The first few steps that we took created a considerably loud echoing noise, indicating that we had just entered into a much smaller space. When I made sure by slowly lighting up to the ceiling, it confirmed my guess – the distance between the ceiling and the cave ground had become shorter again, maybe even only barely reaching eight feet. If Jonathan was with us, he would definitely not be able to stand straight.
"There goes the cause of this echoing sound." I said to both Billy and Jessica.
It did not bother me at first, but after a few more minutes walking deeper into the path the echoing sound honestly began to disturb me. I turned for every several moments to the two of them, and apparently Billy was also annoyed by the sounds. Strangely enough, Jessica did not show any signs of discomfort on her facial expression, which probably had something to do with her experiences in cave explorations.
When I was about to turn back heading front again, I hit the right wall of the cave which caught me off guard that I lost my balance a little. I quickly focused my flashlight towards the wall, and found out that it had slowly curved to the left direction. There was no path branching whatsoever ahead of us, however the path did show that it was leading us to the higher level.
We followed the path, and I did feel like we were going higher as we kept on walking. It maybe took about three minutes before I began to see that the path slowly widened up to the point that my flashlight was not able to reach the left wall. It was also at that moment when I realized that the echoing sounds had stopped. I quickly focused my flashlight to the ceiling again, and saw for myself that the ceiling had become taller again.
Just then, Jessica told me to turn off my flashlight. At first I was completely confused since it would mean that we would have no means of light source. However she kept on insisting that it made turned to her only to see that she had said it with a confident expression. I glanced towards Billy and he seemed to be just as clueless as I was.
"Travis, trust me. Turn off the flashlight." Jessica said to me.
"But, why? We will not be able to see anything after that." I responded to her, still doubting her words.
"It is… kind of complicated for me to explain it… Please…" Jessica begged to me again.
I looked towards Billy again and he literally gave me the same facial response. I ended up following her suggestion and turned it off. Just as I was moving the switch, I had the feeling that we would be trapped in a pitch black surrounding once the flashlight had been turned off. However, I was completely mistaken.
I was surprised when I saw what seemed to be a small light dot straight ahead of our path. Jessica told me that when I was focusing my flashlight towards the ceiling, she suddenly had the feeling that we were close to some sort of an opening to the surface. However, the question of whether the opening would be reachable or not was still remained unclear.
We carefully followed the path, not wanting to trip ourselves and fell hard to the ground. As we continued on walking, I felt the urge to turn on my flashlight again for several times. Nevertheless, I had to respect Jessica for hinting and giving out another clue in getting out of the cave. Maybe it took us about six to eight minutes before I began to see the light dot began to get bigger. It was not until a short while later before we could see the source of the light dot, as well as other things that were seemingly shined by the light.
The source of the light dot was coming from a crevice. There was also some indication that the distance from the cave ground to the crevice lip was taller than it was to the cave ceiling since the ceiling seemed to dome and that the crevice was located exactly at the top of the dome.
If I were to take an assumption of the distance between the crevice and the ground, it was probably around eleven feet and a half, significantly taller than it was compared to the highest ceiling. The crevice also provided the sunlight from the outside, providing us with an excellent sight on the things that seemed to originate from the ancient times.
It was the sight of nine oval stones, each of them with a unique marking and a varying symbol carved on the upper middle section, and was rowed and columned evenly of three by three. When we moved closer to take a better look, I was instantly convinced that they were definitely some sort of burial graves, an ancient type nonetheless since I was not familiar with both the markings and symbols at all.
"Well, Jess?" I asked Jessica, who apparently began to lean in towards one of the gravestones.
"Yes. I guess I need to take a closer look at all of them, so it will take a while." Jessica responded to me, completely focused on the remnants of the ancient times right in front of her.
Realizing that it could take probably close to or around thirty minutes, I decided to approach and look around the surrounding walls near the gravestones. I signaled Billy if he also wanted to look around, to which he responded that he would rather stick with Jessica for the time being. As I approached the surrounding walls, I had to turn on my flashlight again to see if there were other things that could be revealed through the lights. It turned out that my decision did result in another revelation.
It was a figure marking, or rather a carving and although it was not clear I was very sure that there was a fairly good chance that the carving was related to the gravestones. I slowly moved to the other section of the wall, to see if there were other carvings as well. I glanced at both Billy and Jessica once, and saw that they were apparently focused on the third gravestone, assuming that they were looking in order of the rows.
The first section of the wall that I took a closer look at was close to the right row, and the carving there showed a either a figure or some sort of a prehistoric symbol. Even though I had never seen it before, I could stop thinking that it must have some sort of a connection to the gravestones there. Nevertheless, I carried those thoughts with me to the next section of the wall, which was located straight ahead from the middle row.
The first carving showed me a figure of four zigzagged lines connected to each other. It was hard to describe what it looked like, but I could not stop imagining the alphabet 'K' but with an additional dashing line right through its center when I looked at it. There were two things that I highlighted however, the first one was that it appeared like the alphabet 'K' was turned roughly 150 degrees, and that the dashing line was uneven, in a manner that one edge appeared to be thicker than the other.
The second carving showed me a completely different figure, but easier to describe. If the first one looked like it had some sort of a tiny bit similarity with one of our modern day alphabets, then the second one definitely appeared like the carver was attempting to either draw or make several holes on the wall.
Unlike the first carving, the second one consisted of six holes, carved in a revolving manner but with a bit of an uneven distance within each holes. Nevertheless, I had to consider the carver was precise in making it assuming that they were indeed attempting to make a six revolving holes and all they had back at their time was possibly sharpened stones. I then proceeded to the third section, which was very close to the left row, and as I headed there I noticed that both Billy and Jessica were at the seventh gravestone.
The third carving was probably the one that I could relate the most to our current modern day symbols. It had the appearance of a ten-line star, with all lines seemingly had a more similar distance from each other. However there was one thing about the symbol that confused me, which was the appearance of each of the ten lines.
So far as I had known, if a person was to draw a star line, they would draw the second and the next lines to intersect with the first line, resulting in a center dot to all of the lines in the end. However, the very symbol right in front of my eyes seemed to be carved either from the center to the outside, or from the outside to the center, meaning that the carver made ten short lines instead of five long lines.
I was fascinated to see several prehistoric symbols with my own eyes. Still though, I was left in a complete doubt if I could ever figure out what either of them could mean.
"No wonder you are that absorbed to the thing you are looking at…" said a familiar voice right behind me, suddenly.
"Oh… yeah, well… looks like I made the right choice to look around the gravestones…" I responded to the voice, which none other originated from Billy and had me a little jumped for a moment.
I turned to Jessica, who seemed to be holding her memo on her left hand, and a pencil on her right hand. Apparently she drew all symbols and markings on the gravestones, and also perhaps the formation of the gravestones. If that was the case, then she would definitely need to know about the three carvings on three sections of the surrounding wall near the gravestones.
"I think you will need some more time to draw three more carvings on the surrounding walls." I told Jessica as I gestured my left hand around the walls.
"Carvings?" Jessica responded as she squinted her eyes.
"Yes. One of them looked like this." I said to her as I pointed my flashlight to the wall right beside me, revealing the carving on the wall.
"Wow…" She replied as her eyes immediately opened wide. "You are right, maybe it will take about ten more minutes…"
"Yes. Go ahead…" I said as I kept on lighting the carving.
At first I thought that it would take her ten minutes to draw each carving into her memo. It turned out that she was actually really good in capturing the figures on the wall that it only took her roughly eleven minutes to draw all three of them. That time also included the time that we had to spend walking from each section of the walls to the others. Another thing about her drawing that impressed me was the accuracy of the thinness and thickness of each figure according to the real carvings.
"You are going to comment on how bad these scratches of mine are not you?" Jessica said as she closed her memo and put it inside her backpack.
"On the contrary, I saw your drawings as a very accurate copy of all the markings and symbols that we found here…" I responded to her, smiling as I looked at her eyes.
She did not give any words of reply or any expressions about it on that matter, and only nodded once before she had her eyes focused back on the last carving again. I then asked her if she could have any guess on when the gravestones and the carving were made. She did not said anything at first, but after she briefly touched the carvings, she returned to one of the gravestones and proceeded to touch the top of it.
"Can you guess about the time range regarding of when these things were created? I asked her.
"I have no idea…" Jessica said, as she sighed. "But there is no mistaking that they definitely belonged to some sort of a prehistoric community."
"So, are you saying that there is a good chance that we may stumble upon more relicts like these in this cave?" I responded to her with another question.
"Actually, I began to think if this was not just a regular cave after all." She replied to me as she looked down with her serious expression. "This cave may in fact be some sort of an ancient burial ground."
"Then, perhaps we should just go back to the path intersection earlier. I think that we may also find something similar there if that is the case." Billy said to me, as he also turned to Jessica.
We quickly agreed to Billy's suggestion, for me because it felt like we need to first know more about the prehistoric relicts in order to gain another clue regarding the alien's motives in invading earth again, and as for Jessica it was most probably to contain as many findings that she could reveal in the cave. I just hoped that Commodore Quentin's hypothesis was right, and that there would be not be a single alien tailing us inside the cave…