The Cavers Part 2

            “Perhaps this was a mistake.” Wren muttered. He took the glasses off his face, wiped them on his shirt and put them back. When the glasses were finally in place Wren gasped. The two other boys were two afraid to make even that amount of noise.

            Ahead of them in the darkened tunnel, five large spiders were scurrying towards them. The spiders were the size of a child’s head, their long legs segmented by joints like large swollen knuckles. They scuttled across the cave’s floor with that same scraping sound, and the boys looked on in horror.

            Without saying a word Peter turned on his heels and ran. He didn’t shout as he was running, he didn’t look back, he simply ran and ran until the other two could no longer hear him.

            Wren and Henry glanced back at the disappearing light, then forward at the spiders. Henry pulled the pack off his back and held it in front of him, his only weapon against the five monsters. He heard Wren shout. Something about this species of arachnid. Henry wasn’t paying attention, listening only to the sounds of the approaching spiders. He heard Wren shout again. He looked at his friend and saw him point to the ground.

            Looking down, Henry spotted large stalactite at his feet.  Henry dropped the bag, knelt and picked up the bludgeon, wielding it awkwardly in his hands. The spiders were almost upon them.

            Dealing with the spiders took all of Henry’s energy. It seemed that every time he struck one and forced it backwards, another would leap up to take its place. Henry didn’t run though. As Wren held tightly to Henry’s shoulders, Henry kept swinging and swinging until each and every spider was dead. The corpses of the fallen arachnids lay strewn across the floor of the cave and Henry felt a momentary surge of pride at his own prowess.

            “Maybe we should turn back.” Wren said in his meager voice and Henry thought about it for a moment. The spiders were most likely the worst of what the cave had to offer, he thought. Besides, they had come here for a reason.

            The town of Evington was full of rumors about this cave, but as far as anyone knew it had never been fully explored. Many years ago a grad student and his friends had ventured into its gaping mouth and weren’t seen for two days. The man had refused to speak of the events that had transpired within the walls of the ancient orifice save for a few details that made little sense to those listening.

            Henry knew that Wren was most likely right. That they should leave the caving to the professionals and scurry home, as Peter had, to their warm and waiting beds. But something was driving him on. Something he could not explain. He pulled an instamatic camera from his backpack and snapped a picture of the spiders, using Wren for ratio.

            “You can go back if you want. I think I’ll explore a little more.” He said to Wren and he saw the obvious disappointment in his friend’s eager face.

            “Just a little bit more,” Wren said. “Just until we find the fountain.”

            The grad student had later published a paper on the cave that was widely mocked by the scientific community as being the “greed induced ramblings of a man pressed for government funds.” It spoke of spiders of enormous size, (which Henry could certainly verify) impish creatures that scuttled about in the darkness and glowing fountains that glittered with a vast array of colors, like a basket precious jewels laid out in the sun. It was this paper that the Scientific Observation and Adventure club had  gotten a hold of last winter and promised to debunk. For they had decided in their young minds that every scientist was a skeptic, and they wished to do their part.

To be Cont'd