Joey's cave.

When I was young, I had a friend named Joey. He was skinny, with brown eyes and hair, and was always a little on the short side for his age. We met in elementary school and became fast friends. Joey lived only a few blocks from me, and eventually it became commonplace that we would just walk home together after we got off the school bus. It got to the point where one of us could not come home for hours after school, and our parents wouldn't think anything of it, Joey's parents would just assume he was at my house, or mine would assume I was at his, and they were always right.

Summer was always the best, Joey's house backed up against a dozen or so acres of woods and we would spend days out there exploring and climbing trees and building forts out of scrap wood and tarps. Sometimes there were deer, and we would always try to be extra quiet to see if we could sneak up on them. One of the clearest memories I have from my childhood is hanging out in those woods, in the hundred degree heat, with the sun beating down gold through a ceiling of green and lighting up all the pollen and dust floating in the air. We decided that we would have a secret society out there in the woods, which basically entailed us telling our siblings, parents, and people we didn't like that we had a secret club and they weren't allowed to join. We drew a symbol on our hands with a Sharpie marker as a sort of identification, it was a triangle inside of a circle, with lines crossing the points of the triangles.

Once we found a cave in the woods. It wasn't large, but it was large enough for us to go down a little ways into the mouth of it. I could hear water moving somewhere further into the cave, but we were obviously scared though neither of us would admit it, so we quickly found an excuse to go back to our fort. We talked about thee cave and what might be in there. In the daylight it was fun to pretend there were monsters and zombies and a tribe of cannibals all living down in the darkness. Of course we never brought it up at night. Sometimes at night we could hear the coyotes running around and yipping in the woods and the fields nearby. It was fun to listen to them from Joey's kitchen, where his mom liked to keep the windows open in the summer once it got dark outside, and we would sit and watch TV or play board games. For a couple years, at least, I don't think more than a couple dozen days went by that I didn't see him.

Once we went to middle school, things changed a little. My parents sent me to a private school on the other end of town, and Joey went to the local public middle school, so the days of us hanging out every afternoon were gone. We still saw each other practically every weekend though, and still did most of the same things with a couple alterations. For example, the fort in the woods was now more frequently a place for chugging clandestine beers, surreptitiously stolen from the fridge in Joey's garage. It was still our place, though. When each of us started dating, we would talk about girls out there, and offer words of middle-schooler wisdom after a breakup. It was a kind of place where we could really be ourselves and not have to put on a show like everybody does at school.

One day, when we were in eighth grade, we decided we were going to go and actually explore the cave. We armed ourselves with flashlights and backpacks full of water bottles and snacks and extra batteries, some rope, and a towel each. It was dark down there, and I instantly had a flashback to the day we had found this place. I could hear water somewhere down the main tunnel, and there was a breeze coming up through some hole, making a little bit of a whistling noise. I hadn't remembered the sounds in the cave being so loud the limited number of times we had been there before. Joey took the lead and we slowly made our way through the first tunnel, shuffling with our backs against the rock wall, which was short enough to force us to have to hunch over as we moved along. After a while we reached a point where we would have to crawl, flat on our stomachs, under a ledge to get through. In retrospect it really wasn't that far into the cave, but at the time it seemed like we were plumbing the depths of some newly discovered mountain. Joey went first. He took off his backpack, so he could have a little more wiggle room. I was going to stay behind and wait for him to get through, then throw the end of a rope attached to his backpack.

I watched Joey's feet disappear through the gap and waited to hear him ask for the rope. I could hear him stand up and shuffle around on the other side. There were muffled exclamations like he had found something amazing. I had visions in my head of some giant cavern with waterfalls pouring down the sides. It was at that point that I thought I heard something behind me, and without thinking, I jumped up to look back, and from what I understand, I hit my head on the ceiling of the cave and blacked out.

I came to in the emergency room of the hospital downtown, laying down on an examination table. Joey was there, as was Joey's dad. They told me that I had hit my head in the cave and passed out. Joey had found me when he came back through the back because I wasn't responding to his shouts. He had then run the the house to get his dad, and the two of them had pulled me out of the cave and brought me to the emergency room. The doctor had just stepped out to take a phone call and was pleasantly surprised to see me awake when she came back. It turns out I had a concussion and had been muttering nonsense when I was out. Joey's dad had called my parents and agreed to drop me off at home when we left the ER. I had a headache for a couple days afterward and couldn't sleep very well.

A couple days later, Joey showed up at my house. He was already there when I got home, actually. Sitting on my doorstep. He looked like he might have been sick, and was unusually pale, but he insisted he was fine. He had gone back to the cave the next day after I had my concussion. He said he had to go back and get something he had seen when he was on the other side of the ledge. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little purple rock. It looked like quartz, with some black lines on the inside of it. He said there was a lot of it in there and asked me if I wanted to go back sometime to see it all. I said maybe someday, but probably not soon, as I was still pretty shaken up about blacking out. He agreed that maybe I shouldn't be going back soon, so he gave me the rock because he said he didn't want me to have nothing to show for the effort we put into exploring that cave.

After that I started to see Joey a little less. I don't think it was a conscious effort on either of our parts, but just the way things happened. When we went to high school out schedules both got busy to the point that it made finding time to hang out especially difficult. The relatively small number of times I did see him he looked a little more pale and a little more sick every time. His hair started to lighten in color, and his eyes were always very dark, with bags under them. I assumed it was probably from staying inside and playing video games all night. Joey was never much for sports and never joined any teams in high school. He would say that he had been walking in the woods, but if he was, it didn't look like he was doing it while it was light out.

In my sophomore year of high school, a girl disappeared from Joey's school. Her name was Shelby, and she had been in our elementary school. I never knew her that well, but I know Joey'd had a crush on her for a couple months in middle school. In our town, the news spread fast. There were teams of police with bloodhounds out searching all the forests and fields around the town. It really seemed like she had just dropped off the face of the Earth. After a few weeks of looking and not finding anything, the police issued a statement saying that there were basically two options. Either she was dead, and her body was someplace far away, or she had run off and was doing a darn good job of not being found. Obviously we all hoped for the second option. In general, life went on as normal after those couple weeks of crazinesss. There were still billboards up with her picture on them for years after that, but it became increasingly likely that no one was ever going to find her.

Joey's school had a voluntary memorial service for her at the end of that school year. We had talked briefly a week beforehand and he mentioned that he was going to go. I asked if he wanted me to come with him, but he said he'd be fine. I can only imagine how weird it must feel to go to a memorial service for someone who you can't prove is actually dead.

I got accepted into a private college in Montana, with a great biology program and I got some scholarships that made it as cheap for me to attend as any public college in my own state. A couple of days before I was set to make the trip out there and move in, I went over to Joey's house. I wanted to return some books and video games I had borrowed from him, as it was going to be a few months before I even had the chance to see him again. I went to the front door and Joey's mom answered. She said he was out back somewhere and took the books and games from me. I went out to the woods and started calling for him, but I didn't get an answer. I looked around for a while and I found the old fort. It was a mess, looked like it hadn't been used in years, which I suppose wasn't that strange, eventually you kind of outgrow tarp forts, I guess. I started going towards the cave, as it was one the only places we used to hang out that I hadn't looked for him.

At the mouth of the cave, it was obvious that he'd been down here a lot. There was some garbage laying around, along with tools and rope and a couple old, torn up blankets and towels. In one corner, under a pile of small rocks, I saw something sticking out from underneath the stones. I pulled on it, and the rocks fell away. It was a girls backpack, wrapped up in a sweatshirt. I didn't know what to think of that, had Joey been bringing dates down here? It made me feel kind of weird but also strengthened my resolve to find him and learn what the hell he was doing in here. I went down the tunnel further until I came to the ledge. There were some ropes laid around the entrance, coiled up. I noticed a dim light coming through the small passage. I got down on my hands and knees and pushed my head to floor, sideways.

Through the passage I could see him. He was sitting in a chamber at the other end of the passage, with those purple rocks all around him on the floor and set into the walls. There was an LED lantern sitting at his feet, and he was leaning up against the wall. He looked like he was asleep, but he was sort of muttering to himself.

I'm not afraid to say that I freaked out, and got the hell out of the cave as quickly as I could while still trying to be quiet so he wouldn't hear me. I ran back through the woods, past his house, and got in my car and drove away. That was the last time I ever saw Joey. I went to school in Montana, and over the course of the next five years, I got a biology degree.

I graduated two weeks ago. It feels great, and I've been packing up my apartment.

The thing is, yesterday I got a message on facebook from an account with a fake name. I looked at the profile and there was nothing there, no friends, no pictures, no anything. It seems like whoever owns it made this account just to message me. All it says is this; “Hey dude, I heard you graduated. Good deal. You remember that place we found, right? I found something out there, man. It's big, and I want you to come see it.” I'm fairly certain that it's Joey. Either that or someone is just messing with me. Either way, I think I'm gonna go see it, whatever the hell it is.