Imane looks at you, her face grave.
"It's the mushrooms. On the walls. They make you see things. Terrible things. Why I wore that cloth, see? You were breathing in their spores the whole time you were down there. Couple more hours down there, your brains would have turned to mush. Scrabbling at the walls, screaming at the darkness. The caves go much, much deeper than you saw. I think that's what happened to the Japanese girl, that tourist in the eighties. I think she went into the caves of Glenkildove, and something happened to her down there, something very bad, and she never came up again.
"It's not good to talk about things you might have seen in the caves, things your brain told you that you saw or heard. Not good to think about them, either. It was none of it real, none of it. The mushrooms stir things up from deep down, things from the darkest places of your mind. They come for you down there. But you got out. You survived. That's all that matters. All that will ever matter."
I nod in silent agreement. I did survive.
I shiver at the thought of what could have happened.
My brain is racing. I feel as though there are things here that don't make sense, but I am so exhausted it is hard to pursue the thread in my mind.
Next