by Scot McAtee
***
It was Saturday at 11:32 a.m. and we packed our basket and were ready to go.
“Hey Dad! We are off to the trails again. Do you want us to call you when we are coming home?” Faith asked our dad.
“Just text me; I’ll be at work,” he responded.
So with that we were off. Faith and I followed the trail right to the cliff.
“I’ll go first, so you can catch me if I fall,” she said holding the basket in one arm and climbing with the other.
We scrambled up the cliff, heaving ourselves up by the roots of the large tree. When we made it to the top, we stopped and admired the beautiful place. Then we walked carefully to the tip of the cliff and set down our stuff. First we set out our blanket and put the basket on top so it wouldn’t blow away. We settled down on some roots that resembled chairs.
“The wind is really strong up here,” I said.
“Better hold on to our stuff tightly!”
Then we began eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples. Faith asked, “Can you hand me a napkin?”
“Sure,” I said digging in the basket, and then handed one to her. As I handed it to her it began to blow away.
“Hey!” she said to me.
“That was all your fault,” I argued.
“Whatever! Go grab it!”
“You!”
“Oh come on,” she said getting up and dragging me up the hill to fetch it with her.
It kept blowing up the hill, so we followed it. The dead leaves covering the ground made it slippery. Sometimes we would get close, and then another burst of wind would blow it higher.
“Let’s just give up,” she said.
“Look how high we are. We might as well keep going now.”
We climbed the enormous hill until we could barely see the trail.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” I said. “How did we not get it by now?”
After that, one big burst went by. The napkin went up and then straight down, but we didn’t see it land on the ground.
“Where’d it go?” she asked frantically.
“I don’t know.”
Faith and I continued to where it went and then we stopped dead in our places. The entire hill drops off; the ground was nowhere to be seen, just darkness. Astonished, we could not say a word. We just stared.
Eventually, I had managed to say, “What is it?”
She just stared and shrugged. I reached out my hand to put it over the hole but there was an invisible wall. Touching it gently, I followed it with my hands with no signs of an end.
“Emma, I think we should leave,” she said terrified, “and I’m going to text Dad.” She checked all of her pockets for her phone. Nothing. Then she looked at me.
“We left them down in the basket…” I said. “Let’s just try to walk around it and see how big it is.”
“Okay. I’m marking an X in this tree so we know where our stuff is.”
Then we began walking. After walking for a while, we gave up.
“How is this going to solve anything?” Faith yelled at me. “There is still a giant hole!”
“I don’t know! What do you want to do then?” I responded frustrated.
We stood there, looking around for any kind of answer. Just then, a man walked up from behind us and said, “Waiting for something?”
“Hello?” Faith said confused.
He grinned and said, “I see you found our home.”
“Who’s?” we asked.
“Our’s,” he said nonchalantly. He walked to the hole, pulled a card out of his pocket, and held it on the wall. Then he walked toward us and pushed us in.