The Great Deception Mystery Cache

THIS CACHE IS NOT LOCATED AT THE LISTED COORDINATES.

These coords are for a nice big field in what used to be a state mental facility, and is now part of Purdue.  A quiet space thats great for a picnic or flying RC airplanes (if they've mowed recently...)

This is a Cache dedicated to geocaching friends old and new.  I always enjoy a good story from this crazy game we play, but before geocaching was geocaching Pacogoatboy was a very young explorer. He really knows how to tell a great story but there is one in particular that disturbs me. I would like to share in hopes the geocaching world can give this unfortunate soul some peace... and maybe because its just a great story in my opinion.  The story as it was told to me…

Congratulations goes to KatandKev for a FTF!!!

There was a time when I was a boy that my friends and I went looking for a buried treasure.  Hoping to find loot, we gathered our kit.  Equipment: shovels, rope, tent, backpacks.  Could we search?  Absolutely.  Could we succeed?  Here’s the problem, pirates didn’t sail in Ohio.  Especially not in central Ohio.  Creeks are it.  Anywhere.  None of us, and there were four, had any sense, except for one: Girl.  Beagle smarts?  Everyone says they are dumb…  Fat and lazy maybe, but stupid?  Obviously these hound haters hadn’t met her: sharp, keen, observant, attentive, sly, sneaky, conniving, brilliant…  Understand, I’m not saying Girl was a sweet dog; she would happily bite mailmen and chase cats; why else like her?  Never mind that though, among my habits are getting off track when telling stories.  Dad always would say… 

Anyway… That was the summer my sister turned six, so I must have been nine or so, definitely still a kid.  Now put that in your mind, three kids and a clever dog, out exploring.  Opening innocently like that, who would know this was about the destruction of my life?  Rowdy kids we were in those days, me: sturdy, slow; then my friend Vern: kind, dependable, shy, smelly.  Time was, kids took a bath on Saturdays, but I don’t think Vern washed each month, let alone each week.  He loved Girl and she didn’t mind smelliness.  (For perfume, she rolled in roadkill.)  Other than me, Vern, and Girl, there was Big Butch, my mother’s brother’s youngest son.  Uglier than any of us, Big Butch was really named Xavier, but we only called him that rarely, to tease him.  Raised with nine big brothers, Butch was a troublemaker: scheming, lying, rotten, mischievous, thieving, obnoxious, annoying, tough, cool.  

Our lives are filled with these troublesome friends, and we really can’t say quite why. Now Butch wasn’t all bad, at eight years old he was already five seven.  Every boy needs big friends.  Doesn’t fear bigger kids.  Even stand up to adults.  Great to have around, most times anyway.  Ranked out by his even more giant brothers, he’d wind up letting off steam on us some days.  Even so … a free bodyguard.  Every week … a fresh shiner.  Sometimes, well, lots of times, Vern and I would reconsider our ‘friendship’ with Butch, but he’d decide for us.  Forget it, we didn’t mind him much and talking about Butch, who’s a good man nowadays, gets us nowhere.

Itching to go, we left.  Very shortly thereafter, we decided we had hiked enough, so we started pitching our tents, gathering firewood, and, soon enough, made camp.  Eventually we started to search.  Pretty much aimless, we looked everywhere: trees, ponds, creeks, boulders, bogs, holes, ditches, stumps.  Only the hound found anything interesting, a rock face with a narrow crack in the middle.  It was getting late, so we decided to check it out carefully in the morning.  Not that we were scared of the dark, but…

The next morning we woke, bellies aching from the marshmallows and hotdogs we’d eaten.  Our guts hurt something fierce all right, but there was treasure and we were back at that cave right quick!  None of us had packed a light (Girl probably would have, but she’d said nothing.)  Even in the daytime, sun shining bright, that tall narrow crack looked awfully dark.  Four of us, all nervous…

I finally decided to go in.

Very close to the entrance, I found a chest.  Every hair stood up as I cracked it open; inside there was a note, also I found: coins, toys, knickknacks, rocks, baubles.  The note was in code!

Ran out, straight into Vern.  Eager to show them the prize, I popped open the box, and out spilled the shiny, worthless stuff.  Each of them, Girl included, was speechless; none of us really thought we’d find anything.  Making a big show of the trinkets, I kept the note for myself.  

I know, I know, it was rotten to do.

Nevertheless, I did it; I was a skunk: low-down, cheating, lying, stinking, untrustworthy, worthless...  Up until then I’d been a pretty good guy, gotten in a fight or six, but always for cause, you know?  This was something new, and in that one moment, my life changed, for the worse, oh so much the worse.  Each night I’d lie awake…  Sometimes, I’d get out the note and ponder what it hid from me: treasure, murder, love, lust, treason, communists???  (Well, it was a while ago, and we were all scared of the Reds, surely some kid in Moscow was scared of me…)  Each day it gnawed me…  Still, I’ve never been too smart, and I couldn’t tell anyone where it came from, so it sat, unsolved. The note and I aged, without me ever showing it to anyone, a single person knew of it: me, myself.  

Each year my curiosity grew.

In time, I split from the friends of youth.  Getting older, I joined the tougher crowds.  Having the note wrecked me … knowing its source.  The hours of my youth should have been spent playing, enjoying life, but instead, the note took it all away.  Forget it, I’d tell myself sometimes.  It couldn’t be important, never saw anyone after it.  Very often, I’d spend my evenings watching that crevice from hiding, waiting for someone to show up and search inside the cave.

Even in dreams I watched.

Don’t know for what…

Every dream involved the searcher.  Glancing around, the searcher would see me. Running from the searcher, I’d always trip and fall, the searcher would bound up, lips tight, teeth bared.  Every dream went very wrong…  Every last minute of them.

Still, in my heart I hoped for the day when I would really see a searcher at the cave.  Sometimes a person would come by.  In my chest, my heart thumped; could it be?   (Xavier, that’s what Big Butch called himself after medical school, always said I had too active an imagination for my own good…)  Peeking through bushes I hoped…  Only it never was, and I’m not sure I would have given the note up anyway.  Instead, only bumbling fools came, peering at their hands so hard they tripped on nothing!  None of them even tried entering the narrow cave.  They all poked around, looking at some stumps, a log here, a rock there.  They all were searching, but none was the searcher, since none knew of the cave and the chest and note.

Having spent all my time and energy obsessed with the note, I quit society.  Released from the need to be social, I decayed.   Even my parents surrendered eventually, allowing me to sit and stare, thinking, waiting, hoping.  

Each sleep full of nightmares…
 

So the years passed, my folks kicked me out, I led a disreputable life.  I never figured out the note, I’m not smart…  (Xavier said I wasn’t dumb, but my life is gone and still no clue?)  Each day I still ponder.  Inside, my guts churn from disease.  Goodness knows I’ve tried, this note gnaws me worse.  Holding on to it for decades, watching myself fail to solve its riddle, all becoming more brittle: paper, body, memories, will, mind.  

Then I heard of this.

Maybe I could share the note with someone else, could it be possible?  Internet anonymity making me bold for once, I’ve posted.  Nobody knows who I am, nobody sees my shame, and nobody believes it’s real.  Under the weight of all of these years lies my hope, the hope that I could solve the puzzle – my life.  There isn’t much time left for me, my insides are as damaged as my conscience, and if it goes unsolved… 

Everyone pays in the end…    N 41 07.284  W 085 05.614

 So I sit here, at this whirring computer, note, brain, and life waiting … hoping … fading … are you the searcher?