A Child in the Dark

Under the West Virginia earth, darkness was a presence, syrup-thick, oozing from every limestone pore. Mark Chaney led the party single-file, his helmet lamp scribing pale arcs across the glistening walls. Behind him, Jenny’s fluorescent windbreaker, too new, too clean, and far too pink, was a stark contrast to the pale glistening rock that surrounded them. Her companions, Sarah, who thought it was a good idea to wear Crocs into the cave, and David, whose gear was clearly borrowed from someone much larger than him, were not dressed much better.

The cave was a hundred feet below Seneca Rock. The world above was chirpy with robins and green with new leaves, but down here the air hung with ancient moisture and the kind of chill that shivered between your vertebrae. Mark navigated a shoulder-wide squeeze, braced, and turned, illuminating the path for the rest.

“Hi fam, it’s your girl Jenny J. coming at ya from Grapevine Caverns. Me and the crew are here in the bowels of the earth to finally answer the burning question: do cryptids do collabs?”

Despite Mark’s instructions to stay close, Jenny and her flunkies lagged fifty meters behind, ring light blazing as they perfected their duck faces on video. Oh, how Mark hated guiding these touron groups underground, but his student loans were not going to pay themselves.

“Try to keep up,” he said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Careful; it’s slick with biofilm through here. Watch your step.”

Sarah, behind Jenny, centered her headlamp on a slimy glob of the stuff. “It’s actual bat guano, right? Why does it look like snot?”

“Not guano,” Mark said, glancing back. “Bacterial colonies. They excrete a mucosal matrix for moisture retention. Nature’s beauty.”

Jenny aimed her GoPro into the shimmery tunnel and pouted, narrating for her unseen audience. “Y’all, if I go missing, it was murder. Avenge me. Don’t let them say I slipped on a ‘mucosal matrix.’”

“Can’t think of a worse way to go,” David snorted, “Death by snottite.”

They crept onward, boots squeaking and slurping in puddled depressions. The cave’s innards seemed to inhale and exhale around them, some invisible draft ruffling Mark’s damp curls. Jenny continued her monologue, listing out cave facts she’d gleaned from Wikipedia the night before: “The largest stalactite in North America is in New Mexico, but the ones here are like, top five on the east coast, right, Mark?”

Mark grunted. “Third largest on record, but we’re not in that chamber yet. This is the dogleg. It branches, so stay tight.”

They snaked deeper, the passage pinching then widening into a vault. Here the ceiling soared ten feet up, ribbed with flowstone veils that glimmered like wet parchment in their headlamps. Mark paused, notebook out, tracing lines with a grease pencil while the others caught up.

David crouched, examining a deep pool of clear water, his reflection broken by concentric ripples. “Hey, Mark,” he called quietly, “there’s something moving in the water.”

Mark stepped over, shining his lamp. “Probably amphipods. Or a mudskipper. Nothing big, I promise.”

Jenny yelped, exaggeratingly jumping for the camera. “What if it’s the Batboy?”

Mark didn’t dignify the obvious segue with a response, but Sarah piped in right on cue: “The thing from the old 90s tabloids? My grandmother had a collection of those. Batboy was like the Jersey Devil, but grosser.”

Jenny zoomed in for a close-up of Sarah. “You know the origin? We love some folklore content.”

Sarah shrugged. “I heard a scientist discovered it. A bat-human hybrid baby living in the caves. They even made a musical about it, so it must be true. Like Hamilton.”

“I heard they recruited him into the army,” David said, eyes still fixed on the water. “He is the real one who killed Osama bin Laden.”

Jenny rolled her eyes but angled her GoPro toward David. “My followers crave authenticity, Park. Make it creepier.”

David cheesed for the camera. “There are reports of him biting a mall Santa and then escaping from the cops in a stolen car. The kid’s a legend.”

Mark, who had heard these conversations a hundred times, just kept sketching stalactites while the college kids mugged for the camera. He couldn’t believe people were still talking about something as stupid as Batboy after three decades, but at least it was good for business.

When the conversation lulled, Mark stowed his notebook and took point again, guiding them into a well-traveled side tunnel. The rock underfoot turned powdery, sucking at boots. “Single file here. Don’t lean into the left wall, loose rock.”

They shuffled in, the only sounds their breathing and the occasional rattle of Jenny’s GoPro mount. At a hairpin bend, Mark squeezed through, then stopped abruptly, holding up a gloved fist. “Quiet down,” he hissed.

David immediately whispered, “Quiet? Bro, we paid for this. The Mole Men can nap on their own time.”

“Is it bats?” Sarah ducked and flailed an arm as if under attack. “If they get in my blowout, I swear to God I’ll freak out.”

David snorted. Jenny giggled into her phone. “Hashtag cave chaos!”

But Mark’s face was strained enough to sober the group, at least for the moment. “Quiet, please. I hear something.” The others fell silent, and the cave swallowed them in a heavy, airless hush.

Mark cocked his head, listening intently. The silence was immense, so total it felt suffocating. Then, somewhere down the passage, came a faint, impossible sound: a muffled sob. Barely more than a vibration, but decidedly human sounding.

Jenny’s eyes widened. “That…wasn’t you, right?”

Sarah shook her head, lips pressed tight.

David swallowed. “Could be airflow whistling through a crack. Or,” he added, less confident, “maybe a mountain lion cub?”

The sound repeated: a wet whimper, echoing so erratically it seemed to come from both ahead and behind.

Jenny broke the tension with a nervous laugh. “Okay, if this is a prank, it’s A-plus. But can we not?”

The cries wavered up and down the registers, climbing into a child’s thin wail, then guttering out again.

Mark exhaled. He’d mapped these tunnels, led six parties through in two years, and never once heard anything like this. But the others were watching him, Jenny’s camera a glassy third eye. He was the guide, which meant he couldn’t show how much the noise gnawed at him.

“We’re close to the pit chamber,” he said. “If someone’s fallen, they’d be in that sump. But nobody’s logged an entry since last week.”

Sarah cut in, her voice gentling. “What if some local kid snuck in and got lost, or fell through a crevasse or something?”

Mark considered. The sobbing thinned, as if the source had drawn a shaky breath. Then, silence.

Jenny’s voice trembled now, more real than before. “Can we check? Just in case?”

Sarah nodded, already cinching her pack. “We have to, right?”

Mark chewed the inside of his cheek. “Okay,” he said, coming to a decision. “We go forward. No splitting up, no more lagging behind. If it’s nothing, great; if it ends up being someone, you’ll all be social media heroes.”

Jenny grinned, but it was a brittle thing. “Hell yeah, adventure journalism.”

They inched ahead, senses stretched taut as wire. The passage angled downward, steep enough that Jenny had to crab-walk, one hand steadying her GoPro, the other sliding along the slimed wall. Sarah moved like a medic, suddenly all focused efficiency, her calm leaking into her friends. Mark was glad to see at least one of them cool under pressure.

They were now well off the tour path. The air got colder. The crying started again, softer now, like something exhausted by its own misery.

Jenny was shaking, David’s reached forward and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.

Mark’s lamp caught on something ahead: a flash of movement, pale and small, darting behind a pillar of flowstone. He stopped. So did the others.

For a minute, no one breathed. The silence pressed on Mark’s eardrums, ratcheting up the tension until he had to speak just to pop it.

“Could be an animal. Foxes get in sometimes.”

“Foxes don’t cry like that,” Sarah said.

He grunted. “Let’s see.”

They stepped into a low, circular vault, limestone walls streaked with bands of mineral brown, the ceiling hung with dozens of soda-straw stalactites. In the chamber’s center was a shallow pit, full of murky water and bat detritus.

Nothing alive. Nothing visible.

Jenny did a slow 360, filming everything. “Okay, so where is it?”

Mark stepped forward, shining his beam around the chamber. It was empty except for water, stones, and a rank tang of ammonia. He was about to call it off when the sobbing erupted again, this time to his left, just outside the beam.

He turned, and the cry cut off mid-note, replaced by a wet snuffling from the open mouth of the opposite tunnel.

“It sounds like it’s coming from the next chamber,” Mark said. “We keep going.”

The tunnel narrowed, forcing them to duck and shuffle sideways, hands pressed to cold, sweating limestone. Mark went first, each measured step deliberate; the others followed, their bravado compacted to a nervous shuffle and a series of shallow breaths. The crying grew louder; it echoed with unnerving clarity, every sob doubled and tripled by the smooth stone.

The passage pinched so tight that Jenny’s windbreaker scraped audibly. She grunted, camera jammed under her chin, as she narrated in a shaky whisper: “Okay, this is officially the freakiest tour ever. Not even kidding, fam, if you don’t hear from me in five, send a search party.”

Sarah was strangely composed, her training as a nursing student kicking in. David brought up the rear, eyes fixed on the black void behind them, as if half expecting the darkness itself to sneak up and swallow him whole.

Mark popped through the far end, his lamp spearing into a space so perfectly round it felt like the bottom of a well. The chamber was barely tall enough to stand upright, and Mark hunched instinctively away from the sheer mass of slick rock above his head. The space stank of iron and ammonia, sharp and animal. Whatever had been crying had stopped. Only their gasps and the plink of cave water remained.

Jenny squeezed out next and spun, camera up, almost smacking into Mark. The other two filed in just as the noise began again, a low, gurgling whimper from the darkness at their feet.

Mark swept his lamp toward the sound. There, tucked in the shadowed crook where wall met floor, something pale and small hunched with its back to them. Its spine jutted in delicate, trembling ridges. It rocked, shuddering, its body so thin Mark could see each vertebra flex with every sob.

Jenny, drawn by the novelty of terror, crept closer, filming as she moved. “It’s… is it a dog?”

Sarah caught Mark’s sleeve, her voice a frantic whisper. “It looks like a kid. Where are its clothes?”

The thing in the corner heard them. It froze, then twisted around, jointed oddly at the waist, and sat back on its haunches. Four headlamps converged, blasting the shadows away.

It was about the size of a ten-year-old. Entirely naked, save for a scrim of grime and dried silt. Its skin had a waxy, bluish pallor, like a drowned body shot through with tiny veins visible just below the surface. The chest rose and fell in frantic little pants. Its arms were stick-thin, ending in oversized hands; the fingers double-jointed and tipped with translucent, spatulate nails.

The face was moon-round, cheeks sunken to the bone, with a mouth that cut too wide. Its eyes dominated the face, huge, amber, and almost beautiful, the pupils so round and black they seemed to drink in the headlamp beams. A delicate nose, barely more than two slits. Ears, pointed and fanned like bat wings, angled for maximum reception.

It regarded them, eyes flicking from face to face, blinking once, slowly, reptilian.

Jenny’s voice cracked the silence: “Oh my god. Oh my god. Guys. It’s the Batboy. That is literally Batboy!”

Her GoPro flash fired, white and sudden. The creature recoiled, pressing back into the stone, hands up to shield its face. It made a high, keening noise, then fell silent, watching them through a web of splayed fingers.

Sarah’s nurse reflex took over; she edged forward, voice soft. “You’re okay. It’s okay, we’re not here to hurt you.”

Mark reached out, stopping her with an elbow. “Don’t. We don’t know what—”

But Jenny, emboldened by the lack of immediate danger, pushed closer, documenting every twitch and tremor. “Look at its eyes! And the ears! It’s adorable! Oh my god, smile, please.”

As if in answer, the thing’s mouth stretched up at the corners, uncertainly, mimicking Jenny’s grin. Its lips peeled back too far, exposing teeth that were tiny, glassy, numerous, and almost serrated. The smile was heartbreaking and horrifying at once.

David sidled up, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s scared. See? It’s just like a kid.”

The creature tilted its head, eyes widening, and chirped, a soft, questioning sound, pitched somewhere between bird and infant.

Sarah was openly crying now, unable to reconcile the thing’s apparent misery with its strange doll-like features. “It’s lost down here,” she said. “It’s just a baby.”

Mark, voice flat with fear, responded, “Nobody move. Just... let’s not startle it.”

But Jenny, always the content gremlin, kept advancing. She leaned in, GoPro outstretched, narrating as she edged closer: “Y’all, this is unreal. We have found the Batboy, and he is NOT okay. I mean, look at him. He is cute as a button, but somebody please feed this kid a PowerBar or something.”

The creature’s gaze followed the camera, fascinated. David, struck by inspiration, dug in his backpack and extracted a stick of beef jerky. “Hey, little dude,” he said, keeping his voice slow and gentle. “Want some food?”

He tossed it gently at the creature’s feet. The boy-thing watched, then reached with both hands, delicate as a surgeon. It sniffed the jerky, nose twitching, then brought it to its mouth and chewed methodically.

For a surreal minute, the group relaxed. Jenny filmed. David talked to the creature, high and syrupy, like it was a puppy. Even Mark, whose every bone was screaming caution, found himself fascinated by the sheer impossibility of the thing.

Sarah inched closer to it, reaching out her hand, palm up, as if greeting a nervous patient.

“It’s okay,” she said gently, inching forward. “We won’t hurt you. We’re going to take you some place you can get help.”

The boy-thing watched her approach. Its head cocked. The corners of its mouth began to twitch, pulling into that too-wide mimicry of a smile. Its eyes unblinking. It sniffed at her hand looking for more food. When it found she had no jerky, for a heartbeat, it looked like it might cry again.

Then it lunged.

It was a blur, so fast that Mark only registered the movement when Sarah was already on the ground, her headlamp spinning off and casting mad shadows. She screamed, a raw, wordless bleat cut short by the sound of tearing.

Jenny dropped her camera. David froze, eyes bugging, mouth open in a horrified O.

Sarah’s legs kicked once, twice. Then stopped.

The creature crouched over her, making frantic, clicking noises, its mouth buried in the soft of Sarah’s neck. Blood pooled darkly under them, the cave floor drinking it up.

Mark reacted first, grabbing Jenny by the elbow and hauling her backward. “Move! Move now!” he barked.

Jenny stumbled, half-crawling, scrabbling for her GoPro as she went. David backed away, eyes glued to the spectacle, muttering, “oh god oh god oh god” as if repetition might change the outcome.

The boy-thing, oblivious to the escape, fed greedily, cooing with each red mouthful. When it finally looked up, Sarah’s face was slack, her eyes already glassy. It blinked, tongue flicking at the mess on its lips, and fixed its gaze on the three remaining intruders.

Mark pushed the group back through the squeeze, cursing when David jammed in the narrow gap. Behind them, the creature’s chirping was no longer soft. It had become piercing, rhythmic, echoing off the stone until the whole tunnel seemed to join in. Its eyes glinted just outside their headlamps, twin points of light in the dark.

Mark shoved Jenny ahead, the slap of their boots a wet metronome as they tore through the limestone corridor, David panting raggedly behind. Panic had detonated any semblance of order. The cave was a shotgun blast of echoes, Jenny’s sobs, David’s asthmatic heaving, and the animal chirrup of the thing hunting them.

Mark knew this section of Grapevine Caverns in his bones, but nothing in his countless traversals had prepared him for this: a half hour from the surface in a hell of flickering headlamps and the constant, erratic shriek of something not quite human.

The boy-thing’s clicking and coos echoed off the limestone, making it hard to pinpoint its location. Sometimes it seemed to chirp from ahead, sometimes from a side fissure or, worst of all, directly above them. The sound had an impossible quality, a ventriloquism that made Mark doubt his sense of direction.

“Don’t look back!” he barked, but Jenny ignored him, her headlamp beam jerking wildly. “Why is it chasing us? Where is the path, Mark?”

“Forward, just GO.” The cave narrowed, flexing to half a meter across, forcing Jenny to turn her shoulders and squeeze. David, always the slowest, lagged, boots slapping at nothing. Mark risked a glance: David’s glasses were fogged, his mouth a gaping wound.

Ahead, the tunnel corkscrewed. Mark’s mind, even in terror, ticked it off his mental map: ten meters, a sharp left, then the culvert. If they made it to the utility ladder, they could scale straight up to the maintenance crawl and maybe barricade themselves.

But the creature had grown louder; what at first had sounded like sobs was now warbling laughter, seemingly delighted. “It’s toying with us,” Mark muttered, not meaning for anyone to hear.

David did, and with arms pinwheeling in panic, slammed into Mark, nearly bowling him over.

The creature’s cry answered from close, so close, just around the last bend.

David lost his footing and dropped his pack. It fell into the darkness, landing with a distant, wet slap. “Leave it!” Mark hissed, grabbing David’s elbow and hauling him up. Together, they staggered after Jenny, who had collapsed in a patch of cave moss, sobbing into her arms.

“Move!” Mark barked again.

From behind, the creature cooed, “Moow,” almost musical. It was learning their voices. It was mocking them.

Mark tried to drag Jenny by the collar, but she fought him, squirming free. “No! Get away from me!” she howled, swatting at his hands.

Behind them, David shouted. His lamp picked out the boy-thing, a smear of pale in the darkness, perched low and crablike on all fours. It cocked its head, watching them. Then, with a liquid grace, it launched itself at David.

The impact made a sick, meaty sound. David screamed, the noise going on and on, rattling through Mark’s skull. The creature’s hands, those long, double-jointed fingers, clamped over David’s mouth and eyes. Its mouth opened, stretching wider than any human jaw, and bit down. The sounds that followed were wet and final.

Mark yanked Jenny up by the wrist. She cursed and sobbed, seemingly oblivious that her delay had cost David his life. Jenny’s legs buckled, but she stayed upright this time, adrenaline transmuting her terror into raw velocity.

Behind, there was a rhythm to the boy-thing’s feeding. A chomp, slurp, and satisfied giggle. Then, a lull, followed by a fatal silence.

Jenny’s teeth chattered. “Did you see its mouth? Did you see—” She started to weep, inconsolable.

Mark ignored her, Jenny’s hysteria becoming a low background whine. He pressed on; the culvert was just ahead, and the ladder would be around the bend after that.

The boy-thing let them run. Its next cry came distant, louder, then soft again. Mark realized, with a kind of cold clarity, that it wasn’t just random sound: the creature was echoing Jenny’s voice, her gasps and screams, learning to mimic her panicked cry the way it had earlier mimicked the sobs of a child.

The tunnel sloped abruptly. Jenny lost her footing and slid, shoes scraping the calcium scales, straight into the culvert pool. The cold water shocked her into coherence. She came up spitting.

It would have been comical under better circumstances. He shined his lamp around, finding the fissure that led to the maintenance crawl. “In there. I’ll boost you.”

They moved into the crack, barely wide enough for a human chest. Jenny shimmied in, scraping her knuckles. Mark followed, feeling the rock bite into his sides. The stone here was cold and greasy, like the inside of a rotting mouth.

Mark jammed his feet against the wall, using his whole body to push Jenny ahead. She popped out into a dry alcove, and there it was, the ancient steel ladder drilled into the shaft wall, its yellow paint mottled with rust and streaked guano. For a brief, delirious moment, Mark felt hope. He was sure the creature wanted them to run. It enjoyed the hunt. If they stayed silent in the maintenance shaft, maybe the thing would lose interest.

“Go,” Mark croaked, and Jenny obeyed, shoving up the rungs so fast her boots rattled the frame. She had stopped crying now, her camera and phone both lost somewhere in the darkness. No more filters, no snark, just a hiccupping sniffle barely above a whisper.

Halfway to the top, Jenny stopped. She looked down past him, into the dark. “Did you hear that?”

They both stared into the blackness below, listening intently, afraid to even breathe.

The silence stretched taut as a bowstring.

Then, a scream shattered the moment as something reached from above and yanked Jenny up, off the ladder and into the air. Mark spun, groping after her. In the wild wash of his lamp, he caught a glimpse: The shaft above yawned into a round mouth, and from its pit came a pair of cold, gold marbles. The creature stared unblinking down at Jenny as she kicked, arms flailing, suspended by an impossible grip tangled in her thick hair. The boy-thing had found a way in through a crack in the ceiling, and now it dangled Jenny over the dark abyss, its other arm braced in the rock, head canted in sick curiosity.

Jenny screamed, “Mark, help, please—” Her voice went shrill as the creature’s mouth found the meat of her shoulder, teeth puncturing the bright pink fabric of her windbreaker. She convulsed, shrieked, tried to punch at its face. It twittered back, a warbling note so high and pure Mark’s ears rang.

He lunged, swinging his fist, but the angle was wrong, and he only grazed the creature. The boy-thing bared its teeth in a rictus, an imitation of Jenny’s own sobbing grimace. Then, with a guttural grunt, it reared back, yanking Jenny towards the ceiling. Her hands found purchase on the rocks, then slipped, nails peeling bloody, and she was gone, up the shaft and out of sight.

Mark scrambled up the ladder after, but the creature was already gone, dragging its prey into a crack in the rock where no living human could navigate.

Jenny’s screams retreated, muffled by stone, then abruptly stopped. A rain of blood droplets pelted the chamber floor, splattering Mark’s boots and helmet. He stared up after her, mouth open, unable to do anything but shudder.

Silence again. Then, a sound like chewing, wet and deliberate, from somewhere high above.

Mark did not linger. He staggered to the top of the ladder, headlamp wobbling, boots slipping in fresh slicks of blood. Jenny was gone, but the thing would be back. He realized that now. It would always come back.

The maintenance crawl was a half-collapsed tunnel being dug out for future use. The workers had left digging tools near a mound of shattered stone and an open trench near the wall. Mark grabbed a mining pick and scanned the room. In the lamp’s glow, he saw what he needed near the roof: a boulder the size of a washing machine, cracked on two sides and suspended by a column of sediment reinforced with safety mesh and an industrial jack. A breakdown that had not yet been safely removed.

He drew a shaky breath and stumbled over, picking his spot carefully. There would be no more running.

The boy-thing didn’t bother with stealth this time; high keening giggles and the stuttered tap of claws announced its arrival. It slithered into his headlamp beam ten feet above, upside down, crawling along the ceiling with its arms and legs splayed wide, like some demon gecko.

Its face was slick with blood, and the mouth gaped in a crimson smile. Mark felt his bladder threaten to release. He gripped the mining pick like a Louisville Slugger, knuckles pale.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, you little bastard.”

The boy-thing paused, head cocked, eyes dilating as it studied him. It made a soft, seemingly tender sound, a mewling noise that sounded almost like words “lil basa,” then it fell to the floor, landing in a crouch.

Mark raised the pick and smashed it into the stone at his feet, sending a volley of sparks and dust toward the creature’s bulbous eyes. It hissed, dodging sideways, right under the boulder.

Mark seized the moment. He turned and slammed the pick into the support jack once, twice, toppling it with the third swing. The safety mesh ripped; the pillar crumbled. The boulder wobbled, then dropped.

Mark leapt back as the boy-thing looked up at the last instant, eyes twin moons, mouth open in what might have been a word. The boulder crushed it flat with a percussive boom, spraying fragments of bone and stone in all directions.

A large rock cracked off Mark’s helmet, sending it and his headlamp spinning into a dust cloud that coated Mark in grey. He backed against the wall, clutching at his chest, lungs screaming.

He was alive. He’d killed it.

Mark slid down the wall, laughing in a way that hurt his ribs. A cracked, hysterical sound, echoing up and down the maintenance shaft. The laughter collapsed into sobs, which further collapsed into exhausted gasping.

He looked at his hands, at the blood and stone dust, and tried to make them stop shaking.

His lamp flickered, broken nearby. In the dying light, he dared to hope. It didn’t matter if he lost the light. He knew these tunnels; he could get out by touch if it came to it. It would take him some time to crawl back to the surface, but he’d make it. He would call the police, call the university; he’d be famous.

Then the cooing began again.

Not from the tunnel behind, or above, but from everywhere. The stone vibrated with it, a chorus of harmonic cries, more voices echoing than he could count. Eyes, dozens of them, reflected the light from the cracks and ceiling fissures, each a hungry amber pinpoint.

His lamp guttered, one last gasp of light, and in it he saw them emerging. Some as small as toddlers, most as big as the first creature. A tribe of pale goblins that had bred for generations in the black lungs of the mountains, in the caves and mines that honeycombed through Appalachia like blood vessels. They watched him in perfect silence, as if waiting for the dinner bell. Then the lamp died. The darkness was total, and alive with the music of hunger.

Mark Chaney’s scream, when it came, was just another sound in the choir.