The Cave to Hell

Throughout the years we have told our children to never enter the woods. We never knew why. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and so on. What was troubling is when someone would go out into the woods and they never returned. We had no leads, no articles, no trails, nothing. We don’t know. We all assume they are dead. I finally decided to go in, but this time, I thought it was a good idea to take a radio and as much rope as possible. I’m only 19, and so is my friend.

“Dustin, are you ready?” I radio my friend.

“Yeah as ready as I’ll ever be,” He said in a concerned voice, “Roy, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean no one has been seen from the woods. No one.”

“Then we are about to find out what is on the other side.” I walked into the woods. What was beyond it? I had no idea. It all looked normal enough. Most people stopped around here, they didn’t go any further. I spotted a cave up ahead but there was a, “Do not enter sign” on it. Go figure, no one should get hurt.

“Come… here” I heard from the cave. It came out like an echo, almost like I could hear it in my head, like a whisper. Alright, let's check it out. Maybe someone’s in there. I climb inside. I feel my rope being tugged on and my radio coming through with static.

“R-oy… Roy” static, and more static, I’m losing his signal.

“Roy come in… I lost him. Great, I feel him on the other side but I can’t get him. I don’t want to go in.”

I climb into this cave, bats flutter out. I look down and the cave seems to go down for what looks like miles. Light flickers down below, but it seems very unnatural. “What? Where is that light coming from?” I then slip on bat guano.

I slide on my back going down this hole, I assume by now my rope had to have snapped somewhere, cause I am not being pulled at all. I can’t see where I am. I can’t see where I’m going. All I know is, I’m sliding. I feel like I’ve slid for miles and I can’t stop. No friction, nothing to grab onto, feels like a slide that was greased up but smooth.

I finally come to an abrupt stop, tumbling, and landing on my stomach. Somehow, I’m fine. I get up. Something smells awful. I look around finally. To my surprise, I think I finally see why no one has been found. This place was covered in what looked like old blood. I see rotted animals, body parts of humans, and organs.

I wanted to puke. This is why I’m glad my father insisted on me buying a gun, keeping it on me, keeping bullets on me at all times. I loaded it from my backpack. Made sure I had enough bullets. Checked my revolver, everything was ready.

To think, no one had thought to come down here, ever. To come with a gun. I could hear flies. Something was moving. I don’t know what it was but I saw a work bench with what looked like a dead person. Oh my god. It was Sarah. Sarah was this 7-year-old girl. She had gone missing almost 2 months ago.

We didn’t know where she was, her mother and father had looked everywhere for her. She was on this table, naked, dismembered, her eyes glazed over, her organs were out on the table. I nearly threw up. I don’t know how I kept my composure. I was scared, wanting to destroy whoever was down here. I don’t think anyone would blame me and I would likely get off completely.

“Help… me…” I heard a voice, that sounded scared, desperate, crying for his life. I find a man on the ground, somehow alive but missing half his body. All that is left of him are his arms and torso. How this man is staying alive, I have no idea. “Please…” He coughs…”Kill me…”

I say in a hushed tone, “Who did this to you?”

“You’ll never find him… He lives in the city. Black cloak…” he looks down at my gun, grabs it, sticks it in his mouth, and pulls the trigger.”

“WAIT NO…” too late. Well, to be fair, he was going to die within minutes, I guess dying on your own terms is nicer. Whatever this place was, smelled worse than anything I have ever been in, or to. I’ve been around rotting meat but this, I can’t even begin to describe it. This was Hell.

I walked around a bit more, I don’t know where all the light was coming from, but I can tell you that this was unnatural. I find myself at what looks like a cliff. I peer over too… oh dear God in Heaven. It was literal Hell. There were always rumors as to Hell’s existence.

As humans, we aren’t allowed in Hell unless we are dead, as far as I know. I hear unnatural screams, souls of the damned crying out, I see what looks like beatings, people being torn in half but somehow put back together in an instant, watching people have their eyes gouged out. I think the worst so far is seeing what looked like the scariest monster ever literally fucking a man in the face, in his eyes. All I hear are screams. Within seconds the eyes are healed but then fucked, leaving a bloody mess.

I made my way down the cliff easily enough and somehow, the stench of rotting corpses had vanished and it began to smell like apple pie, peaches, and pears, this made no sense to my senses. Maybe it’s Satan’s way of giving false comfort. Makes sense after all. I find what looks like a door. This door looks like it’s part of a castle.

I enter through it. Now, everything is bleak, and chill, but not freezing, everything felt dull. As if happiness is gone. Left with nothing more than emptiness. What is this place?

“Roy… I can hear your thoughts this entire time.”

"What? Who said that?"

“You know who said that.”

"There’s no way you’re real…"

“I’m as real as you but follow my voice and I’ll show you everything.”

I walk down the hall. Doors upon doors, numbers, sigils on doors, alchemy markings on another, just names, numbers, and so on. Something told me to stop at a particular door. The door was already cracked open as if someone just walked in.

“Go on Roy, look inside.”

I open the door, and look around, nothing but darkness. A light turns on overhead and it’s my kitchen, but I know it’s not and it’s unsettling. The room feels like it’s at an angle. The lights are oddly bright, that kind of bright that it’s bright enough to see but it’s coming through the clouds and it hurts your eyes kind of bright. I look around, yeah, it’s my kitchen. I smell something... I know that smell, it’s the smell of sex.

I look over at the kitchen table, but it’s covered in darkness and I hear muffled sounds. I turn on a light to find my girlfriend taped to the table. Her wrists have been cut up, naked, her vaginal area is bleeding, her feces all over the table, she’s crying, in pain, she’s giving me the worst, scariest look I’ve ever seen. I rip off the duct tape.

“Ashley! What’s going on?” I’m on the verge of tears.

She begins to laugh, “This? Wanna see something cool sweetie?” She rips her right arm from the table and stuffs her hand into her stomach, pulling out what looks like an organ then throws it at me. I’m covered in blood. I begin to scream. I run to the door. I kick it open, and run through it, what looks like my naked, bloodied girlfriend runs towards me but hits some invisible barrier. For a moment, her face turns into something else. The face is now jet-black, “GET BACK HERE.” Going through the door, the blood vanishes from me.

“ENOUGH,” says the voice I’ve been hearing. The thing, whatever it was, stopped and bowed at the door.

“That was a demon Roy. I thought you’d have figured it out. Now, come along”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I didn’t tell you to go down to that door, you just did, human curiosity. I’ve never understood you humans to tell you the truth. I don’t understand why my father even created you in the first place.”

“So you are…”

“That’s right.” As the voice said that, a man in a black suit, red tie, black shoes, blue eyes, and blond hair appeared to me. “Come along now Roy. You’re not even supposed to be here.”

“Satan?”

“You can call me Lucifer. It’s alright. Roy, stop trembling. All this? It’s theatrics to scare humans. Father put me in charge of Hell, he told me to take care of the worst of the worst humans. There are different levels of Hell, but what you saw is what we call ‘Your own personal hell.’ As soon as you’re born, you get a door, and that door has nothing behind it till you begin to develop fears, but dear old dad said that each human under your 10 human years is free from Hell.”

“What about the kids that do end up murdering someone?”

“Oh them? That’s one of my demons that escaped Hell and decided to mess with one of you humans. Oh trust me, they get a serious beating down here by me.”

“If I remember right then, you’re still an Angel right?”

“Technically… I hate being called it…”

“Then you’re not allowed to kill, is that why you made demons?”

“Aha, aha aha, someone finally figured it out. After all these years. Someone figured it out. Yes. I’m allowed to scare you into a heart attack but I cannot kill you, not by Angel law anyway.”

“I’ve always wondered, are you allowed in Heaven, ever?”

“Well, dad said I can come back when he decides to hit the kill switch on the universe which should be soon.”

“How soon?”

“Oh don’t worry about it, to you, “soon” doesn’t mean anything, something like another two hundred thousand years. If you humans don’t kill yourselves first. I don’t have the power of time on my side, I can completely stop it but I can’t control it like my brother.”

“I want to go home. But part of me wants to remember you and know you exist”

“Oh you will, but no one will ever believe you. That’s the sad thing. You’re not the first to come down here alive and leave, they all do the same thing, try to tell people I’m real, tell people they realize that Heaven and Hell are a thing, no one believes them in this day and age. Not like before your 1800s. People believed almost every nut case.

My brothers would go out and help humans, but they did it too much, and everyone told everyone. Then finally psychology came around and people were put in insane asylums. You know who suggested lobotomies? Me. I just wanted to see if they’d do it.”

“How do I get back?”

“The same way, up. But this time, take the stairs. Oh and here, you can have one of these. You’re honestly the first to come down here and not try to kill me.”

“I understand your purpose. For the world to exist with such evil in it already, Satan has to exist. The evil need to go someplace.”

“You understand Hell better than most people do.”

I was handed a gold tarot card, ironically the devil card.

“You’re welcome to Hell as a human, but you won't have to go through that cave again.”

“1 last thing…”

“Oh yes, tell your sheriff about the dead girl in the cave, not my doing. His name is Walter.”

I take the stairs. I get up to the ledge, see the girl Sarah again, the half-dead man, then another set of stairs, and walk out of the cave. How I didn’t die I will never know. It was daylight? Why? I walk to the road. It’s only been 30 minutes in there.

My radio starts to work again. “Roy? ROY? Are you alive?”

“Dustin? Is that you?”

“Oh my god, he’s alive!” I hear on the other side, “Where have you been? Stay There!”

Something feels off again, as soon as Dustin arrives, I give him a look of terror and horror, Ashley, my girlfriend, was standing right there as well. I look at them, look down at the ground, and immediately puke. I pass out on the ground. I’m taken to the hospital. I wake up in a bed there. Nothing is wrong with me though. Ashley got into the bed with me.

“Where… Why am I at the hospital?”

“You were gone for 2 days and puked as soon as you came out of that cave. Do you not remember?”

“That’s just it, I remember everything so vividly.” I began to tell my friends everything I saw down there, I came to the part about Ashley, and she gave me this look of sadness. I grabbed a bucket they had next to me and puked. “I can’t... Not again.” I receive a kiss on the forehead from my girlfriend.

“It’s ok sweetie… We are here now.” For a split second her voice sounded like the demon from hell. I looked her in the eyes, nothing was there. Complete darkness. Ashley and Dustin froze in place. The room fell silent. Appearing as if he were there the entire time, Satan again.

“Hello, Roy. I’ve taken an interest in you. So I’m going to grant you something, a gift,” Reaching out to me, his hand to shake.

I leered at him, “How do I know I can trust you? This isn’t my Ashley.”

“I don’t lie, Roy, I literally cannot lie. Once you shake my hand, you can spot all my demons on Earth, and if you don’t mind, kill them and send them back to hell. But do yourself a favor, the last person I did this with started a cult and shit. Don’t do that. Don’t tell anyone you know that will throw you into the psych ward.”

I shook his hand. A ring of light went around my hand. I then saw the demon Ashley next to me. She pulled herself from my Ashley and stood quietly next to Lucifer.

“Alright, Lucy. Deal.” I told him, he gave me a smirk.

“I’ll give you that one.”