(Page 1 of 2) Devil's Hole by Daniel DoggettSUMMARY: There is a bottomless pit that one adventurer feels he can prove does actually have a bottom. He discovers a few other things he was unprepared for.There is some knowledge it is better not to have. If the mind could open up and empty some of its contents it would be a merciful thing. Unfortunately, the mind is not like a computer, which you can keep filling up with information and have the data overwritten. Alcohol might kill enough brain cells associated with memory to make the retrieval of the horror impossible, but it would also kill whoever was drinking it too much. My problems began when it decided to explore a bottomless pit.
Rumors about the bottomless pit are in no shortage. It is said that nothing will grow within thirty feet of it. People planted flowers around it but the plants all died. It remains surrounded by dirt.
One of the most unusual stories about Devil's Hole is the one about the scientists that came to study it. They lowered line into the hole to measure its depth. The scientists only brought about a miles worth, but they ran out of line before the bottom was found!
Not far away is a lake that people swim in. The scientists took this fact into consideration. They noted the water level in the hole is a hundred feet below the water table! That is scientifically impossible, yet it was. They dumped a red dye into it to see if it would come out in the lake a few miles away. It never did. However, in a river over twenty miles away the red dye was found.
When one stands at the rim of the bottomless pit all that person can see of the holes interior is pitch blackness. There is also a strange whistling sound emanating from the hole at night sometimes that disturbs neighbors, but this sound is attributed to the wind.
One day I decided to investigate the bottomless pit, which I was sure really had a bottom. I got into a wet suit and brought a flashlight, an oxygen tank, rope and other climbing gear for my descent into the unknown. I tied one end of the rope to a tree some distance from the hole and the other end around my waist, then lowered myself down into the dark pit.
Descending the first one hundred feet I made a shocking discovery. Shining my flashlight on the walls showed ladders carved into the walls. I did not know of anyone else having explored the hole and didn't know what to make of it. Perhaps I would not be the earliest pioneer of Devil's Hole as I had hoped.
When I got to the water I untied the rope. The water was exceedingly cold and so I was glad I brought the wet suit. Yet still I shivered all over from the cold, or from something else perhaps. I swam farther on at this point and what I found next both intrigued and frightened me at the same time.
Caverns had been carved out of the rock down here, but by whom? I emerged into one of them and took off my mask. There was air in here. I got out of the water and began walking down a long and windy corridor. It led me to a fantastic chamber that explained the mystery of who built these things in pictograms carved on the walls. There were drawings of strange amphibious men called Sahuagin. Some of the scenes depicted these monstrous beasts killing babies of their own race that appeared to have been born with some physical deformities.
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