I did not kill my sister.
I did not kill my dad.
No one believes me, not even my own mom. I have nowhere else to turn and I am very, very desperate. Officers and a judge in my county have given me a week to prove my case, but I am under house arrest and my only saving grace is anyone who can help prove my story is true.
My dad went missing after a possible excursion into Macon cave in 2021. After a short investigation that provided minimal evidence, my dad had been declared deceased and the case was closed. My sister, Lynn, and I weren’t happy with this conclusion. No investigation into the cave ever happened. No body was found. Not even traces of evidence were directly linked to the cave. All they found was a single pair of boot prints that matched what he’d been wearing on the day he left. Lynn and I pressed the police and investigators to look into his disappearance more, but they always brushed us off. It got to the point where police would actively avoid us. We got banned from the police station, blacklisted by private investigators, and any police car that noticed us would speed away. They’re shit, and I think they know it. The police chief here is shit. All of them are shit. It’s been that way for a while. People here say the police officers get the job so they can do nothing all day except race cars and shoot a gun once in a while. It hasn’t all been bad. I managed to avoid a speeding ticket because the officer didn’t want any of my business. Even now, I imagine they slapped this ankle monitor on me just so they could stop hearing about this cave. But I will keep fighting until we all know the truth.
Lynn and I, at that point, got tired of waiting for so long, and we just wanted closure. We decided to search Macon Cave to find evidence of our dad’s disappearance. When we were kids, he’d taken us caving, but never into Macon Cave. It didn’t possess any ghosts or monsters, simply a section of the cave that was too dangerous for us to crawl through, but I’ll get back to that later. After a dispute between my dad and my mom, my dad ran off without notice. In the morning he hadn’t come back home, so we filed a missing persons. After one day, a search party we organized found his silver Toyota Tundra on the side of a dirt road a mile out from Macon cave. It was empty of all belongings. Then, we found the boot print near the cave. He may have gone in and he may not have, but we had no clue. Lynn and I decided to enter the cave once we realized no one else cared. I doubt she’s coming back, even if she is alive, though I doubt that too.
Lynn and I were prepared to spend days at Macon cave. When we arrived, we had flashlights with multiple spare batteries, canned food and water, and plenty of first aid. We set up a tent near the entrance to have a home base. The Macon Cave system is massive, with enough forking paths to make those children’s menu mazes cream themselves. Getting lost would mean a certain fate that we weren’t willing to meet, so we took extra measures to track our paths. Along with marking the walls with chalk, we both also tethered ourselves to nearby tree trunks. We could get about three miles in before our tethers ran out. Most paths went further, but we planned to check every dead end we could find before going deeper. Macon Cave is a straight shot until you get a quarter of a mile in because that’s when you arrive at it. My dad called it the Peephole, but I like to call it the Mouth. The name doesn’t matter though, what matters is that it’s a tight squeeze.
When you enter, your arms are pinned to your side and you can only manage a shimmy to get through. That is not what’s dangerous about it though. Going in is the easy part, crawling out is why we were never allowed to explore. Along the walls are stiff rocks that jut inward. Crawling in isn’t bad, but going the opposite way means subjecting yourself to thousands of stabs and cuts. If I had to guess, I would say it’s ten feet long and pure hell. We didn’t have much choice. The Mouth was the one obstacle that separated the outside world from the possible truth of what happened. We braved ourselves. I went first and Lynn followed once I had gotten all the way through. The rocks stroked my arms as I wiggled through the squeeze, and little chunks of gravel collected on my shoulders. I will admit, in the middle of the Mouth, when I couldn’t turn my body and I could only see darkness in front of me, I thought of backing out. If I tried, however, the rocks would hook into me and tear at my skin and clothes. Turning back wouldn’t be an option. I choose not to tell Lynn; I feared she would leave me alone.
I made it to the other end and called through to let Lynn know I was okay. She crawled through successfully, though it took some emotional support. She was smaller than me, barely, but it was enough to make the crawl slightly quicker. After that, the cave split into a left and right side, each with its own branching paths. We choose the left side first, going down each path until we hit a dead end. Hours passed and we explored most of the left side with no luck. The closest thing to a clue we found was a shard of glass that had been lodged into the ground. The chances of it being our father’s were the same as some random animal with an affinity for sharp glass. At the end of one of our paths, a shallow cliff dived into a flat, vast plane of wet rock. The room as a whole resembled a planetarium that survived a flood. The height of the roof allowed us enough room to stand without bonking our heads. We decided to rest and eat lunch here. She had a sandwich and I carved out slices of an apple. Our tether ropes casually cascaded up the small vertical wall we climbed down to enter the dome. The oil lamp that sat between us reflected off thousands of tiny minerals in the walls. For a moment, I forgot we were more than a mile underground.
Before I continue, I emphasize that I am a weak man. I am 5’8” and weigh maybe 140 lbs soaking wet. After my dad went missing, I developed some unhealthy eating habits and lost a lot of weight, so I couldn’t possibly do what I’m about to say.
Lynn finished her last meal when her rope went taut. She didn’t notice at first; I didn’t either since I had accidentally cut myself. A jolt pulled at her and took her off guard. When I looked up, Lynn was yanked back, body slamming against the rock wall. She hit her head, but she didn’t go completely unconscious. Some force then pulled her over the ledge that led back into the tunnel. The last I saw of her were the soles of her hiking boots.
I froze as her screams seemed to paradoxically grow fainter and louder around me. I should have run after her, but something prevented me from moving. Her voice died out and then I was alone. I only broke from my spell when my rope began to lift from its limp position. When I was in danger, I acted quickly. I am ashamed of that fact but it’s what happened. The knife I used to cut the apple was still in reach, so I grasped around the rubber handle and began sawing at the rope tied around my waist. But this rope wasn’t meant to be cut easily. I used every bit of force I had in my body to saw threw the threads, but it was taking too long. I felt a jolt. Then, I was yanked. The force pulled at my midsection with vigor, and the wet floor caused me to slide off my feet. I knocked over the lamp, but it luckily didn’t break. My body slammed against the rock wall before I even realized I had lost my composure. I had the luck of awareness though, so I pushed against the rock face. My legs were sore from walking, but the adrenaline managed to keep me straight. I continued cutting at the rope until I got through. By the time I had cut loose and the rope whipped up toward the ceiling, I was parallel with the floor. Who or whatever pulled me had been able to get me a few feet off the ground because my back hit wet stone when I managed to free myself.
My tether was gone, my sister was gone, and my sense of control was gone. I must have stayed in that same position on the ground for an hour at least. All I could focus on were sparkling minerals that glistened in the light of the flickering flame. When I did get up, I paced and I cried, but I kept any and all noise to myself. I didn’t want to lure whatever it was. I felt stuck between two realities: if I stayed in my spot then I risked either starving or being the next victim, but if I fled then I risked running face-first into what took my sister. One possibility meant certain death, but the other was a chance at surviving. I choose to survive.
I picked up the lamp and used a tiny foot-hold to climb over the top of the rock face. Peering into the thick darkness, I had no choice but to think of what lay within. I paused, breathed, and took my first step. I feared the herculean task of finding my way out, but to my luck, the force of the rope being pulled managed to carve into the rock walls. I still moved forward with caution, because there was no certainty that Lynn had been pulled toward the outside. We left chalk marks at each bifurcation in the path to dictate which route we had already taken. In my haze of traveling back, I failed to consider that my light could be seen further up the path. To give myself the best chance of survival, I shrouded the light in my flannel so I could see just enough. Each sound brought me pause. Small drips of underground water scared me to death. Part of me felt like Orpheus walking out of Hades, except, if I turned back there wouldn’t be a pretty girl, but instead a horrendous monster that would bite my head off. It feels cliché to say the walls felt like they were closing in, but there’s no better way to describe it. The walls absorbed every breath I took, like it gave them power. I began to fear them, like they were responsible. I kept my limbs as far from them as I could, but some parts of the cave didn’t allow me that comfort.
At some point, I began to see the walls of the cave without the lamp’s aid. I ditched it to burn out. It was extra weight if I needed to run; plus, I still had the knife to defend me. The light didn’t make me feel better though. It meant that I was close to the thing that I feared more than any creature or person.
The Mouth.
I arrived eventually. It was awful. I hope that Lynn died before she got to this point. This part of the cave is composed of a light, layered rock that I don’t know the name of. Its bright color is the only reason the light travels so far. When I arrived at the Mouth, dark crimson splashed the glittering maw of jagged rocks. Plip. Blood dripped onto puddles of thicker blood. Plip. I wanted to rip my ears off before I crawled back through that hole. It was awful. I froze for the second time. I did eventually move on, but it took most of the energy I had left to squeeze back into that hole.
I hadn’t seen the worst of it though. If you remember, crawling in means crawling with the direction of the rocks, crawling out means their sharp teeth hook into you. I stared down the Mouth and I saw bits of my sister. Parts of her clothes and skin had been ripped off her as her body had been dragged through the Mouth. I imagined what it would’ve felt like for my skin to peel like a hangnail, and there’s no choice but to endure it. I couldn’t rush myself; that was the worst part. With each wiggle, I had to slowly feel for what part of the Mouth wouldn’t puncture me. Along the way, drops of blood would fall onto the nape of my neck, sending a shrill through my entire nervous system. I got out, eventually, but not without leaving a bit of myself behind. I had minor cuts and lost my lunch, but I’d be fine. I knew the rest of the walk wouldn’t be as difficult, because there were no deviations. A trail of Lynn’s blood paved the rest of the path. I didn’t look at it, but I knew it was there. I could hear my shoe squish into it each time I took a step.
I got to the exit and had little trouble adjusting to the open world. What did trouble me though was our ropes. Mine was coiled in a heap under the tree I’d tied it to. The rope end that I cut managed to gain a layer of mud. What was left of my sister’s rope lightly grazed the forest floor. There were no blood trails outside of the cave. There were no footprints. Like she just vanished. When my eyes adjusted to the light, and I was sure that I wasn’t going to be attacked, I made my way out of the forest. I didn’t bother with the camp we set up; the forest can have it for all I care.
I should’ve learned from my father’s case that the police weren’t going to do shit. At first glance of the scene, they assumed I’d done it. And now they also think I killed my dad, just because he disappeared around the same cave. I tried explaining myself and my story, but no one cares enough to listen. I have this one chance and I don’t want to waste it. If anyone knows anything about Macon Cave, about its history or even cryptids of the area — anything will help — please let me know. I don’t want this cave to consume another member of my family. It’s had its share.