Three Deer Cave ghost story
[Story from Brakul about a story his grandfather once told him]
This happened when my grandfather was a little boy. His village was haunted by a ghost a young man brought out from the Three Deer Cave.
It’s a cave hidden in a pine grove at the base of the White Cliffs, and it's known to be a wildfolk camp. It's best to give the whole place a wide berth in the winter when they're sheltering in the cave, but they move up to the forests in the summer and so it's safe to approach then. You really shouldn't trespass into it, because they'll know, but you can look. And if you look into the entrance when the sunrise is lighting it up, the tunnel veers hard right and you can see a beautiful old drawing of three deer running along the wall, hence the name. Wildfolk sorcerers draw their deer to mark their winter camps and pray for the health of their herds, just like our sorcerers draw cattle and horses on our boundary stones to do pretty much the same thing. I don’t know why the wildfolk only draw underground though. You’d have to ask someone else.
When I was a young man, boys my age would sometimes dare each other to go inside Three Deer Cave in the summer to prove their bravery or whatever. It’s a stupid thing young men do because they’re stupid. I never went in because I don’t mess around with that kind of stuff. But a lot of youths have gone far into the cave, and they all say that there’s more drawings of deer deeper inside, and art of some other animals, and that no one is sure how deep the cave actually goes.
And apparently that sort of nonsense was also happening in my grandfather’s day. There was a youth named Ibar, just barely a man, whose friends had dared him to go inside. The challenge was that Ibar would reach the big gallery and see what was carved on the large rock by the gallery entrance, and then bring that information back as proof that he had completed his task. All the boys who had finished the dare apparently kept the carving on that rock a secret back then, because it made them an elite group with special knowledge of the cave, I guess. But it's well known now that it's just a drawing of three men who are running with spears and have erections. I think one of the boys probably drew it and just lied about it being there before he came.
Anyway, Ibar went into Three Deer Cave wearing nothing but his summer kilt and mantle, and carrying nothing but an oil lamp to light the way. He walked for a long time, guided only by his little lamplight. It was slow going, but he eventually found his way to the fork and turned right, which led him down a passage into the open gallery where the wildfolk make their winter camp. He didn't see any sign of them, besides their drawings and some old deer bones here and there. Ibar had seen the erection drawing as required, and was probably nervous about being in there too long, and so he turned around to leave in a hurry. It was then that he stumbled on a rock and dropped his lamp, which shattered to pieces on the ground.
Everything became completely dark. He held up his hand in front of his face and saw nothing. He closed his eyes and it looked no different from when they were open. This was a true darkness that would make a cloudy, moonless night seem like a clear summer noon by comparison. And with the light gone, the silence also seemed so much heavier. He could hear every beat of his heart and the rush of his blood, each breath, every shift of his clothing, and the sound of his walking feet, and all these things seemed so loud against the silence pressing in around him. He felt as if he could have been standing on a wide open plain or in a space only slightly larger than his body, and he wouldn't have known the difference. He had never yet known anything so horrifying as this.
Though Ibar was in this predicament for a stupid reason, he wasn't completely stupid, and he recovered from his fear enough to think of how to get back out. He walked to his left until he felt a wall, and then started heading back the way he came. He had only taken one fork in the path, and there were no other passages large enough to just walk right through without knowing, so he should've been able to find his way out as long as he kept in contact with the wall.
He walked for what felt like ages, all the while second guessing whether he actually was heading the right way, or if he was just walking himself deeper and deeper beneath the earth, never to see the sun again. It was hard to navigate without light, and he tripped on rocks or little ledges and fell into the mud a few times. He was getting very tired, cold, and sore.
Suddenly, up ahead, he saw something just a little lighter than the blackness around him, and he started walking faster. He thought maybe this was distant daylight? But soon he realized it was not light from the outside. It was a young man about Ibar's age, dressed in a cape and loincloth and holding a little oil lamp, and he was walking right towards him. Ibar was so glad to see another person! He called out “hey!” and took a few steps to meet him, thinking it was a boy from the village coming to get him. But then Ibar stopped, and he became very silent, because he realized the youth’s lamp had no fire, and the illumination of his body came from nothing and shone nowhere else. The youth looked as if he were lit up by bright moonlight, such that it was hard to be sure of any color on his body or clothing, but everything around him was still completely dark. It was as if he was moving towards Ibar through a black void, like the whole world was empty and they were the only two things in it. The sight of him made Ibar dizzy, as if he could not tell which way was up or down. He thought maybe this is a young wildman using magic to frighten him? But that couldn't be, because the youth was taller than a wildman was supposed to be, and he was wearing normal clothes.
Ibar soon realized that the unearthly youth was not only lit by nothing, but he also made no sound. He should have been able to hear the young man's footsteps quite clearly, but all Ibar could hear was his own racing heartbeat and heavy breathing, even as the youth got closer and closer. He was not doing anything threatening, and in fact he didn't even seem to be looking at Ibar at all, but suddenly Ibar was more scared than he ever had been in his life. When the youth was close enough that his face was visible, Ibar wanted nothing more than to run away as fast as he could, into the deepest bowels of the cave, anything to get away from the ghostly youth. He only just managed to resist his terror enough to flatten himself against the wall instead.
Ibar stayed frozen in place. He knew the ghost was beside him now. He knew that if he turned his head he would see the ghost’s face inches away, looking right back at him, and that nothing in the world could be worse than that sight. So he stayed very still and sobbed and prayed for his safety.
He was not sure how long he stayed there, but eventually he realized he was shivering very hard in the cold cave air. He needed to keep moving if he was going to live. So Ibar pulled himself away from the wall but kept his eyes shut tight, and continued feeling his way forward. After a while, he dared to open his eyes, and the ghost was nowhere to be seen amid the blackness.
It took him a long time walking along the wall, but eventually Ibar saw light ahead of him, real light. It was the sunrise! He had been gone for most of a day and an entire night, but he didn't even think about that. He had never been so glad to see the sun.
He walked down towards the village, and everyone was so relieved to see him. They all thought he had gone missing and a bunch of people were out looking for him, and his dickhead friends hadn't told anyone he was in the cave because they were afraid of getting in trouble for daring him to go in there. And they did get in trouble. That was a whole other thing. But anyway, everyone was happy to see Ibar, and his family brought him home and got him cleaned up. He was in bad shape. His whole body was covered in mud and he had bleeding scrapes on his hands and knees. One of his sandals was missing, and his kilt had been ripped by sharp rocks. He was also very disoriented, clearly in the early stages of cold sickness, but he got better after huddling with his brothers by the fire and drinking hot wine.
He told his family everything I just told you. It made everyone nervous, but they just did a simple cleansing to be safe and then tried to laugh it off. No one had ever heard of anyone dying in Three Deer Cave, and dozens of boys had been in and out of there without ever encountering a ghost. Total darkness, fear, and cold sickness can fool the eyes. And even if the apparition was real, it still could've been a wildman's trick, and nothing more serious than a nasty prank since Ibar had been allowed to leave mostly unscathed. People started joking that they'd tell their children that it was a ghost of a boy who had died doing the dare in years past, since the threat of offending the wildfolk wasn't enough to dissuade young men from going in there already. This whole episode was forgotten, for the moment.
But all was not well. Ibar soon became ill with nausea and fits, and he started talking about seeing the ghost around the village at night. He only got worse and worse. He always knew the ghost was somewhere very, very close by, and he became so afraid that he would not leave his home. But he wasn’t even safe there. Sometimes, he would wake up and cry out in terror, because he had seen the ghost peeking in at him through his window, or even inside the home, standing over where he slept. My grandfather’s home was close to Ibar’s, and he could hear the screaming and crying late at night.
It was obvious he was possessed, and now everyone was taking this very, very seriously. Ibar's parents got one of our sorcerers to exorcise him, and that seemed to have worked, because Ibar's fits stopped and he could sleep soundly through the night. But the possession had done too much damage already. Ibar claimed the ghost was still nearby, though he did not see it anymore, and he never quite regained his strength. He eventually fell sick with a fever and died that winter.
And then, after Ibar's funeral, other people started seeing the Three Deer Cave ghost. My grandfather never did, but his older cousin saw the ghost one time while pissing outside at night, and so did a bunch of other people. Several of our tribe’s sorcerers convened and attempted to banish the ghost, but he was attached very, very strongly now, and nothing they did could drive him away. He was much too old and too powerful. They figured out that the ghost wasn’t one of our people, but probably one of the old people who built the mounds. He died after getting lost in the cave many, many centuries ago, and maybe he thought Ibar was his lost body, or one of his own tribe, and followed him home? And now he wouldn’t leave.
Ibar had gotten the worst of it, but the ghost hurt other people too. One woman who saw him miscarried that very same night, and a little boy who saw him started having fits. Everyone put down strong protections at every entrance of their homes, and started staying indoors all night, but there was usually at least one person who saw him over the course of any given night. He would be seen moving past a window, or he would stand outside of people's doorways, with his feet visible through the gap under the screen. Eventually, the haunting was so bad that some people were talking about abandoning the village.
This was when they brought out the oldest sorcerer in our tribe, who was effectively retired and but still spry enough to do work when she had to. She decided there was nothing to be done but to try and find the ghost’s body, and that she would be the one to do it, since she’d taught her apprentices all she could and was ready to die now. So she went into Three Deer Cave with warm clothing, a shroud, a few torches, a pack of spare flint, and a very long rope to mark her way.
The old sorcerer was gone for almost the whole day, and everyone was afraid that she’d never come out again. But she did, early in the night. She was carrying the shroud, and there were some human bones in it. She looked unsettled and was shaking badly, but she would not tell anyone what she had seen. She only directed her apprentices to start collecting wood for a funeral pyre and to prepare a horse for divination. The sorcerers were able to find out which old mound the ghost’s kin were buried in, which was not too far from the cave, and so they had everyone bring the wood up near the mound to hold a funeral for him.
Everyone came out to help give the ghost his rites, if only to improve the chances that he would leave them all alone. A lot of people pitched in to give him some nice clothing and jewelry and other things that he needed, and the chieftain at the time even gave him some horses and a prize young cow. It was a very nice funeral fit for a chieftain's son, so hopefully the ghost would be satisfied and understand that we did the best we could even though we didn't share customs with his people. My grandfather had contributed by picking some snowdrops for the ghost, which he left on the pyre. He had seen the ghost's skull up close then, and he once told me that it had been very strange looking, but that he could no longer remember why he'd thought so. He just remembered looking at it and being unsettled by how wrong it looked, and that he was trying very hard to be brave and grownup about it.
They cremation went smoothly, and they fanned the fire hot enough to burn much of the bone away. The sorcerers put the ashes in an urn, and actually buried it right in the mound by adding more rocks to it, which freaked everyone out. My grandfather told me there had been a huge argument about whether or not they should've done that. But the mound people must have been happy to have their kin returned to them because they caused our people no trouble. And no one ever saw the Three Deer Cave ghost again after that.
