Part 4 — What Was Beneath the Mountain?
(Part 1) ➡️ https://storiesworld.us/archives/9519
(Part 2) ➡️ https://storiesworld.us/archives/9520
(Part 3) ➡️ https://storiesworld.us/archives/9521
Eventually Roy forced himself forward.
Every instinct told him to leave.
But curiosity proved stronger.
Slowly he approached the disturbed patch of earth.
The rest of the group followed behind him.
Nobody wanted to get too close.
Yet nobody wanted to be left alone either.
The soil was already beginning to settle.
Loose dirt slid back into the hole.
Whatever had been there was disappearing beneath the earth once again.
Then Roy noticed something.
Several thin objects protruding from the dirt.
Dark.
Flexible.
Covered with tiny hairs.
At first, he thought they were roots.
But roots don’t move.
According to Roy, these things twitched.
Only slightly.
But enough to make his blood run cold.
The best description he could later provide was that they looked like giant pipe cleaners sticking out of the ground.
The realization hit him immediately.
Those weren’t roots.
Those weren’t plants.
And they certainly weren’t pipe cleaners.
They were legs.
The men reportedly backed away without another word.
Nobody wanted to remain near that hole.
Nobody wanted to discover how large the creature beneath them might actually be.
According to the story, the expedition ended right there.
The still was never built.
The location was abandoned.
And Roy never returned to that part of the mountains.
Years later people would ask him whether he truly believed he had encountered a giant spider.
His answer was always the same.
He never saw the entire creature.
He only saw what it left behind.
The scurrying in the brush.
The deer disappearing underground.
The hairy legs emerging from the soil.
To some people that wasn’t enough evidence.
To Roy it was more than enough.
Because whatever lived beneath that mountain was large enough to drag a full-grown deer underground without a sound.
And according to him, that was all he ever needed to know.