The entrance was wide enough to accommodate the spring and still allow narrow pathways on either side. How deep did it go? Beckoned by the darkness, I approached the entrance. I started to slide on the slippery ground but managed to hold my own. I only half felt Tommy’s hand holding on to my shoulder.
“Careful now,” he said.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I gazed into the opening, a whiff of its winter breath on my face. As if moving of its own accord, my right hand reached out, fingertips brushing against the surface of the rock. I was half expecting my touch to reveal some secret message, for letters of a forgotten alphabet to materialize, but the surface remained unchanged.
“I don’t like this place. I don’t like it at all. It reminds me of a cemetery. And what’s with that smell?” Minh’s anxiety brought me back to reality.
“What smell?” I asked.
“It smells like an old, stuffy cave,” Minh said, stating the obvious. But it was her choice of a word—cave—that struck me as wrong. A cave implied a naturally occurring formation, created by water and time. This place before us was anything but natural. Too seamless. Too perfect.
“It’s a temple,” I blurted out. What possessed me to say that? It must’ve been this place itself, the slabs of sleek rock practically vibrating with want. Though what this place wanted wasn’t clear.
Judging from five pairs of very confused eyes drilling into me right then, I was the only one thinking those thoughts. Tommy’s concerned expression in particular prompted me to explain myself. “I mean, it feels like a temple. The rock is so flat, it seems man-made.” I looked between my friends’ faces, expecting someone to disagree. I zeroed in on Tommy, since he tended to be the voice of reason during our ordeal.
“Don’t look at me!” Tommy raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “It might as well be man-made. Who knows with this place?”
“Why does it matter?” Minh interrupted him. “We shouldn’t have left our spot. What if the cars come back? We’re going to miss our own rescue!”
“You can go back, if you’d like.” I didn’t recognize my own voice—edgy, even rude. This place was messing with my very essence. Regardless, I couldn’t stop this new me. “I mean it. You know the way back. In fact, everyone who wants to return to our spot can go now. I’ll join you all there.” I took another step toward the entry into what had now solidified in my head as the temple.
In an act of support, Lori came forward to stand next to me, but instead of reassuring me, her presence made me want to flinch. Half her face was lit by the blazing sun and the other was shadowed. “I’ll go with you. At least it’s cool down there.”
“We’ll all go in there. Or we’ll all go back to the clearing,” Tommy said.
Minh still didn’t look impressed. I sought out her eyes and told her, “I just want to see if any light gets inside. Because if it does, maybe this place could be our new shelter. You know, in case there’s another sandstorm.”
Minh nodded, a mechanical movement. Her resistance appeared to have fizzled out. Or maybe she just didn’t relish the idea of being left alone out here.
Not so sure anymore if going down into the temple was such an awesome idea, I had to force my unsteady feet to move. The opening’s ceiling was high enough to accommodate me and Lori, but the taller people in our group, like Minh and Tommy, had to lower their heads as they entered.
All life was sucked out of this place. If the tightly woven forest we had to cross to get here was silent like an empty house, the temple’s silence was nothingness embodied. I touched the walls on my way in, only to pull back my hand in disgust. They were covered with gelatinous sludge. I cleaned my hand off on my pants, which were filthy anyway. After we returned to our sleeping grounds, I had to find a private moment and wash my clothes—and myself—properly in the spring.
“Minh was right. It does stink in here,” Luke commented from somewhere behind me. Or maybe it was Rowen who spoke. All voices sounded the same in here, distorted by echoes bouncing off uneven walls.
Stuck at the front of the line, I ended up leading our group. Whatever would happen to us would happen to me first. But at least it was cool inside here and I was no longer sweating or burning up in the sun. Also, we were all alive and in relatively good moods. Well, as much as possible, considering the circumstances. On the negative side, we were still stranded in the desert. So there was that.
My eyes were quick to adjust to the semidarkness; there were cracks in the ceiling and the walls, allowing some light to seep through. I could distinguish the shapes of stalactites, their gleam infusing this whole experience with eerie beauty. Right behind me, Lori flicked on a lighter (it must have been Rowen’s) and held it high. My shadow, long and ugly, materialized at my feet, stretching farther out into the temple.
“Better save that for when we really need it,” Minh said to Lori, and the light vanished as quickly as it appeared.
With no forks or other openings appearing, we continued on straight, the water stream always burbling below. More natural light illuminated our path now, and we stopped when the tunnel expanded into a wide-open space. The stream we’d been following seemed to run around the entire length of this area, disappearing into a passage to our left. “We could throw a couple of beanbags into that corner and have a plasma TV mounted on this wall,” Luke said, briefly back to his old sarcastic self.
Minh, who had wandered farther up ahead, was now waving a hand in the air, urging us to join her at the far end of this cavernous room. “Just look at these walls!”
“Am I allowed to use the lighter now?” Lori flicked it on without waiting for a response. With her hand held up high and close to the wall, I could see the drawings that had gotten Minh so riled up.
Jet-black, glowing-white, and reddish-okra colors intermingled, dancing on the brown surface of the wall. A series of images followed the circumference of this space—like a strip of pictures arranged in a storyboard. It told of an exploding star, or maybe some kind of asteroid hitting Earth but burning up in the atmosphere to the point where only one tiny white piece remained. The next image showed people on their knees, forming a circle around a white hexagon, rays of light surrounding it like a halo. The fever dreams I’d been having in the oasis flickered through my mind, but my memories of them were already fuzzy, ill defined. There was the queen on her throne, but she was also a fallen star, or at least a part of one. And she was hungry. That much I could recall.
There was some scuffling noise in the distance. Where was the rest of our group? The lighter wavered in Lori’s hand, casting weird shadows on the walls.
“Rowen?” she yelled. Her retreating footsteps clapped against the rock-hard floors. I turned just in time to see her enter the passage to the left where the stream flowed.
“Lori, wait up!” I called after her, echoes exaggerating my call, as if the walls were making fun of me. I sprinted after Lori as fast as the semidarkness allowed. I could hear some of the others dashing after me in the dark, intermixed with the sounds of water splashing and Tommy or Luke swearing. Together, we were creating a strange cacophony.
Somewhere ahead of us Lori screamed, the sound twisted, desperate. I still couldn’t see her. When I caught up to her at last, I halted to a stop as I caught a glimpse of what lay ahead. My feet skidded against the ground and I came dangerously close to an open pit that yawned beneath me. Lori was crouching by the pit’s edge, close to the drop. After I braved another step toward it, I could see that the bottom of the pit was covered with sharp objects, like spikes.
Rowen was down there, his body skewered on several spikes. Illuminated by some dull light streaming from above, Rowen’s face stared back at us, eyes open but sightless. My own eyes were frozen and unable to blink; all I could see were the spikes coming out of his torso. The material of his T-shirt was turning dark red.
“No…,” I whispered.
The semidarkness wavered around me. How did Rowen end up in the pit? We were all together just mom
ents ago—when did he wander off? This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
I was hit with the ghost of a pain in my own gut. Everything slowed down, the walls and the ground beneath my feet vibrating. I lost track of where I was, where my friends were. I was standing by the edge of the pit, but I was also in the pit. Everyone, Rowen included, was looking down at me from above. Their faces were twisted masks; and there were spikes coming out of Rowen’s stomach and chest. I strained to snap out of it. There was a movement next to me, displacing the air. Stubbornly rejecting the new reality, I thought maybe it was Rowen. When I managed to tear my eyes away from my friend’s unmoving body in the pit, I came face-to-face with Tommy. He was right next to me, close to the pit, and he was horrified. His hands were shaking.
To my other side, Lori started to wail. What came next was a mess. Chaos. At first, I couldn’t move, petrified. I was losing time. I could’ve stayed down there for months or years. It didn’t really matter to me. And then there were hands dragging me away.
As Tommy ushered me away from the pit, my eyes sought out Lori. She was fighting against Luke, who was, in turn, pulling her away. Before I gave in to Tommy and left the edge of the pit, I caught another glimpse of Rowen’s body down below. I knew with absolute clarity that my mind would never be able to revisit this memory and not glitch out in shock. That lifeless mass of flesh on the bottom of the pit, that grotesque, bleeding rag doll, was once my friend. He was one of the good guys. Sometimes jaded, sometimes a jerk, but overall okay. And now, the Queen of Giants had claimed him as her sacrifice. Better him than me, a horrible part of me thought before it slithered back into the darkness from which it had briefly raised its scaly head.
THE POWER OF DENIAL
I didn’t know who broke into a run first, but one second I was immortalizing every detail of Rowen’s body and the next we were all stampeding away from the pit and down, down, down the dark corridor. Aside from the pandemonium of our galloping feet, the only sound was Lori’s nonstop sobbing.
My mind was fried, but I had to keep on moving. I knew that much. Stuck in fight-or-flight mode, my brain kept pumping fear into my veins, telling me that if I stopped, whatever had gotten Rowen would get me too. As I ran, I somehow broke away from Tommy and ended up way ahead of my friends. But I wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the dark with me. I sensed an odd pattern of alien breathing, a sulfurous stench of burnt hair, a guttural laugh. I couldn’t see her, but I knew that the blinding gaze of the Queen of Giants was on me once more. I also knew that all of this was her doing. She was controlling us, manipulating our every step, every thought.
I paused, and Minh bumped into me. I yelled into the darkness behind me, “We’re up ahead! Slow down!” Down … down … down … Echoes repeated my words as the rumble of approaching feet lessened, came to a halt.
“Shush,” Minh hissed at me.
I held my breath. My eyes picked out Minh in the dark. She was feeling around with her hands, looking for something.
She turned to face me. “We haven’t been here! This is new!” She was pointing at the wall, indicating another one of those eerie drawings I could barely make out in the weak light. She was right though, this was new.
The image showed five pairs of hands surrounding that same white hexagonal object I’d seen before.
I ran a finger over the image, then had to swallow down a pang of guilt. As a child of two archaeologists, I knew it was poor practice to touch cave paintings. They were fragile, likely to get damaged by sweat and dirt. But I couldn’t help myself. There was something immensely attractive about this particular drawing.
The cave’s lighting intensified, or maybe it was just my eyes adapting to the dark, allowing me to see more detail to the drawing. Like how the white paint an unknown artist used to draw the hexagon had a greenish glean to it. It screamed organic matter. Algae maybe. Was it the same sludge I felt at the entrance to the temple? Some kind of primordial soup from which relentless life crawled out?
And then the painting also spoke to me, as if through some kind of osmosis. Its voice, as visceral as a tap on my shoulder, was saying, Come to me … Alif …
Luke, Tommy, and Lori caught up to us while I was drooling over the drawing. “Where should we go? Which way?” Luke cried so loud my eardrums reverberated.
I pulled my hand away from the wall, my trance broken. I said, “There was only one path leading in here. There’s no way we could’ve taken a wrong turn, so let’s just keep going?”
We proceeded with extreme care, stepping on the ground softly. The corridor curved, and instead of taking us back to the entrance, it led us to a new, low-ceilinged room. The temple was constantly changing, moving. An Ouroboros swallowing its own tail.
But I sensed we were safe now. This place had already claimed its sacrifice in Rowen. If it had wanted all of us dead, we would be dead by now. But I knew I shouldn’t reveal my thoughts about this to anyone. Not even Tommy.
The sole source of illumination in this new room came from a column of light streaming down from a large crack over our heads. The light landed squarely on the center of a flat slab, waist-high. The way the light behaved around the slab seemed odd. Soon I knew why.
As we approached, I saw that the light was being reflected off the slab’s surface. At first, I thought there was a mirror. As I closed in, I saw it was a hexagonal tablet, just like the one from the cave-wall drawings—only real, three-dimensional. The tablet’s surface shone pale green, making me think of Tommy’s eyes.
Lori reached out and, before anyone could stop her, touched the tablet. When her skin made contact, Lori yelped and jerked her hand back. Steam came off her fingers in wisps, and the stink of sizzling flesh tickled my nostrils and throat. Cradling her arm, Lori stepped back. When I looked at her in the semidarkness, her eyes were glazed over. I was expecting her to cry or whimper in complaint over her injury, but she was quiet.
“What do you think that is?” Luke’s question was interrupted by a monstrous howl. Its sound multiplied, growing bigger with each echoed repetition. Noise of rushing feet against rock followed, something clicking violently through the cave. Taloned paws?
“We need to get out of here!” Tommy’s quivering shout forced us out of our collective trance. I worried Lori was too out of it to be able to move, but she sprang back to life just like that—and she reached out for the tablet. Stunned, I watched as she picked up the tablet like it hadn’t hurt her just seconds earlier, and then she was scrambling off in a loose-limbed run.
This time we managed to trace our steps back to the familiar large room. We didn’t linger there, immediately tearing to the entrance corridor, which eventually led us outside. We didn’t drop our crazed pace until after we were out of the caves. Somehow, it was already night outside.
I could barely see where my feet were landing. This was a recipe for a disastrous fall.
“Stop! Just stop!” I yelled. “No one’s after us!” But only Tommy slowed down. I watched as the rest of my friends dashed away, merging into the dark mass of trees. I caught up with Tommy, and we continued side by side, lagging behind the main group. He appeared strong and unshakable to me, as tall and confident as always, but when our eyes met in the dark, his gaze was stripped of life, haunted.
* * *
As we returned to it, our familiar sleeping ground seemed malevolent now. The darkness would have been absolute if not for a handful of stars fighting for their right to shine beyond the heavy-hanging clouds. The space was crowded by the imposing palm trees, which seemed to have crept closer to our clearing while we were away. The spring’s bubbling song was muted and distant. My breathing was erratic, and something was off about my perception of space and time. My movements, even my thoughts, felt delayed, like I had to work extra hard to make my body respond to my brain’s commands.
I had matched my pace to Tommy’s and stopped when he did. We remained standing, watching Minh and Luke crouching by the spring, about ten feet away from Lori. I co
uld hear the nervous undertones of their conversation, if not their words. Lori, her back against a palm, was clutching the hexagonal tablet to her chest. She was smiling to herself, but just with her lips, while her eyes were staring at nothing.
When Lori spoke, her loud, clear voice was surreally casual. She could’ve been talking about a new top or a pair of shoes she’d just gotten in her favorite shop. She was giggling too. “And that’s why she’s got no friends. No one likes a gloomzilla.” Lori was still staring straight ahead, clearly not addressing Minh or Luke. But it became obvious who Lori was speaking to when she said, “Now you’re just being silly, Rowen.”
My heart was slamming against my rib cage. Without putting much thought into it, I found Tommy’s hand in the dark. He gave my fingers a light squeeze and didn’t let go.
Together, we approached Minh and Luke by the water. It was as if Lori was repelling us all. Hesitantly, I let go of Tommy’s hand and sat on the ground next to Minh. “Is she okay?”
Minh kept silent, frowning, and it was Luke who answered, “Of course she is not okay, Alif. She’s in shock. Rowen is dead. Dead!”
Minh hushed Luke while I met his angry stare. The whites of his eyes were glowing, almost swallowing the blue of his irises. I chose my next words carefully.
“I know that. We’re all in shock. Don’t bite my head off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he hissed. “I’m sorry if my unkind tone upset you.”
Minh shushed him again and then said in an awkward semiwhisper, “Did any of you see Rowen wander off on his own?” She spared a look to where Lori was sitting and hugging the tablet, but Lori didn’t show any interest in this conversation.
“No,” I whispered back. Luke shook his head and Tommy just shrugged in the way of someone lost and no longer sure of anything. I explained, keeping my voice at half volume, “I heard the screams, so I followed the sound into the … pit room.”
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