by Tobias Wade
“Close now.” The words slip past Ramose’s darting tongue. “Flashlights off.”
Ender’s hand tightens on the gun.
“You don’t want them to see you coming,” Ramose adds impatiently. “Tunnel collapse before you fire a shot. I go alone, give password, come back for you.”
Ender looks back at his troop. Four men, each putting their lives in his hands. Now Ramose was asking him to trust their lives with him as well. The more trust is spread, the thinner it becomes, but Ender doesn’t see another option. He can almost hear the dry skin of his face cracking in the silence, and his eyes are a desert whose fluids have already begun to evaporate. What abominable conditions men will subject themselves to for gold… but how could Ender pretend he was any better after accepting the contract to come here? Relenting at last, he gives Ramose a curt nod.
“Speak loud. In English,” Ender instructs him. “We’ll put out our lights, but you keep yours on.”
He doesn’t have to tell Ramose that he wants the ghost miner’s light on to make it easier to shoot him in the back if he pulls anything funny. Ramose’s maniacal grin indicates that he already knows.
“Put your worries to bed, my friend,” Ramose says, smiling with teeth as bleached as his skin. “I need you more than you need me.”
Ender flips the light switch mounted on his helmet and the lights behind him cut with military precision. The unnatural night presses closer, but the captain is intent on Ramose’s face for any sign of deceit. The ghost miner’s fey countenance is impossible to read, and relinquishing their lights to the encompassing darkness feels like surrendering their souls to the mercy of a prayer.
Ramose holds his own flashlight by hand above his head, illuminating himself like an actor bearing the focus of a stage. He walks purposefully down the deserted tunnel, humming to himself with careless ease. The proximity of the light gives his skin an even more pellucid radiance, and for a moment Ender is positive he can distinguish the contrast of the miner’s cervical spine and collarbone beneath his flesh.
The full weight of the darkness bears down on the troop as Ramose moves away. The presence of that mountain of earth looming overhead has never felt more evident, and the atmospheric furnace which engulfs them fills their lungs and begs escape with each pressured breath.
No movement. No sound. Despite the intolerable conditions, Ender’s men hold their composure while bearing out the pregnant silence. The captain can’t help but grin at the mutual respect they all feel for each other. This isn’t the first group of pirates they’d brought down, and sure as hell it wouldn’t be the last.
Ramose stops fifty yards away where the tunnel terminates in a blank wall. “The void calls us to her,” he articulates loudly to no one in particular.
“And you will answer the call.”
A hundred years may rob those Ender once loved, his sight, and the very memory of his name, but no eternity will diminish the scar on his psyche which that voice brands him with. He can only imagine the universe being born in response to such a voice, and even more likely will it end with the last reverberation of such an utterance.
The sudden silence after it fades is broken only by a uniform thud as the four men behind Ender fall to their knees. A similar compulsion grips him and saps the strength in his legs. Survival instincts lying dormant since mankind’s first sentient thought devour his consciousness, but Ender stubbornly refuses his nature to maintain a line of sight on Ramose.
The ghost miner turns back to flash his light in their direction, illuminating the gun still leveled at his face. Ender hopes the distance doesn’t betray how violently his hands are shaking, but perhaps his authority is already robbed from his cowed men.
“What was that?” Ender asks. “What is down here?”
“Come and see for yourself,” Ramose replies.
At his signal, Ender hears his men shuffle back to their feet, although he doesn’t glance back at them lest he reveal the terror blazoned across his face. Ender flares his own light on the approach, crouching and pressing himself to the wall in a vain attempt to regain some control over the situation.
The terminal end of the tunnel where Ramose stopped has vanished, replaced only by a black wall of emptiness which their meager light cannot hope to puncture. Ender turns the beam on Ramose instead, bringing to life the fleeting vision which haunted him before.
The light shines straight through Ramose’s skin to reveal the outlines of bones, the suspension of his organs, and even the viscous fluid running sluggishly through his body. Back to his face, the cartilage of his nose and ears block the light more thoroughly, making them appear to hover distinctly apart from his leering skull. Ender ignores the horrified gasps from behind and does not allow his men to see him falter.
“We approach Azgangi,” Ramose says as the troop draws level with him. “But I do have something to confess. If you believe you were being brought to a refinery, then I’m afraid you have been misled.”
Ender wants nothing more than to plant a bullet straight through that sardonic grin, but years of violence and bloodshed as a mercenary soldier have taught that learning when to kill is even more important than knowing how to do it.
Ender lowers his gun to the holster on his belt. If Ramose was afraid of death, he would have shown it by now. Instead the captain moves beside the ghost miner to shine his light into the new opening, revealing a descending stairway which cuts steeply into the solid bedrock. Ender isn’t sure which bothers him more: that here at the bottom of the deepest mine on Earth there was a secret passage which continues downward past all sight and reason…
…or that each step was already worn smooth in two places as though eons of footsteps have passed up and down this way before.
“Azgangi is the temple which lies well below us still.” Ramose continues, each word shedding some of the accent and hesitation he previously decorated the English language with. “The pretense was an unfortunate necessity for bringing you here, but the essence of your mission remains unchanged. I desire your assistance in confronting a subterranean evil, just as you already set out to do. I offer compensation for your service, just as you were prepared to receive. Both will be greater than you anticipated. Will you continue this way with me?”
There it is again. The whisper of the unknowable darkness. The temptation of the void which fixates the senses until sight and sound and touch all combine into a single insistent pressure to leap. The demands of Ender’s curiosity grip his heart with iron claws, dragging him toward the topmost stair. From the idle dreaming days in his youth to each operation in his professional career, Ender hungered for the insatiable thrill of adventure. Now faced with the greatest mystery of his life, his whole spirit is kindling to this fire.
That is why it was so difficult for him to turn around. To bark the commands for his troop to follow his lead on the long trek back toward the mundane world above. For all the wonder promised by this discovery, it could not compete with the presence of looming dread. For all the selfish longing of his desires, Ender could not purchase them with the lives of his men.
Ender does not think of himself as a hero for this instance. He knows the burden of knocking on the door where one of his soldiers once lived, only to ease his weeping mother to the ground. It is nothing but cowardice which makes him unwilling to do so again.
“Ender Maston!” Ramose breaks his composure with a feverish intensity. “I need your help!”
It is lucky that Ender doesn’t turn around again. If he had, then he might not have noticed the wooden support beams which were painted with a metallic gloss. He shouts a warning to his men, and as though thrown by the momentum of those words, an explosion simultaneously ruptures the ceiling. Splintering timbers like breaking bones herald the shifting weight of untold millions of tons of rock and soil above.
Perhaps they could have struggled through the hail before the avalanche of cascading stone blocked off the retreat. Again, it was cowardice which lent strength to E
nder’s desperate effort to pull his men back. Within seconds, all opportunity for a decision had passed.
“I’m sorry,” Ramose moans, a real tremor running through his woeful voice. “I hadn’t wanted to do that, but you’ve left me no other choice. I hope your surprise won’t spoil the good fortune which has brought us together.”
Restraint saves Ramose’s life for a second time today. Somehow Ender doesn’t expect it to be strong enough to endure a third test. Despite his apology, the ghost miner’s skull still grins beneath his thin mask of skin. He must know what Ender was thinking, because the captain wears the same expression as every man in that troop.
There was no way onward but down.
3
Through the dark passage Ender’s men descend, all five in the squad huddling close despite the insufferable heat. Ramose alone seems unaffected, the dense atmosphere apparently invigorating him as he continues the descent. Long white limbs flash in perpetual motion, a faint luminescence rising beneath the disguise of his humanity.
“Ghost miners, they call them,” Sergeant Sosa breaks the tense silence in a slight Spanish accent. The Venezuelan boy is only 22, but he had known fighting for as long as Ender’s most mature soldiers. It was not lost on Ender that his sergeant’s otherwise stoic voice now shakes. “You think he already died down here?”
“Ask him yourself,” Ender grunts. The captain’s eyes don’t need to penetrate the darkness to read the uneasy glances cast among his men. The ripple of fear is palpable; Ender feels it cascading across the troop as though they were an extension of his own body. These were men whose thunder had swept through occupied buildings, breaking through hails of bullets without a hesitation. Their last mission had taken them through the jungles of Nicaragua where they had been captured by rebels for three days, and not one of them had looked death in the eye with anything less than a challenge.
This though? No training, no ordeal, no oath between brothers could ever prepare them for the infinite unknown which lay waiting in this preternatural darkness.
“Maybe he’s not a ghost at all. Maybe he’s the Devil, leading us straight down to Hell.” That was Jacques. Two tours in the French Foreign Legion. Voice trembling like a child.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Ender replies, scrutinizing the pale figure ahead for any reaction to their conversation, “but it doesn’t matter one way or the other. As long as he needs us, we still have a ticket out of here. Until then, no one lays a finger on him. Whatever happens down here—whatever we find—we keep our heads about us and our guns down. At least until I give the word.”
“Sir, yes sir.” Unanimous. Instant. There was no God who had ever listened to Ender before, but this desperate hope that his men wouldn’t regret their trust in him could be named nothing short of a prayer.
Ramose stops abruptly. The stairway terminates in a rock shelf, cool winds and a release of pressure telling Ender they must have reached a wider space like a subterranean of cavern.
“You may turn your lights back on, if you wish.” Ramose spreads his arms wide as though basking in the glory of an invisible sunset.
Click. Ender’s headlight bears directly into the ghost miner’s face. The effect of that leering skull has lost none of its potency.
Click click click click. The rest of the lights from the party are on, probing the velvet darkness which is so thick that it seems reluctant to leave. The persistent beams scan the colossal chamber ahead. A march of endless columns soar from the ground to be lost in the unfathomable heights overhead. Through the center shoots a white marble road, clean and pure and unerringly straight as it leads to the looming structure dominating their view: a blasphemous Parthenon doubtlessly devoted to the nameless monster which inspired such infernal architecture. Black metal blades tear through the earth to collide with the structure from all sides, and countless black marble statues kneel in perpetual worship before the monument.
“Where are we?” Ender asks in breathless wonder. If this vision were to be excavated and lit and flooded with tourists, it might have been a spectacular beauty. Here in this forgotten place beneath the world however, its impossible sight fills him with unrelenting dread.
“We are in the presence of The Beast,” Ramose replies in a carefully reverent tone. “He wishes to make your acquaintance.”
“Is this the evil you spoke of?” Ender reaches out to hold Ramose back, but the guide is already bounding along the marble road.
Flash goes the macabre grin over his shoulder. “Do you hear it yet?” the guide asks, his words accelerating and slurring together in wild excitement. “Do you hear him calling to you? Words like snakes slithering into your brain, mixing in with your own until you can’t tell which are yours at all.”
Ender thinks he hears it too. A faint echo like a scream which lingers in memory long after its source has died.
“Not properly. What is it telling you?” Ender asks.
Ramose closes his bulging eyes, but the expressive terror on his face speaks of the unbidden images which don’t need sight to haunt him.
“The Beast says we are welcome to his land.”
“Yes, but who is he? What does he want with us?”
Ramose flinches. Then shaking his head, he opens his eyes.
“I’ve never seen him myself, only heard his whisperings. You’ve just arrived so you might not feel it yet, but once you’ve spent as long as I have underground, you’ll hear him calling as plain as your own thoughts.”
“So you’ve never been to this chamber before?” Ender presses.
Ramose shudders violently, but the hint of laughter still dances in his bulging eyes. “It is an honor for all of us to be so invited. Please do not stray from the marble road. You will be safe upon it, no matter what else decides to walk with you.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Jacques asks. Ramose doesn’t wait to explain. The shudder passes across his body again like a wave of electricity. Ender can’t decide whether it’s fear or excitement, but either way it provides an impetus which sends the ghoul cantering down the road toward the temple at an incredible pace.
The troop hesitates only briefly before following, although not at the same reckless pace. Ender meticulously scans the arena they pass for clues, catching sight of more than he anticipated.
“Don’t look behind you,” Ender hisses. “Don’t stop moving. Stay on the road.”
Some orders are impossible to obey, no matter how good the intent. Especially when the grating sound of stone sliding across stone begins to haunt their footsteps. The marble figures are turning their heads to regard the visitors as they pass.
“Du Lupe,” Jacques grunts.
“They have eyes!” Sosa’s strained whisper falls behind the others. Ender fades back to let his other men pass, grabbing Sosa by the arm to drag him along. The whole troop has wordlessly transitioned to a half-run now, but they aren’t moving so fast as to miss the moist, human eyes staring out from below the ponderous marble brows.
When the troop catches up with Ramose, they find him kneeling on a raised dais at the base of the stairs leading into the great temple. The ground around him is uneven with deep gashes in the stone, almost as though savaged by gargantuan claws. White hands are digging through the rubble with urgent excitement too powerful for Ramose to contain.
“He isn’t dead. Just sleeping. Isn’t dead at all,” the guide says, intent upon his task.
Ender cuts to the front of his ranks again. A practiced litany of orders sets Marque and Jordan, his other two soldiers, to promptly block the road while Sergeant Sosa and Jacques take up defensive positions around the dais.
Ramose stands from the rubble, cupping something solemnly in his hands. Ender pivots, flashing his light across the ranks of statues. Countless eyes glimmer in quiet reflection. Pounding blood in his ears, a drumroll of anticipation.
“He asks me to extend you a very simple offer. A contract, if that’s how you prefer to view the world,” Ramose
says. The light shifts to reveal his bones once more. “One of you will swallow a sacred seed and carry it with you to the surface. There you will be rewarded with more wealth than you can possibly imagine.”
“If you think we’re just here for money—” Ender begins.
“I have no doubt that your ideals are magnanimous, Ender Maston,” Ramose interrupts, “and that your wife and daughter eagerly anticipate your return. I also, however, understand that you’re a practical man.” Ramose is walking toward them, his open hands revealing a dark object about the size of a walnut. “You want to change the world? Then you’ll need men to do it. You want men? Then you need money. How many lives have your men saved? How many could you have saved, if you weren’t limited to the meager resources that more important men buy you with everyday? It’s hard to imagine how much good you could do by helping me, so instead I will give you a number that’s a little easier to visualize: Five.”
“Five what?”
“Five lives that you will save right here, right now. Please don’t take too long to decide, or it will be four.”
One. Two. Cracks rending the air in such rapid succession that they’re barely distinguishable. Two bullets plant themselves an inch apart in Ramose’s chest. The fragile suspension of flesh explodes on impact. The flashlights highlight the shrapnel of bone which launches into the air. Ramose staggers and falls to his knees, rivers of blood flooding into the cracks in the savaged marble dais.
It wasn’t Ender who fired though. It was Sergeant Sosa, the shots true despite the tremble in the boy’s hand.
“What the fuck was that?” Ender shouts. “We needed him!”
“That’s why I did it.” Sosa lets out a long breath he’d been holding, still pointing his gun at the unmoving corpse.
“We’re all dead now!”
“Yes, sir, but as I see it, we were all dead the moment that tunnel caved in.” The boy looks like he’s on the edge of tears, but he forces the words out.