A Little Bit of Hell and Heaven

Part 2

(much) earlier that morning

Steven and Simon were in the library, sitting at a table that was stacked high with all sorts of books. It was about noon; Simon was fast asleep, his face resting on the spread pages of an open book. Steven was still leafing through book after book, finding nothing. He flipped through the last book, then slammed it shut with a frustrated sigh. Simon jerked upright, suddenly awake, the pages of the small book still stuck to his cheek.

"The Mayan Empire!" Simon shouted, his eyes darting around frantically. As he took in his surroundings, he relaxed a little.

"Dude! Shut up! This is a library!" Steven whisper-shouted. Turning to see a still-groggy Simon, he groaned. "You fell asleep?"

"It's like noon! That's like midnight for vampires. I'm tired."

Steven stared at Simon incredulously for a moment; Simon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The book was still stuck loosely to his face, but he didn't seem to notice. Suddenly, Steven lunged toward Simon, who flinched backward, but Steven only reached for Simon's face and peeled the book off of his cheek. As he flipped through the book, his eyes grew wide and his face lit up. Simon was absently rubbing the bright pink spot on his face where the book had been.

"Simon!" Steven stood up so suddenly, he got his gawky legs tangled in his chair and fell on top of Simon. Both of them ended up on the floor: Steven sprawled out halfway under the table and Simon sitting on the floor, dazed, where his chair had slipped out from underneath him. Steven groaned softly as he rolled over and sat up.

"What the - Steven, what -" Simon cut off as Steven showed him a page of the book that had been stuck to his face. "'The Lake of Absolute Renewal'" Simon read slowly off the page. "'a complete submersion in the Lake of Absolute Renewal will return any changeling to who or what they were before their transformation.' Interesting..."

"Dude! Simon this - this is - this is it! This is totally the answer to my problem!" Steven tripped over his words in his excitement.

"Well, uh - well ok. Is there like, a map or anything to tell us where to find this, uhh, lake?"

"ehhh... sort of?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, 50 miles upstate, there's this - er - network of tunnels and caves and stuff. The lake is in one of those caves, but..." Steven trailed off.

"But? But what?" Simon asked, mildly freaking out.

"Um... well... there may or may not be more than ten other caves that could potentially kill us if we go in them. And those caves - hypothetical caves - aren't marked so that we know which cave is which..."

Simon rubbed his hand over his face and groaned. "We should really get started, but we have to wait until sunset."

"What should we do until then?"

"Sleep." Simon climbed back into his chair and laid his head down on the table, falling asleep soon after. Steven remained underneath the table, staring at its underside and tapping his foot against the leg. Eventually he, too, drifted off to sleep.

6 hours later, they were awoken by the library matron, who told them the library would be closing in 5 minutes with a heavy Russian accent. They shook themselves awake and noticed that their monstrous stacks of books had disappeared. 

"Good thing I grabbed that book and fell asleep on top of it," Steven muttered, rubbing the sore spot on his back where he had been laying on the book. He held it up and they checked it out on their way out.

"Stupid college children," the matron muttered under her breath, along with a string of curses in Russian, as the two walked out the doors.

"Tell me where I'm going," Simon said as they slid into his car. Steven told him the name of the place and Simon plugged it into his phone's GPS. He flicked his lights on and they drove toward the mountains.

"You have arrived at your destination." the GPS told them as they pulled into a small parking lot after about an hour of driving. A sign on the edge of the parking lot read: Endless Caves State Park. Smaller writing beneath the name of the park read: caves entrance with an arrow pointing up a small path to a tunnel in the side of the mountain. Simon parked the car and they grabbed flashlights and backpacks in preparation for their trek into the caves.

They spent half an hour meandering down the large "corridor" before a slightly smaller tunnel split off to the right.  They stood there at the fork, staring down the two pathways. The larger of the two, that continued on the same straight path, faded into blackness, continuing indefinitely. The smaller tunnel to the right was long and dark except for a pinprick of golden light at the end. Steven and Simon glanced at each other and came to the unspoken decision to go down the smaller path and find out what the light at the end was.