#15 VENTURING FORTH BY DAYLIGHT

"It looks smaller during the day" 

The wooden sign in front of the old quarry, on its way to being bleached, seemed far more demure by daylight. The space seemed less vast, the path to the tunnel unassuming. The traction afforded to me by the shallow grooves on the soles of my converse didn't spare me from having to grapple  at a dead tree to reach the embankment bellow without losing my footing. The loose rocks underfoot seemed to be the greatest looming threat the tunnel presented; no sign of strange lights, echoing voices from drowned souls and train wreck victims. The history surrounding the quarry was murkier than its gray waters, fact quickly devolving into local myths of occult threat and murder. The only trace of presence, living or otherwise, was painted on the walls within the bowels of the tunnel, likely left by the band of long haired skateboard toting youth one could encounter in the night and other such transient nocturnal characters. The archetypal elusivity of sub-terrain and the dark would always fascinate us into entertaining thoughts of ritual and chant and spectral apparition. The messages scrawled with the awkward trajectory of an angled can of spray paint were illegible from my vantage point at the bank, I wasn't in the mood to wade. As innocuous and serene a picture as it seemed, I was sure the shadows thrown onto the water in the mid afternoon would take on a much more ominous shape by night.