The trees and bushes fell away as we approached, replaced by grass and then rocky hard scrabble that ended at a granite lip sloping down to the mouth of the cave itself. The bowl-shaped concavity that surrounded the cave’s opening was deep enough that the black opening was all but obscured from most angles, and I remember wondering for a moment how Everett had managed to see it in the first place. But that was quickly pushed aside by the excitement of discovery—standing at the precipice of fulfilling our grand quest for the day, my best (and if I was honest, only) friends standing beside me as we peered down into the dark depths of Mystery Cave.
Even then I think we picked up on something being different in that place. It was almost if we had crossed over some invisible line where the air became slightly electric and there was a pulse of power all around. That pulse was simultaneously ephemeral and as concrete as our own heartbeats, sending out a thrum like being too close to an energy plant or power lines.
But the strangeness of the place only added to the charm of it all. We stood there for a long time on the edge of that stony lip, looking down into nothingness and not saying a word. After a number of minutes, Sara broke the silence.
“Hey, look at that.”
We turned to where she was pointing and saw a dust devil whirling along in dirt a few feet to our left. The tiny tornado of dirt hitched this way and that, coming towards us for a moment before drifting off again. A few seconds later it moved towards the trees, disappearing into the dark of the woods.
“Huh. That was pretty cool.”
I looked down at Everett and grinned, nodding. Then, turning back to the cave, I elbowed him in the side. “So are you going in there, or what?”
I heard him make a choking sound which he tried to cover with nervous laughter. “Yeah, not likely. I told you, people have disappeared out here. Plus, I’m not too keen on getting bit by a snake.”
I grinned and nodded. “Just checking, man. Never hurts to check.” I turned to Sara. “Ready to do it?” She nodded and began to fish in her pockets for the items she had taken from Everett’s house before we had left that morning. I looked at him again. “So we just write a question down and tie it around a rock, then toss the rock in? That’s it?”
Everett nodded, starting to blush. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what Keith said, anyway.”
Sara had given us all pencils and scraps of paper by this point, so I stepped off a few paces to write my question down, all of us separating without saying a word or making a joke. I looked around at Sara and Everett as I smoothed the paper on my palm. Their expressions were serious and intense, and I knew that if I looked at my reflection I would see the same expression there. Whatever this had started out as, we weren’t treating this as a joke any longer. It was serious business meant to be taken seriously.
Which meant serious questions. That was when I realized that I had totally forgotten to think of what question I actually wanted to ask. I stared at the scrap of notebook paper, wondering what was important enough, my boy’s pride weighing in to squelch questions that could be embarrassing if read by someone else. Looking up again, I saw that Sara and Everett were already writing, putting more pressure on me to get it right and make it quick.
An idea came to me, and I jotted it down quick:
Will my parents ever stop making each other so sad?
It was a silly, childish question, and I felt a rush of embarrassment as I scribbled it down, shielding the paper from the continual drizzle. But it was something that was important to me at the time. My father had come back again the night before, stone sober as he always was on his first nights back. But the second he walked in, you could feel the resentment crackling off him like static electricity, sending out a dull hum that sent me past with a hurried perfunctory hug as I escaped to my room. They yelled a long time, but then that was nothing new either.
Then I changed my mind.
I still don’t know why I did it, whether it was just a random act or something of deeper significance. Either way, I tore off the portion of the paper that bore my question, stuffing it in my pocket as I looked around to make sure no one was watching. I folded my blank paper once and began looking for a rock to tie it around. I paused for a moment, questioning whether I should throw in a rock with no question, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had made the right choice.
I turned my mind back to the task at hand, picking out a smooth rock and pressing the wrinkled paper to its cool, wet surface. I had dried it off on my shirt as best I could, but I was still afraid the paper would soak through and give up its secret. Then I noticed that Sara was walking over, so I tied it and stood up, giving her a grin as I brushed the wet grass off my pants.
“So what’d you write?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Can’t tell. Might not get an answer if I do.” She returned my smile. “You ready? Everett’s starting to sneeze.”
He was shivering when we drew close to the rim again, his expression miserable as he clasped his rock to his stomach. “Can we do this and get home? I’m f-freezing.”
I laughed and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it. It’ll be dark if we don’t hurry.” Everett blanched at that and turned towards the cave, eyeing it warily.
I threw my rock in first, right into the middle of the cave’s black mouth. I heard it hit stone and bounce once before fading into the dark. Sara’s was next, then Everett’s, and it was done.
Everett looked ready to bolt, but I stopped both of them. “Guys, whatever happens next, let’s keep this place secret, okay? This’ll be our place. It’ll be a secret just for us.”
Everett nodded solemnly, and after giving a brief smile, Sara nodded as well, her eyes serious as she looked past us to the cave below.
We were quiet on the way back to Everett’s. No jokes or complaints about the rain or how long it was taking to get back. When we got there, Everett’s mother fussed over us for nearly an hour, making us all take hot showers and change into borrowed dry clothes. She had been worried about us, and she wanted to yell at us too, I think. But she was a gentle person. A good person. And if it was in her nature to have the urge to yell, it was also in her nature to resist that urge.
So we spent an uneventful hour getting dry and eating peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, talking about very little aside from mundane
chit-chat. And when the storm finally let up, Sara and I left with
little more than an absent goodbye and an agreement that we’d go back to
the cave together the next morning.
I don’t think it’s because we were thinking about our questions, or even because we were wondering what the answers would be. We considered both off and on, to be sure, but that wasn’t the real reason for the silence. It was because we had felt how things were at the cave, and we all knew that something was different there. It made us question that it might be more than a legend or a practical joke—that it might actually all be real. And if it was real, if it was really true, just what would that mean?
The next morning I woke up with the mild acceptance and complacency of someone that has a job before them that is neither good nor bad, but simply must be done. I remember a foggy moment of surprise at that as I groggily swung my feet to the floor, dimly wondering why there was no Christmas morning flush of excitement or nervous twisting in my stomach. Instead, I very calmly washed my face and dressed, calling over to Everett’s before heading over to find him and Sara sitting on the steps waiting.
I felt a twinge of jealously seeing them sitting together on the steps, even though I knew that Sara lived ten minutes closer to Everett’s house than I did. They greeted me with smiles when I walked up, but their faces and voices carried the same muted quality that I felt in my own thoughts and feelings. We didn’t goof around or waste any time that morning, but simply headed out to the cave with hardly another word.
It was still early, but the air was already warm, with the cloudless blue sky offering no memories of the storm of the night before. We made better time than before, and we had no problem finding our way back to the clearing and the cave. As we broke through the treeline, Sara let out a gasp. Neither Everett or I had to ask why.
Along the edge of the rocky lip, three rocks—our rocks—were lined up neatly, the pieces of paper we had left tied around them. Even from a distance I could spot mine and tell that it was tied differently than the way I had done it. My heart started thudding in my chest as I looked over to Sara and Everett. Sara looked nervous, but Everett was white as a ghost, his eyes jittering in a way I didn’t like as his gaze shifted back and forth between my eyes and the line of rocks twenty feet away.
I reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze and then an awkward light punch. “Hey, this’ll be cool, right? This is what we wanted, to see if it worked.” He nodded weakly at me, forcing a grin.
“Yeah, yeah I know. It’ll be cool.”
I nodded back at him. “All right then. Let’s go get our answers.” I shot Sara a look and smiled. “Sara first.”
“Nuh-uh. All at the same time, buddy boy.”
I shrugged and then nodded, the three of us walking shoulder to shoulder like soldiers marching into battle. I bent down and picked up my rock with both hands, holding it carefully as though it was fragile. I thought about stepping back, retreating to the same spot that I had written my unasked question, but I decided against it. We all stood together, tugging loose the neat little bows that had been tied when the papers had been put back against the cool surface of the rocks.
Pulling the paper from the rock, I folded it slightly without being obvious, intent on not letting the others see that my paper was blank. That was when I noticed that it wasn’t.
I could see the ragged top edge where I had torn off my question and stuffed it into my pocket, and if I hadn’t been certain that this was my paper before, I knew it was now. It was slightly dirtier than when I’d last seen it, but the paper was still legible. I looked at the word written there, wondering at it, studying the handwriting in an absent kind of way as my mind worked. The word was written in black ink, the handwriting both spidery and elegant at the same time—frail lines woven together confidently to form something more. Puffing out a breath, I forced myself to focus and read the word again.
Eventually.
It was then that I noticed that Sara was crying. I turned towards her to see that Everett had his arm around her, making meager comforting noises. I felt jealously twist in my belly again, but pushed it aside as I asked her what was wrong. She looked up at me and seeing her like that, I felt as though my chest might cave in at any moment. I asked her again what was wrong.
She wiped at her eyes as she looked away. “Nothing. It’s great. At least if it’s not some stupid joke…But it probably is, right?”
I glanced down at the piece of paper she was holding before glancing back up at her. “What did you ask?”
Her head jerked back and she began shaking her head as she crumpled the paper in her hand. “Nuh-uh. Not telling. It might not come true if I tell.”
“Oh, okay.”
Everett let out a snort that swiftly turned into a grin. “Well I can tell you that mine isn’t going to come true.”
Sara sniffed and looked at him with a slight smile. “What is it?”
“Well, I asked ‘What’s the most important thing I’ll do in my life.’ The answer was ‘Save lives.’” He laughed, his pale skin tinting red. “I’m not exactly the heroic type, y’know?”
I frowned at him as I shook my head. “That’s not true. Besides, that could mean a lot of things. Maybe you’ll grow up to be a firefighter or a cop.”
“Or a doctor or something.” Sara added, poking Everett in the chest. “You never know.”
I personally thought that a doctor might be a stretch for Everett. He was far from stupid, but he had trouble focusing on anything for more than a minute or two, and to hear him tell it, his grades were always right on the borderline of getting him in trouble at home.
Everett blushed harder and nodded, looking down at the cave for a moment before taking a step back. His gaze sank to the ground in front of him as he asked the question that we had all been thinking since we saw the three rocks waiting for us in a neat little row.
“So who do you think is doing this? Answering the questions, I mean.”
Sara started to say something, but I cut in. “Let’s wait to talk about that. Away from here.” They both fell silent, and we all cast another glance at the black hole below us before moving back to the edge of the clearing. I was glancing around to make sure that we took the right path back out when I heard Sara call out.
“Hey, guys. Come over here. I found something.”
In retrospect, I usually feel sure that it wouldn’t have changed anything if Sara had never seen that fourth rock half-hidden in a clump of weeds. Most of the time, I’m as sure as I can be. But every now and then doubt will set in, and it’s at those times that I wonder if finding that rock and what happened after wasn’t what gave us that final push from curiosity to real belief, giving the mystery real power over us.
Regardless, Sara did find the rock, and we came running when she called, our nerves all a bit on edge and our minds filled with any number of misfortunes that were about to befall us. It was a relief when I saw that Sara was only pointing at another rock with a note lying next to it, the frayed and broken green dental floss used to tie the paper to the rock stuck in a wet mass to one side of the rock’s rough surface. I almost smiled, but then I realized what it meant.
Someone else had asked the cave a question too.
“Read it, already!” Everett’s voice had the reedy whine that let me know he was scared. Patting him on the shoulder, I looked at the paper as Sara spread it flat on her palm.
First the question, scrawled in big, feminine loops and curls in bright, blue ink:
When will I die?
I paused at that, momentarily reflecting how odd a question that was for somebody to ask, but then the familiar black handwriting below the question caught my eye.
This Thursday.
---
Credits
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