everything started getting strange. A sharp dry wind was blowing in from somewhere. It made a strange high keening sound as it whistled around and through the blackened shells of building. It stirred up the ash all me as I crouched down and pushed the scoop into the dead soil. We had been working later than usual, and it was already dark by the time we got back to the main camp. The darkness of the nights here was all enveloping and absolute, a thick ink that swallowed everything. One of the rules was that no one was to be out after dark for any reason. I was looking forward to getting the suit off, having a shower and a microwave chicken hotpot.
The others were already all inside. I was just about to go through the entrance airlock when something caught my eye in the twilight. Right on the periphery of my vision was a flicker of light, where no light should be. Then another appeared, and another. It was way off in the distance, toward the city. My first thought was that it must be helicopters, engaged in some sort of night time exercise. But there was no relief due for another week yet. More and more of the sparks began to appear out of the dark, and settled themselves in place. They looked almost like the outlines of a cityscape at night. They slowly faded into nothingness, and then there was nothing once more but a dark sky. I stared up at it, dumbfounded. Just what had I seen?
That night I spent in turmoil. I got almost no sleep. I could not understand what I had seen at all. There had never been such towers in the city. There had not been that many tall buildings to speak of. Why would I see something like this? Was it some tortured hallucination? Over and over it went through my mind, until dawn broke, bringing with it no new answers.
The next day was like a slow torture. I was half exhausted but I couldn’t shirk my duties. The thought of going and seeing the counselor was out of the question. No one could know about this. In the evening I flopped down on my bunk and slept until some time in the early hours. Then I got up to make a meal. At this time of the morning no one else was up and about.
I was in the kitchen when I heard it, a distant scream. It went up an octave before being choked off. My blood froze for a second in my veins. I stopped. What the hell was it? I stopped by the plastic strip and looked out. Suddenly everything was all lit up by a blue white flash in the distance, blinding and sudden. Without thinking I dived to the floor and covered my head, squeezing my eyes shut, and waited for the shockwave to hit. It’s not possible, I thought. Not again.
I must have lain there for several minutes. But nothing happened. Suddenly the silence was broken by the microwave beeping loudly. I got up off the floor in some consternation.
There was nothing else for it. In the morning I would have to see the trauma counselor. Declare myself unfit to carry out the job, ask for a discharge. It was clear that being here had triggered something in me, some dormant layer of trauma I had never dealt with. I had never experienced flashbacks of any kind up until now. I thought I was more stable than that. I went back to bed with a heavy heart.
I did not intend to report for work when I awoke the next morning. Instead I would ask to be excused and go and see the counselor.
As usual Sarah was up before me, bright eyed and cheerful in the early morning as usual.
“Hey,” she said. “Did you see that thunderstorm last night?”
“Thunderstorm?” I felt like my brain was struggling to keep up.
“Yeah, it was really intense. There was like a couple of really big flashes. Funny thing though, there wasn’t any rain. Guess it’s what’s known as a dry storm, like a dry summer storm. You didn’t see it?”
I shook my head. “I was in bed early.”
“It was real creepy, the way it lit up all the ruins outside. I never saw anything like it.” She seemed to shiver slightly.
So that was all it had been. And I had been just about to quit. And those other strange lights had probably been something else as well. I really would have to pull myself together. On the other hand, if it all it took to trigger a flashback was a lightening bolt maybe I should seek help. I decided to leave off making a decision about it for another day or so. The thing was, I didn’t seem to recall there ever being those kinds of dry summer storms in this part of the country when I had been a child. I supposed the climate had changed.
The next day there came some bad news.
“Attention, everyone,” Orlovs voice crackled over the public address system. “Because of the unforeseen heavy weather patterns, all the aircraft in the region have had to be grounded until further notice. I have been told a convoy of trucks is its way to us, but it’ll be some time before they can be here, because of the atrocious road conditions. As such, we will be here for at least another couple of weeks. In the meantime we have all the food and supplies we need to last us, so I suggest we knuckle down and get on with things. At least this will give us a chance to go back over our initial findings for further verification. That is all.” With a metallic ring he hung up.
We were in the canteen when this came through. We all looked at each other.
“So that’s it,” said Zoë. “We’re stuck in this place. If anything happens to us, we can’t even leave.”
“We’ll be alright,” said Sven. “No one even here but us.”
“I guess maybe it was to be expected,” said Sarah. “There’s not much infrastructure, this part of the world. Not much in the way of roads or anything.”
“There was never many highways here,” I said. “Even in the old days you’d have to go by air to get anywhere. It was mostly air shuttles. We were always remote.”
“Did they get grounded a lot then, too?” asked Sarah.
“Not really. At least, I don’t think so. We didn’t really have this kind of weather back then.”
Sven nodded. “So it’s the war that did it. Did something to the atmosphere. It’s not even safe to go up there anymore.” He looked upward.
Sarah shivered. “In a way I wish it would rain. At least then it might feel normal.”
No one said so directly, but I could tell the others were becoming more spooked. An aura of death seemed to hang over everything. Zoë became even more withdrawn than before. Sven’s penchant for practical jokes seemed to have dried up completely. Sarah now wore a look of permanent worry. Even the toughest minded were affected by it on some level. It would have been impossible not to be. We were now effectively trapped in this place. Doctor Orlov spent most of his time in his quarters, hunched over his little laptop drinking hot black tea without milk, scowling at the results on the screen. So far, he had ventured out into the ruins only once, than quickly retreated back inside. His quarters I noted, on the only time I had been there, was the only one to have no windows at all.
The next day I was by myself again, in the ruins of what had once been one of the larger banks in downtown. It had a wide spacious entry hall made out of solid marble, most of which had survived. It was one of the few structures we were actually allowed within, as long as we did not go further than the main hall. I paused for a moment to look around. It was like standing inside a giant black oven. The landscape was littered with many more such ovens. Thankfully, any skeletal remains had long since been removed. I had no personal connection with this one though. As a child I had never been inside it.
I was taking dust and insect samples from the floor. Suddenly there came what sounded like distant, mocking laughter, from maybe somewhere deeper inside the building. I stood up and looked all around, feeling suddenly very alarmed. If this was Sven’s or one of the others idea of a practical joke, it wasn’t very funny. Looked around, saw no one.
“You are not funny!” I called out irritably.
The wind came stronger, a dry lifeless dirge whistling through the hollow bones of the building. Again there was the hollow laugh, echoing and reverberating about me as if I were in a giant cave. Then the laugh slowly became a growl, low and angry. It seemed to vibrate through the landscape and go right through me. I ran back to where the others were. Sven turned to me. Luckily through the mask he could not have seen
how white my face probably was at that moment.
“Hey, you alright?” he asked.
“I... I thought I heard something.” I felt suddenly embarrassed.
“There’s been no one here but us,” he shrugged. The others all stopped what they were doing, and turned to stare at me. This was what some of them had been waiting for, the moment when I finally had my breakdown. Furious with myself, I turned around and trudged back to retrieve the sample canisters from the floor of the bank. The rest of that day and the next I made sure not to stray too far from the others.
But that night I saw the ghost city again. It was at the end of the shift, just as the sun was finally setting and the sky was turned a deep indigo. This time we were close to Ground Zero. Again I was alone.
Once more I saw the sparks emerge out of the blue. Slowly they assembled themselves into a coherent shape. It was the lights of a tall slender tower block, tapering gradually to a point, forming a long faint narrow grid of light against the dark. Then it rippled, like moonlight on a disturbed lake. Out of those ripples more things appeared. Ghostly shimmering outlines of city blocks wove themselves out of the dark air, their ends merging with the skeletal ruins beneath. It was as though the old city was on some inexplicable level attempting to knit itself back to together out
The Haunting in the Ruins Page 4
