inside—
Ten years ago, these caverns had belonged to us.
From my house, in a car, they’re a good ten miles away, but through the woods, it’s more like two, two and a half. Corinne and Bailey and I used to walk here before we were old enough to drive. Not just for the caverns. That came after. That was always the dare. First there was the clearing where we’d all meet up, just like these kids.
This site used to be privately run and maintained, but now it was abandoned, halfway to disrepair, yet with old restroom facilities and plumbing that still worked. The perfect place for bonfires or parties. It belonged to the teenagers and, like a spell, was forgotten as soon as they moved on.
We’d sneak through the rusted cavern gates, following the roped path deep inside, as far as we dared. Our flashlights off, the chill running up our spines, a tap on the shoulder: Truth or dare . . .
In the darkness, we were all hands and laughter and whispers. We clung to one another or pressed ourselves against the damp walls, trying to outlast everyone else. Pretending to see ghosts, pretending to be ghosts, until someone gave in and flicked a light back on.
* * *
THE OFFICIAL CAVERN TOURS had shut down a generation before, after an accident. A couple left behind, lost in the total darkness, and only one alive by morning. The woman slipped along the slick rocks, hit her head, and her husband couldn’t find her in the dark. Circled the cavern on his hands and knees, spiraling in, calling her name, never making contact. Yelled for help from the locked gate, his pleas swallowed up by the endless forest. It’s disorienting down there—might seem unlikely to be trapped in the same cave and never find the other person, but if you’ve been there, you knew. It could happen.
They found her in a puddle of her own blood and him not twenty yards away.
They’d been exploring a narrow tunnel off the trail. Didn’t notice when everyone left until the lights went off. Felt their way back into the main cavern, searching for the path, for the rope to follow back to the entrance. That was when he lost her.
Of course, that was his story. But then there were the rumors, the whispers, that lived on. He killed her. He meant to. Or it was an accident, a fit of passion, a push too hard. Or like Daniel told us: The monster made him do it. It lived in the woods, and this was its home, and it would speak to you only in a whisper that sounded like your own echo.
Either way, this place shut down, the generator burned out, and the trail of lights turned off for good—and with it, the town revenue. There used to be more of a tourist draw. The caverns nearby, the mountains all around, and the river cutting through. Johnson Farm and the sunflowers within driving distance—people pulling onto the shoulder of the road, walking through them like a maze, cameras strung around their necks.
We still had the draw of the mountains, the view, the way of life that people found quaint. But the town twenty miles away had a railroad with a cartoonish train and a scenic day trip, and it also had the river and the mountains, the proximity to Johnson Farm, therefore taking all of the remaining visitors.
They bolted the metal gates into the mouth of the caverns, tied it up with chains and a padlock, stuck a sign out front. Danger. Forbidden. Keep out.
Like catnip, a goddamn Bat Signal in the sky—Teenagers! Come!
And come we did.
The gates and the padlock were mostly for show. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had a key. There were probably eight different copies of that key floating around by the time we graduated, passed down like a rite of passage, senior to freshman—the dares, the bets, the dark privacy of the rooms losing their appeal after graduation. When those seeking privacy and secrets outgrew the cold walls, the damp floor, moving on to the motel halfway between this town and the next.
When Corinne disappeared, the cops couldn’t search everywhere. There was just too much area and too few resources, until help from the state arrived. Especially for an eighteen-year-old with no definite sign of foul play. They couldn’t rule out the possibility that she’d run.
But the caverns were close to the main road between the fair and