Sinkholes, Caves and the Devil’s Millhopper
A trip to hell and back
Into Darkness
After he made it through what he thought as “the squeeze” the red misty glow had disappeared, he was in total blackness, as they say, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Fortunately, being the country boy that he was, he had a box of matches in his pocket which he pulled out, took out a match, lit it, and held it up to see where he was. It was small space but there appeared to be to be a way out the other side, but he had no way of knowing how far, or where it led with the light of the match only penetrated the darkness six or eight feet. As the match was about to burn his fingers he dropped it, with it going out as it fell into the sand at his feet, leaving him in pure darkness.
He knew he had only had a dozen or so matches so he carefully put the box back in his pocket as deep as it would go for he for sure didn’t want to lose it. He would have to proceed as best he could without light, which wasn’t all that hard since there was only two ways to go and he sure wasn’t going back though the squeeze. He heard the howl again, a bit louder, he had to get moving so off he went, groping his way in the dark.
He procced though the cave which soon opened up allowing him to walk, sometimes stooping or standing up but only for short distances before he was again back on his hands and knees when he came to a larger opening that he could stand up in. He reached out and could not touch the far wall in front of him, so he turned to the right, with his hand on the wall he slowly made his way around the edge of the room when he came to what seemed to be another opening, but was it the correct way, was there more than one opening he thought. Deciding to use one of his matches, he reached into his pocket, pulled out the match box, took out a match, and staring at the match as he lit it. The matched flared up, after being so long in the dark the brightness of it blinding him so that he could not see anything at all, exactly the opposite of what he had intended and needed. He looked away from the burning match, and his eyes adjust so he could examine the room around him seeing what appeared to be four openings like two roads crossing. He swore as the match burned his fingers before dropping it and with it going out, the darkness returned. With the howling still in the distance he turned down the first opening on his right and continued. He had gone what he thought was fifty feet, but it could have been much longer or shorter as he had a hard time judging distance in the dark, when the tunnel came to a dead end. He groped around in the dark, running his hands along the walls and it seemed like a dead end but the only way to be sure was light another match, but he was pretty sure it was a dead end and didn’t want to waste a match, so he returned back down the tunnel to the room. Now he was a relatively intelligent man and knew he had entered the tunnel to his right so when he got to the room he continued to his right to the next opening and proceeded down it.