Caverns

I should have chosen the dark door.

Around me, ghostly, multicolored wisps of mist swirled around me, giving the cavern I was in an unfocused, ethereal look. There was soft, faint light coming from every direction, yet there was no visible source; there was no sunlight, no stars. Ghosts swirled around me - everyone I had known in my life, my family, my friends, even my parrot who had died a few days before, all drifting endlessly in this massive, dimly lit cavern.

It was the vision of the afterlife I’d had since I was a kid.

Of course, it wasn’t the afterlife that the others were experiencing. Dad was probably on an island somewhere off the coast of Jamaica. My mother and older sister, being Christians, were most likely in heaven. My parrot should be in the Amazon Rainforest, chilling out with his other avian buddies - all different incarnations of what the afterlife looked like to different people. They all had an anchor, a wish, a desire, a purpose in the world before they had died, and so they saw different views of the afterlife, a world that adjusted to their wishes and needs.

I suppose what I was seeing was what the afterlife really looked like.

‘Hey, bud, why the sad face?’ My friend Dave sidled over to me, grinning at the look on my face. I almost smiled back, then caught myself as I remembered that Dave wasn’t even dead.

‘It’s already too late to go back. Why are you even pretending to be my friends? My family?’ I frowned at the incarnation of Dave that the Creator, the God, whatever you call the ubiquitous entity that was in charge of the afterlife.

The thing that was Dave frowned back. ‘I’m only keeping up the charade because we thought it would make you feel better. If you wish, I could withdraw for the time being…’

‘Yeah, disappear,’ I said, and the images of my family dissipated into white smoke.

In the short period of time that I had arrived into the cavern, the entity had been my close, constant and rather annoying companion, whether I liked it or not. According to him, this cavern was where souls came when they didn’t have an anchor to prevent them from drifting away in the void. Assuming, of course, that they didn’t choose the dark door.

I’m the only one since the creation of humanity who didn’t.

I gazed into the distance, trying to peer through the blankets of mist, but I couldn’t see a thing through all the mist. The only thing I could make out was where the ceiling met the side of the cavern, so faint that it might not even have been there.

I reached down and scooped up a pile of sand, letting it run through my fingers. Why was there sand here? There were no waves, no winds, nothing to shape them into the smooth grains that lay in piles across the cavern. 

I had no idea why I could walk, touch things and interact with them, but the ghosts of my family couldn’t. There was simply no reason for them to be unable to walk, since they were illusions conjured by the entity… right?

What was outside the cavern? Why was there all this mist? What exactly was ‘the void’? So many mysteries in this cavern, and not a single entity competent enough to answer them.

Guess I’ll just have to find out myself.

I started to walk.

‘Don’t, Thomas.’

I stopped, thought about it for a moment, then spun around to face the entity. ‘And why shouldn’t I?’

Dave stared at me with his arms crossed, a determined expression on his face. ‘There are things that aren’t meant to be discovered, bud. If I could show you-’ He faltered as I looked him in the eye fiercely enough to make the entity step back. 

‘I chose the wrong door, didn’t I? I’m gonna be stuck here forever because of the wrong decision! A decision that I didn’t even want to make! The least you could do-’ I choked back a sob, thinking of my family. ‘The least you could do is let me explore my prison…’

I turned away, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand, and this time he didn’t try to stop me.

-----

Poor Thomas.

I looked at his silhouette in the mist, a shadow in the multicolored light. The car accident he died in was already too much for a regular soul to bear. Was it fair to let him suffer like this?

‘Death isn’t fair, my apprentice.’ My master’s words echoed in my thoughts, when I had asked him about our job. ‘The chosen ones can only succeed through pain, regret and suffering. It is not our job to interfere with the beings who may someday become far greater than us…’

My master… I dissolved into white mist, keeping track of Thomas’ progress through the caverns. It had been so long since my master had faded away, like countless others before him. Every one of them had tried to guide someone through the caverns without losing their sanity and drifting endlessly into the void. And every one of them had failed.

Every person chosen had the same natural talents. Resourcefulness, courage and an unquenchable desire for knowledge and truth. They all were given the same visions of this place - the very same caverns, the mist, and an obsession with the visions. Most of the chosen ones went mad before they even died. Some killed themselves. Others were locked away in mental asylums, spending their life muttering about the visions and what they could possibly mean. The ones that lasted long enough then had to be killed in horrible accidents. Accidents that we had to arrange.

I remembered the person my master was responsible for guiding through the caverns, when he was still training me. A young female, from a planet long before Earth was formed. She was resilient, and very brave. She accepted her reality sooner than all the other ones, and she lasted until the last trial, where no one had ever gone before. My master was convinced that she would be the one to complete the trials and finally break us free of this curse.

But ultimately she failed, just like all the others. She became one of many shadows, drifting in the void, the results of our failures.

I looked back at Thomas, already feeling his grief begin to ebb away. The boy had already shown curiosity to the mysteries that lie within the caverns - all that remains would be for him to discover them. Somehow, I knew that he was going to succeed. He was going to discover that not choosing the door into the void was, in fact, the right path. 

I smiled, then prepared for his journey into the next stage.