six
About halfway up the hillside, an inky, black cave yawned wide. As he started up the hill he found a depression in the ground, a long unused trail. It had been worn into the earth by considerable traffic, but now vines and grasses threatened to hide it forever. He wondered if it might just be an animal trail, but as he walked along it, up toward the cave, he found it seemed to fit his feet, his body too perfectly. His excitement at the thrill of this discovery made it difficult to keep from running, but he kept a cautious pace while he searched for slithering dangers or creeping fangs and stingers. As a secondary concern, he kept an eye out for signs of human life.
It was a fruitless search until he reached the cave. Just inside, scattered with rocks and other debris, the gleam of gray-white bones was unmistakable. When he saw the first skull, he knew that he had found the remains of human beings.
Though the bones were scattered randomly, he could use them to estimate a count. These details were set aside for a moment when he began to notice things that didn’t make sense.
He knew that they were old, but he also knew that they weren’t ancient. These were modern humans. He guessed that they couldn’t be more than a few centuries old, but as he examined the skull closer he quickly adjusted that number.
He had retrieved the skull from the muddy floor with respect and even reverence. To him, it was no longer just an artifact, it was a human being, a person. As he began to inspect its features he observed a single round hole. Only one thing, one tool of man, produces such a hole. As if to prove it a twisted gob of lead fell out of it into his hand.
The skull wasn’t just the remains of a person, but the victim of murder. This was not an ancient act of evil, it had been done the modern way – with a gun. He dropped the hateful slug, disgusted by it.
He placed the skull back where he found it, and walked deeper into the cave. It narrowed at the back and there he found the walls blackened, with oily soot that smelled, even after all this time, like gasoline or diesel.
Beyond a narrow tube lead to anther chamber, inside there were more skeletons, more evidence of violence. He began to understand what had happened here. The men with guns had trapped them in the cave, using fire to smoke them out. Those who came out were killed in the first chamber, while those who stayed inside were suffocated or shot after the fire had died.
He couldn’t stand this place anymore, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. Wiping tears from his eyes he stumbled out of the darkness, out of the cave, down the hill. He felt like he would be sick.
Dropping to his knees on the riverbank, he splashed his face with its muddy water. What he had seen sunk in deeper, the numbers of the dead had been a small clan of people. A flood of detail came to his mind as he squeezed his eyes shut. Men, women, old and children, all slaughtered by cowards, shot down like beasts in a cave. “Oh God.” he chanted at his rippling reflection in water.
From behind him came a voice, “Men of science have no use for God.”
Story by Joe Stanley
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.