Into the Green Abyss

Elena Varga first heard about the hole from an old man in a smoky tavern at the edge of the Black Pine Forest.

The village of Steinbruck lay tucked in a valley in central Europe, ringed by jagged mountains and dense, damp woods that smelled of moss and rain. The tavern’s windows were fogged from the heat of the fireplace, and outside, the evening mist was already drifting in like pale ghosts.

“Young lady,” the old man said, leaning closer, his voice a rasp, “if you have any love for daylight, you’ll stay away from the Grünschlund.”

“The what?” Elena asked, setting down her mug. “The Green… throat?”

He nodded, yellow eyes sharp under bushy brows. “That is what we call it. A hole in the middle of the forest. No bottom. No echoes. The ground just… opens. Swallows things. Swallows people.”

Elena felt that familiar, dangerous flutter in her chest. Curiosity. She had chased it through deserts and glaciers, into caves and over mountains. It had brought her scars and maps and stories, and it had never once let her rest.

“Is that so?” she asked. “How far?”

“Two days’ walk into the forest. You follow the old logging road until it disappears, then the river until it drops away. The earth is cracked there, as if God himself tore it open.” He grabbed her sleeve with surprising strength. “You hear me, adventurer? Don’t go.”

Her friend Lukas, sitting beside her, gave a soft, skeptical laugh. “Old stories,” he murmured in German. “Every village has them.”

The old man heard him anyway. “Then tell me,” he snapped, “why the birds do not fly over it. Why the hunters who go too far do not return.” He released Elena’s sleeve and sat back. “Some holes are not meant to be explored.”

Later, in the room they rented above the tavern, Elena spread her notebook on the table. Maps, half-finished sketches, and pressed leaves fell out as she opened it. Lukas watched her with folded arms.

“You’re serious,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, already drawing a rough outline of the valley, the forest, the rumored hole. “Think about it, Luka. A vertical cavern in the middle of a European forest, with no echo? That means something is absorbing the sound. Vegetation. Geometry. Waterfalls. Or something else entirely.”

“Or it’s just a story to keep children from wandering off.” Lukas crossed to the window and looked down at the misty street. “The man in the tavern was drunk.”

“So are half the people who bring us clues,” Elena said. “And they’ve led us to glaciers with ice caves and churches hidden under the earth. You promised you’d follow the next clue, remember?”

He didn’t answer immediately. The lamplight softened the angles of his face, highlighting the scar along his jaw he had gotten in a cave in Slovenia. “I promised,” he said finally. “But if we go, we go prepared. No heroics. No leaps of faith across bottomless chasms.”

“Of course not,” Elena said, already thinking about ropes, pitons, headlamps, and oxygen meters. “We’ll assemble a small team.”

The next morning, the mist clung low over Steinbruck as she pinned a notice on the tavern’s board:

Experienced climbers and explorers sought for vertical descent expedition. Good pay, high risk. Ask for Elena Varga.

By noon, three people had come.

First was Matthias, a stout man from the village, with shoulders like boulders and hands scarred from years of lumber work.

“I know the forest,” he said simply. “Better than anyone alive. And if you are going into it, you will need someone who can read it.”

Second was Anya, a quiet woman from Prague with rope burns on her palms and a climber’s lean muscles.

“I don’t believe in cursed holes,” she said. “But I do believe in gravity. If you have the right gear, I will go with you.”

The last was Father Gabriel, the village priest, who surprised Elena by appearing at their table in the tavern that evening.

“I hear you are going to the Grünschlund,” he said. His hair was grey at the temples, and his eyes were tired, but steady. “I cannot stop you. But I will come.”

Lukas frowned. “With respect, Father, this is not a pilgrimage.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “But there are things in that forest older than the church in this valley. If you wake them, I’d rather be there.” He gave Elena a small, grim smile. “Besides, someone must say prayers, in case you discover the bottom truly is where the dead fall.”

Elena hesitated only a heartbeat. Something inside her tightened, then settled. “All right,” she said. “We leave at dawn.”

As she lay awake that night listening to the rain patter on the roof and the distant hoot of an owl, the old man’s words returned: Some holes are not meant to be explored.

She turned over, staring into the dark.

Which meant, of course, that she was absolutely going.