The Antarcticans

by Suriano, James

  He rounded the corner and spotted a ramp that led to the basement. The door was slightly ajar, and he peeked inside to find a man wearing a cook’s uniform and smoking a cigarette. He waved his hands, indicating that Gavin couldn’t come through this door, but Gavin slammed into him and threw him out of the way. He bolted through a door that led to the lurid hallways of building’s basement. Suddenly he stopped running and looked around. The rooms on either side of him were empty and dark. There was light coming from one of the doorways up ahead, but he could hear and smell that it was the kitchen. The hallway ended with a staircase. Gavin looked up and saw lights and heard several voices. He ascended the steps cautiously.

  Lucifer got up from his chair and walked over to Noila, Joshua, and Gavin. He placed his hands in the green swirling light over their heads and closed his eyes. Noila tilted her head up and looked at his face. She was hopeful, confused, and angry. She still didn’t trust what Lucifer was doing; the whole ship felt like a setup to her.

  Gavin walked up the polished stone stairs with railings embellished with gold-and-iron carvings—statues of small cherubs at spaced intervals standing lovingly on pedestals just outside the railings. He turned the last corner and reached the ground floor. He stepped onto plush red carpet with gold patterns that matched the railings. It led to a few stairs and an altar. The space reminded him of the churches he had visited in his youth, when his mother would parade him to every church in their hometown for Sunday services. The altar was on the far side of the building. Standing on the carpet, halfway across the room, was Lucifer. He was dressed in white robes lined with silver. Tremendous wings unfolded behind him, reaching for the edges of the building, feathers upon feathers of white and silver. He was much taller than the last time Gavin had seen him. In his hand, which he held out palm up, was a swirling, misty, green ether with small white lights orbiting the center.

  His voice boomed through the building. “Your son is below us, locked deep within the heart of this building and his mind. His imprisonment will be eternal if you don’t succeed in releasing him. I’m holding him in balance right now, but I’m not stronger than an individual’s will. You alone have the power to save him. Don’t be distracted along the way, or his hell will consume him in an unquenchable fire. Sit down. I’ll take you to him.” He pointed to a gilded chair with black Georgian spikes jutting out from each leg.

  Gavin moved past Lucifer, who was twice his size. Centering his mind and focusing his heart, he turned and faced Lucifer when he reached the chair. Lucifer nodded once, and Gavin sat down and placed his arms on the chair. Mighty chains moved, lowering the chair through the floor. Lucifer fell out of Gavin’s sight as he descended to the basement level, where he saw an abandoned room with stacked chairs and a dusty stage. He descended farther, into the subbasement, where mice scurried, and the rich earth was pungent and black. The chains continued to lower him, through layers of forgotten dungeons and storage rooms. He passed skeletons and chained animals that were long departed. His chair was just above a circular hole cut into thick stone. Gavin passed through the hole, his face close to the dripping stone, and as he emerged through the bottom he was hovering over a cavern big enough to fit a three story building inside. The mossy walls and dripping ground water mixed with the thick tropical air and incense from the temples, coating the walls with a sooty film. He looked closer to the temples with colossal gilded golden dragons adorning the roofs. Below them, he saw men dancing at altars, pouring coconut milk, streaking red paint, and spinning wreaths of flowers in the air. A chant he didn’t recognize reverberated off the cavern walls. Small monkeys ran through the space, their tiny hands snatching up morsels of food and drink. Gavin’s chair floated through the air, its wooden legs dangling hundreds of feet above the ground as the chains uncoiled from their reservoir. The chair lowered, then touched down to the cavern’s rock floor with a loud thud.

  Gavin stood up and looked into the two temples on either side of him; he saw doors in the back of the temples leading to separate rooms. Priests were dancing and chanting in front of these doors, so he couldn’t see inside. His chair had landed in the center of an altar, a replica of the one he had seen from above. Red-and-golden twists were painted on the dirt-and-stone floor, and rocks etched out of the ground provided steps to an altar with a blue cloth laid over it. That area was dark, with no one paying attention to it. A large leather-bound black book sat in the middle of the altar. Gavin couldn’t see beyond that, as the light from the two temples only extended so far. As he headed to the temple on the left, the holy men in their hooded blue robes shooed him away. “No, no, no, not for you,” they said, then went back to their chants and rituals.

  “Joshua, where are you, son?” Gavin yelled.

  The men all turned toward him and pressed their hands against their ears under their robes and moaned in pain. Gavin walked into the space around the altar in front of the two secluded rooms in one of the temples. They spun in orderly circles and kept their distance from him. He looked across the cavern to the temple on the other side. The exact same scene was playing out in the other temple except the men were in blood-red robes. The two temples were in perfect synchrony. He walked to one of the robed figures closest to him and chased him around the circle, tapping him on the shoulder. The shadowy figure swatted his hand and tried to move away from him while staying in his circle.

  One of the holy men let out a yell—a word Gavin didn’t recognize—and everyone in each temple joined hands and fell to the floor, prostrating so their foreheads were against the cold stone in the direction of the altar in the center. Gavin got a good view of the rooms with the priests out of the way. He saw beyond the offerings of golden vats of coconut milk and incense. He stepped toward the door, taking the steps up to the first level of the inner sanctum. Behind the second doorway, three bodies were wrapped in royal-blue gauze, bound like the mummies of Egypt. Two Gothic-looking lanterns hung on either side of the altar at the center of the cavern. Flames burst into them and illuminated the dark altar; the lights on the two side temples extinguished simultaneously.

  Victor rose from behind the center altar; his wounds from his cactus encounter in the desert the last time Gavin had met with him were gone. He stood in a black shirt and black pants, his cape a royal blue, and held a staff that emitted black smoke.

  “Rise,” he commanded.

  The holy men got up on their knees, their hands pressed together in prayer. They either didn’t see Gavin or ignored that he was stepping into the first sanctuary and making his way to the three bodies. The stone floor was wet and sticky with the milk the priests had thrown over it in offering, and the thick incense made it hard for him to see and breathe. The ambient light from the main altar cast shadows, but he could no longer see into the inner sanctuary. He heard muffled breaths and followed them.

  “Bring the first,” Victor commanded, then slammed his staff into the floor to reinforce his point.

  Two blue robed men closest to the door, stood up, and walked toward where Gavin was. Seeing them coming, he pressed himself into the shadow of one of the tall columns that held up the roof. As they passed him, he smelled the same scent of smoke and tar that Victor gave off when he had first encountered him. Although Gavin lost sight of the two when they entered through the second door, he heard some struggling and conflict in the dark. They came out carrying one of the bodies, which writhed in their grasp. They lost hold of it, and it fell to the floor. They picked it back up and brought it to down to the chair in which Gavin had descended from the ceiling. They placed the slumped body in the chair, pulled out a long curved sword, and sliced the bottom of the gauze. Two bare feet poked out and found their footing on the floor. They looked like female feet, but Gavin couldn’t be sure from where he was standing.

  He was captivated by what might happen next. The men pulled the woman to her feet and forced her to walk toward the altar. With his free hand, Victor motioned for them to come to him. The woman’s feet could only take sma
ll steps, as the gauze restricted her stride. They led her up the stairs to the altar then pushed her down to bow in front of Victor. He opened the black leather book on the altar, raised his staff in the air, then read aloud strange-sounding words from the text. The dark substance at the staff’s end spun faster in its orbit; small flares reached out from the confines of the metal prongs. When Victor was done reading, he nodded to the two men, who heaved the woman onto the altar and stepped back. Victor’s eyes were filled with lust, and he stepped back holding the staff at the very end that had been against the floor, and slowly lowered it toward the woman’s head. The black smoke reached out to the blue gauze, and from the shape beneath the gauze that Gavin assumed was the head, a stream of green smoke rose. The blackness wound into it, pulling it out strand by strand. The robed men in both temples suddenly jumped to their feet and chanted in unison again. The sound was dark and eerie and unsettled Gavin; it vibrated through him like rough brambles. As the woman’s back arched toward the staff, Victor smiled greedily while the green smoke clung tenuously to her body. Gavin broke his gaze as his mind returned him to the reason he was there, and he hurried into the second sanctuary. He found it difficult not to get lost in the vivid world of Joshua’s mind.

  “Joshua,” he whispered.

  The two other mummified bodies moaned and murmured, but they didn’t respond to him. He touched them then quickly withdrew his hand. Beneath the fabric were swarms of small moving parts, like worms or beetles—many parts moving in different directions. “What the…?” he said to himself. He tiptoed out of the room, back into the first chamber. Victor had kicked the body off the altar, and the men were scrambling to take the lifeless corpse to the edge of the cavern. There was a large hole in the ground, and they pitched the body over the railing. They came back and headed to where Gavin was again. The whole ceremony had made him nauseous. His chair began to rise back to the small circular hole in the ceiling he had come in from. It disappeared, and then, a few minutes later, when the next body was on the altar, with the same scene playing out, he saw Joshua in the chair, being lowered through the air.

  “Not this time, Victor. You won’t take the memories of my past and devour them. Let them go!” Joshua shouted. He was about fifty feet from the floor and was pointing at the new form on the altar. “That belongs to me—you have no right.”

  “Well, boy, why don’t you come get it if it’s so important to you? They all make such a fine collection.” Victor grabbed a black sheet from behind him and yanked it. It fell to the floor; behind it Gavin saw small cubbies that reminded him of the key slots behind the front desk of an old hotel. The slots were filled with the same material that was on top of Victor’s staff. Victor twisted off the top of his staff and placed it in one of the empty slots then reached underneath the altar and replaced the top with a new swirling mass of dark material.

  “You see, I have this wonderful assortment over here.” He pointed to a slot in the top-left corner. “I have your memories of your mother holding you as a child. Without those, don’t you feel so unloved, adrift without a parent doting on you?” he said with a cackle.

  When the legs of Joshua’s chair touched down on the floor, he jumped out of the seat and ran at Victor. His arms were spread wide, and he was screaming a battle cry as he bound up the altar steps. Victor quickly replaced the black curtain in front of the slots behind him. Joshua jumped up to the top of the altar and lunged for Victor, tackling him to the ground. Victor struggled against him, his staff falling from his reach. Joshua stood up, grabbed his staff, and struck him with it, over and over. Although Victor’s head was now bloody and deformed, Joshua kept beating him, mashing his head into an unrecognizable pulp.

  Gavin looked on, horrified by what was taking place. The hole that the holy men had dumped the body into began to vomit out small animals. They were the size of raccoons, with beady eyes and sharp, jagged teeth. Their legs tick-tacked over the rock that covered the floor and their little hands grabbed at the air. They streamed out, marching in a direct line toward the altar. Joshua couldn’t see them, as his rage was fixed on Victor, who was now gooey and splattered on the floor of the altar.

  “Joshua, Joshua, watch out!” Gavin yelled, running in that direction.

  The men around him grabbed their heads again and fell to the floor in pain.

  …

  Noila felt the tension in the hands of her husband and her son while she sat between them in Joshua’s room. She had shut her eyes and tried to focus on supportive and helpful prayers. She couldn’t imagine what they were seeing, but she wanted them to know she was here for them. Flickers of a cavern suddenly crossed her vision. She thought she was falling asleep, but her heart was beating fast, and she heard Lucifer move around the room.

  “Lucifer? You still here?” she asked.

  “Yes, Noila. I’m right here.”

  “I’m seeing things, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “You’re seeing some of what Gavin is seeing. His thoughts can run through you—from Gavin to you to Joshua. It’ll allow Joshua to have the strength of his father. Don’t let go, no matter how terrifying the images might be.” He began pacing in front of her. He knew how important the success of this was. He needed Noila to be clear of any distractions so she could focus on her research.

  Deadly Nostalgia

  Joshua looked up, saw his father running toward him, and smiled. “Dad, you came back—yes!” He peered down at Victor, and a sudden look of shame flashed over his face.

  Gavin was pointing madly at the hole in the cavern floor. He saw several of the creatures climbing the stairs at the back of the altar, behind the memory slots. Long legs, covered in exoskeletons, reached from under their plump, hairy bodies to conquer each step. Gavin reached the steps at the same time Joshua did, noticed what was happening, and jumped up to the altar.

  The priests had hauled out all the blue-cloth-bound mummies from the depths of the sanctuaries in both temples and dragged the struggling masses to the painted red-and-gold pathway. From within their robes, they pulled out curved swords and slashed at the blue gauze in precise, swift motions. The gauze fell in heaps to the floor beneath the bodies. Gavin watched as each one was revealed. Some were scenes of Joshua’s life that unfolded like a children’s pop-up book from the remains of the sheared strips of cloth. The space between the temples and altar were filled with 3-D clips of Joshua’s life on rerun.

  Gavin saw Noila step out of one of the three-dimensional scenes and look around the cavern as if her arrival there had taken her by a surprise. She wore the same clothes she had on in the Dragon’s medical bay before he had suited up for mind connection with his son.

  Margie stood ten feet to her left, with the blue gauze draped in ribbons at her feet. She wore a light-blue spandex suit with a jacket made of pink roses and a smattering of tiny bumblebees perched at the edges of the delicate flowers. Her hair was piled high on her head, and the pink of the jacket matched the hot-pink sparkling eye shadow she had lovingly applied over every millimeter of skin between her eyelashes and eyebrows.

  “Joshy, watch it, darling. The Craminings are comin’ to get ya, hun.” Her voice was like syrup being poured over honey, a Southern drawl from the deepest part of Mississippi.

  Joshua looked in her direction; rock formations were disintegrating behind her. “Margie, behind you,” he yelled back at her.

  She turned, but it was too late, a boulder had broken loose and was speeding out of control right at her. She cringed and put her hands up; a yelp left her lips as the first rock took her legs out from under her. The second one, which was moving much slower, rolled over her legs and pinned her to the floor.

  Joshua reacted with horror and looked at his father for help. “We have to take these images back. Victor has been stealing pieces of me and placing them here. I’ve never seen them all in the same place at once. But I understand now. If I possess my whole history, I’ll be a whole person again.”

 
“I trust you son, but I don’t know what to do. Tell me, and I’ll do anything to help you,” Gavin said.

  Joshua reached from the altar, straining so his fingers could touch the fabric. They caught a few threads of the black curtain that covered the memory slots, and then he tottered on the edge of the altar, losing his balance until Gavin grabbed his torso, preventing him from falling into the snapping jaws of the Craminings below. Joshua got a firm grip on the curtain and yanked it off. The individual slots glowed brightly; the memories inside appeared energized and agitated. He looked back at Margie, who was struggling to push the boulder off her legs. She was crying; her one foot had lost its shoe and was poking out from the side, blue and gnarled.

  “Dad, we have to help Margie,” Joshua said.

  “She’s not real, Joshua. She’s just in your mind. We need to let her go. We need to let all of this go. Claim your memories and let’s leave,” he said loudly. More rocks were breaking free from the hill. A stalactite broke off from the ceiling and fell dead center in the middle of Noila. She looked through herself, touching the stalactite as it stood in the middle of her body.

  “Tell Mom to get out of here. She won’t listen to me. You tell her.” He was pointing frantically at the image of Noila. “She might not know it, but she can die in here, just like anyone else.” Joshua was frantic.

  “Please, Dad,” he went on. “Maybe none of this is real for you, but it’s real for me. Please go help Margie. She’s in pain—I can feel it. The Craminings eventually are going to see her and go after her,” he pleaded.

  “Look, Joshua, your mother wasn’t affected, and Margie doesn’t exist—she’s a creation.”

  “Yes, my creation. I have to save her.” He turned toward her and was looking over the Craminings, who were tearing and gnawing at the gauze around her body.