The hole in the ground is about two feet in diameter, or 0.6 metres, for you euros.It sits on the corner between Ashland Road and Cermak Street, on the outskirts of the city. I won’t say which one, but you’ll know the place I mean if you recognize the street names. You can see the edge of the fields from here. Corn and hills and such.The hole itself is dry and cracked around the top, but it looks like the deeper you go, the wetter it gets. It is seemingly bottomless, and disappears into the darkness far below.Brett has the most powerful flashlight out of all of us, and when he shines it down we can sometimes see black, bubbling water at the edge of the flashlight’s reach.…Sometimes, but not always. The liquid is not a regular feature.Sometimes hot air escapes from within, quivering and warping the air above; warm to the touch.And sometimes… Sometimes, if we’ve decided to throw some stuff down it, that same stuff will have reappeared when we return to the hole the following day. All smashed up; a few, or several, feet from the hole’s edge.The first thing we threw down was an old textbook, to see if we could hear it hit the bottom. Nothing happened at first, but the next afternoon Anna spotted it stuck in the branches of an old, dead tree. All smushed up, leaking, the wet binding ripped open… But very clearly the same book.One time Brett pulled the hat right off of my head. Threw it down. I was angry at him, but there was nothing I could do; it was already too late. I watched it disappear into the darkness.And then the next day, there it was. On the road not far away. Still in recognizable condition, but stained, and flipped inside-out. Not a huge drama, except for the fact that the fluid had hardened the material, crusted it, and made it difficult to flip back the right way.In the end I just threw it in the trash.…I’m still waiting on the boy to buy me a replacement.I doubt he ever will.We threw a brick down there too, once, and the next day we could see it; corners rounded, the red concrete darkened… and smashed through the windscreen of a nearby car.We stayed away from the hole for a few weeks after that particular incident. We were afraid of getting into trouble.Our fascination with it, however, only grew.We kept it a secret amongst ourselves. I’m not sure why, really. I guess it was fun to have something just for us. Our ‘thing’. We didn’t want anybody else to find out about it and ruin our theories and experiments.We threw all kinds of stuff down as the days went on. Cans, bottles, old shoes…We tied Callum’s camera to a piece of rope and lowered the device beneath, to see if we could unlock any of the hole’s secrets, but it was too dark. We couldn’t pick up anything of worth on the footage.And as our discussions on the subject became bolder and increasingly curious, we found ourselves one winter evening all gathered around it. Bristling with anxious, childlike energy. Preparing to tie a rope around Callum himself. Always the intrepid explorer, he’d planned the whole thing. He’s measured his shoulder span and compared it with the diameter of the hole, the process has been thought out in great detail, and he’s finally getting a chance to live out one of his dreams.Venturing into the unknown.And as idiotic as it is, we’ve all kind of come round to the idea. Curiosity has gotten the better of sense, and hey, if Callum is willing to volunteer to go down then who are we to stop him?Brett has been uncharacteristically quiet this afternoon. I’ve been watching him. Watching him chew his tongue. Watching him furrow his brow, and eventually, to my surprise, he speaks up:“Wait. Guys. I- I don’t think Callum should go down into the hole”.We stop to look at him, and guilt washes over me.He’s right, I think to myself at first. What are we doing here? This is dangerous, and it doesn’t matter how badly Callum WANTS to go down, we shouldn’t enable him. And to hear this spoken by Brett, of all people…There is a stirring in the group. Anna and I look at each other. We are about to agree when Brett continues:“…I want to go down instead”.There is a pause.Then Callum splutters. “What? What do you mean, man? I’m- I’m the one who planned this expedition-”“Yeah but look bro, check this out”; Brett makes the decision to pull his bag off of his shoulder, and he opens it up. There’s proper climbing rope inside. A harness for abseiling, and straps, the kind that one uses for climbing walls and such.I’ve never known the boy to have any interest in climbing. His parents are rich, though, so I wonder if he just bought this stuff for this exact moment.“What the- where did you get all that, Brett?” Callum asks, irritated. “Could- Can I use it?”Brett taps his chin in mock thought. “Hmm, well it IS mine, and you know, my parents might get mad if it’s scuffed or damaged…”“Are you kidding me, Brett?” I ask him. “You just want the spotlight! You know for a second, I actually thought you cared about Callum’s wellbeing…”Brett puts a hand on his chest. “Ouch Chelsea! That’s cold! I just think it should be me, is all. And think about it, I’m stronger than you, Callum. No offence man, but, you know. It’ll be better if something goes wrong. I’ll be more able to handle it”.Callum flushes. He’s never been that good with direct confrontation. “Well, I mean it was my idea, so, I still feel like I should be the one to go down”.Anna remains quiet but I come to Callum’s defense. “Yeah come on Brett, just let him use your gear”.Brett shrugs. “Look, I’m just saying, MY stuff will make the experiment safer, and honestly I’m the only one who can really use it, I swear. So… It should probably be me, all things considered”.We glance to the rope we were going to use to lower Callum down inside. The belt-contraption we’d built. It all looks a lot crappier now. A lot more dangerous, in fact. And we start to think that maybe… if we’re going to do this… Brett does have to be the one to go down after all.I look up and make an apologetic face to Callum. He grumbles in frustration and mutters something under his breath.“Fine”. He says. “I guess you’ll be going down then Brett. Make sure you have a flashlight, we’ll need to connect the radio to your jacket…”Brett waves his hand as he pulls his stuff out of his bag. “Yeah yeah, I got all that man. Here, help me into this thing”.The loops of the harness go around his legs and arms, and tighten over his shoulders and around his waist. Callum begrudgingly helps, and we do so as well, awkwardly. I exchange looks with Anna, and with our other friend, Dean. He picks up the rope to examine it.It’s long; seriously long. Long enough to tie around a nearby lamppost, and if the knot were to come undone, the rope would be dragged down into the hole for such a long time that it would be impossible for us not to grab it. So we make the tie, and hold the slack tight in our hands, as Brett stands on the edge of the hole, grinning.He clasps his hands.“Tonight, we make history, boys and girls. In the name of exploration and truth, I go down, into the hole. In pursuit of understanding, perhaps, the greatest mystery of our time”.Callum fumes silently beside me.“Radio check?” he mutters bitterly.Brett grabs the radio on his jacket and draws it closer to his mouth.“Testing, one two three!”His voices crackles dutifully through our own receivers.And he nods.“Here we go”.And with a final glance at each other, waiting, hoping perhaps, that someone will have the confidence to break the social pressure and put a halt to this madness.But, secretly, we also kind of want to see someone go down. And if it’s Brett, then so be it.No-one speaks.And down he goes.Clambering into the hole, pressing his back against the side and using his legs to push himself deeper, hands against the walls. He winks as he disappears below the surface, and we start to allow the rope to slowly, steadily drop into the hole with him.He shouts up to us for a while, encouraging us to lower him a little faster, or, occasionally, not so fast.Eventually he has to use the radio.Callum speaks into it. “How’s it going down there Brett? What can you see?”For a second there is only static.Then Brett’s voice comes through.“Creepy as hell dude! The walls aren’t just dark, they’re BLACK! Like, oily!”We ease the rope a little further down. A small group of birds fly by overhead through the cold, gray-white of the evening winter sky. We can’t see the sun, but when it sets, the world will darken quickly.“And lemme tell you man, it STINKS!” Brett’s distorted laugh crackles through the radios.“What does it smell like?” Callum asks.“I dunno, like wet dog, I guess? And a bit like metal, I think… And it’s so warm…”We continue to lower the rope.“Any sign of the water, Brett?” Callum asks. “Just let us know if you hit it and we’ll pull you right up”.“No, no water. But the walls… They’re REALLY warm.. and there’s-” crackling and interference disrupts the connection, and we lose him for a few seconds. We stop lowering, but his voice returns:“-of some kind… Like a fungus, really, but in lumps and clusters. They feel fuzzy. And WET. GROSS SHIT MAN!”I start to feel uneasy. I’m not sure what my unconscious self has noticed that my conscious self has not, but my skin has begun to crawl.The thought of Brett down there… down in this… this ‘hole’… If that is indeed, all it is…“Guys”, I mutter feebly, but they pay me no mind. They’re too busy listening to Brett’s reports.I try again, louder, but we all start to feel it then.A soft rumbling, a shuddering, beneath our feet.“Brett?” Callum speaks into the radio, looking back at us briefly as he does so. “Brett! Is everything okay?”For a while, there is only crackling.Then: “The walls, you guys… the walls… They’re… Oh man… I- I think I want to come back up”.And the hole shifts.We stare at it in abject horror.It twists before our eyes. Dragging the earth and concrete around it in a spiral. And it starts to CLOSE. Like the black, sticky mouth of a great leech, it starts to close.And we panic.“HAUL HIM BACK IN, QUICK!” Dean shouts from the back, and we do so, scrambling, falling down to the ground in the chaos, using our feet as leverage against the ground as we pull and drag ourselves backwards, hauling Brett up as fast as we can.“GUYS!” he shouts through the radio, screaming. “IT’S CLOSING! FUCKING GET ME OUT, GET ME OUT! THE-” the radio cuts out. It crackles. “-SQUEEZING ME IN! I’M STUCK! I- I CAN'T BREATHE! PLEASE! YOU HAVE TO-”The radio cuts out again.For good, this time.And we pull. We pull on that rope as hard as we can, desperately. Shouting and hollering for help. A man has spotted us from a nearby window. It looks like he’s coming down to help us.But he is too late.The hole quivers before our eyes. It seals, and throbs. Oozing onto the street.Closed.The rope becomes much harder to pull, and then, suddenly, much easier.We all fall to the ground in a heap as the end of the rope flies up from the end of the ‘hole’, and lands right on us, smacking against my face as it does so.Melted through.Not burned, I should say… It’s not hot, like the blasts of air were… It’s just….…just ruined.And we stare at it in silence. In a terrible, terrible shock. The man is here. He’s with other adults, they’re shouting at us, staring at the quivering, fleshy tip of the closed-off hole, and we watch in disbelief as it sinks down beneath the concrete, then disappears into the darkness. Slabs and shards and pieces of road fall into the void it leaves behind, and we hear them clatter around into the shadows. The ground rumbles for a while, and then, it simply stops.“…Brett?” Callum whispers through the radio.But there is no response.*I still have dreams about that night. The whole street was quickly cordoned off, for days, in fact, and by the second day there were whole police blocks at both ends.When it finally opened again there was no sign that the hole had ever been there. It was filled in with thick, pale concrete and mostly overlain with rough asphalt.It’s been months, but I don’t think we’ll ever really get over what happened. Callum barely speaks any more. Guilt, perhaps? Or maybe he simply can’t get over how close Brett’s fate was to being his own.For me, personally? In the dreams, I’m standing on the road. I see the hole. I hear it hiss and whisper to me. And I see something out of the corner of my eye. Something ‘flipped’. Something rejected by the hole. And I know that if I were to look, it would be Brett.Or whatever remained of him.And when I awake I always wonder the same thing.I wonder if the hole kept him down, or if it ever spat him back up. via /r/nosleep https://ift.tt/3ogRX28
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