TW: Severe injures. Death.  Grammar mistakes, most likely (please let me know).

The seemingly innocent clouds from earlier had been the first of many warnings. The lightning, a second ago, was the last one.

I couldn’t ignore the signs of the storm anymore. I shouldn't have done it to start with, because it was that time of the year when it barely ever rained but when it did it was extremely dangerous.

However, I wanted to let my twin brother enjoy a morning in the forest near our town. He had earned it and—more importantly—he needed the break, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to focus on studying anymore. Studying everyday like we were doing recently… it simply wasn’t his nature and I knew it. I had been asking a lot from him, but only because he was as determined as I was to be accepted in medicine school.

A walk in the forest would have been perfect for both of us to rest our minds, but Decklan had run away from the path into some unexplored area of the forest. Why? I didn’t even ask anymore, he didn’t usually know.

Now it was after noon and the wind was starting to rage. From what I’ve seen on TV, people get really scared when the wind blows like this. It’s not a big deal in our town, though. The problem was that we weren’t in the town and, as soon as it started raining, we weren’t sure how to go back.

We were lost in the woods.

Now I remembered why I preferred to avoid the forest this time of year, when everything feels the same and I have to rely on my eyes to find my way around. I know that’s what people usually do, but I’m used to having a better way. A sixth sense of sorts that is supposed to be related to the special ability me and my twin inherited from our father’s side of the family. Some of my relatives call it “bat sight” or “telekinetic sense”. To me, it simply felt like an extension of my sense of touch.

Most of the time, it was more reliable than any of my other senses, but today it wasn’t helping at all. It felt like I was surrounded by mud. Mud and damp ropes. Occasionally I could notice something trapped under the mire, but nothing that I could recognize. My eyes were a little more accurate at the moment, but they weren’t helping much either.

Not five minutes after the lightning, it was raining cats and dogs and Decklan suggested seeking shelter in a cave that he had somehow noticed a minute before.

Angry as I was because of our situation—and blaming him for it—I was tempted to yell that he was supposed to be looking for the trail, not for more unexplored territory. I decided that it wasn’t fair or useful, so I took a deep breath instead, and gestured to him to show the way.

I didn’t like the idea of entering a cave in the forest, but everyone in town knew that it wasn’t safe to be in the forest during a storm in the dry season. The wind could tear down trees or deadly lightning could strike us.

We didn’t venture far inside though. It was too dark to see and, while I thought I could trust my sixth sense better in the cave, there was no reason to take the risk of waking up a family of coyotes or, more likely, ending up trapped if a flood reached the area.

As we got used to the muffled sounds of the storm, Decklan started giving me hesitant looks, even opening his mouth a couple of times. It was hard to discern if he was about to utter an apology because this was mostly his fault, or if he was just nervous about the eerie silence of the cave. He always talked a lot when he was nervous and when he felt guilty.

Yet he held his tongue for a little while longer. He must have noticed how close I had been to yelling at him earlier. He wasn’t always good at reading people’s mood, but everything around us at the moment was the sound or rain outside and the overwhelming silence inside, so I guess it was easier for him to interpret the way I gritted my teeth when he did so much as sigh.

So we waited, quiet like the cave itself. The rain sounded distant and dreamlike. Only the silence and its echo felt real.

That, and the distant sobs that started some minutes later.

“Did you hear that?” Decklan muttered, already walking deeper into the cave to search for the source.

If it had been someone else, I would have thought that he was expecting to confirm that it was… I don’t know, a lost cat or something. Anything to avoid thinking scary things. But, Decklan? I knew this was just one of those times when he couldn’t help chasing something that had caught his attention for reasons he couldn’t explain.

I didn’t want him to be spooked, let alone curious, so I said “No” as plainly as I could. It didn’t help.

I joined him as he followed the guttural sounds that occasionally broke the ominous silence. I wanted to stop him, but it was unlikely to find a big predator in that forest and I didn’t believe in ghosts and mythical monsters; dealing with a small beast was probably easier than keeping Decklan in one place when he had already set his mind in another. Soon I confirmed that we wouldn’t end up more lost than we already were, because that sixth sense that my grandmother mistakenly called “bat eyes” worked perfectly in the cave. I couldn’t “feel” far, but the textures along the walls were unique, easy to remember and identify later. 

The passage descended in an almost imperceptible slope, getting darker and darker as the sounds became more frequent and feral. We took the path on the left, which was more spacious and yet more oppressive because of the musty smell and the lack of light.

My eyes couldn’t adjust anymore. Not an issue, of course.  I let my sixth sense guide me through the darkness and sharp rocks. It wasn’t difficult to navigate in the darkness, but I couldn’t ignore the dread caused by the mix of that rotten-like sweet smell and all the groaning and gasping.

The silence grew louder and louder despite my brother’s rambling whispers. “I’m not imagining it, Mirtala. It’s a crying person, or a hurt animal, maybe? Animals sound like people, like crying people, or maybe we sound like animals when we cry…”

I was tempted to tell him to shut up, that this was serious, but I knew he was scared so I let him talk even though his fear-tinged voice somehow worsened the uncanny combination of our steps on the rock floor and the weakening sobs.

I stopped when they fully disappeared, but my brother kept walking—and whispering—until he reached another passage that came from the left. Then he froze and the next thing he said came with his usual too-loud voice. “Is that a... ?” He didn’t finish the question but yelled an answer to it: “Damn it! It is!”

He ran, and I followed him into a small chamber with enough light to discern a group of disparate stalagmites that rose from a small area close to the bottom wall and… the human body impaled by several of them. I couldn’t see much, but my sixth sense allowed me to feel that his right leg had been pierced by two, a third went through his right shoulder, another through his left arm… Too many, including the tallest one, went through his chest.

The scene sent a shiver down my spine, and I knew we were too late, but I kept running until I was so close that I could see the empty black eyes in the death-white face.

It looked as if the man had fallen from a considerable height. I looked up, trying to find the hole, wondering if the whole ceiling of the cave was about to collapse. But there wasn’t any hole big enough for a person to fall, only the thin cracks that barely let some light in.

It was enough for me to see his face, and distinguish a dark clotted substance on some of his wounds, but not to see the pool of blood among the shadows cast by the rocks. Not that I needed to see it to know it was there. I could feel it running down the rock. I was starting to understand that it was part of that weak sour smell I had noticed as we walked.

“Is he dead?” my brother whispered, a plea more than a question. He had stopped too, but he was a little closer to the man. “What do we do now?”

I had no idea.

I approached the young man, or what was left of him. He couldn’t have been much older than us. Early twenties, at most. His black hair was covered in sweat, sticking into his face. And the horror and pain were still reflected in his frozen grimace.

Was he really alive when we came into the cave? Was he hopeful when he heard us? Was he disappointed during his last moment? I didn’t dare to think much about it. Instead, I reached to close his eyes.

The dead man blinked.

“Get me out of here,” he ordered, before I could even process what was happening. 

He wasn’t pleading like a terrified dying man, or barking demands like some presumptuous ruler. Broken as it was, his was the voice of a man who knew how to get the job done. It was evident that he was used to leading people—and keeping them calm—in the middle of a crisis. 

This was a crisis indeed and I half noticed my brother moving.

“Are you stupid?” I scolded the stranger. “If we move you it will… ”

He started to laugh but winced in pain instead. “Kill me? I know.”

Then he showed a bloody smile that I couldn’t understand. Was he happy with the idea, or laughing at the irony? Either way, he sounded lucid enough and it would be a long time before we could get any help.

We hadn’t even been able to find our way back earlier, before the rain and the night were on the way. That was the only reason we had ended up looking for shelter in a cave. Us, not some tourist or a group of kids. We were lost for the first time in a forest we visited often. Two of the only four humans I knew who could help him out of those rocks without any specialized equipment. What were the odds?

I thought it was a sign, yet I was afraid to make things worse by moving him.

“I’m dying already,” he added, his voice weak but somehow steady. “Help me.”

He was right.

The sound of my brother clearing his throat made me aware of the lump in mine. I swallowed, but it didn’t help to get rid of the fog in my mind. I knew what options we had, but I wasn’t able to compare them fast enough.

“I think we can do it,” Decklan said, kneeling in front of the dying man.

I shook my head, and managed to get the words to explain. “What he wants is to stop the pain. But the truth is that moving him will be torture.”

“Oh, too difficult for you?” Decklan said and, in the darkness, I could imagine the half smile that came with his half shrug. “Well, I could do it.”

I found myself smiling back. “Challenging me won’t work. I don’t really care if you claim to be better at something I don’t want to do.”

“But you want to!”

I was about to swear that I didn’t, when the dying man muttered something else. I couldn’t understand the words this time, but the tone was pleading enough to deliver the message.

“Fine,” I sighed, defeated. Needlessly, I added a warning to my brother: “But don’t you dare to lose your grip.”

He didn’t even bother to remind me that he didn’t lose his grip, ever.

“Okay. Hold his ankles.”

Decklan tilted his head to the left, as if trying to get his two brain cells to meet. “Why?”

“I hold his shoulders, that way we can see each other and sync the movement.”

“Oh, right! Good idea!”

We had moved people before, sure. Mostly by accident, in my case, but not like this. And this was the first time we worked together.

Slowly and steadily, we moved him up, using our minds instead of our hands, even though it probably looked like the latter. It was really difficult to adjust the direction when it was needed because of the shape of the stalagmites but we managed to do it. Precision wasn’t my forte, so it felt like a great effort, enough to make me tired. That wasn’t usual for me, it didn’t matter how heavy something was, or the direction of the movement, telekinesis didn’t usually make me tired.

This gift wasn’t regulated by the same rules as physical force. My brother didn’t fully understand that. Ever since we learnt about gravity at school, he had had trouble holding things too high with telekinesis just because he thought that it was more difficult. That was probably the only reason why he needed my help with this.

After a small eternity, we freed him and proceeded to put him down. This was easier and took only a minute or two, just because we were very careful.

By then I was shaking from the effort, even though there was no physical strain. Decklan wasn’t so troubled, but he was trembling too because he had noticed that the man had been quiet most of the time, and his chest wasn’t moving anymore.

“Is he dead?”

He had asked that before. And just like before, I was sure that the answer was yes.

This time, the stranger didn’t move when I closed his eyes.