by D. F. Jones
Ruby tripped over a small rock, dropping her flashlight. The light on the ground lit the far left corner, revealing a massive figure carved in the stone. “Geez Louise. This dude looks like a freaking astronaut. Look at his helmet.”
Anna bumped into Ruby, nearly making them both fall. She held onto Ruby’s shoulder and said, “That’s some spooky shit.”
Anna walked past Sandy to the next group of drawings. “Here’s the same dude again. He’s holding a totem, and there are three people kneeling before him. This looks like a ritual or rite of passage.”
Sandy sat down on a rock, mesmerized by what they had discovered. She flashed her light toward Ruby and Anna as they traced their fingers over the different drawings. Sandy asked, “Do you think we should tell our parents or teachers?”
Anna and Ruby walked over sit to on the ground next to Sandy. Ruby’s light fused with Sandy’s as Anna’s light circled to the other parts of the room. There was only one wall dedicated to the drawings. Anna replied, “I don’t think so. A tribe sealed this room for some reason. We should leave. I’ve got a weird feeling like we’re being watched.”
Sandy stood, tipping over the rock she had been sitting on, causing her flashlight to point downward. “Hey, look, somethings under this rock. Bring your lights over here.” Anna and Sandy shined their lights over the place where the rock had been as Ruby knelt down, reached in, and pulled out the object.
The girls plopped back down on the hard ground, staring wide-eyed at the totem. Ruby’s voice trembled. “It’s the totem in the drawing, the same one the deity is handing over to the people kneeling on the ground. I know this sounds weird, but this thing is pulsing in my hands.”
Sandy reached over to pluck the totem out of Ruby’s hand. The totem was around six inches tall, made out of crystal and quartz with piercing sapphire eyes. The detailed carvings made the image of the face appear real, smooth as glass to the touch, as though sculpted by a master artisan. No matter which way they turned the totem, it seemed to be watching them. “It’s a smaller version of the big guy in the corner. He is looking at me.”
Sandy handed the totem to Anna, who turned it over in her hands. “I see what you mean. This little dude is shooting energy to my fingertips. We need to place this thing back where we found it and get the hell out of Dodge. I have the creeps in here.”
Ruby took the totem and put it back in the hole. In another part of the cave, she could hear rocks falling. “We need to get out of here because the cave is shifting.” The girls rolled the boulder back in place and made a hasty exit.
Outside in the daylight, they sat on a rock ledge, out of breath and speechless. Ruby opened her backpack and pulled out an amber-encased spiderweb. “Well, shut the front door, what the heck? Look, y’all, it’s a spiderweb inside a piece of amber?”
Anna found an amethyst stone in her pocket, and Sandy opened her thermos, finding a hiddenite stone. Anna shook her head in bewilderment. “Well, I’m pretty sure these stones weren’t with us before we went inside the cave. If I wasn’t so dad-blamed scared, I’d take this back inside the cave, right now.”
Sandy stared at her stone and then spoke quietly. “I don’t want to spook you any further, but holding this stone gave me a vision of the deity who gave us the stones. In the vision, he is relaying that we’re to keep the stones on our person at all times. He will reveal to us in time what it means, and we aren’t supposed to talk about this again until he reveals it to Ruby in a dream.”
The girls looked at each other wide-eyed, holding their stones in eerie silence. They never uttered a single word about the totem or the stones again—until years later.