Short Story: Hell’s Bell

If Dan hadn’t been such an asshole on the tour, we wouldn’t have had to go out there at all. My brother had never had an interest in the paranormal, and maybe it’s a bit my fault because I’ll admit that I knew that going in. I couldn’t get enough of it and it had been that way for just about my entire life. When we were little my grandmother would share ghost stories about her childhood in Tennessee (we grew up in Vermont) and every time she’d tell one, I would not be able to sleep for the next few nights. And yet I anticipated hearing them every single time, all the same. Dan had always antagonized her for them, in ways that she would never verbalize, but that I could always tell upset her much more than she would let on. “That’s bullshit,” he said once when he was nine and I was five, turning to me and expecting me to be his parrot. “Steve, don’t you think that’s bullshit?” he’d said. But he could see in his face that I believed it and there was something in those eyes that looked almost like betrayal.

It would be stupid to say that that one thing, that little moment at grandma’s house, caused the rift between us, but I honestly can’t think of any other possible point of origin. He did not believe in ghosts, and I from the moment I heard grandma start talking knew that I very much did. There was such emotion, such conviction, that it was very easy as a child to take it all at face value. Listening to her stories on those late summer nights kicked off a lifelong passion—and yes, okay, obsession if I’m being honest with myself—for the paranormal. My parents were a little perplexed by the way my passion for ghost stories continued as I got older and it became clear that this was not something I was going to grow out of. But they didn’t find it too troubling, after all, this is a point of interest for a great many people, otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole tourism industry built around it.

With Dan, it was different. He got bitter, he’d not only undercut me any time I brought it up, but any time he so much as saw me reading about the subject. He tried to talk my parents into getting me to stop, even suggesting they make me throw away my books, insisting that it was weird and abnormal behavior that they should not support. When they refused, he tried to bully me into stopping whenever he could. I never knew how to tell him, then, that he had always been the weird one for the way he’d reacted. That many people are skeptics, many people don’t believe in anything out of the ordinary and many people outright refuse to entertain the thought, but as far as I knew, most of them did not devote so much of their time toward getting other people to stop having an interest in such things. It had always baffled me, and though we had never been close, it got to a point that eventually I began to dread seeing him. I’d started to avoid family dinners when I knew he’d be home and, eventually, even started skirting the major holidays when I could find the excuse.

I’ve often thought, over the last few years, about why it got to Dan so much, why it bothered him that I had such an interest in things he couldn’t give less of a shit about. But I honestly think that’s it, right there. He had been an only child for a good few years before I came into the picture and at that age, when you’re just starting out spinning the wheels of your own consciousness but not quite old enough to start making friends of your own, I imagine you start to want a companion pretty badly. Being the big brother, watching me develop, I’m sure Dan had plans for me. It’s tough to recall those really early memories, but I don’t recall them being particularly traumatic. I think Dan simply had ideas for the kind of brother he wanted me to be. Our father was busy most of the time, so he no doubt wanted someone to throw the ball around in the yard with, especially as he started getting more and more into sports. I didn’t want to do those things. I’m sure that upset him, but as I started to develop my own interests totally outside of him and anything that he wanted to do, that made him angry. And I guess if I’m going to be completely honest (and if now now, when?) I suppose at some point I realized that he honestly hated me for it.

That was, maybe, how the trip got started in the first place. I knew I wanted to go as soon as I saw the opportunity. A trip back to grandma’s neck of the woods, we’d visit the house where she had grown up, something that had already been on my mind since she passed away a few years ago, and of course there were other local hotspots as well. Me being me, I couldn’t not take into account that grandma’s childhood home was located less than an hour from the location of one of the most infamous hauntings in American history, one that still regularly draws a crowd and spawns numerous supposed sightings even to this day: The Bell Witch.

Even if everyone doesn’t know the story, they’ve seen something inspired by it, whether it’s The Blair Witch Project or An American Haunting or, as most of us did, by randomly passing some spooky special on the History Channel. This being such a big hobby of mine, I’ve done a lot of digging into the local legend itself. There’s something so much scarier about that kind of rural horror, where you’re so isolated and cut off that a run-in with the devil in the woods at night just feels expected. But the thing that’s always fascinated me about this story in particular is how hard it has become to separate the legend from the fact. Most hauntings have a specific point of origin, after all. Whether embellished or not, you start with the story of someone who saw something and either wrote it down or told it to someone who did. The story of the Bell family had that, to a degree. John Bell and his family were tormented by some unknown thing, maybe a ghost, maybe a witch, until one day he finally dropped dead. When the family gathered around the body, asking what happened, they heard a disembodied voice inside the room with them take credit for the death. It’s hard to believe, just to read it. But even the original diaries recording the events were recounted years after the deaths of those involved.

At a glance, it’s not a great case for the certainty of the thing’s existence. I’m not sure if, in all my research, I’ve ever believed in the story or not. Belief has never really mattered to me as much as you might think, I don’t get swept up in the question when I’m reading ghost stories or encounters or watching trashy spooky reality shows. I don’t always think about it. What matters to me is the story. If the story is good, I’ll follow it as far as I need to. In this case, I followed it all the way back to Tennessee.

I knew, of course, that Dan didn’t believe a word of it. He could never have made that clearer. I can’t say for sure if I’ll ever really know exactly why he came along, but I think it has a lot to do with the reasons I already mentioned. We were barely brothers and we certainly weren’t friends and maybe, giving as much benefit of the doubt as I possibly can, that was it. It was an opportunity to visit our grandmother’s childhood home, something we’d both always expressed an interest in, but I think that was an excuse if anything. If I really had to venture a guess, I’d say that Dan came along because he wanted to prove to me, once and for all, that these things did not exist. That my lifelong passion was nothing more than a colossal waste of time. That’s what I honestly think it was. He didn’t care about repairing our relationship, he’d never made an effort to do so before and had plenty of opportunities. He didn’t care about our grandmother, he’d actively made fun of her for much of the same things he made fun of me for. He had never shown the slightest desire in accompanying me on any other trip, ever. But he needed to be there on the trip where he had no doubt I’d realize my entire life had been a waste of time, and he needed to see the look on my face when I found out and he had absolutely no other reason than that.

The ride was long and largely silent. If I couldn’t make it clear enough, I did not want Dan to come. Taking a trip to the learn about the Bell Witch and realizing he was coming along was, for me, like winning a couples’ cruise with your celebrity crush only to instead be joined by your high school bully. But once I realized it was actually going to happen, I was determined not to let him ruin the experience for me. And he, of course, was equally determined to do exactly that. When we got to the hotel, that air of condescension masked by what he thought was wit started making itself known right away. He was bad from the start, but the moment we pulled into the historical society to take the tour, it got so much worse.

“Good idea,” he said before we were even out of the parking lot, to a fellow tourist loading up his video camera. “If that shit gets found in the woods, whoever finds it will make millions.”

The tourist gave a polite, small laugh. I kept walking and hoped to hell he’d get the hint to follow behind me. The tour guides clearly knew how to deal with hecklers. They’d seen hundreds like him in their day, most of them a lot better at it than he was. About twenty of us gathered into a group for the scheduled 5:30 tour and I could tell that Dan was surprised by the number of people that had shown up, especially for the tenth tour of the day. We did a walking tour around the building and the next block or so, and they told me no information I didn’t already know, but that didn’t bother me. Being there, having the first-hand experience, being immersed in it. That was what mattered.

But not, of course, to Dan.

They would talk about the legend, how many things were most likely fabricated, including President Andrew Jackson’s own encounter with the Witch after coming back from Louisiana. And after every single thing that poor woman said, Dan would have what he considered to be a smartass response. “Right, Andrew Jackson, that’s preposterous,” he said. “But the existence of a Tennessee Witch, that’s gotta be true.”

Plenty of other people there were like me. If they didn’t outright believe, they were interested in the legend enough to entertain the thought. Other people on the tour just wanted a harmless spook to pass the time, something to comfortably give them the jitters before they moved on to dinner. Honestly, though, they were probably in the minority. Maybe in a tourist hotspot, you get a lot of that, but this was an incredibly rural area. People only came to this town for one reason. And Dan, I knew, was ruining it for everyone.

“Sir,” said the tour guide, dropping her pleasant all-business tone for the first time, “If you cannot keep yourself under control, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“What?” He said, smiling and trying to be charming. “I’m just providing a little levity. These are scary stories after all, aren’t they?” He couldn’t even keep from cracking up as he said that last part. The tour guide looked embarrassed, unsure of what to say to him, and I felt embarrassed for her. I had brought him there. He was my responsibility. While he at least had the good sense to shut up a little after that, the mood remained the same until the tour was over. After our walking tour, we loaded a bus and went out to see the cave, a short drive and we got out enough to take pictures. But no further. That seemed very intentional to me, even if I wasn’t thinking about it at the time. My mind was on something else. We loaded the bus again and came back to be dropped off at the historical society, the tour having come to an end. This one thing I’d waited so long for, and by the time it was done I couldn’t wait. It felt like being able to finally excuse yourself from an awkward family dinner. The whole time, my one goal had been to keep him from ruining this for me. I hadn’t. The experience was over and I hadn’t enjoyed a moment of it. He’d won.

I guess that was what led me to say it, more than anything. “You really don’t even entertain the possibility of it, do you?” I said to Dan when we got back to the car.

“Don’t tell me you’re mad,” he said in a smirking, sarcastic tone that I was easily able to decipher as “Don’t you dare tell me you’re not.”

“Let’s go, then,” I said.

“Go where? I want to get some dinner.”

“You snacked the whole way up.”

“That was snacking,” he shrugged. “I want dinner. I’m starved. Let’s go.”

I had him. I knew exactly what to say to get him where I wanted him, though I admit I wasn’t quite sure why I’d gotten it in my head, especially so quickly. “Let’s check it out, then,” I said.

“Check what out?” He was barely listening to me, impatiently tapping the dashboard. “Come on, I’m not waiting around in this parking lot all night, let’s get moving.”

“I mean it,” I said. “If you’re absolutely certain that there’s nothing out there, that there’s absolutely nothing paranormal in this world whatsoever, prove it to me.”

“What?”

“Man up,” I said, letting the words drill into him. If there’s anything he hated, it was the slightest questioning of his masculinity. “And prove to me, once and for all, that there’s nothing there. That you’re not scared. That I’m a big stupid idiot and you have every reason to hate me and think of me as less than a human fucking being. Prove to me that I’ve always been an idiot and that you’ve always been right, it’s the only reason you’re here anyway.”

Things got quiet for a second.

“I don’t hate you,” he said in a low voice. I mistook it for apologetic at first, but repeating it in my head, it sounded more like he’d gotten his hand caught in a cookie jar. If anything, he was embarrassed I’d finally noticed.

“Yes you do,” I said. “And I think we’re both going to be a whole lot better off if we finally start getting it out there in the open.”

“Fine,” he said after a second. “If you want to go, let’s go. Came all the way for this trip, we might as well get our money’s worth. If we get caught, though, it’s on you. You know that, right? You land me in prison over trespassing or some shit, I’ll make your life a living hell.”

“It’s not trespassing. The caves are open to the public. So let’s just go.”

And we did. Like I said, the drive was short. It didn’t take us long to get out there at all. By the time we reached the caves, the sun had already all but set behind the trees. Being the paranormal enthusiast that I am, I had a few flashlights in the back of my car. I’d attempted to go on a few excursions before, nothing major, only local places. I had never experienced anything before, but it never bothered me that much. I had a feeling before we even got out of the car, though, that that was about to change.

I was right, of course.

Dan insisted on leading the way even though he knew absolutely nothing about where we were or where we were going. As soon as the cave came into view and we looked into that black, open maw, a feeling of absolute dread came over me. I knew it came over Dan, too. Fan though I am, I’m still a realist, and I figured it probably had everything to do with the fact that we were by ourselves standing in front of a cave at night. Fear of the unknown and all that. It would have been stupid not to be a little afraid. But this felt different, it didn’t feel like it was coming from me. It felt like I was being subjected to it. It’s hard to describe, but it was entirely outside of myself and, I assume, outside Dan. It felt alien.

Even with that, even as soon as we were there, we pressed onward. Not just because we were stupid. We were. And not just because we didn’t want to admit we were afraid, as we obviously didn’t. We pressed on because we hated each other so much that either one of us would have died before being the one to back out and give the other the satisfaction.

The flashlights worked, thankfully, but barely. I’d worried as soon as we reached the entrance to the cave that they would die on us, as I’d only just found them in the trunk of the car and hadn’t thought to replace the batteries. But they seemed to operate just fine. It was more that the cave itself was so oppressively dark that it almost didn’t matter that much. The cave was wide, open, bigger than I could have possibly imagined, though that might have had more to do with it being so dark that I could barely see any of it. But it felt vast. We walked forward without ever really bumping into a wall. Our flashlights gave us small, steady beams that only illuminated ten, fifteen feet in front of us at most. It felt infinite. And if there was something down there, I thought almost immediately, even at the entrance, if it was quiet, we would have no way of even knowing it was there.

We walked further, the small sliver of moonlight from the mouth of the cave disappearing as we did. We were in it, now. Down in the dark. “I don’t want to go much further than this,” I said to Dan at that point.

“Why?” He asked with a grin. “Are you scared?”

“No,” I said. We both knew it was a lie. “I just don’t want to walk much further. The last thing we need is to get trapped down here in a series of caves with no way out. I don’t want to lose sight of the entrance. If we get turned around, we’ll never find our way out. And I do not plan to die down here.”

He threw his hands up. “Fine. Fine. Have it your way. We’ll hang back near the entrance.” He started stepping backwards. “You’re the one that wanted to come here, you know.”

He said something else, but I didn’t hear it because I noticed something up in the darkness in front of me. At first, I thought it had to be a trick of the light, maybe something reflected off the dwindling glow of the flashlight, but it was there. Up ahead, two small pinpricks of silver light. Like eyes. “Dan, look,” I tried to keep my voice down. Sure, we’d come out there to get scared, but I had no interest in scaring anything else, especially if I didn’t know what was down there.

The silver eyes in the darkness blinked twice and disappeared before Dan could turn around. “What?” He asked.

“There was something up there,” I said.

He shot me a look. Even in the darkness, with his face in shadow, I could see it well enough. “Where?” He said, teasing. “Up there?”

I nodded.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It looked like eyes.”

“Like eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of eyes?”

“Silver,” I said. “Shining.”

“You’re fucking with me.” The look I gave him was enough to let him know, without argument, that I was not. “It was probably just an animal. Who knows what lives down in these caves?”

He had a point there. I conceded. “You’re right. Let’s just get going. I don’t want to scare it. Last thing we need is to get chased out of here by a bear.”

“Yeah, agreed.”

I turned to start walking back, feeling its eyes on me the moment I moved and trying as hard as I could not to notice. We kept walking. Up ahead, there was nothing but darkness. We turned the corner to at least get us back in the moonlight to lead us back toward the car, but saw only more darkness.

I stopped.

The mouth of the cave wasn’t there.

“Why are you stopping?”

“This is it,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘this is it?’”

“This is where the entrance to the cave is. We went no more than twenty feet. We only took one turn. This is exactly where it should be… and it’s just not there anymore.”

“Oh, stop it. It’s not funny.”

“I’m not messing around with you, Dan. It’s gone. I don’t know how, but this is exactly where it should be and it’s not here.”

“No, it’s dark and you can’t see anything and you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He said and stepped in front of me, pushing me out of the way. “Let me lead the way. You obviously don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”

I was both too scared and too exhausted to argue with him. We went a little further, finding no entrance. “Dan,” I said. “It’s not there. And the further we go, the more lost we get.”

“No fucking way. I am not going to get lost down here with you, so you can just goddamn forget about that.”

“I told you not to go any further didn’t I?” I glared at him as I said it, even though I knew he couldn’t see without shining the damn flashlight right in my eyes. It didn’t matter. It was about the only thing that could make me feel better and I took the opportunity. “I told you not to leave view of the cave and then you kept going anyway and here we are. Here we are, Dan. Here we fucking are.”

“So you admit we’re lost.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “If that’s you’re takeaway. Yes, you’re right. Yes, we’re lost. Now let’s figure out a way to get out of here, because I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let this continue.”

“Just as long as you agree that it’s not some paranormal shit.”

“If it makes you happy, Dan, yes. It’s not some paranormal shit. It never was some paranormal shit. I just fell into that hobby because it was something nice and distracting to read so I could have just a minute to myself in the day where I could get lost in other people’s stories and maybe other people’s misery too, sure, so that I didn’t have to think about having to grow up with you.”

Dan looked ready to punch and, honestly, I’d been bracing myself for it. Maybe for a long time. He raised his hand, ready to do it, and that was when we heard the sigh. Somewhere close in the darkness, echoing all around us. Low and soft and distinctly human.

“What was that?” Dan said, finally letting himself be scared.

“I don’t know, Dan. Maybe it was the wind.”

“What, is that supposed to be funny?”

The sigh came again. It was closer now.

The voice was drawing steadily closer. We shined our flashlights in every direction, seeing nothing. “Kate?” I asked, weakly. “Is that you?”

“Who the fuck is Kate?”

“It’s the witch’s name,” I hissed. “According to legend. Maybe. Didn’t you watch the fucking tour?”

Our flashlights showed nothing around us, but the heavy sighing was drawing closer all the same. Then, as I’d feared from the start, the lights began to flicker out.

“Oh shit, no. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Little bursts of wind,” I said. “It’s got to be. Really. Honestly. I don’t… I don’t know how. I don’t see how there could possibly be an explanation for anything else.”

Then the voice, upon us now, so close I felt static all over my body–as if someone was hovering close enough to kiss me–came again. This time, it sounded like the same long exhale, but it kept going and formed an unmistakable word: “Hello.”

“No!” Dan screamed. “This is not happening! I can’t fucking believe this! No!” He started running and for a few seconds, I was too paralyzed with fear to follow. But as much as I didn’t want to be down here alone with him, I wanted to be down here alone with her even less.

I ran after him. He turned down another tunnel and part of me was still afraid of how deep we were going. But I knew that these caves were public access and that people came down here all the time

(looking for the witch, that’s right, they come looking for the witch and boy oh boy aren’t THEY in for a surprise)

and someone would undoubtedly see our car. Realistically, if we got lost in here, we would only have to worry about it until morning. But now, down in the darkness with her, I could only wonder if I’d actually make it that long.

“Please,” I said. “Please, leave us alone.”

But the voice that had come only a few moments before said nothing now. And I caught up with Dan to find him frozen solid in the moonlight. “Dan?”

I stepped toward him and in my panic-stricken state it took me a few seconds to realize he was standing in the moonlight. Not only had he must have found an opening in the cave, but when I stepped closer I saw that he wasn’t even standing in the cave at all. I drew closer. There he stood in the forest, somehow standing among the trees and looking at an old cottage with a flickering light in the window and smoke billowing out of the chimney. I looked up and sure enough the smoke drifted upward and upward, into the sky. The sky was there. I could see it and couldn’t deny its realness. Black and blue, a big, dark bruise hanging over our heads. There were no stars. It had never bothered me not to see them before, but it did now.

Dan started walking forward.

“Dan, no,” I said. “Don’t go in there!”

But just like that he was gone, opening the door and stepping into the small cottage. Despite every instinct in my body screaming that this was wrong, I followed. I opened the small door of the cottage, and took in the structure as I did so. It looked old. Older than most buildings I’d ever seen. There was a cottage we’d heard about on the tour where, supposedly, the witch (if Kate the witch had been) lived. But this couldn’t be that. This was old, sure, but it was new. It looked as though it had just been built.

I opened the door and stepped inside. There was no sign of Dan, nor any witch that I knew of. I only saw an old woman sitting by the fireplace, telling stories to two young boys in the glow of the flames. I recognized them all immediately, of course. I had years of memories to remember them from. There in the rocking chair sat my grandmother. Looking into the fire, distracted, was young Dan. And there at her feet, enthralled by her story, sat me.

“And I tell you,” she said. “It was the scariest damn thing I ever saw. And I never, never went back in the attic by myself after that day.” She leaned back and turned, abruptly, grinning at me. There was something fake about that grin, something artificial, like it was an imitation of a human smile. Or a smile from someone who hadn’t done it in so long that they had simply forgotten how. But I was too stunned by the sight of grandma alive to even notice. “Oh, hello,” she said. “And who are you?”

“Grandma?”

“Well, Stevey,” she smiled again, drool dripping down her chin as she did. “Looks like you’ve finally shown up.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“Stevey, you look lost. What’s wrong? Come tell grand mummy all about it.”

“I had a fight with Dan,” I found myself saying, barely hanging on to any concept of reality at this point.

“Oh you boys are always fighting. I wish it were different I do. But maybe,” she looked up at me with a sinister twinkle in her eye, “Maybe the world just truly isn’t big enough for the both of you.”

“I was in a cave,” I said, looking around the cottage. “I’m not sure how I got out.”

“Oh, now don’t you trouble yourself about that. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be,” she said it in the exact same way she would say something to cheer me up when I was little, or to give me life advice. I can’t begin to describe what a betrayal that was. And that, if anything, pulled me out of the moment.

“No,” I said. “This is wrong. This is… I was in a cave, this shouldn’t be here. This is wrong.”

“Now, now,” she said. “Hush with that kind of talk. You’re where you’re supposed to be, Dan. You wanted to know and now you know. You’ve been on that train your whole life and finally pulled into the station. You’re here,” she said. She grinned again and this time, what I thought was drool was clearly thick, black bile. “You’re home.”

No.

“No.”

“You’ve come to find me in the cave, Stevey, and I’ve been waiting. We’re ALL waiting for you. You’re here now. And you will never, never leave.”

“Where’s my brother?” I said, loudly, trying to drown her out.

There was a whimpering sound. Where Dan as a child had sat only a moment before, I now saw him as an adult, quietly whimpering in the corner. “Dan?”

He looked up at me. “Steve?” He wiped the tears from his eyes. “Jesus, Steve, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“How long has it been?”

“I don’t know. A couple of minutes, I think.”

“A couple of minutes?” He shuddered, then looked at me, sincerely. “We’re still in the cave, aren’t we?”

“We are.”

He started to cry softly again. “Jesus, Steve, I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” I said. But in truth, I didn’t. The damage had been done so deeply and for so long that I’m not sure I would ever have believed him.

I grabbed him and helped him to his feet, then went to open the door.

Grandma bolted up right out of her chair. “You can’t leave.”

“You’re not my grandmother.” I opened the door of the cottage and stepped back out into the darkness of the cave. Nothing but black all around us, now. I turned around. There was no cottage behind us and I was a little unnerved at how unsurprised I was by that.

“We’re never getting out of here,” Dan said.

I had no response for that.

Everything is dark and we didn’t even have flashlights anymore. We walked a few steps further and my foot hit something heavy in the dark, echoing out a metal clang all around us. I looked down and saw light. It was an old lantern, laying in the rock, but still working. Looked nearly a hundred years old, but I didn’t care. I pulled it off the ground and hoisted it high to help illuminate the way.

And it did.

Up ahead of us, there stood the perfect, shadowed silhouette of a person. At best guess, a woman in an old dress, but I could see absolutely no details despite the dim glow shining light on all the cave walls around her. No features, just pure darkness. Except for the small silver pinpricks of her eyes, gleaming little lights in the vast darkness of her form.

“Oh Jesus, Oh God, Oh no.”

It was Dan, but I barely even heard him anymore. I looked directly at her. At the witch, though I couldn’t even believe I was thinking it, let alone seeing it. “What do you want?” I asked.

She said nothing. She did not even move. She only kept staring forward with those shining eyes. Eyes you could get lost in, I thought. Eyes you could get lost in and just stay lost in forever and maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe it was just like falling asleep-

I turned away. “Stop that,” I hissed at her.

She took one step forward.

“What do you want?” I said again.

And then, somewhere all around us, I heard that terrible imitation of my grandmother’s voice saying “Maybe the world truly isn’t big enough for the both of you.”

Like flipping a switch, everything fell into place. God, I thought, that was what it was and that was what it had been all along and somehow I knew it. Somehow I’d always known it. In that deepest, most honest part of myself, I think that was the reason I had even agreed to let Dan come on the trip despite having every reason not to want him there. Because bringing him here, to a place where there had been so many sightings, where everyone thought they’d encountered something at some point and agreed that that thing was bad and evil…

No, I thought. I hadn’t come out there to prove anything to my brother.

I had come to the cave to kill my brother.

And goddamn it if that wasn’t what I was going to do if it meant my way out. “Yes,” I said and the witch seemed to tilt her head in recognition.

“Don’t talk to her, man! Let’s get the hell out of here! Jesus Christ, Steven, come on! Let’s go!”

“Yes,” I said again. “You can have him.”

Dan turned to me and the color drained out of his face. “Steve, what are you talking about?”

The witch took a step forward. Another step. Moving her whole body into each step forward, then stopping, repeating the act. As if she hadn’t walked in ages and was only just remembering how to use her legs. I saw the faintest glimpse of her pallid skin as she drew closer, wet black lips pulled back to reveal teeth that looked brown and rotten, the most intact of them filed into points. Her eyes, even now, were shining brightly, like little moons. She drew closer and let out a small, almost girlish giggle. It was like hearing a child’s laughter echoing long enough that it lost all semblance of humanity and passion. But there was passion there, or something close enough.

There was hunger.

And as her spindly hands reached out for Dan, the lantern fell to the ground and shattered and the last remaining light in the cave went out. I could still hear him screaming as I ran blindly through the darkness, falling face first into a rock and feeling my mouth fill up with blood. But I kept moving anyway. I had to. I had to. And then, finally, mercifully, I saw the light.

I saw the mouth of the cave that had swallowed me and knew that it had only now opened back up to spit me out, no doubt dissatisfied with the taste. What I had initially mistaken for moonlight, as I came out of the cave, had actually been sunlight. So bright that I thought I was going to go blind. The way they told me, I had been in the cave for two days. I told them my brother was still in there, but I knew they would never find him, just like they would never find her. You only found her when she wanted you to, I now knew. And you saw only what she wanted you to see.

I’ve never told anybody about what actually happened in that cave until now. Mostly because they would never believe me. Honestly, who would? I never wanted to tell anyone about what I did, either. I wish I could say it ate at me, but it didn’t. As soon as Dan was out of my life, it felt like a weight had been lifted. It felt like I could finally live.

Most days, that’s what I do. Some days, I can’t help but remember. I can’t help but think about the cottage I went into in the middle of the cave, and remember that you only see what she wants you to see. And on those days, the wind might sound like a sigh, and I’ll wonder if I ever actually left at all.