The Inner Silence:

I was all packed up and ready to go. This had really been an interesting trip, especially the people I had met the last day here, or had I? I looked at my watch. Someone was supposed to meet me this morning to take me to their secret underground world, but no one was here. I could have guessed, even though I don’t know how they pulled off what I had seen the night before. It all seemed so real.

The dream, the strange woman, the old man all seemed so real. I stood, folded up my camping chair and packed it away. Just as I was going to the front of the van a tall woman came walking toward me at a quick clip. She had very pale yellow skin and dark hair in two very long pigtails. She looked Asian. I was actually one of the women from the dream.

She was very tall for what seemed to be an Asian person, yet again, many Asian Americans were pretty tall. She jutted out her hand and smiled. “Anja,” she said. “You were expecting me?”

“Yes, but it’s a little late isn’t it? I was about to go.” I looked at my watch. “You said this morning. It’s almost noon.”

"Oh. Sorry, my fault. No one told me it was this morning, and somewhere in the world it is bright and early.” She grinned. I just shook my head. “So you ready to go?” she said, talking over my brooding.

“Sure. Let’s go.” I walked over to the driver's side and opened my door. She got into the passenger's side. She looked around at the front of the van and smiled.

“Never thought I’d be in one of these.” She looked at me as I started the engine. “Some of us like to visit up here or do spiritual journeys, but I could care less.” The engine turned over. I looked at her for a moment. This was really unbelievable.

“You’ve never been in a car?” I asked.

“No. Maybe a transport, but not a personal transport. I think you’d call it a train or a tram. We don’t do cars.”

“You don’t do cars.” I smiled. “I’ve never heard it said like that before.”

“I’m all original,” she said. I looked into her eyes for a moment. She was definitely that. She blushed a little. “You’re leaking. I can feel what you're thinking.”

My jaw dropped. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean anything...”

“I know. Let’s head out, OK.” I pulled out my campsite and followed the small dirt road weaving through many other campsites, most empty by now, making my way to the exit. “We want you to go to Manitou. It’s in this state.”

“What’s in Manitou?”

“Cave of The Winds. It’s a big cavern where a lot of top siders go to explore the inner Earth. What better place for us to enter than through there. That’s how it’s set up anyway.” She leaned back onto one elbow. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I had no idea.”

“You know your government has known about us for years and have been in communication with us don’t you?”

“I didn’t know that.” She laughed to herself.

“Still keeping secrets from their own people, are they? Back in the seventies they tried to invade us and we shot off one of their volcanoes that was supposed to be dormant to let them know what we were capable of.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was in Washington, I think, Mt. St. Helen’s. That was my baby. I did that. Good way to get somebody's attention without killing anyone, except for the dolts who refused to leave when they were warned. We always warn people, but they don’t often listen.”

Millions of years and they still don’t listen,” she said, watching me for my reaction. I kept driving and just glanced at her. She smiled pleasantly. “Oh. How do you like Sheila, your mentor?” I frowned and she laughed. “I can’t believe they paired her up with anybody. Good luck. She hates top siders, you know?”

“I could have guessed. She seems to hate everyone.” I glanced at her. “Why couldn’t I have gotten someone like you, or that Solomon guy? Anybody but her.”

“We wanted to teach her a lesson and we were pissed off about you. Why not hit both of you with the same stick?”

“Yeah, but I’m innocent.”

“Aren’t we all,” she said. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Let me know if anything changes.” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “I mean, if you need me, let me know. In the meantime I’m going to take a little nap. I had a wild night last night. You wouldn’t believe what we did.”

“I can just imagine.”

“I’m sure you can. You have a wicked imagination.”

“I didn’t know it showed,” I responded. She ignored me and shut her eyes again.

It was going to be a short ride. After I hit route 24 I rode along without mishap. It was only about 20 miles away. The weather was beautiful. The windows were down. It was autumn. A gentle breeze blew into the auto. I peeked at Anja again and wondered about her. She looked so normal, how could she live underground. She was tall too. You would think they would be short if they lived underground, like trolls or something. She definitely wasn’t that. She was a good looking woman who looked like any Earth woman from Asia. No difference that I could see.

I continued to drive up the highway taking in the scenery as best I could, while driving. Just when we were a few miles from Cave of the Winds she opened her eyes. “Can you make a right at the next corner? We're going to pick up Bob.” I made a right turn. “He’s renting a little apartment here. He’ll be taking the van after we get out and parking it in his driveway.” She looked at me and smiled. “No telling how long we’ll be down there.”

“How long? I have food in here. The battery could go dead…”

“Stop worrying about that. We’ll take care of it.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. You could be some type of gang of ax murderers or some cult group doing human sacrifices.”

“I doubt very much that we could be anything like that. Firstly I don’t have an ax and secondly, who would you sacrifice a human too. That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. You topsiders are just plain weird. I was told to expect some apprehension from you, but that’s a little extreme isn’t it? Yet again, you have a leader who is, how do you say it, bat shit crazy.”

“Well we don’t choose our leaders, do we?”

“No. You don’t.” She looked out of the van and pointed. “There he is.” Bob was standing on the road at the end of a driveway. He looked like your average man in his fifties. He was wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, which he could pull off here, I guess. He had on a leather jacket and blue jeans. He didn’t look homeless anymore. I pulled over and we slid the back door open. He climbed in.

“You don’t look homeless anymore,” I said.

“Well I sure do feel homeless. This walkabout is getting more and more weird. I don't know how you can stand living with these people. They have these things called dogs. All they do is take in food in one end and then drop out dung from the other. They are like little tubes with legs who just eat and poot. I don’t see any reason for them. They are disgusting little creatures.”

And then you have people following them around. They have a rope around the tube's neck and when it takes a crap they actually pick it up in a little plastic bag and take it home as if it is pure gold. Sometimes they drop it in these little boxes of green trash cans that you can only put it in. You can’t put anything else in it except the dog’s turds. I just find that amazing.”

And it makes a loud sound, a yapping sound, that people call a bark. All the time night or day yap, yap, yap. I couldn’t sleep at all last night.”

“Well you probably learned something new,” I said. I laughed.

“Yeah. Well wait until you get down there. You are going to learn something too.”

“Don’t scare him. Things will be fine. They’ll be beautiful,” Anja said.

“Sure,” Bob said. “In a pig’s eye.” She scrunched up her face.

“What does that mean?” I ignored the conversation and kept driving and listening. I was mostly wondering what was going to happen to me.

“Make a left here,” Anja said. “We’re going into the rear entrance. When we get to the cave we’ll get out.” We pulled up. The security guard looked at Anja and just passed us through. I looked at her. “I sent him a message. I’m very good at telepathy. I can tell just about everything you’re thinking. You’re leaking. We’ll teach you how to control that.” We pulled up to the rear end of the cage. I put the van in park.

“Take all you need,” she said. “Mostly...you really don’t need anything. Maybe your cell phone or something. Otherwise, we’ll take care of you.” We all got out of the van. I looked in the back. I really didn’t need anything, I guess, but I did take my cell phone.

“Good. Let’s go.” We headed toward the back entrance to the cave. I could hear Bob backing up the van and turning around. He headed back up the gravel road toward the exit. I stood there for a moment and then looked at Anja.

“Now you’re in our hands,” Anja said. We headed into the cave ignoring all of the no trespassing signs and danger, possible cave in signs, until we came to what looked like a service elevator. We climbed in. There were only two buttons, up and down. Anja hit the down button and we descended rapidly.

The door opened to a very wide cavern, bigger than I expected. The ground looked like polished stones. The walls were rough, unfinished stone. It’s as if a giant had scooped out the earth with an ice cream scoop when it was still molten. Light was being emitted from the ceiling, but I had no idea where it was coming from. Solomon and Sheila were standing there. Anja took my hand, which surprised me. We stepped out of the elevator and she took my hand and placed it into Sheila’s.

“As done for so many centuries, I have delivered your student from the surface.” Sheila took my hand. Solomon grinned as we all walked across the cavern toward a doorway cut into the sheer rock wall. We walked hand in hand. That was strange. She looked at me and smiled.

“Welcome to your new home until you are ready to go.”

“When will I be ready to go?”

“Oh, when I say so.” We continued to walk toward that doorway cut into the sheer rock face.

The End (Part 2)