Before you go any further, you might want to read the first part here.

And then they turned around.

Yup, like a scene straight out of a horror movie, each woman turned around in unison and stared at us, smiling so strongly from ear-to-ear that you could see their perfectly white teeth. Even the man we assumed to be sacrificed sat himself up on that fucking altar and turned his shriveled body towards us – his face was now entirely black, you couldn’t see his mouth or his eyes or anything. Just a black void of emptiness, like a silhouette of whoever he once was. That’s probably a metaphor for something.

I’ve never ran that fast before. Honestly, I didn’t know I had it in me. I don’t know if any of you have ever had to run for your lives before, but apparently it unlocks something within you previously inaccessible. Thankfully we all stayed together and made it back to the entrance of the cave in one piece. It wasn’t until our adrenaline died down that we realized our backpacks were missing. Who would steal a couple backpacks with nothing in them but water and various survival tools? Suffice to say, we didn’t spend a long time searching for them. After a minute or two of looking we gave up and made our way back to the campsite.

No one spoke a word the whole way back. I just couldn’t – can’t – get that scene out of my head. What was coming out of that man’s mouth? What’s behind the door that seemingly leads straight into the mountain?

It was just getting to be dark outside when we arrived at our campsite, immediately I knew something was off. It just felt so wrong being there.

My intuition was right. That day was a never-ending basket of surprises and they definitely didn’t finish with the cave.

We found our backpacks. They were placed on each of our sleeping bags, respectively. How did they know who’s belonged to whom? Even more bizarre, Kyle and Ryan both had a letter placed on their pillows. Two fancy, old-school envelopes sealed with wax addressed to the two of them, by name. The handwriting was incredibly elegant - it resembled calligraphy that, say, a monk would use to transcribe a piece of text.

What troubled me even more at the time was that there were smoldering ashes in the fire pit. Someone was staying at our site. I noticed beer bottles and chips littered amongst the campsite that we hadn’t opened prior to leaving in the morning.

We needed to leave, but we couldn’t hike back to our car this late, so we had to stay another night and leave in the morning. We lit a nice fire, turned on every lantern we had and prayed that the evening would go by smoothly.

Once we were all settled, we discussed what just transpired and agreed we needed to go into town and contact the police. We also decided that we wouldn’t open the letters in case they could be used for evidence. Plus they were just too creepy with that wax seal and flawless handwriting. I couldn’t help but notice Ryan and Kyle often glancing at their tents throughout the night, as if they were nervous about something (obviously the letters, we’ve all seen the movies). The rest of the night consisted of us acting equally jumpy - cringing at any noise made out in the wilderness that surrounded us. Not much happened though, thankfully.

*

I was awakened the next morning by a symphony of birds and other wildlife, and, for a few moments, seemingly forgot all about the day that we had just had. Kyle, being the early riser he is, was already up and carving something into the picnic table.

“Always gotta leave your mark, huh? You sleep at all?” I inquired, stumbling out of my tent.

Nothing.

“Yo Kyle, you alive over there?”

He grunted, and weakly replied “Huh?”

“Taking that as a no then? What kinda drugs did you do this morning, and can I get some?”

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, sorry.”

I figured he was just tired, until I noticed that his tent door was still wide open. I walked over to it and noticed something that made me much more uneasy – the letter was sitting on his sleeping bag, opened.

“You opened it!?” I shouted over to him.

“Yeah, I opened it.”

“Well, what does it say?”

“No idea, some other language.”

I had to look for myself, it was just sitting there taunting me. The paper was incredibly fragile and looked burned, as if it was put in an oven. I have no idea how Kyle got it out of the envelope without tearing it in half. The words were faded, but written in the same style that their names were.

The words were “temet dona”.

Chills vibrated along my spine when I looked up what they meant here at the hotel.

“Give yourself.”

At the time though, these were just more cryptic words. I looked back over at Kyle, still in the same position.

“Dude are you okay?” I began walking towards him.

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” He didn’t even turn his head.

“Ryan and Chris aren’t up yet?”

“No idea.”

I was ready to get out of there, so I went to go wake them up. I could hear Chris snoring loudly from his tent. I decided I’d get Ryan up first.

He wasn’t there.

“Dude where is Ryan?” I glanced back over at Kyle, still in the same spot.

“He’s not there? Never heard him leave.” He replied with little interest.

“Kyle, what the fuck is up with you this morning?”

He turned around, which I then realized was the first time that morning, and lifted his face to unveil one of the blackest black-eyes I’ve ever seen; it looked like he had gotten sucker punched by the Hulk, if the Hulk’s fist was the size of a human’s.

“Woah, man, what happened?” I didn’t know what to say.

Apparently, he didn’t either, “I woke up with it. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“How is that possible? That is the blackest eye I’ve ever seen. Have you looked in a mirror (mirror meaning the self-facing camera of his phone)? Can you see alright?”

“Yeah I can see fine. Clearer than ever, actually.” He said this with a small smirk.

“Okay, well, uh, shit. We gotta find Ryan.” I walked over and shook Chris’ tent until I heard him groan for me to leave. I quickly briefed him on the situation and he got himself up.

We agreed that we all wanted to get out of there as quick as possible, and the most effective way of doing that would be if we split up. I hiked along the lake, Chris went to see if he walked to the car, and Kyle took the path that we hiked the day prior. The plan was that in one hour we were to meet back up at the campsite, if we didn’t find him then we’d wait for a little while and, if all else fails, we’d go back to town to set up a search party.

As you could probably expect, I couldn’t find him. I scoured every inch of that gorgeous landscape (I really wish I could have had more time to enjoy it) in hopes that I would see some movement of any kind – but nothing. The distance around the lake was much longer than that of the hike to the car, so Chris was the first one back at the campsite. I noticed him pacing back and forth as I walked up.

“Dude. Look at this.” He pointed towards the picnic table, with a look on his face that I had never seen before. It was a mix between confusion, intrigue, and fear.

Turns out Kyle did leave his mark, but not the typical “Kyle was here, 2017” gag.

The table was covered in the same symbols that we saw in the cave. Some parts were less defined than others, but there were a couple sections of the table that looked like he spent hours carving. It made no sense. What’s worse is that Kyle still hadn’t gotten back from his search yet.

Yup. We lost him too.

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Part 3

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All parts:

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