The mouth of the cave looked dark and intimidating, and even when Yoongi the light mounted to his helmet, its beam was unable to penetrate more than a few meters into the void. It was early in the misty morning, and the young man and his friends all certainly had a full day of exploration ahead of them. Namjoon had said that he researched everything, and the cave they were about to go spelunking in was probably one of the largest in the surrounding area.

“More than enough passages to get lost in; right, Yoongi?” joked Namjoon as he slapped the older man on the back.

Yoongi flicked off his inadequate light as he picked up his backpack and turned to face his friend. He was eager to see what secrets the cave held, but he wasn’t quite as excited as Namjoon by the prospect that they could, without a doubt, actually lose their way in the twisting passages and tunnels. Hoseok wasn’t too keen on the idea either, it seemed, and he made his displeasure more vocal than Yoongi as he joined his companions at the mouth of the cave.

“That’s not funny, Namjoon,” Hoseok sighed deeply in complaint. “Going caving is serious business, and getting lost is no laughing matter.”

“I know that, Mr. Fun- Serious Pants,” huffed the younger man indignantly. “I was just kidding; jeez. How many times have we done this now? Two dozen? At least?”

“Yes, we’ve been in a lot of caves, but this is an entirely new one,” argued Hoseok. “We don’t know anything about it yet, and we really could end up getting lost.”

“You two argue too much,” interjected Yoongi. He took a few steps into the cave, almost having to duck to avoid the opening ledge. “We’re gonna be perfectly fine, Hobi; we won’t go in far enough to really get lost. This is just a trip to check things out, remember?”

Namjoon followed after him, and the younger man really did have to bend over to keep from banging into the lip of the cave. The ceiling of the actual cavern was a bit higher, so he was able to straighten out as he caught up to Yoongi, who had already started to wander deeper. The two men were just about to begin their descent when Hoseok’s voice rang out from the entrance as he, too, slouched inside the cave.

“Wait! Before we go,” insisted a stumbling Hoseok, “let’s go over the supply list one more time.”

“Fine,” sighed Yoongi, impatient to get on with things.

Hoseok rambled off the list from memory while Yoongi confirmed that they had everything on it.

“Headlamps?”

“Check.”

Yoongi switched on his circular light as the three young men walked down the gently sloping rock, and Namjoon and Hoseok both followed suit.

“Flashlights?”

“Check.”

Yoongi quickly pressed the clip-on light attached to the strap of his backpack before turning it off again immediately, saving the batteries in case he needed it later.

“Lantern?”

“I think Na-”

“Check!”

Namjoon excitedly held up the little electric lantern before lowering his hand to swing by his side. Yoongi abandoned trying to finish his sentence, and instead looked up at the dripping stalactites, their stony tendrils reaching downwards as he walked farther into the cave.

“Okay; I think we have enough light sources to burn off our goddamn corneas,” laughed Hoseok. “Food and water?”

“Check and check.”

Yoongi resumed his droning response as he focused on the tan walls, glossing over the smooth, wet rock formations that crawled up and down the sides.

“And… excavation tools.”

“Yep; we should be all set, Hobi.”

The group had made it half of the way way to a steep drop-off that had just started to become visible in the limited glow of their headlamps. Hoseok stepped out in front of the other two men before stopping abruptly while facing them. A smile spread across his face as his friends lifted their hands to shield their eyes from his headlamp, and Hoseok exclaimed:

“Time to go spelunking!”

❧

Namjoon was the first to reach the bottom of the ravine, and Hoseok jumped down the last few perilous steps not long after. Yoongi was still scaling the sheer wall - which he could see led to a large, circular room lined by rows of stalagmites - when Namjoon called tauntingly up.

“Come on, lazy bones; we’re waiting on you!”

“I’m goin’ as fast as I can,” yelled back Yoongi, nearly losing his footing on a precarious, shallow ledge.

The wall leading down to the main area of the cave wasn’t particularly tall, but it still took the three men the better part of ten minutes to make it all the way down safely. This was due mainly to their lack of climbing equipment, which made the trip surprisingly tedious, and somewhat more dangerous than the three men had expected.

Yoongi didn’t feel the need to rush himself, as although he liked to complain alongside Namjoon about Hoseok’s almost comical level of over-preparedness, truthfully he was more than a bit worried about exploring this particular cave. Maybe it had something to do with how the cavern had swallowed up his beam of light when he stood in front of it, trying to size up the claustrophobia-inducing entrance. Or maybe it was because of the general windy chill in the atmosphere. But for whatever the reason, Yoongi was simply unable to shake his asive feeling of unease as he reached the spacious opening below.

As they got deeper and deeper into the cave, however, the bad vibes gradually but noticeably subsided as they passed through rooms with multiple towering columns of rock. Each new area of the cave was filled with beauty, and soon Yoongi couldn’t help but admire the pristine stalactites and aquamarine pools. Hoseok hypothesized that the tint in the liquid was due to some sort of natural mineral runoff - and even he started to loosen up and have fun after a while spent admiring the tranquil water. That made Yoongi feel better about the whole situation, and by the time he stopped to check his watch and discovered that they had been walking around for a almost full two hours, the feelings of dread and premonition had virtually passed completely.

The three men squeezed through a particularly cramped tunnel that made it necessary for them to crawl on their stomachs to reach the large adjacent room. The fit was tight, but they all managed to wiggle through before deciding to take a short break.

❧

“Hey, guys. Check this out,” yelled Namjoon from a corner of the spacious area that they were resting in.

The cave’s layout had turned out to be more or less a straight line up until this point, but the cavern they were currently in split off in several different directions that branched away from the uncomfortably cramped path they had followed in. Namjoon was standing antsily at one of the several entrances into a deeper part of the cave. Yoongi pushed himself off of the rock he was leaning against, and Hoseok followed him over to where the youngest man was positioned, waving excitedly for them to hurry up and see what he’d found.

“This tunnel here looks really cool,” explained Namjoon as he turned into the opening. Yoongi and Hoseok filed through behind him. “I haven’t been down it yet, but I thought I heard wind or something earlier coming from somewhere up ahead. I figured it might be interesting to go and check it out.”

“Okay, but then we should think about leaving the cave,” suggested Hoseok. “It was easy enough to get here, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find our way out. It’s better to get out of here before we go getting lost in all these little divergent tunnels.”

Yoongi ran his fingers along the cool, bumpy curtains of limestone that lined the narrow passage. The trip down was quick, and it only took them about a minute to make it to the end of the tunnel. The area it opened up into was less of a room and more of an abrupt dent in the otherwise faultless rock. On the flat wall in front of them, however, was a narrow crack that just about matched the length of Yoongi’s head from top to bottom. He thought he could probably stick his face through the widest part to get a better look at what was on the other side, but the eldest man’s first attempt at doing so quickly revealed that the hole shrunk inward at an angle that made it impossible to position his headlamp so that it actually illuminated what he was looking at.

“Huh. Well, this was kind of disappointingly lame,” commented Namjoon.

“I dunno,” contended Yoongi. “I think the hole is kind of cool.”

He kept peering into the impenetrable darkness as Hoseok started to inch back out of the tunnel, which was just barely tall enough for all three of them to stand up in.

“I’m sure there will be much more interesting stuff to find the next time we come,” he offered. “But now we should get going before we forget how to find our way out of here.”

“Come on, Hoseok,” argued Namjoon. “We know we have to take the shortest tunnel out of here; I doubt any of us are gonna forget that we needed to crawl through on our stomachs. Why are you so eager to get out of this cave, anyway?”

“No reason.” Hoseok dismissed the younger man with a halfhearted shrug. “I just think it seems smart to quit while we’re ahead, you know?”

Yoongi listened to the two men discuss what the lot of them should do next while he continued gazing into the black hole, hoping to see something of interest on the other side. He unclipped his small, handheld flashlight, and tried to angle it into the hole - but all that accomplished was to illuminate the sides of the uncooperative crack, which caved inward as they stretched away from the passage Yoongi found himself in. The wall appeared to be fairly thick, and the young man wondered if there even was another open room on the other side of the one he was crouching in.

❧

“All I’m saying is that it’s better to come back another day when we have more equipment and can map things out so we don’t get lost,” maintained Hoseok, raising his voice slightly. “The rest of this cave could be huge, and- Oh my God! Yoongi, what the hell are you doing?!”

Yoongi froze. His arm was in the hole, buried up to a point slightly past his elbow. The crack may not have been large enough to shove his head into, but it was more than able to accommodate one of Yoongi’s limbs. He pulled his arm out as he turned to face Hoseok, who was wide-eyed and open-mouthed as he stared at the older man in disbelief.

“Yoongi, that’s so dangerous!” cried Hoseok.

“No it’s not,” muttered Namjoon. “It’s just a hole in the wall, dude.”

The youngest man knelt down to bring the opening to eye level, and squinted as he tried to position his headlamp in such a way that it would illuminate the other side. Like Yoongi, Namjoon was unable to see more than a few inches into the thick rock, so he quickly gave up and reached in.

“Namjoon! What are you doing?!” yelled Hoseok

Namjoon ignored the other man’s shouting as he probed around in the hole, unable to reach quite as far in as Yoongi had been able to.

“I don’t feel anything,” Namjoon informed the eldest man, who nodded dejectedly in agreement. “It just feels like a crack in the stone.”

“Good. Now let’s get out of here before it opens up into a portal to Hell or something,” mumbled Hoseok, who was already heading back up the slope.

“Always so dramatic, Hobi,” teased Namjoon as he took his forearm out of the hole. “Okay. It looks like there’s nothing here, so let’s get going and come back tomorrow.”

As the three men turned to leave, a sharp crack echoed throughout the tunnel. It sounded almost like a piece of rock breaking off from the wall somewhere ahead of them, and Hoseok increased his already-brisk pace so he could go investigate.

“Damn it!”

Hoseok punched the wall in front of him as Yoongi rounded the gentle corner to see a large boulder blocking their exit.

“!”

“Wait; what’s going on here?” asked Namjoon, moving to stand close to the older man.

“We’re trapped!” exclaimed Hoseok, breathing heavily from his swearing.

Yoongi shuffled his feet awkwardly as Hoseok started to pace back and forth, although the latter was unable to travel very far in the cramped chamber. The younger man pulled at his hair nervously as he tried to come up with a plan. The lone door appeared to be totally blocked; the large rock in front of it must have fallen from a platform higher up in the main area of the cave. The room with several branching paths was now completely closed-off, and the three men were confined to the short tunnel that ended with the crack in the wall. Hoseok continued to fret as Namjoon headed back in the direction they had just come from, toward the hole and the dead end.

“What are you doing?” asked Yoongi as he followed.

“I hear that weird whistling again…”

Namjoon didn’t seem as worried about their current situation as Hoseok evidently was, but Yoongi thought that perhaps his friend was just doing a better job at pushing their troubles out of his mind. Yoongi himself was so frightened that he felt strangely numb. His premonition had been warranted, and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself now. He chose to keep on following Namjoon, thinking that maybe examining the hole again would at least serve to take his mind off of the fact that he was almost certain they would all be sealed in the cave forever.

❧

“Maybe there’s a way out through this hole,” muttered Namjoon as he once again crouched in front of the slender opening.

Now that he was closer, Yoongi, too, realized that there was definitely a sound coming from within the hole. It was a soft and faint whooshing noise, and it reminded him of the sound a dog whistle made when one blew through it too forcefully. The fact that it was there, even if just barely, meant that the crack had to lead somewhere, as solid rock was incapable of producing such a noise.

“Try to feel around again,” Namjoon suggested hopefully. “Maybe we can use the excavation gear to dig our way out of here.”

Yoongi looked into the black slit, hesitant to stick his arm back into the abyss. He hadn’t felt anything out of the ordinary when he’d put his hand in the first time, but the feeling of dread was back and even stronger than before, and he wasn’t exactly eager to go knocking down walls after what had just happened at the entrance to this one.

Don’t be stupid. You’re just creeped out because you’re scared of getting trapped in here forever.

That did little to reassure Yoongi, but it did motivate him to try feeling for an adjacent room. He pushed whatever negative thoughts he could out of his worried mind, and plunged his arm into the hole up to his shoulder, surprised that the space felt oddly roomier this time. Yoongi wiggled his fingers around, and contacted nothing but open, warm air. It seemed like there really was a connecting chamber on the other side. He was about to inform Namjoon of this discovery when suddenly another monstrous boom sounded from the opposite end of the tunnel, followed by the sounds of crumbling rock.

“Hoseok?!”

Namjoon called out to their out-of-sight friend as Yoongi twisted his body to look in the direction of the exit. His arm was still in the hole, and he felt a pinching sensation at the tip of his elbow. The two boys heard yelling from the other end of the winding tunnel, and before either of them could move towards it, Hoseok came stumbling down past the last turn of the narrow pathway, huffing and out of breath.

“Guys, quick! The opening! It’s clear now; the big rock fell away. We have to get out of here while we can,” explained Hoseok.

“Right,” agreed Namjoon, jumping up.

He marched up the slope to meet Hoseok before turning back to look at Yoongi, who was still kneeling uncomfortably next to the hole, his arm embedded in the jagged, cracked rock.

“Dude, you coming or what?” the youngest asked.

Yoongi’s eyes widened as he looked up at his companions, who stared back down at him impatiently. They didn’t know how the exit had suddenly become unblocked, but everyone was certain that they wanted to get out of the cave before anything else had a chance to happen.

Unfortunately for Yoongi, however, he was totally stuck. The rock wrapped around his arm tightly, and no matter what way he moved or strained, he wasn’t able to free his arm - although a minute ago he’d been able to slide it in easily.

“I-I… can’t,” the eldest man gasped weakly.

“What do you mean you can’t?” snapped Hoseok, his pupils filling with fear as they locked on to Yoongi’s arm.

“I’m stuck,” he whimpered. “I can’t get out.”

Namjoon stood frozen. Hoseok started to walk toward the trapped man, stopped, turned around, and then spun again, unable to decide where he wanted to go. He looked at Yoongi helplessly while the latter struggled to sit fully down on the ground with his arm still swallowed by the imposing wall.

❧

The rumbling sound came again, and Namjoon shot off in a hurry toward the exit, afraid that they had just been shut in again.

“!”

His voice reverberated off the walls of the small, offshooting room, and faded as his footsteps continued to echo off the rock.

“Yoongi, come on,” pleaded Hoseok. “Stop playing around.”

“You think this is a joke?” exploded Yoongi. “I’m ing stuck in here, Hoseok.”

The young man’s voice trembled as he yelled at his friend, and Hoseok looked away while Yoongi finished speaking. The other man choked on his words as he looked down at his friend, who was still propped up against the rock that was squeezing his arm.

“We have to get you out of here.”

Without waiting for any sort of verbal response, the younger man yanked on Yoongi’s free arm, grunting as he tried to pull him out of the oppressive rock. It was no use, though, and before long Namjoon’s pounding footsteps returned, moving even more hastily and scattered than before.

“The opening is half blocked right now, but if we hurry we can make it,” wheezed Namjoon, breathless. “The walls are… shifting. Or something. I dunno. They’re moving around, and we have to get out of-”

He looked down at Yoongi, who stared back up at Namjoon pitifully. The older man hunched his slight shoulders, resigning himself to his fate as he turned away from his friends.

“You guys have to go,” he whispered. “We don’t know if the rocks are gonna move around again.”

As he was speaking, Yoongi felt something soft brush against his fingertips. It was definitely not a piece of rock, and he had to keep his breath from hitching audibly in his chest, instead swallowing his terror so his friends would agree to leave him there.

“No!” sobbed Hoseok. “Yoongi, we can’t leave you here.”

“Just go, you guys. I’ll be fine…”

The wind had started to pick up again from behind the apparently hollow wall, and Yoongi could feel the breeze against the palm of his hand, which was still sticking out into the room on the other side. He winced as the rock cut into his arm, and he thought he heard stones moving from somewhere else within the massive cave.

“Did you hear that?” whispered Namjoon.

Something again touched the end of Yoongi’s thumb, and he stifled a squeal as he shut his eyes tightly. The wind was almost deafening in his ears, but Namjoon and Hoseok were still talking at a normal volume beside him, so although Yoongi couldn’t make out their argument through the pounding swells of air, he assumed that neither of them could hear it. As he pried open his eyes, the swirling subsided, and he caught the last few words of what Hoseok was saying through thinly-veiled tears.

“-can’t just leave him here, Namjoon!”

“We have to go, though,” choked the other man.

Yoongi was busy tugging frantically at his arm, but all he succeeded in doing was ripping up the buried flesh that remained securely in place within the wall of the cave. The sound of another rockslide bounced through the enclosed space, and Namjoon swore before sprinting away toward the mouth of the tunnel, taking the handheld lantern with him. It was by the single light of his weak headlamp that Yoongi watched as Hoseok, too, disappeared after backing up - still weeping silently - around the bend in the path.

❧

Yoongi listened as the footsteps of his friends got quieter before disappearing completely. It was deathly silent in the cave, and without Namjoon’s lantern or either man’s additional headlamp to light up the confined space in which he alone now sat, Yoongi reached for his clip-on flashlight to bring a little more atmosphere to the dim, unforgiving cavern. He grasped at the strap of his backpack, but the little light was nowhere to be found.

Dammit. Must’ve dropped it somewhere.

Yoongi glanced up at the winding tunnel his friends had disappeared into. Presumably, they had been able to make it away and back out into the main room that connected all the other, unexplored areas of the cave - and Yoongi was at least happy about that as he leaned uncomfortably back into the rock.

The wind was blowing faintly again, and Yoongi could feel the warm air that touched his trapped hand. His headlamp flickered. The batteries were probably running low by now, and Yoongi didn’t know if he wanted to bother switching them out with the fresh ones in his pack. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be able to see whatever was on the other side of the hole anymore.

He sat there contemplating whether or not to turn off his headlamp and stay in the darkness for a while as he listened to the wind pick up. Suddenly, the hair of the back of his neck stood up with an intense, tangible zap. Against the outstretched tips of his fingers that were getting crushed by the rough rock, Yoongi had felt a sharp, hot burst of air.

Exactly like the sensation of getting hit by something’s jagged breath.

Caves are seriously creepy, man. Especially caves that trap you and make you discover their horrible secrets that you would have much prefered to leave uncovered. Ted the Caver is one of my absolute favorite scary stories, and it never fails to creep me out! I would definitely recommend reading it if you feel like never setting foot in any kind of confined space ever again. Seriously, though, it is really well written, and you can probably find it easily on the internet, so check it out if you like super-creepy cave stories.

I actually kinda like caves despite their weirdness; the rock formations can be absolutely beautiful. I had the chance to explore some caverns in ia about a year ago, and I absolutely loved it! Granted, the caves I went in were tourist attraction-y, guided-paths-with-railings type places as opposed to the more cramped, have-to-squeeze-through-on-your-stomach kind of deals in this story, but still… I enjoyed seeing all the pretty minerals : )