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The Cave

Don Tassone

    As a boy, I spent a week every summer with my family at Cave Lake, nestled in the nearby Appalachian forest. Campsites cost $10 a day. It was the only kind of vacation we could afford.
    As far as parks and campgrounds go, Cave Lake was pretty simple. But for those of us who lived in the inner city, where trees and green space were scarce, Cave Lake was paradise.
    I loved camping, fishing and hiking there and, best of all, exploring Frost Cave.
    The mouth of the cave was higher than my house and wider than a bus. A small stream flowed out of it. All kinds of things lived deep inside. Bats and ferns and strange crustaceans called isopods.
    By rights, we shouldn’t have ventured in far enough to see these things. A sign outside said the entrance was open to visitors but exploration of the rest of the cave was limited to experts.
    “We’ll be experts by the time we get back,” Dad would say as we made our way past other campers and visitors obediently hovering around the entrance.
    My siblings and I (Mom never went into the cave with us) turned on our flashlights and slowly followed the old man in. It got dark in a hurry. The hard ground was slippery and pock marked by pools of water. Dad said be careful, who knows how deep they were.
    Every sound created an echo. We knew there were bats, but we never heard them. We barely saw them. Dad knew where to look, though: up high, along crevices near the ceiling. We’d train our flashlights up there and, sure enough, there was creepy, hairy movement and the glint of tiny eyes.
    “Don’t disturb them,” Dad would say. “They carry rabies.”
    The very thought made us keep our flashlight beams and voices low.
    “Stay together,” the old man would say.
    We did our best. But once I was shining my light on what I thought were pale fish in one of the still, dark pools, and the next thing I knew, I was all by myself.
    I shined my flashlight all around me. There was no one there.
    “Hello!” I called out, my voice echoing off the walls.
    But no one answered. I knew Frost Cave wasn’t really one big cave but a series of interconnected small caves. A person could easily get lost. That’s probably why the sign said to stay near the entrance.
    I kept calling out, but still no one answered. I scanned the cave with my flashlight, but I saw only rocks, water, ferns and walls. I was tempted to look up, to see if there were any bats, but I kept my beam low.
    My heart was beating fast. I began to sweat, even though the air was cool and damp. I could hear myself breathing hard.
    I wondered where my family was, how they could have left me like this. I thought about trying to find them. But what if I made a wrong turn and got even more separated from them? I decided to stay put. After all, I knew they would eventually have to pass by here on their way back out.
    I’d always been afraid of the dark. I kept my bedroom door open when I went to sleep and slept with a nightlight next to my bed. Some of the kids played outside after nightfall. Not me. I was the one who turned lamps on in our house at dusk.
    Now I sat down on a big rock, sweeping my flashlight around the empty cave like a searchlight. I was alone, with no one entering the cave and no one returning, at least not yet.
    What was I to do? What could I do but sit and occasionally call out, hoping someone would eventually hear me.
    I tempted fate and shone my light up high, near the ceiling, where the bats lived. But there was no sign of them, and I realized I had been afraid of something that wasn’t there.
    Why was I afraid of the dark? I had never asked myself that question. I was just afraid. Maybe because of stories I had heard or things I had seen in movies or ghosts I imagined. I wasn’t sure.
    I thought about calling out again, but instead I turned my flashlight off. I sat in the dark, in the quiet of the cave. The only thing I could hear was the echo of the sound of water slowly dripping. I was not afraid of water. I loved the water.


    The rock I was sitting on had a little dip in it, right where I was sitting. I hadn’t noticed that before. Not that it made the rock any softer, but I felt comfortable there. I felt secure. I was straddling the rock, and the soles of my tennis shoes were flat against the finely pebbled ground. I couldn’t see the ground or the water or the cave walls, but I knew they were there, and all of a sudden I felt safe.
    I sat there like that, in the dark, for at least 10 minutes. My heart stopped pounding. I stopped sweating. I stopped worrying.
    Then I heard voices.
    “Ryan!”


    It was Dad.
    “Ryan!”
    “Ryan!”
    “Ryan, where are you?”
    The voices of my father, my brother and my sisters echoed off the cave walls.
    I was going to call out or turn on my flashlight. But I waited for a few moments. Not to cause them any more concern but to sit in the dark just a little longer and to know, from now on, I would be okay.

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