White Space Season 2

in the woods at all. A week after they last went exploring, Father had gone hunting alone. He looked different when he returned, like he’d seen something that scared him, even though he wouldn’t admit it. He did, however, forbid the family from going back into the woods. Father said they were too dangerous, and that something “wasn’t right.”
    Since that day, Billy had been plagued by nightmares about what evil monsters might be lurking in the woods, and the caves, in particular. His imagination was vivid, too vivid, at times. Billy ran, knowing he would gladly trade whatever imaginary monsters waited in the caves for the true horror of the Indians giving chase behind him.
    He hadn’t heard the Indians or seen any arrows since first breaking the tree line. He hoped he’d lost the Indians, but didn’t dare stop running. Not yet. Not until he found the caves.
    He kept running, his chest cold and growing tighter as he fought to catch his breath. Billy tore past a thousand trees until he found the open mouth of a dark cave looming a hundred feet before him. Standing in front of the cave, Billy began to wonder if it was such a good idea to go inside.
    He heard no Indians, and knew he couldn’t hide in a cave forever. Eventually, he had to find his way out of the forest and onto somewhere. But where do I go? Who is left on the island to help me? His family was alone, save for the natives. Father was friendly with a few of the island’s Indians, and Billy would probably reach out to them for help reaching the other island or getting to the mainland. But he couldn’t be sure whom to trust after the Indian attack on his family.
    Why were they killed? What did Father do to them?
    Billy wasn’t sure whom to trust, and couldn’t afford it much thought until after surviving the night. Once he heard hooves in the distance, far more than two horses, Billy looked back into the cave’s mouth knowing it was his only hope.
    He paused at the cave’s entrance. Something inside him — maybe everything — whispered that there was no going back.
    He stepped inside the cave, and immediately felt as if he were walking into another world. It was quiet, save for the light rain outside, which entered the cave, along with light, through openings above. The silence, along with the cold air, had a weight of its own that felt heavy, pushing in on Billy from all sides. As he stepped deeper into the cave, trying to get as far from the opening as possible, he tried to determine if this was one of the caves where he’d been before, but the rock all around him was too similar.
    As he crept along the path, he heard a buzzing, loud and fuzzy, twisting his thoughts in a knot. Just beyond the sound, he thought he could hear voices whispering, calling his name .
    “Hello?” Billy whispered, afraid to speak loud enough for the Indians to hear.
    He swallowed hard and stepped deeper into the black, then kept stepping forward until the darkness swallowed him whole.
    He inched forward with painfully slow steps, as if trying to pull a plow across frozen ground. When he and Father were in the cave before, even if it wasn’t the same one, they both carried torches. Now Billy had nothing, and his world was only darkness and all the terror darkness held inside it.
    He wanted to turn back. The scant sunlight bleeding into the entrance was gone. And the openings above were farther and fewer between. He couldn’t be sure the way forward wouldn’t lead him into a space too tight to get out of.
    A low whistle lit the wind, coming from the tunnel ahead. And with it his name, again.
    Billlllly.
    He moved forward, marking the path in his mind, in case he needed to go back. But it was hard to remember each turn, especially in the dark. Getting lost inside the caves meant a death as certain as facing Indians outside. He continued walking until a cool gust of wind wafted from somewhere ahead, brushing by him so quickly, it nearly knocked him down.
    Billy stayed frozen, pressed against the wall until he finally found the courage to creep forward, a few feet at a time, running the tip of his foot in a cautious semicircle in front of him. Suddenly, his foot found no ground. If he had been walking, rather than slowly inching forward, he would have certainly fallen into the dark chasm, either dying instantly or lying at the bottom of a ditch with a broken limb, slowly dying where only his bones might one day be found.
    He took two steps back, when the ground