it out.
I descended down to the other side of the hill, with a little haste. I wanted to make it back to my tent before it got too dark, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. My curiosity piqued. I was excited for some adventure. I got to the shed, opened the door and walked straight in without surveying the inside first. I felt the earth beneath my feet give way, my gut lifting up as if on a roller coaster, and then fell hard to the ground, breaking my tibia. The pain was excruciating. I rolled around in agony, feeling the dirt and rocky bottom. I looked up and realized I had fallen down into a deep hole, not so deep that I couldn’t see the shed walls. The shed was only big enough to encompass and hide the hole. The hole seemed to be about twenty feet deep, no way to climb out and escape. There was still enough light to see up top, but down in the hole it was dark.
“We’re dead. You know that don’t you?”
I was startled. Someone else was down in the hole with me. I grabbed my flashlight out of my backpack. There on the other side of the hole was a young woman. Her whole being- body, face, and clothes were filthy with dirt and grime. Her lips were dried up and cracked.
“You almost hit me. Watch where you’re falling next time,” she said with a weak chuckle.
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. I’m in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I wake up and think I’m home in bed, then realize I’m in this damned hole.”
“How did you get here?”
“I was abducted… and you?”
“I was camping and found this shed.”
She laughed. “So, you saw a creepy shed in the woods and went to see what was inside. Man, you’re a dumb fuck.”
“There’s no way out of here?”
“No, I’ve tried. Nothing we can do. I know you’re hurt pretty bad. I heard your leg snap as you fell. Man, what a sound. I hate to say this, but I’m glad you’re here though. I was getting lonely. I don’t mean I want you to go through what I’ve been through. I mean, I’m just glad you’re not him. Well, might as well introduce myself since we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. My name is Mary.” She widened her eyes and tilted her head forward, trying to evoke a response.
“I’m Gary.”
My leg was bent awkwardly, but no bone was exposed. Even though there was just me and Mary in the hole there were piles of clothing, a thrift store in the middle of the woods. I grabbed some blue jeans and a tee shirt. I tied it tight around my shin. I didn’t know how to make a tourniquet or even if I should. I just wanted to stabilize my leg the best I could.
There was an uneasy silence. What do you talk about when you are trapped in a hole?
“Him… you said him. It’s just the one guy?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I would call him a guy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
“What do you mean? Does he come down into the hole?”
“Yes, and he takes you out of the hole and does things to you… experiments.”
“Then that’s our chance. That’s our only chance, is to knock the shit out of this fucker and get out of here. He’s not expecting me. He doesn’t know I’m down here.”
I started formulating a plan. There were enough clothes that I could hide underneath, and I had my knife.
“Mary, I want you to move forward. I’ll pack some clothes behind you. I’ll be buried underneath with my knife. You lean back on that pile… you know like you had made yourself a comfortable little bed or something. Ok?” She nodded her head. “When does he usually come?”
“I don’t know but it’s pretty regular.”
“How does he get down here?”
“He has a rope ladder.”
“Is he big? Have you ever tried to fight him… to escape?”
“No, he has some…” she hesitated, “some kind of power. It freezes me. I can’t move. I hear a ringing in my head and then I’m paralyzed. Don’t let him see you. We’ll know when he’s approaching. There’s always a humming sound and a clicking.”
I wasn’t believing anything she was saying. She had been trapped in a dark hole for who knows how long. She was losing her mind, starved of vital nutrients. Her imagination had started to create a different reality for her, one that I was unwilling to participate in.
I laid against the wall of the hole on my side. My broken leg was throbbing, as it was laying on the floor with my other leg on top. I couldn’t switch around though. I had to be facing the side the hole he would be climbing down. Mary threw a bunch of the clothing on top of me, leaving my face exposed so that I could breathe and not get too hot. I held my knife up to my chest. It was the old-fashioned survival knife, with a compass on the handle. I had long since lost the matches and string that came with the knife, tucked away in the hollow of the handle. But for my present purposes, the blade was, hopefully, all I needed. Mary leaned back against me. We waited.
After a while, I heard a humming and a clicking. The thought ran through my head that maybe Mary wasn’t crazy after all.
“He’s coming.”
“I know. Go ahead and cover my face.”
The humming subsided, but the clicking grew louder. I heard the door open, then the unrolling of the rope ladder with the wooden rungs tapping out a rhythm as it fell to the floor of the hole. Mary started to whimper in fear. I heard the man make his way down and then the thump of his feet as he jumped to the bottom. The hole lit up with a blue light. I felt Mary’s body go limp and then I felt her lifted up off of me. I slowly, quietly pushed away the shirt that was covering my face.
The man had his back towards me with Mary slumped over his shoulder. He was about to climb up out of the hole. He wasn’t that tall, but thick like a Neanderthal. He wore all black, with a long sleeve turtle-neck shirt. He was bald, but the oddest thing was where the blue light was emanating from. What skin I could see, on his head and his irregularly long hands, was glowing blue.
I was scared as hell. What was I about to tangle with? Yet, I knew now more than ever this was our only chance. I let him climb a few rungs before I sprung out and hobbled as fast as I could to the other side of the hole. He didn’t hear me. I know I had made too much noise, but he never reacted. I shoved my knife into his lower back. The clicking grew loud. I grabbed his shirt and yanked him down the ladder, pulling my knife out of his back, and thrusting it in the back of his neck. Mary fell hard to the ground.
He turned his head revealing large black eyes, devoid of pupils. He didn’t have a nose. His mouth was huge with mandibles projecting from each side. The mandibles fluttered angrily, clicking and humming, increasing in frequency. He, or it, pushed me to the ground, pulling my knife out of his neck and throwing it to the ground. It looked into my eyes, making a hypnotic contact that I could not shake. I heard a ringing in my head and my body went limp. I had no control over my limbs. I was frozen to the bottom of the hole, my plan unraveling.
Everything was a haze. I was barely cognizant of my surroundings so I don’t know when or how Mary regained consciousness, but I could see her sneaking toward the knife. My vision was blurry. I was fighting to not to pass out. I saw Mary get the knife and move quickly toward the being. She grabbed a handful of dirt and slung it at his head. He turned and she landed the knife in his face. He pivoted back toward me, and I could see she had stabbed him directly in one of his eyes. Black and crimson fluid streamed down his face. I could feel my body again, slowly able to move my limbs. I got up as fast as my recovering body would allow and started towards the ladder.
“Go Mary. Go, go, go. Get the hell out of here!”
She went up first and I followed pushing her in the rear as we went up. We were half-way when I felt him grab my broken leg. I shrieked; the pain was unbearable. I instinctively kicked with my other leg and landed a shot to his mouth, breaking off one of his mandibles. The creature fell back down into the hole. Mary and I made it out of the hole and quickly pulled up the ladder.
The creature recovered from its fall. Realizing it was trapped, it tried frantically to climb up the wall. I was relieved to see that it didn’t have any power of flight or levitation or some other weird alien power that would get him out of the hole. Mary and I watched as the blue shimmer of light banged against the walls, like a firefly stuck in a mason jar. There was nothing to do but leave it there and hope it starved to death.
It took forever, but we finally made it to my car. Mary drove me to the nearest hospital. She called the police and told them that we had escaped from an assailant with long black hair and a big bushy beard. I don’t know what else she could say. Who would believe the truth? She pushed the officials in a different direction from the shed, claiming that we had escaped from a house somewhere about ten miles from the actual location. I suspected she knew more than what she was saying, or even more than what she had told me. Maybe she knew that the creature would no longer be there, that something would have come and retrieved him. I don’t know. I do know that I never travel that way anymore and I sure as hell don’t ever go camping. Gaming is all the adventure I need.