What do Caves Eat?

 was the title of the book.

Its answer, right on the first page:

“You have to see it to understand.

I’ll teach you how to get there,

but your challenge is to jot it all down,

because I couldn’t.”

I read,

and read,

and when I had read everything, I thought,

“I can do this.”

It didn’t matter I had never seen the inside of a cave,

I knew where to go, and what to do by heart,

and the author’s picture on the back

showed that he was taller than me.

I wouldn’t get stuck if he hadn’t.

As I flew across the country to find my cave

I stared at the last few pages, lined but empty

and labeled, “OBSERVATIONS.”

I squeezed through the mouth into a gaping cavern,

of stalactites and stalagmites, jutting out like teeth.

There were bats clustered everywhere on the ceiling,

silent, but unfurling momentarily as I passed.

At the back was a little gash in the wall

and the bats no longer clung to the ceiling,

they huddled from cold oozing out of the crevice.

I followed a trickling stream down the winding passage

and at the bottom I heard the sound

of water falling into the lake I was looking for.

I pulled out my book, and following the last directions,

I hopped in.

Then I saw why the bats stopped roosting where they did.

Coating the walls was a dense mat of fuzz,

thick and clumpy like wet dryer lint,

I could even feel it submerged under my feet,

getting tangled on my boots,

and caught everywhere on the walls were bats, slowly desiccating .

As I got closer and shone my light on a recent victim,

I stopped,

and thought,

“Bat’s aren’t white on the inside.

They don’t have pages.

Or the faded title,

What do Caves Eat?”

I looked around at the dangling books in horror,

and the tangles of fibers, slowly squeezing out

their substance letter by letter,

dripping into the stew of enzymes

that I was standing in.

I slapped my book shut, cradling its precious few notes

and turned for the entrance,

but I was caught in the tangle underfoot

and the book went tumbling into the water, sinking fast,

and not even taking a moment to untangle myself I dove for it.

I found it on the floor, already ensnared in fibers,

but I wrenched it free and tore my feet away,

and clambered out of that vile hole in the ground.

My book is safe now, the fibers and enzymes withered

under the heat of a hotel dryer on high,

but I fear that the cave has a taste for something new.

I can feel the fibers slowly creeping up my back

(it seems I can’t get dry enough to halt them).

So I have to get this all down

before they engulf me

and start to squeeze,

and I

drip,

drip,

drip

away.