by Micah Castle
Professor Little checked his wristwatch to find it was almost lunch time.
“Thank God.”
As the big hand moved and rested on the twelve, his phone rang.
Damnit.
He picked it up and put it to his ear.
“Professor Little.”
“Hey Tom, it’s Joe.”
“Oh, hey, what’s going on? Usually you only call me after work, when you want to go to the bar.” Thomas said as he mindlessly tapped on his knee.
Joe laughed. “Not today, unfortunately. I’m at work, at a site.”
“What kind of site? Typically, the ones you excavate for the University are in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or signal.”
“A modern one, surprisingly. You know of Briswich?” Joe sounded like he was straining himself to talk normally, as if he had to hurry to get out whatever he wanted to say.
“Yeah, that rock climbing gym I go to is near there. Why?”
“Can you come down?”
“Wha— why?”
“I think this is something you’d be interested in, something that you’d definitely want to check out. It’s very sci-fi, like those books you like to read so much.”
Thomas looked at the ungraded stack of papers on his desk, then his calendar. It was Friday. He could leave early and should be able to get back quick enough to finish his work. Even if he had to stay the night at some hotel, if the papers were done by Monday morning, he shouldn’t have any problems.
“Yeah, I guess I can.”
“Great!” Joe shouted. “Wonderful. Okay, when you get into town, go straight downtown. From there, take a left at the first four-way onto Lake Drive, then keep going for a bit, eventually you’ll come to a steel fence. Park there and text me, I’ll let you in.”
“Okay, see you then.”
Joe hung up, then Thomas quickly grabbed his keys and left his office, locking the door.
The steel fence seemed to stretch for a mile and looked to be much larger than Thomas anticipated. It reminded him of the giant fences they used in prisons to keep prisoners in. The tops didn’t have barb wire, but cameras were perched periodically throughout. Beyond was a stretch of grass then a large, white tent. Thomas cruised down the vacant dirt road, then a booth appeared a few yards away on the side. The rest of the way was blocked off.
At the fence, he texted Joe.
K. Be out in a minute.
After a few minutes, Thomas saw Joe come out of the tent and walk up to the booth. He spoke to the guard for a moment, then waved to Thomas to drive in, which he did and parked on the side of the road, for there was no parking lot or driveway passed the gate.
Joe ran up to Thomas’s car before he even got out of the vehicle. Thomas could hear the clanking of tools in Joe’s belt before he appeared in the driver’s side window.
“Okay, I’m here, now what?” he asked.
“Come! Come, look and see what’s been found.”
Thomas walked a foot behind Joe as they crossed the grass. Joe’s shirt was wrinkled and splotched with dirt, his cargo pants were rolled up to his knees, and his boots were caked in dried mud, but Thomas suspected the dirtiness of Joe was not from this site but from countless others in the past.
Joe opened a flap and ushered Thomas into the tent. Immediately Thomas stopped and took a step back. There was a steep hill before them and not the archeological site, with tables and tools and ancient bones, he believed would be inside.
“C’mon, over here you big baby.” Joe walked over and called from a makeshift bridge that extended to another hill.
Thomas cautiously followed Joe across the bridge, which reminded him on an extended handicap ramp laid flat, gripping the metal banister for support and trying to keep his breathing under control. He was used to heights, but the way the bridge creaked under his weight sent a chill up his spine.
He sighed with relief when they came to the other end of the bridge. It led into another white tent, one much larger than the previous one, and the site was at last revealed to him.
Three white monoliths took up almost all the room inside the tent. They weren’t smooth but sided like a geometrical shape. The bottoms had three sides, and the lines formed a point at the top where the peak arched over the ground. They formed an imperfect circle around a patch of greenery between them. The monoliths reminded Thomas of devil horns, curving and sharpened near the top and thick at the bottom.
He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. They were like ruins, but there were no signs of the past like hieroglyphics or runes or crudely painted cave drawings. A faint remembrance of Clarke’s A Space Odyssey’s giant black monoliths flittered through his mind.
After a few silent moments, he asked, “So, what are they?”
“Originally we thought they were just statues. Maybe a group of art students ran up here with supplies and crafted them, but that’s unlikely. They would use cheap materials, like papier-mâché or clay or something like that. The chemicals making them up — I’ll get to that here soon — are too rare or specialized for normal people to get their hands on. Plus, it would be nearly impossible to get enough supplies up the hill and make this thing overnight.
“So, after brainstorming for days, and although it’s very unlikely, our best theory is that they are marking points, like putting an X on the map.”
“An X on the map?”
“Yeah, like when you want to get to Orlando, Florida or wherever. You get the map out, mark that place and try your damnedest to get there without getting lost.”
Thomas nodded. “Okay, but what or who could leave a mark like this and in this place?”
“We don’t know. We did toy around with the idea that someone rich had a helicopter and simply made them elsewhere, then dropped them off here, but why would someone waste the resources to do that?”
Thomas shrugged.
Joe walked around each monolith, weaving as if he were dancing with them. “Their chemical composition is a bit odd. It combines things like gabbro, which is found in volcanic rocks; chondrules, which is from meteors; chlorargyrite, which is found in naturally occurring silver; and galactosamine, which is found in cocoons. That’s just the ones I can recall. There’s a huge list of properties, so long and with so many complicated names I can’t remember them all. Experts are dumbfounded by what it is, or what it does, or where it came from. Even after the other two sets we found—”
“Other two?”
“Yeah, there’s two other sets, just like this one. One was found in a desert in Africa and the other was found in the Rainforest in Southeast Asia. The latter took a bit longer to find, since the natives that live there avoided the place like the plague. But eventually some traveler came upon it and reported it to the authorities — luckily, he didn’t go to the press with it, or our job would’ve been a hell of a lot more difficult. It was found that the natives avoided it because they believed it to be cursed. They called it the Three White Demons, since they kind of resemble the horns of the Devil.”
Thomas took a minute to make sense of the information. What Joe said sounded like something out from a science fiction novel, and somewhere in the back of Thomas’s mind, he hoped it to be true. He had more important thoughts, though. Three markings on the planet made from some odd combination of materials and even experts — whoever they are — were unable to decipher what they are or what they’re used for.
“So, why’d you call me?” he asked, getting near one monolith and placing his hand onto it. He felt a cold chill creep up his arm before he pulled his palm away.
“I really wanted it to show it someone, it’s way too cool to not share, even though it’s against the rules. So, I thought who better to show off to than my best bud, Tom? I know you’re into those sci-fi books, and this seemed right up your alley. So, I said, ‘What the hell?’ and called you.” Joe had a stupid grin stretched over his face, which almost removed all the wrinkles around his
eyes.
Thomas chuckled, and said jokingly. “Well, thanks Joe. You’re my buddy, too.” Then he asked, “Have you considered digging around it?”
“Well of course we have, we’re not that dumb. That was the first thing we were going to do but then our supervisor said to wait, to keep everything intact and see if we can figure it out without disturbing the area. He’s trying to get a GPR, a ground-penetrating radar, first, to make sure we’re not digging anything important up. The moment you and I are done here, hopefully we can get the ball rolling.”
Thomas nodded, then a silence fell over the tent. For at least ten minutes, he tried to think of any possibility that would explain the monoliths. He walked around each one, inspecting them. When he stood in the center of them, it felt like he stood upon something hollow, like standing on the cement slab above a storm drain. He looked at the grass, but nothing was different than the rest of the grass. For a brief second, he thought the ground was going to give out and he was going to fall, but he quickly pushed that irrational fear aside, shaking his head. He left the center of the monoliths and continued to meander. The heat is the tent began to swell and sweat began to form on his forehead.
“Okay,” he abruptly said. “So, even though it’s far-fetched, I think you might be right that they’re markings, from where or for what, I don’t know. Maybe they’re coordinates? But that really makes no sense either… Maybe the three are connected in such a way we cannot tell they are, like our technology hasn’t advanced enough to see the hypothetical line between the three… But that’s a little bit out there… Maybe… Hell, I don’t know, there’s just not enough information to go on.”
Joe slowly nodded. “Hmm… connected, yeah, that could be. We thought of that in the beginning but there’s no evidence to support that, besides them all looking alike. Like you said though, there isn’t much to go on. Maybe once we start digging we’ll find some more information. I’m itching to see what’s below these things.”
Joe’s cell phone went off.
“Shit! sorry, hold on.” He said to Thomas, then answered the call. “Uh huh… Yeah, no, okay.”
He hung up.
“I’m sorry but it’s time to go buddy. Thanks for your help but now the real men gotta’ work.” Joe slapped Thomas on the back and escorted him back to the bridge, then to his car. The sun had begun to set, and the sky burned with a fiery orange and yellow. The warm leather radiated through Thomas’s clothes as he sank into the driver’s seat. Joe leaned in through the open window.
“That was the supervisor. We’re using the GPR at 11:30 A.M and depending what we find, we’re digging at 12:30 P.M.”
“Can you call me after you’re done? I want to know where this goes.”
Joe grinned, chuckling. “Absolutely, but it’ll have to be on the down low. I don’t want my boss to find out I’m some kind of mole.”
Thomas eyed the cameras along the tall steel fence.
“I forgot to ask. What’s with all the secrecy?”
“When we got wind of the other two monoliths, and the potentiality of them being markings of some kind and with an unknown origin, the government came down with an iron fist. They’ve been keeping the monoliths very hush-hush, that’s why it hasn’t been in the newspapers or on T.V. yet. I think they want to take them and store them at Area 51 or something,” he said, laughing.
“And although you see no guards, except the guy at the booth, or military now, you bet your ass you’ll see them soon once we have more concrete answers. I suspect they’ll be down here in drones before we can put the shovel into the dirt. We have freedom now but I’m sure my supervisor will be overruled the whole way afterwards.
“Anyway, gotta’ get back.” Joe slapped the window and straightened himself. “Call you as soon as I get something. Beers after everything’s done and over with?”
“Absolutely!”
“Great, can’t wait! Have a good one, Tom.”
“You too,” Thomas said as he started the car and drove away from the site.
II
A Week Later
It was nearing two o’clock when Thomas returned to his office for his lunch break. One of the students he nearly failed had come up to him after class had ended. The boy tried to plagiarize a paper, but Thomas quickly put an end to that.
He sat into his chair, opened his desk and took out his lunch. Peanut butter and jelly with a small plastic bag of oatmeal cookies and his thermos filled with ice water. As he sank his teeth into the sandwich, the phone rang. Quickly he set down his lunch, wiped his hands on his pants and picked up.
“Professor Little,” he said with a mouthful of peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth.
“I, uh… yeah, this is Joe. You okay?”
He took a swig of his water, then sighed. “Yeah, sorry, middle of lunch. What’s going on?”
“Well we got out the GPR and set it up, but right before we started on Saturday, like I said we would… Something happened.”
Thomas leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. “What happened?”
“It’s more like what showed itself than what we actually discovered. A hole appeared in the center of the monoliths. The grass and dirt seemed to just vanish before our eyes. From what we can tell, it’s nearly bottomless, probably goes down at least two hundred feet.”
A hole? To what? The familiar feeling of falling washed over Thomas, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Has anyone gone down it yet?”
Joe laughed. “Hell no, no one wants to go down there. Too much of a risk. The hole is large, big enough to fit an average-sized adult, but we would rather take the slow approach with machines before sending a live victim. God only knows where it goes or what’s down there. Anyway, that’s not the weirdest part.
“When the hole appeared, two others appeared at the other two sites, at the same exact time. It’s like the monoliths knew we were going to dig and they decided to just show us their hand. We’re all scrambling to figure out what to do now. My supervisor is afraid that if we try to dig around them anyway, it might make other things happen, maybe make the whole hill collapse or something.”
“Three holes, simultaneously…” Thomas murmured.
“But hey, look, I gotta’ go. I’ll call you back when we figure this out. Have a good one buddy.”
The Professor let the phone drop onto his desk. Are the monoliths sentient? he thought. Or was the triggering of the holes just that, a trigger. Perhaps timed, set in such a way that at that moment they were going to appear anyway, even if the diggers were there or not.
Thomas leaned into his chair, heard the squeaking as it adjusted to his weight.
What could be down the hole? Could whoever place the monoliths also have dug the holes as well? How would they manage to make them suddenly appear?
Thomas opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling aimlessly, then a previous question came into focus.
What if the monoliths are sentient? What if they’re like the ones in A Space Odyssey and they were placed by some species from somewhere in our universe? What if the hole leads to another world? But… what if it’s the opposite? The hole could lead to some obscure strange place with otherworldly creatures who would only attack a newcomer to their domain, or, he thought grimly, it could just be a regular, deep hole that would lead to the death of anyone who fell down it.
He knew these ideas were mostly fueled by all the science fiction he read over the years, and he truly believed that these were just the kind of theories crazy people believed, but there was a thrilling energy that came with them that made his heart race and his body feel energized.
Although Thomas was not part of the archaeological team, or qualified to even know about the site, he felt he had to be closer to the monoliths, to study them, to hypothesize and discover their origins, their meaning. It was a mystery that he needed to solve. And, beyond that, his mind refused to pull away from the frenzy of potential outco
mes of going down into the hole that appeared. He knew he wouldn’t be allowed to go down, knew that even if he halfheartedly mentioned it to Joe, he would instantly be turned down.
An English professor? There’s no way in hell you’re going down there, Joe would say.
Perspiration had formed over Thomas, and his hands curled into fists. Then he slowly relaxed his hands, stretching them over the armrests.
He didn’t want to be left behind in this next discovery. He yearned to be a part of something new and nothing would stop him. He thought of the protagonists — David Bowman, Dr. Goodwin, Randolph Carter, and so many others — of all the great science fiction novels he consumed over the course of his life, and somewhere deep down wanted to be like them, wanted to adventure into the depths of the unknown and experience something greater than the Earth and mankind could ever offer.
But, for now all Thomas could do is impatiently wait for Joe’s next call.
III
A Week Later
Joe called him on Wednesday, revealing that they decided they would send down a camera and a microphone, with a small light attached, into the hole for a hundred feet.
They let it dangle for three hours, then pulled it back up and turned on the recording. The first portion was merely layers of dirt and stone whizzing passed the camera, and the sounds of the machine bumping into the walls. Then when it stopped moving, the remainder of the video was just a still shot of the layers of sediment.
Thomas suggested they didn’t go down far enough to really get anything, and Joe agreed, but his supervisor wanted to wait two weeks to drop anything down further into the hole. His supervisor wanted to collect samples at the hundred feet level and see if they could come up with any remnants of what made or caused the hole.