by Mark Frost
“But, dude, how are these dudes glowing? I thought that was some kind of modern Halloween technology.”
“I would say they were all alloyed with a phosphorous compound,” said Ajay.
“Let’s keep going,” said Will.
They found one more glowing statue in another alcove a few hundred yards farther down the tunnel. This variation depicted the Paladin figure as an infantryman from the Civil War, armed with a musket, pistol, and hand ax. Elise thought the statue was made from cast iron since it appeared cruder than the others.
“This pedestal has no date,” says Elise, examining the base, “but the initials I. L. C. are carved in the corner.”
“Ian Lemuel Cornish,” said Will.
“If Ian Cornish put this here,” said Ajay, “it dates to the late 1860s.”
“I’ll ask again,” said Brooke, standing back. “What are these for?”
“They’re all soldier dudes,” said Nick. “Sentries.”
“Versions of the Paladin, updated every time they stuck one down here,” said Will, thinking it over. “American versions.”
“In the form of whatever figure represented the warrior archetype of that era,” said Ajay.
“And I think Nick’s instinct is right,” said Will. “They’re sentries, standing guard.”
“Like scarecrows,” said Nick. “Really stiff ones.”
“So for the last one hundred and fifty years someone’s gone to considerable effort to place these here,” said Ajay. “That rules out the Center. This started five decades before the school opened.”
“The Paladin was the symbol for the Knights of Charlemagne for a thousand years,” said Elise. “If it’s not the school, it has to be them, don’t you think?”
“We know Cornish put the first one here,” said Will. “So either the Knights continued the tradition—”
“Or Ian Cornish was a Knight,” said Ajay.
“What if Cornish was the first modern Knight?” said Ajay. “Maybe he revived them.”
“We know he built the tunnels, at least as far as the doors,” said Brooke. “But did he build this tunnel?”
A clear, intuitive response came into Will’s mind as he looked around.
“No,” said Will, examining the construction of the alcove. “This section beyond the doors was here first. It’s a lot older than these statues. At some point when he was digging out there, Cornish punched through into here.”
“So Cornish put up this first statue,” said Elise. “And for some reason built the doors?”
“I still don’t understand how they’re supposed to act as sentries,” said Brooke. “What good could they actually do?”
“I have a thought about that,” said Ajay, pacing around the figure. “This could be a modern variation on an ancient tribal tradition that was common practice all over the world.”
“Such as?” asked Elise.
“The gargoyles you find along the outer walls of Gothic cathedrals like Notre Dame, or the angels armed with swords that flank the entrance to the hall of the Great Buddha of Nara in Japan. They’re spiritual guardians, placed to protect important sacred sites.”
“Protect them from what?” asked Nick.
“Some theories suggest they were put there to ward off demonic entities from other realms,” said Ajay, glancing at Will.
“The Never-Was,” Will said, as it all came together for him. “These statues were put here by people who found out about the Other Team.”
“Where the monsters come from,” said Elise, meeting his eye.
“Wait, so you’re saying there’s one of those portal-doorway thingies to Monster Central down there?” asked Nick.
“I don’t know,” said Will. “But we won’t find out by standing here. The answers are that way.” He pointed ahead, just as a whispery wind moaned from somewhere far below. Will felt it blow a chill into his soul. He shook it off, wandered a few yards into the dark, and pointed his light ahead.
“The right wall of the tunnel falls away here,” he said. “Looks like there’s some kind of drop-off. Everybody shine your lights down this way.”
They joined their lights together to form a single beam that pierced the blackness. They couldn’t see anything at all in that direction, but all felt the vertiginous, almost sickening disorientation of staring into a void.
“I’m done dancing in the dark, dude,” said Nick. “Time to break out some daylight.”
He extracted a couple of thick red flares from his pack, pulled on a pair of thick leather gloves, then ripped off the flares’ caps and fired them up. The alcove and tunnel in both directions filled with bright red light. Nick hopped up and jammed one of the flares into a gap between the statue’s rifle and hand, then jumped down and held the other flare aloft.
“I brought a crap-ton more of these if we need ’em, a flare gun, too,” he said. “Enough to give us over an hour of light. That enough to find Nepsted’s damn key?”
Ajay looked at his watch. “It’s just after ten.”
“That’s about as long as I want to spend down here,” said Will. “How about you guys?”
They were all in agreement.
Nick advanced cautiously until he could see the edge of the drop-off with his flare. Even with its brighter light shining down, they still couldn’t make out anything in the darkness below.
“Hold this a second,” said Nick, handing off the lit flare to Will.
Nick took out the flare gun, cracked it open, and dropped in the plug of a flare capsule. He aimed it out just above the level of his shoulder and fired. The flare arced up and out, tracing a line at least a quarter mile into the air before it detonated and transformed the darkness with the white light of a sudden full moon.
The sudden overhead burst revealed the void confronting them as a domed rock cavern, at least a mile wide and half a mile deep. The flare descended slowly, as if by parachute, and eventually lit up the ground far below them.
“What does that look like to you?” asked Nick, pointing down toward the flat base of the cavern.
“It looks like a city,” said Will.
CAHOKIA
From this distance, by the light of the flare, they could only see shapes—Ajay identified them as rooftops—but they filled a sizable portion of the gigantic cavern below, and the scale of the place looked vast. They encountered no more statues. Avoiding the open side of the wall, they descended steadily for ten more minutes along the winding path until they reached the top edge of a broad, steep stone staircase carved out of the rock, open to the void on either side as it descended into darkness. They stopped, raised their flares, and couldn’t see the end of them.
“Remember what Nepsted told us,” said Will.
“The key’s in the cavern at the bottom of the stairs,” said Ajay.
“Well, we found the stairs,” said Nick as he fired another flare into the air. When it lit up above them, they could see that the stairs dropped for a least a quarter of a mile before reaching level ground at the floor of the great cave.
“Nepsted’s buildings must be down there,” said Will. “The cathedral and hospital.”
They’d dropped so much in elevation that the city was no longer visible, something huge and gray obscuring it about a mile away across a flat plain.
“Watch your step,” said Will. “We don’t know what kind of shape they’re in.”
Nick took the lead, setting a slow pace, making sure everyone took their time; the stairs were uneven, cracked in many places, completely eroded in others. It took twenty minutes to pick their way to the bottom. The staircase narrowed abruptly just before it ended in a rocky chamber, a vaulted archway being the only way forward. They cautiously stepped through it, reaching the perimeter of the plain leading to that gray obscurity in the distance. The air felt still and cold, so they paused and put o
n additional layers from their packs.
“Look, you can see where we were,” said Brooke, pointing up and behind them.
The light from the flare they’d stuck on the statue appeared as a faint red glow far above them and to the right, which allowed Ajay to obtain their bearings with his GPS.
“Anyone want to holler how freaky this is?” asked Nick. “Never mind, I just did.”
Will closed his eyes, called up his Grid, and thought he saw a brief flash of heat at the top of the staircase; it vanished and didn’t reappear. A trickle of sweat ran down his back.
“Give me two more of those flares,” said Will.
He pulled on a pair of leather gloves as Nick lit them both for him. Will raised the flares high and stepped forward. A carpet of dust three inches thick covered the ground like gray snow for as far as they could see, and stirred up into small clouds with every step. Its uniform gray surface glowed an eerie shade of crimson in the flares’ light.
In the distance they could make out what had obscured their view of the city: A high wall filled the entire horizon ahead. The monochrome flat gray plain made it hard to determine how far away or tall it was, but it extended out perpendicularly, curving away in either direction as far as they could see.
A walled city.
Will blinked, summoned up his Grid again, and surveyed the landscape ahead, looking for signs of life. Nothing. Gray and arid as the moon. He cleared a space in the dust with his feet and dropped one of the flares on the ground.
“This will help us find our way back,” he said. “Let’s move.”
He didn’t want to alarm them by saying he also wanted it there to see if anyone followed them onto the plain. He lifted the other flare like a torch as he set out, and the others followed closely behind. They walked slowly, in silence, too overwhelmed to speak, the shuffling of their feet in the dust the only sound.
“What is this place?” whispered Brooke.
“Jericho said something to me last year, in the trophy room,” said Will, his voice a whisper. “A Lakota legend about an ancient race that lived in the area long before the human race appeared.”
“Lived where, here?” asked Ajay.
“Whoa, as in Wisconsin?” asked Nick.
“He said ‘on this same ground,’ so maybe that includes ‘way down under it.’ ”
“We’re at least a mile below the surface,” said Ajay, his eyes glued to the readout on one of his meters. “Could some of these ‘legends’ have made it to the surface?”
“Or the other way around,” said Will as he shuffled along. “There’s lots of caves in the area. Maybe the Lakota found this place or some artifacts they left behind.”
“Or, dude, maybe some dudes.”
“What happened to this older race?” asked Brooke. “According to the legend.”
“Jericho said they were destroyed by—Wait, that wasn’t it. He said they destroyed themselves. Through some kind of madness or … disharmony.”
“Looks like something a whole lot worse happened than singin’ out of tune,” said Nick.
“Did he mention if this race of ancient underground denizens were … p-p-people like us?” asked Ajay, for once not even bothering to react to Nick.
“He did not.”
“Well, that’s helpful,” said Nick.
“How do you think this relates to what we’re looking for?” asked Brooke. “Does it have anything to do with the Knights or the Other Team?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea how this fits in yet,” said Will, raising the flare.
“Well, I’d say this could be very, very good,” said Nick. “Or it could be very, very bad.”
“Thanks for your expert analysis,” said Elise.
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Nick, rummaging in his pack again, “we’re down here to find Nepsted’s key. And the sooner we do that, the sooner we can get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of this dusty hellhole.”
“Why bother to spell hell if you use it five words later?” asked Ajay.
“Ex-squeeze me?” asked Nick.
“Ajay, can you see an opening anywhere in that wall?” asked Will.
“I was just about to help you with that,” said Nick.
Nick raised his arm and fired another flare into the air over the top of the wall. When it combusted, the whole area lit up like daylight.
“Are you out of your mind?” said Brooke, grabbing Nick by the arm. “What if we’re not alone?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Look around, Brooks. This joint’s a dead zone.”
Will glanced back at the flare they’d left at the stairs. He thought he saw a shadow pass between him and the flare but maybe his eyes were playing tricks. When he turned back, Nick’s overhead flare revealed that much of the wall ahead had been damaged by erosion and gravity.
“There,” said Ajay, pointing to a section to the left. “I see a break in the wall there.”
They turned slightly as Ajay guided them toward the opening. The journey took much longer to complete than Will would have thought; it was impossible to judge distances over the featureless dimly lit plain, and as they shuffled closer, the wall turned out to be much bigger than it first appeared. Well over fifty feet high at the top of its undamaged sections, forming a defensive rampart wide enough to drive a truck around. They were near enough now to realize it had been built from the same earthen bricks that lined the tunnel. But where the tunnel was still intact, the wall was a crumbling ruin, with more advanced decay and disrepair revealed as they moved closer.
“What do you see?” Will asked Ajay, who was staring hard at the wall.
“A number of jagged scars in the bricks that I wouldn’t attribute to the ravages of time,” whispered Ajay. “Multiple places, halfway up and higher, smashed in by what could have been projectiles.”
“Which you interpret as … ?” asked Elise.
“It appears this place came under siege at some point. Like a medieval walled city.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s deserted,” said Will.
“Let’s hope it’s deserted,” said Brooke.
“All along the watchtower, princes kept the view,” said Elise softly, looking up at the crumbling line of the wall.
“Jimi Hendrix,” said Nick.
“Bob Dylan,” said Elise.
“There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief,” said Will. “My parents had that record.”
“Dylan wrote it,” said Ajay.
“Yeah, but Hendrix crushed it,” said Nick.
“Let’s hope there’s a way out of here,” said Brooke.
“Are you quite finished?” asked Ajay, and drew their attention back to the wall. “These marks are distinctly different from the gouges we saw on the backs of the entrance doors.”
“Gouges? You didn’t say anything about gouges,” said Nick, worried. “What gouges?”
“Don’t get too close yet,” said Will, ignoring the question. “Head for that opening.”
They tracked farther left until the opening Ajay had spotted came into focus for the rest of them as a large gaping black hole.
“Fire another flare,” said Will.
Nick sent one up directly overhead, and as it blossomed, revealing the gap before them, they saw what had happened. Two gigantic metal gates had fallen, or collapsed, or more likely been battered in. They’d landed inside the wall, dented and gashed. Massive iron hinges that had once suspended them stuck out from the edge of the portal, wrenched and twisted out of shape.
“What did this?” asked Nick.
“It looks like some kind of war took place here,” said Elise as they all stared at it in awe.
Something Dave said once came back to Will, and he heard it in Dave’s voice: “A war between the Hierarchy and the Old O
nes, the corrupted Elder Race that had ruled and ruined the planet. Until the Hierarchy drove them back through the Gates of Hell.”
Could this be that place?
“You really think we should go in there?” asked Brooke.
“We’ve come this far,” said Will.
“Hey, nothing’s eaten us yet,” said Nick.
“Such a confidence builder,” said Elise.
“If anyone wants to turn back now,” said Will, “just say so.”
No one responded.
“Feel free to lead the way, Will,” said Ajay, hanging in but hoping someone else went first.
“Once we’re inside, don’t touch anything,” said Will, drawing them together. “Stick together, keep your voices down, and be ready to run. If we have to jam out of here, head back to the stairs and up to the tunnel.”
Will raised his flare and led them toward the gates, while Nick took the rear. The light from Nick’s last overhead flare faded, leaving them inside a traveling bubble of bright red light.
They reached the fallen gates, each at least fifty feet high. Fashioned from thick solid metal, with great expanses of steel banded and riveted around the edge, they bore the scars of a furious assault; rends, deep dents, and scars defaced their surface.
“Different marks than the ones we saw on the doors upstairs,” said Ajay.
“You mean the gouges?” asked Nick.
“Yes,” said Ajay.
“There’s something engraved on the gates,” said Elise, shining her light on one and then the other. “Take a look.”
Her beam traced a gigantic indecipherable letter or glyph stamped into the metal.
“Welcome to Cahokia,” said Nick, hopping up on the gate and spreading his arms. “Tourist capital of the underworld.”
“This is one of the greatest archeological finds in human history,” said Brooke.
“I wouldn’t be so fast to attach the word human,” said Elise.
They continued past the gates. Inside, the damage didn’t appear to be as devastating, but the same thick blanket of dust lined the ground as far as they could see. Although many interior walls were crumpling into ruin, enough remained that they could make out the patterns of a city grid. A network of paths and lanes trailed off from both sides of the main wide avenue that led in from the gates.