by Matt Carter
“I’ve got what we know of the mine’s layout memorized, but you should study it too in case anything happens to me,” she said. She soon began babbling excitedly, “Of course, these diagrams are not very well drawn, and not by an expert, and the layout likely changed over time with cave-ins, and assuming the Splinters—”
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “We’ll be fine. Out of everyone here, I’d trust you to singlehandedly find Haley and get us all out of this alive.”
Mina smiled up at me slightly, “You do know the odds of all that happening are incredibly low, right?”
I nodded. “We have to try.”
A few moments later, Billy skidded to a stop. “If I’m not mistaken, guys, this is where you two were headed while I was busy almost getting arrested.”
We left the van, taking along everything we thought could be of use. Tools, flashlights, bottled water. I slung the heavy, improvised flamethrower over my back while Mina filled her bag with as many bang sticks as she could. Billy took along a long spool of a couple thousand feet of clothesline, shoving his revolver down the front of his pants.
He gave me the chainsaw.
Geared up, we headed along the forest trail, following Mina’s flashlight beam as she led the way.
“So you’re sure this thing isn’t going to blow up on my back?” I asked Billy as we trudged, motioning to the flamethrower.
“Like, ninety-nine point nine percent sure, man,” Billy said.
“You said a hundred percent earlier,” I said.
“Well, I was a little more baked then,” he shot back. “I mean, you should be grateful Jailbait had me make that in reserve anyway! Shouldn’t you be worried more about fighting some giant Splinter tree and going into the ‘mine of mystery’ and saving Haley than little things like exploding?”
Mina had stopped in her tracks at the darkened edge of the clearing.
“I don’t think we have to worry about the tree,” she said.
Billy and I followed her into the clearing. It was alive with activity, the gnarled, viney bushes on the ground writhing and contracting. The massive tree that had blocked the mine entrance had moved to the side, rocking back and forth slightly on thick, tentacle-like roots. The dark entrance of the mine loomed before us like a gaping dragon’s mouth, the faint green glow from within promising otherworldly terrors.
“Well, at least they were nice enough to leave the door open for you,” Billy said.
Billy tied the end of the clothesline spool to a nearby, non-Splinter tree in a series of messy knots. It wouldn’t win him any merit badges, but it looked like it would hold.
“Say it again,” Mina said.
Billy sighed dramatically, like a put-upon child. “Three tugs mean you found Haley and are coming up, four tugs mean you haven’t found Haley and are coming up, three, then two tugs mean you’re in trouble and need help, and one long pull means you’re being carried off and probably eaten by some underground terror.”
“I never said that one,” Mina stated.
“You might as well have,” Billy said, irritated. “Listen, I don’t see why I can’t come with you. You’re going to need all the help—”
“We can’t just stand around here arguing!” I snapped. “Every second we’re here, they’re dragging Haley farther into that mine. If we don’t go in there now, we could lose her forever!”
Billy clearly wanted to keep arguing but shut up when Mina glared at him. He scowled but still handed Mina the spool of clothesline.
“Just be careful, you guys, all right? I’ve become kind of attached to you,” Billy said, playfully punching Mina on the shoulder. She smiled faintly but quickly turned on her flashlight and made for the mine entrance, trailing clothesline behind her. I started to follow, but Billy put his hand on my shoulder.
“Take this. For the tree,” Billy explained as he handed me the chainsaw I’d set down when we saw the tree had moved.
“The tree’s out of the way,” I said, not looking forward to carrying another awkward, heavy weapon in addition to the flamethrower.
“For now,” Billy said simply. I hadn’t considered the possibility that it might move back while we were inside. I took the chainsaw gratefully and followed Mina into the darkness of the Miracle Mine.
It was cool and musty inside. That didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was how light it was. I’d been in caves before, and once inside of an abandoned mine on a school field trip. A certain distance away from the entrance, you find yourself in a darkness more pure than you’d think possible. In here, however, we could see even beyond the beams of our flashlights by the faint green glow that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Looking down, I could see why.
Nearly every surface of the mine was covered in a spongy, vein-like material that pulsed faintly with the green light. Tangles hung from the ceiling like grotesque, malformed roots or vines, occasionally leaning toward us, but for the most part hanging lazily in the air, dripping long, slow trails of slime. The disgusting, living carpet captured our footprints perfectly as we descended.
And the heavy, three-toed footprints of a Splinter.
“Looks like we’re on the right track,” I said. We had to be at least a hundred feet in at this point, the entrance long-since invisible in our downward hike.
“Possibly,” Mina said without elaboration. She looked off at a crudely dug side-tunnel and mused, “That must be the escape tunnel.”
“What?” I asked.
“The tunnel the miners dug to escape on their own. I’m surprised it hasn’t caved in by now,” she said.
“No, I was asking what you meant by ‘possibly,’” I clarified.
She was quiet, thoughtful as we walked farther into the mine. “Has it occurred to you that maybe we’re being led here? That maybe the tree being out of the way and the footprints here for us to follow are part of a trap rather than good fortune? That Haley is just bait that your Reaper is using to draw us here? What kind of sense does it make to free us one moment and attack us the next?”
I did my best not to be annoyed with Mina at this moment and failed. “I guess it depends on who The Reaper is. If it was Kevin, or even your dad, I could see him letting us go out of some sick sense of priority or honor, but going after Haley because that was what he was told to do. Honestly, I don’t know if the Splinters have ever made sense to me. But what I want to know is, if you think this is a trap, why are you still here?”
She didn’t look at me when she said, “Because this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to answers.”
I turned, about to ask her what kind of answers she was looking for, when I saw it. It was simple, something I could have missed if I were any less on edge, but I caught it clear as day on one particularly slimy, root-covered wall.
The beam of my flashlight wasn’t aiming straight.
I trained it on the wall at about chest-height, but the light nearly fell to the floor. I tested this, training the light farther up the wall, but it curved about four feet lower than it should have.
“That shouldn’t be,” Mina said as she tested her flashlight beam against the same stretch. Anywhere else she aimed it, the beam was straight, but on this section of the wall it curved. Even more disconcerting, upon closer inspection of some of the vines, I could see slime on them, but it was dripping upward.
She set her flashlight on the ground and went to the wall, tearing at the forest of slimy, pulsing vines, forcing her hands further inward.
“There’s a crevasse hiding here, maybe even a tunnel,” she said as she struggled with the roots. “Hit it with the flamethrower. I think that should open it up!”
Though I feared it exploding in my hands, I gave the weapon a try. I set down the chainsaw and ignited the kitchen-lighter fused to the end of the sprayer. With one press of the trigger, a fine stream of flaming gasoline shot from the end of the weapon. Much like the light and the dripping slime, it did not quite go where I was aiming, but it found
its mark on the wall all the same, rapidly burning away much of the slimy, creeping mess of vines. It did reveal a narrow fissure in the stone wall of the mine.
We checked the ground. The footprints led in.
Mina slipped into the crevasse first. It was a tighter squeeze for me, one I had to make by taking off the flamethrower and pushing it in ahead of me along with the chainsaw, but after twenty feet or so, the way opened into a wider, downward-sloping tunnel. It was almost too steep for us to walk down safely, but the fleshy carpet we walked along kept us from falling down, so long as we stayed close to the wall.
The farther we walked along that narrow, slanting tunnel, the closer-in the walls seemed. The fact that it felt as if gravity had shifted slightly and was actively pulling us farther into the tunnel didn’t help either. It felt as if the laws of physics from our world were slowly falling away with every step we took toward that eerie green darkness.
Mina stopped maybe ten feet from the end of the tunnel. She cocked her head, then looked at her hand as if she had never seen one before.
“What is it?” I asked. At least, that’s what I think I asked. At that moment, I was transfixed as the sound of my voice seemed to solidify as a rippling wave in the air. It embraced Mina, wrapping around her before popping in a small, near-invisible explosion behind her.
She looked at me, eyes wide.
“You think that’s strange, watch this,” she said as she raised her arm above her head, making me stagger slightly as her voice hit me. At first it looked as if she had raised her arm and dropped it quickly to her side again, but then I saw it slowly arc through the air appearing to take a full minute, leaving a trail of darkness in its path.
“What is that?” I asked, raising my hand in front of my face and seeing the same frightening effect.
“It appears that time and space aren’t working quite like we know them,” she said. “I think what we’re seeing is the past, present, and future simultaneously.”
I raised my hand, fluttering it around like a bird, and, despite my anger, caught myself laughing at the sight.
“It’s like being in The Matrix,” I said.
She cocked her head. “Which matrix?”
“Another time,” I said, checking that the rope trailed behind us. It was still there, but going by the spool, we would be running out very soon.
“Come on,” she said, leading me slowly into the opening ahead. I was so disoriented by the strange atmosphere of the tunnel and so eager to get out, I nearly started running as we got to the end. It was only Mina standing in the way that stopped me from spilling over the edge entirely.
At least, I think edge was the right word.
The vast chamber we had stumbled into was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was perfectly square and at least a hundred feet across, though the way my depth perception was messing with me, it might have been a mile for all I knew. It had the shape of a massive, inverted stone step pyramid with tiers of decreasing size descending in front of us maybe a hundred feet down, ending in an opening that glowed brilliant green. Looking up, I could see that we were only about two thirds of the way up the structure, and greater tiers still ascended above us. It was like being in a great, ancient stadium.
Somewhere far away there was a heavy, mechanical sound at regular intervals, as if there were many great gears at work. Massive crystalline stalactites hung from the ceiling above us, pulsing and glowing iridescent purple hues, while most of the room itself was lit by thousands of small, glowing green blobs that floated through the air. A few floated by us casually, and for a moment, I wondered if they were alive or just a natural part of the environment down here. Mina reached out to push one away from her, only to see it sprout small, spider-like legs. The legs thrashed out, pushing away from Mina, before retreating back into the blob as it hovered away in its new direction.
I was running my hand over some ancient, inhuman writing that had been carved into the crumbling archway around us when Mina called for my attention. She was looking at a large brass sign bolted next to the archway that looked to be a fairly modern addition. On it was what looked like the same block of text written out in perhaps fifty different languages. About nine lines down, I read what it had to say in English.
PROSPERO
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NORTH AMERICA
EARTH
“What do you think that means?” I asked.
Mina was staring out at the other levels of the stadium, a crushed expression barely controlled on her face. Slowly, she pointed at another archway opposite us on the next level down, then another one farther off to the left. As I learned to adjust my eyes down here, I could see a few more gates on other levels.
It took her a few seconds to answer, and when she did, it was with a fragile imitation of her usual matter-of-fact confidence.
“It means that my hopes that Prospero might be an isolated outbreak were . . . unfounded. This is how they get from place to place. This place . . . it’s a place between places. Not on Earth, but connected to it somehow. It seems that each of those gates connects to a different location somewhere else in the universe, and this is how they travel.”
“The universe?” I asked, pointing to the sign. “You mean the world?”
She shook her head, decidedly, resignedly. “If they have to specify Earth on the sign, it means they’re likely on other worlds, too.”
The enormity of the thought made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. She waved me to the edge of our tier and pointed down. I looked at the spongy material on the floor about fifteen feet beneath us. I could see the telltale, three-toed footprints heavily embedded in it. What I couldn’t see was a way down.
“Do you think there’s a staircase somewhere?” I asked, not particularly hopeful. I doubted very much that Splinters needed to use stairs.
Mina moved her hand sharply through the air, staring at it as it moved slowly, then swiftly. She looked down at the tier beneath us, putting her toes up to the edge.
“Wait!” I called, too late. She jumped.
I expected to see her landing in a heap with a broken ankle or leg, screaming for help. Instead, she slowly fell to the level below us. She looked up at me, flashing what I could have sworn was a smile.
“How did you know that would work?” I asked.
Before she could answer, she crouched down and jumped up with all her might, landing right next to me with the grace, if not balance, of a ballerina.
“How did you know that would work?” I repeated.
This time she definitely smiled, whatever the sight of those signs had done to her already switched off and locked away somewhere in that eerily compartmentalized brain of hers.
“The floating lights,” she explained. “Gravity doesn’t seem to have any logical, constant effect on them, or on anything in here. But the one that landed on me had some sort of rudimentary consciousness.” She pointed out into the void, and I watched the lights for a moment, drifting in that deliberate, self-preserving way, like insects, but without visible wings. “That’s what gravity responds to for them. Thought. And it will respond for us, too. It goes in whatever direction you want it to, if you focus hard enough.”
As if testing a theory, she walked up to the wall next to me, put her foot on it, and began walking up it, before jumping off and landing next to me.
“See?” she said, beaming proudly.
I suddenly began to feel very dizzy. I looked down at the level beneath us, gulped, and focused just as Mina had told me.
I jumped, fell for what felt like twenty seconds, and then landed as lightly as a feather. Mina landed next to me. I smiled at her, hopefully. She smiled back.
We jumped down a level at a time, occasionally having to dodge side to side to find more footprints or a better landing spot where certain portions of a tier had collapsed with age. The rope trailed out behind us like a lifeline.
Mina compulsively w
rote out the city names from the archways we passed on her arm. It slowed us down a bit, but when—if—we made it out of here, this would be good information to have. They passed by almost in a blur.
ROME
CAPE TOWN
XI’AN
BUENOS AIRES
BAGHDAD
The signs all felt random, as if the Splinters had just chosen a handful of major cities to invade. And Prospero. It was a few tiers from the bottom, when we found a sign marked KARAKORUM, that everything made terrifying sense.
Right now, Karakorum isn’t much more than ruins out in the middle of the desert, but centuries ago it was the capitol of the Mongol Empire. Like Rome, Xi’an, and Baghdad, it was a major imperial and cultural center. A center of influence and expansion. If the Splinters had chosen it, it seemed very likely that they had been with us from almost the very beginning. The magnitude of this scared me more than I could put into words.
We jumped down to the final tier. Below us, at the bottom of the stadium, was a brilliant, glowing pit that showed us nothing of the world beyond. The footprints appeared to be going in its direction, though.
Cautiously, Mina tossed in the spool of clothesline. It pulled taut after it disappeared into the green, having reached the end of the line.
“You can turn back, if you’d like,” Mina said as she peered down into the green. “I’ll understand. And I promise, I will do everything I can to save Haley.”
I looked down into the green abyss, and I gulped. I thought of Haley. I thought of Mina.
That did it.
I jumped.
I fell down for maybe one second. Then the direction that was supposed to be down changed, and I fell sideways, landing with a heavy thud on a stone walkway. I looked back at the glowing green portal and saw that I’d fallen maybe six feet. The spool of clothesline lay limply on the floor next to me. I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Seconds later, Mina flew through the portal and landed on top of me roughly. Our eyes met for one awkward moment before she climbed off and helped me to my feet.
