Beyond the Stone Arch

The map had been wrong twice already.

The first mistake sent me three miles in the wrong direction.

The second nearly led me straight into a ravine.

By the time I found the old road, I had stopped trusting the map completely.

Still, I followed it.

The road curved through the forest like it had been waiting for someone stubborn enough to keep going.

Tall trees crowded both sides, their branches folding over the pavement until the late-afternoon light came through in scattered pieces.

Everything smelled damp.

Earth.

Leaves.

Stone.

The kind of air that made you feel as though the forest had been there long before anyone thought to name it.

I checked the map again.

A thin red mark crossed the page.

No road.

No landmark.

Only a handwritten symbol near the edge.

A circle.

And beneath it, one word.

Entrance.

I almost laughed.

Then the road bent.

And I saw it.

A stone tunnel cut directly into the hillside.

Old.

Far older than the road leading toward it.

Its arch was built from heavy blocks darkened by weather and time, the stones stacked with a kind of precision that made me wonder who had put them there.

And why.

The tunnel itself was black.

Not shadowed.

Black.

As though the light stopped at the entrance and refused to go any farther.

I stood in the middle of the road and stared.

Every sensible thought I had told me to turn around.

I had no flashlight.

No signal.

No idea how far the tunnel went.

No idea what was waiting on the other side.

Naturally, I walked toward it.

The temperature dropped before I reached the entrance.

The warm forest air disappeared behind me.

A cold draft slipped from the darkness and moved across my face.

It smelled faintly of wet stone.

And metal.

That stopped me.

Metal?

I stepped closer.

The sound of my shoes changed as pavement gave way to rough ground.

My hand brushed the stone wall.

Cold.

Almost unnaturally cold.

I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight.

The beam disappeared into the tunnel.

Thirty feet.

Maybe forty.

Then nothing.

I took another step.

Something moved deeper inside.

I froze.

Silence.

Then a faint scraping sound.

Stone against stone.

I should have left.

Instead, I whispered, "Of course."

Because apparently common sense had abandoned me somewhere back near the ravine.

I moved forward.

Five steps.

Ten.

The daylight behind me shrank.

The darkness ahead seemed to grow.

Then my light caught something on the wall.

Marks.

Not graffiti.

Symbols.

Lines cut directly into the stone.

Circles.

Arrows.

Shapes I couldn't recognize.

I reached toward one.

The moment my fingers touched it, something clicked beneath my feet.

I stopped breathing.

For one long second, nothing happened.

Then somewhere deeper inside the tunnel—

THUD.

I spun around.

Nothing.

Another sound.

Closer.

THUD.

My heart started pounding.

Every adventure story I had ever read suddenly seemed less entertaining.

I stepped backward.

Carefully.

The ground shifted beneath my heel.

That was enough.

I ran.

I didn't look behind me.

I didn't care what was making the sound.

I only cared about the patch of daylight at the end of the tunnel.

The opening grew larger.

Ten feet.

Five.

Then I burst back into the warm evening air.

I kept running until I reached the grass beside the road.

Only then did I turn around.

The tunnel stood exactly as it had before.

Quiet.

Dark.

Empty.

No falling stones.

No ancient trap.

No mysterious stranger emerging from the darkness.

Just the stone arch beneath the trees.

I laughed.

Partly from relief.

Partly because I felt ridiculous.

Then I noticed something in my hand.

A small metal disk.

Old.

Heavy.

Covered in the same strange markings I had seen inside the tunnel.

I stared at it.

I didn't remember picking it up.

The forest went silent.

Completely silent.

No birds.

No insects.

No wind.

Then, from inside the tunnel—

a single metallic click.

I looked up.

The darkness seemed deeper now.

I backed away.

That's when someone spoke beside me.

"I wouldn't go in there."

I turned.

A man stood a few feet away.

Hands in his pockets.

Perfectly calm.

I looked back toward the tunnel.

Then down at my hand.

The metal disk was gone.

"What tunnel?" I asked.

He frowned.

I turned again.

The forest was gone.

The road was gone.

I was standing in front of a framed photograph.

A quiet road stretched toward an old stone tunnel surrounded by deep green forest.

A woman beside me leaned closer to the image.

"That looks like the beginning of an adventure," she said.

I studied the dark entrance.

For just a second, I thought I saw something glint inside.

I smiled.

"Or the beginning of trouble."

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