by The Behrg
It had to have been two minutes now, though it felt like thirty. His fingers were numb, curling inward. He was losing feeling in his feet. Oxygen starvation. His lungs burned, demanding he take a breath, water be damned.
Just ahead, Kendall stopped moving.
He’s unconscious.
It was the first thought that presented itself. Kendall’s body slowly turned so that he was floating lengthwise as if he were standing. Dugan clawed at the water, swimming toward him, then saw the muscled man in nothing but his briefs turn his head and gesture.
Two cavern mouths merged into the one they had travelled through, their path splitting. Dugan glanced upward at the cavern ceiling, his need for air trying to summon a pocket into existence. But he was no Shaman.
Kendall glided forward, choosing the path on the right. The current bore down on them with a frenzied force, impeding their progress. Or maybe Dugan was simply running on fumes. He blinked rapidly, his peripheral vision closing in, dark spots running like rain down a windshield.
The last of his air escaped, a gnawing cancer in his chest chewing through tissue with sharpened teeth. Darkness on all sides of him, except for that tunnel straight ahead. A tunnel that was shrinking.
Compressing.
The flare dropped from his hand. He could no longer keep his grip. He had to breathe.
Had to breathe.
Had to breathe.
Just as he was about to give in and welcome the water into his lungs, hands latched onto his shoulders, pulling him upward.
The water was warmer, thicker. It clung to him, sensing his escape, not wanting to let go.
And then he was through.
He came up out of black sludge, heaving.
Arms dragged him onto solid ground and he let his head fall back against the hard earth. His extremities burned, hands and feet tingling like pins were breaking the skin. His head felt like it might burst.
“We made it.”
Kendall hovered over him, his face dripping with black mud. It clung to his hairy chest and was smeared along his shoulders and bare arms and legs. In nothing but jockey shorts he really did look like a Ken doll, though one that had been left out in the yard after a storm.
Oso was hunched against the wall, also shirtless, though at least he had kept on his pants. His long black hair looked more like a mossy vine with the amount of filth caught in it. It draped down to the floor, hiding his head as he leaned over, breathing between his knees.
“Take your time,” Kendall said.
“We’re sure … this is it?”
“Nah, it’s just another cavern with stone steps leading down,” Kendall said.
Dugan noticed muddied footprints on the ground, leading toward the hollowed passage where the steps began. “One of you … check it out?” he asked.
Kendall shook his head. “Wasn’t us.”
Zephyr. He had made it.
“We need to stay together,” Dugan said.
“Rojo stay back?”
Dugan sat up, an intangible spike driving through his skull with the motion. “He was … right behind me.”
Oso quickly stood, moving to the dark pool of ichor and mud. He unlatched his belt, letting it fall, his knives hitting the ground. Lowering the goggles back over his head, he bent back to expand his chest then sucked in a large breath.
“Wait!”
Oso jumped feet first into the sludge, disappearing beneath it.
“Damnit,” Dugan shouted.
Kendall slid one of Oso’s blades from its sheath, the curved black steel shimmering from the glow of the flare Oso had left on the ground. Kendall tossed the flare to Dugan, raising his goggles from around his neck.
“I’ll check on Zephyr, be right back.”
He slipped down the winding staircase before Dugan could protest. Dugan slammed a fist into the rock wall beside him, dirt and small pebbles breaking loose. He was losing control of his men. As a unit, his team was unstoppable, but as individuals the cracks each of them bore widened, their well-oiled machine breaking down into useless parts. It wasn’t the money that kept them with Dugan, though it certainly had its place. These men belonged when they were together. They were part of something greater than they could ever achieve on their own, something that transcended family ties and relationships. A uniform organism controlled, however remotely, by the man at its center.
So if the body was breaking apart, molting into separate entities, what did it mean about the mind that controlled it?
Dugan undid the fastener on his folded hunting knife, depressing the button to draw the blade back. The capped dart was still in his pants pocket. He wasn’t sure who he’d use it on, The Shaman or Zephyr. Though at this point he knew which one he wanted to stab.
Minutes passed and Oso had yet to come back up. Dugan stood, pins-and-needles spreading from his toes upward. His head felt like he was decompressing after a deep water dive. He lowered the flare toward the pool, sickened by the sight. Bacteria and worm-like parasites floated in swarms on the surface of what looked like rotting feces. He rubbed at his arms and ran his hands through his hair, knowing it would do little good.
Footsteps echoed from the stairwell.
Dugan ditched the flare on the ground, moving to stand against the wall near the entrance to the steps. He gripped the knife loosely, allowing it to be an extension of his body.
Kendall tripped over the last step, bowling over, barely managing to stay on his feet. “Dugan?”
“You find him?”
Kendall breathed heavily, tapping the side of Oso’s blade against his bare calf. “Just his handiwork. Two bodies. Soldiers. Their necks, snapped.”
“And he left them out? I’m gonna kill him.”
“Oso’s not back?”
But Dugan didn’t need to answer. A hand burst through the thick casing of mud at the pool’s edge, grappling for a handhold, then Rojo came up out of the water. His head lolled forward as both Dugan and Kendall rushed to grab him. They dragged his body over the lip of solid earth. Rojo’s arms flopped down at his side, his beard no longer red but a mud-encrusted black.
Oso emerged, gasping in gulps of air. He flipped over onto his back, falling against the ground, his legs still beneath the mud. His whole body shook as if he were having a seizure.
“Nothing,” Kendall said, his head placed against Rojo’s chest. He stared down at the sludge dripping from Rojo’s open mouth. “Freaking muku.” He shoved his fingers in Rojo’s mouth, scooping out a handful of the mud. “I swear to god, you tell anyone about this, Dugan —” He bent over Rojo, lifting the man’s neck to clear his airway, then placed his mouth over Rojo’s while plugging his nose.
Kendall pumped the man’s chest, slamming against his ribs with locked fists. Dugan went over to check on Oso. The native’s eyes were unfocused, his body still trembling.
“You shouldn’t have gone,” Dugan said.
Oso’s eyes came into focus, finding him.
Dugan sensed his question and nodded. Behind Dugan, Kendall continued the noisy efforts of CPR.
Oso pointed with his lips toward Kendall and Rojo, then puckered them making a kissing noise. He then made a large X with his fingers and pointed to himself.
Dugan chuckled. Despite everything, the native could still make him laugh. Oso was just glad he wasn’t the one to give Rojo CPR.
“Don’t worry, we’ll tell everyone about it,” Dugan said.
This caused Oso to smile, an expression not often seen on the man.
Kendall suddenly slapped Rojo, the noise carrying in the small room. Dugan turned back in time to see Kendall repeat the motion, hitting Rojo so hard, his head flapped to the other side.
A gurgling sounded from Rojo, followed by liquid vomit splashing onto the ground.
“Get the hell off me,” Rojo said.
Kendall climbed off, moving away from the growing pile of discharge as Rojo emptied his stomach. “A thank you would suffice.”
“The hell’d
you eat? Onions and tuna fish?”
“You’re one to talk,” Kendall said, “With your mouth full of shit. Though that’s no different than normal, least for you.”
“We need to get going,” Dugan said.
“I could use … another minute,” Rojo said, sitting up. Color slowly flushed back into his cheeks.
“Zephyr’s already down there. Longer we wait the more likely he screws everything up.”
“He made it?”
Oso somersaulted backward, grabbing the blade Kendall had taken from the ground and rising into a crouch. He motioned to the stairs, then descended.
“So much for a minute,” Rojo said.
“Suck it up,” Kendall said.
“You certainly did,” Rojo retorted. “Been trying to make that move on me … since you got here.”
Kendall pointed to Dugan. “Told you I should have let him die.” He followed Oso’s lead, moving quietly down the stone steps.
Dugan clapped Rojo on the back of his head. “Glad you made it.”
“Me too.” Rojo wiped at the sludge on his beard, wringing it from his hand to the floor. “Did you send him for me?”
“No. He went on his own.”
“Would you have?”
Dugan met the man’s eyes. “No.”
Rojo’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t say anything. After a moment, he looked away.
“Is that a problem?”
“Yeah, it is.” Rojo paused, as if searching for the right words. “Now I’ve got to thank not only Kendall, but that mute son of a bitch.”
Dugan nodded, knowing that in the last few seconds his and Rojo’s relationship had irrevocably changed. He almost regretted not his actions, but his decision to tell Rojo the truth.
Almost.
Soon it wouldn’t matter. He had no self-deceptions that his team would last beyond whatever this rescue attempt resulted in. This was it. The apex of what they might accomplish. And if he couldn’t be honest with his men now, they should never have been together in the first place. Maybe he had taken them to the edge just one too many times, or maybe he had inadvertently shoved them over without even realizing it. Either way it didn’t matter. He just needed them to hold together long enough to accomplish what he came for. Getting his daughter and the Shaman out.
Dugan motioned for Rojo to go ahead, a tiny voice wondering if he no longer trusted the man at his back.
Is there anyone left that I do trust?
He didn’t like the answers that bounced back at him.
Verse XXVIII.
The journal Donavon had discovered was no ordinary ledger. It dated back to the fourteenth century, filled with the lucid writings of madmen and women who referred to themselves as Dryades. Gaulish descendants, their stories were filled with tales of nymphs and sorcerers, ritualistic practices and human sacrifices. Donavon could almost envision the scenes playing out in some R-rated acid-induced Disney cartoon in his head. As centuries turned, so the practices of these pagans were shaped by the religions of the day. They claimed to be a part of a holy war, hunting demons, though they clearly remained polytheists in a very Christianized world.
By the nineteenth century, the modus operandi had changed; those belonging to the Order of the Dryades were more members of a club. More like the Freemasons, Donavon imagined, not fully understanding their own past but clinging to prevailing tradition anyway. Talk of devils and demons dissipated into lore, though they maintained the quiet credence of being the intermediaries between man and nature.
What kept Donavon so fascinated wasn’t the delusional agendas of old frightened men but their twisting of history, claiming that major wars, plagues and uprisings were testaments of their victories against some imagined greater evil. The drawings of half-naked women and sexy tree-nymphs also weren’t so bad.
Spree was curled up beside him on the couch, asleep or hung over. Probably the latter. Night had finally regained its supremacy over the day, a welcome return to normalcy. Not that Donavon had yet ventured outside. Besides, any minute Kendall would be marching back through those doors, celebrating his victory and triumphant return.
Any minute now.
Donavon flipped toward the end of the book, the long pages curling and falling back against his open palm. There was such a weight to these pages, as if the words written on them carried a greater importance than they obviously did.
His eyes fell on an entry scribed by Sir Frederick William.
August the Thirteenth, 1976.
It is one thing to know one’s calling in life, another to have demonstrated the import of one’s call. While we hand down the remnants of the plagues that might otherwise have destroyed our DME, (Dear Maiden Earth, Donavon knew from his earlier readings), they have become, like so many once-great artifacts, dimmed with time. Even the handling of these fossilized memories do little to convey the reality of their existence — or of the world which might have been borne had not our forebears the prescience to secure our future through the proper cleavage of this virus. And yet today our divine calling became more than a badge, more than an introductory estate to the wealth and fortunes of those who have laid our path in stone, more than an echelon of the society unravelling before us.
By boat we traveled to the Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands off Scotland, docking near the uninhabited Sula Sgeir. Thousands of Gannet seabirds beat their wings from the gneiss rock island, cawing their threats at us in a maddening tumult. Claes Langenberg had us don our diving gear, testing each of our apparatuses thoroughly, before we pitched ourselves into the North Atlantic. The entrance to the underwater cave was a good eighty meters below the sea and so hidden that, short of having a guide, I’m not sure anyone might have found it. All the more fitting, considering what was housed within that island’s center.
After a significant climb, pulling ourselves upward through the water by brace of the cavern walls, as there wasn’t space to swim, we emerged into a hollowed cavern. I can’t describe the feeling of reverence that overcame us as we removed our masks and lowered our tanks. It was apparent we were in the presence of something otherworldly not just from our sight, but the very air permeating through that cavern down into our cores. The Vessel was at once recognizable and yet totally alien. Having seen multitudes of drawings, one would have thought the sight to be spoiled, but its magnificence was beyond description or drawing, and quite a thing to behold.
Lance Horn and I circled the Vessel, which stood upright like a stone cocoon. It’s surface appeared pocked, like that of a pinecone, with tens of thousands of dimples at the tips of stone pegs which had fallen flat. There were no openings, no cracks in its surface to reveal that anything had once stepped from within, a Creature of such power bent on reshaping the world. My mind ran wild with thoughts of what might have happened had this Being survived. The islands would not have been all it had created.
I expected a lecture from Claes, perhaps a guided tour, pointing out variances in the Vessel’s taxonomy — there were several — or a retelling of the Ancient Dryades and the Callanish Stones. But Claes, in his infinite wisdom, must have known. The lecture was written in both of our faces.
Prior to our leaving he did suggest we each break a small sliver from the Vessel, to remind us of all we had seen. “You’ll look back on this moment and your mind will try to make sense of things, rearrange events and memories into a more logical fashion. This,” he said, as he chiseled off a small fragment at the Vessel’s end, “is to remind you in those moments when you entertain doubt. This, you cannot forget.”
He kept the fragment he had removed for himself, stating he took a piece each time he brought someone here. It made me realize that even he had his doubts. One concrete memory was not enough to waylay the circling of the mind when he returned to, what to him, represented a normal life. He needed the reminder each time he came.
Lance went first. Using the chisel and hammer he carefully nudged off a square the size of a considerable pebble. It clacked against
the rough earthen floor, tumbling a few feet away. When he retrieved the piece he gasped in surprise. “It moved!”
Donavon let the page fall, remembering the shell or rock he had taken from the attic. The subtle forming of it beneath his hand. The not-so-subtle prick on his finger.
Was he to believe this was a part of some Vessel, some alien pod from another universe? And why would Sir Frederick have transported it from Europe all the way to South America? To what end?
As he did with most of the scripts sent his way, he skipped ahead, scanning the text for anything of interest. The entries were few and far between, most denoting funerals, galas, and the occasional fruitless excursion. While the journal’s concept had at first gotten Donavon excited about its potential for adaptation on the screen, he was realizing more and more that this was just an old men’s club, created to make them feel like they were doing something worthwhile.
While those few of us who remain continue to watch, I wonder if what we do even matters anymore. The last threat was over eight centuries ago. How many since have dedicated their lives to an unnecessary cause? What might we have accomplished had we other desires? Other passions? Should a transformation begin anew, I have not the confidence that we would be equipped to deal with it. We are a dying breed, elders so out of touch with the rest of the world there are few of this new generation who would join us. None that might be worthy, at any rate.
And yet, while we have watched, I fear we have allowed a darker evil to take root. Mankind has done what these Beings could never accomplish, transformed the earth into something so sterile and alien that we’ve lost touch with our DME. Our forebears would wail should they see us now. Waiting for enemies at the gate, unaware of those residing within our own halls. Within our own households. Within our own heads. Perhaps we have lost this war without an enemy ever needing to show.
No wonder this guy drank so much, Donavon thought.
The last entry was short, dated just over a decade ago.