The Cave

I don’t know why I’m writing this down, maybe to help me remember, maybe to help me forget. My therapist said it’s called therapeutic journaling. Sounds like a bunch of made up pseudoscience crap, but nothing else has worked, so here goes.

Not to be cliché here but it really did start like any other day. Josh and I woke up at the camp site, we went fishing for a while, whittled on some driftwood, and were setting up the campfire to cook our lunch when we heard a screech coming from the woods. It sounded like something large was coming our way. I turned to Josh and yelled at him to grab his pack and run. As I threw some things into my pack, I could hear the creature getting closer, and closer. I took off in the same direction Josh did. I took one quick look back at the campsite, the creature was there, and it was huge! It had a gaping black hole of a mouth with rows of sharp fangs. Look up nightmare in the dictionary and that things picture will be there.

As I ran, I didn’t want to call out to Josh and draw the creature to him or me, but I had to find my son. I couldn’t hear the creature anymore, so I stopped by a tree to catch my breath and make a plan. I kept thinking, where would Josh have run to? I decided he probably ran to the lake, so I headed that direction. When I got there, I couldn’t see Josh. I sat down on a boulder near the shores edge and tried to think where else he could be.

Then I heard him say “Dad?”. All the air whooshed out of me knowing he was safe. I hugged him, and he asked, “Dad, what was that?” I told him I didn’t know, but we couldn’t go back to the camp site. I asked to see his pack and was glad to see it had everything our survivalist instructor told us a person would need to survive in the wilderness. With what we had I knew we would be fine, the one thing we were missing was shelter, so I stupidly led us to some caves near the water.

If I had led us to the ranger station, or to the road, or to the more populated camp sites we would have been fine, but no, I lead us to the caves. They had caught my eye earlier in the day because it looked like a rockslide had caused a new cave to open and I remember thinking I’d like to explore that this weekend. Josh and I had been going to this campsite every Father’s Day weekend for years. We had been in those caves a hundred times, I thought they were okay, I thought they were safe.; but the new cave, no, that one was not safe or okay.

I got out my flashlight and told Josh to stay close as we entered the cave. He was so close that when I walked through the portal, he was right there with me. I call it a portal because I don’t know what else to call it. Portal, gateway, whatever. We were in the cave, it looked like a normal cave floor. Then we were falling, and we were in a barn, an old run-down barn that had seen better days, but we definitely were no longer in a cave.

We fell about thirty feet onto a pile of what we thought were giant ropes. I scooted over to Josh to see if he was okay. He asked me what had happened. I had no idea at the time and told him so. We got off the giant ropes and looked around. I had been to my grandfather’s farm as a kid and I could see normal barn things. Two empty stalls, a tack room, grain bins; but the problem was I was only about the size of an ant, and they were huge. I told Josh to stay put as I walked towards the stalls, I didn’t get far before I realized my feet were so small it was probably about a mile away. I gave up and turned around, that’s when I realized the thing we had landed on was a mop, not a pile of ropes. I could see the mop handle now that I was further away.

I filled Josh in and then he walked away so he could see the mop more clearly. As I stared around the barn I realized it had seen better days. There were holes in the roof, and the stalls hadn’t been used for a long time. There was no hay or feed to be seen and it just felt neglected and old. When Josh returned from looking at the mop he asked what we were going to do. I looked behind us and could see a tin can laying on its side on a shelf about thirty feet up. It looked like about where we had fallen from. I told Josh we had to get back up there and see if that was the way back to our world.

We stopped and ate the dried fruit in our packs, drank some water from our canteens, and formed a plan. I told him it wasn’t much different than rock climbing, and we used our ropes and climbing gear in our packs to get back up to the tin can. We walked inside and thankfully were transported back to the cave. Once we walked out of the cave, I walked us to the Ranger Station. I know I must have sounded crazy so they of course called an ambulance. I offered to show the Park Ranger where the cave was but he said he had to follow procedure and get me and Josh to a safe place, so the ambulance took us to the hospital. My wife came and got Josh but you bastards haven’t let me go, so here I am and that’s my story.

*****

Mary lifted her hand to her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks. “He wrote this?” she said softly.

“Yes ma’am, this is your husbands account of the camping trip he took with your son.” Said the doctor.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know how someone goes from being a normal person to this. He had a job, he was a good husband and father, I don’t understand.”

“We are still studying late-onset schizophrenia, we don’t have a lot of answers, we just know it sometimes happens. Has your son remembered anything else that may help us?”

“No, he still says that when Rick woke up that morning he was agitated and told him to grab his pack and then marched them to the Ranger Station.”

“We will continue to do all that we can for him Mrs. Jones. Perhaps with the right medication and therapy he will be able to sort out reality from his hallucinations. Give it time.”