hour he spent scowering the field, digging coins and the like, and all of a reasonable age and value. Before he knew it, it was mid afternoon and the sun was at its hottest. He did not realize how faint he was becoming from the heat until the ground started to spin and his body shook with convulsions. Even though he had a small bottle of water in his pocket, he had ignored his thirst as the thrill of the discoveries had grabbed him. At this point it was too late to do anything and he fell forward to the ground, collapsing in a heap. The sun had finally taken its toll on him and now he lay in an empty field, unconscious and suffering from a large dose of sun stroke.
He remembered that he began to dream of his past life, from being a young boy to growing up to be the man that he now was. He dreamed of his friends, of his ex wife, of birthdays, Christmases, and holidays gone, and many other things or people he had been close to and although he dreamt he knew deep down that he lay in a field with the sun rays soaking up his bodily fluids, making him weaker and weaker by the minute, and at that point he released he was going to die.
And then something odd happened. A small irritating pain on his left earlobe snapped him out of his dreaming. The pain revived him and now awake he could do something about his deathly situation. However, he was still very weak and having to reach down into his pocket to retrieve the small bottle of water was not going to be easy, in fact it proved at the time to be a mighty task needing full concentration and commitment. This though proved nothing when compared to getting the screw cap off the top of the bottle, a painful and highly frustrating process that proved to be one of the most difficult things he had ever done in his entire life as his weakened fingers fumbled to get a grip.
Eventually after several tries he succeeded and as quickly as he could manage he raised the bottle to his mouth and swigged back the cool liquid. It took some time but eventually the water revived a small amount of strength back into his body, the life saving liquid had done its job and then shakily he managed to get to his feet.
There was still a pain in his left earlobe that caused a minor irritation, tenderly reaching up to find out what caused the pain he discovered the culprit as he pulled away a small black beetle. The beetle instantly bit into his hand, drawing a trickle of blood. It was then it hit him, he realized what had happened. It had been the beetle biting into his ear that had caused him to snap out of it and wake up from the deadly sleep.
Taking the now empty bottle, he gently put the beetle inside it and then placed the bottle back into his pocket. There had been something that had struck him as very strange. The field’s soil that he had searched in had been baked dry by the sun. There where no stones only thick hardened red clay all around him, no-where for a beetle to hide or want to be. He surmised that if a beetle like the one he now had in his bottle had been out in the field then it would have died in much the same manner as he might have moments before, boiling to death within it's hard black exoskeleton.
There was only one explanation. The beetle had been sent by God to save him. The beetle that he would later name Horrus had saved his life. This was the reason he could not go into the cave, he could not leave his friend, his companion and savior, not if there was some chance that at some point he'd return to him.
The light rain made a soft patter on the small tents roof sounding like a child's lullaby and sending Greg's eyelids earthwards. He decided against fighting his tiredness as tomorrow could prove a long days trek for him and his other three comrades if they where going to get back onto a familiar track.
Just before he tucked himself up into his sleeping bag he took out his thermos flask and emptying the hot coffee from it, he filled it half full with soil. Then he took pen and paper from out of his backpack that he used for jotting down information or drawing diagrams on, then scribbled the words "Horrus's new home" onto it before placing it beneath the flask…Just in case!
The next morning Greg woke late. He usually got up around eight but this morning he rose at half ten. He guessed that he must have been more tired than he had realized and that the previous days exertions had taken more out of him than he had first assumed. He picked up his flask and emptied the contents out excitedly, but Horrus had not come home. He sat for a while, disappointed and upset before finally reaching the decision that perhaps it had been fate last night, perhaps Horrus had wanted his freedom. "After all Horrus had given me a sign telling me his still alive so what other explanation could there be". This last thought brightened his mood and although he missed Horrus, he did want what best for him.
He then remembered that the other three men should have arrived back by now. In fact, they should have been back an hour ago. He quickly got ready and packed his tent away, half expecting for the men to turn up as he did. After this was done he began shouting the names of the men, hoping to get some form of answer in case they where on there way, but no answer came.
Twenty-five minutes had passed from the time he'd woken up and a horrible thought that his friends had suffered some form of set-back or possible injury made him decide that he would have to go and look for them. He took the torch from his side and headed up the steep hill in the direction that the cave-mouth lay.
The upwards ascent to the mouth of the cave did not take long and the higher up the hill he got the better he could view his surroundings. Today the sky was clear and the sun shone bright making the walk pleasant and cheerful, though when he looked around he could only see for mile or so as the fog wall that had shrouded all around before still could be seen in the distance, white and shimmering, giving a ghostly look all about.
As he approached the cave mouth a shiver of fear ran down his back. This was not the first cave he had ever been in and he wondered why the darkness of the gaping hole in the hill should bother him at all. Then he noticed that the air about him had cooled and a smell of mould struck his nostrils. "Ah ha", he thought. "A simple change in temperature and a few puddles of stale water are giving is the creeps, eh". He chuckled quietly and then walked the rest of the way to the cave. The light outside revealed only a few feet so he shone his powerful torch inside to see how big the cave was. The cave turned out to be almost round in shape and very small, some thirty feet long as his torch-beam searched about striking and stopping against the far end wall. He was about to shout the names of the three men when suddenly the beam struck an object that made him freeze with terror. Sitting at the end of the cave was a figure in a wooden chair. The figure was deathly still, not moving a muscle as the light danced around it. It was clear that the figure was a man and from the skin color and general shape that the man possessed he was not one of the three men that Greg now searched for.
Fighting away the shock that had froze his face; Greg called to the man in the chair.
“Hello. Hello there". No answer came and for a while and Greg wondered what he should do. As he had called, the figure in the chair had not moved and he wondered weather he was asleep, or maybe even dead. This last thought made Greg miss a couple of breaths as his brain went into overdrive, until eventually he reached a decision. He began to inch his way into the cave while keeping his torch-light permanently on the figure.
As he got closer he realized that the figure was not in fact as he had first thought. What sat in the chair was a sculpture of a man, made completely out of clay.
Greg reached out with the front of the torch and prodded the clay figurine, making a dull thudding noise that suggested the figure had been there for some time as the clay seemed rock hard. He sighed with relief and taking a closer look he realized that the model of the man was not particularly that well detailed and finger marks from whoever sculptured him could be seen running all over the naked clay flesh. He knew that his mind and the light cast from his torch must have played a trick on him for him to assume that it had been a real man. He also wondered how old it was and how the clay model had come to be in such a place. "Perhaps it's been here for centu
ries, made by the hands of a person who for some reason lived once in this cave", he thought. He then noticed that behind the chair was a small hole that he would have to crawl through if he was going to explore another part of the cave.
Searching about some more in the small cavern that he stood in, he found that this was indeed the only other place left that the men could have headed down as there where no other exits from the cavern he was in. This did not explain why the three would go down the hole further into the cave and he stood in thought before an obvious answer hit him. He guessed at what had happened and he grinned to himself. The three men having seen the figure had assumed like him that it must be of an ancient origin. No doubt too they would have spied the small hole behind the chair and decided to head through in search of more discoveries that had been lost through time. The moors where large, and with many parts unexplored the chance that a human had never entered into the cave since whoever built Joe Blogg’s in his chair was a strong possibility.
Greg went over to the hole and crouching down he shouted once more the names of the men. Once again no answer came so with a deep sigh he shone his torch into the narrow tunnel and spying nothing but a narrow passage-way of rock, he crawled inside.
He started through the tunnel on his unkers, it twisted and turned but the going was still fairly easy. After about five minutes of continuing in this manner, the tunnel suddenly narrowed in from all sides and if he was going to progress he would have to crawl on his belly. Since he had come this far he decided there was not much point in going back and there still looked to be no signs of danger, the walls around him being of solid rock with no loose stones in sight. He continued on, using his shoulders and knees to push himself along.
His only concern was if the tunnel became any narrower he may get stuck so he kept his mind focused and made sure he didn't become too complacent. The further he went the colder it got, this however he knew to be normal as the deeper into the cave he went the more the temperature would drop. It was the musty smell that he could not understand. His first thought of it being because of stale water festering away within, he now thought this though to be wrong as the cave around him was stone dry with not a hint of moisture anywhere suggesting that even if there was water deeper within the cave then by now he ought to be seeing some kind of sign of it's being. But nothing, not so much as a slight dampness on rock or even the odd spot of moss. Also the smell was getting stronger the deeper down into the tunnel he got. "Perhaps I'll have my explanation at the end of the tunnel, to coin a phrase", he thought to himself, trying to keep his spirits high.
He had been crawling for exactly thirteen minutes when the end of the tunnel came. Shining his torch in front of him he saw a large stone, shaped like a mushroom. The stone was stuck right at the opening into whatever new passageway or cavern lay beyond the end of the tunnel. To get to the new part he had to squeeze past the funny shaped stone and although he managed this it did prove difficult with much struggling and pushing to get himself and his back-pack through.
He observed one thing about the stone as he squeezed passed it that he'd been wrong about when he had viewed it from a distance. The stone was actually part of the smooth rock around him and had not been placed in the opening as he'd originally thought. Sprouting up from the ground and billowing out at the top, looking like a miniature frozen