The Legend

As he climbed through another clump of bushes, Paul could see the mouth of the cave. There it was, just as the old map had shown. Could he possibly be in a place that hadn't seen man in almost two hundred years?

Six months earlier, Paul Montgomery was in a small town library in upstate Maine. He was going through and studying some of the local manuscripts and newspapers when he spotted something that caught his eye instantly. In the middle of one of the books of court papers from the original village, was an old hand-drawn map.

Paul had been around this region off and on for almost twenty years, and knew there was something different about this old map. According to the map, there was a cave just forty miles from town. When he looked at a current map, there was no sign of it and that set Paul's mind in motion.

He talked to some of the older members of the town, trying to get as much information about the cave as he could, but nobody seemed to know anything about it. He did, however, pick up on one of the local legends and thought that maybe the two went together.

The story said that before there was a village, pirates camped on an outcrop that had once jutted out over the ocean. They supposedly buried a large amount of loot in a deep pit in the rocks. The ocean protected the rocks for all but one hour of every day. Otherwise, the waves would crash in with such force, that to try to steal the bounty would surely get a man killed.

Finally, the legend claimed that Captain Frederick Smythe went mad with fever and murdered his entire crew, fearing that they would take his treasure. He killed the last man beneath the outcrop where they had camped which angered God so much that he caused the earth to shake and the outcrop crumbled down on top of the captain. The rocks that held his stolen treasure were lost to the sea forever.

Paul learned every detail and version of the story he could and tried to find the few shards of truth within them. He sat for hours on the rocky shoreline, searching for a hint of what was no longer there. He took dozens of pictures, from every possible angle, and studied them relentlessly.

Finally, he began to put all the pieces together. He laid a tracing of the older map over a current map. He figured that the cave would show up somewhere within the harbor, which had been proven to have widen since the late seventeenth century. To his surprise, it showed that the cave was quite a ways inland and should still be there in the forest.

Quickly, he threw some supplies into a duffel bag and jumped into his jeep. He followed the road as far as it would go, but the cave was shown to be at least another five miles into the forest. He left the jeep right there and started climbing through the bushes, which had brought him to this moment.

Slowly, he moved on, knowing that there could be any variety of wild animals inside. He pulled a flashlight out of his pack and picked up a small tree branch. Wildly, he began yelling and banging the branch on the sides of the cave entrance. Instantly, hundreds of bats swarmed from the cave, causing Paul to fall backwards and roll part way down the hill.

He managed to get up and headed back for the cave. He picked up his flashlight and went inside. The stench of bat was almost more than he could bear, but still he pressed on. Deeper into the cave, he began to see a faint scribbling on the walls. It was three letters and a date. "CFS 1692", he stated out loud, "Captain Frederick Smythe".

He looked around the cave a little longer, but found nothing else. He left the cave, feeling as though he had been transported through time. He had stood in a place that hadn't seen a human in two hundred years, and though he knew he would have a lot more searching to do, he was satisfied in finding a little piece of truth in an old legend.