The Cave, Part I

When I was 9 years old my family lived in a new house, in a new neighborhood, on the outskirts of a small town. The location was most likely picked because of the proximity to the new freeway, some train tracks, and a little creek that served as the city's flood control. All that made it cheap real estate.
Our home was nestled in a group of about 30 others in the middle of a reclaimed cow pasture. A short distance away lay Zero mountain.
Zero mountain was a mining operation for a hundred years until the minerals petered out and almost everything was abandoned. What was left running fit behind a tall fence and a little alcove. None of kids were interested in the mountain, the dilapidated equipment, or the tall fence for many years...save Winter time. That's when we would walk up the road cutting straight up and over the top of Zero so we could sled down it.
Those were trying and terrifying encounters that always left us wanting more...and our mommies. We always went back.
The train tracks that I mentioned earlier crossed right in front of our neighborhood and disappeared a few miles away around the back side of Zero and a forest resting at the base. It was a natural progression for us kids to start with putting things on the tracks to be smashed, then throwing things at the train, to running after the train, to riding our backs down the road running parallel to the tracks while chasing the train, to wonder around on the tracks a ways, to finally wondering where the tracks and train went.
The adventures continued on in to Summer with each outing finding us further down the tracks until we started making sandwiches and stuffing them, along with candy, in our pockets for the journey there and back again. It was on one of these journeys we started to become interested in Zero mountain. The tracks hugged the back side of the mountain about a mile in the woods. About a 1,000 feet up we could see dark holes in the mountain face but the terrain was too rough and the grade too steep to attempt a climb up, even for foolhardy kids like us.
We started looking for ways up the mountain along the tracks each time we walked them. It didn't look good, it was like a conical volcano on all sides exposed to the tracks. After walking down the tracks for weeks and not finding treasure, dead bodies, or a clubhouse the amount of kids from the neighborhood dwindled to three.
The remaining three kids (me, my older sister, and Jason from a block over) decided to abandon the tracks and walk up the road that cut straight over the top of Zero like a bad haircut. At the top we found an old rock breaker and a five story silo. It was all so rickety that playing on it left us covered in rust and cuts so we moved on.
The road wound down in to the valley at the top of the mountain where we found the fenced in alcove. A few trucks and buildings sat behind it, unmoving and unmarked, which didn't attract our interests. We followed a split in the road leading out of the valley and back up to a high ridge. It would around massive piles of stone, cut back on itself at least 14 times until we got to a clearing on what appeared to be the Western ridge of Zero. It looked like a wasteland blown to bits. Large boulders strewn about at weird angles. Left to topple over and roll down the mountain given the right momentum. Gravel piles of different colors sat next to giant gears and odd machinery that seemed to have served no purpose.
The sun baked everything on top. The light was pure white. It felt like a movie sequence when someone is about to die and starts to leave the world around them in a slowly blinding flash.
We wandered for an hour peeking in little cave entrances no bigger than a cracked door. Found a gigantic pit dug at the highest point that had filled with the bluest, opaque water I had ever seen. We couldn't make it down to the water as it was a sheer drop of about two hundred feet and the water looked like something a very large, and very hungry, monster would live in. We walked around until we found the ridge that looked down on the tracks we hiked so many times, some 2,000 feet below.
We knew there were caves down there, we just didn't know if they opened up on this side of the mountain. Our quest began again in earnest. We had to find an opening.
We split up in to three to try and cover more ground up on the mountain ridge. I took a path that lead me almost to the northern most part of the mountaintop. I was about to turn back as I could see the road we had walked in on far below, when I spied three wide, but short caves. Each opening was piled high with machine cut rocks. I could see scratch and bite marks all over them. The first two openings were piled so high and thick that no amount of kicking could clear an opening big enough for me. The third entrance however gave way easily.
There I sat with my legs dangling down in to the darkness after having kicked a wheelbarrows worth of rocks down. My hands were planted firmly behind me and I sat back just to make sure I didn't slip away.
The blinding light outside made it impossible to see in. I threw several rocks in to the opening and barely heard anything when they landed.
I found a cave!
I got up and ran up to a clearing and started screaming for Jason and my sister. It took them several minutes to make it over to where I was...and those minutes felt like an eternity. The same time someone feels slow down during a car wreck is what I felt. I couldn't scream any louder or make any more insanely outlandish claims to get them to run over the treacherous landscape than I already had. I had to wait.
When they finally got to me I was already running back to the entrance, which made them think I was joking as they both stood still until I turned back and screamed for them to hurry some more.
We all finally congregated at the entrance peering down in to the darkness. They threw rocks, I threw more, we all agreed this was the find of our lives.
Looking down the long drop of scree into the darkness I knew we would need flashlights and rope before attempting a venture inside. So, with half broken hearts we headed home knowing what we was to come next.
It took a few days to get back to the entrance we had found. While we dug in garages, sheds, and the backs of our parents cars for the supplies we thought we might need each one of us told the tale of finding "the cave". Kids were equal parts amazed and horrified by the existence of said cave and the possibility of disappearing into its depths.
I thought we would certainly be able to recruit some neighborhood kids into our adventure but after all was said and done it was only the three of us who originally set out and found the cave headed back to climb down inside.
The Friday finally came that we had all that we thought we would need: rope, flashlights, knives, extra socks (I don't remember why), sandwiches, peanut butter crackers, and a mason jar of water. With a cursory check of supplies, debate over whether a pellet gun would help and if we should bring one of our pet dogs along we set off with just the items already collected.
On our way out of the neighborhood we knocked on two doors to make sure we couldn't get one kid more to join...it seemed like four was a powerful number and capable of fighting off an unknown adversary that three couldn't. In the end, just the three of us stepped on to the tracks and headed West.
I can't rightly remember what we talked about but I'm sure it was about claiming the cave as ours, who we would allow in, who we would tell about it, possible treasure, possible monsters, and who was going in first.
I remember that the walk was longer than it should have been. Excitement pushed back against us like magnetic force, or maybe that was fear.
When we got to the top of Zero mountain it took a minute to rediscover our opening again which had me worried that someone had found our cave too and hid it, but my fears were unfounded. Soon enough we were standing at the jet black gash in the white rock looking in. The earlier agreement of who was going in faltered, Jason had declared dibs but fear broke that resolve, and so we found ourselves battling to force each other in using standard kid protocol; rock, paper, scissors.
First me against my sis, a win! Then me against Jason (the rat coward who was supposed to be first), a lose!
I went through all the stages of coping in about 30 seconds from denial to acceptance. In the end the desire to get down there was greater than my fear of dropping into a hell mouth and being devoured by blind, albino monsters.
I tied the rope around my pants using the belt loops and stuffed a flashlight down the front of my pants. I wanted complete control of my hands, and conversely, my decent if at all possible. I kicked a bigger hole in the scree and waited for the roar of rocks to subside before I climbed over the point of liminality and down the dark side.
I was trying to slide down on my butt at first and with each foot I realized it was an inferior method. The rocks were broken and jagged, the dust thick and choking. The best way down was a bent knee run. So, without alerting Jason who was holding the rope I stood  up and began descending rapidly. I must have gone down about 20 feet before the panic up top caused Jason and my sister to think I was either being pulled to my death by a nefarious force or slipping in to the abyss as they grabbed the rope tightly and sat back. My pants nearly came off as the rope went taught and I fell forward. The force knocked the wind out of me so I was powerless to yell out as the proceeded to pull me back up the slope via sharp rocks.
After being dragged backwards for a foot I finally yelled out and they stopped. I got back on my feet, dusted myself off, jerked angrily at the rope and walked down the remaining feet to the cave floor. My eyes were adjusting while I stood on the dry, cold floor in silence waiting for a noise other than my breathing.
Drips. Far off drips. Wind. A low moan of it entering from some unknown location deeper inside, like a yawn from a whale.
My sister and Jason were calling down to me, asking questions, demanding to know what was there, could they come now, and other requests I didn't want to answer until I knew speaking wouldn't attract something from the dark. I held my flashlight without turning it on for the same reason.
Finally, I turned it on and looked at what was immediately surrounding me. To my right the rock wall which held the opening and scree pile I just slid down went on in to darkness. I could see it stretch on for about a hundred feet before fading away. Panning left my light illuminated nothing unless I pointed it straight up or down. The ceiling was about 80-100 feet high, higher as the cave deepened. Turning left towards the other side of the wall I had entered through my light shone on a pillar. A pillar carved from the cave. Reaching from floor to ceiling and thick as a redwood. I walked towards it but was stopped, by the rope still looped through my pants. I turned around and yelled up the slope to come down and that I was taking off the rope.
As I freed myself from restraints I heard the bustle of the other two explorers making their way in and down. Walking forward shining my flashlight periodically at the pillar and down at the floor I was amazed by how dry the cave floor was and how large the pillar kept getting, as I walked closer and closer. Standing at the base of it and looking up the scope and size was beyond my young understanding. I walked around it with my arms outstretched trying to get a rough idea. It was on the backside, looking back at the entrance did I realize that another pillar was several hundred feet away. I was stunned. I turned around in to the darkness and pointed my light deep in to the cave and off in the faint distance another pillar, just as large, stood waiting.
I walked back around the pillar towards my sister and Jason who were just reaching the bottom and looking around for themselves and remarked on the pillars and the vastness of the cave. We all echoed sentiments of awe and worry. It was so big. Immense. Not an empty warehouse size. Not even a stadium size. It was a neighborhood, long, wide, tall, and deep.

We regrouped and agreed to walk along the wall to the right of the entrance to try and measure at least one length of it. We walked along the wall until the floor fell away. Looking around we realized there were trails/roads cut in to the rock so we walked over and were pleasantly surprised that it ran parallel to the wall. Like a cliff side road it was with one side only slightly higher than the main floor of the cave and the other falling off in to the darkness separating us from the cave wall that wound back to the entrance.

Kicking rocks off the side, down in to the abyss, listening for the bottom. Somewhere at the bottom a small pool of water was disturbed by our rocks. The splash was quickly followed by the clank-crunch of rock on rock.

We walked for five minutes. Slowly. Our flashlights whipped around, floor to wall, wall to emptiness, floor to ceiling, all over. It still didn't make us feel safe seeing where our every foot fell. Slowly we stepped as if the lights that shone down on the path would not reveal a sudden ending. The path bent close to the wall and the ceiling got lower as we moved further down the right wall. We came to a split on the road with one part turning off in to the darkness towards the center of the cave and the other even closer to the wall and down what appeared to be a sub cave. We chose to walk in to the sub cave and turned right. Things seemed a little more claustrophobic down that path. The ceiling was only 50 feet up and the walls on either side only 100 or so. Debris on the floor was piled along with corners where the walls met the floor. Big rocks, pillow sized. We walked another five minutes down the sub cave which also seemed to be dropping down minutely, deeper in to the Earth. Our conversations went from upbeat to fragile. We were speaking in hushed tones now that the walls and ceiling were closing in. Fear crept in to our minds. I was speaking about weird things on my mind. Worries. It became infectious. By the time one of our lights lit up a broken looking shack, more like an outhouse with windows, our bravery had given way to horror. We didn't turn and run. We stopped, then walked backwards, as if from a growling dog. Everyone turned around and started walking back making excuses like "It's too dark down here." or "Let's look somewhere else." as we headed back to the split in the road.

When we got back to the split and turned down the other route it was only a few moments before we came to just one of the many terrible and unsettling things hidden deep in that cave.