by Rawlik, Pete
The supplies revealed two things that I had not noticed before. Out of habit, I donned some of the clothing, but I was not cold. Indeed I would have estimated the temperature in the cavern at a comfortable seventy degrees, a balmy temperature if I was truly in Antarctica as was implied by the markings. Nor was I hungry, and though I was tempted to open a tin of baked beans, it was more out of routine than any real need. I left all the food untouched. I went about examining the remaining packs, checking the equipment and assuring myself that it was all in working order. Within one of the boxes was a self-winding wrist watch bearing the manufacturer’s name, Waltham Watch Company, on the back casing. The watch had ceased to function at 12:42 on February 1st, 1930, but after winding, the mechanism seemed to function normally. I have no way of knowing the actual date or time, but I set the watch to 8:00 AM on February 2nd. It is from this admittedly arbitrary setting that I have since kept time. Curiously there were four other cases bearing the insignia of the Waltham Watch Company, but all of them were empty.
I explored the chamber, and my knowledge of engineering and geology suggested to me that it was not a naturally formed structure, but at the same time I could conceive of no method for constructing it. Scattered about the floor of the vast chamber were four more pits, identical to the one in which I awoke. The shape of the entire chamber is pentagonal with each wall being about a hundred yards long. In the center of each wall there are hexagonal openings which lead to similarly shaped tunnels. The light provided by the strange fungal growths does little to illuminate these dark foreboding tunnels.
I gathered up some of the equipment and supplies and have resolved myself to venturing down one. My one concern was that the tunnels seem completely indistinguishable, and it was possible that in my wanderings, I could return to this exact locale and not be able to recognize it. As a solution to this problem I decided to use the soot from the heater and periodically leave identifying marks to note my passage. The symbol I chose was a simple X, more than sufficient to accomplish the task at hand.
I followed a random tunnel for several hours. At first, I thought the tunnel was straight and level, but after traveling for quite some time I came to realize that the strange five-sided tunnel was slowly curving to the right, as well as being slightly vertically inclined. Such a state would probably have been more noticeable if I had more light, but I was forced to rely on one of the hand-cranked electric torches which illuminated only a few feet in either direction. The darkness was overwhelmingly oppressive. The tunnels were solid and smooth; there were no rocks, no loose pebbles, no sand or dirt. Neither was there anything organic. I saw no evidence of any other person or of any life at all in the tunnel, but I heard things, or at least I thought that I heard things. At one point I could have sworn something had been coming up behind me, something large and unseen that was breathing, gasping really, like a train engine drowning in steam. I crouched back against the wall, the electric light sputtered in my hand, and I was too fearful to crank it. As the dim light slowly failed, I swear that whatever it was out there in the dark stayed just beyond the limit of my failing vision, until the torch flickered weakly and then died, plunging me into complete, impenetrable darkness.
Eventually, I was able to overcome my fear and began cranking the torch frantically and did not cease until the incandescent glow was at its maximum, but the light revealed nothing, and the noise, that freakish snuffling and groaning, trailed off into the darkness and never returned.
Whether the strange sounds were real or the hallucinated product of my mind I cannot say, but after this I made sure to keep the light fully charged. I also began to favor staying close to the wall on my right-hand side. My logic for doing this was simple. Walking down the center of the tunnel, I had realized that the limited illumination given off by my torch may have been insufficient to allow me to detect any branches, turns or similar features. To compensate for this deficiency I chose the side opposite the one on which I was carrying the torch. If any features were to occur, at least I would have a better chance of detecting them.
It was not long after making this decision that I began to detect a faint but definite point of light some great distance down the tunnel. Even more startling was the clear sound of something akin to bubbling, a sort of liquid gurgling, that was emanating from the same direction. With each step the light grew in size and finally took on the familiar hexagonal shape of the tunnel. With a kind of resignation I slowly emerged into yet another hexagonal chamber of tremendous proportions. As with the chamber of my origin, lighting was provided by strange fungal growths hanging down from the ceiling, and as with that chamber, there were five terraced pits, but unlike the first chamber these pits were not empty. In the lower chamber of each was a dark and viscous fluid.
At first I thought the pool was composed of tar or oil, for it gurgled as masses of different densities welled up and then spread out over the surface, much as pools of organic hydrocarbons are known to. Yet as my torch light played over the fluid pool it was revealed to be deep red in color, not the black or brown normally associated with petroleum deposits. Any suggestion that the pool contained some sort of conventional fluid was dispelled by what happened next. For as I leaned closer to the pool, the very surface swelled up, like a rolling wave in the open ocean, and surged toward the light. Startled, I immediately drew back, which sent the light jerking upwards violently. The pool responded as well, and a column of translucent red jelly about a foot thick came up out of the pool like a streamer of melted wax. The tendril reminded me of a slime mold, or perhaps of an amoebic pseudopod reproduced on a massive scale, and as crude and futile as the attempts to grasp my light were, I was overcome with such fear that I drew back even further.
Again the fluid thing in the pool responded, at the base of the tendril there began an intense roiling which quickly formed into a large swelling about twice the diameter of the tendril. With frightening speed the mass raced up the tendril and exploded from the tip. A single large globule of puss spun through the air surrounded by a cloud of smaller globs. Arcing through the air, they all failed to reach me and instead impacted on the surface of the pond, the step-ledge or the wall of the pit itself. Nothing that I could see made it up out of the pit.
Terrified but fascinated as well, I carefully peered over the ledge and observed the globules that now lay scattered about. Those that had landed on the surface of the pool itself had vanished completely, apparently absorbed into the main mass. Those that had landed on the riser were slowly sliding downward, mostly in a manner not unlike that of a viscous fluid, but on occasion a large quantity of the stuff would partially detach itself from the wall and then pull itself downwards in movements reminiscent of infinitely smaller amoebas. This, too, was the motion of the masses that had landed on the lower ledge, the ones I found easiest to observe.
Ranging in size from a penny to a baseball, all were of the same translucent red color which only naturally appeared deeper as size increased. The translucent nature of these things made their internal structure clear to me, but the ease with which I could see inside them offered no comfort or explanation to their status in the order of things. Try as I might, the only organization I could discern within these things was a complete lack of structure. As they moved they put forth pseudopodia that pulled them forward, and the light of the torch revealed the flow of fluids as these appendages were expelled and retracted, but as to what caused the fluids to move, as to some sort of musculature or skeleton, or nervous system, I could discern nothing. The fact that these things would weakly reach out after the light implied that they were reacting to some sort of stimulus, but whether that was heat, light or motion I could not tell, and neither could I make out any semblance of sensory organs that would register such a stimulus.
It was not only the torch they reacted to. As they crawled about on the lower ledge it was inevitable that one would meet another, and the resulting interaction taught me much. The contact between the two was accidental and casua
l, nothing more than a smaller glob brushing up against a larger one. Immediately both ceased moving and I could see a small bridge of jelly form where the two had touched. The pause was pregnant, there was a taste in my mouth, a taste of wonder and anticipation, and I swear I could see a faint dance of lights flicker within the jellied bridge. Here then was a new species unknown to man carrying out biological functions equally unknown, and I was the first to observe it.
The bridge split apart violently and the smaller glob veered off, moving rapidly away from the other. The larger thing groped after it, lashing jellied tentacles out like streamers across the black rock of the floor. The larger one grasped the smaller, dragging it back, pulling it into itself. The larger one swallowed the smaller, absorbed it, and merged with it in a strange form of anti-mitosis. When it was all over, there was only one glob left and it slid back in the same direction that the larger one had been going as if nothing had happened. It was as if the smaller one had never existed.
Intrigued, I decided to perform a quick experiment. Tying a small piece of rope to one of the food tin keys, I carefully dropped the item in the path of one of the larger globules. As the weird jelly, like creature crawled over the metal key neither the creature nor the key reacted, but as the thing slowly crawled over the hemp rope it suddenly surged forward. The rope was enveloped and within seconds it was gone; not one trace of it remained, devoured by the blob of goo which quickly continued back on its seemingly random trek. Based on this experiment I suspected that this strange protoplasmic creature could devour any kind of organic material, and I shuddered to think on such things too much.
I made a camp by the mouth of one of the tunnels, as far from any of the pits and their horrid inhabitants as I could get. Something was nagging at the back of my mind. I had missed a vital clue, or drawn some ersatz conclusion, but, try as I might, I could not overcome the feeling that something was horribly wrong. My watch told me that I had been awake for hours, and still I was not hungry. As I sat there looking at my supplies, I caught my reflection in the side of a metal tin. It took me a moment, as I had to stare at my reflection to understand what I was seeing. My face was that of a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. My eyes were hazel. My skin was fair and smooth. I could see no scars, but the most dramatic feature that my image revealed to me was the complete lack of hair. There was none on my head; I had no trace of beard or mustache. Eyebrows were absent, as were any eyelashes. I checked the rest of my body and found that there was no hair anywhere, on any part of my skin, nor any tattoos. Using the tin as a mirror, I checked my mouth and found no fillings or missing teeth. Except for the complete lack of hair, I was a perfect specimen of manhood. I tried to think about what kind of physical or chemical trauma could result in the loss of all body hair but could think of none. Confused and tired, I closed my eyes and quickly fell asleep.
According to the watch, I awoke several hours later to find that I was no longer in my camp. I apparently had rolled away from the tunnel mouth, all the way to the edge of the nearest pit. Indeed one of my arms was hanging over the edge, dangling down toward the lower ledge. Even in a drowsy state I realized the danger of my situation and leapt to a fully upright position, letting out a gasp of horrified terror. This engendered a curious response from the fluid thing in the pit. As I jumped back from the rim in a panic, the thing trapped within the pit recoiled from my position. Like a small body of water driven by a gale force wind, the thing piled up against the wall of the pit furthest away from me. Curious, I carefully stepped forward, and I swear the damned thing shuddered with fear and tried to crawl even further away. Only when I withdrew did the creature relax and flow back into a more placid state.
Confused, I ran my hand over my head and made yet another discovery. My scalp and indeed the rest of my body was covered with a fine stubble. It seemed that a significant amount of growth had occurred while I slept. Apparently, whatever had caused the loss of all my hair, some chemical exposure or physical trauma, did not cause any permanent damage.
I spent the next four hours navigating a dark, seemingly endless tunnel. The time I spent in that shaft and the things that occurred are meaningless in comparison to the events that transpired once I emerged from it, so I will not bother to describe them in any significant detail. Though it should be plain that after spending such a long time in the dark and barren corridors it was a welcome relief when I finally emerged into yet another massive underground chamber, I immediately noticed that the chamber I had come to was significantly unlike the two I had previously explored. Instantly my senses were assaulted by a cacophony of sound that flooded the room and made my teeth ache. It was a rhythmic crashing sound like waves of steel crashing against a shore of glass, horrendous in its nature and bone-shaking in its intensity. With each pounding crescendo I cringed and instinctively covered my head, which served me well as each beat was followed by a heated gust of wind that carried with it a grey sticky ash and such a stench that would put an abattoir to shame.
The source of these violent sounds and noxious bursts was not readily apparent to me, for unlike the prior chambers which were devoid of features save for the pits and the phosphorescent fungi, this one was filled with great mounds of grey rock and ash that towered over me like hills, nearly reaching the ceiling itself. Fearful, but driven by an overwhelming sense of scientific curiosity, I removed my pack and cautiously secreted it underneath a small pile of rubble, concealing it completely from casual view. I then climbed slowly and carefully to the top of one of the great mounds. Several times I lost my footing and either slid backwards down the mound, or found myself in a patch of fine loose material not unlike quicksand.
Reaching the summit, I found myself suddenly in close vicinity to one of the many phosphorescent clumps that served to light the great cavernous halls, and I examined it in detail. It was as I suspected a type of fungi but not one with which I was familiar, and it exhibited features that were wholly unlike those normally associated with that kingdom. A large globular growth almost a yard in diameter, the fungi appeared strikingly similar to an inverted street lamp. Not surprisingly, the thing was evenly divided into five panes of semitransparent material that appeared to have the consistency of amber or dried maple syrup, but paper thin. These panes were held in place by a thick organic green latticework. Through the panes I could make out a bulbous cluster which was the source of the strange cool light, a light to which I was strangely attracted, nearly mesmerized.
Forcefully tearing my attention away from the organic lantern, I turned to look out over the vast chamber. My position on top of the debris pile augmented by a plethora of the luminescent growths gave me a nearly unobstructed view of the artificially constructed cavern, and again I wished that it hadn’t, for the sight which was revealed to me set my heart racing and my mind reeling. To describe the thing as inhumanly monstrous would not begin to explain the nature of it, for it was beyond anything I had seen before. Where the pit-thing could be portrayed as protoplasmic and bearing a superficial resemblance to a hyperbolic slime mold or amoeba, this creature was simply alien, bearing no resemblance, not even an exaggerated one, to any earthly creature. It was an abomination pure and simple, a hideous affront to the laws of nature as well as of physics. I do not have the words to give the thing a proper description, and I apologize for lacking those skills, but in the interest of science I shall try.
The main mass of the creature was a fluid darkness larger than a subway car. It had no true shape or boundary, but I could discern in the darkness of its bulk great masses of flowing currents and roiling boils that would seem to churn up and explode out into nothingness. The heaving, turbulent darkness was surrounded by a green, wispy haze that clung like fog on a mountain top. Between the two components of the creature there was no clear division and as I watched, volumes of the fog would seem to condense all at once into inky blackness, while in other areas the darkness would suddenly sublimate into a mass of the thick verdigris mist.
The hul
king mass was, as I have noted, an inky blackness, but at the same time it was inexplicably translucent, like a fine piece of smoky quartz or volcanic glass. This property, this transparent darkness, made my eyes ache as I watched it flow and change and move. Its primary method of locomotion appeared to be similar to amoeboid motion, moving the bulk of its mass forward in a wave front that more or less crashed like a wave. This was not its only method of travel, however, for it also produced from itself a myriad of appendages of all shapes and vast sizes that would seem to supplement its forward motion. A phalanx of jointed appendages not unlike those of a grasshopper pushed it onward, while a pair of rough-hewn arms with great circular suckers clasped onto the floor before the thing and dragged the hulking entity about. Tentacles, arms and legs came into existence and dissolved as needed, as did other specialized organs including a multitude of feelers, visual receptors, a trumpet-like organ I assumed was analogous to an ear, and a moist fan of tendrils that I gathered was designed to provide a sense of smell.
Along with these appendages and organs, the creature appeared to have created a set of features that seemed specific to the task at hand, namely carving this chamber into the standard pentagonal shape. The front of the monstrosity had been transformed into twin huge jaw-like shovels lined with massive and wicked picks. The creature would literally bite into the wall of raw rock and then swallow the resulting chunk of boulder-sized stone. Seconds later, a huge tube-like orifice on the creature’s anterior end would suddenly swell up and belch out a cloud of grey sediment onto the floor, forming the mounds that were scattered about the chamber, and the clouds of sticky ash that were driven into fearful gusts by the forceful expulsion.