I should have listened to my professor.
I’ve always been fascinated with caves, and what lies inside of them. Now that im in college I found it easy to have some fun with my friends in the caving club. The club consisted of John, Jacob, Dylan, Noah and Cody. Of course, this club had its crazy leader, Mr. Gilbert and his weird religious ramblings about caves and the devil.
About 2 weeks ago, the club planned out a trip to the biggest cave in the area, Hearthstone Cave. Our journey would take us about 8 hours to complete, and it would be pretty cool to see a cave that big for the first time.
We entered about 10 days ago, it was around 2 PM and all of us were very excited. The dripping of moisture and the cold rocks felt comforting, completely unlike how the public views caves.
“Alright, take the left path.” Mr. Gilbert said at a fork in the road, I noticed he was always holding a Bible when he spoke.
We made our way deeper and deeper until we reached a large room, nicknamed the Colosseum by previous explorers due to its size and features on the wall. We set up a small camp before checking the map and found a small crack in the wall that wasn’t on the map.
“Hey, over here!” Jacob, the self-proclaimed leader of our group shouted
We approached the gap in the wall, finding it to be about 14” high and about 24” wide.
“We should stick on the path…” Mr. Gilbert said, obviously worried
“Calm down, we can do a little off-the-map exploration!” John exclaimed.
Mr. Gilbert inspected the gap and made sure it wouldn’t collapse before sending Noah, the skinniest of the group to the other side.
“It’s another tunnel!” Noah shouted back after what seemed like forever.
We ended up with Jacob towing everyone along and peer pressuring Mr. Gilbert in the crack. We moved along to find Noah deeper down the tunnel shining his flashlight towards the dark. The cave was now almost pitchblack as our lanterns in the camp had gone out of our sight. Everyone turned their flashlights on and looked around, finding it to be a ideal height. We pressed onwards, expecting to find a dead end.
The tunnel kept on going and going as Dylan marked it down. After about 10 minutes of walking it made a sharp turn to go even deeper. The group seemed weary but Jacob’s talk of scientific discovery encouraged everyone. We kept on going and going until we found another crack in the wall.
“God damn it!” Mr. Gilbert exclaimed, as his older body could barely get past the first tunnel. Noah went through it once more, finding a smaller path ahead.
“More path!” Noah called out as Cody and Dylan went in. After John, I entered. The cold, damp stone was as hard as steel and as cold as ice. No human had ever set foot here as we knew, and we crawled carefully. About halfway through, my worst fear came to reality, I was stuck.
“Shit!” I screamed as Jacob started getting impatient. The rocks as lodged themselves in my boot and I couldn’t get out. I started panicking as the cold surroundings felt as they were closing in. My heart pounded as John kept moving, leaving us behind.
“Move!” Jacob yelled as I tried squirming through, the cold stones relentless on their grasp. The darkness started to close in as Johns lights went further and further away. Jacob managed to finally jam my boot out, and my foot was free, but now shoeless. I got out of that crack as soon as I could.
“Mr. Gilbert!” Jacob yelled
“Yes, Jacob?”
“You wont be able to get through, stay here until we get back”
Mr. Gilbert was quite alright with this, as he hated the small cracks and liked the bigger tunnels. Our club pressed on until we reached a more carved out room. The flashlights barely illuminated it, but we could make out a rusted gate on the other side.
“Guess someone was here before us…” John said.
We moved towards the gate before someone noticed writing above it, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate, it read. None of us knew Latin, so we just guessed it was something from long ago. Dylan marked the room down as “Latin room” on the map as John pryed it open. The gate clanked as it hit the stone and the noise left the room. Cody shined his light down the path, as it went deeper and deeper.
“Do we go?” Noah asked
“I dont want to…” Dylan said.
“Shut up you pussies! We could find gold or something down there!” Jacob exclaimed, which seemed to reignite hopes of going deeper.
I dont remember much after that, only the dark stone and distant screams until we reached a hotter area, Noah ended up trying to leave but only to find our path had been sealed. We were forced deeper and deeper and found ourselves in fiery brimstone, I believe Mr. Gilbert had called it Limbo.
That was 9 days ago, we kept on going deeper, praying to God for safety. Im only alive to write this because of the clubs sacrifice, I sit here next to the half-eaten corpse of Dylan and our empty canteens with nowhere to go. This is my end down here, I should have listened to Mr. Gilbert.