“There,” I point ahead and to the left of a log-cabin gift shop. “We need to follow that series of bridges until we come to the entrance. See how they slope down?”
We are off, racing down the bridges like children ready to go on a roller coaster. I feel as if there’s some electric energy in the air - a current that might be connected to the Vestige somehow. If this really is where the medallion came from, I wonder if the mountains are peppered with other precious materials. Part of me believes that the medallion needs to be shaped and refined in order to encompass its Aberrant powers. The other half is suspicious of this theory, wondering if the raw material discovered supposedly by the Native Americans is already emanating with power. Perhaps that’s what I’m feeling as I come down a set of wooden steps and approach the entrance to the cave system.
It looks like what I expected. The hillside is solid rock, dotted with lichen and peat moss. In the center of the hill, the rock splits into two sections, leaving a tall black opening that heads into the hill. I feel cool, damp air flowing from the entrance.
A few little kids rush past me, laughing as they chase each other into the cave. Their mother apologizes and hurries after them.
Looking closer into the opening I see that there are tiny lamps staked into the soft earth that makes up the cave floor. These disappear around a corner about ten feet into the cave.
“Check out this plaque,” says Mae, and I walk to the right to see a copper square with writing embossed on it.
Mae begins to read.
“‘Known throughout the years by many names, including The Witch’s Cave, this natural formation was a popular destination for many local people. Said to be a hiding spot for witches, legend says that the cave harbors magical powers that are most likely explained by the echoes of the nearby Presumpscot River.’ Look, can you see it through the trees?”
She points and I can just make out the silver water of the river through the dense green foliage and towering white trunks of the birch trees. Austin scribbles down some notes about the area while we observe the outside of the cave a bit more.
“I wonder if this is where the loggers used to come for their breaks?” says Mae.
“Forget about the loggers,” says Austin. “Imagine Super Guy coming to a place so remote. It’s beautiful. I doubt any fans will expect a scene like this.”
I think both ideas sound reasonable, especially considering that Grandpa says he found himself in one of these caves, and Super Guy mainly lives in a huge epic city. Yet, one thing still eludes me. Grandpa says that he fell through the soft dirt into a cave. This is clearly not that cave, but perhaps the one we are looking for is connected to the others in this series of tunnels.
I crane my neck, trying to see the top of the hill. It’s so high up and steep that Grandpa had to be on the other side of this hill, which means that we need to do a lot of walking through the caves to get to where he found the Vestige.
“Alright,” says Austin, closing his sketchbook. “I’m ready. What are we waiting for?”
24
The Second Vision
The inside of the cave is wonderfully cold. I didn’t realize how hot my skin was from the summer sun, even through the trees.
We pass a few more people who are coming back out the way we came, and the deeper we get into the cave, the more the sound of trickling water echoes off the pockmarked walls.
The tunnel turns left around a corner and then squeezes tight, immediately opening onto a large cavern about twelve feet high. I have to suck in my stomach to fit through the opening, and Austin groans as he forces himself through. There is a sign staked into the ground that calls this opening the Lemon Squeeze. Mae is the only one who fits comfortably between the two walls, and she laughs at our struggles. Her laughter echoes off the cave ceiling, amplified.
“Stop laughing!” I say. “It’s a lot harder than you think.”
“Maybe for you,” she says, sticking her tongue out. “You need to go for a jog more often.”
“I’ll add it to my list of things to do…” I mutter and continue into the center of the cavern. I take out the map once more and flip it over to a graphic of the cave system. We are starting to venture deep inside the hillside, and the feeling of energy floating through the air gets thicker and thicker the more we follow the lights. I take a few pictures with my phone, lighting up the walls with my flash, and Austin draws a lot of quick sketches. I’m actually amazed at his ability to turn a blank page into a masterpiece within minutes. He would be a great gadget designer.
I play along for him a bit longer, then I pull Mae off to the side as Austin takes a seat to draw a more detailed image.
“Are we getting close?” asks Mae in a hushed tone.
I show her the map.
“If I’m calculating correctly, I think that this is the cave that Grandpa fell into,” I say, tapping a smaller cavern that’s only a few tunnels away. “Luckily the caves all lead to one spot - the exit. So, we can’t exactly miss it because we need to walk through it. But, I have no idea how noticeable the supposed drawings are.”
“What if they’re faded away with erosion?” asks Mae, and my heart drops a bit.
“I really hope they’re not,” I say. “I think they will give me some of the answers I’m looking for.”
“As simple as they probably are,” says Mae with a half-smile.
She’s right. Whatever drawings I find, they are probably open to intense debate and interpretation.
“Even if it’s just symbols,” I say, “that’s better than nothing. You know how much research we’ve done, and nobody seems to mention the Vestige at all?”
She nods.
“Maybe we’ll be the first real historians,” she says. “I might write a book myself.”
This makes me laugh.
“Sure,” I say, teasing her. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Suddenly Austin speaks up, directly behind us, and I almost jump out of my skin.
“What are we talking about?” he asks.
Mae and I turn suddenly to face him.
“Uh…” I say. “We were just saying that, looking at the map, there’s a pretty cool looking cave just around the corner that we’d like to see.”
“Really?” says Austin. He holds up his sketchbook. “Lead the way.”
We continue on, reluctantly letting Austin tag along. I whisper to Mae that we need to keep any revelations about the real Vestige to ourselves until later when we enter a medium-sized cave with purple-hued walls. Everything appears normal until the light from my phone catches on some markings on the walls. I walk closer and it’s unmistakable that this must be the very cave where Grandpa found the Vestige.
The Native American drawings glow brightly against my beam of light.
“This is incredible!” says Mae.
She and I both pull out our phones and launch the cameras. Austin stands back, his eyes wide as he takes in the ancient drawings.
Directly in front of us are some of the coolest drawings I’ve ever seen. Each one tells a different story of what life was like for the Maine natives, and more than a few recount ancient legends that may or may not be true. I pick out a few curiosities from the brochure, admiring the primitive drawings. They all look so rich compared to the grainy, low-resolution photos on the page.
The one drawing in particular I’m looking for has to do with the Vestige. I found a very small thumbnail of it on some wiki. To the untrained eye, the figure holding the light in his hands could be mistaken for any kind of symbolism. But, I’m positive that the ball of light has to be the Vestige. My hope is that I can look at the surrounding drawings and gain some clues for use in my Super Guy book.
I walk five feet along the wall, scanning all the scattered drawings, when suddenly it pops out at me.
There, on the wall directly in front of me, is the very drawing I am searching for. I can’t help but let out a long breath as I snap pictures of the drawing.
“D
o you see it?” I ask, shining my light across the drawing.
Mae nods, also taking some pictures.
“There’s a lot more history here than I expected,” she says.
True to the wiki I found online, the drawing shows a primitive figure holding a glowing ball of light. However, if I was expecting clear-cut answers from the drawings, I am sadly disappointed because this drawing stands in the middle of two accompanying sketches that seem at odds with each other.
One drawing shows a group of people standing around what must be a hole in the ground of some kind with one of them holding a rope. The rope goes down into the ground where it ends in a circular cave. At the bottom, holding onto the rope, is another person who appears to be discovering a ball of light - the Vestige.
The other drawing on the other side of the main Vestige sketch is another small cluster of figures, except this time they are staring up into the sky. A disc-shaped object is hovering in the sky above them and again, the Vestige seems to be suspended between this floating disc and the group of onlookers.
“So, do you think it’s aliens?” asks Mae, giving me a playful nudge.
Austin pushes himself forward.
“Did you say aliens?” he asks. He goes to stand between us but loses his balance. With a cry that echoes off the cave walls, he stumbles forward and catches himself with a hand on my shoulder.
“Ow!” I say as he tightens his grip.
“Sorry!” he replies, steadying himself so that he can draw out some studies of the pictorial images. “This is right up my alley…”
I groan.
“I was really hoping to get away from the whole extra-terrestrial thing,” I say, taking a few good shots of the supposed UFO drawing. I want to reach out and erase the drawing with my hands, but there’s no chance I can ever do that. Again, I groan. “Did it have to be aliens?” I ask rhetorically.
Mae shrugs.
“Who knows?” she says. “Maybe it’s not what we think at all. Maybe the disc is some representation of a constellation, or the moon, or something.”
I kneel down to get a better angle of the drawings with my camera and zoom in. “What do you think this one with the underground cave means?”
Mae crouches down beside me. She studies the picture for a moment, her eyes squinting.
“I don’t know,” she says. “That drawing definitely seems to be at odds with the UFO-looking picture. Assuming that the ball of light would be the Vestige, did these natives find the Vestige in the ground, or did it come from the sky?”
I set my flashlight down on a nearby ledge and rub my chin.
“I don’t know,” I say, noticing that Austin is having a heyday with these drawings. “Either way, I think I’m sticking with the theory that the natives found the Vestige in the ground.”
We continue examining the drawings when Mae pulls me aside.
“There’s one more thing,” she says in a hushed tone, close to my ear. “Do you see the ground here? I don’t spot anything that looks remotely like the Vestige.”
I do a quick scan of the cave floor and, true enough, the place is practically spotless. Any debris has been swept up, and judging by the color of the walls, the Vestige is an entirely unique substance in comparison.
“This is good,” I mutter. “This means we’re the only ones that have these abilities…”
Mae is about to say something when a new person steps into the entrance of this cave. I see them out of the corner of my eye and almost dismiss them. But, then I take a good look at the person who stands there, staring at us, and my eyes widen.
“Dad?” I mutter under my breath.
The figure in the entryway looks exactly like my father. But, that’s not possible. My father is dead. I watched him get buried in the ground.
Still, the figure that looks like my father makes eye contact with me, his expression placid, then he walks away, becoming completely obscured by the cave wall.
“Hey!” I say, hurrying for the opening in the cave.
Mae takes notice and calls out to me.
“Shaun? What is it?”
But, I’m not listening. I’m not paying attention to anything else because it is unbelievable that my father would be walking around a strange cave system in southern Maine.
I need to see if I am wrong. I need to know if the figure is just a doppelgänger of my father. That is the only explanation.
I follow the man back through the tunnels, always just a bend in the way behind. I pass by other people who are taking pictures of the cave, but I barely notice them.
The figure leads me all the way out to the open air and continues through the trees, off the path.
“Dad!” I yell.
The figure doesn’t say anything, though in the light he looks even more like my father. He continues through the trees, his feet clomping on the leaves, until we are far enough away from the path that nobody can see us.
He turns and looks at me with a smirk on his face.
Then, stretching his arms out, he sends a pulse blast at the ground and goes rocketing into the air.
25
The Invisible Enemy
This doesn’t make any sense. That figure can’t be my father. But, how in the world is he appearing to me - let alone flying through the air?
There’s only one way to get to the bottom of this.
I shoot myself up into the air, kicking away from the rocky ground, and chase after the vision of my father. He soars higher up into the sky and the sunlight blinds me as I crane my neck, struggling to keep him in my field of vision.
This is impossible, my mind tells me. But, then again, there he is! He’s as plain as the color of my shirt. I squint my eyes against the wind, which gets continually chillier the higher that I go. My lungs start to struggle from the change of altitude, but I can’t stop. Dad is still soaring towards the clouds.
I glance down at the once towering mountains and can barely see the cars on the winding roadways. They look like matchboxes. This is higher than I’ve ever flown before.
“Dad!” I yell, my voice barely making a dent in the roaring of the high-altitude wind. “Stop!”
My emotions are controlling me. I want to cry at the sight of my father. I want to reach out and touch him, to make sure that he’s actually here in front of me. But, then another side of my emotions takes over and I feel a great fear that the vision in front of me is not my father at all. He could be a trap, though it’s hard to figure out what sort of trap would require me to fly up into a deserted sky.
I continue my climb, searching for answers.
The air up here is so thin and so cold that I can feel the sweat on my brow crystallizing, turning to frost. My limbs begin to shiver and the tips of my fingers are like ice beads. I grit my teeth and continue further, though when I focus my eyes above I see no trace of my father.
My head thrashes about, searching for Dad. He was just here. Now it’s as if he’s disappeared into another dimension. My mind races.
Maybe I’m just having a horrible hallucination. But, where did it come from?
I begin to shudder and my hands start to go numb.
“Dad…” I mutter, the tears that form in my eyes stinging with much-needed heat. “What’s going on?”
Suddenly a sharp pain stabs at my right shoulder and I cry out. My throat is raw so it’s painful to make any sort of noise now. The rawness has moved up into my nasal cavity. One hand shoots up to my shoulder and I lose my balance, swerving in the air.
The pain intensifies and I scream. Where is it coming from? No matter how hard I reach, I can’t seem to get to the spot where the pain originates. It shows no sign of going away.
I squint my eyes against the glare of the sun and the now chilly wind. When I manage to focus again, Dad is still gone.
This is impossible, I think. There’s no way that Dad is actually still alive. I attended his funeral, after all. But, how am I able to see him? I want to hunt him down and figure out what the heck
’s going on.
As I slow down to look around for any sign of movement in the sky, I am nearly knocked from my perch by a strong force that catches me off guard. Two powerful hands yank me by my shoulders, twisting me into a tumble and I thrash my hands out frantically to regain my balance.
My head whips around, looking for any glimpse of the person who could have attacked me at such a height. It couldn’t have been Dad, unless that was just a clever disguise. But, it was so real.
I turn to my right and finally see something come zipping towards me. It’s not a bird, nor is it a normal person. Instead it looks like a figure wearing some sort of cloaking device - like a chameleon. Its torso, head, and arms are a constantly changing blend of colors. Some of the color comes from the clouds and sky, while other, brighter colors seem to come out of nowhere.
I steady myself in the air and holler at the figure.
“Show yourself!”
The figure continues to charge at me and swipes for my arms, but I’m too quick this time. I dart out of the way and send a blast of energy at the back of the chameleon figure.
In an instant the figure swivels around and manages to catch the glowing ball of purple energy like something out of DragonBall Z. My eyes widen as the shifting figure grows the ball of energy until it’s the size of a beach ball and then sends it hurtling towards me at a phenomenal speed.
The energy screams through the air, the sound breaking through the howl of the wind rushing past my ears, and I barely have a chance to raise one of my hands up in defense before the energy explodes against my stomach and I reel backwards. I spin head over heels and tumble from the sky.
All the air has been forced from my lungs and I gasp for breath. It reminds me of one time when I landed off a jump on a snow tube and had the wind knocked out of me. Every gasp I take fills my lungs a bit more and the dizziness in my head quickly goes away, but the pain remains. It’s as if I was jolted with a cattle prod.
My spinning stabilizes and I find myself facing the sky. The color-changing figure is following me down, most likely to finish me off.
The Aberrant Series (Book 2): Super Vision Page 13