OFF THE OCEAN

Another Horrorwalker Travel Guide Horror Tale

CHAPTER ONE

(Smoking On A Friday Afternoon)

Holden Beach, NC

12-27-2012

Where the Atlantic Ocean meets the coast of North Carolina, starting at Wilmington and extending all the way down to South Carolina, is some of the purest beach front in the United States of America. The sand is sugar white, the air is as pure as it can be filtered by the processes off the ocean, the fishing is some of the best on the east coast, the seafood restaurants are exceptional and the history there is as ancient as the sands of time.

Exotic plant life grows there that cannot be found naturally anywhere else on earth. Unique animals make their unique sounds during the day, and night, in the forests. And the people who have inhabited the coastal area, the inland swamps and the other low lands go all the way back to the original Native American peoples living off the land and the generous ocean.

Food is abundant… to those who know what plants to eat. Wild apples, wild pears, figs, fat blue berries, clover, succulent huckleberries, wild asparagus, over-sized dandelion plants and huge bloated with juice Muscadine berries that explode in your moth like fruit juice bombs… and much more… is everywhere you look for it on the coast of North Carolina.

And if adventure is your deal… there is surfing, fishing, hunting, exploring and… caving. That last activity is the lead that begins this story.

The moss and lichen covered entrance of the ancient cave looked like the maw of a monstrous toothless deep sea fish. Will-o-the-Wisp fairy-like mist, borne upon the constantly direction changing air flow inside the cave continually pushed its way from the inner bowels of the unexplored darkest depths of the cave. Sometimes the air flow was very stiff and cold, sometimes it was very gentle and cool, as it spilled out into the cool open air breeze blowing off the Atlantic Ocean. 

That ocean mist, mixing with the cave air, always made the opening appear to be likened to a living breathing entity blowing scentless smoke out of its mouth… or at certain times, drawing outside mist inside -- thus the name, The Smoking Cave!

Primordial is the feeling one gets when standing before the opening to untold thousands of years of internal earth erosion by rain water, the occasional flooding with ocean water and the internal sculpting of the cave walls by unknown forces that inhabit the deep and the dark in the absence of light far down inside a damp, ancient cave.

And many curious wayward children, and many more defiant adults, have explored the first few hundred yards into this cave… ignoring the signs posted around the entrance by the state declaring The Smoking Cave to be a dangerous place to play in and explore. Braver, or the more stupid, tempters of fate, push deeper into the cave. Twenty people have died inside this nature created tunnel into the unknown over the course of a long period of time… all from drowning accidents, over the time period of six decades. 

Many more people fear the reputation of the dark dangers existing inside of The Smoking Cave‘s twisty interior. It is well known, even to those people who would never dream of entering the cave, that if you dare to explore this complex cave… before long, there is that discernible  extremely sharp downward slope of around 100 yards called Forges Drop-off, that leads down into the watery bowels of the cave. It is that dropping point that actually loses so many people. It takes a special type of Caver to make that plunge. And twenty explorers have died at that point in the cave by surprisingly fast moving sea water rushing into the cave during unpredictable high tide-like events. It is said that the water level can rise from three inches to six feet within the time space of one hour.

Deadly dangerous indeed!

Where that water enters the cave is still, to this day, a vexing mystery to everyone. The Caving expedition crew has yet to be formed that has committed to mapping, finding and possibly corking that point of flooding. If so many explorers did not risk their lives in The Smoking Cave, no one would really care. But, the fate of this cave will probably be sealed if another death occurs inside its mysterious depths.

Actually, Brunswick County has been trying to force the state to plug the entrance with cement for decades, but the local Native American councils consider The Smoking Cave to be a historical sacred burial site… backed by the university archaeologists in Wilmington Raleigh and Chapel Hill. 

The ancient Choctaw charcoal cave drawings of men, dogs, the undecipherable map of a land area and the odd shaped fish like creatures discovered by Robert K. Hawksclaw in 1974, 1298 yards deep into the cave, proved the Native American point... and so, the cave remains open to members of the general public who ignore the warnings, the few researchers who brave the cave and daredevil Cavers from around the world who sneak into The Smoking Cave to test their Caving abilities, and their luck.

And right now... these two young men, weighted down by pounds of gear and heavy boots, are slogging out from the darkness and the dankness of a corner of the deeper depth of The Smoking Cave… up from the furthest they have ever descended into this, their sixth time exploring the cave… making their way to the awaiting exit… out from the claustrophobic depths of this cave to reenter the open world.

And they have witnessed the unknown in the deep darkness of The Smoking Cave. These two men had just touched a piece of the awesomeness that makes nature grand and often unexplainable… that which was about to rock the very foundation of the personal world they stand on.

End Chapter One