Hello, gentle listener, and welcome to Nocturnal Transmissions, the fortnightly podcast that brings you dark tales, both old and new, performed by your humble narrator, Christenolland.

This episode we are delighted to be sharing some subterranean nightmare fuel, courtesy of Ellis Hastings.

Ready to descend, gentle listener?

Good. Nocturnal transmissions is proud to present the knocking on the walls blurred together that the realization he had made a wrong turn at the fork miles back dawned on Christian Larson.

For the last three hours, Christian had plunged into the belly of Utah's most challenging cavern system,

the infinite caverns, navigating through a maze of a million turns with just his

headlight for illumination, and squeezing himself through a dozen confined spaces. His moss and sweat-stained

V-neck clung tightly to his chest, rising and falling in rhythm with his breaths.

A massive passageway had stood before Christian, ushering him into the darkest recess of the cave,

beyond the range of his headlight. As he'd stepped forward to enter oblivion.

The opening diverged in two.

One of the pathways would come out of the source of the Virgin River, the other.

Christian didn't want to think about what the other would lead to. He had thought about backtracking to the entrance, but remembered he had foolishly, in hindsight,

disconnected the rope from its anchor after repelling into the cavern, to save himself from having to walk back to the start after reaching the exit.

Christian tried to remember if after reaching the exit.

Christian tried to remember if anyone in the cave divers of Zion Facebook group had mentioned a fork this deep into the cavern.

He withdrew the journal from his pack and read through the notes he had taken from the

so-called experts in the group.

As expected, there was nothing about the alternate paths before him.

Shit!

Christian said, his voice had bounced through the chamber

before coming back to him from a hundred directions at once.

...