Dura

Part 2

I had to push Alex to press him through the opening and as soon as he was out he pulled me out.

The room was big enough for us to stand in. It was only illuminated by our flashlights and headlights. Looking back at the hole we just came out of, it was clear that it was too small for us to enter. Squeezing yourself out of a tiny hole is one thing, crawling inside of it another. Realizing this, my heart almost stopped. If the hole that let the cold air in was too small as well – if there was such a hole at all – we would die in here.

I pointed my flashlight at Alex's face. His frosty agitated breath told me he was just as terrified as I was. Slowly, we tracked the walls with our flashlights. To our relief, there was a second opening big enough for us to enter. Before I had time to cool down, something inside of the opening caught my eye.

It was a skeleton, covered in some dark clothes. The lower part of its body was still inside the hole, meaning he or she must've died trying to crawl out of it and gotten stuck.

"Shit, Lester," Alex said.

"It's good news," I said with a shaky voice. "It means we're going to get out..."

We sat down next to the remains, first to examine it and then to move it so that we could enter the small opening. The skull was lying face down, but based on the color of the bones we immediately saw that this skeleton wasn't prehistoric. There was no soft tissue left, but as far as skeletons go it looked rather fresh. Alex reached for the skull and carefully picked it up and held it in front of us.

"Give me some light," he said.

I shone my flashlight on the face of the skull. It almost looked like it was smiling at us, a big horrific grin.

"Put it away," I said.

"Wait," Alex said. "Look at it. There's something..."

"What?" I asked in a whisper.

"Can't you see it?" he asked rhetorically.

I was too stressed to see anything particular with it.

"It's surprisingly elongated..." He turned the skull around. "The back of its head is massive. And look at the top... not very globular, you see?"

I began to see what he was talking about, but my mind didn't grasp what he was trying to tell me.

"So...?" I said.

He turned the skull around so that the face was staring at us again. "Look at its facial structures... very pronounced."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Its eyebrows are heavy... Look, Lester, I know this is going to sound crazy but I think we are looking at the skull of a Neanderthal."

"That is crazy," I said, although I could clearly see the similarities from the skulls we had been studying in class. "Look at the bones, it must have died at least within this century."

"I know," Alex said, "and yet this is clearly the skull of a Neanderthal. I mean, I know Neanderthal DNA in humans can affect the shape of the skull but this is something else."

"Do you think the environment in the cave could've helped preserve the bones this well?"

"I don't know, that would be pretty crazy as well but I can't think of any explanation right now that wouldn't be completely bonkers."

With a mixture of fear, confusion, and excitement we decided to carefully move the remains away from the opening and leave the cave so that we could report our findings to the university.

This passage was larger and we could make our way through it with ease. The worry disappeared from our voices as we crawled and the excitement over what we had found took over. We did fear what the faculty would say about our amateurish expedition, but surely our discovery would compensate for our foolishness to some degree.

We saw the light at the end of the cave, but strangely enough, it was still cold. Alex got out first.

"Something is wrong," he said as I exited the cave.

I saw what he meant. There were patches of snow in the grass. This was in late August and it had been one of the warmest summers in recent memory. Dumbfounded, we looked around trying to figure out what was going on. In front of us, there was a set of large boulders obscuring the view. We slowly walked past them and entered the forest. It seemed thicker than before.

"How much time did we spend in that cave?" Alex said, trying to make it sound like a joke although he was obviously frightened. "It's winter, or... I mean... It's early spring, at least."

I looked up at the sun, filtered behind a cover of clouds.

"The sun is where it suppose to be," I said. "Whatever is going on, this is the same day..."

I reached for my phone. The time and date were as expected but there was no reception or internet connection.

We tried to walk around the cliff we had come out of in an attempt to find our camp, but on the other side, there was nothing to be found. The disorientation I felt trying to comprehend what was happening almost gave me a panic attack, but there wasn't any time to panic. A gunshot echoed through the forest. Two more followed. We decided to walk toward the sounds in the hopes to find someone to talk to. However, we moved slowly so that we would see them before they saw us.

We came to a small hill. Sounds of voices came from the other side of it, but we couldn't hear what they were saying. We climbed up on the hill, lay down on top of it and peeked down. On the ground beneath us, there was a large dead animal covered in thick fur.

"That's..." Alex began.

"That's a mammoth!" I continued.