Free The Ghost of Lizard's Rock by J Richard Knapp

from behind them!” said Jacob.
    The air was cool and damp
as it reached my face.
    The cool breeze continued
to grow in strength. The bushes seemed to lay flat on the ground
with its force.
    At that very moment, Jacob
and I saw a light move from the dark area behind the bushes against
the rocky wall. We stared at it for several seconds without moving
one way or the other.
    A moment later - the
breeze disappeared, the bushes slowly stood up again, and the light
disappeared.
    “ How can that be?” said
Jacob somewhat bewildered.
    I looked back up into the
tree branches above us. They were still again. I instinctively
moved closer to Jacob, “Let’s see what’s back there.” I tried to
sound confident and self-assured.
    Jacob pushed his way
through the brush to where the light had come from with me right
behind him. A moment later, we were both standing in front of the
rocky wall and the entrance to a huge dark cave.
    “ Wait here.” Jacob looked
to me, “I’ll be back in a moment.” He said it with a un-Jacob-like
authority and pulled a tiny flashlight from his key
chain.
    “No way,” I said
unwaveringly. “You’re not going in there by yourself.”
    I am sure Jacob was
thinking that I was just being brave, but in fact, I wasn’t about
to stand out there all by myself if there was a possibility of a
ghost wandering by.
    Jacob flipped on the
flashlight and moved slowly into the cave. He didn’t seem to notice
that my hand was barely touching his shirt. I was going to make
sure at all costs that Jacob stayed close!
    My mind began to think of
all kinds of strange things that made no sense at this very
moment.
    “I need to head home
pretty soon,” my voice seemed to be shaking. “I don’t want my mom
to worry about me.”
    “It’s okay,” said Jacob in
a comforting voice as he turned toward me, “There are no such
things as ghosts!”
    “You sure?” My voice
cracked slightly.
    Jacob chuckled as he
stepped further into the cave with me hanging on tightly to the
back of his shirt.
    I thought, “How did you
know exactly what I was thinking?”
    Jacob smiled and aimed his
flashlight even deeper into the darkness of the cave. The light
bounced off the back wall of the cave. He flashed the light all
around us. We were standing in the middle of a large room in the
cave. Tiny trickles of water were coming out of the cracks in the
walls.
    “It’s just one big room,”
said Jacob. “The cave doesn’t go anywhere.” He looked more closely
at the trickles of water seeping out through the rocks. “I’ll bet
that water is coming from James Creek and works its way underground
to here.”
    “Great,” I said
skeptically, “Now explain the light and the wind.”
    Jacob had a puzzled look
on his face. “I don’t know.” He continued to aim his flashlight
here and there to spot another tunnel he had missed.
    Both Jacob and I knew the
wind came up every evening during the summer and fall months. By
midnight the wind would calm down to a gentle breeze. It had
something to do with the land heating up during the day and then
cooling down quickly in the evening. But nowhere had we ever heard
of wind coming from a dead end cave. This was definitely in the
‘strange’ category!
    “Here it comes again.” I
grabbed onto Jacob’s arm with a tight grip.
    The wind seemed to be
circling the outside edges of the cave before departing out the
entrance. The intensity seemed so much greater standing in the
middle of the room. I tightened up my grip and accidently pinched
Jacob’s forearm.
    “Ouch!” Jacob winced at my
grip.
    I reluctantly pulled my
hand back, “Sorry.”
    Suddenly, something on the
far wall of the cave caught my attention. It was a tiny wisp of
dust.
    “Did you see that?” I
tried to refocus my eyes on the place where the dust had been, but
my eyes were watering in the wind.
    Jacob had been looking at
the pinch marks on his arm and didn’t see anything.
    “Aim your light over
there,” I pointed to