It was old, older than God, older than the hundred foot pines that towered above.

It looked like a submarine hatch, sitting on a low concrete rise, planted firmly in the

forest floor.

There were a tight bed of pine needles over a rusted wheel handle and bolts the size of

apples.

It took both of us to get the handle to turn.

Metal grown in protest, screened as it shaved away the layer of rust that had welded its

shut.

Together, we pulled the lid open, it was heavy, heavier than a house, then it split

back in its hinge with a sigh of stale air.

Darkness seemed to spill out of the hatch way, like it had been bottled up for eons, I was

now ready to infect the world.

It looked as though a great metal mouth had opened up on the forest floor, a predator's

mouth, starving and ready to feed.

We peered down, a surface elevator of ribeye-like rungs descended the dark concrete ball into

the greater known, hazy, overcast sunlight for the darkness and lost, penetrating the

meager five feet before shadow claimed the hole for its own.

Sammy found a rock that looked like a cat's head, negotiated it over the hatch and dropped

it down.

It whistled off into the darkness.

We waited, two teenagers in the woods of Washington, listening for the sound that never came.

That rock hitting the bottom.

...