In my twenties I liked to go on urban explorations with my best friend. We weren’t the best, but our adventures took us to incredible places; houses where horrible murders had occurred, buildings where a small mistake had ended the dreams of hundreds of people, and even abandoned hospitals, which were now home to stories of abuse and neglect.
But all that urbanization eventually tired us out and as careless young people we decided to set our sights on nature, which led us to the countryside and the mountains. So we set out on the journey to what would be our last exploration, a small town in the north of the country that would witness the experience that would change our lives.
On the outskirts of the town, twenty minutes from the last house in the small community, there was an abandoned mine popular with local explorers. This mine had been evacuated after a gas leak killed the thirty workers who were digging for gold in the 1950s. Once the gas had dissipated and been consumed, it had become the subject of legends that reached the ears of local explorers by word of mouth. There were tales of ghosts that would take you deep into the mine and get you lost, and of explorers who had become rich by finding gold.
Money and intense experiences were the perfect bait for any young explorer like us.
We arrived at the mine on a reddish autumn afternoon, with the cold in our bones and the slight shiver of excitement, we took our first steps inside that grim and hostile house of stone and moss.
The place was gigantic, as soon as we entered a huge hole of darkness opened in front of our eyes and when we used a flashlight to see what was hidden ahead, we found ourselves before the rails of the mine that followed as far as the darkness consumed them and divided into several paths that led to uncertain, unknown destinations.
We decided to follow the straight path of the mine, which turned out to be quite boring for the first fifteen minutes of the trip, as we only saw and heard the screeching of bats and mice running in fear of our presence. It seemed like a welcome chorus for the new visitors.
At one point in the walk my foot stepped on a solid, almost chewy object. As I pointed the light of my flashlight at the ground I could see a piece of pink and grayish skin, from which a scarlet liquid was dripping, which ended up staining my boot. I screamed in horror and fell to the ground in shock. Lying there and looking up, I could see my best friend’s horrified expression which soon turned into a gag of disgust and he lifted me off the ground with all the strength he had, as he looked away from what he had seen.
Standing up and still not processing the shock, I turned to see what I had stepped on and could only mimic my friend. It was a sickening sight. In front of us, on the ground, lay the body of a mutilated pig. The carcass was old, as it showed signs of putrefaction and bites on the exposed parts, probably from rats or bats. However, there was something strange. They did not appear to be fang bites, and seemed to come from a much larger jaw.
I crouched down to inspect the corpse, but my examination was interrupted by my friend’s voice:
-What the fuck is that?
Hearing him, I got up as quickly as I could and followed his gaze, further down the trail was another dead pig, and another, and another, and another, and another….
There was an endless line of dead animal remains scattered along the trail, from whole bodies to pieces of what was once a living thing, many of them now unrecognizable. The line was increasing in number towards the depth of the mine.Our reaction was to run away from the place, and as we ran we heard it for the first time. The neighing of a horse, a high-pitched sound that filled the mine in seconds and grew louder as it came, echoed in my head and in my bones intensely. It sounded so desperate and terrified that it ended up scaring us and we finally raced for the exit.
Once out of the mine, our fear turned into concern, we had seen several dead animals and had fled like cowards from a living being that probably needed our help, one that was probably even more afraid than we were.
From that moment on, our exploration became a rescue mission. We spent the next three days entering the mine and moving deeper and deeper into the area, but the sound of the horse grew fainter and fainter with each exploration. We sensed that it was afraid of us and was moving away from us, but we were not willing to let it die out there alone like the other animals we saw.
The last day we went to the mine was different. We bought fruits and vegetables to leave as a trail on the road so that the horse could go out alone, and before our last exploration I told my friend that we should go to the farm in town, but he decided to go ahead to the mine, he saw useless the advice or opinions of some old man who probably did not even care about his animals, if those in the mine belonged to him, but still I decided to go to that place.
As I arrived at the farm I was greeted by a not so old man of aggressive or quite cautious aspect, he was sitting in a rocking chair with a face of few friends and only managed to see me from head to toe before opening his mouth:
-Did you come for something or are you just going to stand there?
-I’m sorry, I just wanted to know if you were aware of the dead animals in the mine. Maybe they are yours and well… if so your horse is still alive.The man let out a loud laugh and looked me in the eye as a father would look at his son when telling him a story of fantasy beings.-Ha! My horse?, my friend, I don’t know if you’re blind or dumb, but look at this fucking town. We don’t have the agriculture to have stables, I haven’t even seen a horse here in years maybe the gas went back into the mine and it’s rotting your mind, but thanks for your concern.
I didn’t even listen to what else the man had to tell me, hallucinations or not, the return of the gas could be precisely the cause of death of those animals, although that didn’t explain the bites. Something was wrong with that mine and I had to warn my friend.I called his cell phone and he answered a few minutes later. He sounded excited.-Hey, man. You have to come quick, the horse is pretty close. I can hear his footsteps, I think we will be able to save him….My friend’s words were cut off by a loud bang followed by a gallop that ended up cutting off the call.
Twenty minutes later I was running as I entered the depths of the mine. I felt something was wrong, and I feared for my friend’s safety. As I reached the spot of the dead animals I came across something that will forever be burned into my mind.
Ahead of me, there was a huge bloodstain where my friend’s cell phone was lying. I kept running into the mine while shouting his name, but my voice was interrupted by the sound of something breaking, it sounded like someone stepping on dry branches and crumpling sheets of paper.As I pointed my flashlight in the direction of the sound, the small, dim light drew the head of a bull in the darkness, which between its teeth was chewing half of my friend’s face. I froze, even more when I noticed that I was pointing the flashlight at an abnormal height for an animal, and when I looked down to the ground I could see that the thing with the face of a bull had a humanoid body, and between its arms it was carrying the rest of my friend’s body at the height of its mouth to continue eating him.
That thing turned to look at me and as if it was mocking me it launched the same whinny that we heard that first time, turned its back to me and went into the depths of the mine taking the body with it, that’s when my body reacted and I ran towards the exit where my steps were mixed with the sound of the beast eating while it neighed in a mocking way.
In the days and years following the accident I questioned my mental health.Was what I saw real? Maybe I had hallucinated from the gas and my friend was lost inside the mine.I don’t know, but I was and remain too much of a coward to go back and find out.I don’t even remember my best friend’s face anymore, but the sound of the beast eating his body will haunt me until the day I close my eyes for the last time.
There wasn’t a horse in the mine….