by Greig Beck
“O-ooka-aay.” Andy’s brows knitted, and he tried to turn again.
“Don’t. Just keep coming.” Michael started to see the thing enter Andy’s halo of light and he heard Jane suck in her breath out to his side.
The thing literally walked up the stone, hanging onto cracks and crevices that even the best caver couldn’t possibly hope to do. Closer now, Michael could only stare in horrified fascination at the face—vestigial slits for a nose, eyes that were totally white bulging orbs that quivered in a backward-sloping brow.
The mouth hung open and large, strong, yellow tusk-like incisors were displayed. This thing was mammalian, a carnivore, and perfectly dark-adapted. The body was longer than that of a person, and the back hind legs were shorter than normal, meaning it probably moved on all fours, and its long body meant it could slither through the tightest of openings in the rock faces.
It was right behind Andy and its nose flaps opened and closed wetly as it inhaled his scent.
Andy grimaced, obviously sensing the thing. “Stinks.” He made a whining noise in his throat and tried to increase his speed.
The young guy was still 15 feet down from Michael, but he had no idea what he’d do when Andy got to him. Being stuck to a cliff face wasn’t exactly the best place to start a fight.
“Keep coming. You got this, Andy. Don’t look back. Just keep coming to me.” Michael tried to sound calm but heard the edge creeping into his own voice.
Then it had him.
The thing reached out a clawed hand and gripped his ankle. Andy screamed and hung on tight. He was lucky he had made it to a larger lip of stone; otherwise, he would have easily been plucked off the wall.
The thing lifted itself closer, bringing its grotesque face near to Andy’s ankle to sniff at it. A pointed tongue snuck out to lick at the sweat-drenched skin. It shivered in pleasure.
“Oh God, it’s got me.” Andy’s teeth were bared and his eyes like saucers as he clung on.
I got them into this nightmare, Michael thought as a strange calm came over him.
He had very few tools left, but still nestled in his pocket was Georgy’s penknife. He carefully reached for it and closed his eyes as he concentrated on opening the blade with one hand.
“Help.” Andy started to be pulled backward, his arms straightening to the elbow from where he hung on.
Michael had the blade open now and briefly glanced down. He turned to look at Jane once, and then turned back. He lined up the thing below Andy. Then let go of the rock face.
He sailed close to the wall, and at the exact moment he was beside the creature, he grabbed it and plunged the four-inch blade deep into the center of its muscled back.
It shrieked like the creature from Hell it was and let go of Andy to slide down the cliff face. Michael hung on to the blade and also momentarily to the slick, rank-smelling skin of the creature.
He swung as the creature tried to throw him off. Michael’s weight dragged the blade down its back, opening the slick skin and muscle like a zipper.
The pain and damage were too much and the monster let go of the wall. Michael used its motion to swing himself back at the rock face, finding a small edge of stone and clinging there. The knife had been dragged from his hand as the colorless thing fell backward into the void.
Michael kept his forehead against the cool stone and only then felt the nausea and giddiness kick in.
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, he begged as he breathed in and out and tried to calm his breathing and heart rate.
“Michael!” Jane yelled.
“I’m…okay.” He looked up, and his eyes were blurred with tears. “Just, keep, going. Find a pitch ledge to take a break.”
“Thank you,” Andy said softly. And then: “You idiot.”
“Always was.” Michael chuckled. “Now keep going.”
Michael hung on the wall for a moment more, straining his ears. It didn’t matter, he guessed. If there were more following him, he didn’t have anything more to fight with.
And this is where luck is supposed to kick in, he thought. With all his remaining strength, he levered himself up to the next handhold.
CHAPTER 27
Andy and Jane pulled Michael over the lip of the rock shelf, and he rolled a few feet away from the edge and just lay there on his back, panting.
Jane came and kissed his forehead and brushed his long hair back from his sweat-streaked face.
“That was the bravest and dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She kissed him again.
He snorted softly. “I can’t think about it. Because when I do, I want to throw up.” He groaned and shut his eyes. “And if I had thought about it, I would never have done it.”
Andy came and rested his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t think about it and just did it, or I’d be monster food by now.” He grinned. “I feel like kissing you as well, and bear in mind, I haven’t cleaned my teeth in months.”
“Rain check.” Michael chuckled.
Andy turned. “Maggie, was that one of those…?”
“Yeah, yeah, that was one of the things we saw on the way down. Like a cross between a bat and an ape, I think.” She shook her head. “Freaking horrible.”
Michael groaned as he sat upright. “Some sort of mammal that has evolved to live down here.”
“It was a true cavernicolous species, a troglobite. But for a mammalian species, it shouldn’t exist,” Jane said. “And for a creature that big, there’ll be more, a breeding population somewhere.”
“It gives me the creeps knowing there could be a pack of these horrors down here somewhere.” Maggie shook her head and grimaced.
“The people from the core—the skeletons,” Andy replied, turning to Jane.
“You think these could be the things that killed them? Oh God, that’s horrible. Those poor people.” Maggie rubbed her face and stood. “Climbing all this way to escape the shell people—all those women, children, whole families—only to be picked off in the dark by these nightmares.”
Michael looked into Jane’s half-lidded eyes. “Yeah, maybe,” he replied softly.
Jane got to her feet and walked slowly to the lip of the ledge and looked down for a few moments. “Those who descend into the void find monsters. Or become them.” She exhaled and walked away to the rear of the shelf.
“I don’t think Jules Verne could ever have imagined what the truth really was.” Michael pushed the hair up off his face. “Sometimes, the comfort of fiction is better for us.”
Maggie began to laugh and then sob as she clung to something on the wall at the rear of their ledge. “Thank you.” They all turned to her.
“What is it?” Andy asked.
Maggie faced them, grinning from ear to ear. “The most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my entire life.” She dropped her hand and held her waning crystal close to the rock.
Hammered into the wall was a rusting climbing pin; many decades old, but there it was.
Michael and Andy leaped to their feet and rushed to her.
“Oh my God, oh my God…people were here.” Jane clasped her hands together like a child. She spun, her eyes luminous. “We can’t be that far from the surface.”
“Find more. Find where they came from or where they went.” Michael went to one side of the ledge and Andy to the other, while Maggie and Jane searched the rear of the small alcove.
“Got a squeeze hole.” Maggie was on her belly. “This must be where they went.” She stuck a hand in and raked at it. “Sealed up though.”
Andy threw himself down and slid forward. He grabbed at some of the rocks blocking the tiny hole. “Not a natural blockage.” He grunted and tugged. A small rock popped free into his hands. He tossed it aside and kept digging.
In another 20 minutes, there was a pile of different-sized stones around him. Then he held the pale, glowing crystal before him and slid forward on his belly. In a moment, he pulled himself out backward and sat up.
“We
can get in there.”
Maggie exhaled with relief. “If it means no climbing for a while, then let’s go.”
Who sealed it, and why? Michael wondered. The last cave they encountered that was blocked was done to keep out the arthropod creatures. So what was this one blocked for? To keep those cave things trapped down here, or to stop people finding this place?
He looked at his friends who were now little more than ghostly shadows of themselves. Plus, the luminescent crystals were on the verge of dying, just like they were. They had no choice.
“Then what are we waiting for? Take us in, Andy.”
Michael wiped his hands and noticed there was blood on his forearms from the creature he’d stabbed. He tore a strip off the rags he wore, wiped his arms, and went to throw it over the edge.
He paused, looking at the rag. Then he tore it in half and jammed one piece of the bloody material in his pocket and tossed the rest where it fluttered down into the darkness until it vanished.
Andy held his crystal out and immediately slithered into the tiny hole. Maggie didn’t waste a second in following him.
Jane reached up and kissed his bearded cheek. “I have my fingers and toes crossed.”
“You and me both.” He watched as she slithered into the small hole, and he got down on his hands and knees to follow.
Tock.
Michael looked back over his shoulder.
Tock.
“Go to Hell.” He slithered in after her.
*****
In a line, they wormed their way along the narrow hole, now glad that they had all lost so much weight. As they came out, Andy was first to stand and lowered his waning crystal to the remains of a small fire pit, and the piles of burst-open food tins accompanied by a scrawled note.
Michael joined the group and had to crouch to get really close to see the words in the growing darkness. “Can anyone read that? Doesn’t look like Russian.”
“It’s not; it’s Romanian. I can read a little.” Maggie squinted. “Basically, it says: clean up your shit.” She turned and laughed. “Trash—welcome back to the modern world.”
“Romania?” Andy asked.
“If that’s where we are, then we’ve traveled all the way under the Black Sea; over 1,000 miles,” Jane said.
Michael stood. “Come on, we’re running out of light. Minutes count now.”
They climbed, slid, and scraped for several more hours. But the thought that they were heading home gave them the extra energy they needed. In another hour, they began to find guide ropes already set into the stone. And then some formal notices.
“It is Romania,” Michael said. “I recognize this; it’s the V5-Cave in Fața Muncelului, the deepest cave in Romania. We must be close to the surface now.”
“I feel sick,” Maggie said. “I’m scared that I’ll close my eyes and then wake up and find it’s a dream, and I’m still stuck way down below.”
“It’s real,” Michael said. “Jane? Where are…?”
“Here,” she said from behind him. “My crystal is dead.”
“It’s okay, we just follow the ropes now.” Michael reached out to draw her closer to him.
For the most part, they now had to use their outstretched hands to feel their way. But in another hour, an illumination up ahead drew them on. And in a few more moments, they came to a final chimney. Looking up, they saw stars.
Jane sighed. “Never have I seen something so wonderful in all my life.”
Andy inhaled. “I can smell grass, and pine needles, and…freedom.” He grinned, his eyes near glowing as he stared upward at the celestial bodies.
There was an iron ladder set into the wall, and climbing it, even after the fatigue, physical torture, and lack of food and water, would be the easiest thing they had done in their lives. Even Michael bet he could have flown up the last few hundred feet if he had wings.
He watched as the others started to climb, and he turned back to the dark labyrinths of the cave.
“Goodbye Angela, Jamison, Bruno, Ronnie, and even you, Harry. We’ll miss you all.” He turned back and began to climb.
At the top, they crawled out of the hole in the earth and immediately ran to an open patch of soft grass. It was some time in the night, and the evening’s warmth made it feel like late spring. There were the tiny bells of white wild flowers dotted around them that were almost glowing in the darkness.
Their crystals were nothing but shards of inert quartz now, just decorations hanging from their necks as mementos of a world hidden thousands of miles below them.
They lay on the grass, arms and legs outstretched, all holding hands. Andy turned to them.
“Coolest. Adventure. Ever.” He grinned.
“Never. Ever. Again,” Maggie replied. “My caving days are over.”
“Mine too,” Jane said. “I think I’ll take up surfing.”
Michael just lay there staring up at the sky, his mind working. “Was it real?” He turned his head. “Already, I don’t believe it.”
“It was real,” Jane said. “And the center of the Earth is a nightmare.”
*****
Thousands of feet below them, the creatures sniffed at the blood-covered rag that had floated down to them. It carried the blood scent of their kin, but also of something else.
They began climbing up the sheer wall, tracking the scent, until they arrived at the small cave with rubble pulled free. One eased closer and its nostril flaps flared open as it inhaled the intoxicating smells of the strange warm-blooded animals.
It squeezed in to follow.
EPILOGUE
“How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next?” ― Jules Verne
A full year had now gone by and Michael Monroe sat at his desk making notes. He, Jane, Andy, and Maggie had undergone bleach scrubs and iodine treatments to minimize the effects of the radiation they suffered for months. It seemed to be working, as none of them had yet suffered Katya’s tumorous fate.
The calendar had said they were gone 43 days in surface world time. But he knew they had been down at the center of the Earth for over twice that. The wheel within the wheel, he thought.
They had all agreed for now that they would keep their expedition secret, at least until Michael finished with all his notes.
Though his friends seemed to want to just forget about it, Michael couldn’t let it go. However, the work was proving difficult.
He stared down at the page he had just finished. He was creating an illustration based on his recollection of the pictoglyphs he and Jane had seen on the wall of the gallery ruins in what he thought of as the crystal city.
In his illustration, he displayed a fleet of small ships sailing off into the distance on a blood-red, endless sea.
He sat back, letting his eyes travel to the small broken statue of the humanoid figure on his desk. He still had so many questions that they interrupted his sleep and curiosity still burned within him like at the heart of a furnace.
There was intelligent life down there. Still down there. He knew it as keenly as he knew his own name. And there were so many other darker questions—what exactly were those things they encountered on the climb back to the light? He had his suspicions, horrible ones, and he had sent off the rag containing the blood sample of the creature to zoological hematologists and was awaiting the results.
He sat back, his imagination still working. And what of the group that sailed away? Were they like us? Did they find another place to start again? Could they be found?
He had also been examining all the stories he could find, whether just hearsay or not, about cavers disappearing in deep caves, and of new caves in remote places that were considered taboo for containing evil spirits. One thing he had found during his research was that all legends had a kernel of truth at their heart.
He sat brooding for a moment and then slid open his desk drawer and removed the small book wrapped in oilcloth. He carefully opened the leather cover and glanced at the word
s again.
Saknussov had kept a diary of his time at the center of the Earth, and the things he said he had witnessed made Michael tremble with both excitement and fear at the book’s revelations.
Could they all be true? he wondered. Or was sickness, and madness guiding his hand by then?
Michael sighed, closed the diary, and sat back as he knew there were only so many answers to be had on the Earth’s surface.
He smiled. Jane had seen the look in his eye and simply held up a finger in front of his face. Don’t, she had warned.
He folded his arms, ruminating. Explorers enter caves, new caves, in the hope of finding something undiscovered and extraordinary. He had found something so extraordinary that it would change everything they knew about the evolution of the species, their world, and mankind’s place in it.
Michael closed his eyes for a moment. “Don’t,” he whispered.
He slowly opened his eyes and they immediately moved to the picture he had been drawing of the vast pellucid sea and a sky glowing blood red.
Its pull was irresistible.
END
Read on for a free sample of Primordial Island
Chapter 1
Dr. Peter Albanese sat up on the stage at commencement in full academic dress next to Dr. Tracey Moran. He was sweating under his robe, but it wasn’t from the weather. In fact, it was a cool, pleasant day in May, and the ventilation in the auditorium was thankfully working.
However, Peter hated crowds. They had always made him uncomfortable, and although he wasn’t the focal point of this massive crowd of proud parents and bored siblings, he always found the occasion to be stifling and was appreciative it was only an annual tradition.
He looked over at Tracey, who was positively radiant, beaming as if she were graduating herself. Hers hadn’t been that long ago, so the gravitas of the situation likely stirred happy memories for her. Peter’s graduation was a bit further in the past, though not by much, and he felt the same way about it then as he did now.
After sitting through countless speeches from various university officers, guest speeches (this year from a local politician and a television actor he was unfamiliar with), the ceremony was wrapping up, and the Department of the Geosciences would be joining the other departments at the reception to follow.
