The Cave of Echoes

Pete woke early, said he was going back to the cave — this time with John.

Tom said, “Hell no,” but Pete was already packing his flashlight and camera. He said he needed proof that this place was “messing with the sensors.”

I followed for a bit. The cave wasn’t far — maybe fifty meters behind a curtain of vines. The entrance was dark, wide, breathing cold air.

Inside, it smelled like wet limestone and metal. The echo was strange — you could whisper and hear your voice circle back like someone else was repeating it half a second late.

John started filming, but his camera glitched, showing horizontal lines and static. Pete laughed nervously, “Guess ghosts hate GoPros.”

We walked maybe twenty feet in when we saw it — the walls shimmered like they were wet, but the reflections didn’t move right. It looked like the light was bending inside the stone. I waved my hand and saw my own reflection — but delayed, a few seconds late.

Pete whispered, “What the hell…”

And then we heard it.

A faint tap-tap-tap from deeper inside. Like knuckles on hollow rock.

Pete raised his flashlight. The beam caught something pale — maybe rock, maybe not — that slid back into the dark.

That was enough for me. I told them I was leaving.

Pete stayed a bit longer. John followed him. I waited outside.

After maybe ten minutes, John came out alone.

No Pete.

He said, “He told me to go ahead. Said he’d catch up.”

But hours passed.

No Pete.

We called for him until our throats hurt. Sakda joined in later, shouting his name into the cave. The echo came back wrong — the name stretched, distorted, like someone was copying us.

At sunset, Sakda said we had to stop. “Rain come again,” he said. “Night not safe.”

Now it’s almost midnight. The storm’s back.

Tom keeps saying Pete will walk out in the morning. John won’t talk. I caught him staring at the water again. I think he’s humming that same tune I heard before.

I just checked the blog upload logs on my phone — apparently, this post uploaded twice, at the same time, with slightly different text.

The first version normal.

The second… full of repeated words, some Thai letters mixed in that I never typed.

I deleted it. But it came back again.

I think something’s wrong with the signal here. Or maybe with me.