A few of my friends told me about this cave deep in the depths of the forest in our neighborhood. Apparently, the legend goes as this:
A cartographer was looking around the forest. He eventually found a cave. He went inside, wondering what it will lead into. Surprisingly, it was very large, except for the entrance. He noted that it was so huge, a waterfall could fit in here. But there was no waterfall. There wasn't even a source of light. It was very dark, and the air smelled rotten, hence the name Rotten Cave. He luckily had a lamp with him (This was in the 1800s, by the way), and was horrified to see dead rotting corpses in there. He rushed to the entrance to tell everybody of his discovery, but the entrance was blocked with stone. He tried furiously to get out, but it was no use. Then, he felt a cold breath down his neck. He was never heard from again.
I got to admit, it does seem like a pretty scary ghost story. But I didn't believe it. There must be a million dozen other ghost stories that were probably just like it. So when my friends asked me to go with them to the cave and check it out, I didn't hesitate.
Justin, David, Carter and I delved into the deep forest in the fall afternoon. All the trees had no leaves on them, and it was a pretty gloomy day. Good day for a ghost hunt, I thought. We were prepared for anything. First, we all had flashlights, with fresh batteries. We also had a horn so if one of us was separated, we would blare the horn so we would know where we were. We also had walky talkies, if there was a split entrance. We found the cave, and reluctantly, we went inside.
As the legend described, the air smelled foul. As if rotten eggs and sour milk was left here for years. We turned on our flashlights and off we went. We walked through the stoney entrance. There was a medium sized cracked that we could fit through. We squirmed into the tiny crack. Halfway through, we heard Carter scream. Turns out it was just a spider web. Carter was a scaredy cat. He didn't want to go in the first place, but instead of being at home, he decided to come with us.
We emerged through the crack to see the biggest space we have ever seen. But it wasn't beautiful. The walls were basically yellow and the air still smelled horrible. So we continued on. I started to feel a little frightened, mainly because our flashlights started to stop working. We went on to the rumbly rocks that we stepped over. That's when we noticed that Carter was gone.
We used our walkie talkies to communicate with him, but all we heard was static. We tried again and again, but nothing worked. The only words we could make out were "Stay....Get a...Hel-". We blared our horns, hoping that Carter would come. He didn't. We focused our attention on finding Carter. We walked all around the place like it was a maze. But we couldn't find him. He disappeared.
David proposed we get out of the cave, but Justin said that we should go forward. We still had more ground to cover, and we didn't even find any rotting bodies. I had to agree with him, because we might find Carter wandering in the depths of the cave. So we continued. The air started to smell even worse than it was before. How could that have happened? Soon, the smell got much more horrid. That probably means the bodies are close.
I started to shiver, as the air got colder. Then all of a sudden, everything became still. There was no smell, and it was very cold. We all felt it, and we all started to become frightened. David just kept on saying we should go. Justin said we had to find Carter. I told everybody to stop. I heard footsteps. We all thought it was Carter. Coming out of the darkness was a yellow rotting corpse slowly shifting towards us.
Naturally, we all screamed and ran away as fast as our young feet could go. David tripped on a rock as we continued to run. All we last heard from him was his screams echoing inside the cave. I kept on rushing towards the crack that we went through. I was completely horrified to see the crack was sealed off. I also realized that Justin wasn't with me. I was all alone, weeping and sobbing to myself.
I should have never have came here, I thought. I'm stuck here forever. I heard bones coming from all sides. I stood completely still, awaiting my doom. The last thing I felt was a cold breath going down my neck.