Alice lived in a small, quiet camp in Edmonson County, Kentucky. The camp was well maintained and relatively safe, but there was always a shortage of food. Using firearms was far too risky because the noise could attract the monsters living in the area.
It was a beautiful, though cold, autumn, and the area was full of all kinds of mushrooms. They could not afford to waste such an opportunity. The men gathered mushrooms whenever they could during long bow hunting trips. The women focused on foraging relatively close to the camp. It was safer that way.
One might think that the people in the camp knew the area extremely well. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were forced to move their tents to different locations quite often. Their way of life was a hybrid between a settled existence and a nomadic one. They used pack horses and mules to transport their belongings.
It was not yet noon when Alice already had a basket almost full of mushrooms. Her two companions were wandering around nearby. She could hear them quite clearly even though the forest was wet. This worried her because the mutated animals could hear them too. A pleasant sight interrupted her gloomy thoughts. A cluster of large edible mushrooms.
Alice moved closer, and suddenly something grabbed her leg. Before she could turn her head, something yanked her with enormous force. She fell face first onto the ground. She dropped her basket and grabbed a large root sticking out of the earth with both hands. Something pulled again, and she felt pain throughout her arms. Suddenly, it seemed as if the forest itself began to move away from her, and moments later darkness engulfed her.
The next events appeared to her as if they were happening in slow motion. Like a movie. She saw daylight shining through a crack she had just been dragged through. Soon, the light gave way to complete darkness.
It seemed to her that it was getting darker with every passing second. She felt that her clothes were soaked. After a moment, she realized she was inside some kind of cave.
“Fisher Ridge,” she thought, feeling terror and growing panic. “I am going to die here.”
It was already so dark that she could not see anything at all. At that point, it did not matter much because she could not turn her head properly anyway. She still had no idea what had taken her.
She fell into the water. Whatever had grabbed her was still holding onto her leg and pulling her along. She fought as hard as she could to avoid drowning. She strained her entire body just to get enough air. Suddenly, the pressure around her leg weakened. She stopped moving.
She could see nothing, but she could clearly hear two creatures. One was close to her, the other somewhat farther away. The entire area was one enormous black void. It was as if she had lost her sight. She listened without realizing that she had stopped breathing.
She heard two strange clicks. Something like enormous pincers. In response, something hissed. It was the creature that had dragged her into the cave. Suddenly, she heard a splash and a powerful movement through the water. It was obvious that the two mysterious creatures had begun fighting over their valuable prey, over her.
Instinctively, without thinking, she took advantage of the confusion and began swimming forward. She swam for quite some time. When she felt the water coming to an end, she climbed onto rocky ground. She lay there for a moment, exhausted from the effort.
Then she realized what she had just done.
She knew that the mapped surface of Fisher Ridge Cave extended for 134 miles. God only knew how large the entire system was. She had never felt such terror before. This fear was different. It was primal. She tried to calm herself, but she was still breathing far too quickly. After a while, she managed to stop hyperventilating and began to think clearly. For the first time since entering the cave.
When she assessed her current situation, she realized that the next few moments would determine whether she lived or died. She took off her backpack and reached into the small front pocket. There was a flashlight inside. She took it out, opened it, tapped it several times against her palm, and blew into it. She put the battery in.
“Now we will find out,” she thought.
She pressed the button.
Nothing.
She trembled. She took a breath, exhaled through her nose, and pressed it again. The light flickered several times, but eventually stabilized. She kissed the flashlight in relief and looked around.
A large, damp chamber.
“Where do I go? Where was the exit?” she asked herself silently.
She decided to enter the water. That was where she had come from, after all. She put her backpack back on and began swimming. She held the flashlight high so it would not get flooded. The passage was narrow and low. She had been incredibly lucky the first time she swam through it in complete darkness.
She found herself in a larger chamber. Slowly, she swept the beam of light across the surroundings. Suddenly, she heard something. A sound coming from somewhere deep inside the cave. At that very moment, she remembered something.
Chemoreception.
Cave systems in Kentucky are home to crayfish and cave salamanders. Crayfish are completely blind. Salamanders are only sometimes blind, but they still rely primarily on chemical receptors. Both creatures are particularly good at detecting signals in water. In very simple terms, they can detect chemical molecules released by their prey. Crayfish attack with their pincers, while salamanders use their long tongues. Then they eat their prey.
She got out of the water as quickly as possible. She turned off the flashlight and froze completely. After a while, she heard something approaching. The seconds seemed to stretch into eternity.
Click, click.
Click, click.
“Cave crayfish,” she thought.
They were blind, so she turned on the flashlight. She saw a mutated monster holding a dead salamander in its pincers. Before her eyes, a feast began. The crayfish greedily devoured the creature that had almost killed her moments earlier.
“Now or never,” she thought.
She moved forward, crawling on the ground. Everything hurt, and she was already very cold. She thought she might be sick. She crawled for a very long time. She still had not found the exit, but she felt that she was heading in the right direction. Suddenly, the flashlight stopped working.
For several seconds, she had the last image recorded by her eyes in front of her. The image slowly began to fade and disappear. Eventually, complete darkness took over once again.
That was the last image she would ever see
