by Erik Hyrkas
“I don’t know,” Marcy said. “I only looked away for a few moments and then he was gone.”
“I’m really sorry, guys,” Brit said, slouching to the ground next to Michael. “This is my fault.”
“No, I needed to rest,” Michael said. “I don’t think I was going to make it much longer.”
“I mean this,” Brit said with a gesture around them. “We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t picked up that stupid piece of glass.”
“How did you find that thing?” Michael asked.
“Last night… Peter was an EMT, or maybe pretending to be one. I guess I don’t know which. At the accident, he dropped it and it slid under a car.” Brit shrugged as she studied her feet. “I went back and picked it up after the ambulance left. I didn’t know what it was. It looked like a harmless piece of tinted glass.”
“Oh no,” Marcy said.
Brit looked up and then looked around. “Where is Hunter?” she asked.
“He was on that hill a moment ago,” Marcy said, “not more than thirty feet away. Just standing there, looking around.”
“Damn it,” Brit whispered, scrambling to her feet.
She looked into the multi-hued sky, trying to see if one of those giant buffalo birds had somehow swooped down and grabbed Hunter. If something had grabbed him, you’d think he would have made a sound, she reasoned. The others noticed her looking at the sky and also began looking for any sign of an airborne attacker.
Gingerly, Michael stood and started walking toward the same hill where they had last seen Hunter. Brit and Marcy followed, still scanning the sky.
“His footprints stop right here,” Michael whispered.
From the top of the hill, Brit couldn’t see much more than she could before, just more endless red, gravel hills in one direction and more endless forest on the other side of a ravine in the other direction.
“It happened so fast,” Marcy whispered. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “I…” She hiccupped. “I only looked away for a second.”
Brit didn’t like Hunter, but she didn’t dislike anybody so much that she wanted them eaten or killed. She thought of Jax somewhere on Earth, probably trapped in a basement. What if Peter was lying? What if Jax was here? Was he in the forest or the desert hills? If they walked long enough, would they find each other? Did he know about the buffalo birds?
“Whoa!” Michael yelped, and then he slipped from sight.
Marcy and Brit both stared at the spot that Michael had disappeared. He had slipped sideways into nothing.
“Michael!” Marcy screamed.
Brit carefully walked to where Michael had disappeared. Marcy stayed near but looked wary. Brit held out her hands, trying to feel the spot where Michael had slipped into—then she was falling.
Marcy grabbed Brit’s hand, and the two of them tumbled through white nothing, much as they had when falling into the place Peter had called Aeternum.
Chapter Seven
Hunter was lying on the ground a few feet away holding his head, and Michael was sprawled a foot away when Brit landed on a dank, uneven stone floor in a room only lit by a small glowing square that Michael held in one hand.
Before Brit could stabilize herself, Marcy appeared behind her still holding her hand, and the two tumbled on top of Michael, which made for a reasonably soft landing.
Michael exhaled hard. “Ugh! Get off!”
Marcy screamed and gripped Brit’s hand. “I can’t see!”
“It’s okay,” Brit said, trying to comfort Marcy and not have her hand crushed. “It’s going to be okay. I think we’re in a cave of some sort.”
In the dim light of Hunter’s phone, Brit could see they were surrounded by tons of rock. She knew they were below the surface, but she had no sense of how far away they were from it. The pale light illuminated Hunter’s face enough that, now that she had a moment to look, she could see that he was bleeding.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I fell and hit my head,” Hunter said, shining his phone toward a softball-shaped rock on the floor. Next to the rock were shards of glass.
“What is that?” Brit asked.
“That is what is left of the weapon I took from Peter,” Hunter said. “It shattered much easier than I would have expected.”
Brit stood and scanned the darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that there was a trickle of water flowing along the floor. A slight breeze blew a strand of hair into her face.
“Which way did he go?” Brit asked.
“I don’t know,” Hunter said. “I didn’t get a good look, but I thought I heard something over there,” he said, gesturing in the direction that the wind was blowing.
Brit thought for a moment. “That might be the way out.”
“How do you know?” Michael asked.
“Well, I don’t. Peter might though, and picking a direction is all we need to do right now. We’ll keep going with the wind whenever we have a choice to make in direction. If the wind direction changes, and it might, then we’ll move against the wind instead of with it. Either we’ll be going deeper in or we’ll be going the correct way. There’s a fifty-fifty chance the direction we travel will get us out,” Brit said to Michael, and then she turned to Hunter again. “How much battery do you have left?”
“My phone is fully charged,” Hunter said.
“Does anybody else have a phone that is charged?” she asked.
“My phone still has fifty percent of its battery,” Michael said. “I don’t have a signal, though.”
“We don’t need a signal, just a source of light. I don’t know how far we are from daylight, and so we should save the phone batteries as much as we can.”
“You are right,” Hunter said, and he turned off his phone, leaving them in pitch black. “If we are going to survive this, we’ll need light; and we shouldn’t waste it when we don’t need it.”
Marcy gasped. “I can’t see!” she screamed, and her phone lit up.
“Don’t be an idiot. We need to save our batteries. Use the phone for finding our way out, not for sitting around talking,” Hunter said.
“But we don’t know what is down here,” Marcy said. “Maybe one of the demons will find us.” The light of her phone went out. “I think my battery died.”
Everybody felt more uneasy with the thought of some creature in the dark finding them.
“I don’t like the dark either, but any creature will see us from much further away with the light on,” Michael said. “We’re probably safer when it is dark.”
“I’m really hungry,” Michael said. “We haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day.”
“I need to get out of here,” Marcy said desperately. “Let’s leave—now!”
“If you know the way out, then lead the way, princess,” Hunter said. “I think pork chop is right. We don’t know how long we’ll be down here, and we really do need food and water.”
“There’s water right here,” Brit said.
Hunter’s phone lit again. “Where?”
Brit held up a hand to block out the light shining in her eyes. “Watch it!”
“Sorry,” Hunter mumbled, and he redirected the light around the room until he found the small rivulet of water flowing along the floor.
He crawled over to it, studied it for a few moments, then dipped a finger in it. After licking his finger, he leaned down and began slurping. Then he rolled over and began convulsing violently.
Brit scrambled toward him. “Hunter!”
His convulsions turned to laughter. “I got you good,” he said. “The water tastes pretty good, actually.” Hunter splashed water on his face, finally washing away the blood he had smeared on it the night before.
Brit took a turn drinking some water, and Michael went next. Brit noticed that the water was flowing in the same direction as the air.
“I am not an animal,” Marcy said, refusing her turn.
“You really should stay hydrated,” Brit said.
“I feel fine,” she said. She squirmed a little. “Um, well, I kind of need to use the restroom.”
Hunter chuckled. “Well, just don’t do it near our water source.” He flashed the light around the cave until he found a low spot that wouldn’t flow toward the rivulet. “This looks like a safe spot that won’t contaminate our drinking water.”
Marcy looked at them uncomfortably. “I can’t go with everybody watching me.”
“Fine. We’ll move a little way along the cave,” Hunter said.
Michael handed Marcy his phone. “Be careful. It’s brand new.”
Brit smirked at the fact Michael was worried about his new phone when they were far from home in a place with no signal and only a minute chance of ever getting back. It was actually a bit funny to her.
Hunter began picking his way along the uneven floor. Michael and Brit followed him carefully. Despite there being plenty of room to stand, they crawled more than walked because it was safer than tripping over the uneven rock-strewn ground in the dark.
Brit glanced back and saw the phone light on as Marcy studied the hole Hunter had indicated that she should use as a latrine.
“This should be far enough,” Hunter said.
After Michael and Brit found a spot to sit, Hunter extinguished his light. They had moved around a corner but could still see the faint light of Michael’s phone. More disturbingly as far as Brit was concerned, they could also hear Marcy peeing.
Marcy’s voice carried to them as if she was only a few feet away. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Brit called.
“Nothing,” Marcy called.
“I’m guessing that she discovered how much pee splashes when it hits rock,” Hunter whispered.
“Shut up,” Marcy said.
“Yep,” Michael said.
When Marcy came around the corner holding the lit phone, Brit couldn’t make out her face but imagined it was plenty red.
“You guys could have given me more privacy,” she said.
“What if something found you from the other direction?” Hunter asked. “If we were too far away, we wouldn’t have been able to get back to you to help.”
Marcy handed Michael’s phone back to him. He examined it as closely as he could in the dark, looking for any scratch or imperfection.
“Next time I’ll take that risk,” Marcy said.
Brit thought that Hunter had a point, which irritated her. Not that she would be embarrassed by others hearing her pee, but sacrificing a small amount of privacy in the interest of safety seemed prudent. She was pretty sure both guys would pee right in front of her without thinking twice.
“Michael, can I borrow your phone?” Brit asked.
“Why?” Michael asked suspiciously.
“I want to take a turn,” Brit said.
“Oh, sure,” Michael said, and he handed Brit the phone.
Brit half-crawled and half-walked back to the spot where they had appeared in this cave and found a different low spot in the ground. Knowing the risk of splash from the outset, she managed her task more successfully than Marcy and came back to the others feeling relieved.
Marcy handed Brit hand sanitizer from her purse in exchange for her phone.
“Are you guys going to take a turn?” Brit asked.
“We just went,” Hunter said.
Despite the dim light, Brit could see by the disgust and horror on Marcy’s face that this was indeed true. As Brit had predicted, the guys didn’t think twice about peeing right there. Knowing Hunter, he probably wrote his name on the wall, which in his case was good practice since he might forget how to spell it.
Brit offered the hand sanitizer and phone to Michael, who took both with mumbled thanks.
Marcy grabbed Brit’s arm. “What’s that sound?”
“Shh!” Hunter put a hand on Marcy’s mouth.
She pulled away and spit. “Eww! You didn’t wash!”
Hunter, Brit, and Michael all said, “Shh!”
“Mom?” a young male voice asked. There was a long pause, and then he said, “Yeah, I’ll be home soon.”
There was a glimmer of light emitting from a crack along the wall ahead.
Hunter crept forward in the dark, and Brit followed him as carefully as she could.
Marcy let out a small whimper. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“We’ll wait right here,” Michael whispered in reply.
Hunter glanced back, and despite the near blackness, Brit could tell that his silhouette said, “Shut the hell up.”
The light ahead went out and there was only the sound of Hunter breathing near her, and then the light from the passage ahead flickered back on.
“Mom?” the same young male voice asked. After a long pause, they heard. “Yeah, I’ll be home soon.”
Hunter crept forward and peered around the corner.
“Kid, are you lost?” Hunter asked.
The light went out as Brit reached the side passage. Hunter cursed under his breath and then his phone light came on.
There was a teenage boy standing twenty feet away looking at his phone, which was now glowing. Hunter jumped. “How’d you get over there?” he asked.
The boy wore earbuds and didn’t seem to hear Hunter. He swiped his finger across the surface of his phone a few times.
“Mom?” the boy said. He walked toward Hunter and Brit, not looking at them. He listened for a long moment. “Yeah, I’ll be home soon.”
“Hey kid,” Hunter said loudly. “Are you okay?”
The kid’s phone went dark and he was gone for a moment, and then he appeared back where he started.
“What the fuck?” Hunter walked toward the boy now, but Brit stayed back.
“Hunter!” she whispered. “This isn’t right.”
Hunter paused a foot from the boy, who said, “Mom?” He started walking forward again, right through Hunter.
“It’s a ghost or something,” Hunter said.
Michael and Marcy scampered into the corridor, scrambling over rocks and debris on the ground.
“Something is coming,” Michael said.
Marcy pulled up short. “Hey, kiddo, you need to stick with us. It’s really dangerous down here.”
“Over here,” Hunter said, running across a relatively level section of cave and into a new side passage.
Brit still watched the boy, who was dressed in a Superman t-shirt and heavily stitched jeans. He looked so real.
Michael pushed past her. “We have to move, something is coming this way.”
The kid disappeared, which both broke Brit out of her reverie and caused Marcy to scream.
Brit grabbed Marcy by the arm and pulled her toward the passage where Hunter stood shining a light at them.
“Shut the fuck up,” Hunter whispered.
In the cave where the only other sounds were that of their feet and the occasional drip of water, his voice was still loud.
Marcy put a hand over her mouth as she ran, but she was sobbing. The boy reappeared and began his limited script again.
“Mom?”
Brit pulled Marcy, who hesitated, alone.
“We have to move,” Brit urged her in a whisper. “He’s not real. It’s some sort of hologram.”
“I think it’s a ghost,” Hunter said.
“You can’t leave him,” Marcy said with desperation in her voice.
“He’s not real,” Brit insisted, and she pulled Marcy harder.
They reached the side corridor, and the sound of scraping reached them. They all stood still and became quiet. Hunter turned off his phone, but the light of the phantom boy’s phone still shone in the corridor they left.
Brit dared a glance back around the corner. An azure creature with a black belly scampered toward the boy. The creature’s smooth, glistening skin gave her the impression of a giant salamander the size of an alligator, except that it had clawed toes and rows of small sharp teeth in its panting mouth. She was frozen in horror, staring at the creature.
>
“What is it?” Michael whispered.
The creature stopped moving and let out a powerful screech, and Brit noticed that the creature had no eyes.
Hunter pulled on her arm, but she resisted.
“Wait,” she whispered.
The creature screeched again, its head tilted to one side as if listening. All four of them stood still, barely daring to breathe. After many long moments, the creature scampered to where the kid had reappeared and made a chortling sound. The kid and the light disappeared.
Now, plunged into darkness, they stood listening to the scratching and scurrying. There was a sound that reminded Brit of the time she dropped her new phone on the cement drive way, and then the scurrying and scratching moved further away.
Hunter’s light came back on. “Holy shit,” he said. “What the hell was that?”
“It looked like a blind alligator,” Brit said. “I think it was finding its way using echolocation.”
“Speak English,” Marcy said.
“It didn’t have eyes,” Brit said. “I think it could navigate in the same way a bat can find insects, using sound.”
“What happened to the kid?” she asked.
“I think the creature took him,” Brit said.
“The creature ate the ghost?” Marcy looked more scared than before.
“We’re going to die,” Michael said, and now he was crying.
“Pull yourself fucking together man,” Hunter said, and he slugged Michael on the arm.
Michael held his arm, tears still slipping down his cheek. “We’re definitely going to die down here.”
“I’m not giving up,” Hunter said. “If you want to pussy out, want to lay down and die, that’s fine by me; but I’m not going to give up. We need to either find a new light source before my phone dies or find our way out. After that, we’ll look for food and shelter.”
“Do we go back to the passage with water?” Brit asked.
“That’s where the creature was,” Michael said. “I’m not going that way.”
“I don’t want to get eaten by anything,” Marcy said.
“The water might lead us out,” Hunter said. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll need it to survive. That creature might be dangerous, but there are four of us and it’s blind. If it comes down to that, we might be able to turn it into food.”
