by Greig Beck
TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
Greig Beck
www.severedpress.com
Copyright: Greig Beck 2020
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic
that imagination itself could add nothing to them”
― Jules Verne
“I declare the earth is hollow, habitable within, and that it can be reached via deep caverns hidden about the world. I pledge my life to this truth and I am ready to prove my theory true.” Arkady Saknussov, philosopher, alchemist, and explorer, Russia, 1485
EPISODE 01
“It is only when you suffer that you really understand” ― Jules Verne
PROLOGUE
1972—Krubera Cave, Western Caucasus, former Soviet Union.
Deep down in the labyrinths, miles below the surface, Lana came to a fork in the cave she had been following. Both tunnels could lead up and out, or only one, or neither.
Please help me, she whimpered.
They were after her, and she knew it. When she had lost her sister, Katya, for one horrible second, she had hoped that they went after her sibling and not her. Now she knew that merciless thought was bouncing back at her, and bad karma was going to bite her—literally.
She chose the tunnel to the left and ran on. Her glow stones were small, grabbed in haste, and so would soon lose their luminescence. Already they were a dull blue now. Lana knew she had only another few hours of light left.
Then what?
She slowed as her tunnel narrowed and the ceiling lowered. In another 10 minutes, it constricted even more and began to feel a little like a throat getting ready to swallow her whole.
Lana sobbed and scurried on, but then in the next few hundred yards, she found she had to get down on her knees and crawl. She scraped her shin on a jagged extrusion but ignored it and kept going.
Her stone was lighting only a few feet around her, and in the next few minutes, what she prayed against happened—her cave ended in a tiny cul-de-sac where the passage had collapsed perhaps thousands of years ago.
She placed her hands against the wall and futilely felt along the ancient stones for any crack or weakness. Finally, she turned and sat with her back to the cold rock.
Could I backtrack? she wondered. Possibly. Could I do it in the dark when my light fails me? Unlikely, she knew, especially with the things out there that could see in that terrifying blackness when she couldn’t.
Lana’s eyes stung and her heart hammered. She was so tired that she felt nauseous. She crawled forward and pulled some of the loose debris from an ancient rockfall into a pile and then set about building a wall over the narrow mouth of her small cul-de-sac. In 10 minutes, she was wedging a last stone in at the top.
Her light was barely illuminating her tiny enclosure now and she sat back, covered it over, and closed her eyes. Just give me a few minutes rest, please Lord, and then I can think clearly. Lana’s breathing began to slow, and her hammering heart slowed its gallop as her mind drifted.
The secret path to the center of the Earth was supposed to have been a myth, and no one really believed Georgy when he said he could lead them there, to a place of wonders. But it wasn’t a myth, it was true, and the things that they found there were more horrifying than she and her lost team could ever have imagined.
The sound of a rock falling out of her wall immediately jolted her to full alert. She reached up to fumble her glow stone back out and held it forward.
From behind the hole made from the falling rock was movement. She smelled and heard the thing before she saw it—pungent, like bad sweat, and shit, and dead meat.
There came snuffling and low grunts, and then she saw the totally white and bulbous eye pressed to the hole. They’d found her.
Lana screamed as her rock wall tumbled inward.
CHAPTER 01
1973—Krubera Cave, Western Caucasus, former Soviet Union
One Year Earlier
The five cavers sat around sipping coffee made on their tiny portable kerosene stoves. It had taken them over 100 hours—nearly four days—to reach the 6,250-foot point in the world’s deepest cave. And this last day would see them touch bottom, at 7,208 feet.
“Getting warmer,” Dmitry Bukin said while staring straight ahead.
Katya Babikov nodded and turned to him. She noticed he looked haunted; they all did. In a world of eternal night, sleep patterns got disrupted, and any sleep that was achieved was never deep but fitful. They’d been descending, squeezing, slithering, and dropping down chutes for sometimes eighteen hours a day, and it felt like they’d been inside the cave for over a month.
“Be thankful we’re not in the Sahara Desert or over a geothermal site. Some caves heat up one degree every 100 feet you descend. By now, where we are would be hot enough to cook us alive,” Katya said.
“So why is it only getting warmer just now?” Alexi Domnin, their youngest member, and an IT worker by profession, asked. He turned to her. “Geothermal, after all?”
“This area is old, very old—billions of years old, in fact—so the likelihood of geothermal activity is negligible.” Georgy Azarov grinned. “Maybe Hell is just around the corner after all.”
Katya’s sister, Lana, scoffed softly. “For some reason, that thought seems far creepier when you’re down in a place like this.” She lifted her chin. “You do know the other name for the Krubera Cave is the Devil’s doorway, da?”
“Yeah, yeah, and there has been devil’s doorways, devil’s triangles, devil’s mountains, and hundreds of other places deemed evil all around the world. The devil must get sick of all the traffic.” Georgy drained his coffee. “But today, we ascend to Heaven. Just like the ancient Mayans thought.”
“Or at least to a basement sump line.” Katya also finished her coffee, wiped out her mug, and packed it and her kerosene stove away. She pulled out her notebook and made some quick notations.
She paused in her writing. “Do you think it is true, Georgy? Already we are deeper than anyone has descended, ever.”
“Arkady Saknussov’s notes have been true so far. They cost me a fortune, but now I say: well worth it.” Georgy half-smiled. “He wrote that this was the way to find the new opening.”
Katya smiled as she listened. She loved the way Georgy’s eyes lit up when he spoke of the 15th-century explorer, scholar, and alchemist, and knew that a child’s enthusiasm burned within him. He had expended decades, plus half his life savings in pursuit of the ancient Russian’s notes. And she bet he would do it all again tomorrow.
But then luck had smiled on Georgy only a few years back when he had heard that a certain unique manuscript was appearing at a rare book auction in Moscow. The sellers thought it a work of fiction, but Georgy recognized it as Saknussov’s meticulous research into locating a passage to the interior of the Earth.
Georgy had paid a king’s ransom to win the book, and Katya had bet he would have gone even higher if need be. None of them really believed Georgy when he had spoken of what he had read. But so far, he had been right. Or rather, Saknussov had.
“He said it was beyond the lake.” Georgy got to his feet. “Like I told you, I believe he meant some sort of sump line.”
Katya nodded. A sump in caving terms was a passage that was submerged under water. Most times, they were static sink points where water had percolated down over the years. But sometimes they had a through-flow and were connected to underwater streams or sunken passages. And on rare occasions, they drained and refilled without reason—one day they were there, and the next, not.
“Yep, and here’s to being the first ones to really cave dive here,” Georgy replied with a grin.
Katya shrugged. “Second, actually.”
“I said, real
ly, dive there.” He raised sweat-slicked eyebrows. “Saknussov never planned on diving. Maybe he did, but what diving gear did they have 500 years ago, hmm?”
She chuckled. “You’re right. I think we’ve got a shot of finding something really special.”
Georgy dusted himself off. “Okay, children of the permanent night, let’s press on.”
Katya groaned as she came upright. Though she was a committed caver, after so many days in complete darkness, she missed the sunlight. They had at least another 20 hours of work to do—they needed to navigate the last caves as they began to shrink at choke points that then opened out to cathedral-sized vaults and dropped into some chutes that fell away a hundred feet straight down. They couldn’t afford to get sloppy for even a second no matter how fatigued they got, as a broken bone at this level could mean a fast death, or the onset of uncontrollable infection, and then a slow death.
In good time, the group finally wriggled through the last snake-hole on their bellies. They pushed their small air tanks ahead of them and dragged their kits behind them tied to their waists with soft rope.
Georgy stood, dropped his gear, and walked to the edge of a pool of water no more than 50 feet across that was so still it could have been a sheet of glass.
“No one has been in here for many centuries.” He crouched beside the water and briefly searched a small pack on his waist, pulling free a thermometer. He carefully dropped it in and watched it for a few seconds before removing it. “81 degrees.” He turned and grinned. “Anyone for a warm bath?”
“It’s so small. Will we all fit?” Lana asked with hands on her slim hips.
Georgy chuckled softly. “It looks it from here. But I bet there will be shelves of stone which the pool extends under, and therefore should be larger beneath the surface.” He stared into the pristine cave water. “I think it’s only about six feet deep, and as long as we don’t stir up the silt, it should remain crystal clear.”
Katya opened her pack. “We’ll still need the suits in case there’s any thermoclines. Swim into one of those, and you’ll shock as your muscles cramp when you go from warm to icy water. So let’s suit up, people.”
It took the group took just 10 minutes to pull on their wetsuits and check their breathing equipment. The group didn’t have swim fins, as they didn’t expect to be doing all that much swimming, and some things needed to be compromised on for the sake of keeping their caving kits small.
Katya lumped her clothing and pack with everyone else’s up against a cave wall and returned with her hand-held lamp. She did a quick check of her diving mask and snorkel and also ensured the watertight seals of her bags were closed tight. All of them would do the same.
As she waited for the others to finish up, her feet and calves tingled. She frowned and looked about. All around them the air became misty, and for a few seconds, she was confused about whether it was just her fatigued eyes playing tricks, or…
Shit.
“Tremor!” she yelled.
The one word said underground that was the equivalent of yelling “shark” when you were swimming in the ocean.
Everyone swung toward her and froze, waiting.
The dust kept on gently raining down, and the vibrations continued to tickle her legs. There was nothing they could do, nowhere they could go, and so they just froze and prayed.
The first real jolt sounded like approaching thunder as it rippled past their cave. Then there came a second sound like cracking ice, deep, but then moving to be all around them.
Katya knew the geology in the area was phenomenally old, and therefore stable. But that didn’t mean they never had ground shakes. Above them on the surface the tremors might have been little more than a shimmy. But nearly 7,000 feet down, they could be catastrophic.
Immediately, silence fell, and the movement in the rocks faded away.
“Was that it?” Dmitry whispered as his flashlight beam danced over the cave ceiling.
Alexi snorted. “Maybe the military have decided to ground test their nukes.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” Lana whispered. “Should we extract?”
Georgy turned to her. “Even if we did right now, it’d take us nearly a week to climb out. We’re here now so why don’t we just see if…?”
The ground jolted to the left, hard, then to the right so violently it threw them all to the ground. Dust and debris rained down, and then huge rocks shaken free crashed somewhere in the cave. All around them, it sounded like mill stones grinding together.
“Cave in!” Katya yelled over the top of the maelstrom.
She crouched and held her hands over her head, but there was nowhere to go, and if they were unlucky enough to be under a falling boulder or the entire ceiling fell in, they’d be like squashed bugs, and perhaps just something interesting for future paleontologists to dig up in the millennia ahead.
With another shudder and moan, the ground shake was shut off as quickly as it began. The group stayed down, some keeping their eyes squeezed shut. Katya slowly looked up. The dark air of the cave was filled with dust smoke, and rocks still tumbled, some bouncing away in the darkness.
She spat grit and shone her light upward to ensure the cave roof wasn’t hanging just inches above her.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked. She crawled over to find her sister.
Light beams crisscrossed in the darkness.
“Sound off,” Georgy demanded.
“I’m okay,” Dmitry replied.
“I’m good,” Katya said. “And Lana is with me and okay as well.”
“Alexi?” Georgy asked.
A cough and groan from the dust-filled darkness. “Bit banged up. Got hit. Just need to get this debris off,” the young man replied.
“I’m coming.” Katya crawled toward his light.
She found him and pushed rocks off his legs. He immediately sat forward to grab one and exhaled through clenched teeth as he pressed the limb, feeling it all over.
“Hurts, but don’t think it’s broken.” He winced. “No high-jump competitions for a while.”
“He’s fine,” Katya said over her shoulder.
“Hey, I am a little bit hurt,” he insisted.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said, helping him up.
The young caver hopped for a moment, before gingerly putting his foot down to test it.
“Yeah, okay, not too bad.”
“Hey, where’s our lake gone?” Georgy scoffed.
The group joined him at where the sump pool was situated. But there was nothing now.
“Holy shit, it drained,” Dmitry said.
Georgy carefully walked down into the empty sump basin, shining his light back and forth.
Katya held her light on him from up at the lip. “We should leave now. We were lucky, but if there’s another tremor, we might get trapped.”
“We might already be trapped, somewhere in those thousands of feet of tunnels, chokes, and chutes above us.” Georgy half-turned. “Katya, we’re already here now. We’ve got to make the most of it as we may never be back.”
Dmitry had joined him in the emptied basin and had wandered over into the far corner and crouched under a shelf of stone. “Hey hey, I think I’ve found why the sump drained.” He shuffled in further. “There’s a new cavern opened up.”
The group crowded over, and then crawled in under the lip of stone. Georgy pointed his flashlight into the dark-on-dark void and moved it around.
“Feel it?” He held a hand up flat. “There’s a warm breeze blowing up from down there.”
Lana added her light. “Look there. Is that writing?”
All the lights swung to where she pointed.
“I don’t think so. How could it be?” Georgy looked over his shoulder. “Alexi, give me a clap test.”
Alexi squeezed down low and into the new cave. He turned around and put his finger to his lips to quiet them, and then turned back. He clapped once, loudly, and waited.
The speed of sound was ar
ound 1,100 feet per second, and given the sound waves needed to strike something and then come back, it was a two-way trip.
Alexi finally heard his echo and turned, grinning. “Six seconds—about 3,000 feet. It’s big, and ever-lovin’ deep.” He grinned. “All virgin passageway.”
“Magnificent. And the best thing is it goes down.” Georgy smiled, his teeth showing white within the sweat and grime on his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to set a new depth record, globally.”
“Names up in lights,” Alexi added.
“Wait, you want to go in?” Katya asked. “Right after an earth tremor?”
“Damned right I do. This is exactly what Arkady Saknussov said we would find.” Georgy turned. “Who’s with me?”
“Like you said, we’re already here.” Dmitry nodded. “So, I’m in.”
The rest of the group also voted to enter the new cave system. Katya had reservations about the new chamber’s stability, but either she went with them or she was going to be the poor sap left behind to mind the gear.
She shrugged and snapped shut her leather notebook. “Fine, let’s do it.”
Georgy turned to face the new cave. “Into the wild black yonder.”
He led them in.
*****
Lana and Katya ran hard, but in opposite directions.
Katya fell to the floor of the cave, skidded for a few feet, and managed to skin her naked knees. Most of her clothing had long torn or rotted away, and she ignored the new wounds as they just added to all the other scar tissue she had accumulated over the weeks, months, or however long she had been down here.
She scrambled to her feet and sprinted again, tears of panic blurring her vision.
Georgy was gone, as well as Dmitry and Alexi, and Lana had simply run blindly off into the darkness.
She held up the phosphorescent stone that glowed blue in her hand and illuminated the stygian darkness ahead of her. She knew if she could just make it back to the opening of the new chamber, she might be okay. Maybe they wouldn’t follow her. Maybe.
