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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-11-08 18:51:01+00:00.

The second-worst mistake was arriving.

The worst mistake was leaving.

There’s a certain arrogance to human exploration. Driving the flag into the dirt first, as if that means a damn thing. Of course, I’m not entirely cynical. Charting the world is about more than greed and glory — it’s about overcoming that ancient fear of the unknown. Mapping every plot of land so there are no more hidden crevices to keep us up at night. Nonetheless, our endeavours are selfish. And we have, for many centuries, blindly considered ourselves superior. When discovering new land, we’ve never considered a haunting possibility.

That something other than man may have already staked a claim.

“Temper your expectations,” Dr Crenshaw, our expedition leader, warned loudly as we scaled the cliff-face of a thousand-metre-tall mountain.

I grunted whilst finding handholds and footholds in unreliable nooks. We were ascending no ordinary mountain. The rock-formed skyscraper jutted from the dirt like a square, or perhaps a squircle, poking out of a sorting cube’s hole. It was a flat-topped mound rising almost unnaturally out of the ground-level forest. A misshapen mountain sprouting bushy trees, like hairs from its level head. That old-growth rainforest, we hoped, would be untouched. We wanted to discover it before anyone else.

It was an inselberg — meaning “island mountain”. Such natural formations, which tower above flat land, are difficult to climb, on account of their near-vertical sides. That was why we doubted any early humans would have managed to reach the top of the berg. We were ecstatic to be the first explorers to tread on that sky-high soil. An undiscovered piece of land is a rarity in the twenty-first century.

It took nearly two hours to reach the mountaintop. Crenshaw was the first to disappear over the sharp edge. He crawled onto the grass, unclipped his carabiner, and gasped loudly — prompting Howard Williams, Rachel Garcia, and me to speed up a little, as we were eager to experience that momentous event for ourselves.

I was the second to cross the threshold and see the rainforest in reality, rather than a photograph. I pushed up from the grass with my palms, and my jaw fell as I stood. As I witnessed the splendour of the wooded ocean ahead. A canopy of leaves nearly entirely blocking out all sunlight, creating a sense of calm in the forest. A sense of peace that we were about to disturb.

This was a team of biologists and researchers who had spent years following in the footsteps of others. We did not stop to think. We were all enchanted by the possibility of doing something original. The possibility of making history.

“What do you think, Steph?” Howard asked, collecting our climbing equipment.

“It’s pretty,” I said, brushing mud and debris off my clothes.

He rolled his eyes. “I was hoping for something a little more, y’know, scientific.”

“And I was hoping for more than thirty seconds to conduct my research, Howard,” I teased.

He chuckled and replied, “That’s fair.”

“I’m eager to see this cave,” Rachel said.

Dr Crenshaw pointed ahead. “Well, if we push ahead, we’ll be in and out long before nightfall.”

“You seem confident,” Howard said. “Do you need a moment to get your bearings?”

“Not at all, Williams. I’ve been studying the aerial mappings religiously for the past month,” Dr Crenshaw said. “To the detriment of my health, I must admit.”

“Yes, it was a little disconcerting to have a yawning man climbing directly above me,” I pointed out. “But, after watching you work for so many weeks, I don’t doubt that you would be able to sleepwalk your way to this cave entrance.”

Our leader laughed, letting a glimpse of emotion loose. “I won’t argue with that, Smithson. Come on. Let’s get moving.”

Crenshaw was such a tightly-wound man. I was relieved to see him letting his muscles loosen. Letting himself enjoy something. He rarely looked joyous. His hunger to climb this inselberg in Mozambique was driven by necessity, not desire. It was an itch he simply had to scratch, no matter how apprehensive he felt.

He wasn’t a cold man. In fact, I’d always viewed him a little as a father figure. Stoic and silent, but layered. I wanted to help our leader. Wanted to ease some of his anxiety about the excursion. That was why I rushed through the tall, mopane trees of the forest, which formed a sun-obstructing canopy overhead. Rushed to catch up to Crenshaw. The man was twice my age, but barely broke a sweat. His pace was hard to match, so I settled for tagging along just behind him.

“This is a historical moment,” I breathlessly said.

Crenshaw grunted. “If…”

“If?” I repeated between heavy pants.

“If we haven’t been beaten,” he finished.

I shook my head. “We haven’t been beaten. I’m sure of it. We were the first to locate this forest with the aerial—”

“I’m not talking about recorded history,” Dr Crenshaw interrupted. “At some point, long ago, man may well have walked here.”

“How?” I asked. “The sides are so steep. So difficult to climb even with modern gear.”

“Sometimes,” the man began, slowing his stride, “things are difficult to see, Smithson.”

And then he stopped, causing me to almost bump into his back.

“Careful, Steph!” Rachel said, almost colliding with me. “What’s the hold-up, slow-poke?”

“We found it,” Dr Crenshaw whispered.

The leader stepped aside, allowing the rest of the team to see what he had found.

There was a hole in the dirt — the entrance to the cave. To a pocket within the mountain.

“I’ll unload the gear,” Howard said, starting to unzip his rucksack.

“No need,” Crenshaw replied, pointing his torch into the chasm. “Look.”

The four of us crept towards the edge of the cave entrance below our feet, and we followed the bright beam. It illuminated a walkway protruding from cave’s inner surface. A slope of rock hugging the wall and spiralling downwards.

Not a single member of the team spoke for the next thirty seconds. Our gazes traced every surface revealed by the beam. I did not know for certain, but I presumed the sloping walkway continued right to the bottom, as the torch did not illuminate the cave’s floor one hundred feet below.

Eventually, we all accepted the hole’s inescapable purpose.

“A stairwell,” Rachel whispered.

Crenshaw nodded. “Yes, Garcia. A stairwell.”

“So, we’re not the first,” Howard sighed. “All of that effort—”

“To find a long-lost remnant of our ancestors,” Dr Crenshaw finished, taking a tentative step onto the stone slide.

“That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” I said. “We have no idea how old it might be.”

“It’s more than a primitive staircase,” the leader announced, bouncing his boot soles on the sturdy slope. “It feels sturdy. Just imagine the advanced craftsmanship necessary to construct something like this, Smithson. Those ancient hands could’ve merely carved a tunnel into the cave’s wall, but the attached stones. Joined them together to form an intricate ramp. Imagine what marvels might lie below.”

Howard and Rachel followed their leader into the entrance, but I frowned and firmly stood my ground. “It doesn’t feel right. What kind of prehistoric civilisation would’ve been able to achieve this?”

None of my team members answered. And I realised, as they kept walking, that I would either have to follow or be left alone. Left in a forest which did not fill me with as much wonder as I had expected.

I chose to follow.

I hurried to catch up to my colleagues, hardly noticing that they had stopped walking. Had stopped to stare in awe at the wall.

“Careful!” I laughed, echoing Rachel’s earlier caution as I nearly bumped into her. “There’s no handrail up here.”

She pointed at the wall. “Look at this, Steph.”

I followed the light of Crenshaw’s torch to several lines of markings on the cave wall. The four of us moved closer to the symbols, with incremental waddles, as there was little room on the three-feet-wide slope. But moving nearer did nothing to answer burning questions. The marks, falling somewhere between drawings and hieroglyphs, became less discernible the closer I looked. It was as if the shapes were shifting. Endlessly restructuring.

I told myself, of course, that—

It’s just a trick of the light.

I felt silly, as I’d explored countless cave systems across the planet, and I’d never been afraid of the dark before. Never been afraid of the unexplained. But there was a secret in that place I knew we weren’t meant to learn. Something in my mind, or perhaps my very body, rejected the cave. Reacted violently, screeching at me to drag the four of us out of there.

Some small part of me, however, wouldn’t cooperate.

“You’re the expert,” Howard said to Crenshaw. “What is this?”

“It’s beautiful,” the leader answered in a faint whisper.

There was a detached expression on his face. An absent, unwilling nature to the way in which he raised a shaky hand towards the wall. Crenshaw was always detached, of course, but never like this. He was always lost in thought, but there no longer seemed to be anything behind the man’s teary eyes.

Get a hold of yourself, I berated myself. This is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your career. Do not fumble it.

“We should record this,” Rachel timidly suggested as our leader brushed his fingertips against the etchings. “Dr Crenshaw, I don’t think we should do that. We wouldn’t want to damage it.”

“Damage it?” Howard asked, before laughing. “It’s a stone etching that’s lasted for millennia. It’ll …

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