Under the Hill (part 2)

II. The feeling was unshakable. By the time I awoke, I felt a desperate sensation to return to the cave. Surely, there was something I had missed, some additional detail which might fit nicely into my story. Perhaps the children would be less fearful and more conversational. Yes, I thought, I would go prepared this time, knowing what to expect, and take charge of the situation, rather than be led around by a gang of ten year olds. And so I set off on foot from the checkpoint. The sun was setting, but I brought a battery-powered torch to light my way within the cave’s dark confines. Rather than climb the hill, I went around it, directly to the entrance. The entire field was eerily quiet. I began to doubt my mission. What madness brought me here? The children were probably miles away, in their homes, under curfew. Sneaking past the soldiers once was an accomplishment in itself, how could I possibly expect them to have done so a second time? This was just plain silly, I thought to myself, looking down at the bag of chocolates with which I had hoped to woo the children. I had come this far though, and at the very least I can examine this cave fully and offer a more thorough depiction of it in my article.

And so I entered, once again stooping lowly to fit into the cave’s short opening. With my torch, I could see the first room, and the next, and the one that followed. It seemed to be a system of tunnels of some sort, connecting various confined areas. They must have been very old, for the outline of each tunnel was in the same smooth stone that made up the cave’s entrance. The ground, however, was the same soft dirt found throughout the field outside, though there was no grass, nor anything growing from it. The rooms seemed almost identical. In fact, at one point I had to retrace my footprints to assure myself that I was not going in circles. It was clear now that this cave was deserted, but I endeavoured to continue to the final room, the bigger one in which I discovered the children on the previous night. Walking slowly through the final tunnel, I began to hear faint sounds, as of someone whispering in a large open area that was completely silent. Could someone else be in here? I wondered.

I shone my light across the room. At first glance, I noted how much bigger the room was than I previously thought. This must explain why the yells were so much louder than I would have anticipated, and for that matter, the laughter which brought me here in the first place. Just then, my light caught a face in the corner, then another. And another. Presently, all five of the children were huddled in a small corner at the far end of the cave. They shielded themselves from the light, so I lowered it from their faces. At once, I noticed them much more fully than before. They looked as they did the previous night, but appeared more vividly before my eyes. Their faces were solemn, not the cheerful ones I noted earlier. The girls appeared sorrowful, as if waiting for someone to take them away from this place, where they surely did not belong. They wore beautiful dresses that did not suit such a place as this damp and dingy cave. Their hair was long and covered their faces in careless strands. The hands they used to cover themselves from the light were dirty, almost black, as if they had been playing in soot. The boys too had the same dusty marks, though not only on their hands, but their faces as well. They were dressed rather shabbily, in torn clothing whose original colour it would seem impossible to discern. Their facial expressions, however, both sardonic and proud, seemed to betray their pitiable appearance.
“Hello again,” I began, finally breaking the eternal silence. Still no response, though they eyed me incessantly. “I’ve brought you something,” I continued, taking the chocolate bars out of my bag. Two of the boys stood up slowly, looking at my hands curiously. They took a few steps forward, but would not come any closer to me. “Go on, don’t be shy now,” I said to them, hoping to gain their confidence. Still, they chose not to come any closer, though the others also stood up and waited behind the two. “Very well, I’ll just leave them here,” I went on, laying the candy on the ground and backing away slightly. The boys looked at each other, then the first made a move toward the chocolate, though his eyes never left my face. He picked up a piece, and appeared to confer with his friends silently. The rest proceeded to join him and one by one they began eating. I began to observe them quietly from the room’s entrance, hoping to make them feel more at ease. Within seconds, they had devoured the little that I had brought them, as though they had not eaten in days. I had seen that sort of thing before, in the refugee camps I visited. It was always a sorry sight, but this time I felt more curiosity than any real empathy. “Did you like it?” I asked them, slowly moving closer to them. They looked back on me at once, as though they had just noticed me for the first time. “Relax,” I continued, “I just want to know your names.” Again I smiled but my own smiles began to make me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, as though they could see right through me somehow with their piercing eyes. I decided from that point on I would not smile at them, for even at their age, they might have deemed it to be patronising. “Yoshi,” said one of them. Finally, a voice other than my own would fill the ominous air that surrounded us. I approached the boy excitedly, “Yoshi? Is that your name?” “Yoshi,” said one of the girls, looking up at me from behind her friends. “I don’t understand—” “Yoshi,” said another boy, then the other, and finally the quiet girl spoke the word too. “What is Yoshi?” I asked in desperation, for it seemed these children were not responding to a thing I said. “Is it another ghost? Does it live in this cave?” “Yoshi,” came the reply, though I did not know from whom this time. It did not matter, for they were all presently consumed by this inexplicable word. They were not even looking at me anymore. The five of them formed a small circle, held hands, and began chanting it in unison. “Yo-shi, Yo-shi,” they chanted. It grew louder and faster. Soon they began skipping in their circle, holding each other’s hands. “Yo-shi, Yo-shi,” they continued. It was a song of some sort, though with a single word as its lyric. All of them were smiling now, and occasionally giggling as they danced and sang their peculiar tune. “Children, please, stop,” I began, trying to interrupt them or capture their attention, even for a moment. They simply ignored me though. It was becoming a frustrating tendency. As I continued to cry out, they would only sing faster and louder. “Yoshi, Yoshi,” came the eerie voices. Their melody filled every crevice of the cave and each chant came upon my ears a hundred times. I shined my torch on their smiling faces as they danced and skipped in their circle, but they took no notice of it this time. Again, as if possessed by some demon, I wanted nothing more than to leave this place, never to return. Every moment that passed with me standing there felt like it was sucking the life from within me. I could not breathe, and began to run in horror as I had the previous night. In my terrible haste, I dropped my torch and continued the escape in darkness. Once more, I hit my head on the cave’s low entrance, freshly cutting my newly closed wound. It was only outside that I felt a rush of air, which I directly took into my lungs.
It hit me almost instantly this time how imprudent it was of me to run from these playing children. I must have been suffocating in this cave, I thought to myself, and the lack of oxygen to my brain may have been partly responsible for my drastic behaviour. Nonetheless, I would save myself the trouble of going back inside. It was clear these children did not take kindly to my imposition and would rather be left to their game. Holding a handkerchief to my cut, I walked back to the checkpoint feeling sullen and defeated. The same soldier immediately noticed me with a sly smile. He seemed eager to relay me his predictable, cheeky comments but I was in no mood. “Just let me through, please,” I implored. “In time, in time,” came his reply. “It looks as though you’ve been back there after I told you to stay away. Those villages have no laws, you know. We cannot always protect you from the Bedouins.” “Thanks all the same,” I told him dryly, “but I have work to do there, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my hotel now.” “Calm down, my friend,” he said. As he spoke, his face did not change one bit. His condescending smile was in perfect form. I looked down at his green uniform. It was crisp and clean. His massive automatic machine gun was hanging by his side and his right hand never left it. He used his other hand to check my identification and wave cars through. “Sorry, maybe you can help me after all,” I began thoughtfully. “Does the word ‘Yoshi’ mean anything to you per chance?” I am not sure why I posed the question. I suppose I simply wanted to stop his incessant commentaries, but just then I noticed a stark change in his face. It turned grave, then angry. “Where did you hear that name?!” he demanded. “I-I don’t know,” I stammered, taken aback, “I did not even know it was a name.” “Of course it’s not,” he muttered, “Now away with you.”
Upon reaching my hotel, my head was spinning with questions. Nothing seemed to add up anymore. The soldier’s peculiar behaviour seemed to indicate that I had come across something I was not meant to discover. But what could it possibly be? And how is it that those strange children came to know it? That night was indeed as strange as I had seen in my days there, but in the midst of the confusion, my heart went out to the children who did not belong in such a place. “Perhaps tomorrow will yield itself to answers,” I said, comforting myself.
The next morning I was rudely awoken by the telephone’s persistent ringing. It was my editor. “What in the devil is this rubbish?” he began. “Sir? Why it must be 4am in Lon—.” “I know what time it is, Stanley, now explain yourself.” “It’s just my story, sir. An in-depth feature, as you asked.” He gave a long sigh. “By depth I don’t mean the dark depths of some bloody cave, Stanley,” he finally said in a voice somewhat calmer than before. “I was looking for something relevant, something concrete, not the Arab Harry Potter,” he continued. “I’m sorry, sir. I just thought it might be of interest.” “You guessed wrong then. It’s enough you managed to miss yesterday’s bombshell press conference. We may be calling you home soon enough. Good-bye, Stanley.”
Within moments, this unpleasant conversation was a distant memory. All I could think of was the chanting that rang in my ears. “Yo-shi, Yo-shi,” it said. Getting to the root of this mystery would become my sole driving purpose. I spent the days that followed asking all my contacts on both sides of the fence about the word and its relevance to anything near the checkpoint. I was careful to leave all the important details –especially the children and the cave— from my questions. Finally I came across a promising lead. A commander at one of the military outposts in the West Bank told me of a former general named Moshe Yoshan, who was nicknamed Yoshi by his friends in the IDF. He was a decorated war hero from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and subsequently patrolled a series of checkpoints, including the one leading to Ramallah, which I had been visiting everyday. He retired nearly ten years earlier though, and went to live with his mother somewhere on the northern coast. That was all that the general would tell me, but it was more than helpful. I was quickly able to obtain an address from the military’s veterans’ database and hurried to Acre the following day.
The house was in a quiet part of town, only a few metres from the coast. It was small, surrounded by a broken fence with an unkept garden within. By knocking on the door, it seemed as though I awoke the entire neighbourhood. Women and elderly men peered out of nearby windows and doorways until finally the door opened. An elderly woman eyed me suspiciously then spoke, rather curtly. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but my son is very ill and cannot have any visitors.” She did not wait for a response but immediately began closing the door until I interrupted her with my hand. “Please, I have come a long way and I should only like to speak with him for a moment.” She began to deny me entrance again, but just then a figure emerged from behind her. It was Yoshi. “Very well,” she said grumpily, “but only for a minute.” She left the doorway and I stood face to face with the general. He certainly did not appear well. For a man in his mid-forties, his hair had turned completely white and his face was very wrinkled. In fact, had I not known who he was, I would have assumed he was the same age as his elderly mother. A sorrowful look was in his eyes. His mouth was wide open, but no words came out. Finally I began.
“I’m sorry to bother you general, but I wanted to ask you about—” “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” came his voice. His speech was slurred, as though a heavy impediment lay on his tongue. His voice was incredibly weak and scratchy. I became puzzled at that moment. “I-I’m not sure as to what you are referring. But no, I have not seen anything supernatural, if you mean the cave.” “Ah yes, the cave,” he continued, “may God’s curse be upon that place and all who dwell within it. I have not slept a night in ten years because of it.” His voice began to trail off. In fact, it appeared he was no longer addressing me, but continued to speak to himself for several minutes, little of which, other than bits and pieces, could I understand. It was now that I realised that his retirement probably came at the hands of some traumatic incident that caused his current distress. I hesitated to interrupt his idle ramblings, but I thought I should redirect him to my query. “Sir, lately I have observed children playing within this same cave, but nothing has befallen them. What is it that happened to you there?” Something in these words must have triggered a bizarre reaction, for he eyed me with great shock and horror, though it was not entirely possible that he even saw me at all, but was witnessing something altogether imaginary. His eyes lit up with panic as he began to shiver before me. Soon he began to shriek, just as the children had done. His mother emerged yelling after me. “What have you done?! My dear son, what have you done to him? He is not well. Why must you remind him?” His mother grabbed him at once, and opened the door for me to leave. “I-I’m so sorry,” I began to say as I left, but no apologies would be heard, nor would I ever be forgiven for such a gross intrusion into this peaceful home. The door slammed shut behind me, but I could still here the old man’s screams long after I had passed through the broken gate and walked out of that street.
The days passed and I was at a loss. No longer did I trouble my mind with questions that had no answers, or at any rate, whose answers did not wish to be known. The news picked up and I became too consumed by current events to concern myself with inexplicable obscurities. At one point, I was passing three or four stories along to London each day. Never once did I contemplate returning to the cave or discovering the identities of the children, or even the cause of the general’s convulsions. Some things, I realized, were not meant to be known, even to a reporter. It was not until a visit in late November that I stumbled upon an astounding discovery. During a trip to a West Bank refugee camp, I decided to visit one of the many UN-run schools. This particular one was recently shelled by the Israeli military and I was to interview some teachers and administrators, as well as document the destruction. While rummaging through the rubble that was the library, I came across what was ostensibly a yearbook of sorts. It contained the pictures of hundreds of children, and it was one of the few books I found preserved, though its edges had been burnt and several pages had fallen out. Suddenly, as I leaned over to pick up a fallen page, I saw them. All five faces were on the page, though in different places. I first noted the quiet girl, whose expression in this portrait was exactly as I had seen it in the cave. Then the bold boy, who exhibited the same airy smile I saw as he felt for my hand. The remaining three followed. Finally, a new clue in this mystery. Perhaps now I can find these children at their homes and talk to them in more seemly surroundings. I turned to the librarian who was also searching through the charred remains of what was once her place of work.
“Do you know where I can find these children?” I asked. “Oh, I’m sorry, it appears as though your Arabic is not as good after all. That book you hold is of Palestinian child martyrs from the Intifada.” Her words were a bombshell, though she did not even know it, as she delivered them with a regretful smile. “No, you don’t understand,” I began, attempting to maintain some hold onto reality. “I’ve seen these children, fairly recently. They couldn’t have just been killed.” “You’re right. They weren’t just killed. The book you are holding is of martyrs of the first Intifada, over ten years ago.” She came closer and began to read the page’s heading as I held it in my hand. “However that particular page is not of children who were killed during the street battles, for their bodies were never recovered. During this time, many disappeared and were presumed to have been kidnapped. There were many stories circulating of soldiers who would take children to secluded places and kill them, but no proof of such things was ever found.” The words hit me harder than anything I had ever lent my ears to hear. A strange dizziness overwhelmed me as I saw the world spinning about me. The blow was worse than one thousand collisions into the cave’s low ceiling.
I excused myself from the librarian and scrambled to reach the cave. In my bewildered state, I scarcely recall my hysterical sprint to the lonely path up that hill. As I approached the ghostly entrance, a voice came from behind. “You cannot go in there,” it said. It was the soldier from the checkpoint. “We have orders to close this hole at once. It is too dangerous, the ground above it cannot support it from caving in,” he concluded firmly. “No, you don’t understand,” I implored, “I must go in there. Children. There are children in there. You have to let me go.” As though he had anticipated my state of lunacy, the soldier ushered two others to take me by the arms and out of that area. In my fanatical state, I continued yelling out, begging them to stop, until they finally dragged me across the ground and away from the hill. As I departed from it for the last time, I heard them again. The faint remnants of childish laughter followed me home.