What's that Sound?

Three kids check out a mysterious hole in the woods, despite the fact that no one should ever do that.

They stood, looking down, unconsciously spreading out evenly to form the points of an equilateral triangle. Nobody wanted to be the first one to say something, because they knew it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Still, nothing could keep Shawn quiet for long, and it was his discovery, after all, so he spoke up. “Well?” he said.

Shannon wanted to tell him to shut up, sure that the faint breeze constantly wafting out of the hole had started to carry something very much like a voice, but as soon as she thought about it, she dismissed the possibility. “This is... I don’t know. How long has this been here?” She pitched her voice a little louder than necessary, thinking about that voice even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself.

Shawn kept his eyes on the darkness clogging the hole. “Maybe a week. I come through here all the time, but the last time I’m sure I came through right here was last Saturday. It wasn’t here then.”

Brendan kept quiet, not wanting to speak up so close to the hole. He tried to look bored, unimpressed, but he knew they wouldn’t buy it. Who could look unimpressed staring down into this hole that never ended? About six feet across, the walls were almost smooth, made of compressed and compacted dirt. With the sun high in the sky, they could see maybe thirty feet down. A few cross-sections of roots dotted the upper walls, cleanly sliced off, a few holes that might have been burrows as well. He imaged a mole scurrying blindly through the darkness only to find itself suddenly plummeting into light, falling and falling, tumbling end over end. Would it have any idea what had happened or would it be something beyond its capacity to comprehend?

He stepped back from the hole, feeling suddenly insecure. He knew that if he fell down that hole, he would comprehend it all the way to the unseen bottom, every last long second of the fall, two pairs of wide, staring eyes following him down, down until he vanished into darkness. Would he feel the ground rushing up at him in the dark?

The other two stepped back as well, probably without even realizing it. Shawn turned to him, head cocked, and ask, “So, Bren? What do you think?” His voice held a note of pride over his discovery.

As the oldest of the trio by a few months, Brendan was generally viewed as the unspoken authority. He swallowed. “This is... this is wrong. You have to....” His voice trailed off. How could they just stand here like this? “Things like this, they just don’t happen! Huge holes in the ground don’t just appear, Shawn!”

Shawn looked doubtful, but this was his. “It’s probably for construction, like a sewer main. They’re gonna dig out the sewer tunnels first before anything else.”

Shannon scoffed, a sharp puff of breath. “In the middle of the woods? They’re not gonna start construction before clearing all these trees out, and they’re not gonna start right in the middle here anyway! They start at the edges. My dad gets all those green newsletters, they’re always protesting things like that. He says they start at the edges and nibble their way in like rats eating a cake.”

Shawn grimaced. “Who cares what it is? It’s awesome, and we found it!” He stepped back a few more paces and dropped his backpack on the ground. He started rummaging through it as the other two, grateful for the implied permission, stepped back as well. He tossed a length of bright orange and black rope on the ground, followed by a pair of binoculars, another length of rope, and a small camera. At the sight of the tangled rope, Brendan’s stomach dropped, his knees felt weak. No way, no way in hell was he letting anyone climb down that rope. Finally Shawn pulled a dusty red cardboard tube capped with opaque plastic on one end, brandishing it proudly. “Aha!”

Shannon recognized it. “A flare?”

Shawn beamed. “Yeah, I stole a few of these out of my mom’s car. They’re awesome! I tested one, and it wouldn’t even go out when I stuck it in the pool!” It had bubbled and smoked like mad, though�"he wished they could always light the pool with underwater flares. “I figure we can lower one down, see how far it goes!”

Brendan breathed a sigh of relief. So no one would be trying to climb down the rope after all. He was so relieved, in fact, that he even offered to tie the rope to the flare with his Boy Scout’s knowledge of knots. Shawn assented, but insisted on wrapping the knot with duct tape, “just to be sure.”

With a gleam in his eye, Shawn popped the cover off the road flare and struck it to life. A hot, red flame burst into view, hissing and smoking angrily. They shielded their eyes, surprised by its intensity, and Shannon took hold of the far end of the rope. They clustered together, watching the flare drop into the darkness, bouncing off the solid dirt walls, twisting slowly. Shawn fed the rope out evenly, all three children peering over the edge as the fierce red light sank further into the Earth. The flare’s light was a narrow red band on the walls, ever-shrinking.

As Shawn approached the end of the rope, Brendan hastily tied the second rope to its end. Each rope was about a hundred feet long, and no sign of the bottom was apparent. Shannon thought the breeze coming from the hole was increasing, but no one else seemed to notice, so she kept quiet. She imagined the flare slowly descending past dozens of pairs of greedy eyes gleaming like rubies in the fiery light, just waiting for the right moment to reach out with filthy claws and yank. She loosened her grip.

Finally they reached the end of the second rope, the flare dangling two hundred feet down in the dark. Shawn swung it back and forth and ordered Brendan to get the binoculars. He resented Shawn’s tone, but just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

Peering into the depths with the binoculars, Shawn finally got them adjusted to his satisfaction. He handed control of the rope over to Shannon, who kept it swinging. Shawn finally admitted that he wasn’t able to see anything in particular, lowering the glasses in disgust.

Brendan stepped back from the hole. “Look, maybe we should go home. You don’t know, the sides of this thing could be unstable.”

Shawn ignored him. “I should have brought more rope. I didn’t think it could be this deep.” His voice held a note of awe. He wasn’t quite old enough to know just how impossible this was.

Feeling increasingly nervous as she stood holding the rope, Shannon walked over to a nearby tree and tied it to a low branch with a tangled series of amateur square knots. One hand on the rope for the vague feeling of safety it gave her, she returned to the edge of the hole and listened. The constant breeze made her feel like she was moving; she closed her eyes and leaned into the wind, sure now that she was hearing something down there. She tuned out the sound of Shawn and Brendan arguing behind her. They could go home, but she was staying here until she figured out what the voices were saying. A harsh clicking whisper rode the breeze to her ears, a multi-layered overlapping drone that waxed and waned like the white noise of a crowd, seeming to come from everywhere at once. She leaned closer. She could almost understand it. Just another few seconds. So close.

She almost didn’t notice when the rope jerked once, twice in her hand. Breaking out of her daze, she opened her eyes with a start and found herself balanced much too far forward. With a cry, she swung out over the hole, grabbing frantically at the rope with her other hand, one foot slipping into air in a shower of dirt, the other planted firmly in the rim, on soil that was slowly coming loose. Shawn and Brendan stared at her, too stunned to react at first, each suppressing the idiotic question, “What are you doing?” They both bolted to her side as her hands started to slip on the rope. Shawn grabbed her wrists and pulled while Brendan grabbed the rope and leaned back with all his strength. Slowly they hauled her upright until she lurched forward, sprawling on top of Shawn at Brendan’s feet.

She pushed herself up off Shawn, panting in terror, while Brendan leaned over beside them, hands on his knees, gasping for breath, one hand still clutching the taut rope. “What the hell happened?” he managed to get out. “You weren’t gonna climb down there, were you?”

Shannon shook her head, not trusting her legs to support her if she stood up. “I just... I was listening, and I just slipped, I guess. Someone pulled the rope.”

Brendan gave the rope an irritated flip. “Yeah, Shawn, knock it off.”

Shawn sat on the ground near his backpack, frowning. “Knock what off? I was nowhere near that rope, dude, I was talking to you when she slipped.”

Brendan looked at the rope, clearly running under tension into the hole, with Shawn nowhere near it. “You were....” He went pale. “Y-you’re pulling on the rope.” Shawn threw a handful of dirt at Brendan. “No, I’m obviously not, moron. Nice try, though.”

Brendan dropped the rope like it were suddenly covered with fire ants. “There’s something on the rope there’s something on the rope!” he shrieked. He put his hands to his head and took a skipping step toward the hole, then several steps back, afraid to get close, looking like a cartoon housewife who’s seen a mouse.

Shawn rolled his eyes and refused to let himself be drawn in, but Shannon could see the rope moving in little fits and jerks. Swallowing hard, she crawled to the edge of the hole and peered way down into the dark, where the rope was jerking back and forth and several angular shadows kept coming between her and the flare’s dim light.

She tugged on the rope, which felt like it were now supporting a substantial weight, digging into the rim of the hole. “Shawn, oh s**t, Shawn, there’s something down there, something’s coming up!” Her voice grew in pitch until she was screaming the last words, and that more than anything convinced Shawn to have a look, because Shannon had never been given to drama.

She stumbled over to the tree, frantically digging at her clumsy knots with her fingernails, while behind her Shawn let out a single fearful groan. “Brendan, help me!” she yelled, but his Boy Scout training hadn’t covered this, and he was useless. She undid one knot, with too many to go. “Shawn, what’s happening?”

She turned to look, still working at the knots, and saw Shawn frozen in place, crouched at the rim of the hole. “They’re coming up,” he said, his voice flat. “They’re coming up. Oh man, they’re all coming up.”

Another knot fell. Still too many to go. The rope was slowly stretching, the weight on it increasing, making it ever harder to untie the knots. “Shawn! In your backpack, do you have a knife, anything?”

Shawn didn’t say anything, just stared into the hole, slowly shaking his head. Brendan turned to the backpack and looked inside, moving like he was underwater. After a moment, he turned it upside-down and shook it. A single flare fell to the ground, and he tossed the backpack aside, looking numbly at the red tube.

A mad grin lit up Shannon’s face and she pounced on the flare, fumbling off the cap and popping the flare alight with a brutal swipe. “Brendan, get Shawn out of the way!” Brendan stepped up next to Shawn to drag him away, but stopped when he looked down.

Shannon hurried to the edge of the hole. Less than 30 feet below, a figure like a chimpanzee stuffed into an iguana’s skin was climbing the rope, a succession of identical figures trailing down into darkness below it. It looked up at her and bared a grin full of daggers. Its long, curving claws made climbing awkward, but it was making good progress. She shot a grin of her own back at it and thrust the flare at the rope. The creatures suddenly redoubled their effort, hissing and clicking. The fibers of the rope began to soften, melting beads of liquid plastic dropping to the ground with a high-pitched whizz. Shannon danced anxiously in place, willing the fire to burn faster. The melting portion of the rope stretched out, and Shannon hit the narrowest spot with the flare, pulling on the rope above it. It finally gave, the line of creatures plummeting back into the darkness in a furious chorus of echoing shrieks, as with a final leap the one in the lead flung itself upward and grabbed a handful of Shawn’s hair, claws digging into his scalp. He howled in pain and the creature shrieked a sound like agony, rearing its head back, jaws gaping for an enormous bite. Shannon screamed in frustration and jammed the burning end of the flare into its mouth, shoving it down the creature’s throat and levering it out of the hole. Brendan cowered on the ground, hands clamped over his ears. Clawing at Shannon’s arm, the creature released its grip on Shawn’s head, leaving behind parallel furrows in which white bone gleamed before drowning in red.

She held the creature spasming before her, its mad grimace digging into the flare that gurgled and spat deep in its throat, before slamming it to the ground, never loosening her grip. Shannon kneeled on the writhing creature’s chest, relentlessly driving the flare deeper. It flailed and thrashed weakly, stripping tatters of flesh from her arms before shuddering and finally dying. With a burst of putrid reek, the flesh of the creature’s throat curled and parted to reveal the dying fire of the flare.

She finally let go, gasping and sobbing. Shawn was curled at the edge of the hole, clutching his head, moaning, blood leaking between his fingers. Brendan looked back and forth between them, hands still over his ears, his perception of himself as the group’s cool head forever ruined. Eventually, Shannon caught her breath, and said, “Brendan, let’s, uh, let’s stuff this thing in Shawn’s backpack and take him to the hospital.” Shawn’s moans had died down to quiet sobs. She looked down at her arms, covered with gashes and bleeding freely. “Me too, I guess. Then maybe we’ll take the backpack to the newspaper and get famous, huh?” She spoke to them like a mother calming down her babies after a nightmare. “That’d be cool, right? Or maybe the cops first? What do they do in the movies?”

Almost in tears, Brendan looked back at the hole. “In the movies they would do something stupid like go look in the hole again, so let’s get the f**k out of the woods and then we can vote on it.” So they did.

Author's Note

The current title comes from a song lyric that I misheard as "What's that sound coming out of the hole in the woods?" Please suggest better ones, because I'm sure they are legion.