I've been hiking on the Appalachian Trail for a stupid, simple reason. To write a book. I've published 3 novellas before, all for a decent price. But now I want to go for it all. To write a novel. A full-length book. The kind of stuff the professionals wrote on a regular basis.

As I approached the cave, I realized how the snow was getting thicker and coming down harder than before. I slowly entered the dark home of whatever creatures lived here. And I made a mental note that they probably won't be friendly ones.

I decide to just eat a piece of my beef jerky that I had brought, as it obviously won’t spoil, and go to bed. The jerky had no taste on my half-frozen taste buds, and was hard to swallow because all the water in my flask had frozen into ice, my throat felt horribly dry and uncomfortable, I don’t know how I slept, but fatigue overcame my uncomfort. In my dream, there was a terrible sound. As if an avalanche was right outside my home. And as I awoke, I saw, surprisingly, that it was partly true. Only it was in my cave, not my home. The weight of the snow must have crushed the rocks supporting it before. The mouth of my cave was completely covered. Nothing but a few rays of light showed from a few small holes in the ceiling of my little confine.

I was completely trapped. Until the snow melted or I found a new way out, I would be stuck here. If I was here too long, I would surely starve to a long, agonizing death. I thought of my father, and how he was never found. I wondered if he had met a similar fate. The thought sent sharp shivers down the contours of my aching, sore spine.

I laid out my old, tattered sleeping bag I had picked up along the trail within the first few miles of my long, tiring journey through the Appalachian Mountains. As soon as I laid on the hard, rough stone flooring of the cave, in spite of my utter discomfort, I fell into a deep, yet restless sleep.

I woke up with my neck damp with perspiration and tears running down my dirt-caked cheeks. I didn't remember my dream, but it must have been terrible. I loudly sobbed until I felt like I couldn't anymore. Then I ended up emptying my stomach right on the front of my shirt. Great. Just great. I smell revolting, I have no sustenance in my stomach when I'm already low on food, and my shirt is completely ruined.

I slept for another frequently interrupted 7 hours, and woke up feeling refreshed, but extremely thirsty. I took out my flask and filled it with some of the snow blocking my exit and waited for it to melt. In the daylight, I could see most of my surroundings surprisingly clearly.
This cave has had a history, I can tell that right away. There are backpacks everywhere, and, of course, they were accompanied by skeletons. They mostly looked like homeless men that had gotten trapped here just as I have. But they've been preserved in the cave's dry, cold climate. I take a small knife from one of the backpacks and cut the packs from the backs of the deceased men. I didn't want to have to touch them unless it was absolutely necessary.
I was delighted by what I found in the packs. I now had about a month's supply of beef jerky and some freeze-dried apple slices. I neatly store them in my own pack and look through the other backpacks until I've found an array of pans, matches, lanterns, knives, flares, iodine and water bottles. I fill each bottle with snow and sit them at my small camp to melt into the water I was now desperate for. My throat ached and my tongue was swollen and dry. I picked up the first bottle and added a few drops of iodine and waited. After about 20 minutes or so, I drank half of the bottle in one satisfying gulp. I then sipped the cool water while eating a half a strip of beef jerky.

I decided to explore further into the cave, maybe I would find another exit. I took one of the lanterns and slowly crept along the left side of the cave. It was damp and covered in some sort of stringy moss. I looked upward and saw small cracks running through the top of the ceiling in some places, small drips periodically dropped down the side of the wall onto my neck, and each gave me goosebumps throughout my body. I felt extremely cold. All of a sudden, I felt something whoosh by my face and I felt a small pain in my cheek. I was shocked and fell over clumsily and felt a ragged stone cut into my temple. Then, all was darkness.
I wake up confused and sore. I feel dried blood on my face and moan at the ache along my jaw. I tiredly sit up and feel my cheek. It’s swollen and there is a small bite mark on the side. I look about 5 feet to my left and see a shadowy, small figure. It’s nighttime now and I sip thirstily from my water. I only have a few drops left; I pour them on the small wound on my cheek to sooth the burning sensation.


I wait a few more hours until daylight, and I look over to see that the figure that must have flown into me unknowingly was in fact a wounded bat. I must have smacked it after it had bitten me. As I see the small patch of white foam along the side of its mouth, all I can wonder is if humans can get rabies. I had never been big on science, but I was pretty sure that I had picked up something in high school talking about Furious Rabies and Dumb Rabies. I had just lost my memory of the symptoms over the years. I slowly hobbled back to my small camp near the mouth of the cave and laid down. I put a few drops of iodine in my other water bottles and waited. I was hoping to god that the snow covering my exit melted quickly. I wished I had never started this trip in the first place. I do remember that the incubation period of rabies was shorter the closer the bite was to the brain. The soreness in my back suggested I had been knocked out for at least a day. I most-likely only had a few more days until the full effects of the rabies took over. I felt a cold chill run down my spine at the idea of dying in this place from rabies.

I slept restlessly for another few hours; I had a dream where I was back home, with foam dripping from my mouth and a terrible grin on my face. My mother stood before me trembling, but paralyzed with fear. The small voice in my head begged my body to show her mercy, but it wouldn’t listen. I lunged for her throat and ripped it out with my teeth. I relished her screams of agony. That small part of my consciousness that knew that what I was doing was wrong disappeared without another thought.

I woke up with a scream. What was I thinking when I decided to venture further into the cave? That it would be safe? Ha. Now I have a cut on my forehead that’ll probably get infected, a bite from a rabid bat, and absolutely no hope of getting out of here sane or even alive. That was the seal of my fate. I remembered my notebooks in my backpack that I had brought to start my book. I might as well write down the painful story of the last weeks of my life. The result is what you hold in your hands now, in fact. My death notes. If anyone is reading this, I hope you understand that this isn’t easy to write. My mind is made up of fear and the colors of my imagination at this point. I can barely remember my past. My memories are already fading; I guess that’s one of the first symptoms of this disease.
I feel like I'm already dying. I just hope I can stay at least a small bit sane through the effects of the rabies. I feel that my duties as a writer obligate me to write until the very end. I will record my struggles in my worthless composition books to probably never be found. If there, in fact, is a human being reading this, I urge you to put this notebook away. I fear that my poisoned mind may already be near insane.

I wake up and my forehead is covered with fresh blood. I had almost forgotten about my head wound after all my worries of rabies. I looked through the backpacks of the deceased men once again and found some gauze strips that I applied to my wound after washing it thoroughly, but gently with water. It was early morning, I could tell by the crisp smell of the morning breeze. I now remember reading in my high school Health textbook that when infected with rabies, if you're unable to get medical help, to wash out the wound with water and get plenty of rest. If I don't strain myself, maybe the incubation period will last longer and I might just make it out of here alive.

I lay here with one of my dozens of pencils I had brought and one of my brand new spiral notebooks that I had bought from Wal-Mart a week before my journey. I had brought about 10 of the notebooks with me, so as to not run out of writing space. I feel as if I'm in a dream, as if all this can't be real. Could it really be true that only a month ago I had been back home with my mother eating pizza and discussing my upcoming hike? Oh, what I would do for a slice of that pizza now...But I can't think that way. Right now, I must focus on survival.

I wake up the next morning and drink another 3 bottles of water and decide to thoroughly cleanse whatever dirt and chips of stone I could get from my forehead wound. I was very lucky to not have brain damage, to be honest. This is the second day since my accident, and I’m starting to feel overly drowsy and a bit disoriented. I knew that the incubation period of the rabies, whether Dumb Rabies or Furious Rabies, was almost through. I will soon be losing myself, I realize and accept this. I decide to go back to the skeletons and just look through their pockets for anything useful, even though the idea made my stomach churn.

I find the first skeleton and look through his jean pockets carefully; I find nothing more than a $5 bill and a Stride chewing gum wrapper. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but some sense tells me that it’s close. I slowly go to the second and third skeletons, these seem fresher. I see immediately that they’re a couple. I feel a pang of pity. They were probably happy together. They probably owned a house and had jobs and friends. This man and woman had probably been married and had been in love. Although their flesh is half-rotten, I can still tell that they were very young. Maybe mid-twenties. They were in the prime of their lives. They had probably wanted children. But all of that was taken away by this cave. This terrible, horrible place had ended so many lives. But how could it simply be the cave? Could there possibly be something else here? I don’t believe in ghost stories much, I find them amusing, in fact. But at this point, what else do I have to believe in?

I still have about 15 skeletons to search, so I keep going. I search five more, and I come up with pretty much the same as before. Except three of the five, which were children. What were these kids doing hiking in such a treacherous place? They couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, for God’s sake. What had brought them here? I wondered horrifically, and what made sure they didn’t leave? What is going on? I have a feeling that, whether I like it or not, I’ll find out soon.

As the days go by, I start feeling simply as if my body is giving up. I’ve been sleeping a rather restless 12 to 14 hours of sleep each day. My body rarely allows sustenance. My body is becoming weak and undernourished at an alarming pace. I’m not sure what to do. My body needs certain vitamins quite badly. I’m bruising more easily than I ever have before, and they hurt more than any other bruise I’ve experienced as well.

Upon searching the children’s pockets, I discovered in all of them a small handkerchief with, to my utter horror,
“Our day has come,
To travel to the Land of the Seer
The Seer shall point us on our path
We feel that a new beginning is near.”
written in a dark red ink, which i recognized as dried blood. I have never been more afraid in my life. I feel as if something is watching me. Maybe what the dead children call The Seer is real. If so, what will happen to me? Is all of this just a chain of events that have been set and rehearsed many times over with the people in this room as the victims leading up to my doom that may be quite alike theirs? What about the future victims of this “Seer”? I fear that I may learn this answer and not live to tell about it.

I cannot sleep tonight. I am too restless and have so many questions swirling in my head like little colorful clouds that refuse to be ignored. It seems as if the full effects of the rabies aren’t taking place in my mind. I don’t remember if it’s possible to simply attain the physical symptoms and not the mental ones. Maybe this is the true game for the Seer, if it actually does exist, which I’m now sure it does. Maybe the object of the game isn’t to make the victim go insane, but to slowly kill off their bodily functions while their minds are fully aware. If so, I’m afraid that I’ll have to spend my short remainder of life trying to find it and find its weakness.

I wake up and my back is stiff and aching. I feel this physical NEED for water, but as I take 3 large gulps from one of my water bottles, I realize that it’s doing nothing to quench my thirst. What does this “Seer” want me to drink? I realize the answer as soon as I think about the question. The thought makes me gag and regurgitate what’s in my stomach, which by now is nothing more than bitter stomach acid. My throat burns from the acid afterwards. I don’t know if I have the bravery to do this. The blood inside the past victims must have frozen instead of decomposing. I knew by some sense that this is what the Seer wants me to do. I take a sharp piece of rock and go over to the man closest to me. As I place the rock over his wrist, I take a deep breath and close my eyes. This is for survival. I can’t chicken out of what will keep me alive. And as I place the cold stone against his dead skin, I feel an icy hand shoot up and grab my forearm. All I remember was screaming, and then darkness.

I wake up sore. I prop myself up on my aching arms and groggily glance about my surroundings. I see the man who had apparently come to life and grabbed my wrist, but he was back in his original place. His normal dead stare penetrating the wall across from the one he was propped up against. Had I been hallucinating? Maybe I had just been hit in the head with a stone that fell from the ceiling and had a horrible dream while I had been knocked out. But I realized that this was untrue. I glanced down to my forearm and saw a message that had been carved into it with the stone I was about to use to cut the dead man. The message simply said “The fun has just begun”.

I tear a strip of cloth from the cuff of my pants and wrap it tightly around my forearm. I have to stem this bleeding. I think whatever it was had damaged a vein in his attempt to get the message across. I sense that this shows that this thing doesn’t want me to use this man’s blood. But why not? I wondered vaguely. What’s different about this particular man? i guess I should investigate. I realize that I hadn’t searched this man before. He looks familiar in a way, but I can’t quite put my finger on how I know him. I slowly trail my eyes away from his dead, glazed stare and focus on the fact that he has the top corner of a wallet sticking from his ripped up Levi blue jean pockets. Identification. Perfect. I trail my eyes back to his face, watching to make sure his expression doesn’t change like it did before while I take his wallet from his front pocket. I flip back the cover of the worn-out leather pouch and search for a driver’s license or I.D. to no avail. I sigh and carelessly throw the wallet back on the lap of the skeleton, but then my gaze skims over the ground as I start to walk disappointedly away. A driver’s license. I’m in luck. I pick up the small, beaten, and faded piece of plastic off the ground and can barely make out the picture, and can’t make out the name at all. It is somewhat familiar. As if it had been something I had only seen in early childhood. Then it hits me. My father died on this trail. A father I haven’t seen in years. A father that had been pronounced dead what seems like forever ago. I am in the presence of my father’s decaying remains. The thought brings me to my knees and I sob for what seems like days, but in reality it was only a couple of hours.

I decide to give him a proper burial, the one he deserves. I gently lay his body down on the dirt flooring of the cave. I then find a rock in a shape that’s perfect for scooping amounts of tightly packed dirt and start digging. Before I place the first scoop of dirt on his face, I close his eyes gently and start crying again. I only wish he had come home like he had promised. I cry silently while I work. What I judge to be about 3 hours later, I’m sweaty and cannot cry anymore. But it was worth it. At least I now feel that my father is at peace.
Today was the last straw. I’m going deeper into this cave and finding out what it was that killed my father. I have to kill whatever it is. I can’t let this go unjustified. I may die, but at least I’ll die knowing that my father’s death was avenged. I grab a large backpack and fill it with food and bottles of water. I also grab a knife, but I hide that inside my sleeve. I did find a flashlight that you have to wind up to charge, I wind it up for about 30 minutes, and then start walking. My heart is pounding the whole time. I have a feeling that I will come face to face with whatever it is in this cave that drew all of those people here and killed them sooner or later. I spend about what I think to be 6 hours walking slowly throughout the cave. I watch my every step, not wanting to trip and injure myself again. Then I stop and take a long gulp of water, even though my body craves something else, I refuse to drink blood.
I look around and notice something on the walls. I walk over hesitantly and see that it is poems written in gore. The one that catches my eye makes a shiver run down my spine and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The poem says
“We came to hide
But didn’t know
That where we were hiding
Took us to the other side”


The blood looked fresh, how could that be? Could there really be someone else that had gotten here just before me? I can’t stand this anymore. I tear off a ragged piece of my shirt and drench it with water from one of my bottles. I vigorously scrub the blood on the wall. At first, it seems to work. But then I realize that whenever the blood fades, it seemingly seeps from the walls thicker and fresher than before. I’m desperate to get rid of it. By the time I give up, I’m drenched in blood and the message is clearer and more horrible than before. I don’t know what to do. There is something horrifyingly wrong with this cave. The sort of wrong that can easily drive even the most mentally at-peace human mind to complete and utter insanity.
I decide to walk for about 10 more minutes, and then stop and sleep. My energy levels have been dropping quickly, and I have lost at least 15 pounds. I’ve lost track of the days. I just know it’s been over a week. I wish I had never come here. Freezing to death would have been better than whatever horror awaits me at the end of this cave.
I take slow, careful steps through the cave, so as to avoid tripping again. I already found out what injuries come as a result from that. My head wound still isn’t fully healed by any means. At one point, it started snowing. Through the cracks in the cave, a few pellets of hail also bounced off the top of my aching head. It feels as if this cave will never end. At that moment, I see a message as a flash of lightning came overhead. I'm not sure what it says until I light a match I took from one of the corpses. What i read gives me a sense of fear mixed with an odd feeling of relief. At least now I can come face to face with whatever the Seer is and get it over with. Whether I die or my father’s death is avenged.
The message says, again, in blood “Getting Closer Now.”
I decide to stop for the night. If this Seer wants to take my life tonight, I don’t care. But I have a feeling that it won’t. It wants me awake and aware. I spread out my sleeping bag, even though it’s torn to shreds. The rocks have worked as a sort of sandpaper against the cheap material of the sleeping bag. Oh well. I lay down and end up scrunching up inside it to avoid getting my head covered in snow.

I wake up the next morning with the sorest back I believe I’ve ever experienced. I also find another surprise as I rub my eyes and become aware of my surroundings, or more like the lack of them. All of my supplies are gone. What a cruel joke. I sigh and lay back down. This can’t be happening to me. I wish I would wake up from this dream already, as I’m hoping it is a dream.
I decide to just ditch my sleeping bag. It won’t do me any good after this point. I’ll either die tonight, or I’ll survive and get out of here. Winter is almost over. It seems I’ve been in here for about 2 months. Quite amazing, if you really think about it.
I walk about another mile, and then I start hearing it. A low, but sharp sound in the distance. Like the walls are cracking. Then I hear a crash, as if they’re avalanching into whatever waits below. And when I walk a little further, I realize I’m not that far from right. It was the flooring of the cave that was falling in. There’s only a small, thin pathway that seems to have been professionally crafted in a period of months, maybe even years. What I see beyond me must be a dream. It has to be. Yet I can’t help but believe it’s real.
Waiting at the other side of the pathway is my father. Just as I remember him when I was little. He started yelling to me “come over here, Jimmy! Hurry! Before the path falls!” I feel as if I’m in a dream as I run across the pathway. About halfway through, I stumble and almost tumble down into the fiery depths below me.
I then regain my balance and run the rest of the way across more carefully. The pathway crumbled as soon as I placed my foot onto the stone flooring of the other side. I’m immediately swept into an embrace by my father. But then I realize it isn’t just an embrace. He starts pushing me backwards, towards the pit! “DAD! STOP!” I scream. “PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!”
What I see then will haunt me until the very second of my death. He backed up and seemed to burst into a madman’s laughter. He then put his hand up to his face and began to scratch it off! From below that horrifying flesh mask is the demonic face of what can’t be anything other than the Seer. Its face is a bright red, and seemed to be pouring blood from the pores. Its eyes were pitch black and demonically sharp and knowing. Its laugh was unlike any other. It was a deep, haunting laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my blood run cold. It grabs my arm and jerks me forward until my face is merely an inch or two from its own. I can smell its putrid breath and feel its claws in my forearm. It says to me in that deep, horrible voice “I am the plague. I am the one they call Satan. I am the one crazy men see at the end of every hallway. I am the one who takes children from their beds at night. I am every murderer in your world, I am in their hearts. They have all met me and all have no choice but to worship me.” He’s been circling around me and has his back facing the pit.
I panic at the seriousness and horror of my realization of his words. I rush forward and slam my body into his, sending him tumbling down. I attempt to catch my own balance, but it is futile. I rushed too soon and too quickly. I feel myself begin to fall and I feel, in an instant, as if I am flying. Until I hit what waits below and am knocked unconscious, never to wake again.