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MidReal Story
Anonymous
Jun 26
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I couldn’t believe my luck.
I’d been hiking with my friends Mark and Sarah all day, and we’d been on the trail for hours.
We were miles from civilization, but as far as I was concerned, that just made our adventure even more exciting.
We’d already seen some amazing sights, and now we’d stumbled upon a hidden cave in the heart of the forest.
The entrance was completely obscured by thick foliage, but I had caught a glimpse of it as we passed by.
Now I was pushing through the underbrush to get back to it, eager to see what lay inside.
"Guys," I called over my shoulder as I disappeared into the woods.
"You have to check this out!"
Mark and Sarah caught up with me quickly enough, panting from the hike.
"What is it?" Mark asked, looking around.
"A cave," I said with a grin.
"There’s an old cave here."
"Awesome!"
Sarah exclaimed.
"I love caves. Let’s go check it out."
I grinned at her and pushed my way through the brush until we reached the entrance of the cave.
It wasn’t very big as far as caves went, but it looked like it had been here for a long time.
The walls were smooth and worn away by years of erosion; it was impossible to tell how deep it went just by looking at it from where we stood.
"Who wants to go first?"
I asked.
Mark pulled a headlamp from his backpack and handed one to each of us.
"I’ll go," he said, slipping his own light over his head.
"But no pushing, okay?"
The cave was cool and dark after the bright sunlight outside, but our headlamps cut through the darkness, allowing us to make our way deeper inside.
We passed through a narrow tunnel, the walls slick with moisture, until we reached a larger chamber.
There were stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites rising up from the floor, some of them meeting in the middle to form stone columns that looked like they could collapse at any moment.
"It’s beautiful," I breathed, running my fingers along the wall as we walked.
"I can’t believe we’re the first ones to find it."
"Or maybe we’re not," Sarah said with a nervous laugh.
"Maybe there are giant spiders or something living down here that will eat us for trespassing." "Nah," I said with a grin.
"We would have seen their webs by now."
"That’s true," Mark agreed.
"But what about bears? It wouldn’t be too hard for them to get in here."
"It's worth it," Sarah agreed.
We'd all heard stories about the hidden caves in the area, but none of us had ever found one before.
I could understand why they were so rare; this one was practically invisible from the outside unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.
But now that we’d found it, I wasn’t about to let a little thing like bears or giant spiders scare me away.
"Let’s go check it out," I said with a grin.
The cave went on for what felt like miles, and we weren’t even close to exploring all of it when we saw the first sign that something wasn’t quite right.
A strange breeze blew through the tunnel, carrying with it a blast of freezing cold air.
I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter around me, my eyes scanning the walls for any sign of an opening that might explain where it was coming from.
"There can't be a draft in here," I said.
"We’re too far underground. Maybe there’s another way out."
"Or maybe there’s some kind of monster living down here that breathes ice instead of fire," Mark joked.
"We should go back," Sarah said, her voice low and uneasy.
"What if something happens to us down here? We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. We could get lost, or trapped…"
"Or eaten by ice-breathing monsters?"
I suggested with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
"Don't worry. We'll be fine. We've got plenty of food and water, and our headlamps have fresh batteries. Besides, I'm pretty sure this cave is just a big loop. If we keep going, we'll come out right where we went in."
I wasn’t really sure about that last part; I’d only been half paying attention when Mark had explained how caves worked before we went in.
But I wasn’t about to let my friends see me looking nervous.
The truth was, I was starting to get a little worried myself.
If there really was something living in here, something big enough to cause that kind of draft, I wasn’t sure we could handle it on our own.
"No one's getting eaten by anything," Mark said firmly, putting his arm around Sarah’s shoulders and giving her a reassuring squeeze.
"It's probably just the wind blowing through a crack in the rocks or something. We’ll keep going a little further, and if we don’t find anything, we'll turn around."
Sarah nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
I thought about telling them that I was only joking; I was starting to get a bad feeling about this myself.
But I didn’t want to make things worse by scaring them even more than they already were, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to act brave as we followed the tunnel deeper into the earth.
It wasn’t long before our path opened up into another chamber, much larger than the last one and filled with strange rock formations that looked like they belonged in a different world altogether.
"Wow," Sarah breathed, gazing around at the walls with wide eyes.
"What do you think made all these?"
"I have no idea," Mark admitted, "but it’s amazing. Come on; let’s go check it out."
We hurried into the chamber, keeping close together as we looked around for some sign of what had caused the draft earlier.
There were plenty of cracks and crevices in the stone that could have been responsible, but none of them seemed big enough to cause that kind of wind…
And then Sarah gasped and pointed at something up ahead, her voice barely more than a whisper as she said:
