Woo! Woo!" One might mistake this sound to be of an animal; wild and sudden. However, this statement was actually echoing throughout an office-my office. “We got it! Got the land!” I looked up, delighted. The company that I worked for, Coal Foundry, had just received a mass of land that held potential for coal extraction and other industrial minerals. According to the documents, the land had vast cave systems with mass deposits of coal. Perfect. Just what we needed to get the money flowing. My boss, Robert, assembled a team of cavers and campers, or, in his words, “explorers”. His “explorers” included me, an experienced caver and naturalist, Jones, a camper and guard, and Eli, a glorified rockhound. Handy with tools, though. The three of us were sent to the land, roughly 10 acres. The nearest town was hours away, somewhere in New Jersey. Some Native Americans had lived here hundreds of years ago, and there had been talk of them being eaten by beasts of some kind that used to roam the plains. Fairy tales. A few days later, we departed in a minivan. It was being driven by some man named Bernard. We were given camping gear, two flashlights a person, caving gear, tents, a pick, and, thankfully, some extra space to keep anything we wanted inside. I packed a small, leatherbound journal and pen, Jones, being Jones, packed his favorite trophy- a small, serrated tooth, treating it like a teddy bear. Eli, being sensible, packed a brush, toothpaste, and a portable metal detector. We slept; for tomorrow the work would begin.
When I awoke, it was dawn. Eli and Jones were ready as well. As we got off, the driver, Bernard, burly, bearded, stout Bernard, said, “Locals used to call this place Lonely Animals State Park… good luck finding out why.” He snickered. With that, he drove away. His words wrapped around my mind. Lonely Animals, I thought. A strange name for a seemingly normal place, but a chill ran down my spine after all. I set my sights on the plains below me. Fields. Endless, gaping fields ran as far as the eye could see. I resisted the freezing sensation, the voices screaming from my little amygdala. With a swift motion, I beckoned to Jones and Eli, and plunged into the lands of Lonely Animals State Park.
YOU ARE READING
Lonely Animals
RandomA team of cavers is sent to land received in a contract with unexplored cave systems underneath, in the hopes of finding coal. However, the team finds darker things than coal in the rocky abyss. The first installation of The Squares & Lines Mythos.
