The Anomaly

by Michael Rutger

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have a theory?”

  “A few months later I started to overhear arguments between my parents, late and loud and long, and they were snippy with each other for a year or two, and my dad seemed very distant sometimes, unhappy, distracted. But eventually that passed. They’re still together now and they’re super happy with each other and so whatever happened during that period, they held their course and navigated those rough seas and came out the other side stronger. Which is awesome. But from then on…”

  She shrugged.

  “You knew something your dad didn’t,” I said. “Or your brothers. And you also knew your uncle had been used as a fake alibi, but couldn’t tell him even though you loved him. Plus your mom’s suddenly a lot more complex than you realized, and you’re the only other woman in the household, so you wonder if you are, too. Goodbye, simple world—hello, secrets and lies.”

  “You’re not bad at this,” Molly said. “Right. Precisely that. All of which has been discussed with strangers who charge a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, and with all of which I have made my peace. And, come on, Christ, all that oversharing boils down to: Girl gets left alone in a dark house, is subsequently wary of dark places? That’s embarrassingly direct.”

  “As my grandmother used to say, human beings are very basic cakes. We just have a lot of fancy icing on top.”

  “She really said that?”

  “No. She was a nice woman but she couldn’t bake for shit. I just made it up.”

  “Ha. But the truth is that the event itself was really not that big a deal.”

  “And so what is?”

  “The other things. That other information. Learning that there’s always something going on that you don’t know about. And that people will lie to you, even if they love you. And that nobody can be trusted, no matter how much you love them. And also that sometimes you’ll know in your heart that something’s wrong about the world, like I did when I first woke up that night. And you know what? You’ll be right.”

  She looked me full in the eyes. “I’m right now, too, Nolan. About this place. There’s something very not-okay about it. Something bad. I wish I’d never spotted the way up into that shaft. I wish we’d never found this.”

  I held her gaze and I tried to come up with the words to tell her no, it was okay, it’d all be fine.

  But I couldn’t.

  We made our way back across the pool. As I stood on the other side waiting while Molly dressed in her nice dry clothes—wishing I’d had the sense to do the same—I noticed again that the water in the pool wasn’t as clear as I’d thought. And then that, around the edges, there were tiny little aggregations of what looked like algae.

  I realized either I hadn’t spotted these before, or that we’d changed things, somehow polluted the water, compromised this place, by bringing in stuff from the outside world.

  By being here.

  Chapter

  28

  I wasn’t especially hungry when I woke the next morning to find our area already dimly lit by a flashlight on the ground. I was cold—my clothes were still a little damp from the time in the pool—and I was sure as hell thirsty. It has long been my practice upon rising to imbibe a quantity of coffee equal to (or greater than) the volume of my own body. Ken operates a similar policy. I would, in fact, pity the fool who tried to out-caffeine us before noon, if we ever teamed up and went pro. Realizing there was no coffee was therefore an ominous start to the day.

  I stood, creaking, rolling my shoulders to try to get the kinks out. The spasm in my back from Gemma’s slide down the canyon wall had faded to a dull ache. I got a measure of my thirst and informed it that what it was about to receive was all there was for now, and to be grateful. I took a sip and sluiced it slowly and thoroughly around my mouth before swallowing. I saw Ken do the same, then look dubiously at the scant third of a bottle that remained.

  “Going to need a top-up trip to the pool before long,” he said.

  “I don’t know whether that’s still a good idea.”

  I told him what I’d noticed there in the night, though not about what Molly and I had discussed. She got up and stretched as I was updating him, and strode off by herself down the main passage toward the stone ball. I hoped this meant the talk might have helped, a little.

  Ken shrugged. “If it was there last night, then it was there when we found the place,” he said. “Nothing grows that quickly. Except bamboo. Or a bar bill in Vegas with an all-female crew. Seriously. I’m still paying that one off. Plus, if you’d seen some of the shit I’ve eaten over the years, then you’d know a few single-celled organisms don’t stand a chance of fucking me up. And your gut’s been all right, hasn’t it?”

  “Fine.”

  “Well then.”

  “On that subject,” Gemma said. We turned to find her standing with unusual diffidence a few feet away.

  “What?”

  “I was wondering. Should anybody require to divest themselves of waste products of the digestive process, quite soon, what’s the protocol? I’m…asking for a friend.”

  “Eh?” Ken said.

  “Pick a room,” I said. “And we’ll designate it the latrine. The archeologists will hate us but it’ll limit site damage. And, you know, fuck ’em. They’re not here.”

  “Roger that,” she said, and set off toward one of the corridors with her backpack.

  “Oh,” Ken said after a moment. “That’s what she meant.”

  “Yeah. And it makes me realize we’re already dehydrated. I haven’t personally divested myself of even liquid by-products for a long time now.”

  “Me neither. You really think we ought to avoid the pool?”

  “I’m not drinking it again unless things get desperate. In terms of water loss, the absolute last thing you want is explosive diarrhea.”

  “I do enjoy our chats, Nolan. Always have.”

  Molly came running back into the room. “Guys,” she said. “Feather’s gone.”

  “Feather?”

  It was the fifth time Ken had called. I’d tried multiple times, too. And Molly, and Pierre.

  “So where the hell is she?”

  “Maybe she got an early start on going back down the shaft,” Molly said. “It’s seven thirty. It will have been light for an hour or two out there.”

  “She wouldn’t have gone without telling us. Would she?”

  “Maybe she tried, and we were all asleep.”

  “Doubt it,” Pierre said. “I’ve been awake since four.”

  “Seriously?”

  He looked embarrassed. “I thought I heard something, like a thud. A couple of times. Just bad dreams. But then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Or she got confused about the time?”

  “She wears a watch,” Molly said. “She showed it to me.”

  “Maybe she’s exploring,” Pierre said. “Gone to the canyon wall to see if she could dislodge those rocks. Or to check if we missed anything in the side corridors. We never actually got to the ends of those, right? Could be they’re super long and she hasn’t heard us calling.”

  I thought about it. “I could buy the idea of going back to the canyon wall. Not the side corridors. Would you? By yourself?”

  “If I had to.”

  “But if you didn’t? With a little flashlight? And if you didn’t know how long the batteries would last?”

  “Probably not.”

  “She has her phone as a backup,” Ken said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Molly said. “It’s in her backpack. Which is with us.”

  “Either way,” I said, “I find it hard to believe. But if she went to the end wall, it’s a straight shot down that passage. She would have heard us calling, and called back.”

  “So what, then?” Molly said. She was scratching her arm, back and forth, in what looked like a nervous reaction.

  I called out Feather’s name one more time, very loud
. Everybody listened. Nothing came back.

  “Who was the last person to talk to her?” Molly asked.

  “Me. She fell asleep,” I answered.

  “How do you know?”

  “She stopped responding.”

  Molly looked at me.

  “What? What the hell else could have happened to her?”

  She shrugged.

  “No, seriously, Moll. Nobody else knows this place even exists. What the hell are you suggesting?”

  “Easy, Nolan,” Ken said.

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t even realized how I was sounding. “Okay, yeah. Sorry.”

  Molly shook her head and smiled to show it didn’t matter. But it kind of did. Not to her, but to me. At that moment Gemma came walking down the passage. We all turned to look at her, wondering how to describe the situation.

  “What?” she said. “Oh, for God’s sake. Jesus. Yes, I just took a crap, okay? Women crap, too. Get over it.”

  “Feather’s disappeared,” Molly said.

  “Oh.”

  Back in the main room we appeared to reach a universal unspoken agreement to assume the best. Pierre speculated about whether Feather would go with Dylan to get help, or send him off and come back to reassure us it was in hand. The consensus was she’d likely do the latter. And that if she’d left really early, hopefully there wouldn’t be too long left to wait. We discussed this cheerfully, in quiet, confident voices. Everything was cool. Nobody was starting to panic. Not a bit.

  Most took a bite of what remained of their sandwich. Ken offered me some of his, but I shook my head. “I almost never eat before lunchtime, so I won’t miss it. Save it for later.”

  There was a sudden tiny but sharp point of pain on my left arm, and I swung my hand and slapped. When I lifted it there was a little splotch of blood. “Mosquito.”

  “Hell is a mosquito doing here?”

  “They’re everywhere, dude.”

  “No, but seriously. What’s it doing here? Until yesterday there was fuck-all here for it to eat.”

  “Could have come up the same shaft as us. Maybe on our clothes. Or there’s a tiny gap somewhere.”

  “Gap to where, Nolan? There’s at least a quarter mile of rock in every direction.”

  “Ken, I don’t know. It’s dead now anyway.”

  “I saw a bug,” Pierre said. “In the night. I was lying awake and after a while I wanted to know what time it was so I turned on my phone. There was a bug on the screen.”

  “A mosquito?”

  “No. Little buggy thing.”

  I looked at Gemma. “You’re smart. What do bugs eat?”

  “I don’t know. Plants. Smaller bugs. Bug food.”

  Ken was looking at me. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “But. Yesterday afternoon Pierre showed me a room up that passage over there. It smells bad. I mean, really rank.”

  “Sorry to have missed it.”

  “We got pulled away because you called when Feather arrived back. But thinking about it—what makes a room smell like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Dry and fusty but with a kick to it, a kind of meaty undertone.”

  “Sounds like half the Merlots I’ve ever drunk.”

  “It’s an organic smell, is my point. I just realized—maybe it’s something rotting. Or something that rotted a very long time ago, and the smell hasn’t had a chance to escape. Could just be some plants. Or maybe…a small animal.”

  “And you’re speculating that if it’s animal, then in order for it to die there, it had to get in from the outside somehow.”

  “That is precisely my thinking. And I don’t see an animal climbing all the way up that shaft like we did.”

  “Could it be something that got in here through that opening in the wall that’s now bricked up? How long do smells last in confined conditions?”

  “I have no idea. But Kincaid talked about a bad-smelling room. And that’s a hundred years ago. It can’t have lasted that long. And he talked about the smell being so bad, and the room so dark, that they didn’t explore it further.”

  “And you’re hoping there’s some shaft or tunnel in the back and once in a while a coyote or something falls down it, and we might be able to get out that way?”

  “I don’t have anything else. Do you?”

  Chapter

  29

  We left Pierre and Gemma with our phones and with instructions to come running if Feather reappeared, took the biggest flashlight, and headed up the passage.

  “Whoa,” Molly said as we entered the room. “You’re right. That’s skanky.”

  “I kinda like it,” Ken said.

  “That’s because you’re a disturbing human being with no redeeming features.”

  “There’s some truth in that.”

  We walked in together, Molly in the middle, directing the light. The room was reminiscent of the one with the end wall covered in symbols, in that it had been cut as a precise oblong, right angles between floor and walls and ceiling. These walls were bare, however.

  We advanced slowly, taking time to try to become accustomed to the odor. As I’d noted the day before, it didn’t start strong, which made the degree of its unpleasantness all the more surprising. It remained low, insidious, irrevocable, but got more intense as we progressed into the room. Breathing through your mouth helped a little, though not enough. After a while it seemed to coat your tongue.

  “I’m ready to bail on this,” I said.

  “Oh yes. Check this out before we go, though,” Molly said. Her voice was muffled because she was holding her hand over her nose and mouth. She lowered the beam of the light so that it shone on the floor.

  “What?”

  She moved the beam back in an arc so it illuminated the patch we’d just walked over. “Compare and contrast.”

  The floor ahead was darker in color than the portion behind. The demarcation was uneven, like a tide mark. As we walked farther the effect intensified. At first it was a faint stain. Slowly it began to thicken until you couldn’t see the rock through it anymore. The color distribution was uneven, varying from dark gray to nearly pitch-black.

  I squatted down and got up close, wet my finger and ran it over the surface. “It’s smooth,” I said. “And very hard. Like it’s been baked onto the rock.”

  “Is that where the smell’s coming from?”

  “I’m not sure. It could be.” I smelled the finger I’d run over it. “Actually, yes. I think so.”

  “That’s not great news,” Ken said.

  “Why?” Molly asked.

  “Couple of mummified rats, maybe we’re onto something. But if it’s some nasty fossil fuel gunk that’s seeped out of the rock over the years and dried out, we’re no better off.”

  “We don’t know for sure that’s what it is,” I said. “Let’s keep looking.”

  We moved on, taking a diagonal course toward the right wall. The stuff on the floor continued to become thicker. The gray patches disappeared and it became unrelenting black, almost glassy.

  “Look at the walls,” Ken said.

  Molly redirected the light. There was discoloration there, too, but a different kind. More like smoke damage, deeply ingrained soot from an intense flame. It was also on the ceiling.

  “Sorry, Nolan,” Ken said. “But I think we’re on a loser. Something burned up in here a long time ago. Whatever it burned or melted or baked onto the floor is what’s causing that smell, I reckon.”

  It felt strange to be standing in a place where at some point—hundreds or thousands of years ago—there had been an intense fire and great heat. That was gone now, along with any hope of understanding what had caused it. All that remained was an unpleasant olfactory echo. And us, stuck, with no way out.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”

  He and I waited together as Molly wandered farther into the room, taking the source of light with her.
I had a headache, and it was getting worse. My stomach made a sudden and protracted growl.

  “Eat some of that sandwich when we get back,” Ken said.

  “I will. But when that’s gone, we’ve got a few peanuts and a couple granola bars and that’s the end of it.”

  “Nolan, this is not good. And you know what’s weird about this place?”

  “Seriously? How about ‘everything’?”

  “True. But also, apart from those spheres in the pool room, there’s nothing here. It’s totally bare. Not even any rocks lying on the ground. Completely empty.”

  “Maybe Kincaid and his crew took it all.”

  “Every single thing? That’s pretty shitty archeological practice, even by the standards of the time. But my point is now this room’s turned out to be a bust, I’m wondering whether our new goal should be finding something—anything—that we can use to bang against rock.”

  “Because…?”

  “I don’t know how else we’re going to get out of here.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not talking about hacking out a tunnel. I mean trying to make the gap around that big stone ball bigger. So that somebody slim, like Gemma, can get out.”

  “It’s rock, Ken. If we had chisels and hammers and dynamite we could get somewhere. But banging a pebble against it is just going to be a waste of energy that we can’t afford.”

  He opened his mouth, but closed it again. Nodded. “Yeah. I know. But…then what?”

  More than anything else so far, the fact that Ken had been semiseriously talking about trying to bang a hole in the passage around the ball made me realize how screwed we were. When you’re in a bad situation there’s always part of your mind that carries blithely on, assuming you merely haven’t thought of The Thing yet—that there’s some obvious solution you simply haven’t fallen upon. Sure, it looks bad right now, this voice murmurs, comfortingly, but it won’t when you’ve come up with The Thing That Solves It All.