Last summer, I went camping with the Scout troop. Me, four other leaders, and the boys. I brought my dog along, a gray cairn terrier named Zanie.
Zanie was a shelter dog. She has something wrong with her throat, that makes her barks very raspy and unusual sounding.
I loved that dog, so I got very upset when she got loose and ran off into the woods one evening.
I wanted to go easy on her throat, so I relaxed my grip on the leash.
Unfortunately, that was the same time in which she caught sight of a rabbit, or...I don't know, and she was gone.
Zanie is overweight, but she isn't slow. She got away from me, scampering off into the dark.
I had a flashlight, but the wind had picked up, and the dog was scurrying through mounds of brush and weeds that stood at exactly the same height, so it took me five minutes to pinpoint the location of the jingling dog tags.
They were stuck on a tangle of dead twigs. The dog had wiggled out of her collar somehow. I called for her, but she didn't come.
I ran after her, shoving my way through the brush, shouting in hopes that she'd return to me.
I caught sight of a fat little body as it disappeared under a bush.
Unthinkingly, I stomped ahead, and found no resistance beneath my feet. The weeds and brush had obscured a giant hole, and I had fallen right in.
I fell through the air a few feet, shielding my face just seconds before ramming headlong into a rock shelf, then I found myself somersaulting painfully over a myriad of shelves and boulders until my back slammed into a muddy cavern floor.
I blacked out for a whole minute.
When I awoke, I found myself in agonizing pain.
For some miraculous reason, I hadn't broken anything, but it sure felt like it.
As I lay there moaning and gingerly trying to roll over on my side, I found a dark hairy shape making crazy noises as it licked me all over my face.
While I groaned and pushed my furry friend away, the cave filled with a weird grinding noise. It sounded like someone trying to start a car with a dead battery, except slower, and it had sort of an unearthly ripping effect to it.
Up to that point, my only source of light had been the moon. That was, until I heard the noise. It was like a floodlight had been switched on with flickering theater lighting.
I eased myself into a sitting position as I struggled against the worst case of sciatica I've ever experienced, and I stared into the light.
Zanie growled, backing towards the mouth of the cave. I probably would have too, but I was too tired and in too much pain to move that fast. In fact, I thought the bright light was a sign I was dying.
Instead of seeing the pearly gates, I saw a box appear. A blue wooden box with a glowing light on top and glowing windows.
As the thing gained definition, the light faded to the point where I saw nothing but a set of square glowing holes cut into the inky blackness.
The door thundered open with shocking suddenness, and my eyes were temporarily blind from whatever source of illumination there was inside the thing.
Through the haze, I could see the figure of a man in a suit staggering out the opening. Surrounded by a nimbus of light, I thought it was a ghost.
In an unghostly manner, he took a few shaky steps and collapsed on the ground.
With a dizzy aching head, I stumbled to my feet and leaned over this stranger, trying to piece together the scenario the best I could.
In the light of the doorway, I could make out details, but I couldn't make sense of it.
The man wore a brown blood soaked pinstriped vest, a suit coat and slacks. I couldn't get a real good look at his face because it was dark, but I could see that it was cracked, weathered, and his hair was silver. In one hand, he clutched a tool, some kind of shiny silver cylinder with a glowing green knob on one end.
I have First Aid Merit Badge, but that doesn't make me a paramedic. Still, I thought I'd try to help the man any way I could.
Kneeling down, I pulled back his suit coat and saw a jagged piece of metal sticking out of his breast, right where his heart would be. Right away, I knew this guy was history. It was only out of courtesy that I dug out my cel phone.
The phone came out of my pocket as a useless piece of shattered plastic and electronic parts. I threw it against the wall in frustration.
My next plan was to climb out of the cave and run for help.
I tried to stand up, but I found the stranger's hand clamping down on my leg.
"Don't bother," he gurgled. "They removed my other heart on Qutjofa 7." He coughed up blood. "No regenerations left. No lucky breaks. This is it. The end."
His hand shot up, clutching my arm. Even with the blood loss, it hurt, and he actually had enough strength to pull me down to the point where our noses touched.
"I saved them!" he shouted in my face. "I saved them all! No one died!"
And then he slumped on the ground, breathing no more.
"Saved from what?" I asked.
No one answered me.
I didn't know it at the time, but this dead man, and his weird glowing box, were about to change my life forever.