The December Selected Writer is Timothy Wilkie

Please feel free to email Timothy at: timwilkie06@gmail.com

OSSUARY
by Timothy Wilkie

Kate’s heart was beating so hard that it hurt.

She was in an uncontrolled slide her hands and feet slipping on the walls slick with green leprosy. The deeper she slid, the darker it got until she was totally drowning in a sea of night. Desperate for light—
her head lamp tilted at an awkward angle—did little to illuminate her surroundings. Her fingers brushed over something fury and it screeched in her face and scurried away.

The rocks beneath her jutted out and her foot caught between a boulder and the slimy walls of the crevice. She screamed out in pure agony as her momentum twisted bone almost to the breaking point and held her suspended in the shaft of the cave.

*****

Six hours earlier, Kate awakened to headlights on the wall and a van pulling into her driveway. She jumped out of bed; her alarm hadn’t gone off. She slipped on her jeans and grabbed her backpack off the chair before Billy could do something stupid like blow the horn and wake up her mother. He was uncommunicative during the ride, and just kept nursing his Xtra-Mart coffee and listening to the Dead on a CD cranked to the max.

There was an eerie fog this high in the Catskills. When they got to their destination, Billy handed her backpack to her out of the back of the van. “How much did you pack? I hope you can carry this because we’ve got a hike ahead of us.”

“Don’t worry, I got it.” She made a face at him as she hoisted it onto her back.

As they made their way to the trailhead, she led the way. Their flashlights barely cut through the early
morning fog, making the landscape seem almost dream-like. The trail up to the falls wound around through the tall pines and breathtaking drop offs. Billy had been right when he told her she’d be impressed.

“Just wait until you see the hidden cave I found,” Billy told her. “There’s a legend tagged to it.”

She heard the roar of the falls long before they cleared the woods. It sounded like a train coming down the mountainside. It surged off the cliff and rained downhill on the rocks below. 

The height made her head spin and the pure force of it made her weak in the knees. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs and ride the mighty current down the rugged face of the mountain.

Still in the lead, she made her way down the steep incline next to the falls, conscious of Billy right behind her. The ground was piled high with pine needles. She watched where she placed her hands because spiders liked to tunnel through the leaves, weaving their webs on top to shimmer in the sunlight.

Less than a half hour later she shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh. She had followed the trail down from the falls. “I don’t see any cave,” she said out loud. 

“It's right in front of you, behind the falls,” he said. “The local legend is that this cave is haunted.”

She saw the dark hole looming ahead. She turned her headlamp on. “I don’t believe in ghosts. I want to go inside.” 

She moved slowly along the narrow stone ledge behind the falls and slipped into the opening of the cave. It wasn’t high enough to stand, but she could see it went back a ways, opening up a bit at the end.  There was an inversion thing going on inside which made fog swirl around her like smoke. The only way she could see any distance was to stay down low and look under the ghostly white veil. 

She moved only a few feet at a time because she didn’t want to fall into a sink-hole.  As she moved in further, the fog cleared and she was able to see that the tunnel lead to a smaller opening between two big slabs of limestone. She stepped over some bones of a dead animal still stained with blood and gore and her nostrils stung with the pungent stench of death. She held her breath until she was clear.

Her father had taught her to never go caving alone, but she had Billy. Still, he was a bit hung over. How reliable was he this morning?

Stop it. It’s was not like I am down here alone, she told herself. Billy is just outside, and even hung over, he would help me if I need it. 

She stuck her head inside the wedge in the back of the chamber, letting her headlamp shine a narrow beam across the space.

Suddenly, something moved at the other end. She quickly turned off her headlamp. She could see light at the other end that she hadn’t seen a few moments ago. Something had moved.

“Hey!” She cried out. Someone was blocking the light on the other side, concealed by the layers of darkness in-between.

The tunnel was kind of tight. “Hey there!” she called out.

Her words sounded hollow and emotionless as they echoed back at her. Her eyes were open wide as she stayed perfectly quiet, awaiting a response. Wait, was there a reply? It sounded like a small child at play, nonsense talk, her father use to call it.

As she worked her way into the wedge, the darkness hugged her like a cool wet blanket. She kept her eyes locked forward as her father had taught her so many years ago. “It helps so you don’t feel like the
walls are squeezing in on you,” he had told her.

She wiggled her way along an inch at a time, stopping at intervals to listen. Suddenly, her foot hit against the wall and it gave way. The sound of falling rocks pounded in her ears and brought her to the very brink of panic. 

Alone, wedged tight in the darkness—choking on a cloud of dust, unable to breathe— she quickly cupped her hands over her nose and mouth as sort of a half-ass dust filter. There was no retreat now. Moving forward was the only option.

Much to her shock and dismay, there was nothing ahead except a shaft going straight down. The light she had seen was some kind of firefly. There were thousands of them on the rock surface.

She paused for a few moments, considering her options. She could feel a steady flow of fresh air when she leaned out over the shaft which meant there had to be an opening to the outside down there somewhere.

Then all of a sudden she caught a flicker of light at the bottom of the shaft. Not wanting to be fooled like before, she watched and waited. Yes, there it was again; it looked like a climber’s candle. She was in the shaft before she knew it and had screwed up just that fast.  Her heart was beating so hard it hurt. 

She was in an uncontrollable slide, her hands and feet slipping on the walls slick with green goo. The deeper she slid, the darker it got until she was drowning totally in a sea of darkness. Her helmet banged against the rock-face, tilting her head-lamp into an awkward position. 

Her fingers brushed against something fury and it screeched in her face. Then her foot caught between a boulder and the walls of the crevice and she screamed out in pain as her foot wedged in tight.        

An agonizing bolt of pain that shot up her leg and brought tears to her eyes she tried to wiggle her foot to loosen the limestone jaws of the trap in which she was caught. The edges were sharp like razors and they bit into the tight tender flesh around her ankle.  She pounded on the limestone with her fists
and cursed her own stupidity. 

She needed Billy. She shouted his name once, twice, three times…could he hear her way out there when she was way in here? She felt truly alone for the first time in her life because there was no answer to her shouts.

She clutched at the slick walls, digging her fingernails deep into the soft green mat and pulled herself slowly upright. When the pain permitted, she slowly started moving her foot again, but her ankle felt like cold fire shooting up her leg. She clamped her jaws tightly together to stifle her screams and concentrated on moving her foot just little—back and forth—trying to gain some space without falling.

Then she felt something touch the back of her neck lightly, very lightly, but definitely skin on skin contact. She reached up and brushed it off quickly without thinking, and then jerked around trying to see what it was. 

Nothing. 

Then something touched her face a second time. She felt her heart skip a beat and then, kicked into high gear, she covered her head with both hands, almost losing her balance. 

Rabies, bats carry rabies! was all she could think. She tried to move again, but it hurt so bad.

“Billy!” She cried out again. “Help! I’m stuck.”

She knew he couldn’t hear her. Would he come looking for her on his own?

She took a deep breath and held it as she yanked her foot up. Her ankle screamed in agony, shooting fire up her leg, but her foot came free. Slowly putting as little weight on it as she could, she moved down the shaft until she reached the bottom and emerged into a large chamber. Here she hoped to find a way out.

Kate swept the chamber with her head-lamp before she started walking. With every step she took, she
heard a crunching underfoot. It was like walking on broken glass. 

She knelt down and felt around the ground. She picked up something round and hard and studied it under the glow of her head-lamp. It was a piece of bone. She saw more bone because they littered the cavern floor.

Animal bones! she desperately thought. They can’t be human!

She looked up and saw a small opening near the ceiling.  A quick examination of the chamber revealed a natural stairway in the stone that led up to it. It was well worn and crumbling in spots. She slowly made her way up the steps, favoring her injured foot. 

About halfway up her foot slipped and she clung to the wall with both hands. For a moment, her foot dangled in thin air and then it found the very edge of the step and she steadied herself. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you, God,” she whispered.

She teetered on the narrow ledge as she eased her head through the opening. At first the shadows
inside seemed to move back and forth, ignoring her intrusion into their realm. “I'm here,” she whispered. “But where to hell is here?”

Her ears picked up the nonsense sounds again of children at play. When her eyes adjusted to the shadowy realm, she realized that the walls were lined with tiny human skulls. They sparkled as the beam of her headlamp hit them like they were alive and looking back at her. There were bones in stacks all over the floor. 

This wasn’t a place for children to play; it was a place of the dead…an Ossuary.

She was distracted by whispers in the farthest corner of the chamber. They were different then the nonsense sounds of children. More sinister and frightening. 

Kate reached up and started pulling stones away, dropping them on the ledge she was kneeling on. When she had the hole wide enough, she climbed in further so her head-lamp lit up the far corner of the room. She saw that it was partially caved in. The whole chamber was compromised; water was coming down the walls, threatening to wash everything away.

Unwilling to let the lonely desolation of the cave overwhelm her, she knew she had to get Billy. These were the bones of children—possibly hundreds of years old—placed underground from their original burial sites, a sort of shrine of the damned. 

Suddenly, she felt a hand touch hers. She was blinded for a moment from the glare of her own head-lamp, and when her vision adjusted, there was a little girl standing next to her.

Her eyes were totally devoid of life and her skin like alabaster. The little girl smiled. She pointed in at the chamber and when Kate turned to look, she disappeared into the shadows.  

The nonsense voices of children within the chamber returned in waves that seemed to crest and break over her. Kate closed her eyes and listened; she was so tired that the words were soothing in a strange way. It seemed to be a song that they were singing…just for her. 

The sound of children laughing resounded from the inner chamber. She turned on the narrow ledge, knocking stones off and as they clattered down the rock face to the floor below, she peered back into the hole. The little girl’s face was right there, suspended in mid-air, practically nose-to-nose with her. They stared at one another until Kate screamed, and the spell was broken. The little face disappeared. 

She immediately reformed in front of one of the stacks of bones. “What do you want?” Kate cried. The little girl pointed down at the stack of bones. 

“Are those your bones?” she asked. “Do you want me to take your bones out of this place?”

The girl nodded her head up and down and then suddenly screamed. Her voice echoed off the walls and Kate covered her ears with her hands. She knelt on the ledge shaking with her palms tight to her ears. 

Something large and foul-smelling passed by her in the chamber. She recoiled in terror, her heart pounding in her chest. Her eyes ached from trying to see between the lines of shadows. There was something back there wedged in tight between the layers of shadows.

The little girl faded, only to appear again right in front of Kate. The children’s voices were gone now and the look on the little girl’s face was one of pure terror. Her mouth stretched and twisted in a silent scream. Just then something seemed to grab her from behind and pull her back into nothingness.

The smell grew stronger again, nasty and vile. Kate gagged and then right next to her ear, there was a deep, throaty growl. Invisible hands picked her up and pulled her through the hole into the cavern. 

She tried to pull away, but it was hopeless. She was no match for the force that had a hold of her. 

Once she was inside the creature dropped her to the floor of the cavern. She landed in a heap right next to the little girl’s stack of bones.

She frantically started picking up the bones and cradling them in her arms, and when she had them all, she made a dash for the hole in the cavern, hoping it was an exit.

She had only a few steps to go when something hit her from behind, knocking her to the ground. All of a sudden, it was on top of her.

Not thinking of her own safety, Kate screamed, “You can’t have them!”

The thing growled deeply. It seemed to be inches from her face. “She’s just a little girl!”  Kate cried.

She felt the force of the blow, sounding like the crack of a whip, as she flew backwards. She landed with her back against a wall of limestone, just below the exit.

She shook it off and stood up and started throwing the bones through the hole in the wall. It was in the desperate hope that getting them out of this chamber of death might loosen the hold the creature had on them. 

As she scrambled up the wall, she heard a howl of pure and undeniable rage, then there was silence, and with that silence, she felt a desperate hope of escape.

For what seemed like forever, she made her way across the large chamber to the exit. She stumbled over the uneven ground, finding the little girl’s bones and picked them up again. 

There was a tunnel that she was sure led out of the cavern. As she made for it something that felt like the bony talons of some giant bird of prey ripped at her arm. She pulled herself free and escaped down the passageway with the foul smelling demon on her heels. The smell was that of a rotting corpse and it was all over her. 

There was light coming in as the tunnel slanted upwards towards the surface. She could hear the thunder of the falls above, and she spotted the opening in the rocks just in the nick of time.

Then the stench was in her face, blocking her escape. She lunged to the side, holding on tight to the little girl’s bones and dove head-first through the opening to find herself one with the waterfall.

She was free! She still held the bones in her arms.

Billy was still out there, nursing his hangover. “So,” he asked, “did you see any ghosts?”

Timothy Wilkie is a writer/artist living in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. He was a musician for years, playing his songs at one bar after another, trying to be some kind of rock star.

When his two sons came along, all that changed. He realized that they were his most important contribution to the world. At the same time, he started painting and writing, which was all he ever wanted to do; even when he was playing music, he wanted to paint and write. It seems that now he’s finally home.