"Hey."

"Hey."

"Wake up."

"Hello?"

"Wake up, lad!"

With a violent jerk, George straightened up. Her back ached and groaned. The cold, hard stone floor definitely did not make a good bed, she had to admit.

"At last you're awake," spoke a voice she didn't know at all, which had a strange echo, as if someone were speaking in a huge hall. "Who is this?" asked George, looking around a little intimidated. Had she been dragged off? And where the heck was Timmy? "Timmy?" she called out in panic when she realized that her dog was nowhere to be seen. Instead, nothing surrounded her but yawning black emptiness in every direction she looked. "I give up, I've completely lost my mind," George sighed, running her hands over her face. " Why no, how can someone like you lose their mind?" the strange voice asked. "What do you mean, 'someone like me'?" questioned George, straightening up. "Well with your attitude and courage. I've never met a person who thinks like you, you understand with the desire to be a boy even though you were born a girl and all. My honest respect for that, speaking of which," the voice spoke. "How do you know?" growled George, who was getting tired of all the secrecy. Whoever was talking to her was going to have to show themselves. That is, if she wanted to know this person at all. After all, she was in a room that was pitch black. George could easily make out the floor beneath her and a little of her nearby surroundings, but everything beyond was hidden in a pitch-black sphere. Sphere! At the word, George Lewis' theories came back into his head. Should she really believe this nonsense he was babbling? Was this supposed to be the proof? If Lewis was really behind this crap, he would get a real beating from her, she swore to him in her mind.

"I must have really pulled you out of the mud earlier, didn't I?" laughed the strange voice. "What are you talking about?" asked George with half-closed eyelids. "Well, the cave. You wouldn't have escaped those funny South Americans without it," the voice replied. "And what did you, whoever you are, have to do with it?" inquired George. "Well, I made sure that all they saw was a bare wall of stone. So, the cave existed only for you and your dog," the unknown voice replied. "Oh, stop giving me that crap. I don't believe in such rubbish.", George nagged, getting really annoyed by all this mumbo-jumbo. 'What nonsense. Only little kids believe in that. Anne might be frightened by it, but not George.

"Oh, are you so certain?" the voice boomed a lot louder, but it didn't really sound particularly aggressive. Nevertheless, George recoiled a little. A bright white light shone in front of her, beaming right at her and blinding her. "Follow the light, but it will blind you. But only in this way will you be able to reveal the greatest secret of your life. But be warned, there are many dangers lurking and many riddles that must be solved correctly. Solving them alone will be impossible, but if you work together in a team, the great mystery of the P̄hī h̄æ̀ng khwām cring can be solved," the voice spoke, accompanied by an increasingly loud reverberation. The light became so blindingly bright that George had to turn away completely, fearing she would go blind even with her eyes closed.

Then, in a fraction of a second, the radius of the light cone shrank and moved directly above George. She looked up in confusion, hoping to finally find an answer. She was surprised that she was no longer blinded by the light, even though she was looking directly into it. The voice cleared its throat and said meekly, "Oh yes, before I let you back into reality, please stop kicking my friends, okay? Well.". George didn't quite know who was meant by "my friends" and could only let out a quick "What?" before something hit her right in the face. Water. As if someone had poured a bucket of water on her.

###

"Stop! Stop it! Stop that right now," complained George, whose face felt soaking wet, and something wet was slicking her face. But instead of more cold water being splashed on her face, a somewhat offended Timmy suddenly sat in front of her. Perplexed, she stared at her dog for several seconds to process what had just happened. Only then did she remember that she had not exactly been kind to her most faithful companion. "Hey, sorry Timmy. I had a really weird dream," she apologized to her dog for her curt behaviour. But he seemed to have forgotten all about it because he stormed towards her, barking and panting happily. " It is okay, it is okay. I was just sleeping. I was exhausted," George laughed, a little touched by the almost excessive affection her dog was showing her.

"Let's get out of here and try to find Julian or the others," George announced, after some hearty petting. Her dog looked at her in wonder, as if asking her what had got into her. Only when she looked out of the cave did she notice that it was pitch black. Being trapped in a cool creepy cave did not appeal to George at all. But wandering around in a dangerous jungle in the middle of the night was definitely even less to her liking. So, she decided to stay in the cave with her dog and leave immediately at dawn. But shortly after she made this decision, something happened that made George really think she had lost all her wits. The light. It was back. Only this time not in her dream and a lot more real. To her amazement, her dog didn't seem to be able to see the light, for he stood beside her, calm as a cucumber, scratching his ear. Why this was the case, George had no answer.

As quickly as the light appeared, it was also extinguished again, leaving a perplexed George behind, who no longer really knew what to think now. Was everything she had seen or heard in her dream really true, or was it all just an illusion? No matter which of these two theories was the "right" one, they both supported Lewis' theories. He thought that something in the jungle was not right and possibly paranormal and that what George had experienced was something paranormal. At least for her.

Without knowing what to do, she sat down on the cool, hard stone floor of the cave and began to think. Her thoughts drifted to her friends. How the hell was she supposed to free Julian from the hands of several heavily armed strangers, alone, with only her dog as a companion? She had not even the faintest idea where they had taken Julian or where Dick, Anne and Jo were. George had the uneasy feeling that they too had been taken by these people, so for her, it was not a "rescue mission" for Julian, but for each of her friends. Completely unarmed and almost on their own, this was an impossible task.

All her childhood, George was a loner. With her unusual way of acting more masculine, keeping her hair short and wearing more masculine clothes, it made her more or less a laughingstock or someone to stay away from among the other children at Kirrin. How many times had she witnessed some parents of classmates, complete strangers to her, telling their children not to talk to George or be "poisoned" by her. According to the motto, girls are supposed to stay girls and just don't get the idea of not falling into the stereotype of the submissive, well-behaved housewife who listens to men at every turn. Kirrin was a very conservative place. So conservative that George had no idea what transsexuality was. Lewis seemed to be quite different. He freely offered to dub her a boy and see her as one too, only if she told him. Perhaps he even did so already. George put it on her mental "to-do list" to definitely approach him about it. If she ever saw him again, of course because he too had disappeared without a trace.

"You sure worry a lot about yourself and your friends," a strange voice spoke softly. "Who is there?" asked George, startled, tensing up. "Someone who has many solutions to your problems. You just need to find a way to find the real you and ignore what people think," the voice replied, which didn't really help George. Coincidentally, her eyes fell on Timmy, who was lying calmly next to her, dozing off. Did he not hear that voice at all? "I have no idea what you're talking about," George replied, continuing to look at her dog. "You don't have to be." the voice spoke and fell silent. It left a completely distracted George behind. She had definitely gone insane. Already the whole time since she had been here. First this exaggerated concern for Julian, then this stupid voice saying some mysterious things to her and then falling silent without telling her who it belonged to.

George buried her face in her hands and took several deep breaths. She needed to calm down. She had to stay focused and put together a plan to get her friends back. "But that's impossible!" hissed a nasty little voice in her lower consciousness. George had to agree with it, sadly. It was impossible in her current situation. She didn't know where they were, how they were doing or if they were even alive. The men who had kidnapped Julian could be torturing, tormenting or simply killing him in cold blood at this very moment. This jungle brought up enormously sinister thoughts that George dreaded. She didn't want anything like that to be done to him. Whether there had always been a gigantic rivalry between them, he was, next to Dick, the brains of the gang. He, more often than not, always kept a cool head and, unlike George, tried to talk or think about something more carefully first rather than jump to conclusions. They were almost the complete opposite of themselves, but still matched so extremely that it almost scared her. Added to that was her uncharacteristic concern for him. Sure, you're scared when you learn that someone close to you is in mortal danger, but to almost cry about it was just too cheesy for George. She was strong, brave and desperate to be a boy. For her, that rarely meant, if ever, showing any feelings at all.

Also, this uncanny desire to touch him that she felt when he lay unconscious in front of her, when she had stayed with him in the clearing. It almost disgusted her. How dare she become the least bit submissive? She was contradicting herself to her identity and she absolutely could not let this happen again. Otherwise, George would only continue to lie to herself and not live up to the courageous, selfless person she usually was. In her hectic world, there was no time for anything like love and affection. It was even a miracle that she would ever voluntarily call Julian, Dick and Anne friends. But that was only an "exception" for her. An exception that had entirely changed her life. Positively, one had to say.

Timmy suddenly jumped up beside her, which startled George. So, again, completely lost in thought, the world around her sank into a dark fog. Brought back down to earth by her dog's strange behaviour, she looked around cautiously. Her gut told her that something was wrong. In her left ear she perceived fine crackling. As if masses of small pebbles or debris were falling to the ground.

The longer George listened to this sound, the more restless she became. Where were these noises coming from, and what did they mean? Was the cave about to collapse? "Impossible!" thought George to herself. Surely, a cave couldn't just collapse out of the blue. Still, that subtle, nerve-wracking crackle gave her slight goosebumps. Timmy was not exactly at ease either. Ready for battle and with his eyes wide open, he stared in the direction from which the noises were coming.

"As they always say, the truth lies behind closed doors."

As if on cue, the back wall of the cave gave way and collapsed with a loud crash. A huge cloud of dust developed and engulfed George and Timmy, blinding them. Coughing violently, George tried to drive the dust away from her by waving her arms wildly around. Even Timmy sneezed loudly several times, shaking violently. After the coughing had subsided and George could finally see something dimly again, she could hardly believe her eyes. Exactly where the cave wall had subsided, there was now a gaping hole about two metres high that looked too much like an entrance. George ran her fingers through her burning, irritated eyes hoping to remove the annoying blur in her vision. When she finally succeeded, she spied something that drew her strongly into a fierce spell. A soft white light shone from the opening, too much like the light from her dream. Her innate desire for adventure and discovery flooded her. She had to pull herself together strongly not to run immediately towards this strange entrance. Instead, she called Timmy to her and approached the strange opening with him close at her side.

When she peered inside, there was indeed a long, extremely narrow corridor in front of her, leading into gloomy darkness. "Going in there without a torch would not be an excellent idea," she said to herself. The light she had spied earlier had disappeared after she had approached the opening. Only by chance did she spot something lying in a corner of the cave. "What is that?" she asked, approaching the unfamiliar elongated objects. Puzzled, she blinked several times as she realized that the mysterious objects were flares. "Convenient. I'll pretend that it's not suspicious at all that these things are just lying around here," she spoke quietly and picked them up. At the tips of the elongated objects were percussion fuses. These would, as the name suggested, ignite the flare by striking it against a hard surface, like stone.

Shrugging her shoulders, George looked at Timmy and struck one of the torches against the nearest stone wall of the cave. Immediately the light began to burn, accompanied by a loud crackling noise. Red smoke emanated from the tip of the illuminant and surrounded her legs. "Kinda cool these things." commented George with a grin, who was secretly a big fan of pyrotechnics. "Well then, what are we waiting for. Let's explore this weird passageway and see who's trying to play a trick on us," George said to her dog, who still didn't want to believe that she might be experiencing something supernatural or paranormal.

No matter what was behind this passage, it wanted to be discovered and George, always ready for an exciting adventure, wanted to be the one to explore it.