by C. J. Waller
Great.
“Because I’m not thinking what you’re thinking,” Fi says, slowly. “I’m thinking we’re all really tired and more than likely traumatised by what happened to Nik. I think we need to take a step back and start being sensible-”
“Sensible? Oh, come off it! It’s right in front of us, Fi. How can you deny it? For God’s sake, look! There was a door here – one covered in carvings and patterns – and now there isn’t. I touched it and it opened. You all saw it.”
“Look, we don't know what we saw,” Fi says. “This place is unique, with a potential set of unique conditions in which it formed. The... the 'door' could have just been... just been come kind of special, uh, cooling formation, or, or...”
It's clear to me that she is struggling to try to rationalise what's happening to us. Brendan, on the other hand, just gets angry.
“What?” Brendan’s frustration is plain now. If this were a cartoon, there would be steam shooting out of his ears. “But that’s not true, is it? You saw it. We all saw it. We all saw the door. The carvings. Before I touched it. Didn’t we?” He turns to me, looking for confirmation. “Meg?”
Oh, crap. My stomach plummets. Not fair, Brendan – not fair. I have no desire to get mixed up in this, no desire whatsoever. Looks like I don’t have a choice, though.
I close my eyes, resigning myself to my fate, and nod. I can feel Fi’s disapproval and Brendan’s triumph like ice and fire against my skin.
“See? I told you. It was here.”
Yes, so he's right. Oh, but how I wish he wasn’t. Now it’s Brendan’s turn to sound like a lunatic. I wonder when it will be mine.
“Megan, you're the rock expert. Were they carvings? They weren’t just… I don’t know, some kind of weird natural formation in the rock?”
Now my hackles rise. My eyes fly open, and I fix Fi with my hardest stare. There she goes again, doubting me, deriding me. As if I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between natural phenomena and full on cave art. Bitch. Then the memory of the deluded Norwegians and their Viking runes floats to the surface. They were experts, too, and just as sure. But they were wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I was just looking for patterns in the chaos.
Or maybe my mind is giving me the excuse I need so I don’t have to face up to the reality that maybe, just maybe, the nutters are right and we are not alone.
I shrug. It’s a good response. Nothing says, “I don’t know and please, don’t push it” like a shrug. Fi accepts it with a sage nod of her head, but Brendan isn’t having any of it.
“Megan? Please! Why are you… why deny it? You saw it! We all saw it”
“I did,” I say eventually. “But, Brendan – I don’t know what it was. It’s so dark down here, and like Fi says, we’re tired and stressed and-“
“And what? I can’t believe that you’re denying the evidence of your own eyes!”
Why is he picking on me? Why doesn't he drag the other two into this? They saw it too, after all. I know what Fi's doing, and I don't blame her. I don't blame her, because doors shouldn't exist down here, even if you have seen one with your own eyes-
“Maybe if we enter, we could settle this once and for all?”
There goes Janos again, being all reasonable. Well, maybe not reasonable, considering what he is suggesting – whether I was wrong about the pictures on a door that doesn't seem to exist any more or not, I’m not going in there, not unless I have to – but at least he’s not arguing. Brendan snaps his head up, as if he’d forgotten Janos was even there, and his eyes brighten. He nods enthusiastically. I wonder what’s happened to the cautious, sweet nerdy bloke I met three weeks ago, but he’s gone, replaced by a doppelgänger I know only too well. Most scientists have one. It’s the curse of curiosity. We want to know more, and sometimes, it makes us forget our fears and reservations. Sometimes it's a good thing; it's what drives us to answer seemingly impossible questions about life, the universe and everything, but sometimes it can get you into serious trouble. Like now.
“I don’t know, Janos...“ Fi says. She looks uneasy. Despite my previous feelings, I can’t help but feel that she’s the one we should be listening to right now. Good, solid, sensible Fi. Soldier Fi.
“Oh, come on, Lieutenant – aren't you just a little bit curious?” Marcus says. Fi and I exchange a look, aware that not only are we outnumbered, but also how this is turning into some kind of strange battle of the sexes, a playground-like mentality of boys vs girls. In the end, it is Fi who utilises the all-round shrug, and I am forced to join in. But I don’t like it, and no one can make me.
Chapter Five
Although Brendan wants to go first, Fi won’t let him. I don’t blame her. He’s turned into some kind of human/Labrador puppy hybrid, and his enthusiasm isn’t so much catching as potentially deadly. He wants to bound into the darkness when we haven't a clue what's in there. I mean, we don't even know if there's a floor.
She spends a moment just looking at the doorway, and then with a determined grimace, pulls out her pick. She tests its weight as I imagine a warrior of old might do a sword and gives a grim nod.
She steps into the gloom and disappears.
Brendan makes to go next, but Janos stops him. A look is exchanged, and Janos wins out. He goes first, followed closely by Brendan. Marcus glances to me and gestures towards the doorway.
“Ladies first?”
Fuck you, Marcus. Fuck. You.
***
I don’t know what I was expecting. How could I know? No one’s ever been in this situation before. Oh, sure, people have wandered into undiscovered places before and marvelled at the wonderful sights that lay before them, but each time, they have been safe in the knowledge that everything they’re about to discover was built by human hands, within the acceptable parameters of human experience.
We’re not.
Beyond the door, it is dark. There aren’t any bacteria in here, so it’s pitch black. The light from our kinetic headlamps feels weak in here, their beams barely able to penetrate a blackness so thick it feels like this whole place is screaming, “get out whilst you still can!”
But we don’t listen. We press on.
The column is hollow. Which makes it a tower, I suppose. Thinking of it as a tower makes my head ache, though, because we’re back to that whole “calling it a tower gives it an air of being constructed and as far as I know, the dinosaurs didn’t go in for much building” thing. But what else can we call it? There is literally nothing in my lexicon, both everyday and professional, that even begins to describe what this is. And judging by the way the others are turning slow circles, their faces slack, their eyes huge, they are struggling too. In a way, it's comforting to see them rattled. We’re all in this together. That's something, at least.
Once our eyes adjust, we can see that the ‘room’ is only ten feet in diameter, but it soars above us, straight up, as far as we can see. The walls are made of the same strange, pale crystalline mineral as the outside. On the walls are images. It’s like a graffiti artist decided to go on a massive trip and paint all the funny patterns he saw in huge, bold strokes. They look vaguely geometrical, but I can’t work any of it out. I don’t think anyone alive today could.
“Would you look at this shit…” Marcus breathes. “What does it mean?”
None of us answers him. It feels churlish to even try.
Janos steps further into the room and lets out a short, panicked bark. We all jump and go towards him, but he holds a shaking hand up and yells at us all to stop. Then he crouches down and runs his hand along the floor. By the light of his headlamp, I can now see why.
There’s a hole in the floor, about three feet wide. Just big enough for someone to fall in and never be seen again.
We all join him at the edge and peer down. If we thought it was black up here, it’s nothing compared to down there. Down there, it’s as dark as the devil’s arsehole and I for one am not all that keen on investigating further. There's something about the hole
that makes me nervous, something beyond it just being dark and potentially deep. Little sparks of static panic ignite along my spine when I see Fi and Janos unholstering the two remaining coils of rope that we have.
“You’re not… you’re not thinking about going down there, are you?” I ask… It’s hard to keep the tremble out of my voice, and I’m ashamed to admit my throat lumps up as tears back up behind my eyes. I swallow hard. What the hell is wrong with me? Like tears will stop them going down there.
Janos looks up and reaches out to pat my shoulder.
“We have to,” he says. “We need to explore all avenues. You never know – this might help us find a way back.”
Find a way back? Is he mad? Of course, this won’t help us find a way back. I catch a glimpse of Marcus shaking his head in terrified disbelief. Brendan, on the other hand, cranes his neck so he can get a better look, his expression almost hungry.
He’s really beginning to worry me.
After splicing their ropes with a complicated selection of knots, Fi tries to drive a spike into the lip of the hole. It doesn’t even scratch the surface, let alone bite. She gives us all a look that borders on the apologetic.
“Sorry, had to try. Looks like we’re going to have to fix this elsewhere.”
We scour the room, looking for anything that we might use as an anchor point. After a few minutes, Marcus lets out a short, “Hey, guys,” and we all crowd round him. What he’s found makes my throat constrict.
On the wall, about four feet off the ground, is a metal ring. I say ‘metal’ because I can’t figure out what it's made of and it's kind of shiny. It also doesn’t have any discernible way of fixing it to the wall.
“Why… what? A ring? Why?” Fi asks, as perturbed as I am.
“You’ve gotta tie your guard dog to something,” Marcus says. At first, I think he’s joking, but a quick glance tells me that’s not the case. He’s serious. I eye the ring again. It’s directly opposite the door.
Guard dog, indeed.
Janos gives it a tug.
“Well, whatever it is and why it is here, it is fortunate. It seems strong enough. We can use it.”
I watch as Janos and Fi set up the ropes, the black sludge of doubt sloshing around my insides. I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my time, but this is definitely going to go down and a new contender for first place. We’re rappelling down, so Janos goes first. He’s pretty adamant about it, saying he set up the ropes and therefore should be the one to test them, which is one hundred percent fine by me. Every time I peer down that hole, I can’t help but feel we’re mucking around with things that should be left well alone.
After Janos goes Brendan, more because we can’t stop him than out of any discernible choice. Then Marcus.
Then me.
Fi clips me onto the ropes and tries to give me a reassuring grin.
It doesn’t work.
“You’ve had lots of practice at this,” she says. “Just don’t think about where you are and concentrate on moving. Treat it like any other rappel. Okay?”
I nod quickly and take in a deep breath. She’s right – I have done this loads of times before, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Feeling decidedly sick, I lean back, all the time saying a little prayer to whatever gods govern ropes and little bits of forged metal (it’s times like this when agnosticism is preferable to atheism; there are just times in your life when, regardless of how sensible or cynical you are, sending up a little prayer is the only thing you can think of doing) and teeter over the edge. Fi flashes me another smile, but in the light of our headlamps, it looks more like a leer.
“You’ll be fine.”
Yeah. Sure.
I step off the edge.
My stomach swoops as my weight stabilises. There are no walls to guide me, so I tease the rope through the pulley, which in turn lowers me down in a series of small jerks, each one causing my heart to clunk against the inside of my ribcage. Above me, the small circle of Fi’s headlamp grows smaller and smaller until there is nothing left but a pinprick, and I feel as if I am floating in space and her light is nothing more than a lonesome guiding star, cold and desolate.
Then something touches my boot and I scream. I can’t help it.
“Hey… Hey… It’s just us,” Janos says as he and Marcus help me find my feet. I try to uncouple the clip, but my fingers won’t work. In the end, Janos does it for me. He tugs on the now dangling rope and it begins its ascent, back up towards Fi.
“Are you all right?” Janos asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. Just… how deep are we?”
“About twenty feet.”
“Twenty feet? Is that all?”
“Yes. But I know what you mean. It feels more. But rope lengths don’t lie.” He grins, and I find myself smiling back.
We wait a few minutes for Fi to rappel down. Brendan’s already off, exploring the walls, despite Marcus telling him to fuckin’ pack it in, we have to stay together, man, but he’s lost in his own little world of wonder, and for a moment anyway, so am I.
The space we’re in (it isn’t a room; I can’t think of it as a room, because if it’s a room then someone lived here and that is the road where madness lies, my friend) is basically the same as the one above. Circular, with walls covered in weird pictograms. But there is one difference. Cut into the mineral is an archway.
And beyond that archway is a corridor.
We cluster around its entrance; our headlamps sweep the interior, making it resemble a particularly naff ‘90s rave. The walls are ribbed and soar up and over our heads, like a ribcage of some massive snake. The floor slopes downward a little, and the same apprehension from before grips me.
“It’s the only way,” Brendan says.
“I don’t know…” I say. Every instinct is now screaming at me: don’t go down there. I don’t know why – hell, maybe I’ve developed a sudden and crushing case of claustrophobia – but it’s all I can do from shinning straight back up that rope and taking my chances with the monster in the water. Which is saying a lot, because I have never once in my life successfully climbed a rope on my own without some kind of assistance.
“There is no other way,” Janos says, cutting through my panicked train of thought. “And, come on – aren’t you just a little curious?”
No. No, Janos, I am not. But I can see Brendan is, and even Fi is peering eagerly into the darkness ahead. Out of all of us, only Marcus shares my doubts, which is worrying. I mean, twice in one day? That's unheard of. But in the spirit of togetherness (and the fact that I have no desire to sit in the dark with Marcus), we all agree that we can’t leave it – we have to at least have a look.
No one speaks as we creep down. The air feels flat down here, and there’s a peculiar smell that sets my teeth on edge. I kind of recognise it… sort of. But there’s not enough of it for me to identify it with any degree of certainty. That and I’m not sure there are many over-ripe bananas down there.
Even though it is pitch-dark, we all feel the shift in direction. We’re no longer walking in a straight line, but rather the path is arcing, and it isn’t long before I realise the path is forming a spiral, corkscrewing even deeper into the earth. We’ve been going for about half an hour or so when the darkness dissipates and a blue-tinged light filters up. With it come the smell, stronger now, and it no longer smelling of rotten bananas. Now it smells more of rancid meat. This causes all of us – even Brendan, whose growing hard-on for this place is getting quite disconcerting – to stop.
“Dead things?” Fi mouths.
We all shrug, because what else are you supposed to do?
With each step, the light grows in intensity until we can actually switch off our headlamps. This is a bit of a relief; even though we aren’t reliant upon batteries due to our kinetic suits, there’s always the unspoken risk of a bulb blowing, and thanks to Mr Monster in the Water, we don’t have any spares. But even that relief is intermixed with doubt.
What’s maki
ng the light?
We round the last corner and all stop as one.
In front of us is a room. Yes, this time I’m calling it a room. I can’t keep kidding myself, because there is no doubt in my mind that this structure was once inhabited. By whom – or what – I don't know, but nature just doesn't make things like this.
It stretches out before us; a vast gallery bordered by… benches of some sort, and what I can only describe lamely as control panels. Above them, the walls have large sections cut out of them, and it is from them that the light comes. It is a rich oceanic turquoise, and it takes me a moment to figure out why... because they are windows, windows out into the ocean we have discovered, the ocean that swallowed Nik, the ocean that houses some kind of monster.
“Holy crap…” someone breathes behind me. I don’t know who it is. I can’t devote enough of my attention to figure it out. All I can do is stand and stare at what is laid out before me.
It looks like something from the set of some kind of sci-fi movie. The walls glisten with moisture, and moulded bumps adorn the panels beneath the windows. The ‘benches’ – I don’t know what else to call them and have no idea what their true purpose might have been – are constructed out of the same material as the rest of the room, raised and moulded lumps that rise straight out of the floor. The whole thing reminds me of a laboratory, a feeling I can’t shake off as we wander along the gallery, trying to fathom out what the strange nodules and spirals carved into the panels might mean.
“I knew it,” Brendan says. “Alie-“
“Shut. Up,” Marcus says. “Don’t you dare say it. No one says it. This is fucked up enough without bringing that kind of… of bullshit into the equation.”
I nod, unconsciously. Marcus is right. We have no idea what this place is, or what purpose it served. No one is to bandy the ‘A’ word around. No one.
“He has a point, though, Marcus,” Fi says. “If it isn’t, you know, them… then what? Who the hell built this? I mean, even if we’ve got the dating wrong and this place is… is… modern, what the hell is it? What does it do? And who the fuck owns it? I was in the military for ten years and worked on some pretty top-secret projects… but I haven’t seen anything that even approaches this before. I don’t even know where to start.”