Magnolia's Code

The Violin

Author's Note
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Here's a part early for you guys since I'll be at camp next week! Please enjoy and tell me what you thought of it in the comments!
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After his first experience in the Magnolia Caverns, the last thing Tim wanted to do was go back into them alone. But it was the only thing he could think about, and he didn’t want to ask Jay to go back there again, especially after he had broken one of the most basic rules of the woods: don’t drive your car into the damn woods (Jay’s words).

    If Tim was a little more confident, he probably would have had the courage to call the number Jay had scrawled on his hand and ask him for assistance once more, but the only thing he was confident enough to do was not wash the ink off of his hand and out of his life entirely. He felt sort of paralyzed when he looked at the number, like he was hovering between two realities and he only had to take a step in one direction to make one of them happen. The more likely step that he would take was the one of cowardice, but somehow this step was delayed by the thought of the Magnolia Caverns.

    It seemed to Tim that the caves were the only things worth thinking about right now, and he could deal with his pitiful social problems after he had taken care of the curiosity he had about that dark hole in the ground. Now that he was in the safety of his own apartment, the creepy, dark feeling that he’d had, like someone or something was watching him, seemed supercilious and fake. He almost laughed at himself for feeling that way.

    It was this feeling that ultimately drove him to the edge of the caverns again, in the middle of the pitch-black night. He stood with all of his cave gear on, clutching his equipment bag like it was his lifeline, shining his headlight into the unassuming hole. He was trembling, because he could feel the menacing tendrils of something wafting up from below the surface of the earth. The hair once again stood up on the back of his neck, and he took one step back, and then another. He almost didn’t venture into the cave at all, but a voice in his head that sounded remarkably like Jay’s hissed fitta, and he tightened his resolve and lowered himself into the depths.

    Surprisingly, Tim’s terror faded somewhat as he carefully made his way farther and farther into the caverns. They seemed to welcome him, even, inviting him ever deeper into their intricate system. They compelled him to continue his search into the rocks, looking for… he didn’t even know what he was looking for. He must have stumbled for hours through those systems, but he wasn’t for sure because he lost all sense of time the farther back he went. He had a suspicion at one point that he was becoming delirious, but after that, he became too dazed to even care about his own sanity. He had a funny thought that this must have been what had happened to all the other scientists who had come in here, but that slipped away and was replaced with the vague idea that maybe there was some sort of strange gas in these tunnels, but that thought was gone as soon as he’d thought it as well. After all, who had time for thinking when there were so many rocks that he had yet to explore?

    Rockies, rockies, rockies. What had Jay called them? Rock cells? Tim let out a sharp peal of laughter that echoed off the enormous ceiling and startled him into more giggles that were completely unlike him. Before long, he was completely enveloped in laughter, bent double at the waist for lack of air. He accidentally fell over, still wheezing hysterically, and something sharp jabbed him in the side.

    “Aow!” Tim cried, clapping a hand to his side. Luckily, whatever it was hadn’t broken the skin. However, the pain acted as an antidote to whatever the cave had been doing to him, and his eyes sharpened into focus once more; he hadn’t even realized they had been blurry. He slowly sat up, the full extent of where he was crashing down around him with the force of a tsunami. The echoes of his last laughs were still fading around him, and he felt as though he was seven leagues under the water and had only just realized he was about to drown.

    Tim’s breath came in fast, loud pants and he started to sweat, even though the atmosphere was ice-cold. Menacing darkness pressed in around him, like it was curious about the human that had dared to venture this far into its domain. He touched a shaking hand to his face and found it to be hot and wet with tears. He was completely and utterly lost. He would die down here; there was no way he could find his way back now. And his legs already felt like they were going to fall off.

    Just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.

    Two things happened at once: Tim’s headlamp flickered and went dead with a fizz of the bulb, and an ominous moaning sound reached through the darkness. He froze, more terrified than he thought was even possible. “Hello?” he whispered. At least, he thought he whispered; it may have been that he just moved his lips in the shape of the word.

    The moaning sound came again, this time in a different pitch. It grew louder, continuing to waver and change pitch. It took Tim at least two terrifying minutes to realize that the sound was made by--of all things--a violin. Once he recognized it, it sounded too obvious to be anything else.

    He wondered if he was going crazy again. He tried pinching himself, but the sound didn’t go away; if anything, it got louder.

    Tim stood frozen in complete blackness, too scared to move a muscle, as the violin droned on. If he could have processed anything at all besides fear, he would have realized that it sounded rather pretty. He had always been partial to classical music.

    Just as suddenly as it started, the music stopped. Rather startlingly, Tim’s headlamp flickered back on. Like a switch had been flipped in his mind, he bolted away in a random direction, running like his life depended on it (which, really, it kind of did). He let loose a guttural scream that didn’t die until he was completely out of breath. He stumbled and fell multiple times, cutting his arm open in the process, but the adrenaline coursing through him left no room for pain.

    After what felt like several hours of running flat out, a shred of light pierced his skin, and it took him a long time to discern that it was actual sunlight and not just the beam of his headlight reflecting off of a shiny wall, especially since it had been dark when he went in. His stomach turned over as the first half-sane thought he’d had in a long time broke through his head: he wondered how long he had been in the caverns.

    Miraculously, there it was: the cave entrance. Tim wasn’t even sure how he had gotten back without any sense of direction whatsoever, but he was immensely glad he had. He thanked whoever was up there in the sky for his good fortune, actually falling on his knees in the sun-soaked grass just outside the cave and kissing the ground. He was sobbing silently, and he only knew this because he saw the tears dripping onto his bent knees. He pressed his numb face into his even-colder hands as he tried to contain the tears, taking deep steadying breaths.

    Tim was okay. He hadn’t died. He’d gotten out of the cave. He was…

    He hesitated to think the word safe. Just because he was out of the caverns didn’t mean he was safe, it just meant he could be more easily fooled into thinking he was. However comforting the sunlight was, there was still someone in those caves who had made those noises; after all, violins didn’t play themselves.