Just Another Rainy Day

It was about 5:58 in the morning. We were far in the deep forest where we had been constructing a one roomed store house. My uncle and I had just finished roofing the house with iron sheets when suddenly rain drops begun to fall from the dark clouds above us. I thought to myself of how lucky we were to have finished roofing just before the rain begun. This part of the forest was so silent of any human civilization, to some extent we thought we were the first humans to have reached that part of the forest. The uninterrupted sounds of the wild beasts from time to time, the birds, the insects and the free blowing wind seemed to confirm that human traces had not been there, it was serene.

We hid inside for shelter. As each single rain drop kept growing to more numerous drops we begun to notice the rain leaking on the roof from the nail holes made when we attached the iron sheets to the wood frames. The leaking rain drops were still sneaking in gradually when we noticed that despite the leakage the floor still remained dry, what was happening? We were astonished by what we were witnessing, we had not seen such a thing before. Different questions were surely running in our minds. Was it magical? Were we being haunted? Were we perhaps in a dream? But it was all real. Around 7:40 that morning, I asked my uncle what he thought was going on but he too just like me couldn’t figure out what was happening, but what we both knew was that the situation was agitating to even ignore it. We kept observing.  

As it clocked 8:20 am it was still raining heavily outside and wasn’t showing any sign that it would stop sooner. It wasn’t long when I noticed that the drops had been evaporating as soon as they hit the floor. The floor was heating up but we just hadn’t noticed since we both were still in our field boots which concealed the heat from us as insulators. When I told my uncle what was keeping the floor dry he attempted to touch the floor with his bare hand but quickly took it off the floor in a reflex to the scorching heat that had burned his hand. We were both surprised with the heat but this discovery still didn’t crack the mystery for us at all, if anything it had only amplified the mystery. Now the common questions we both had were on what could have been causing the heat, what was underneath us? Were we underneath a volcano of some sort? Or were we above some ancient forbidden spot? It was really troubling to even think of the things we were thinking, there was really nothing to tell except the time which by then was about 9:30 am. We kept wrestling with those thoughts in silence.

As the time came to 9:48 am I took a leap and told my uncle that we needed to find out the source of the heat underneath us, I suggested to him that we could dig up part of the floor to search and find the source. What a good thing it was that we had our building tools with us inside this store house, we went on to dig up the floor gradually as we watched every strike with caution. As we got deeper and deeper the heat temperature also increased more and more, it was uncertain what we were going to find as the source of the heat. None of us really knew but we kept digging, we had to, it was the only way of really knowing. We dug till we came across what seemed to be boiling mud. We stopped digging for a while as we were now puzzled by what it was, we had not come across such a thing in all our previous explorations. Yes we were explorers by profession but from the way it looked this exploration was either going to be our best or worst exploration so far. We laid down our digging tools as if in surrender as we watched the boiling mud defy us.

In all our explorations we would always stay away from disturbing the natural laws of each place, we never wanted to interfere with the affairs of nature. But this boiling mud was different, it didn’t seem to be natural. On one hand it was telling us to stay away from it through the anxiety it gave us but on the other hand it seemed to be inviting us to find out more about it through the curiosity it gave us. We were in a fix, not sure whether to drop this ‘mystery of the boiling mud case’ or to continue with it to a verdict. We pondered on it over and over. I remember the time on my watch was 10:25 am when I heard my uncle speaking again, he was telling me that if we were to be discovering something we were only going to be discovering something that had already been discovered before but only buried underneath us. I agreed with him there a hundred percent, I thought to myself that since we were not living in the Stone Age anymore for sure that meant somehow there had to be an explanation for this boiling mud and we would only be confirming an existing discovery if we went on to inquire on this mysterious boiling mud. It was good to know that we were on the same page concerning our next step.

By 10:45 am we had gathered courage again to proceed with the digging. We now dug with a little less caution, we were ready for anything. We however had still left the door open in readiness for our escape in case anything unpleasant was to emerge out of this boiling mud. Just before we knew it something suddenly sprung out of the boiling mud, it was like the sound of an exploding water pipe but only that it was hot mud spurting out. We quickly took cover under some wood blocks which we had with us in the store house. It was now raining mud from beneath us inside the house as it also continued to rain heavily outside the house. We felt trapped, like a hunter cornered by his own prey, it was a hilarious feeling. My uncle suddenly begun to laugh and I unknowingly joined in. At last for once we laughed about it, we were laughing at ourselves for being afraid of a natural spring, but maybe we didn’t even know the difference between a spring and what was before us. But for a moment we were relieved, we weren’t in any danger as we had earlier perceived. I looked at my watch, it was now just clocking 11:30 AM, I smiled as it was almost noon time, this was going to be our lunch break I thought to myself as I whipped the mud drops off my face.

The mud kept spurting out for a while then it suddenly changed, it was now mud mixed with small rocks. We laughed at it again, it appeared the mud rain had hailstones now. Little did we know of what was about to befall us. Our lives would never be the same after this rainy day. Our explorations were not going to compare to this day. The small rocks that we thought were mere rocks were something else. They were rocks that we had seen flying in the spurting mud but we had not yet seen them clean of the mud. These small rocks were crystals and pearls, jewelry of sorted kinds. Old treasure hidden underneath the ground by ancient people that once stepped on that part of the forest in which we were now on. We didn’t notice the crystals until one of the stones landed on my uncle’s hair. He pulled it out of his hair and looked at with interest and the expression on his face was like that of a man who had just won a lotto. From the look on his face I knew it had to be something good, I knew there had to be something good about that small stone.

He shouted in joy of what he had just held in his hand. He shouting that the rock was a crystal, a diamond crystal. I joined in and we both rejoiced over what we were now seeing, all the stones we thought were just mere stones were actually valuables. We had just stumbled upon some treasure. It was a couple of minutes to noon but we didn’t even think of going on a lunch break, this treasure we had found was satisfying enough. The sentiment we now both had was to dig up even more so that we reach the core from where this treasure was coming from. What a twist it was for us, we were re-energized to finish the job we had started of digging and we were determined to do so before the day came to an end. It kept raining outside and by 1 pm we were digging again wholeheartedly as if that was the only day we had to bring the best out of it. We dug for a continuous two hours before we finally hit something that felt like a metal of some sort. Yes it was a metal box indeed, a treasure box that appeared to be about three quarters the size of the room we were in. It was a peculiar metal box about 4 by 6 meters in size, hot and filled with water perhaps the mud. It explained where the spurting mud was coming from and why it was spurting. The heated mud had created pressure inside the metal box and caused it to erupt as an explosion of mud which carried the valuable rocks along.  We still however didn’t know the source of the heat. We still wondered what might have caused the heat. It was now 3:30 pm on the clock. But to us the day was still young, we kept digging around the treasure box for there was still much to find out about that mysterious treasure box laying underneath our store house. To some degree we were also relieved that we were now very close to making out what had caused the heat.

If the treasure box was bigger than we thought it was it meant that we were going to have to demolish the house altogether in order to get it out of the ground, we were in a fix again and the time clocking 4:00 pm was not fixing the dilemma at all, we were now racing against time. If the house had to be demolished it was not going to be safe for us to be outdoors in the forest when night came, we were surely going to need that store house for the night. But at the same time we needed to get that treasure out before dark in concern of who might have found us there now that we were aware that people had been there before by evidence of the treasure box buried underground. Time was ticking, the rain was pouring and we were digging.

At 5:00 pm we had dug out a bit more than half of the room when we realized that there wasn’t any mud spurting out anymore, however the metal box was emitting smoke which was passing through the holes that had been made on the box as the crystals shot out of it with the mud under pressure. The smoke seemed to have been in its final stages but certainly had been caused by a fire underneath the box. What could have ignited the fire? We were still kept in suspense regarding the fire starter. We were now anxious to know the cause of this fire. It was still a mysterious fire.

We had dug all around the treasure box without the need to demolish the house, what a victory it was. Now the sound of the rain falling on the iron sheets was like that of victory chants to our ears. With a clear view the box looked as though it had been buried centuries ago. It was rusty but still intact in a strange way except for the recent holes. We checked around it carefully and found a key hole. But what was surprising was that the key hole had its key on it. My uncle turned the key around to open it when suddenly my wrist watch beeped, the time had just clocked 6:00 pm. It suddenly stopped raining as if to confirm that the key had been turned at the right time. It was as if the rain had lured us to find this lost treasure. It had drawn us a map with the rain drops leaking from the roof. It had served as a campus in giving us direction on where to look when the leaking rain drops evaporated as they hit the floor. It had spurted out of the dirt in the form of boiling mud. Right from the start of the day the rain had taken an exploration to make way for this treasure to be found, keeping us indoors at all costs. It had rained from both above and rained beneath us. It had kept us indoors to find this treasure box. The fire was never the mystery as it seems even if we never found its cause. The rain was the mystery. It certainly wasn’t just another rainy day.