Speaker 1: I've been surrounded by conspiracy theories my whole life. I
don't mean that I believe in them. Most of them
are ridiculous, some of them are dangerous. I only ever
got into that stuff because of my uncle. When you
grew up visiting a man who owns more black and
white photocopies of underground based schematics than he does shirts
and starts to rob off on you. I never cared
much about bigfoot, but more people and pigeon robots. It
was interesting to listen to my uncle. Warren was that relative,
the one everyone keeps at arm's length during the holidays,
the one people warn their kids about before they visit.
He didn't do anything wrong, not ever, but there was
always something about him that made others uncomfortable. He had
a disorder. It had walked his joy since birth. His
teeth jotted out at an angle, like a row of
warped fence posts. He had to wear these weird rubber
mouthguards at night just to stop them from cutting into
his cheeks. He also had diabetes, and that was a
constant battle for him. He kept sugar tabs in his
shirt pocket and always smelled of insulin and peanut butter crackers.
He wore shirts that had been washed until the graphics
faded into pale ghosts, jeans with cracked belt loops, and
a windbreaker that had probably been navy blue twenty years ago.
His glasses were too large for his face. His hair
had receded before I was even born. Most people didn't
give him a second chance. The ones who did usually
looked away. But to me, he was great. He wasn't
just a family weirdo. He was He knew how to
fix things, build things, explain things. He could talk about
sub sonic weapons and hollow earth theories in the same
breath he walked me through fixing a blown capacitor. He
was patient, He had time for me. I didn't get
that from many people. Growing up. His house felt like
some kind of time capsule. Old war paper, flickering fluorescent lights,
carpet that had gone stiff at the edges. But what
always pulled me in was the back room. He called
it his workshop. No one else ever went back there.
I think my mom saw it once and refused the
step inside again. It was cramped and packed wall to
wall with shells full of scrap parts, tools, plastic tubs,
and print outs that had yellowed into brittle curls. It
had cathode monitors stacked on top of filing cabinets, each
one hooked into something different. One of them looped footage
from a cave in Turkey. Another displayed seismic redoubts. I'd
sit at his work bench while he soldered or rewired something.
The smell of burned plastic and machine oil always stuck
to my clothes. After I left. He had this Motorola
flip phone with a thick black antenna. He clipped it
to his belt like it was a badge. I once
asked him why he didn't just get a smartphone, and
he looked at me like I'd asked him to put
a tracking device in his skull. The only thing about
him that I found strange was his obsession with mole people.
He didn't picture them as cartoonish or green or wearing goggles.
He imagined them as pale, sightless things, humanoid but not
entirely human, adapted to a place where light never touched here.
Theories about how their society worked, what tools they used,
how they might hear our movement from beneath the crust
and respond with coded vibrations. He rarely even wanted to
use light outside of his home, and that really shined
through the time I went camping with him. I tried
to set up a fire. I had gathered kindling, stacked
it carefully, even brought a fire starter cube because I
was proud of thinking ahead. He stopped me the moment
I could light it. He didn't yell, he just stared
at the pile for a long moment, then told me
gently to leave it alone. He said fire draws attention.
He said some things can't handle sudden brightness, that it
confuses them, hurts them. That when you're near their domain,
you should respect their rules. I didn't understand at all,
but I just let it go. Months passed after that.
We fell out of touch for a while. I got busy.
Life crept in as it does slowly at first, then
all at once when you start working full time. Checking
in on your eccentric uncle doesn't always top the list,
but I still thought about him, especially when I saw
something odd on TV or read a weird headline on line.
I always think Warren would have something to say about that.
Then one day I heard from my mom that he
was gone. She said it off hand, like it wasn't
worth more than a sentence. Oh, by the way, your
uncle hasn't been home in weeks. Your cousin Todd went
to check he wasn't there. That was it. No missing
person fliers or searches, just the call to the authorities
and a casual shrug passed around the family group chat.
Everyone had an explanation ready. He'd probably gone off chasing
one of these rabbit holes. He did that once years ago,
spent three weeks in New Mexico because he thought the
government was digging under old reservations. Turned out he just
wanted to try desert photography. But even then, he'd told
me before he went. Todd had apparently driven over, walked
around the house once, tried the door, peered through the blinds,
then left, said everything looked fine. That was enough for them,
But something about it sat wrong with me. I couldn't
explain it. I hadn't seen him in months, and I
had no reason to assume the worst. But I knew him.
He wouldn't van for weeks without at least leaving a
note taped to the door or a voicemail filled with
static and obscure hints he was weird, not careless, so
I went. I didn't tell anyone. I got in my
car early one morning and drove out to his place.
The further I got, the heavier it felt. When I
pulled up to the house, it looked the same as always.
I went up to the mailbox to retrieve the spare key.
Uncle had told me about where he kept it in
case I need to grab something from his workshop when
he's sleeping or away. His car was parked in the driveway,
right where it always sat, but the porch light bulb
had burned out. I noticed that as I climbed the steps,
a tiny bulb, dead and cold in its fixture. I
unlocked the door and stepped inside. I moved through the
living room slowly. My shoes made no sound on the
old carpet. Something in me didn't want to break whatever
spell was holding the place in suspension. I stepped into
the kitchen. That's when I saw his medication. It sat
in its organizer on the counter, color coded labeled by
day Sunday through Saturday, each compartment still full. His blood
sugar monitor was next to it, turned off. The testing
strips were still sealed. I stared at it for a
while my uncle had never missed the dose in his life.
He treated his condition with an almost ritualistic precision. It
had been drilled into him. Skipping insulin wasn't just irresponsible,
It could kill him. I followed the faint electric buzz
toward the back of the house. A sound I knew well.
It was always there when I visited. The workshop ran
in its own circuit, something he wired himself. Even when
he wasn't home, He left certain things running. The world
doesn't pause just because I step out, he used to say.
Across the threshold and stepped inside. The air inside was
heavy with solder and paper. The whir of a low
powered fan came from the corner. Dust hung in shafts
of afternoon light filtering through the narrow window. My eyes
moved across the space, automatically, picking up old landmarks, the
metal rack of spools and wires, the blinking VHS converter
on the shelf above the filing cabinet, the digital thermometer
weige between two brakes and the floor. But something was
different this time, a sound, a beeping. I moved toward it,
but I didn't reach for it yet. My eyes caught
something else first, The chalkboard covered almost the entire wall.
He had bolted it directly into the studs years ago.
I remember watching him do it, sweating through his shirt,
mumbling about how dry wall was the enemy of permanence.
Now it was covered in layers of overlapping diagrams, notes, sketches,
and pin photographs. The usual chaos was there, but this
time it was all focused. Everything pointed to one subject,
more people. There were diagrams of hand structures, claw curvature,
and comparative models against known borrowing mammals. There were skeletal
projections showing how a human spine would have to evolve
to function primarily in a crouched lateral motion. Heat mapping
charts had been overlaid with seismographic readings with annotations in
red ink. He'd written detailed estimates on hearing ranges, potential
hive networks, and low frequency signal behavior. Pinned to the
center of the board was a photo black and white
grainy taken from above a depression in the earth. The
soil looked compressed inward with unnatural symmetry. Below it, he'd
written a date, a coordinate set, a single phrase too
consistent to be weather. I scanned the rest of the wall.
A long time line stretched across the upper edge. All
of it converged. He had found something. I realized he
had gone to find proof. The beeping grew louder as
I moved toward the bench. It was coming from a
hand held GPS receiver. The screen was small and monochrome.
A single blinking dot pulsed on the display. Next to
it was a folded piece of paper, torn at the edge,
written in sharp block letters. I recognized this handwriting immediately.
I'll assume you'll be the one to find this, nephew.
I knew it'd be you. I finally found something, and
I want you to see it. Follow the signal. I'll
finally prove myself right to you. I picked up the GPS.
The signal was holding steady, still transmitting. I took a breath.
My throat felt dry. I took the medicine into my bag,
pocketed the GPS unit, and walked out the front door.
The GPS coordinates pointed somewhere deep in the northern Range,
far beyond cell towers or road markings. I had to
stop twice to recheck the route, and once to talk
myself into continuing I backed carefully, water, flashlight, the insulin,
extra batteries, snacks. I stared at the receiver for ten
minutes before I even turned the ignition. There was no deadline,
but it felt like I was already running behind. I
couldn't tell if it was guilt or something heavier. Maybe
I'd waited too long, Maybe I had already missed him.
But if he was alive, if he was just stranded
or hurt, or waiting for someone to show, then I
couldn't waste any more time. The last stretch of road
turned to gravel, then gravel gave out entirely. I parked
beneath a canopy of thin, brittle trees, the leaves scorched
from a summer that had lasted too long. The signal
still blinked on the hand held. I walked for over
an hour, boots crunching through rock and shale, the sky
dimming above me. When I finally reached the destination, I
thought at first I had gone the wrong way. There
was nothing there, just a low ridge of broken stone
and a slope that dropped off into a dry gulch.
The quarry was just beyond it, old and half reclaimed
by mass and brush. I almost turned back to double
check the coordinates, but something caught my eye a seam
in the cliff side. It was in a cave mouth.
It was more of a split between two walls of stone,
vertical and narrow. Some one could walk past it and
never notice. I stepped closer, shining the light into the space.
The beam hit nothing just there. That meant depth. The
crack was just wide enough to squeeze through. I jested
the strap of my bag and stepped forward. The walls
pressed close around my shoulders, rough and uneven. Bits of
stone scraped at my sleeves. I kept one hand on
the rock and the other around the flashlight, angling it
downward to avoid blinding myself. I could get through without
too much issue, but a small laugh bottled out of
me as I thought about Uncle squeezing through here. My
chest tightened as the gap narrowed further, But then after
about twenty paces, it opened, not completely, but enough to
stand comfortably. The space beyond the crack was colder still.
The sound of my boots echoed softly, bouncing from surface
to surface, dust coat to the floor in a thin layer,
disturbed only where my footprints had cut through. I saw
the first one just ahead of me, a boot print,
then another, the heel worn unevenly. The flashlight being trembled
in my hand. I steadied my breath, tried to listen. Nothing,
just the hum of air deep underground. I pressed on,
following the princes. They curved inward, deeper into the passage.
The air grew heavier. The light from the entrance had
disappeared entirely. My flashlight was now the only thing keeping
the dark from swallowing me. The tunnel widened slightly, then
narrowed again. The ceiling dropped just enough to make the duck.
I moved slowly, scanning every inch with the light. Something
crunched beneath my boot. I crouched, brushing away dust. A
plastic wrapper, torn open, corners folded inward, dust clinging to
the sugar residue. I picked it up, one of those
glucose shoes. He always carried strawberry flavor. He used to
say they tasted worse than cardboard, but they worked fast.
A few steps later I saw the glove, fingers stiff
with dirt. The wrist strap was still cinched it over.
A tear had opened across the palm. The kind that
comes from bracing a fall. The ground here was uneven
and covered in loose stones. His phone was much further
from there. It sat balanced on a ledge of rock,
screen glowing faintly in the dark. The plastic casing was scuffed,
and the rubber and tenor leaned slightly to one side.
The signal bar pulse gently, battery at twenty three percent.
I reached for it and stared at the home screen.
I held the phone for a moment longer before slipping
it into my pocket. Now I know for sure he
was here. I stood still and called his name once,
then again, louder I saw it just past the bend
in the tunnel, tugged against a stone wall where the
cave curved. The sleeping bag looked old, almost sunken into
the ground, but I recognized it immediately, faded green canvas
with a broken zipper. He had owned it for decades.
I remember him using it in the woods when I
was still too young to carry my own pack. He
used to say that newer ones trapped too much moisture.
I moved fast, boots scraping against loose grit, my chest
tightened with something close to hope. My voice came before
I even reached him, Uncle Warren, I heard myself say,
it's me. I brought your meds. What the hell are
you doing down here? The beam of the flashlight wavered
slightly as I knelt beside him. He hadn't moved. The
top half of the bag was pulled up to his shoulders,
his arms resting across his chest, hands tucked beneath the flap.
His head leaned against the cave wall at a slight angle.
His glasses were still perched on his forehead, pushed up
the way he always wore them when working on something
close range. I reached out and touched his shoulder. The
fabric was damp, My throat closed. Before I could call
his name again, I shifted the light downward, trying to
get a better look. That was when I saw the
color of the fabric change from green to black, stained
through the canvas. Wasn't folded in at his stomach. It
had collapsed. I gripped the zipper and pulled it back.
His chest had caved in where the sleeping bag had dipped.
Flesh and bone had been torn apart. His torso was
still whole above his ribs. Skin pale and drawn, but
everything below that had been opened, not by a blade.
There was no clean line. The wounds looked jagged, pulled apart.
His abdomen had been torn open in wide, uneven ridges.
Muscles and viscera were exposed beneath the shredded fabric of
his shirt. The blood had soaked into the bag long
enough to turn it thick at the seams. The skin
along his side had deep indentations when something had clamped
down or hooked in. I saw striations in the torn flesh,
shallow grooves shaped in arcs, too round to be teeth.
His hands were still crossed at his chest, but the
one to his left was missing its pinky. The stump
had gone gray. The air around me changed. Then the
smell reached me, rot, first sharp and acidic, then iron,
thick enough. The taste behind it something else, a damp sweetness,
the scent of compost that had been turned too late
in the season. I climbed a hand over, My mouth
turned and doubled over. My stomach clenched, and bile forced
its way up. Before I could stop it. It hit
the rock floor in a splash. I stayed bent over, gasping.
A flashlight shaking in my hand. I couldn't look back
at him, not yet. I closed my eyes and tried
to breathe through my nose. I tried to hold onto
something else, anything else, but all of it was drowning
under the smell and the sound of my own pulse
pounding in my ears. And forced myself to step back
from the body. My legs moved, but my eyes didn't
want to leave him. I had to blink a few
times to break whatever spell I had fallen under. The
flashlight trembled in my hand. I wiped the back of
my wrist against my mouth and breathed through my teeth.
Then I heard it, a faint scrape something against the rock.
The sound came again, then another higher, pitched from a
different direction. I froze my grip on the flashlight tightened.
I turned slowly, shining the beam toward the sound. Nothing.
I took one step back. The beam shifted. I was
when something darted across the far wall, just outside the
edge of the light. I blur gray and low. I
turned the light quickly, but it was already gone. Another
shape followed, cutting across the dust ahead of me. My
eyes couldn't track it fast there was more than one.
I kept my feet planted, trying to count the echoes
of movement, three maybe four. None of them made a
sound I could identify, just the soft scrape of nails
and the drag of their limbs brushing loose gravel. With
these the things that had done this to Uncle, I
couldn't know for sure. I crouched slightly and angled the
light across the walls. They weren't climbing, but they were
getting closer, hugging the edges of the chamber, staying just
outside the illumination. Wherever they were, they didn't want to
be seen. I thought of something Warren once told me.
Most animals don't want to fight. If you scare them,
they wait, but if you run, they chase. It had
been drawing a story about a coyote that followed him
for two miles. I remembered the way he had spoken, then, calm,
like it was more important to think than to react.
I could hear scuttling again, louder now, so I stayed
calm and tested my theory. I flicked the flashlight off.
The darkness was instant, complete, just pressure and sound. The
scratching grew sharper closer. I could feel them now, small
displacements in the air, loose pebbles shifting near my boots.
Clenched my jaw, counted silently to four, and snapped the
beam back on. The light cut through the dark like
a blade. One of them froze mid movement. For a second.
I saw it. It had crept within six feet of me,
crouched low, body compressed in a tense arch. It skittered
off when the light hit it. Its limbs locked in
place for a fraction of a second. Muscles coiled but frozen.
The skin on his back was patchy and raw, hairless,
pink and gray. The skin across the skull had been stretched.
It looked almost human from the silhouette, but it had
no eyebrows or cheek bones. The flesh sat low, sagging
slightly under its weight. It reminded me of moles we
used to see in the garden, but wrong in proportions.
The head was too large, the jaw too wide. The
eyes were small, swollen and dark with sclarer, had watery gleam.
They didn't reflect the light. They resisted it. I watched
as the pupils constricted into pinholes. It shrieked not loud,
but high and shaking. Then it turned and vanished into
the rock behind it, slipping through a narrow gap I
hadn't seen before. A moment later, another shape followed it,
then another. My hands were soaked in sweat, even through
the fabric of my sleeves. My heart hammered so loud
I almost missed the next sound. I turned and ran.
All those quiet lessons about staying calm and holding your
ground evaporated. Every animal documentary, an educational video i'd ever watched,
crumbled under the sound of claws skittering against stone. I
ran hard, light, swinging in frantic arcs across the tunnel walls.
The beam flickered against rock and dust and things I
could not name. My bag clipped the side of the cave.
I stumbled, caught myself, and kept moving. I heard them
hiss behind me. A sharp click followed close to my left,
then another above. One of them was moving across the ceiling.
I heard the scrape of its limbs, and the dull
thought of his body repositioning overhead. I couldn't look. I
didn't want to see how close it was. My lungs burned,
my throat felt raw. The air was heavy and damp
and thick, with the scent of something. I could see
the narrow path ahead, the one I had come through
the tunnel. I never felt so long. The beam of
my flashlight hit the rock just ahead. That was when
one lunged. It came from the dark on my right,
a blur of pale limbs and teeth. I turned just
enough to avoid it. Its claws raked the cave wall
and sent a cascade of dust across my shoulder. I
threw my weight forward, pushed off the ground, and ran harder.
Then another dropped from above. I screamed. It missed barely.
It hit the floor behind me and skidded, claws dragging.
I didn't stop. I knew they were closing in. I
felt the weight of them behind me, pressing the air forward,
shrinking the distance between us. Then claws wrapped around my leg.
My body slammed into the ground. The impact drove the
air from my lungs. The flashlight bounced out to my
grip and rolled across the stone. The beams swung wildly,
strobing through the cave in broken fragments. My heel caught something.
The grip on my leg tightened pulling. I clawed at
the ground. My fingers found nothing but dust and sharp gravel.
Another shape moved in from the left, crawling, low eyes leaking,
its jaw clicked open, saliva dripping from the mouth of
a mall. A distorted melody warped by decades of overuse,
blasted through the cave. Mechanical static layered over digital tones.
The motor roller it had slid from my jacket pocket
when I hit the floor. The antenna stuck at an angle.
The screen glowed. We were close enough to the surface.
Now it had found a signal. Everything it had missed, calls, voicemails,
alerts had come through at once, dozens, maybe hundreds. The
speaker vibrated against the stone. Every sound echoed through the tunnel,
magnified tenfold. I'd always marked the ring tone, a broken
remix of old midiphiles, layered with sirens and overlapping voice prompts.
It sounded awful. The thing on my legs shrieked and
let go. Its arms snapped up to shield its head.
The one crawling towards me recoiled, clawing at its skull.
Both of them backed away from the phone, their bodies
twisting against the walls, trying to escape the sound. One
slammed into the rock so hard dust exploded from the ceiling.
Another scraped at its own ears, tearing shallow furrows into
the sides of its head. The ring tone kept playing.
The cave vibrated with it. Loops of distorted melody collided
with incoming alert and static griding voicemails. I pushed myself
up and grabbed the flashlight. The beam caught one of
the creature's mid turn. It screamed and scrambled back into
the dark. The crack of the cliff side was ahead.
I threw myself through it, shoulders, slamming into the stone
on either side. The cold air outside hit my face
and chest like a tide. I dropped to my knees
on the gravel slope just beyond the entrance, but above
me sunlight. I looked up and saw the sky. I
never found the courage to go back. I wish I
could say I went back in there retrieved my uncle's body,
but I was scared. I gave an anonymous tip to
the police. They found the body, and later the cave
was sealed off because it was deemed too dangerous. The
official story was a lonely hermit losing his life in
a cave. But I knew better.