Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-37467875-20190122044408/@comment-37467875-20190122045033

Stay away from the mountains in Alaska, that’s what many settlers tell me in the towns and cities commonly around Homer. Tourists such as me are confused but don’t care to ask why. I visited Alaska from Ohio just to see the beautiful mountain tops, far away and up close. I was excited when I finally made enough for plane tickets although it was a long process. I for a long time believed it was worth it but I soon learned it wasn’t. I traveled with my two favorite people my wife Linda and my brother Jacob. All three of us packed the basic items preferably for mountaineering.

When we arrived we were in utter awe at the landscape around us, Alaska was known for its beauty after all. We rented a hotel in a town which is called Homer. From the hotel window, we could see the mountains with their white, snowy look just tempting us to go explore. But we waited a couple of days to prepare, we first wanted to meet the people in the city. We went to restaurants, stores, and even movies. However one particular afternoon in a restaurant, we overheard a missing person report on the news. It explained how four tourists went into the mountains around Homer and haven’t returned for 10 days. Curiosity filled me as it did with Linda and Jacob. “Am I the only one who wants to explore the mounts even more?” Jacob exclaimed in a questioning tone. Linda replied with a teasing “No.”

I guess some people heard and a man said “Yeah that is a bad idea folk.”, we looked at him and I asked: “What.”  “I said that is a bad idea. People who did return from those mountains are traumatized from their experience.”  “How so?” I asked with a hint of doubt. “They claim that monsters live up there.” Jacob simply chuckled at his story, “That's baloney!” he explained before taking a final swig of his beer and sat up. “I’m ready to go, folk, are you?”, I and Linda simply nodded in response. We got up and were about to leave but not before the man grabbed me and said: “Be careful”.

I and Linda were unnerved at the least, Jacob was well...drunk and reckless. “So what if a creepy legend lives in those mountains?” he said pointing to them “It ain’t gonna stop me.” Walking through the town my eye caught something. It was a man just walking, not saying a word, not batting an eye, not even showing any signs of emotion. The one interesting thing he was doing was whispering and murmuring to himself. The whispers and murmurs were rather indecipherable. He caught me staring when I tried to look away so in response he simply stared back, still whispering under his breath. When I did look away I could still feel his gaze aimed towards me. I kept walking till I couldn’t hear the faintest whisper escaping from his lips.

We made it back to the hotel and I asked Linda and Jacob “Did you see that man, the one that was whispering?” Linda simply smiled and nodded at me and Jacob was in the shower. Nothing else was worth saying that night. When I woke up I realized how much of a beautiful day it was. I decided to wake up Linda and Jacob and tell to pack for our mountaineering trip. They agreed and got out of bed to pack water, food and heavy coats. We traveled to the mountains our off-road car. It took around fifty-five minutes before we made it and parked around the less steepest spot to start our exploration.

When we began around the first fifteen minutes we enjoyed throwing snowballs at each other. Linda and Jacob were basically at war while I just sat and watched striking any one of them when the mood hit me. Ten minutes after that is when everything happened. I was walking aimlessly through the blanket of snow that covered the dirt until Jacob grabbed my shoulder and said: “Holy hell do you see that man?” Jacob was pointing at a large cave opening that leads underground and into the tunnel. There was vague light escaping the mouth of the cave possibly indicating that someone was inside. “D-do you think someone is in there?” I asked confused, “Maybe it’s the ssscary creatures just waiting to take our souls.” Jacob teased shaking my shoulders. I couldn’t believe Jacob was still on that stupid story some guy told us in a restaurant.

Linda just stared at the cave and said: “Well wanna take a look inside?”. Jacobs eyes widened as with the smile on his face, “Heck yeah finally somethin entertaining”. I just sighed and followed my group as they walked in. When we did make it in the air was strangely warm and further down the cave there were torches on the wall somehow still alight. “Strange” Linda said “Are these fairly recent?”, Jacob and I just shrugged our shoulders and continued on down the cave. We were deeply interested in everything we saw in the cave, the torches, the structure and the writing on the walls.

I looked into the brown writing on the wall, it had a very smelly odor to it. They said, “Within the body lies a mind.” I continued down the cave’s walls. Then I saw more writing “Within a mind lies secrets.” Jacob out the blue theorized that this was an ancient Indian home or something. Deeper into the cave we saw something very peculiar, There were three wooden doors leading to three different hallways. Jacob looked confused and said: “Looks like someone needs to renovate this place.” We each looked at the doors closely and decided to go through the one in the middle. We opened the door and were immediately greeting the stench of what I describe as rust and a dead animal.

The stone floor had a line of the brown substance leading down the hallway into a doorway. Me, Linda and Jacob carefully followed the line waiting for something to happen. We made it to the doorway and saw EVERYTHING. The room was filled with various sharp tools such as knives, scalpels, drills, and saws. There was also what looked to be various torture methods, the worst part was the meat hooks with dried fairly recent blood in each corner of the room hanging off the wall. This wasn’t any ordinary cave space, this was a scene out of Saw Five. I looked to Linda and Jacob, Jacob looked disgusted and Linda looked like she was about to vomit, I couldn’t blame her.

Jacob looked around the room in horror as he said “W-what tt-the fffu-” He was interrupted by what sounded like three pairs of footsteps creeping down the hallway. We quickly looked around in a panic as we look for a place to hide. Jacob finally whispered a loud “There” pointing behind a long counter. We quickly but ever so quietly snuck behind it, as the door flung open. Loud heavy breathing was audible behind the counter, then we heard a voice. “I thought you said someone was here Chase.” the voice sounded like it came from a man in his late teens. “Nathan I swear to god I heard targets talking, I’m not lying to ya.” the voice sounded different but still sounded like it was a man in his late teens. “Where is there to hide in here there’s nothing but…..yes Mama, c’mon guys Mama says they’re around here somewhere”.

We were to sigh in relief until a female voice said “Nathan darling, be a dear and fetch that for me.” we then heard footsteps creeping closer and closer to where we were hiding. “This is it.” I thought “This is how we get caught.” The footsteps came about two feet away then stopped, the heavy breathing was audible. “Is this it Diane?” the female voice replied, “Yes, thank you.” The footsteps walked away. It felt like fifteen minutes until it was silent again. I took a risk and peeked around the corner, nothing was there. I motioned for Jacob and Linda to follow me, “Who the hell were they?” Jacob whispered to me. “Do you think I’ve got a clue?” I replied, we walked through the hallway we came from. And we were back at the three doors, “Hey, uh anybody know where we came in. We looked around “I think it was this way.” Jacob told us as he beckoned us to follow him. Taking our chances we went through the door to the left. The hallway was tall and wide, it was filled with bizarre drawings and what looked to be hand-written stories.

Some of the drawings depicted a large shadow like creature with snow-white eyes following three masked children. Some depicted the three masked children with knives butchering countless bleeding corpses as the shadow figure was giving a proud smile. But the last drawing depicted a very detailed sketch of three masks. One of them was a broken and very battered skull with blood seeping through the cracks. Another was a black mask with four vertical red stripes. The third and final mask was a bone white with red eyes and black stains, the mouth looked like torn and cut flesh with red paint splattered around it. Keeping the mouth together were four crude laces going in and out of the flesh.

I don’t what I was thinking when I decided to keep staring at the picture. “Hey!” Jacob said distracting me from the art, “We found another door.” I just nodded and followed them through. The other side of the door revealed three corridors with signs. Each sign had names, the first one read “Mr. Whispers”, the second one read “The Girl in Red”, and the third “The Bleeding Skull”. We were about to decide which one to take until we heard it again, footsteps in a faster pace behind us. I and Jacob quickly ran down the first corridor while Linda took the second. At the end of the corridor was a bedroom, a very basic looking on with a closet, a bed with a rusty frame, drawers and a large desk with a lamp.

The footsteps were about to come through the corridor that we were in so out of instinct I dashed inside the closet and cracked the door while Jacob quickly hid under the bed. The figure came in, he was wearing a hooded red leather jacket, tan cargo pants, gloves, and the laced mouth mask. He slowly crept around the room behind every nook and cranny. He spent five minutes looking for us until his head shot towards his closet. He started shambling towards me with a very dirty switchblade. He held out his gloved hand towards the door ready to rip it off its hinges. Everything came to a sudden stop when his bed made a loud creak. The figure quickly turned around.

He started speed walking towards the bed, the figure grabbed the frame and threw it against the wall revealing a very terrified Jacob. “I fooound you.” the figure said before picking Jacob up by the shirt and pinned him to a wall. Jacob shoved the figure with all his might only staggering the figure back. Jacob couldn’t run too far because the figure was fast, two times faster than Jacob. I could only watch as the figure tackled Jacob to the ground and raised his switchblade, what broke me into tears was when Jacob shared a last look of terror before the switchblade entered his right eye penetrating his brain. The figure wasn’t down after that and kept stabbing Jacob in the chest. When he was done, the figure slowly stood up and took a deep breath. He then walked away down the corridor. I stayed in that closet for what felt like hours reminiscing Jacob’s death.

I had to keep going. I stood up wiping the tears from my eyes and walked down the corridor stepping over what used be my living, breathing brother. I kept walking down the corridor and stepped into where again the three doors were. I took the door in the middle where I found once again three more corridors, This place was a stupid maze. I took the middle corridor that ended with a door that said “Storage”. I readily opened it prepared for what I was about to face but I found something much worse. Inside were three dog sized cages with dirty plates in front of them. Inside two of them were to rotting corpses of what I thought were two women, inside the third was a man who immediately looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.

“H-hey!” he shouted, “You need to help me.” I looked at him and asked “Do you know the way out?” he nodded profusely “Yeah, I do but you need to help me.” I simply looked at him a gave him an “ok” look. The cage he was in was locked from a key. I looked around the room to see a large rock, I picked it up and started bashing at the lock. The lock broke and the man was free. “T-thank you.” He exclaimed excitedly, “Now let's go before it’s too late”. “WAIT!” I shouted at him, “How did you get here?” The man looked down and explained that he and a few friends were exploring the mountain. They walked into the cave and one of them had their spine snapped by a man in a bleeding skull mask.

He and the two girls were knocked out and put into the cages, every day they would be fed moldy bread, old vegetables and drank dirty water. Every day they would drag him or his friends down to that torture room and experiment with them. His friends eventually succumb to their wounds but he was lucky. He explains that whole story to me with a shaky voice. “Now let’s go.” He said grabbing my arm. We made it to the three doors once again and I sighed in relief as I saw Linda alive and well. We saw each other and shared a tight hug before we heard faint whispers and murmurs. “That sounds familiar,” I exclaimed looking to were it came from. Then it clicked...the man I saw on the street, was one them.

The man quickly shouted “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” as he ran through the right door. I and Linda were right behind him but we heard three pairs of footsteps following us and the issue was that they were running too, far faster than us. I looked back to see the figure in the red leather jacket quickly catching up to us with two others. He held his switchblade above his head ready to strike. I looked back in front of me to see the cave opening. I kept running until I felt a sharp pain in my left leg as tripped to the group. I looked to see that there was a pair of scissors stuck deep in my leg. I looked up and got a good look at the three figures. The red leather jacket one was next to a feminine figure wearing a red hoodie with a striped mask and her hood up. She was holding a serrated straight razor pointed towards my throat. The large one was wearing a bleeding skull mask with a white coat, he walked over to me and yanked the scissors right from my leg. I shrieked in pain, The skull mask figure then raised his scissors up ready to end my life.

He was then tackled by the man I freed earlier, Linda then came to help me up onto my feet the female figure quickly yanked Linda away as she screamed at me to run. I couldn’t leave her too, so I stayed and watched as the freedmen's screams stopped as the skull masked figure slammed his forehead against the stone wall caving his face in. I watched my wife Linda’s throat get slit. He cried again and fell to my knees, I was foolish to think I could escape. I waited for death to come but it didn’t the three figures stared at me with satisfaction in their eyes. Then as quick as they came they walked back into the cave.

I took this chance to limp down the mountain and to my car. It took a long time but it eventually started. I drove back to the hotel thinking to myself that my wife and brother were dead. What was I going to tell mom and dad, what was I going to tell anyone. No one would believe me which is why I posted this online as a warning. Stay away from the mountains in Alaska or you will surely lose your life.