by Micah Castle
Thomas then waited for another call from Joe. He went about his work with a zombie-like demeanor. Idly he sat in his office and graded papers, conducted schedules for the semester and thereafter, created assignments for the upcoming weeks. But outside of work, he feverishly researched geology, cosmology, the study of ancient sculptures, and anything else that could relate to the monoliths or the holes. His evenings were spent trolling the narrow book-lined aisles of the University library and hunched over his desk at home.
He was so focused on his work that he would forget to eat and even almost forget to go to the bathroom. What was further down the hole consumed his mind to the point it even felt more important than his bodily functions. When he slept he made sure the ringer on his cell phone was as loud as it could possibly go, and when he was in the classroom, he always put it out on his desk, so he could grab it at any moment.
When he was returning to his office, it rang in his pocket. He had two heaps of papers and folders wrapped in his arms and he ran to his office, weaving passed countless students and teachers, nearly tripping and spilling the documents over the floor. It was a miracle he opened the door, but when he did he lunged into the office, threw the piles onto his desk and whipped out his phone.
“Hello! Hello?” he said, sweating.
“Damn Tom, why are you shouting?”
“Sorry, I’m just… Uh, sorry. What’s going on Joe?”
“So, the results from the samples came to nil. After that, we lowered the camera and microphone further down into the hole, about two-hundred feet. Then we left it sitting there for six hours. We just brought it up now and we’re about to watch the recordings.”
“So, why’d you call me, if you hadn’t watched the video yet?” Thomas spat.
“Whoa, calm down there buddy. You told me to keep you updated, so I am. There’s no need getting your panties in a bunch.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said, wiping his forehead. “Sorry, okay so, can you call me when you do watch it?”
“Uh huh, yeah, I’ll be right over.” Joe said to someone else, then said to Thomas. “Will do, bye.”
Professor Little sunk into his chair, setting the phone on the desk, and stared up through the dust motes at the yellowed ceiling. He rested the crook of his neck onto the back of his seat and closed his eyes. Slowly he drifted off.
It felt like only five minutes had passed when the sudden electronic ringing woke him. He spasmed in his seat and jolted up, snatching his phone and said quietly, “Hello” into it. The light coming in through the window had darkened, and his wristwatch showed it was almost six o’clock.
“Hey Tom, it’s Joe again. We watched the tape.”
Thomas leaned forward, “Yeah? What was down there?”
“Yeah, two hours ago, and I can’t tell you what we saw or didn’t see.”
A cold wave fell over Thomas and a pang of pain shot through his stomach, as if he were sucker punched. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t confirm or deny what we did see or not see on the tape. I cannot hint or tell you anything. I’m sorry buddy, I really am, but this thing is bigger than all of us. We tried to keep our recordings and viewings within the department, but the government apparently caught wind of the video and some FBI goons in black suits came in unannounced and took the tape from us after we finished it.
“As you could guess, they watched it and, after some phone calls I heard them make in the hallway, they have full control of what is or what is not down there, and the dig and sites themselves. They’re coming in tomorrow and locking the place down. I don’t even know if I’m going to be allowed in anymore. It sucks but—
“I gotta’ go. I’m sorry Thomas, I really am.”
The empty, deafening silence immediately felt suffocating and Thomas stood up, undoing his collar. He snatched the phone up from the desk and chucked it across the room, it broke apart against the wall. Thomas threw off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, all the while clenching and unclenching his hands. Everything felt hot, too hot, he felt that the sweat seeping out from his pores steamed around him.
How could they do that? How could Joe do that! The monoliths were from somewhere else and that hole lead to someplace unknown! He just knew it! He felt it in his bones, in his very soul. Although it made no sense from a rational standpoint, it made sense to him. There was no rich man who dropped it off in a helicopter; there were no art students who quickly made these sculptures across the world, simultaneously — not to mention the hole that had no explanation as to where it came from, or who made it. There was nothing but the unknown beyond the creation of the monoliths, the hole, and whatever else was dwelling down below.
It was the stuff of legend, it was the stuff of the unimaginable! Thomas had to know what was down there, he had to be a part of the potentiality of being one of the few first founders of something groundbreaking. He wasn’t just an English professor, he wasn’t just some guy in Cherry Brooke teaching dumb students things that they hardly had appreciation for, he refused to be someone who would be forgotten once he passed to only be remembered by his love of novels and his motivation to teach.
Thomas began to calm, and his pace slowed. He stood in the center of his office and looked up at the small window near the ceiling. He closed his eyes and felt the faint warmth of the dying sunlight. His mind was like a tempered ocean now losing its rage, its strength. It had now simmered to a serene pond, and with this, his thoughts moved from one set to another.
He would be remembered. He would experience the world underneath the monoliths that he knew existed, no matter what Joe could or could not say. He refused to wait any longer. His name would be inscribed onto the monoliths once he came back with otherworldly knowledge and be the first adventurer into the realm of unknown.
He, and he alone, would be the man that humanity would remember as the harbinger of another world.
IV
That Night
The cloudless night sky twinkled with stars, and the half-full moon faintly illuminated the open trunk of his car. Thomas double checked his supplies before walking the mile to the steel fence: a thick rope that stretched only one hundred and fifty feet — the largest he could purchase from the store inside his gym, but he believed he could manage the rest of the way down — spiked boots, and a head flashlight. He wore a black sweat suit and gloves. He considered bringing pulleys but was uncertain if they would hold well enough in dirt, also he had no intentions of coming back up once he went down.
He gathered everything into his large gym bag and swung it over his shoulder, closed his trunk with his free hand, and crept to the fence. He noticed there were a few guards stationed at intervals around the fence. Silently, crouching, he moved to a corner at the end of the fence where no guards currently were. He also made sure to position himself away from the nearest security camera. Thomas scaled the fence to the top and tossed the bag over. The hollow, rattling sound it made when it hit the ground made him wince and look over his shoulder. No guards seemed to notice. Slowly he straddled the top of the fence, then made his way down.
After he picked up the bag, he made his way to the first tent, which he discovered to be empty upon entering. As fast as he could he moved across the bridge, almost slipping on the moisture blanketing the planks of metal.
When he entered the second tent, he went to the nearest monolith, knelt and unpacked the gym bag. He first took out the rope and tightly wrapped it around the monolith. Then he took off his shoes and put on the spiked boots. He tightened the flashlight around his forehead and switched it on, sending a beam of light across the tent. Thomas coiled the rope around his one arm, and walked to the hole and looked down, seeing only the gloom far below. Even the light from the flashlight hardly penetrated the darkness.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes. A few deep breaths hardly calmed Thomas’s jittery body.
Should I go? he thought. Should I plunge deep into the abyss? Is what I believe is down there
, actually down there?
Come on Thomas, don’t think like anyone who has ever doubted you. It’s always been said to become better than what you are is to do something that makes you uncomfortable at first. Below that darkness is a world that will welcome you and, in that way, the world you’re in will do the same.
Slowly he inched his feet over the opening and turned. He took the rope into both hands, and one foot after another, Thomas scaled down the hole. With every foot, the opening grew darker and darker until all that he could see was utter blackness. He glanced around, but it only illuminated the small space around him, nothing above or below his body illuminated. Even with going to gym every week, his arms burned with fatigue as he descended, and he could feel his muscles throb with pain.
Despite what he learned in geology in college, he became colder and colder instead of feeling warmer as he slowly moved deep below. His breath came out in tufts of white and even with gloves, the cold bit into his fingers. It felt welcoming on his tiring body, but Thomas had to grit his teeth to stop them from chattering.
It came quicker than he anticipated, but he came to the end of the rope. He looked down into the darkness, then looked up into the other darkness. He had little energy left to keep holding onto the rope and, even if he wanted to, there was no way he was going to be able to climb back up. If it wasn’t for the cold his exhausted body would be covered in sweat and a rancid smell would be wafting up through his collar.
He closed his eyes, then let go.
The frigid wind whipped his face and an unrelenting whooshing filled his ears. He wrapped his arms around his chest and put his legs together, like he used to do in the public swimming pool as a child, the pin needle dive. Hundreds of yards flew passed him like the rings of sediment he knew surrounded him. He kept his eyes shut against the powerful wind, for he knew if he dared to look at what was happening he would certainly pass out.
At some point the whooshing stopped and silence overwhelmed him. He wasn’t sure if he had finally come to the other world or that he had gone deaf. Thomas opened one eye to find himself still in the darkness, and when he looked down, he could see nothing beyond. He was still falling but there was no sound. He brought the tip of his boot to the wall and heard the feverish scrapping of dirt and stone.
Wherever he was had no naturally occurring sound. The Professor closed his eyes again and waited for the return of the whooshing. The lack of noise seemed to drive him closer to unconsciousness. It was as if the soundless atmosphere was a sound of its own and it carried weight, feeling overwhelming, suffocating to the point that he believed it labored his breathing and thoughts. An immediate drive to fill the void overcame him, so Thomas began to scream. It echoed up and down the hole, it reverberated off the dirt and came back to him.
Even after fifteen minutes of continuous shouting, the whooshing never returned, no sounds ever returned.
After a while he was forced to stop, his throat raw and the taste of blood coating his tongue. He opened his eyes again and peered in between his legs. A silvery, mirror-like reflective disc filled the entire hole. When the light hit it directly, it became blindingly white, like looking directly into the sun. Thomas looked at the wall next to the disc, which partially illuminated it. It seemed to ripple like water, but it was perfectly glossed over.
This was it. This was the entrance to the other world. Thomas turned off the light, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Each second was like an eternity but at last he felt his feet enter then his body followed.
V
?
When Thomas opened his eyes, he was looking out at the solar system from some unknown distance. He felt like he was in a dream but awake at the same time. Somehow, he could distinguish and examine the gigantic planets, but was far enough away to see everything, as if in this dream-but-waking-world he had the ability to focus his sight onto a planet from a great distance, like a super telescope. He idly floated in space but didn’t feel the immense cold nor was his breathing impaired.
He looked to the Earth. The sun behind it gave it a halo of bright, vibrant orangish red. A beam of vivid purple light shot across the span of the solar system to Earth, then another did so in another spot on the planet, then another. When the beams evaporated into tiny microscopic beads of violet energy, drifting away in the abyss, the monoliths were left on the Earth.
They seemed superimposed onto the planet, but he knew that they weren’t really that large. The Earth became transparent, he could see the rings of the planet, the crust, the upper and lower mantle, the inner and outer core. The holes from each monolith left an empty line from three sides of the orb and converged at the dense inner core of the planet.
The world began to rotate like a disc, but the core remained steady. It became a blur of browns and blacks, of yellows and reds. Its rotation became so fast that it seemed to form a solid image of an eye, the core the iris, the rest a combination of reds and browns. Like veins, a reddish blue fluid burst into the three holes and flowed down into the core. The liquified metals of the outer core cooled, and the inner core became a blinding white. Waves of vapor flooded out from behind the planet, drifting off into the abyss surrounding it.
A glowing ivory chain of lights came down from the universe above. It attached to the core, as if the end of the chain was magnetic. The slack chain tightened, and the Earth folded into itself, like the top of an umbrella being closed, then in a blink of an eye, it vanished up into the heavens.
He prayed this place was truly a dream, but somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t. It felt too real, it looked too real, the pain he felt was too overwhelming. Tears formed over Thomas’s eyes and he felt like a mother who lost her baby at birth. That was his home, that was his life, he was to be championed after his discovery.
He was about to close his eyes, as if that would hide the horror he just witnessed, when more monoliths appeared on the other planets in the distance. As if Earth was practice, the monoliths appeared in the beams of light on all the planets at once.
They grew transparent, the core of each much different than the others; some liquid, others solid, but all glowed with different hues. They spun rapidly, the liquid from the monoliths came down into each one, changed them, then the chain from above was dropped and pulled back up. In all but five minutes, all that was left now in the solar system was the Sun.
A black ball with violet phosphorescence floated into space, drifted passed the waves of flames surrounding the Sun, and placed itself in the center of the ball of fire. As the sphere exploded, tarry veins shot across the star, settled into its surface, and pulsed. The Sun dimmed with the beat of a dying heart.
When the last flicker of light vanished from the massive burning star, the veins glowed a blaring white and like a mirror, shattered. The Sun broke apart and fell into the abyss below.
All that remained was the black ball, that after a few moments, dissipated and turned to ash.
In an unimaginable darkness, Thomas curled into himself and cried. He wailed and prayed, his body trembled, and he soiled his pants. He wanted to go back, he wanted to be home, he wanted to talk to Joe, he wanted to be in his office with the dust and ungraded papers. He wished that he would’ve said no to Joe when he first asked him to come see the monoliths, he wished that he would’ve just went on about his day like normal and ignored the temptation of something new… God everything was gone — gone, gone, gone! — all gone, and now he was all alone, forever. There would be no more life, no more light, nothing except total, endless blackness.
Thomas closed his eyes even though he couldn’t tell, for the darkness of his eyelids matched the darkness outside of them. At some point the nothingness overwhelmed him, made his mind heavy as if it was filled with cement, made his breathing labored as if his lungs were riddled with cancer, slowly he drifted into unconsciousness.
When he awoke, he was in a room. The ceiling was reflective and curved like the inside of an eye co
ated with a large mirror. A hole was carved out of the wooden floor. The world seemed hazy, as if he wasn’t seeing everything but only bits and pieces. He rubbed his eyes. There was someone else here. A small child, no more than eight-years-old, with glowing ruby hair and ivory, unblemished skin that seemed to illuminate the room. His body seemed flat, deflated, containing no muscle tone or bone structure of a normal boy. The child had two onyx eyes but no nose or mouth. Gripped in his two hands was a brilliantly white chain that vanished below the floor.
Thomas silently watched the child pull the chain up and set what he caught onto the floor. Immediately he noticed his home, the folded planets.
Despite the intertwined feeling of terror and wonder, he shouted, “Hey!” His words echoed through the palpable space, as if he spoke from a great distance underwater.
The boy continued his work as he detached each planet from each link of chain. He never looked up.
“Hey!” Thomas shouted again. “What’re you doing!”
“Making a collage.” The child’s voice emanated all around Thomas, as if the air spoke.
Taken aback, it took a moment to respond. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said.”
The child gathered the paper-like planets, stood and went over to the lowest part of the ceiling. He wiped his hand onto the back of one, then stuck it to the reflective roof. One by one, he arranged and stuck the planets to the top of the room until he had run out. He took a step back, inspected it and nodded, then returned to the hole.
“That was my home!” Thomas screamed, pushing himself onto his feet.
“So?” The boy said, taking a handful of monoliths from an unseen pocket in his leg and tossing them like confetti into the hole. He leaned forward and watched them drift into the nothingness below.
“What do you mean, ‘so?’ There were people there! There were lives! There was love and friends and stories!”