Monsters Do Exist and Seem to Dwell in Caves

It’s Halloween season again, I hate this holiday; I used to like it. I hate seeing all of these fake monsters roaming the streets; I hate people trying

to be scary, frankly; I hate anything that is trying to be scary as of late. I hate it so much because people do not know how lucky they are to be ignorant of what it is like to look true fear in the eyes. Believe me or not, there are very real monsters out there, waiting for unsuspecting fools to enter their domain to be snatched away from the warm grasp of life.

Now here’s a story for you all blood lusting hyenas, I’ve met two such monsters, or one, I’m not even sure if the woman was one… That other thing; now it was definitely a monster. It left Chris catatonic the moment he saw it. Chris is my twin brother, and we and the rest of our little gang, we did something stupid. Most people would not consider that stupid, but I, I know better. Now it’s just me and Chris, barely, the rest, they’re gone. It was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

You see Chris, Tommy, Adam, Zain and I, we were pretty much best friends since grade school. We were known collectively, there was never a situation where there was one of us without the others. For many years, we’ve been living by the beach. Now, not too far from our town, there’s a cave system and until about a few months ago, none of us had ever gone inside. We’ve wanted to go there for a while, but could never find the time to do so, eventually, during last summer we planned our “expedition” into that cave system. Deep inside, we were all somewhat nerdy, to an extent; this is exactly why we were so adamant on checking out this piece of rocky soil. We’ve decided to prepare for this little trip of ours to avoid any troubles while we’re there, hence every single one of us brought a bag pack with a flashlight, some rope, and whatever other tools we deemed necessary. Like I’ve said, most people wouldn’t find this a stupid poorly planned walk that had gone randomly wrong, we weren’t a bunch of dumbasses, or that’s what we thought at least.

We set out before sunrise and reached the spot just as the sun had begun rising, it was Saturday morning; we exchanged greetings and started walking into the cave system. We turned on the flashlights twenty seconds later or so. The cave’s inside was dark and quiet.

It was quiet mostly, some water dripping sounds filled the various spaces inside, squeaking and clicking of bats was clear too, and the sound of the ocean’s waves beating across the shore behind us. There was nothing out the ordinary.

We marched slowly deeper and deeper into the caves, adoring the almost mesmerizing shapes created by the various chamber openings inside the system, we saw a few bats, many cockroaches and I think there was even some reptilian or something. I know you must be expecting some kind of creepy details to appear in my story, but I swear, there were none, not by that point, at least.

After we had gone deeper into the system, Adam flashed his light at one wall and found an opening. We walked towards it and tried to see if there was anything beyond it and if we could pass through it. A few moments into our collective pondering, Zain had decided to crawl into that space to see if there was anything to look for passed this cavity, lo-and-behold, the cavity was a small space large enough for an adult to crawl through easily into another chamber. After letting us know we could pass into that next chamber Zain proceeded to push himself quickly into that chamber, once he hit the ground he yelled out, “Fuck!” much to our surprise. We tried to shove our heads simultaneously into the opening in the wall to see if our friend had gotten hurt, a second later he called out, “Watch out, guys, there’s a turd or something here!”

We’ve calmed down immediately upon hearing him say that and laughed about it, then we made our way through the cavity as well, I went first, followed by Adam, and then by Chris, last to crawl in was Tommy. We had scanned this new chamber with our flashlights, nothing but stone walls, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, until Chris’ light, hit someone’s silhouette, the sight startled us all, there she stood before us, a person I can only describe as someone trying way too hard to look like a monster prostitute. With a frantic look in her blue eyes, she called out in a shaking tone, “He’s awake, you’ve awakened him, run, we won’t be able to protect you, run!”

As if getting surprised by a scantily clothed woman with a shit ton of Halloween-like makeup on her person wasn’t creepy enough, her almost psychotic speech didn’t even give us the chance to react, I tried to say something but she just screeched “We said run!” feigning to lunge at us like a maniac, honestly, that was enough to make us turn and begin climbing out of the chamber, it is when I started climbing out I had noticed that so-called turd Zain stepped on earlier; It was a dog’s corpse, a pair of scissors stuck at the base of its neck, half decomposed, disgusting, the sight made my stomach turn and I’ve whispered to the others, “Don’t step on the dog…”

This woman, whatever she was, kept on talking to herself frantically, in the third person, even after the most of us were out of the chamber.

The look of shock in everyone’s eyes must have meant that they heard me loud and clar, or at least that they were terrified by the woman. Couldn’t blame them, still can’t, I was kind of scared too at that moment. We didn’t say a word and just started walking, towards the exist, we only had to walk straight, that much I remember, we didn’t take any turns or anything, just headed straight out, or tried to at least.

All the way out, I kept hearing this broad saying things like, “good boys…” and “leave…” and “listen to the hive… yes…”, other than that everything was quiet in the cave system, no one spoke, and no sounds were produced by the caves. I guess the others might have heard her too. By this point, I’ve come to realize how deep into the caves we’ve ventured, because it took us more than fifteen minutes of walking and there was still no natural light in sight.

Twenty minutes into our walk back out, I’ve grown tired of this woman’s talking, I snapped my body backward and yelled out, “Get the fuck away from me, bitch!”

Much to my surprise, there was nothing behind me. The guys turned around to see what I was making a ruckus about, but before I could react, I’ve seen a movement come from above, we all did, it came from the ceiling. Tommy’s head fell off his body, it rolled on the floor, passed the rest of the guys, and passed me, by the time I managed to turn to him, his body was lying on the cave floor in the forming pool of his own blood.

I remember feeling nothing, my vision getting sharper, time grew painfully slow and my ears were flooded with the sound of my hasty heart rate beating against my rib cage.

Slowly I turned around, he, it, this monster, I don’t even know, a fucking seven plus foot Scarecrow thing stood there with its back to us, it’s arm extended over Tommy’s body, decorated with a blood-stained blade. A full body suit made of cloth covered his entire frame, the left side was orange and the right was green, it had a sack on as a mask, or a face, and a mane full of dark yellow hair, I guess. Various belts around its body and extremely pointy metallic looking shoes.

This monster turned its head at us, rotating it a hundred - eighty degrees on its neck, two holes for eyes displayed two large, watery, faded gray colored eyes, and they seemed truly lifeless, as if devoid of a soul. With its head locked on us, this thing awkwardly back flipped itself, keeping the head locked in place, if it were a human being, the neck would’ve been snapped, of this much I am sure.

I didn’t think; I didn’t say anything, I took a deep breath and ran, I ran as fast as I could, seems like this monster did not care. I had frozen in place once I heard the blood-curdling screams of my friends, tears begun streaming down my face, I was about to break down and cry but a scream from my brothers mouth from behind me had knocked me into my senses. I remember turning around and seeing him running with a huge gash running down from his right shoulder down to his stomach with that bloody thing following him, legs first, it’s like this thing was doing a crab walk or something, its body was arched backward and it was almost running on all fours inverted. I took me a millisecond to get running again and soon enough I saw the entrance to the cave, Chris and I almost made it out.

Just a few more moments and we would’ve been out of the cave, out of the monsters home turf, we would’ve put it at a disadvantage because we had far more mobility on the solid open ground than a gigantic Cryptid that moves strangely on all fours.

We got out.

Not even a moment later, a pulsating, disgusting mass of dark reddish putrid smelled flesh grabbed a hold of Chris and began dragging him back inside, I grabbed at him too, and we both got yanked back into the cave system. I must’ve hit my head or something while we were struggling with that disgusting mash of an appendage because Chris was broken out of my hold, and everything began going blurry, the last clear thing I remember seeing was Chris’ shadow kicking at something that looked like a Centaur with a gigantic head and an extra horse head.

I woke up sometime later on the shore when the tide had pushed seawater into my face. My head was throbbing with pain, and nausea hit me about a second later, Chris was sitting in a fetal position by the entrance to the cave system. My state was so bad I had barely gotten up to my feet and almost fell a few times during the attempts to walk towards my brother. Once I reached him, I could hear him mumbling over and over; “Skinless…”

I tried shaking him out of whatever state he was in, but his vacant stare would not change and he would not stop mumbling that word no matter how much I’ve tried. I fell down to my knees next to him, hugged him as tightly as I could and cried and apologizing to him, blaming myself for what happened, even though it wasn’t my fault, nor anyone’s fault, we did not expect such a turn of events, we couldn’t have.

Amidst my crying, I heard the woman’s voice coming out of the cave, still with that shaking tone, telling me, “We couldn’t save them, we couldn’t save them, the hive is sorry… so… sorry…” I snapped back at her and she just disappeared into the darkness of the cave.

We both ended up getting both of us home, Chris and I had gotten all the medical attention in the world and while my bad concussion was all healed up, Chris was never fixed, he is still stuck, unmoving, unresponsive, with that blank stare in his eyes, now they seem so lifeless, like his soul was taken away from him. From time to time he mutters something incoherent, I guess it’s the word “skinless” or “monster”, you’ve no idea how scary it can be when he mutters something in the middle of the night.

I tried telling people of what happened but no one believed me; they are pretty sure we’ve just gotten lost and fell through some opening in the cave floor, as the broken and mangled bodies of my dear friends were found deep inside the cave. Anyone whom I tried telling about this monster had disregarded it because of trauma-induced delusions. This is exactly the reason I’ve decided to share this here, I mean, the internet contains all sorts of informational oddities, maybe someone around the endless cyberspace will eventually believe me that monsters do exist and seem to dwell in caves.