Why did I even come down here?

It’s a male ego thing maybe, like I saw a hole in the ground and felt I had to penetrate it in the Freudian sense. I’m kicking myself with the stupidity of it. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here. Didn’t bring any supplies, just my phone, my fags and my lighter. I just saw this hole and wandered into it and went too far and now I’m lost.

I’ve been here for a long time, days maybe… at least two. This place seemed so inviting as though it was calling me to it. I’d passed by it before taking shortcuts home from my mate’s house about two miles away. It was far quicker hopping farmer’s gates and crossing fields than following the boring road full of engines and blinding lights. Loads of times I’d passed this place and didn’t even notice the hole at first, but then autumn came and the brambles died back and the Hawthorn tree at the entrance retreated a bit and there it was. So I went into it like a pillock.

It started off as a small muddy tunnel which slanted downwards into a stone room with a low ceiling and an opening at the back. I half slid, half grappled into that space and felt the excitement at the discovery that there was more to the hole than met the eye. There was a warm earthy smell in there and an absence of outside noise, just the drip, drip of water from dangling root systems above. The opening at the back of this first section of the cave beckoned me and I figured there’s no harm in exploring it. I had my phone and I could always turn back if I wanted, it felt safe enough at the time.

I shone the phone torch into the void and discovered another bigger room beyond it, again sloping downwards. The squeeze through wasn’t too claustrophobic, it was an adventure, like I was the first to find it. I’d bring my mates back, I thought, make it a den maybe. Graffiti up the walls a bit and make it mine, I wondered what it would be like to sleep in there.

Down further I went, and noticed after a few minutes that the dripping sounds had grown more vast and echoed which suggested the space I was in had gotten much bigger. Sure enough, as I walked forward and shone the torch around the walls I could see that I was in a cavernous space with rock pools and sleeping bats framed by massive stalactites, large mossy boulders with altars and shelves and crevices to explore. I can’t tell you how long I was there before I realised I couldn’t get out.

The way I’d come in was confusing. Everything sloped the wrong way and none of the holes showed daylight, nothing looked familiar. I tried every exit and none of them led back to that first room. I wound up getting deeper somehow, to a place without moss or bats, just blank loveless rock dripping anxious sweat and eerie silence. I got scared after a few hours and tried to retreat in the direction I thought I’d come from but my bearings were gone and nothing made sense, I was deeper now. Too many tunnels to make sense of. My once trusty phone was useless now apart from its torch, there was no internet down here, or signal to call for help. Cold sweat beaded on my upper lip and panic began to set in.

After an indeterminable time down here, my phone died. It gave me a warning that it would, but that last fifteen percent didn’t last as long as it should have, as though something was draining it or the universe had it in for me. It plunged me into darkness and set my adrenaline into chaos. I’d never known that shade of darkness before, it was a total absence of anything at all and my eyes didn’t adjust to it, the blackness continued no matter how long I waited. My arms flailed around and feet fumbled on invisible stone, I tripped in my panic and fell, must have hit my head for here I am now, on the ground soaked in a pool of water.

There’s a lump forming on the back of my head and warm blood is trickling down my neck and man, it hurts. There’s a whistling noise in my ears and I can’t think straight. How am I going to get out of here? Will anyone know to come looking for me here? I picture my mam putting my photo up on Facebook and begging her friends to share it. Someone in Canada commenting ‘shared, hun x’ as though I might have wandered to Canada by mistake.

The blackness is the blackest thing I’ve ever seen like an absence of anything nice at all and I’m trapped in it like drowning in a vat of treacle it’s sticky blackness and it’s all over me and I can’t handle this I’m going to die…

The whistling noise is starting to quiet down, I can think a bit better now. I focus on it for a few seconds, and hear it changing pitch.. it has a tempo of sorts. I slowly realise that it’s not in my head, I can hear music coming from somewhere, real haunting stuff like I’ve never heard before. It’s confusing but sort of soothing at the same time, I can’t pick out what sort of instrument it’s coming from, it’s closest to that sound a crystal glass makes when you lick your finger and run it over the rim. Like music that’s made from water, does that make sense? It’s everywhere, like the rock is creating it, it doesn’t have a source.

I suddenly remember my lighter in my pocket and fish it out, spark it up. I’m in a small space, there’s a large entrance like a door close by, a queasy sinking feeling hits my stomach as I spot writing above it. There’s no flicker off the flame, no air in here, it’s dead air but smells strange, like flowers.. not the nice ones, the weedy ones that smell like dog paws on a hot summer’s day. The writing is weird, swirls and dots and slashes that don’t make sense. As I peer at them the lighter heats up and burns my finger and I let the flame die.

Just that moment, in that split second the light died, I swear I see a figure in the doorway.

All the breath vanishes from my lungs and I’m drowning in panic.

I wait for the lighter metal to cool a bit before sparking it up again but I really, really don’t want to.

The light flares, and reveals a naked body standing in front of me.

It’s my body. It’s me.

It stares at me, expressionless for a moment, then comes towards me arms outstretched and takes a hold of my shirt collar. The light dies again as my finger burns. I can feel cold hands on my body, undoing my shoelaces, unbuttoning my shirt, I can’t move and can’t shout. I’m frozen like a date rape victim, powerless, unable to fight the horrific things happening to me as I’m being slowly, silently undressed. I’m naked now, and feel like I’m being pulled backwards by a gravitational force towards that doorway.

The lighter is still in my hand. I flick the flint one more time, but realise there’s no need to, there’s daylight coming from a crack in the wall ahead, an impossibility. I’m fighting fury with confusion at the unfairness of it. I watch as the copy of me walks away, towards the light. It stops and turns just as I fall backwards through the doorway.

“See you in three hundred years” it said.