The Anomaly

by Michael Rutger

  This time it was Gemma who ran her fingers over the carvings, as if they were an ancient form of Braille, waiting to reveal their secrets. I noticed she’d managed to scrape the cut on her arm again when lowering herself into the pool, and it was bleeding freely.

  “When we get back to the main room,” I said, “see if Molly’s got a first aid kit in her backpack. That’s not going to heal if you keep scraping it.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  We stood looking impotently at the pictograms. They were extremely neat, far more precise than the ones we’d seen on the walls of the passage approaching the pool and in the previous room. About half an inch square, each an intricate combination of symbols, some of which appeared in more than one pictogram. Presumably it worked on a similar principle to Egyptian or Chinese, each of the component glyphs being picto- or ideographs representing constituent things or ideas, but to get anywhere with interpreting the overall designs you’d need to understand the meaning of the component parts. One looked like the short curved horns on a dung beetle; another could have been a big hill, a pair of eagle wings, or an evocation of a welcome breeze on a summer afternoon, for all I knew. The pile of things I didn’t know or didn’t understand about this place was now so high that I wasn’t tall enough to keep adding more to the top. I was also tired and very thirsty.

  “We should get back,” I said. “The others are going to be wondering where we are.”

  They nodded distantly—Gemma still tracing her fingers over the carvings; Ken standing with hands on hips, glaring at the stones as though hoping to intimidate them into confessing their purpose. I’ve seen a similar look work immediately on barmen and hotel clerks and very senior people in the film and TV industry, but the stone balls weren’t talking.

  I stepped down off the ledge into the water, not bothering to be gentle about it.

  “Christ, Nolan!” Gemma yelled as she took a big splash up her back.

  I pushed away from the edge, deciding the hell with it and going fully under the surface. When I surfaced I tentatively licked my lips. They tasted fine. A little metallic, like mineral water—and who knows, maybe that’s what it was, sourced out of a hidden spring rather than drips from above—but perfectly drinkable.

  “Come on in,” I said. “The water’s lovely.”

  Ken stepped back in, and Gemma followed, and for a while we swam back and forth, silent but for quiet lapping sounds, in a pool of water a thousand feet underground.

  Chapter

  24

  When are you going to say it?”

  “Say what?”

  We’d been back in the main room for a couple hours. Investigations into two of the other passages had revealed similar nondescript rooms. Pierre had now gone to scout up one of the remaining passages by himself. The rest of us were sitting in a circle. I’d taken two small mouthfuls of the remaining half of my sandwich. I’d left my water bottle alone for now, and was monitoring my guts for signs of unruliness after ingesting liquid from the pool.

  “The bleeding obvious,” Ken said. “Look, Nolan. I yield to no one in my respect for the red-skinned man—both in his achievements in wiseness and his or her rights of precedence in your chaotic farce of a so-called country—but there’s no way Native Americans built this place.”

  “I know.”

  “So? Who did?”

  Everybody looked at me. And it’s a curious thing. You think it’d be awesome to be the guy who gets to intone, “Maybe it was aliens…” You think that’d be cool, especially if you’re right there on-site, one of the people who’s discovered the evidence. But in reality it’s not something you want to say. It says all bets are off. The walls of reality come down. It’s like someone asking, “Hey—did you just hear a disconcerting sound from the cellar of this abandoned house deep in the woods?”—and having to answer: “Uh, yes. Yes I did.”

  But also, as I have said countless times on camera, aliens are never the answer to any sensible question. There is nothing on Earth that can’t be explained by the actions (however surprising and anomalous) of Earthlings. If you look back through the history of the idea of extraterrestrial contact, with few exceptions it’s always proffered by an opportunist, a lunatic, a religious nut, or some magic-is-just-science evangelist one step away from a padded cell. Where once we reached for God and his angels, now we grasp for beings in spaceships. Both are merely attempts to explain that which we cannot explain, by bailing preemptively from the discussion by means of the magical other or an unverifiable deus ex machina.

  “This structure does not,” I agreed carefully, “seem likely to be the work of local tribes. Even the Anasazi, who did some pretty zany stuff.”

  “And so?”

  “I’m wondering about the Romans.”

  “The Romans? Seriously?”

  “It’s not as dumb as it sounds. People have this picture in their head of America as a young place. The ‘New World.’ But it’s as old as anywhere else. It’s been here as long as Europe or Africa. It’s a contentious subject but there’s people who think there were populations here before anybody made it over the land bridge. And others have asked how the Romans could have failed to make it to North America.”

  “Because it’s a long way from Rome, you tool. You’re not telling me they sailed right across the Atlantic.”

  “They wouldn’t need to. They were in your neck of the woods for nearly four hundred years. Ran the place, as I recall. From the United Kingdom you can make a series of shorter hops around the top of the North Atlantic, via Iceland and Greenland and Newfoundland, each of which was well within the capabilities of the Roman navy. If they chained those together they could totally have gotten here.”

  “Coulda, sure,” Gemma said. “Any evidence they did?”

  “Some, perhaps. A very Roman-like sword found off Oak Island in Nova Scotia. Coin hoards here and there. It’s said the Micmac language includes maritime terms that are remarkably similar to vernacular Roman equivalents, and the tribe carries a rare DNA marker that’s been tentatively traced to the Eastern Mediterranean. And no, Gemma, I can’t point you to officially sanctioned documentation. Certainly not in the current circumstances.”

  “But even if you could, even if we buy that—Nova Scotia is thousands of miles from here.”

  “Right—but this is the Romans we’re talking about. The most can-do nation of all time. Their soldiers routinely marched well over twenty miles, day after day, in full armor. At that rate they could have come this far in, what—four, five months? It would have taken longer in reality, of course, because they wouldn’t have come in a straight line and would have been exploring the unknown rather than heading for somewhere in particular. But they were tough, resilient guys who knew how to live off the land and find or make everything they needed to survive—backed up with the experience of having conquered most of the known world already. These are people who brought not only food crops with them to new environments but medicinal plants, too, so they’d have their traditional remedies and salves on hand after taking the place over. They had serious colonizing game. Like a team of a hundred Rambos, without the colorful psychological issues. It’s not out of the question that an exploratory force could have made it this far.”

  “Kind of makes sense,” Ken said. “And I’d credit Romans with knowing how to build that pool. Smelting and metalworking techniques for those spheres, too.”

  “They’re not the only group rumored to have gotten here before Columbus,” I told Gemma. “The Vikings, of course. Irish monks—with alleged examples of ogham script found here and there. Maybe the Egyptians, or Phoenicians or Minoans, too. I’d call those long shots, but the Romans? Maybe. You’ve seen what we’re dealing with. The Romans are the best I’ve got.”

  “But the writing we’ve seen isn’t Latin.”

  “That is, I’ll confess, a disappointing hole in my hypothesis. Though, wait.”

  I got up and walked over to the passa
ge with the pool. Ken came with me. “What?”

  I pointed at the three letters Gemma had found. “They could be Roman, I guess?”

  Ken shook his head. “Nothing else we’ve seen here presents like their writing. And look.” He pointed just to the right of the N or M. “Little nick there, like someone was about to do another letter and didn’t have time to finish. It’s just ‘Dominic,’ mate, or ‘Donald’ or something. Like I said—just one of the previous bunch who was here, leaving a mark.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “How long has it been?”

  This last was from Molly, who’d been sitting quietly at the edge of the group, arms looped around her knees, looking toward the main passage. Listening, but not participating.

  She’d been sitting exactly like this when we got back from finding the pool. While we’d been in the passage she had divided all of our resources—the remaining sandwiches, water bottles, a couple of tiny bags of peanuts, and a handful of granola bars—into neat piles. Spare batteries for the flashlights and Pierre’s camera were in another.

  None of the piles was as large as I would have liked.

  Molly had efficiently bandaged Gemma’s arm with gauze from her kit, then gone back to sitting. She listened while we told her what we’d found, but made no comment. She seemed calm. Too calm, I thought, but then I realized she was simply waiting. She was done being here. She had no further interest in this place or anything we might discover about it. She wanted out.

  “Four hours,” I said. “A little more.”

  Molly glanced at me, and then went back to looking down the main passageway.

  A while later Pierre came back and told me he’d found something different. I asked Ken if he wanted to come see but he said no, though to shout for him right away if it turned out to be a fully stocked bar or a lap-dancing club.

  I followed Pierre down the passage that ran out from the three o’clock position in the room.

  “How’re you holding up?” I asked.

  As soon as the question was out of my mouth it seemed a strange one. Unguarded, and unlikely to be helpful. It could only remind someone of our situation.

  He shrugged, however. “Good. I mean, I’m totally ready to be somewhere else, but you know, it’s all still awesome.”

  “Do you think Molly’s okay?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s just—I think she gets kinda claustrophobic in the dark. Plus that girl is half-woman, half-smartphone. She’s had no signal for two days. That’s got to be driving her nuts, right? Her Facebook is going to explode.”

  I laughed. “How are you doing for camera batteries?”

  “Okay. But I’m running low on disk space. That’s why I stopped shooting everything in sight. I figure you and Ken can tell me what you want me to pick up before we leave, and I’ll do it then. Worst case, I can trim some of what we already have, though I don’t want to lose much. I don’t expect I’ll get to film something like this again.”

  After fifty yards it was evident that this tunnel was different, in that it bent markedly to the left—deeper into the rock—rather than heading out straight from the main room. I observed this.

  “Yeah,” Pierre said, stopping and pointing up the passage. “Plus it’s longer. Though it still ends in a wall. This is what I wanted to show you, though.”

  He gestured through a doorway, and I went into the room beyond. “Yi,” I said, immediately.

  “Right.”

  The odor was insidious rather than strong, dry and old—but noticeably more powerful than the general smell of dust and charcoal that hung around the rest of the tunnels. My initial reaction was due to the fact that it was implacably unpleasant, even in small doses—like the smell that lingers around the corner of a building near rat traps.

  The room was big, too. I couldn’t see how big, because after walking ten feet—the smell getting a little more forceful with each step—I retreated to the doorway.

  “What’s causing that odor?” Pierre asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “But Kincaid did mention a room they’d found that smelled bad. He described it as ‘snaky,’ I think. I don’t know what snakes smell like.”

  And then we heard the sound of shouting.

  Sudden, urgent—and coming from the main room.

  Chapter

  25

  Pierre and I ran in to find the central space deserted. This was extremely disconcerting until we heard voices from the main passage. By the time we got into it, Ken, Molly, and Gemma were together down at the end, up against the stone ball.

  “What’s up?”

  Ken gestured to me to come forward. “We heard a noise,” he said. “Scared the crap out of me. But then she called out and we realized who it was.”

  “Feather?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  He stood back so I could get closer to the wall, near where the small gaps were. “Feather? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, though she sounded exhausted.

  “Is Dylan with you?”

  “No. He’s not there. He’s not anywhere.”

  “What…do you mean?”

  “He’s not there! He wasn’t there.”

  “Not back at the raft? Why didn’t you wait?”

  “I didn’t wait because the raft isn’t there, either.”

  “What? Feather, look—tell me slowly, okay?”

  There was silence as she gathered herself. “I climbed down the shaft,” she said. “I tried to go quickly but not too fast, like you told me. It’s a lot easier going down. Then I dropped into the passage and went back out to the opening in the wall. And I looked down, and…the raft wasn’t there. It’s gone. A storm’s come in and it’s raining and windy. And the boat just isn’t there.”

  Ken blew out his cheeks. “So what did you do, love?”

  “I waited,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I figured maybe he’d taken the raft after we left, instead of the dinghy, for some reason. Maybe the water got too rough to stay there. But could he do that? Could he manage the raft by himself?”

  “I don’t know. Probably, if he had to.”

  “That’s what I thought. So, I waited. I lay on the ground and looked down from the opening, because I thought there’s no point climbing down if he’s not even there, and I could shout when he got back. But then I thought, maybe the raft came untied accidentally or something. But if that happened he’d still come back, right? He’d come back in the dinghy?”

  “I’m sure he would have,” I said. I was trying to think through the possible scenarios and rank their odds. For some reason Dylan left in the raft, and had trouble getting back upriver. Or…was running late. Or…he came back, then went away again. Any of these was possible. “So what did you do?”

  “It got dark,” she said. “I didn’t know whether he’d be able to see me up there. Or hear me, because it’s a long way down the wall and the river’s loud. I thought maybe I should climb down to where we got onto the wall from the river, but then I’d just be hanging there, in the dark, and cold. So…So I climbed up the shaft and came back here. I hope that was okay, Nolan—I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did exactly the right thing,” I said. “We’d have started to worry soon if we didn’t hear anything from you.”

  I was aware of Molly turning from the ball and walking back up the passage to the main room. I looked at Pierre and gestured with my head for him to go after her.

  “But now what?” Feather said.

  “Now…look, it’s eight o’clock. I don’t know what happened to Dylan. Maybe he freaked out because we were gone a long time, and went to get help. And because of the weather, he got stuck somewhere.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Probably. Either way, there’s nothing we can do tonight. There’s no point you spending the night hanging out of the opening staring into the dark. So we sit tight, and try again tomorrow morning, okay?”

  “Okay,” she mumbl
ed. She sounded strung out and very tired.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said.

  I trotted up to the main room. Molly had returned to sitting in the same way she had been earlier, though now she wasn’t looking down the main passage. She was looking at the floor.

  “You okay?”

  She didn’t respond. I grabbed the remaining chunk of sandwich and half bottle of water from my pile and went down the passage again. I dropped to my knees close up to the wall and stuck my hand through the small gap there.

  “Feather—can you see my hand?”

  “Where? Oh, yes, okay.”

  “Can you get to it?”

  I heard her moving down to the floor and shuffling forward, wedging herself into the narrow space between the far side of the ball and the wall and floor. Then the sound of a grunt as she stretched toward me. A light touch, when her fingertips brushed mine.

  I pulled my hand back, transferred the sandwich to it and stuck it back through the gap. “Take this.”

  “Nolan…I can’t.”

  “Yeah, you can. We have other stuff in here, you don’t. And you’ve climbed down and back up the shaft. Just take it.”

  After a few seconds I felt the sandwich go. I did the same with the water.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was quiet.

  I stood up. Ken was looking meaningfully at me, and I nodded. Gemma caught the look.

  “I’ll hang here awhile,” she said.

  We left her there talking to Feather and walked halfway back up the passage together.

  “This is not good,” Ken said.

  “Dylan wouldn’t just have bugged out, would he?”

  “No. He’s a dickhead, not an arsehole.”

  I’d worked with Ken long enough to understand the distinction. And I agreed with his take. “So what?”

  “Fuck knows. The river’s pretty bumpy down there. And probably a lot worse now if there’s a storm. So maybe it’s beached somewhere downriver. We’re just going to have to hope he comes back tomorrow morning and waits.”