Kraken Orbital

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 9

  The Caves

  It takes me a few moments to adjust my eyes to the blackness of the cave. I come out of my hiding behind Kolt. I force myself to. I need to take control and remember what it was that forced me here in the first place. I need to remember how empowered I felt when I kicked the crap out of my boss and I need to remember how to be that guy again.

  I step forward and rip the torch from his loose grip. And then I stupidly slip on a wet rock I hadn’t seen.

  I go tumbling head over heel and drop the torch onto the soaked ground. Luckily, more by his skill than my good management, Kolt picks it up and dusts it off before it has the chance to get swamped by the water running through the cold and soggy cave. My back hurts again. I’m not fully recovered from the crash, not by any measure, and that fall has done it no good at all. I stand, arch my back to hear it crack, and groan in a feeble attempt to garner any kind of sympathy.

  I feel a right idiot. Kolt has, as a testament to the kind of guy I now know him to be, not said a word and has just stepped ahead of me. He could have ripped me to shreds over that. I think I would have done that were I him. I listen hard for the sound of sniggering through his mask filter but it doesn’t come. Maybe he just feels my embarrassment. I already know he has virtually no sense of humor so I really shouldn’t be as surprised as I am.

  All I can hear is the incessant and rhythmic dripping of far away water. I waste no time in catching up with Kolt. This place is making me feel cold and afraid again. I can see he has descended down into another level of the cave complex, only by the fading light of the torch, and my blurred vision can sparsely cut through the lingering mist that seems to have formed out of nowhere. I steady my stance and start making my way over to him.

  ‘Kolt!’ I shout and the sound echoes. The confined walls of the cave, and some yet to be discovered more open space, bounce every decibel right back at me.

  ‘Wait up!’ I shout up. The words carry for what feels like forever. I shuffle closer and finally reach a steep downward gradient that I slide down on the backs of my legs to meet him.

  I land in a heap at the bottom of a slippery slide. I can’t get any traction on the wet rock, even with my hardened boots on. Kolt hasn’t said anything yet but at least he stopped to wait for me. The mist has blanketed the cave in a thick, relentless, and penetrating veil that I can barely see through. The light from the torch is all we have to guide us. But all that does is light up the mist rather than a path through it.

  At least I can stand up properly. And at least I can’t hear any of the dinosaurs in here so I have to hope we are safe from them. Something must call this cave “home”. I just pray it’s nothing big enough to try to eat us.

  I can hear water in the distance somewhere. It is flowing slowly down some underground traps and streams. I can hear it trickle slowly, licking the side of the dark rock, and cascading down into some unknown abyss. But I’m fixating on that to hide something else I don’t want to believe.

  I’m so sure that I can see shapes and figures moving around in the mist. My eyes are, despite all of my effort to concentrate on anything else, fixed on them. I’m watching them shift in the ever changing fog and light condition. I glance to Kolt to see if he is looking in the same direction. He is. But he either hasn’t seen the figures that wisp around the penetrating mist, has seen them and is not afraid, or they aren’t even there at all.

  I watch carefully as one shape, so human to my tired eyes, dances through the dense fog, twirling almost playfully to a soundtrack that I cannot hear. Then it disappears again. Back to the fog from whence it came. I stare into the vacant space the figure used to occupy, so hard that I feel as though my eyes could hone in on every particle of the fog.

  I’m sure it must be my tired eyes. I’m sure it’s a trick of the light and the way the bamboo torch is burning. But I can swear I see a face made of mist. A human face. One with scared and lonely eyes, that glance longingly at me, craving to live as I do.

  I can feel my tongue swell in the back of my throat as the fear settles in and takes hold of me. I can’t look away. I can feel my breathing deepen with every labored inhale as my throat begins to close with fear.

  I feel cold. Not like a snow and ice caused cold, but a chill. Almost like my very blood is running away from my skin with dread of what might be. The face has not gone. Kolt remains focused and still. The chattering of the water running through some unknown cavern and the licking flames are the only noises around. I try to focus on them. I try to take my eyes away and stare at the flame but my gut won’t let me.

  The spectral eyes captivate me and I feel the pain I see in them. I need to do something. I need to move, to run, to turn and sprint in terror back the way we came and wait for my fate with the Morris Cooper security force.

  I shake my head violently from side to side with my eyes firmly clamped shut. It is a while before I can open them again. A few moments before I dare to. But the specter has gone when I do. There are no more shapes in the mist, no more figures dancing through it, no more fearful eyes piercing me with longing stares.

  I sigh, a lot louder than I would have liked to, and wait for my heart to stop thumping inside my ribcage. I blow out the air from my lungs through my tightened lips. I make a funnel out of them and blow away as much of the mist as I can. I can see the effect of it but more mist rolls in to take the place of every volume my lungs manage to move.

  But there are no creatures, at least that I have yet been able to see, lurking inside. My companion has still not said anything and I can no longer fight the childish urge to seek comfort from his, hopefully, more mature thoughts.

  ‘Kolt.’ I whisper so the sound does not bounce so vividly back at us.

  ‘We need to pass this field of fog.’ He says back, peering through his strained eyes through the dark blanket of mist, studying it and trying to remember which way we need to go. He doesn’t say anything about the eerie figures, which I am certain were nothing but figments of my battered and over active imagination, so I decide to press him further.

  ‘Did you have any problem passing through the cave before.’ I hide my fear admirably and I don’t think he senses that I’m all messed up. That’s good. I already feel like a child, like the beta male, I can’t do with another slip down the pecking order. For the sake of my own assaulted ego.

  ‘The caves are disorientating, I think I have a map of them in my mind for us to follow though.’ I assume he means that he has spent the last few moments planning a route while I have been panicking over shapes and shadows that I must have made up. He starts to walk his way down the deep cave system, each step thundering a malicious echo around the cavern, his fire torch flickering and seemingly dying with every passing second. I still can’t help but to keep checking all of the field of view. I check the mist every few seconds for shapes and masses in there but there doesn’t seem to be anything.

  ‘Ouch!’ I kick a rock since I’m not really watching where I’m going. I need to get my game face back on. I’m tired, upset, stressed and my imagination is playing hell with me.

  I follow Kolt a little further, listening contently to the chattering water in some unknown distance, letting my eyes settle to the faint but flickering light, and let my mind waver a little more from the task at hand. I have to forgive myself for not being as “on the ball” as I would like to be. I feel sorry for myself, that much is true, but I need to be less hard on myself right now.

  I made my choices back in the mine. I killed six people and beat the hell out of one more. That takes it’s toll. Especially considering I’ve been nothing but a good, law abiding, well behaved and dutiful member of society all of my life. I didn’t think I would ever have it in me to kill people. I kind of wish I could turn the clock back, but I know that I can’t.

  Then I fly a rig all the way here with nothing but experience gained in a simulator, crash the damn thing right into the dirt, traverse across a desert, escape the snapping jaws of
creatures I though long extinct, climbed a precarious vine up a slippery rock face, nearly drowned in a babbling river since I messed up and jumped in, only to start seeing ghosts in the thick mist in this claustrophobic and dense cave.

  All this while thinking about my inevitable, if that’s the right word, capture at the hands of the Morris-Cooper Mining company. I should really give myself the break I should deserve but I can’t. I’m not even half way through this epic journey I, and Kolt, have embarked upon. I’m tired, we’ve been traipsing through the night and I’ve not really eaten much at all in days.

  My legs are starting to burn. I hadn’t even noticed the gradual incline but we must have been walking up hill for some time. I hadn’t even noticed the mist clear but now that I have, I’m glad it’s gone. The images of those figures, and especially that face, are pasted into the back of my mind.

  I’m glad I don’t have to think about it anymore. The sound of gushing water has grown more intense in the past few minutes, it sounds like it might be running through the walls to our left and right.

  The tunnel has closed in around us and the walls are no longer smooth and water worn. They are jagged and unforgiving to the slightest mistake. I keep catching my shoulder blades on the sides and the rock keeps tearing chunks of my armor away each time. I just grunt in frustration. I’m on auto pilot right now, just watching Kolt step the miles away.

  ‘Now we have to crawl.’ Kolt says, turns back at me and lowers his arm across his face to demonstrate that the roof is much lower in this section of the cave. I’d forgotten his eyes. I had thought they might clear in time but they are still bloodshot to the extremities. To the point where there is no white left in there. The flame from the torch is exaggerating the color for sure but it doesn’t stop the sight from being intense and a little disturbing.

  Even now, after I have known him for some time, he still scares me. I just nod. I’m too tired to speak.

  I’m even glad when I drop to my knees. My thighs are throbbing from the uphill struggle. I know moving through tight spaces will be physically hard but I’m just happy to be lower. Closer to the ground. Kolt moves ahead first. I watch as he pushes his eight foot tall frame through a confined tunnel and disappear, along with our light, into another area of the cave.

  I tuck myself into a tight ball, roll my shoulders to face the thinnest direction, and press on. I can only hear my armor scrape against the rough surface of the wall and the force I need to push myself through the thin section of the closed walls surprises me. I don’t even know where I’m pulling the energy from it but I’m definitely glad of it.

  The sound wasn’t much at first. There was nothing to separate it from the distant sound of running water. It wasn’t pronounced enough to hear over my armor rubbing against the rock. But slowly it began to pierce my ear drums and fill my head. A scream. I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman, but it oozes fear and dread. It’s primal and near deafening. It fills me with fear immediately and I begin to panic as the reality slowly settles in.

  I have no way to turn my head. If I push it to the right I just bash my head on the cold rock. I can feel blood trickle down my face as the sharp geology cuts into my fragile, cracked and cold skin. If I try to look around the other way I just jam it against my own shoulder blade.

  I can’t tell where the scream is coming from, or if my mind is just playing tricks on me, but I could swear it’s coming from behind me. I start to breathe hard and push harder and tougher against the rock to squeeze through.

  ‘Kolt!’ I shout at him and hear my voice drowned by the constant and devilish scream. ‘Kolt!’ I scream again until he finally stops. He can’t turn either, he’s far bigger than me after all, and I can’t hear if he is calling back to me or not.

  ‘Keep moving.’ He yells, his voice finally pushing through his rasping mask. He must have heard me, and the viscous scream coming from behind too. I take his advice in a heartbeat and start pushing my way through the tight and horrible space with every tiny bit of power that I can muster.

  The going is tough, and I try really hard not to get consumed by own thoughts of dread, try not to think that any number of beasts might be clawing at my back and I wouldn’t even be able to see them! I try not to think about the ghostly spectral figures I had seen when we first entered the cave either. Me, and my body with me, has entered full survival mode and I can feel the adrenaline burning through me.

  ‘Not far now!’ Kolt shouts back and seems to pull himself through a sort of doorway in the cave and is able to fully stretch out. He reaches back for me, I take his arm and with one last gasp, force myself, driven by his power, out of the tiny hole.

  I quickly scramble to my feet, neglecting to look around the new area, and swing back around to peer down the tight crawl space we just forced our way through. Kolt is holding up the improvised torch as close as he can to the entrance to the tunnel.

  It, irritatingly, only lights up the immediate area in a hazy spherical glare of flickering and inconstant light. The scream has died down a little but it’s still there. I’m glad the noise is growing more and more feint. I don’t even care if it’s someone in trouble and they are getting dragged away by a rouge dinosaur. I just want the noise to go away. A selfish thought I admit but I just don’t care.

  ‘What the Hell is that?’ I join Kolt by the entrance to the crawlspace and peer into the relentless darkness, as if somehow expecting my vision to suddenly and somehow adapt out of nothing and be able to see more. It doesn’t work. I can’t see anything. The scream grows more and more distant with each passing minute. My heart calms at the same rate.

  ‘I remember the caves now.’ Kolt turns immediately back to me and stands up from his crouched position. He raises the torch high but it’s starting to die. As the adrenaline ebbs out of me I begin to feel very cold, colder than I have in a while, and I start to realize just how far we have come through this system of caves.

  It must be first light by now. We must have spent the whole night traipsing through the darkness of the forest first and then the cave system second. Kolt aggressively tosses the torch back down the crawlspace. The wood splinters against the jagged rock and the light goes out, as the wood breaks apart, too fast for us to see anything that might be following us. I’m angry with him but only for a moment or two.

  I start to adjust to the new light very quickly and realize that the cave system has opened up higher in the mountain. Now to address his cryptic comment about remembering the caves…

  ‘Why do you remember them?’ It’s a good enough start to an awkward conversation.

  ‘I remember the fearfulness of the place. I remember shapes dancing in the dark and monsters lurking beneath the rock.’ I wish he hadn’t said that. I had convinced myself that I was just imagining things but clearly not. There was something odd about the cave network. I just didn’t want to face the truth. I have to come clean with him.

  ‘I thought I’d been imagining things.’ I say, trying hard not to let even the slightest amount of fear show, and turn my head from side to side to try and detect where the new light is coming from. I can just about feel a bracing breeze blow in from unknown entrance, or exit depending upon perspective, of the cave system.

  ‘So did I.’ Kolt said nothing more. What could he say? He has no answers, no more than I do, so it will be very wrong of me if I expect anything other from him.

  ‘What did you think the screaming was?’ I ask him using the past tense since the noise has now completely faded into nothing but an eerie memory.

  ‘Perhaps a lost woman.’ He guesses. There is nobody here but us. ‘Though I know the tone of her vocal chords from somewhere deep in my mind.’ He recognized the sound of the scream! That admission made my blood run cold. I know Kolt is beyond help with some things, including his patchwork memory, but this last comment reminds me of some other horror inducing things he has said in the past few days.

  I wonder how he feels? If he recognizes a ghostly howl to
belong to woman he knew once upon a time then he must be crawling up the walls with worry about it. I can’t even bring myself to reply. I don’t want to pry further into his damaged psyche because I’m honestly afraid of what I might find.

  ‘Is your ship much further?’ I ask instead. I can’t deal with his last comment so I’m deliberately choosing not to. The cold is getting worse now. Since the chilling sound of a distant scream has now died away, I can hear the wind howling and billowing around a cramped entranceway, the sharp rocks causing turbulence and gusts.

  ‘We have climbed much through the night.’ His voice suddenly changes. He sounded reflective, and I’m not sure it is the right word to use, but I think it’s afraid, when he admitted to recognizing the scream. Now he is himself again. Confident, strong and assertive.

  ‘So?’ I fill in the gap between his observation and his explanation.

  ‘We will exit the cave high in the mountain and have to climb a difficult face of rock until we reach a ridge, upon which my poor ship is lain to rest.’ He points with a finger, that I can thankfully now see given the new source of light, to the right and steps forward.

  The cave has lost it’s intense atmosphere now. The cold has taken that away and filled it instead with a thin spray of stray snow flakes.