Gravediggers

by Christopher Krovatin

  From behind me, a hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes. “I think it opens up ahead,” says PJ.

  “Right,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Am I that obvious?”

  “You’re breathing really hard,” he laughs. “And besides, I know about freaking yourself out. I’m good at it.” I force a chuckle, if only for the splash of levity.

  PJ is, once again, right. A few feet ahead, the tunnel leads into a dark mouth, which then opens up into a massive brown stone chamber, the air cool and earthy. Perfect blades of light pour in from one or two small cracks in the ceiling, and between that and my headlamp, I can make out the spindly, clawlike stalactites hanging down over us and a huge glittering black pool sitting in the center of the chamber, teethlike stones creating a path across it. Ian whistles, and the sound reverberates in a shrill echo.

  Our tour guide makes another announcement in German, Indonesian, and Mandarin before turning to us. “Here is one of the many underground pools of Bangyan Cave. These lakes are fed by wells beneath the earth’s surface, they are famed for being—”

  “How deep is the average underground pool?” I ask, trying to gather as much information as I can along the way.

  The tour guide stops, his face sour and bunched. “The pools are very deep,” he says. “They are famed for being rich in minerals and—”

  “Are there any wildlife that live in them?” I ask.

  “Look, gadis,” says our guide, leaning in close, “I have a rhythm going here. With every question, I must start over. Keep asking them, and we will be here all day.”

  “Sorry,” I say, though his brush-off has left me angry.

  “Never mind us,” says Ian. “Pretend like we’re not even here.”

  We move on to another tunnel, one we have to navigate by getting down on our hands and knees and crawling through. The next cave chamber is decorated with hanging encrustations of epsomite and gypsum that resemble melting candle wax. My mouth opens to ask our tour guide further questions, but I shut it quickly. This man won’t be much help to us, and besides, Ian’s maneuver was the correct one. Our presence should garner as little attention as possible.

  The entrance to Kudus hits me before we even infiltrate the next chamber of the cave. As we crawl nearer and nearer to the mouth of the tunnel, I feel a buzzing deep inside my body, running through my teeth like a live current. There’s a sound, too, not unlike the rushing of water, which grows in my ears until it drowns out the shuffling of the German college student in front of me.

  “Do you hear that?” I ask, my teeth chattering.

  “Hear what?” Ian says, barely audible over the din.

  As we enter the third chamber, there is no doubt in my mind that some sort of magical influence reigns over this place. My hands are vibrating. The room seems to throb with a loud sound like waves against rocks. While most of the smooth-walled chamber lies in the same state of still air and impenetrable blackness, one corner of the room burns with a hazy light that seems to rise from the ground in smokelike clouds.

  “It’s in here,” I whisper.

  “How can you tell?” asks Ian.

  “I feel it” is all that I can whisper in return. He frowns and looks away.

  The plan is simple; I just have to ignore the overwhelming blast of magic energy that courses through me. Our tour guide’s mind-numbing descriptions seem to go on for an aeon, but this time around he actually skips English—perhaps my nosiness helped rather than harmed our ability to disappear into the cave—and swiftly turns to lead our crew through another small stone passageway. One by one, as the adults turn their backs to us, PJ, Ian, and I click off our headlamps, hold our breaths, and step back into the shadows.

  As the last of our tourist companions vanishes into the shadows, darkness overwhelms us, so thick and inky you can almost taste it, lit only by the bright, shimmering aura rising from one small corner of the room.

  “There,” I tell them. “Where that column of light is.”

  “Column of light?” says Ian. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s pitch-black in here, Kendra,” says PJ. “What do you see?”

  I flick my helmet lamp back on and approach the glow. There, in the floor, is a circular opening, its edges surrounded by intricate shapes and sigils that hum with an unnatural gray light. PJ and Ian turn their lamps on and illuminate a tunnel, descending directly into the earth.

  “Ho boy,” says PJ. “Talk about a metaphor for the past year.”

  My fingers press into the sigils, but feel nothing—these symbols are enchanted onto the stone, not carved. Yet as my hand rubs along the tunnel entrance perimeter, the pads of my fingers touch a series of impressions that don’t take whatever these strange new visions are to identify. They speak with perfect clarity:

  “Claw marks,” I whisper, the shadows around me seeming to chill my voice into vapor. “These feel recent—” My lamp follows the scratches to their end . . . where what appears to be a human fingernail juts from the dusty ground. On closer inspection, I find my initial hypothesis correct. Revulsion quiets me as I visualize O’Dea, clawing for her life, being dragged down this hole.

  “Oh my God,” whispers PJ. “We need to get down there.”

  “Time to crack into our goodie bags, kids,” says Ian, dropping his Melee Industries backpack. He unzips it and retrieves a pair of night-vision goggles, their verdant segmented eyepieces making him resemble a chameleon. PJ and I follow suit, and soon we all shut off our headlamps and switch on our goggles. For a moment, the darkness remains, and then with a flicker our jagged cave world appears to us in pixilated green.

  “Nice,” Ian says. “This is some Navy Seal stuff right here.”

  Bit by bit, we “suit up,” as Ian repeatedly calls it—gloves, jackets, work belts containing flashlights, hammers, and other small caving needs. At the bottom of the bag, I find a rubber handle attached to an unknown object. One yank, and a machete comes free, awkwardly held in my hand.

  “We better each have one of those,” says Ian.

  “I don’t think I’ll need mine,” says PJ softly. “Okay, let’s talk belaying. How do we do that?”

  Between Ian and me, a plan is constructed: spike the rope at the cave mouth, link it through our belts, drop the remainder into the opening, and belay down. It all sounds perfectly logical if one doesn’t take into account that none of us have ever climbed a mountain, or belayed down anything, or gone caving before.

  I hold the spike, PJ loops the cord through it and ties a knot, and Ian drives it tightly into the rock, his hammer ringing cacophonously (again, old school) with each strike, echoing madly through the cavernous darkness that surrounds us.

  “The tour will probably hear us,” I say, brushing stone dust from my sleeve.

  “Then we’d better get going,” says PJ, looping the remaining rope through his belt. “O’Dea needs our help.” I follow suit, and Ian takes the third loop. He then holds the remainder out over the hole, opens his hand, and lets it drop into the blackness.

  There are exactly nine seconds before we hear it hit bottom.

  Do the math, Kendra. If time until impact is nine seconds, then you have approximately two hundred meters until you reach the bottom.

  Enjoy your climb.

  “You’re first,” PJ says to Ian.

  “That’s original,” he responds. He pulls out a pair of gloves from his pack and slips them on. He then grabs the rope, leans back into the hole, and scoots bit by bit down until he vanishes. A few seconds later, the cord stops pulling through our belts, and we hear him call out, “Okay. Next, Kendra.”

  Doing my best to be fearless, I recline gradually, pressing the soles of my boots against the stone walls at all times and allowing my weight to tighten the cord in my hands, suspending me. Below, I hear the zip and chuckle of Ian being an adventurer, and I attempt to imitate him by increasing my downward speed. Inch by inch, I sink in the enclosed silence of the hole, its smooth edges slowly engulfing me until
I’m surrounded on all sides by walls of stone, all illuminated in spectral green.

  And yet, in this clammy darkness, my goggles are nearly blinded by light.

  Sigils. They descend along the walls of the stone tunnel in glittering lines, each intricate and careful in its artistry. My hand involuntarily rises to touch one, only to find a cool, smooth surface beneath it; either these sigils are painted onto the wall, or they’re enchanted into it.

  Though they resemble no alphabet I’ve ever encountered, both their swooping designs and faint glow speak to their meaning. I do not simply know it, like a piece of trivia, I feel it, like a belief, deep within my core.

  Go back, they say. This is a terrible place. They are here.

  For how long we drop, I can’t tell exactly; PJ lowers down above me, and for what feels like hours we sink deeper, the sigils on the walls continuous and consistent. Suddenly, I hear Ian beneath me gasp.

  “Guys,” he whispers, “we’re here.”

  “Is it the city?” I ask him.

  “Nah,” he says. “But I’m guessing we’re on the right track.”

  As the walls finally open up into a cave ceiling, the view appears, and I, like Ian, find myself breathless. Before us stretches a vast cavern, with dozens, perhaps hundreds of stalactites descending from the ceiling, interspersed with the skinny tendril-like formations known as “soda straws” and jagged, monolithic pieces of epsomite crystal. Enormous columns of rock stretch between the floor and ceiling of the cave, creating sloping oval openings in the sprawling interior cave. And all along it, sigils, glowing white against the green background, thousands of them stretching in a spiderlike web that spans the entire floor and walls and through a darkness so huge and cold that it feels like we’ve arrived on the ocean’s floor.

  With no rock to brace against, I descend quicker than planned, but thankfully Ian is there to help catch me, and PJ shortly thereafter. The sensation of solid ground is reassuring beneath my feet, but my focus remains on the stunning cave all around us. As PJ and I make noises of wonderment at the incredible geological formations, Ian drops his backpack, sorts through its contents, and hands us each a plastic-wrapped item.

  “Food,” he explains as I stare dazedly at his offering. “Those are Danny Melee Noob Chewers. Protein bars, basically. Eat; we’ll need the energy.”

  Only Ian could eat at a time like this. My mouth barely registers the flavored protein cud I gnaw upon. (If my tongue is accurate, Danny has chosen a hazelnut-graham cracker flavor here that will no doubt have a sour aftertaste.) Slowly, just to be sure, I lift my goggle from my eyes and stare out at the cave. And I am correct—even without the goggles, in the lightless subterranean void, the sigils continue their soft glow, giving the invisible space depth and shape even in the dark.

  “Kendra?” asks a black space where PJ was. “Are you okay?”

  Great idea, Kendra. Take your night-vision goggles off while your friends watch. That doesn’t look suspicious, does it?

  “I’m fine,” I respond, flipping the lenses over my eyes once again. In the green electronic glow, PJ nods with a knowing smile. Ian, meanwhile, chews his pressed protein supplement with a look on his face that suggests it has spoiled.

  “What did you see?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I tell him. “It’s . . . a scientific experiment. Total darkness. Can the eye adjust itself to the dark in a totally lightless space? Sensory deprivation has been said to cause interesting effects on the human brain.”

  Ian chews a bit longer and then says, “So . . . are you seeing things?”

  “Ian, stop,” says PJ.

  Ian’s eyes narrow behind his goggles, whether I can see them or not. “Warden things? Sigils and stuff?”

  An influx of heat coats my face. My involuntary power immediately becomes my shame. “It’s fine, Ian. All I saw was the dark.”

  “You should tell us, you know,” he says. “If you notice anything.”

  “Ian, what are you even talking about?” asks PJ, measuring his breath.

  “I want to know, is all!” says Ian. “If Kendra is developing some kind of extra senses or magic powers, I think it’s important we talk about it.”

  That’s a thought—why aren’t you talking about it, Kendra? Why aren’t you shoving your face in Ian’s, laughing, shouting, “Maybe I do, jerk, so watch it or I’ll make a Hand of Glory out of you”? Suddenly, it feels like his words, his knowing, is some sort of spotlight focused on you. It feels anxious, and creepy, and sad. What is that?

  “Guys, focus,” says PJ. “We’re in a cold, lightless space with no one around. Things are bound to get a little claustrophobic.” There’s a distinct waver in his voice on the last word. PJ, it seems, is fighting his own fears as much as ours. “Whether or not Kendra’s seeing things, we need to find O’Dea, and it’s looking like this place leads to Kudus. We just need to figure out how to get there. Kendra?”

  My fear swells up in my heart again, taking shape and lashing out. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “I mean, do you have an idea for a plan?” says PJ, sounding disappointed.

  Ah, yes, Kendra. You’re the smart one, remember? Focus on your brain.

  “Well, obviously, we have to feel the air for current,” I say, doing my best to sound analytical. “If there is a passageway out of here, it probably has wind blowing out of it.”

  My statement is true, but I know it’s unnecessary. My eyes have already settled on a spot, a circular shadow in the distance where the sigils amass, forming a ring.

  Play along, Kendra. Lick your finger and hold it up. That’s it. The air is coming from over there, right? Why, you didn’t need magical powers at all to figure that out—

  “Stop,” says PJ, aiming an ear upward. “Do you hear that?”

  At first, I want to accuse him of being preposterous, but then my ears find the strange sound in the air—a scratching noise that seems to get louder with each second. My mind runs through a list of wildlife found in Indonesian caves, but none of them make a noise as loud and unsettling as that.

  My mouth opens to speak. Before I can, it appears.

  The hole in the wall is too small for any human being to fit through, yet somehow the repugnant thing unfolds out of it like a spider—long thin fingers first, torso and head following. Slowly and silently, it creeps from its crevice and crawls along the edge of the cave wall insectlike, bones popping. From our vantage, its spine, thick, ridged, and discolored, bulges from its back at us. With every painstaking stretch of a hand or foot, the scratching noise rings through the cave.

  Ian and PJ follow my gaze and both go dead quiet. We observe as the thing inches along the wall, stopping every so often to tilt its head to the air and sniff loudly.

  Good Lord, Kendra. You looked at pictures of axolotl and cave cockroaches and hairless bats . . . but you never planned to see anything like this. What in the world is . . .

  Wait. Is that a zombie?

  The bead of sweat that forms at the rubber seam where my goggles meet my face is barely noticeable until it descends down my cheek rapidly. I am only truly conscious of it as it dangles momentarily from the very edge of my chin, allowing me a brief moment to paw at it before it drops from my face and hits the cave floor with an audible pat.

  And, as expected, my heart explodes with fear as the creature freezes, twists its head in a complete reversal with a loud crunch, and looks directly into my eyes with orbless sockets.

  Chapter Six

  PJ

  Something has happened, down in the cave.

  In our run-ins with the living dead, something I always find upsetting about them is that, when all is said and done, they’re people. It’s what separates them from the other movie monsters. Zombies don’t become zombies under the full moon. They don’t turn into dust when you drive a stake through their hearts. Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney and Christopher Lee never played zombies, because walking corpses are not fancy or nuanced. They’re just human beings, only the
script got downgraded and the stunt wires are showing. Our first zombie horde was a group of college dance majors, and the second was a cruise ship full of tourists. Both were dead, and ugly, and ravenous, but they were people.

  How did George Romero put it in Dawn of the Dead? “They’re us, that’s all.”

  Which means this is, or was a long time ago, a person. It was us.

  Which means things have taken a terrible turn in this place.

  The cave zombie on the wall is a skeleton wrapped in gray chipped skin, its fingers long and knobby, its dusty eye sockets black and empty. Its backbone is like a Stegosaurus’s spine, lined with bumpy, discolored ridges. The nose, the ears, all the extremities are gone, leaving this skinny skull-faced lizardlike thing that is, somehow, climbing the wall.

  When it pulls its Ashley Bell impression and meets our eyes with its back turned to us, my stomach tries to turn itself inside out, but I manage to stave off my fear. Then, the rest of its body lowers gracefully off the wall and twists itself to meet its head, and I manage to croak out, “Oh GOD.”

  “Okay,” says Ian, teeth chattering. “Oh man. Okay. It’s coming for us, isn’t it?”

  “No,” says Kendra. “It can’t. The sigils won’t let—” She gasps and looks at us, eyes wide, mouth open. The words make me cringe, revealing what I’ve known since Kendra blasted that Warden across the room. Our friend is more than meets the eye.

  “So there are sigils,” grumbles Ian.

  “Well, look on the bright side,” I stutter. “At least we know it can’t get to us.”

  The cave zombie responds by carefully moving its foot forward and placing it on the dusty ground. Then, with a dancer’s grace, its scarecrow body steps forward, balancing on—oh, what is this—on the very tip of its big toe. As it moves, its body bends and twists horribly, the arm and ribs shifting fluidly while the face stays set on us; the air is full of popping bones and creaking dead skin.