The Family Plot

Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.

Dear Ava,

It’s so weird to think that just a month ago, everything made sense. I think that maybe if I try to write this all down, it will help clear my head. I can convince myself that I’m where I’m supposed to be, that none of this is wrong, that I’m…

Never mind. Let’s start at the beginning.

Do you know what taphophobia is? It’s the fear of being buried alive. No one talks about it much anymore, but back in the day, people were terrified of it. There were all kinds of contraptions you could buy for your coffin to make sure someone saved you if you woke up six feet under. Little flags that would pop out of the dirt, bells that rang, all sorts of creepy stuff.

You know what, though? I don’t think it was being in a coffin that scared people most. I don’t even think it was the idea of everyone they loved thinking that they’re dead.

It was the part about being underground. Of waking up in a place that feels…wrong…even if everything about it looks right. The other side of the coin, beyond the veil, whatever you want to call it.

That’s the thing about being Inside. You don’t realize it at first. You think you’re out in the world, living your life, when really you’re miles underground, slowly fading away into nothing.

Sorry, I promise I’m trying to focus.

Here in Kentucky, you can’t walk ten yards without running into a cave. The ground is a sieve, hollowed out by millennia of water reaching cold fingers through cracks in the limestone. You know that.

But you also know that it isn’t all cave tours and state parks. A pasture you drive past one day might be gone the next, sucked into a sinkhole’s jagged teeth. The ground is always shifting, never stable, and for most of my life, that’s how I’ve felt, too.

Our family has lived on this farm for generations, and it has swallowed up every one of us.

Back when you were born, we all lived here together. Grandma and Grandpa in the big farmhouse build in 1869, and our two uncles and their families scattered around the property. I never asked why Mom and Dad chose the plot closest to the road. I used to think it was because it was the shortest walk to the bus stop, but now I’m worried that there might’ve been other reasons.

They wanted us to be as far from The Cave as possible.

The Cave is about a quarter of a mile from the farmhouse and so overgrown with brush and weeds that the mouth is barely visible. It isn’t like the caves you see on TV, more like a narrow shaft opening into the earth. It always feels cold around there, even in the middle of August. A kind of damp chill that sinks into your lungs and sprouts along your ribs like mold.

Some people, like Uncle Clark, say The Cave whispers. Grandma always insisted that it sang, but you were probably too young back then to remember. Dad used to say it gave him bad dreams. He never told us what about.

I never saw or heard any of that stuff. Not until recently.

You were little when Uncle Clark disappeared, six months old, I think? Or seven. I don’t know. I can’t remember now, but I know I was ten. He and Aunt Mary lived closest to the forest that ran along the hills like the knobby ridges of a spine. When our cousin Joshua was a baby, Uncle Clark started talking about seeing things in the trees at night. Eyes that glowed silver. Long fingers grasping at the windowsill. Deer that didn’t look like deer. He started having nightmares, too.

Dad said he was sleep deprived. But Mom, who grew up on this land, didn’t say anything at all. Two years later, Uncle Clark walked into the woods one morning and never came back.

Aunt Mary tried to raise Joshua alongside the rest of us for a while, but eventually the bills piled up, and they moved in with her sister in Florida.

Probably for the best, honestly. Joshua doesn’t know it, but he’s the only one of us who really got away.

At least, the first one yet.

Anna was next. You remember her, don’t you? Do you remember that day?

We were all playing outside near Uncle Shane’s house—right up the hill from Uncle Clark’s—when she pointed into the trees and shouted, “There they are!” and ran into the woods. Caiden followed, and you and I did too, but there was no trace. As soon as we got under the branches, dappled in the golden light of late summer, it was as if Anna had never existed at all. We walked a long way looking. We called her name. Nothing. Uncle Shane and Mom and Dad went out again that evening, and Grandma and Grandpa the day after. No one ever found her. Caiden and Anna’s mom died a couple years before, so after that it was just Caiden and Uncle Shane.

Until five years later, when Uncle Shane disappeared too.

The weird thing was, no one ever called the police. Not when Anna ran off, not when our uncles left. Not when Mom started whispering about lights bouncing over the dark fields or music on the wind. Not when Grandpa ambled off one Christmas morning. I was an adult before I knew that calling the police was a thing a person could do. It’s weird to me now, but it wasn’t back then. I’d never heard of a missing person’s report. It was like Grandma just accepted the losses every time. She went out looking, but she didn’t really think she’d find anything. The disappearances felt…expected, somehow, like we were just waiting for The Cave to take all of us.

Caiden tried to escape. When he was sixteen, he quit school and got a job in the next town. But then one frosty morning I looked out my bedroom window and saw him ambling straight into the woods without looking back. None of us even knew he was home.

We never saw him again. Watching a thing like that will change a person.

It was worse when Mom went, though.

When was that? Two years ago? You have a better memory than me. I just know it was winter sometime, probably January. It was bitter cold. I never told you this, but I was with her that day. I followed her footsteps in the snow out the back door, through the pastures, and beyond the tree line. They continued on, curling away into the dim evening like a trail of smoke.

I followed. Because it was Mom, after all. Dad was gone already. He got separated from Caiden’s search party and no one ever saw him again. But Mom is the strongest woman I’ve ever known besides Grandma, the only one who seemed able to withstand this place and still love it.

I found her hovering by the mouth of The Cave. Somehow, there wasn’t any snow there. The ground was vibrant and green and mossy, like spring instead of January. But still, that damp chill clung on. The air smelled like wood rot and herbs.

I called to her, but she didn’t seem to hear me. There was something wrong about the way she stared, as if she didn’t recognize who I was.

I said it was cold out and we should be getting back. She told me we’d gotten it mixed up, and that we weren’t outside The Cave at all. We were inside, and we needed to go through it to get to the other side.

I said that was crazy. I told her to look around; we’re at home on the farm like always.

“Don’t trust your eyes, Mags,” she told me. “Come with me. I know the way. I’ll get you out.”

She offered her hand, but I didn’t take it. In fact, when she wouldn’t listen to me, I turned around and left.

Mom never came back.

I still feel guilty about that.

Especially because now, I’m worried that she was right. What if she was? What if we really can’t trust our eyes anymore? What if…

I have to finish this story.

For about six months after Grandma left, once it was just you and me on the farm, everything seemed fine. Or, as fine as it could be, I guess. No shadows in the moonlight, no eyes in the trees. In fact, the farm was so quiet that I thought The Cave was finally finished with us. Maybe it has swallowed as much of our blood as it could hold.

That was stupid. It’s calling me still, right now. I can hear that whisper on the wind, that song…it knows the way out. It knows the way home.

We have to follow it.

Sorry, Ava. Moving on.

First, there were the sounds. Just one here or there, a whisper in my ear as I cleaned equipment in the barn, or a creak at night that didn’t match the house’s normal groans and pops. I know this place as well as I know my own body. Something wasn’t right.

But you never mentioned the sounds, so I didn’t, either. I spent my days walking you to the bus in the mornings, picking you up in the afternoons, and working the farm in between. We aren’t rolling in cash or anything, but we do alright. I always set my alarm for 2:30pm so I’ll be at the bus stop on time. I never wanted you to think I’d leave you alone.

The only problem was that I stopped sleeping well. The whispers were increasing, but I became pretty good at shoving them to the back of my mind.

Things changed in October. Cliché, right?

First there was the…no, it was the house. The house was first. Definitely.

It was getting dark one evening—the sun sets so early in the fall—and I was cutting the last of the herbs from the half-frozen garden. The wind whistled through tomato plants and cucumber vines that still clung to their metal cages with frostbitten leaves. As I dropped bunches of rosemary and thyme into my basket, I happened to raise my eyes and glance across the pasture at the dark, cold shell of Uncle Shane’s house.

Only, it wasn’t dark and cold anymore. Vibrant green moss carpeted the roof and clung in patches to the walls, even reaching over the windowsills and stretching across the cracked glass. Nothing around the house looked dead. The grass was green and full of clover, thistles, and other weeds. Thorny brambles spilled from the window boxes.

There was no light inside the house except for a single candle burning on the windowsill. Even from this distance, if I squinted, I could make out a shape shifting in the shadows behind it.

“Mom?” I knew this was silly, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind. I got up and sprinted across the field toward the house.

I can’t tell you the exact moment that everything changed, because I don’t remember. All I know is that by the time I got to the door, the house was quiet again. No moss, no tangled gardens, no candle in the window. I pressed my face to the glass to try to see inside, but it was so grimy after years of neglect that I couldn’t make out a single thing.

My heart sank as I turned away. But then I stopped dead in my tracks, because something was standing there, blocking my path home.

It was a baby deer.

At first, I was excited. I’ve never seen one of those in real life, only in TikTok videos, and I’ve always wanted to. White-tailed deer are really protective of their young. You rarely see them out in the open.

But as it ambled toward me, I realized that something wasn’t right. The fawn kind of stumbled, wandering from side to side like it wasn’t sure where it was going. When it got close enough, I could see that its eyes were clouded with cataracts.

I stepped forward and reached out a hand. Its nose twitched, searching for me. I closed the distance and rubbed its velvety snout.

Only velvety is…not quite the right word. My hand came away covered in wet goo that clung to my fingers. I looked the little thing over and realized that it was still sticky and damp from birth, with dried blood clinging in clumps to its fur. It couldn’t be more than an hour or so old.

What was it doing out here all on its own? It did look very young. So lost and sad. “Where’s your mama, little one?”

The fawn turned toward the forest, blinked its big, clouded eyes, and ambled away.

How could something that small be surviving on its own, without an adult in sight? The mother had to be nearby. Did they get separated somehow?

The fawn stopped just at the edge of the woods. It turned back to me, angling its head like a puppy. For some reason, I felt like it wanted me to follow it.

I know this sounds crazy. But we lost our mom too, and her absence still aches. And the guilt I feel for running away that day…well, that has stuck around too.

The tiny fawn pawed gently at the ground.

“I can’t go with you right now.” My breath fogged as night bore down on us. The stars were coming out, and you were in the house alone. “It’s dark. But if you come back tomorrow, I’ll help you look then, okay?”

This little thing is never going to survive the night.

But at that point, I still believed that its mother had to be close. Surely, she’d come back. Maybe she was just waiting for me to step out of the way.

By the time I woke the next morning, I’d convinced myself that it was all just a weird hallucination. I was starting to lose my mind like Mom, like Grandma, like Uncle Clark, like all of them. But that wasn’t unexpected, I guess. It shouldn’t bother me.

So when I stumbled into the kitchen to start breakfast and saw the little blind fawn waiting outside in the yard, in broad daylight, I could hardly believe it.

At least, I think it was there. No, I saw it. I know I did.

It doesn’t matter that you didn’t see anything, because I was there, and I’m not crazy.

I skirted around the fawn’s unmoving shape as I got you off to school. But when I got home, it was still waiting. I couldn’t ignore the throbbing in my chest any longer.

“Still haven’t found your mom, huh?” I asked. The look in its eyes reminded me of my cousin Anna. “Can I help?”

It tilted its body toward the woods and inclined its head, waiting. As soon as I jogged toward the deer, it ambled off into the trees.

We wandered the woods together for a while, searching every grove and cluster of bushes. I was beginning to worry that the mother might have died during birth. If that was true, I thought that maybe you and I could take care of it.

The day started to feel like a dream. An hour rolled past, but we never caught a glimpse of another deer, dead or alive.

When the fawn came within a hundred yards of The Cave, even before we were in sight of it, I’d had enough. I turned back and said I didn’t want to look anymore. The fawn stood there staring at me with those big, sad eyes, but it didn’t try to change my mind.

The problem was that my desire to help was like a leaky pipe. I could try to shut it off, but it continued to drip, drip, drip into my chest just the same. As I lay in bed that night listening to you snore across the hall, I felt guilty.

I was too scared to help the fawn; the same way I was too scared to stop Mom from leaving.

The same way I’m scared now. Scared that she might be right.

The next day, I went back outside. The fawn was there again, and we searched some more. This time, when we reached The Cave, I eased a little closer, but in the end, I still couldn’t do it. Just as we got in sight of it, I turned around and went home.

Like before, the fawn just watched me.

This pattern repeated itself day after day, week after week, until a whole month flew by. I never told you about it, but the fawn felt like a part of our family in a way; the third entity always hovering between us. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing anymore, but I knew I had to do it.

The weirdest part was, even in all that time, the little deer never grew. It stayed just as small, just as damp, and just as sightless as it was the first day.

Wandering the forest took up an hour, then two, then so much time that I forgot to pay attention. Hours smeared past like fingerprints on glass, and before I knew it, my phone would be buzzing to remind me to pick you up at the bus stop.

I never got texts or calls while I was searching. They’d pile up as soon as I left the forest, like I’d been in some remote pocket of the country for the whole afternoon, not on my family’s own farm. But the predictable buzz of my alarm still went off at 2:30pm.

I worried that someday it wouldn’t, because I knew I wouldn’t notice. I’d just leave you standing there in the cold, waiting. Maybe I’d never step out of the forest at all.

Or maybe I’d finally find a way back.

Every day, we inched closer to The Cave. The fawn seemed really interested in searching there, but I could never manage to get too close. I still couldn’t get the image of Mom out of my head.

My fear of The Cave grew day by day, even as I circled closer. I started to dread seeing the fawn each morning. Every night, I told myself that tomorrow I wouldn’t follow.

But I always did. I couldn’t help myself.

Two weeks in, other things started to happen. At first it was just more noises like I’d noticed before—whispers on the wind and thumps in the attic that sounded like footsteps. Then one evening as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, a small figure, more a shadow than anything, flickered past the corner of my vision. I spun around, but there was nothing there.

Shivers trailed down my spine. I waited for a second, staring at the empty doorway. Then a soft hum, like someone singing a lullaby under their breath, floated into the kitchen from down the hall. I didn’t recognize the song, but the notes itched a dull spot in the back of my brain.

As soon as I left the kitchen, the singing stopped. I knew it wasn’t you, because you were in the living room watching TV like always. You gave me a weird look when I tried to explain, and maybe I deserved that.

Except I know I’m not losing my mind. It’s just that I’m starting to think…

That night, I had a dream. It started with a single drip of water trickling down the wallpaper from the ceiling. It was followed by another, and then another, and then another. Soon rivulets of muddy water were running down the walls, sinking through cracks in stone. Moss bloomed across floral wallpaper.

The moisture crept toward my bed, but somehow I knew I couldn’t let it touch me. I scrambled back against the headboard, clutching my comforter to my chest. The water just kept dripping.

I lurched awake and sat up, gasping in a tangle of sweaty sheets.

Normally, when you wake up from a nightmare, it fades away so quickly that the details turn fuzzy. This wasn’t like that. It was as clear as day to me, as clear as if I was finally seeing the truth I’d avoided for weeks.

Moonlight dribbled through a crack in the curtains, staining the floor silver. For some weird reason, I felt drawn to that sliver of night sky. I thought looking at it might give me the answers I’d been craving.

That’s not crazy. Lots of people look at the stars.

I got up and went to the window.

Somehow, I expected what I saw before I saw it. The blind fawn stood on the lawn below, painted silvery beneath the stars, gazing up at me.

The little thing had never come at night before. At least, not that I’d seen. I was suddenly choked by the idea that it might have been standing there like that every night, watching my window as I slept.

I no longer felt an ounce of empathy or compassion when I looked at it. Somehow, I knew it was not innocent. It wasn’t a child, and it wasn’t lost. Or maybe it was, but not in any way I could help.

Maybe we’re all lost in one way or another.

I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I didn’t even think about saying goodbye to you. I just let my feet carry me down to the front door, as if my body had taken charge of my mind.

The fawn was waiting where it was when I looked out the window. I couldn’t make myself speak, but I nodded to it. Something seemed to have taken hold of me, like cold fingers wrapped around my stomach and shoving me forward. I had no choice.

Maybe none of us did.

Created by: Danny Ingrassia

I rubbed my arms and stepped back toward The Cave again. One stop, another. A third. I still wasn’t close enough to make out anything but darkness inside. I was desperate to see what was down there, and yet I didn’t want to move an inch closer.

Suddenly—I have no idea how it moved so fast—the fawn was behind me. It nudged me with its nose, making me trip over my own feet.

I panicked and wheeled my arms. The Cave loomed closer, beneath me now instead of ahead. I screamed. I lost my footing on the edge, and then…

I crashed against the back door of the house.

I blinked, trying to understand where I was and how I’d gotten here. I was covered in grass stains, dead leaves, and thick, cold blood. My heart was pounding as if I’d run a mile.

I clutched my chest, breathing hard. Behind me, I could feel the forest huddling at the edge of the pasture. Feel it watching me.

Wherever I was before, now I know I’m not in the right place.

I fell into that Cave. Somewhere, I’m still falling.

I turned slowly to look back. My body ached. Exhaustion stung the corners of my eyes.

As soon as I saw the forest, the deepest dread I’ve ever felt bled like ink into my thoughts. Panic prickled the hairs on the back of my neck.

I didn’t know what I’d seen in The Cave. I still don’t. When I try to reach for those memories, it’s like prodding a bruise that doesn’t heal. If I could just think straight, then I know I could…

But of course I can’t. Because I’m Inside, aren’t I? I have always been Inside. We have always been Inside.

I turned and sprinted into the house. I locked all the doors, and then all the windows. I had to go back out there, and yet I couldn’t.

The house was quiet. Much quieter than it had ever been when Mom and Dad were still here, when it was full of creaks and laughter and snoring. Back when our clothes smelled like the garden and the coffee maker was almost always on. I don’t know what made me get nostalgic right then, but in a rush, my mind was filled with memories.

Good, happy times, before everything went sideways.

Was it possible that I had finally broken the curse? After all, I was the first person in my family to be called by The Cave and get away. No one else came back. Maybe I’d finally snapped whatever power that place had.

Hope surged in my chest. I didn’t hear anything strange, didn’t see anything.

Maybe we were finally free.

And yet, something felt wrong.

Something still feels wrong.

My own heavy breathing was the only sound as I dragged myself up the stairs and back to my bedroom. The walls felt colder than I remembered, and damper too. The sensation reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think of what it was.

I was too tired to change out of my stained clothes, so I just collapsed at the desk and powered up my laptop. No matter how exhausted I was, I had to write this down. Everything feels weird right now, but back then everything made sense, and if I can go back over the old parts, then maybe the new bits will be clearer.

I’m almost done, now.

I didn’t check on you. I still haven’t checked on you. What’s the point? I’m starting to think the danger isn’t out there, it’s in here with us. It’s this place.

I have to get out of here. Ava, I have to. I know this sounds crazy, but Mom was right.

We aren’t outside. We’re in The Cave right now, maybe we’ve always been here, and we have to get out.

The only way to escape is by going back in.

When you find this, follow me.