Beneath

Nobody goes into the Halloway Caves. That's not a warning — it's a statement of fact. The entrance collapsed in 1987, burying forty feet of limestone passage under a thousand tons of rock and ending whatever curiosity the people of Dunmore, Oregon might have once entertained about what lay beneath their town.

But collapses can be dug out. And curiosity, like certain creatures, has a way of surviving burial.

Dr. Sarah Aldridge stood at the edge of the excavation, watching her team's lights disappear into the newly opened passage like fireflies being swallowed by the earth. The archaeological survey had been her idea — the caves contained significant Chinook artifacts, according to ground-penetrating radar — but now, standing at the threshold with the cold breath of the underground on her face, she felt something she hadn't felt since childhood.

Fear. Not the rational kind. The other kind. The kind that lives in the basement of the mind, where the lights don't work and the stairs creak under no weight at all.

"Coming?" called her assistant, Jake, his headlamp already receding into the dark.

Sarah took a breath. Stepped forward. And the cave accepted her the way a mouth accepts food — slowly, thoroughly, with no intention of letting go.